February 10, 2020 • 44 mins
We think Valentine’s Day is a day to celebrate and reflect on partnerships of all kinds, not just romantic ones. In this special C&C episode, we’re taking you behind the scenes of our creative partnership and talking about why we work so well together. We’ve got lots of personal insights on how to build a partnership from the ground up, as well as tips from professionals. Whether you’re looking for a new partner in creativity or want to love the one you’re with, tune in!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Limit Does Not Exist is a production of I
Heart Radio. Okay, I'm Christina Wallace and I'm Kate Scott Campbell.
We're here to help you follow your curiosity, celebrate your individuality,
(00:20):
and embrace the and not the or, so you can
turn everything you love into a custom built career that's
as unique and dynamic as you are. If you feel
that one path may not be your only path, and
you call yourself a human bend diagram, then you are
in the right place, because when it comes to pursuing
your passions, we believe the limit does not exist. What
(00:45):
happens when two strangers get introduced by a mutual friend,
bond over their love of math and theater, and schedule
a skype date. This podcast happened exactly. While some people
think Valentine's Day is a day that's just for romantic relationships,
we think it's a day to celebrate and reflect on
partnerships of all kinds, including our own. In this C
(01:06):
and C episode, we're taking you behind the scenes of
our creative partnership and talking about why we work so
well together. We've got lots of personal insights to share
on how to build a partnership from the ground up,
as well as tips from professionals. So in the name
of love and partnership, let's jump in, shall we. Let's
do it. Hey, Christina, Happy Valentine's Day. Kate, Happy Valentine's Day.
(01:34):
Some people think Valentine's Day is just for romantic relationships,
but I think we should celebrate it for our creative partnership.
To that idea is enough to get me back on
board with the idea of Valentine's Day in general. I
have never been a big Valentine's Day person. I've always
been a fan of the day after Valentine's Day, where
the candy is off um. But I think, you know,
(01:58):
the world spends so much effort celebrating romantic partnerships, and
there are so many other types of really fulfilling partnerships
that have nothing to do with romance that I think
are worth celebrating. I agree with you, and I have
to say I've been thinking a lot about partnerships this year,
and specifically about ours and how much it means to me,
(02:20):
like truly it really does, Like our relationship to me
is the foundation of everything that we do together. Just
the strength of our relationship, I mean, my gosh, I
could be doing a podcast about cereal with you, and
if I'm doing it with you, I have lots of
thoughts on cereal. And I'm not talking about cereal that
(02:42):
very popular podcast s the breakfast food, which I would
maintain as a food you can eat in for any
meal of the day. I am so there with you.
I realized the other day that our relationship is actually
I've been in longer than my relationship with my husband.
I'm first, I know, I mean, we don't have a
child together, but we have a podcast together, and I
(03:05):
think that's kind of yeah. I agree with you. I mean,
I remember it was shortly after you got married last
year and we had been on hiatus for a little while,
and you called me on the phone and you were like,
Chaz is the love of my life. You are the
creative love of my life. Something like that. It's true.
Maybe I'm misremembering this, but but when you said that
(03:27):
is what I said you, I literally swooned. I was
sitting in my car in l a And and just
like your ability to just say, hey, we work really
well together, let's keep doing this. You know, We've done
that a couple of times where we've said. Look, I
remember when we did episode one on one and we
talked after that and we said, you know, I think
(03:47):
you said we could shake hands and say we made
something really great and then go our separate ways and
stay in each other's lives. And I remember immediately getting
so sad at the idea of that. I just remember
being like, no, no, that's not what I want. I
love my life with Christina Wallace in it, and I
love making things with you well same. I mean, I
(04:07):
think we've had some pretty memorable moments of our partnership together,
which I think is a both a testament to how
strong the relationship is, but also I think contributed to
how strong the relationship is. Yeah, totally. I mean, Christina,
I think back to that first weekend at south By
Southwest that we spent together where you were like, hey, yeah,
(04:29):
just come crash in my hotel room with me, and
they were like, so, like, you're a person i've met once,
but you should come share a bed with me so
that we can pull this off, and to your credit,
you said, yes, thank you. I did. I mean, when
I look back at it, like we barely knew each other.
We had had one skype date. We had hung out
at JPL and had green juice with our friend Rachel
(04:51):
and I think lunch, some cheesy fries at the dinner,
that's right. It was some kind of like late afternoon.
It wasn't even lunch, it was like a snack. Yeah,
and then we just like jumped in. Well, it's set
up very clearly that you are a yes and type
of lady, as you know, crucial, true, it's crucial for
(05:12):
pulling this off right. And I think anytime you start
something new, you are sort of setting the not the
ground rules, but kind of the the emotional you know, boundaries,
ground rules for what that partnership looks like. And you
could have said, Hey, I really want us to script
out this whole episode. Let's strategize three more times, you know,
(05:34):
let's get in front of a white board, let's have
a lot more conversations. And instead you're like, no, I'll
get on a plane, I'll meet you in Texas. We'll
have some breakfast tacos, and we'll get in front of
a microphone and see what happens, you know, and not
that we were winging it. We sat down in the
bar of the drift skull let's go together, you know,
an outline, but you were very open to saying, I
(05:56):
don't know what this is gonna look like, but I'm
pretty sure it's gonna be awesome, so let's just see. Yeah.
And and really our partnership is the source of that.
Like the instant trust I had with you was like uncanny.
I mean, that's not to say at the beginning it
was really scary. It's like, we are creating this thing
that feels so experimental with this person who I think
(06:19):
is awesome, and I'm still really getting to know, you know,
and it's trust takes time. It's so funny thinking about
that hotel room in Austin because of the nature of
our long distance partnership, like we have just found ourselves
in these random hotel rooms like around it's a cry. Well.
(06:39):
Do you remember our first live show at Interlock in
northern Michigan. Gosh, um, it was cold too, got it
was cold, and you got there like with plenty of
time to spare. You flew in from l A. You
were doing great. I was flying in from New York,
connecting through Chicago and my plane went to land in
Traverse City and our there was like too much fog.
(07:01):
Our pilot couldn't make the landing, so he circled around
to make it another attempt, and after he got below
the fog line, he realized he wasn't even close to
the runway and how in touch with me at the time.
I remember that were you calling me? Because I was
low enough in the air that I turned my Yeah,
I like broke all the aviation rules and turned my
myself phone signal on to text you. I was like,
(07:21):
we're making a second pass and we're not landing. And
we flew back to Chicago, and I almost missed our show.
We were like trying to figure out who could be
your guest co host. That's right. I didn't get there
in time, That's right. I think I landed with like
forty five minutes before we had to be on stage.
In the meantime, I was in this I'm not going
(07:43):
to call it a cabin, but I mean it's a
little rustic. Rustic. I just thought that I talked to
you into coming to interlock in and then you were
going to have to do this show without me. I know,
But I do have a faint memory of going down
to the what is it called the cafeteria Stone, Yeah,
(08:04):
the Stone Stone Cafeteria, and I think finding you a
banana and like some other things that you could eat,
and then we pulled off that show. I mean, I'm
also thinking about when we did our show in Providence.
It was also very cold, and we were in that
brown yea and we were in that really cool little hotel,
sleeping in bunk beds, bunk beds. It was the cheapest hotel.
(08:29):
The reason it was, it totally was. And then, of
course when we had had some time off again we're
on hiatus, we had the phone call that I've already
talked about in which I swooned and I flew to
Vegas to meet you. That's right, because I had a
I had a work thing there I was doing. I
(08:49):
would think I was speaking at a conference, and I
was like, Vegas is kind of close to l A.
Why don't you meet me there. I have a room
at the Cosmopolitans. Oh my gosh, get pork buns and
atogize about how to bring the show back. My life
at that time was such a whirlwind because I had
just gone through my breakup. I had just moved. I
think I still had boxes and no couch in my place,
(09:13):
and I was like, yes, totally, Like who else at
this very very tumultuous time would I just go hop
on a plane to Vegas for like nobody? And I
think to your point from the very beginning, the question
of like when you're working with someone you don't know
that well, right, we're sort of both jumping in the
deep end and trusting that the other one is going
(09:33):
to jump. I think there are two ways that you
can approach a new relationship. I think this is true
for romantic relationships too, because I think this is consistent
about how I felt about Chaz at the very beginning.
You can either start from a place of trust and
say I'm going to trust that they will be there
until they give me evidence that they won't, and then
I will readjust what I think about them or how
(09:53):
much I'm willing to put into this, or you can
start from a place of I don't trust them and
I need to see evidence so they can earn that
trust over time. And I don't think either way is
better than the other. I just think there are two
very different ways to start a relationship. I choose to
start from a place of trust, and then the second
you break that trust. I'm very much a scorpio. I'm
(10:15):
done with like we're done here, and and I think
I'm very lucky that both you and Chess also do that.
You start from a place of I'm going to show
up too, and I'm going to trust that you'll be there.
And I think that's what made so much of this
work early on, is that we had a very similar
approach to saying, let's go all in, let's just dive in,
(10:38):
and we both did, and so we both were able
to kind of show up with equal commitment from the
very beginning, rather than having to build that slowly over
lots of interactions. I don't know, what, do you think.
I really love hearing you say that that you feel
like that was my approach. I think lately I've been
thinking a lot about my ability to trust and how
(11:00):
difficult it can sometimes feel to have trust in somebody
and how it's something that can take time right. But
I'm really with you in that I strive to be
in that first camp as much as possible, which is like,
go in with trust, because I feel like that's, you know,
setting hopefully both people up for success. And I know,
(11:22):
for me something that has really really contributed to building
trust with you together is our ability to have conversations
that could be potentially really uncomfortable. I remember a phone
call we had last summer where I kind of felt
like I was really putting my heart on the line
to say, Christina, I feel like I've changed in these ways,
(11:44):
and are you down to have our show also continue
to evolve and change in those ways. And I remember,
I don't know if I told you this. I had
literally written a page and half of notes for that phone. God,
I was just in this place of personal change, and
it just felt vulnerable and I completely trusted you enough
(12:07):
to have that conversation with me, and to your total credit,
you just rose to the occasion. And I have to
say it ended up being such an invigorating phone call.
It just really reinforced our partnership. And I have this
theory that when you have uncomfortable conversations with another person,
(12:27):
usually one of two things happens. You decide that you
are on different pages and you go different ways, or
or sometimes you know the other person won't meet you
there and then you can't really do much. Or it
brings you closer together and consistently our ability to have
those conversations to me has just brought us closer together
(12:50):
in a really exciting way. And I'm I am so
honored that you think that and kind of touch that
you put that much thought into preparing for that phone call.
I know, I think to your point of, you know,
finding it necessarily sometimes hard to trust or needing to
build that over time, I think my theory very much
when you both jump in with trust and you both
(13:13):
show up and say we're going to do this. The
one caveat to that approach, I think is that you
need to be really clear about what you want or
where your boundaries are or sort of you know where
where what's going to make you happy in this partnership,
because I think if you both jump in and you're
not clear on what you want, and you don't have
(13:34):
to be clear on the very first moment, but you
have to be willing to do that work, to to
always check in and make sure like is this working
for me? If you don't do that work, then I
think the jumping in can you know, I've experienced this
in romantic relationship sometimes where it sort of feels head
over heels and you can get you know, wrapped up
in it, and if the other person knows what they
(13:56):
want and you're not sure what you want, it can
be really easy to just go along with them. And
then you find yourself a year or two down this
path and they're pretty happy because they know what they
want and they have been driving the relationship in that direction,
but you by kind of going along with it because
they had this clarity of vision and it felt really good.
(14:20):
You find yourself in a place where like, this isn't
working for me, and then you feel really bad because
you are like, but I've never told them that this
isn't working for me, or maybe I did, but not
super clearly, and so then you end up breaking something
off where they're like, but this has been great, what's
going on? And you're like, yeah, but I was never
able to stand up for myself enough or or make
(14:43):
sure that this was working for me up to this point.
So I just feel like that. That's like the one
asterisk on the like jump in with both feet first
is you have to be willing to have these difficult conversations,
and you have to put in the work to make
sure and check in with yourself this working for me?
What do I want. If not, how do I get there?
(15:03):
And how do I put in the work to redirect
rather than just going with the momentum. What you've articulated
is that it's equal parts. Being able to take personal
space and really reflect moment to moments sometimes right to
figure out, okay, is this working for me? And then
whatever the answer is, having the courage to communicate that
(15:25):
to your partner. I would also say, just to tack
onto that, another thing that has really I know enhanced
our partnership is our ability. Whether or not we're saying
it out loud to each other, but I think that
we have a real ability to really appreciate the things
that we share in common and also to really appreciate
the differences that we have, and that we're able to
(15:47):
find a way to really embrace the yin and yang
and also embrace the oh I see you like. Both
things are really valuable. Absolutely. I mean that's the ven
diagram to be super cheese, right. Yeah, there are things
that that totally overlap and make a lot of sense,
and that's where I think we naturally connect. But there
are so many skills, traits, you know, approaches to work,
(16:10):
what have you that you do brilliantly that I'm like,
I'm just going to let you do it because your
aces at it, and that there are things that I
just lead into and say, why do I just take
this on? Because that's my jam? Right. So, whether that's
like you being the creative director effectively of our show
we're doing photo shoots, or picking the music for our intro,
(16:33):
or designing the logo for our new cover art, whatever
that is, I have thoughts. I certainly weigh in on it,
but I know that you have a vision, and your
vision is You've got great taste. So when in doubt
I lead into your vision, what I love is I
will come to you with all of these ideas and
you just have this innate ability to wrangle them and go,
(16:56):
let's go in that direction. And it's so valuable. Thank you.
(17:16):
We've mentioned a couple of times that there are these
parallels between working relationships and romantic relationships, and you found
this really great article written by a Stare Perel, who's
a well known couples therapist. I thought it was so
interesting that she is writing about co founder relationships. Yeah.
So I met esther through the Summit Series community years
(17:39):
ago when she was really just focusing on romantic relationship.
She did a couple of great Ted talks and from
a couple of books, and has had a couple of podcasts.
She's prolific really focused on when relationships break down. So
it's not surprising given her adjacent cy to the startup
world that she would then translate that experience into co
(18:03):
founder relationships and what it looks like when co founder
relationships breakdown. So she wrote this great article for first
Round Review, which is the publication of First Round Venture Capital,
about kind of the fights that you're sick of having
with your co founders, and will link to this in
the show notes, but it really kind of comes down
to there's kind of overt fights, that's what you say
(18:25):
that you're talking about, and then there's the covert fights.
And we all know this in any relationship. They're like,
what are you really fighting about? It's not that your
husband left his socks on the floor, It's that you're
sick of picking up after him because you feel like
his mother. This is not related to chas. This is
just a thought that came to mind, and so she
talks about, you know, when we come to work, it's
(18:46):
a very common now to say, like, bring your whole self.
She's like, you do, bring your whole self, whether or
not you've been given permission. You come to work with
a kind of unofficial relationship. Resume that. So how you
deal with people is how you deal with people, right,
And you can either be aware of that or you
(19:07):
can continue to show up with these patterns and not
have that awareness. And so she really breaks down kind
of how to think about, you know, what's underneath a
lot of these fights that you're continuing to have. Is
it about power? Is it about prestige? Is it about
not feeling seen? You know what? Are what is really
driving these patterns of communication as they've broken down. But
(19:32):
what I thought was equally interesting in that article is
that she links to another piece that she wrote, it's
really about how to set up healthy relationships from the
beginning so that you don't get to this point of
it breaking down. And really she breaks that into two
kinds of co founder relationships. Ones with people you're already
(19:53):
friends with and ones with people that you are strangers
to write, people you are just meeting and you're building
that relation and ship professionally. First, Now, Christina, you and
I fall into the camp of people who started out
as as we've mentioned, relative strangers, right, I mean we
were introduced by a mutual friend, and certainly we had
had our Skype date. But then what a Stair writes
(20:17):
about is this idea of if you don't know the
person that you are considering creating something with or co
founding something with, get to know each other in context.
So she talks about, you know, doing activities together. And
when I was reading this, I was like, oh my gosh,
Christina Wallace, you knocked this out of the park because
(20:38):
you invited me to what we could really both call
a personal playground, which is NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Right,
we had this whole adventure date there. Yeah, I mean
I did not know that this was her advice. I
just thought it would be a fun day. But I
think it makes a lot of sense, right that if
we were to sit across from each other over coffee
(21:00):
and say like, would you like to be my co founder?
It feels very awkward and then you're kind of like, Okay,
what are we co founding? Right? Or what you like?
And if you think about dating, this is the same
there too, Isn't it way more fun? To like go
bowling or go ice skating, or do something on an
(21:22):
early date rather than just stare across from each other
and start quizzing each other. So we went and spent
I don't know, three four hours walking around with Bobbach,
being fascinated by all the things at JPL, getting to
ask questions and just hanging out. And I think that
was the context we needed to say, you know, are
(21:44):
we are we curious about the same things. Do we
communicate in a similar way? Do we have fun together? Right?
And it was towards the end of that the Bobback
actually said to us, you guys are really funny. You
should have a show. She forgot he said they should
have a right, But you know, getting that kind of
outside perspective on the relationship was also a really great
(22:04):
instigator to take it seriously pretty quickly. I think any
time you can just remove expectations from a situation, it
just frees you up to just be a person, right
and to also take in the other person you're with.
And to your point, we were able to kind of
size each other up without even consciously doing it. It
(22:27):
makes me realize that we're always doing that as people
like We're always just assessing, often subconsciously, how do I
feel around this person? Do I do I feel like
we have shared perspectives? You know, all of those questions
just naturally happened while we were you know, looking at
things that have been on the moon. There are also
(22:47):
all these other unconscious clues about our relationship. For instance,
are you on time? Right? Gosh, like totally what kind
of a driver are you? Oh? You you drove us
to passage, but like you were a great driver. But
you see, I mean this is when people say, like,
(23:09):
see how people treat the waiter or the receptionist. It's
the same thing. Do you get frustrated really easily and
like lose your stuff or do you take things in stride?
Are you conscientious about other people's time? Are you grateful
and appreciative? Right? I just remember how kind of both
in awe and grateful you were to me for bringing you,
(23:32):
but to boll Back for his time. And I've seen
that every time we write emails to anyone we are
working with, you are just so effusive in your thanks
and it's real, it's genuine thanks to everyone we work
with that says like thank you for for being part
of this right, thank you for helping us or or
getting back to us on a Saturday or whatever that is.
(23:54):
That tells me a little bit about the type of
person you're going to be to work with and and
to be, you know, of spending time with. When you're
throwing a party, and by party, I mean this podcast
is a party that you and I were throwing together, right, Yeah,
when you're throwing a party, you know, part of that
is being so happy that people are coming to your
party and really letting them know that. I mean, looking
(24:17):
at that article that we've been talking about, so much
of the covert dynamics really come down to respect and appreciation, right,
Like this idea that I have your back, I mean
I felt that from you really early on, and it
was scary. We were in different cities, we were doing
things together but also separately. But I felt, even when
(24:41):
I felt vulnerable and nervous about our partnership in its
really new stage, I still felt continually, based on our
conversations and just everything that you were bringing to the party,
that you had my back. We're always looking out for
each other's best in trists and knowing that that's going
(25:01):
to support our collective best interest is huge. This is
where some people say, well, then doesn't it make more
sense to co found something or to work with friends
people you are you know, people you already trust, you
know they're going to have your back, You've established all
of these you know, elements of your relationship. Wouldn't it
just be easier to start there? And I think, you know,
(25:22):
I I have certainly did this. My very first apparel
I founded with one of my best friends from business school,
and we had had this explicit conversation at the very
beginning that we didn't want this, you know, company to
affect our friendship. We had seen other companies where the
co founders started as friends and by the end they
(25:42):
weren't talking to each other and hated each other, and
we said, we don't want that. We value our friendship
too much. The problem there, and Esther talks about this
in in her article, is that you have to be
willing to your point to have the difficult conversations, and
when you're friends first, it's sometimes is harder to have
(26:05):
those difficult conversations to hold each other accountable. It really
depends on how you built that friendship, you know, how
strong it is. What other context you have for it.
But I think for the most part, unlike our romantic partners,
unlike our family, a lot of our friends we don't
have conflict with. That's why we're friends with them, you know.
(26:26):
Like the friendship it sounds a little superficial, but like
you don't really have to hold your friends accountable for things.
Maybe they stood you up for dinner, or maybe they're
always ten minutes late, but like, why not just plan
for them being ten minutes late rather than hold them
accountable for being late on you all the time? You know,
And that's fine as long as you're just going to
(26:48):
yoga or meeting up for green juice. It's not fine
if they continue to be ten minutes late or worse,
an hour late for an investor meeting, or for turning
in the deliverables that they said they were going to
take care of. Right. So, I think it can be
a lot harder if you start with the relationship where
(27:08):
you feel like it's a really strong one, but it
might not have been tested before. You know, maybe you
haven't had any friction or you haven't felt the need
to really have those difficult conversations. If you don't have
that practice yet, you might avoid doing that as part
of your professional partnership, and then you're really, you know,
(27:28):
kind of screwed. To be honest, I feel like in
school you and I were most definitely the person in
group projects that all of the work fell onto. I mean,
is that true? To be able to know that I'm
not the loudest engine in the partnership like that I
(27:49):
can really lean on you has been everything. And I'm
just wondering if, yeah, if there's a sort of shared
background of friendship, there just may not be that kind
of environment, right that you just you sort of have
the shared history of a certain dynamic that then could
be hard to change. But I know that Esther gives
some advice about if you are co founding with a friend, Yeah,
I mean, you're not doomed, not at all. And there's
(28:11):
just there's a couple of things, right. So Number one
was she says, get a coach, which I think is
brilliant that an outside third party think about it as
a proactive therapist for your relationship that you're meeting with
on a regular basis, who can observe your interactions, your
conversations and provide that sort of external perspective and as
(28:34):
part of that coach, really setting up a structure from
the beginning before things are broken, to proactively define and
debug your partnership. I Love, I Love you know, sort
of acknowledging from the beginning that we've got some patterns
of behavior already, we have some defaults already, and we
(28:56):
need to identify them and then take a harsh look
at are all of them going to work for us?
And if not, what things do we need to change,
What conversations do we need to have right now and
on a regular basis going forward that we haven't needed
to have as friends. Um, So, I think there are
lots of ways that you can still be successful working
(29:17):
with a friend who's already a friend, but you need
to be clear eyed about that from the beginning of like,
we're going to have to work at this just as
much as a partnership that's starting with strangers. It's just
a different kind of work. And I think as long
as you have that realization, both of these approaches can
(29:37):
be successful. Um, you just can't go in and assume
everything will be fine, because that's when you're going to
end up. In that first article she wrote, which is
how to stop having these same fights over and over
and over again. What we're talking about is obviously so personal,
and every partnership is going to be so different. But
there is that universal rule of physics for every act,
(30:00):
and there's an equal opposite reaction, right, So when you
make mindful investments into your relationship, I believe that that
can only read benefits. We thought it would be fun
(30:24):
to ask each other a few questions. Yeah so, I
mean Esther gives some great questions that you can ask
of a stranger at the very beginning of a partnership
to get a sense of who they are, Like what
do you do when you have twenty emails sitting in
your inbox? And we thought we could ask those, But
I think it's actually a little more fun to be
(30:45):
maybe less quizzical and more appreciative of each other. I
love the questions. Since this is Valentine's Day, we'll call
this our gift to each other. But let's start with
this first one. What was your first impression of me? Oh?
My gosh, I still remember seeing you on my laptop
screen in my living room during our skype date, and
(31:08):
my first impression can boil down to two words on it,
I was just like, Christina Wallace, the train that you
are on, I want to be on it too. It
was you who said, hey, I saw this video that
you made. Let's have a skype date. And your ability
to just point at me and go let's hang out
(31:29):
was just awesome. Also, on a more superficial note, before
we skyped, I definitely casually googled stock to you, as
we like to do on the show. Obviously, and I
just remember seeing you in a speaking video in this
amazing like orange and purple dress. Do you remember this dress?
I do I have that dress? Oh my gosh. And
(31:50):
I just remember going, oh, I like her style. Sounds
so superficial. Okay, Christina, what was your first impression of me?
So obviously I had a strong first impression of you,
or I wouldn't have said we should have a skype date.
What was interesting about my first impression of you was
because it was based on your work. So I saw
(32:10):
how I do math, and my initial reaction was, who
is this genius? She is creatively very talented. Obviously, you
like directed, wrote, produced this incredible video. Also, just the
fact that you thought to do this and you cared
(32:30):
about these things that it was about you know making
all these different approaches to math, which is you know,
many people have a lot of baggage around, and you're
saying all of these are valid, right, and you can
love it, you can be scared by it, you can
do it in your sleep, you can struggle with it
(32:51):
but still show up. Um, and all of these approaches
are absolutely okay. And I thought, this is a person
with empathy, with creativity, with leadership and with vision, and
I want to know her. And then I googled you
and I said, she also has red hair, so obviously
we must be friends. You know. It goes to show
(33:11):
that when you make something that you're like, I don't
I just feel like I want to make this, it
really does help, hopefully help you find your people. Okay,
I'm gonna ask you first, sure, what's one of the
best qualities I bring to our partnership. And I know
that we've we've thrown a lot of appreciation at each
other in this episode so far, but UM tell me
more so. One of the things that I absolutely am
(33:37):
in awe of is your creative brain. That it's everything
from visual to oral, right with sound, mood boards that
you can put together. You just have this ability when
we say let's do a video about you know, our
the name of our show, or let's do a photo
shoot that really gets the new kind of energy of
(34:01):
down and you're like, yes, there will be gold hula hoops,
and I was like gold hula Of course, your attention
to detail on creative things is the execution becomes flawless.
And I think that that is crucial, right. I think
a lot of people have maybe a big vision of
a creative and never they want to go after and
(34:23):
then they're sort of like like, that's good enough, let's
move on, and you like, not good enough. You like
have a very specific, very attention to detail approach to
all of your work that says, I like this, but
move that font like three pixels to the last. I
(34:44):
like those hula hoops, but they need to be exactly
this many inches in diameter, and we want them to
be gold, but matt gold, not shiny gold. Right Like
that attention to detail is why your work is so good.
Thank you so much. So, Kate, tell me what's one
of the best qualities I bring to the partnership. Here's
(35:05):
the thing, Christina, listening to you say what you just said,
I wouldn't be able to step into those qualities without you.
What I mean is that you are such a pillar.
You are just this engine and your ability to just
not just wrangle all of the ideas and go here,
(35:28):
here's where I think we land there, but your vision
and your leadership. What that does is it really frees
me up to be able to focus on things like
the diameter of the hula hoop. Right, you have this
amazing way of creating a through line and also of
just being a driving force. Can't stop, won't stop. Well,
(35:50):
thank you, Kate. So I love this next question because
I think it tells you how well you know a person.
How can you tell when I'm frustrated or in a
bad mood? I mean, short of me telling you I'm
frustrated in a bad mood? What what do I what's
the first signal? Well, okay, first signal is your words
are cut by like an eight, like you will say
(36:13):
about an eighth as much that's correct. Your self awareness
is so strong and healthy that you're so good at
saying like, hey, I'm having a really rough day, just
f y I like it's not personal, or I'm having
a rough moment like you're so great. It's just articulating
that at the beginning of conversations or to say like, yeah,
I slept for two hours, like I'm not going to
(36:33):
pretend to be in any place that I'm not right now.
I think I said this when I came back right
after the baby, where I was like, I'm not sleeping.
So I'm going to be very direct in my text messages.
And it's not because I'm mean. It's because I do
not have the bandwidth to like say, hey, how are
you exclamation point? Um, I'm just gonna say, did you
(36:54):
do that thing? Okay, Christina? How can you tell when
I'm frustrated her in a bad mood? You add double
the exclamation point to your emails and text messages. Oh
my gosh, I'm crying. I do you know? There's that
phrase success makes you more of who you are. Apparently
frustration makes me more of who you are as well,
(37:14):
because I also I'm just a personal fan of the
exclamation point. One of the reasons why emails take me
so long to write, other than you know, like I
worry about grammar too much in them, is that I
actively delete exclamation points and replace them with curious. Apparently,
not when I'm frustrated, but at other times, oh my,
whereas I will go and look at my periods and
(37:35):
replace them with exclamation points so I don't sound like
I'm mad at you. What's something that, when you see
your experience other people doing it, you think, ah, that's
so Kate. Well, I mean, honestly, any time I interact
with anything San Francisco, obviously I'm thinking about you. Um No,
(37:56):
that's a great question. Honestly, it probably comes down to wigs, wigs, accents, costumes, anything.
At this point, when I see someone with a great wig,
I'm thinking Kate probably already has that. Let's be honest,
I am just like the queen of of different looks, accents, personalities.
(38:19):
You could have a one woman SNL show. Oh my gosh,
I thank you, I am. I am truly humbled and
flattered Kate. What's something when you see your experience other
people doing it, you're like, yep, that's Christina. Okay, I've
never seen someone do this publicly, and it's really great
that I haven't. But if I ever saw someone take
(38:41):
their pants off and starfish on the bed then, which
I've actually never seen you do, but I know that
it's it's a tip of yours. Given how many hotel
rooms we've shared, I'm surprised that I have. I know
that I'm trying to be respect you. I'm glad to
know that's a strong part of my personal brand. I mean,
(39:03):
it's really fabulous. It really comes down to just owning
who you are and giving yourself what you need, two
things that I've really looked to you for inspiration. And
on that note, I would also say, anytime I see
a toll just gorgeous and gorgeously confident woman, I'm always
like Christina. It's Christina. It goes back to my first
impression of you, of just your ability to just stand
(39:28):
in who you are and be a badass. Honestly, thank you.
To be clear, I also think about you every time
I see Kate Blanchet in anything. In case, Christina, you
were just making this the best Valentine's Day ever. I
don't to bring this home. We have some resources that
we thought we would just give a quick shout out
(39:48):
to for anyone who wants to learn more about partnerships,
how to build them strong, or to read about inspiring partnerships.
I know my go to this fabulous book that just
came out called work Wife by these wonderful female founders,
Claire and Erica, the founders of a Kind, which is
this fashion brand, and they just talk through their you know,
(40:13):
fabulous relationship, friendship, partnership in building this company over ten years.
And they on their Instagram page wonderful, wonderful account just
kind of pulling together other really inspiring female business partnerships.
So great place to look if you want to read
about some inspiring partnerships. But I know, Kate, you came
across some resources that are really useful as well. What
(40:35):
did you find? Yeah, so you might be familiar with
the book The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman. It's
something that I found just really illuminating in general with
how I moved through the world. My primary love language
is acts of service, which it just goes to show
how extra grateful I am when you do our taxes.
I have to say, like ultimate active service. You know,
(40:57):
my primary love language is not included in the book.
Not his tidiness so well interesting in want to do
a revision on that book, you can add a sixth one.
That's amazing. I mean I I could see tidiness being
an active service. It's like the person that you're sharing
in space with tidies it up. I mean to be clear,
Before I came home from the hospital with our baby,
(41:19):
Chas went home and tidied our apartment because I knew
I left it in a total mess when we left
for the hospital. He knew that coming home to that
would stress me out. So he went home and like vacuumed,
Like that is the ultimate I love you, I mean
to me, that is the ultimate romantic gesture. That's amazing. Anyway,
you found a version of this for working right, So
(41:41):
Gary Chapman co authored a book called Five Languages of
Appreciation in the Workplace, And yeah, he's replaced the word
love with appreciation, which really comes down to everything we've
talked about today. That slash like HR probably prefers it.
So true. Such a great HR move. You know, I
haven't yet read it, but I'd really like to, and
(42:02):
it's certainly at the top of my reading list to
see how, you know, we can continue to apply what
we've been talking about romantic partnership tips to professional partnerships.
You also found this great article on HBr as well.
It's called how to have Difficult conversations when you don't
like conflict and like who likes conflict? Sounds like this
(42:23):
good for all of us. That's really great to hear.
I know that I'm naturally conflict averse. I'll be like, no, no, no,
let's put out the fire. Let's put out the fire.
But that's really something that I've really worked on stepping
into in the past, definitely the past year and a half.
And it's really nice to just know that there's a
lot of resources out there. If you're someone who knows
you've got to have an uncomfortable conversation but you're really
(42:44):
nervous about it slash not sure how to go about it,
that's a great piece to look at as well. We
want to hear from you what some of your best
partnership tips are. Send us your tips, your updates, your questions.
You can reach us on Twitter or Instagram at tld
any odd or you can email us at hello at
t L d any podcast dot com. That's right, or
(43:05):
you can leave us a voicemail at eight three three
high t L d n E. We love hearing your voices.
That's eight three three four eight five three six three
And don't forget to dial the extension eight oh three
when you call it to leave a voicemail and we'll
link to the HBr article, the Esther Perell article, the
Work Wife book. All of these resources in our show notes,
(43:27):
which you can find at t L d any podcast
dot com, Slash one O nine. Thanks so much to
our producer, Maya Coole and Tu for tuning in. As always,
please subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts if you
(43:49):
like what you heard, it really helps us get the
word out to fellow human ven diagrams. Until next time, remember,
the limit does not The limit does not exist is
a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from
My Heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
(44:11):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Yeah
The Limit Does Not Exist is a production of I
Heart Radio. Okay, I'm Christina Wallace and I'm Kate Scott Campbell.
We're here to help you follow your curiosity, celebrate your individuality,
(00:20):
and embrace the and not the or, so you can
turn everything you love into a custom built career that's
as unique and dynamic as you are. If you feel
that one path may not be your only path, and
you call yourself a human bend diagram, then you are
in the right place, because when it comes to pursuing
your passions, we believe the limit does not exist. What
(00:45):
happens when two strangers get introduced by a mutual friend,
bond over their love of math and theater, and schedule
a skype date. This podcast happened exactly. While some people
think Valentine's Day is a day that's just for romantic relationships,
we think it's a day to celebrate and reflect on
partnerships of all kinds, including our own. In this C
(01:06):
and C episode, we're taking you behind the scenes of
our creative partnership and talking about why we work so
well together. We've got lots of personal insights to share
on how to build a partnership from the ground up,
as well as tips from professionals. So in the name
of love and partnership, let's jump in, shall we. Let's
do it. Hey, Christina, Happy Valentine's Day. Kate, Happy Valentine's Day.
(01:34):
Some people think Valentine's Day is just for romantic relationships,
but I think we should celebrate it for our creative partnership.
To that idea is enough to get me back on
board with the idea of Valentine's Day in general. I
have never been a big Valentine's Day person. I've always
been a fan of the day after Valentine's Day, where
the candy is off um. But I think, you know,
(01:58):
the world spends so much effort celebrating romantic partnerships, and
there are so many other types of really fulfilling partnerships
that have nothing to do with romance that I think
are worth celebrating. I agree with you, and I have
to say I've been thinking a lot about partnerships this year,
and specifically about ours and how much it means to me,
(02:20):
like truly it really does, Like our relationship to me
is the foundation of everything that we do together. Just
the strength of our relationship, I mean, my gosh, I
could be doing a podcast about cereal with you, and
if I'm doing it with you, I have lots of
thoughts on cereal. And I'm not talking about cereal that
(02:42):
very popular podcast s the breakfast food, which I would
maintain as a food you can eat in for any
meal of the day. I am so there with you.
I realized the other day that our relationship is actually
I've been in longer than my relationship with my husband.
I'm first, I know, I mean, we don't have a
child together, but we have a podcast together, and I
(03:05):
think that's kind of yeah. I agree with you. I mean,
I remember it was shortly after you got married last
year and we had been on hiatus for a little while,
and you called me on the phone and you were like,
Chaz is the love of my life. You are the
creative love of my life. Something like that. It's true.
Maybe I'm misremembering this, but but when you said that
(03:27):
is what I said you, I literally swooned. I was
sitting in my car in l a And and just
like your ability to just say, hey, we work really
well together, let's keep doing this. You know, We've done
that a couple of times where we've said. Look, I
remember when we did episode one on one and we
talked after that and we said, you know, I think
(03:47):
you said we could shake hands and say we made
something really great and then go our separate ways and
stay in each other's lives. And I remember immediately getting
so sad at the idea of that. I just remember
being like, no, no, that's not what I want. I
love my life with Christina Wallace in it, and I
love making things with you well same. I mean, I
(04:07):
think we've had some pretty memorable moments of our partnership together,
which I think is a both a testament to how
strong the relationship is, but also I think contributed to
how strong the relationship is. Yeah, totally. I mean, Christina,
I think back to that first weekend at south By
Southwest that we spent together where you were like, hey, yeah,
(04:29):
just come crash in my hotel room with me, and
they were like, so, like, you're a person i've met once,
but you should come share a bed with me so
that we can pull this off, and to your credit,
you said, yes, thank you. I did. I mean, when
I look back at it, like we barely knew each other.
We had had one skype date. We had hung out
at JPL and had green juice with our friend Rachel
(04:51):
and I think lunch, some cheesy fries at the dinner,
that's right. It was some kind of like late afternoon.
It wasn't even lunch, it was like a snack. Yeah,
and then we just like jumped in. Well, it's set
up very clearly that you are a yes and type
of lady, as you know, crucial, true, it's crucial for
(05:12):
pulling this off right. And I think anytime you start
something new, you are sort of setting the not the
ground rules, but kind of the the emotional you know, boundaries,
ground rules for what that partnership looks like. And you
could have said, Hey, I really want us to script
out this whole episode. Let's strategize three more times, you know,
(05:34):
let's get in front of a white board, let's have
a lot more conversations. And instead you're like, no, I'll
get on a plane, I'll meet you in Texas. We'll
have some breakfast tacos, and we'll get in front of
a microphone and see what happens, you know, and not
that we were winging it. We sat down in the
bar of the drift skull let's go together, you know,
an outline, but you were very open to saying, I
(05:56):
don't know what this is gonna look like, but I'm
pretty sure it's gonna be awesome, so let's just see. Yeah.
And and really our partnership is the source of that.
Like the instant trust I had with you was like uncanny.
I mean, that's not to say at the beginning it
was really scary. It's like, we are creating this thing
that feels so experimental with this person who I think
(06:19):
is awesome, and I'm still really getting to know, you know,
and it's trust takes time. It's so funny thinking about
that hotel room in Austin because of the nature of
our long distance partnership, like we have just found ourselves
in these random hotel rooms like around it's a cry. Well.
(06:39):
Do you remember our first live show at Interlock in
northern Michigan. Gosh, um, it was cold too, got it
was cold, and you got there like with plenty of
time to spare. You flew in from l A. You
were doing great. I was flying in from New York,
connecting through Chicago and my plane went to land in
Traverse City and our there was like too much fog.
(07:01):
Our pilot couldn't make the landing, so he circled around
to make it another attempt, and after he got below
the fog line, he realized he wasn't even close to
the runway and how in touch with me at the time.
I remember that were you calling me? Because I was
low enough in the air that I turned my Yeah,
I like broke all the aviation rules and turned my
myself phone signal on to text you. I was like,
(07:21):
we're making a second pass and we're not landing. And
we flew back to Chicago, and I almost missed our show.
We were like trying to figure out who could be
your guest co host. That's right. I didn't get there
in time, That's right. I think I landed with like
forty five minutes before we had to be on stage.
In the meantime, I was in this I'm not going
(07:43):
to call it a cabin, but I mean it's a
little rustic. Rustic. I just thought that I talked to
you into coming to interlock in and then you were
going to have to do this show without me. I know,
But I do have a faint memory of going down
to the what is it called the cafeteria Stone, Yeah,
(08:04):
the Stone Stone Cafeteria, and I think finding you a
banana and like some other things that you could eat,
and then we pulled off that show. I mean, I'm
also thinking about when we did our show in Providence.
It was also very cold, and we were in that
brown yea and we were in that really cool little hotel,
sleeping in bunk beds, bunk beds. It was the cheapest hotel.
(08:29):
The reason it was, it totally was. And then, of
course when we had had some time off again we're
on hiatus, we had the phone call that I've already
talked about in which I swooned and I flew to
Vegas to meet you. That's right, because I had a
I had a work thing there I was doing. I
(08:49):
would think I was speaking at a conference, and I
was like, Vegas is kind of close to l A.
Why don't you meet me there. I have a room
at the Cosmopolitans. Oh my gosh, get pork buns and
atogize about how to bring the show back. My life
at that time was such a whirlwind because I had
just gone through my breakup. I had just moved. I
think I still had boxes and no couch in my place,
(09:13):
and I was like, yes, totally, Like who else at
this very very tumultuous time would I just go hop
on a plane to Vegas for like nobody? And I
think to your point from the very beginning, the question
of like when you're working with someone you don't know
that well, right, we're sort of both jumping in the
deep end and trusting that the other one is going
(09:33):
to jump. I think there are two ways that you
can approach a new relationship. I think this is true
for romantic relationships too, because I think this is consistent
about how I felt about Chaz at the very beginning.
You can either start from a place of trust and
say I'm going to trust that they will be there
until they give me evidence that they won't, and then
I will readjust what I think about them or how
(09:53):
much I'm willing to put into this, or you can
start from a place of I don't trust them and
I need to see evidence so they can earn that
trust over time. And I don't think either way is
better than the other. I just think there are two
very different ways to start a relationship. I choose to
start from a place of trust, and then the second
you break that trust. I'm very much a scorpio. I'm
(10:15):
done with like we're done here, and and I think
I'm very lucky that both you and Chess also do that.
You start from a place of I'm going to show
up too, and I'm going to trust that you'll be there.
And I think that's what made so much of this
work early on, is that we had a very similar
approach to saying, let's go all in, let's just dive in,
(10:38):
and we both did, and so we both were able
to kind of show up with equal commitment from the
very beginning, rather than having to build that slowly over
lots of interactions. I don't know, what, do you think.
I really love hearing you say that that you feel
like that was my approach. I think lately I've been
thinking a lot about my ability to trust and how
(11:00):
difficult it can sometimes feel to have trust in somebody
and how it's something that can take time right. But
I'm really with you in that I strive to be
in that first camp as much as possible, which is like,
go in with trust, because I feel like that's, you know,
setting hopefully both people up for success. And I know,
(11:22):
for me something that has really really contributed to building
trust with you together is our ability to have conversations
that could be potentially really uncomfortable. I remember a phone
call we had last summer where I kind of felt
like I was really putting my heart on the line
to say, Christina, I feel like I've changed in these ways,
(11:44):
and are you down to have our show also continue
to evolve and change in those ways. And I remember,
I don't know if I told you this. I had
literally written a page and half of notes for that phone. God,
I was just in this place of personal change, and
it just felt vulnerable and I completely trusted you enough
(12:07):
to have that conversation with me, and to your total credit,
you just rose to the occasion. And I have to
say it ended up being such an invigorating phone call.
It just really reinforced our partnership. And I have this
theory that when you have uncomfortable conversations with another person,
(12:27):
usually one of two things happens. You decide that you
are on different pages and you go different ways, or
or sometimes you know the other person won't meet you
there and then you can't really do much. Or it
brings you closer together and consistently our ability to have
those conversations to me has just brought us closer together
(12:50):
in a really exciting way. And I'm I am so
honored that you think that and kind of touch that
you put that much thought into preparing for that phone call.
I know, I think to your point of, you know,
finding it necessarily sometimes hard to trust or needing to
build that over time, I think my theory very much
when you both jump in with trust and you both
(13:13):
show up and say we're going to do this. The
one caveat to that approach, I think is that you
need to be really clear about what you want or
where your boundaries are or sort of you know where
where what's going to make you happy in this partnership,
because I think if you both jump in and you're
not clear on what you want, and you don't have
(13:34):
to be clear on the very first moment, but you
have to be willing to do that work, to to
always check in and make sure like is this working
for me? If you don't do that work, then I
think the jumping in can you know, I've experienced this
in romantic relationship sometimes where it sort of feels head
over heels and you can get you know, wrapped up
in it, and if the other person knows what they
(13:56):
want and you're not sure what you want, it can
be really easy to just go along with them. And
then you find yourself a year or two down this
path and they're pretty happy because they know what they
want and they have been driving the relationship in that direction,
but you by kind of going along with it because
they had this clarity of vision and it felt really good.
(14:20):
You find yourself in a place where like, this isn't
working for me, and then you feel really bad because
you are like, but I've never told them that this
isn't working for me, or maybe I did, but not
super clearly, and so then you end up breaking something
off where they're like, but this has been great, what's
going on? And you're like, yeah, but I was never
able to stand up for myself enough or or make
(14:43):
sure that this was working for me up to this point.
So I just feel like that. That's like the one
asterisk on the like jump in with both feet first
is you have to be willing to have these difficult conversations,
and you have to put in the work to make
sure and check in with yourself this working for me?
What do I want. If not, how do I get there?
(15:03):
And how do I put in the work to redirect
rather than just going with the momentum. What you've articulated
is that it's equal parts. Being able to take personal
space and really reflect moment to moments sometimes right to
figure out, okay, is this working for me? And then
whatever the answer is, having the courage to communicate that
(15:25):
to your partner. I would also say, just to tack
onto that, another thing that has really I know enhanced
our partnership is our ability. Whether or not we're saying
it out loud to each other, but I think that
we have a real ability to really appreciate the things
that we share in common and also to really appreciate
the differences that we have, and that we're able to
(15:47):
find a way to really embrace the yin and yang
and also embrace the oh I see you like. Both
things are really valuable. Absolutely. I mean that's the ven
diagram to be super cheese, right. Yeah, there are things
that that totally overlap and make a lot of sense,
and that's where I think we naturally connect. But there
are so many skills, traits, you know, approaches to work,
(16:10):
what have you that you do brilliantly that I'm like,
I'm just going to let you do it because your
aces at it, and that there are things that I
just lead into and say, why do I just take
this on? Because that's my jam? Right. So, whether that's
like you being the creative director effectively of our show
we're doing photo shoots, or picking the music for our intro,
(16:33):
or designing the logo for our new cover art, whatever
that is, I have thoughts. I certainly weigh in on it,
but I know that you have a vision, and your
vision is You've got great taste. So when in doubt
I lead into your vision, what I love is I
will come to you with all of these ideas and
you just have this innate ability to wrangle them and go,
(16:56):
let's go in that direction. And it's so valuable. Thank you.
(17:16):
We've mentioned a couple of times that there are these
parallels between working relationships and romantic relationships, and you found
this really great article written by a Stare Perel, who's
a well known couples therapist. I thought it was so
interesting that she is writing about co founder relationships. Yeah.
So I met esther through the Summit Series community years
(17:39):
ago when she was really just focusing on romantic relationship.
She did a couple of great Ted talks and from
a couple of books, and has had a couple of podcasts.
She's prolific really focused on when relationships break down. So
it's not surprising given her adjacent cy to the startup
world that she would then translate that experience into co
(18:03):
founder relationships and what it looks like when co founder
relationships breakdown. So she wrote this great article for first
Round Review, which is the publication of First Round Venture Capital,
about kind of the fights that you're sick of having
with your co founders, and will link to this in
the show notes, but it really kind of comes down
to there's kind of overt fights, that's what you say
(18:25):
that you're talking about, and then there's the covert fights.
And we all know this in any relationship. They're like,
what are you really fighting about? It's not that your
husband left his socks on the floor, It's that you're
sick of picking up after him because you feel like
his mother. This is not related to chas. This is
just a thought that came to mind, and so she
talks about, you know, when we come to work, it's
(18:46):
a very common now to say, like, bring your whole self.
She's like, you do, bring your whole self, whether or
not you've been given permission. You come to work with
a kind of unofficial relationship. Resume that. So how you
deal with people is how you deal with people, right,
And you can either be aware of that or you
(19:07):
can continue to show up with these patterns and not
have that awareness. And so she really breaks down kind
of how to think about, you know, what's underneath a
lot of these fights that you're continuing to have. Is
it about power? Is it about prestige? Is it about
not feeling seen? You know what? Are what is really
driving these patterns of communication as they've broken down. But
(19:32):
what I thought was equally interesting in that article is
that she links to another piece that she wrote, it's
really about how to set up healthy relationships from the
beginning so that you don't get to this point of
it breaking down. And really she breaks that into two
kinds of co founder relationships. Ones with people you're already
(19:53):
friends with and ones with people that you are strangers
to write, people you are just meeting and you're building
that relation and ship professionally. First, Now, Christina, you and
I fall into the camp of people who started out
as as we've mentioned, relative strangers, right, I mean we
were introduced by a mutual friend, and certainly we had
had our Skype date. But then what a Stair writes
(20:17):
about is this idea of if you don't know the
person that you are considering creating something with or co
founding something with, get to know each other in context.
So she talks about, you know, doing activities together. And
when I was reading this, I was like, oh my gosh,
Christina Wallace, you knocked this out of the park because
(20:38):
you invited me to what we could really both call
a personal playground, which is NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Right,
we had this whole adventure date there. Yeah, I mean
I did not know that this was her advice. I
just thought it would be a fun day. But I
think it makes a lot of sense, right that if
we were to sit across from each other over coffee
(21:00):
and say like, would you like to be my co founder?
It feels very awkward and then you're kind of like, Okay,
what are we co founding? Right? Or what you like?
And if you think about dating, this is the same
there too, Isn't it way more fun? To like go
bowling or go ice skating, or do something on an
(21:22):
early date rather than just stare across from each other
and start quizzing each other. So we went and spent
I don't know, three four hours walking around with Bobbach,
being fascinated by all the things at JPL, getting to
ask questions and just hanging out. And I think that
was the context we needed to say, you know, are
(21:44):
we are we curious about the same things. Do we
communicate in a similar way? Do we have fun together? Right?
And it was towards the end of that the Bobback
actually said to us, you guys are really funny. You
should have a show. She forgot he said they should
have a right, But you know, getting that kind of
outside perspective on the relationship was also a really great
(22:04):
instigator to take it seriously pretty quickly. I think any
time you can just remove expectations from a situation, it
just frees you up to just be a person, right
and to also take in the other person you're with.
And to your point, we were able to kind of
size each other up without even consciously doing it. It
(22:27):
makes me realize that we're always doing that as people
like We're always just assessing, often subconsciously, how do I
feel around this person? Do I do I feel like
we have shared perspectives? You know, all of those questions
just naturally happened while we were you know, looking at
things that have been on the moon. There are also
(22:47):
all these other unconscious clues about our relationship. For instance,
are you on time? Right? Gosh, like totally what kind
of a driver are you? Oh? You you drove us
to passage, but like you were a great driver. But
you see, I mean this is when people say, like,
(23:09):
see how people treat the waiter or the receptionist. It's
the same thing. Do you get frustrated really easily and
like lose your stuff or do you take things in stride?
Are you conscientious about other people's time? Are you grateful
and appreciative? Right? I just remember how kind of both
in awe and grateful you were to me for bringing you,
(23:32):
but to boll Back for his time. And I've seen
that every time we write emails to anyone we are
working with, you are just so effusive in your thanks
and it's real, it's genuine thanks to everyone we work
with that says like thank you for for being part
of this right, thank you for helping us or or
getting back to us on a Saturday or whatever that is.
(23:54):
That tells me a little bit about the type of
person you're going to be to work with and and
to be, you know, of spending time with. When you're
throwing a party, and by party, I mean this podcast
is a party that you and I were throwing together, right, Yeah,
when you're throwing a party, you know, part of that
is being so happy that people are coming to your
party and really letting them know that. I mean, looking
(24:17):
at that article that we've been talking about, so much
of the covert dynamics really come down to respect and appreciation, right,
Like this idea that I have your back, I mean
I felt that from you really early on, and it
was scary. We were in different cities, we were doing
things together but also separately. But I felt, even when
(24:41):
I felt vulnerable and nervous about our partnership in its
really new stage, I still felt continually, based on our
conversations and just everything that you were bringing to the party,
that you had my back. We're always looking out for
each other's best in trists and knowing that that's going
(25:01):
to support our collective best interest is huge. This is
where some people say, well, then doesn't it make more
sense to co found something or to work with friends
people you are you know, people you already trust, you
know they're going to have your back, You've established all
of these you know, elements of your relationship. Wouldn't it
just be easier to start there? And I think, you know,
(25:22):
I I have certainly did this. My very first apparel
I founded with one of my best friends from business school,
and we had had this explicit conversation at the very
beginning that we didn't want this, you know, company to
affect our friendship. We had seen other companies where the
co founders started as friends and by the end they
(25:42):
weren't talking to each other and hated each other, and
we said, we don't want that. We value our friendship
too much. The problem there, and Esther talks about this
in in her article, is that you have to be
willing to your point to have the difficult conversations, and
when you're friends first, it's sometimes is harder to have
(26:05):
those difficult conversations to hold each other accountable. It really
depends on how you built that friendship, you know, how
strong it is. What other context you have for it.
But I think for the most part, unlike our romantic partners,
unlike our family, a lot of our friends we don't
have conflict with. That's why we're friends with them, you know.
(26:26):
Like the friendship it sounds a little superficial, but like
you don't really have to hold your friends accountable for things.
Maybe they stood you up for dinner, or maybe they're
always ten minutes late, but like, why not just plan
for them being ten minutes late rather than hold them
accountable for being late on you all the time? You know,
And that's fine as long as you're just going to
(26:48):
yoga or meeting up for green juice. It's not fine
if they continue to be ten minutes late or worse,
an hour late for an investor meeting, or for turning
in the deliverables that they said they were going to
take care of. Right. So, I think it can be
a lot harder if you start with the relationship where
(27:08):
you feel like it's a really strong one, but it
might not have been tested before. You know, maybe you
haven't had any friction or you haven't felt the need
to really have those difficult conversations. If you don't have
that practice yet, you might avoid doing that as part
of your professional partnership, and then you're really, you know,
(27:28):
kind of screwed. To be honest, I feel like in
school you and I were most definitely the person in
group projects that all of the work fell onto. I mean,
is that true? To be able to know that I'm
not the loudest engine in the partnership like that I
(27:49):
can really lean on you has been everything. And I'm
just wondering if, yeah, if there's a sort of shared
background of friendship, there just may not be that kind
of environment, right that you just you sort of have
the shared history of a certain dynamic that then could
be hard to change. But I know that Esther gives
some advice about if you are co founding with a friend, Yeah,
I mean, you're not doomed, not at all. And there's
(28:11):
just there's a couple of things, right. So Number one
was she says, get a coach, which I think is
brilliant that an outside third party think about it as
a proactive therapist for your relationship that you're meeting with
on a regular basis, who can observe your interactions, your
conversations and provide that sort of external perspective and as
(28:34):
part of that coach, really setting up a structure from
the beginning before things are broken, to proactively define and
debug your partnership. I Love, I Love you know, sort
of acknowledging from the beginning that we've got some patterns
of behavior already, we have some defaults already, and we
(28:56):
need to identify them and then take a harsh look
at are all of them going to work for us?
And if not, what things do we need to change,
What conversations do we need to have right now and
on a regular basis going forward that we haven't needed
to have as friends. Um, So, I think there are
lots of ways that you can still be successful working
(29:17):
with a friend who's already a friend, but you need
to be clear eyed about that from the beginning of like,
we're going to have to work at this just as
much as a partnership that's starting with strangers. It's just
a different kind of work. And I think as long
as you have that realization, both of these approaches can
(29:37):
be successful. Um, you just can't go in and assume
everything will be fine, because that's when you're going to
end up. In that first article she wrote, which is
how to stop having these same fights over and over
and over again. What we're talking about is obviously so personal,
and every partnership is going to be so different. But
there is that universal rule of physics for every act,
(30:00):
and there's an equal opposite reaction, right, So when you
make mindful investments into your relationship, I believe that that
can only read benefits. We thought it would be fun
(30:24):
to ask each other a few questions. Yeah so, I
mean Esther gives some great questions that you can ask
of a stranger at the very beginning of a partnership
to get a sense of who they are, Like what
do you do when you have twenty emails sitting in
your inbox? And we thought we could ask those, But
I think it's actually a little more fun to be
(30:45):
maybe less quizzical and more appreciative of each other. I
love the questions. Since this is Valentine's Day, we'll call
this our gift to each other. But let's start with
this first one. What was your first impression of me? Oh?
My gosh, I still remember seeing you on my laptop
screen in my living room during our skype date, and
(31:08):
my first impression can boil down to two words on it,
I was just like, Christina Wallace, the train that you
are on, I want to be on it too. It
was you who said, hey, I saw this video that
you made. Let's have a skype date. And your ability
to just point at me and go let's hang out
(31:29):
was just awesome. Also, on a more superficial note, before
we skyped, I definitely casually googled stock to you, as
we like to do on the show. Obviously, and I
just remember seeing you in a speaking video in this
amazing like orange and purple dress. Do you remember this dress?
I do I have that dress? Oh my gosh. And
(31:50):
I just remember going, oh, I like her style. Sounds
so superficial. Okay, Christina, what was your first impression of me?
So obviously I had a strong first impression of you,
or I wouldn't have said we should have a skype date.
What was interesting about my first impression of you was
because it was based on your work. So I saw
(32:10):
how I do math, and my initial reaction was, who
is this genius? She is creatively very talented. Obviously, you
like directed, wrote, produced this incredible video. Also, just the
fact that you thought to do this and you cared
(32:30):
about these things that it was about you know making
all these different approaches to math, which is you know,
many people have a lot of baggage around, and you're
saying all of these are valid, right, and you can
love it, you can be scared by it, you can
do it in your sleep, you can struggle with it
(32:51):
but still show up. Um, and all of these approaches
are absolutely okay. And I thought, this is a person
with empathy, with creativity, with leadership and with vision, and
I want to know her. And then I googled you
and I said, she also has red hair, so obviously
we must be friends. You know. It goes to show
(33:11):
that when you make something that you're like, I don't
I just feel like I want to make this, it
really does help, hopefully help you find your people. Okay,
I'm gonna ask you first, sure, what's one of the
best qualities I bring to our partnership. And I know
that we've we've thrown a lot of appreciation at each
other in this episode so far, but UM tell me
more so. One of the things that I absolutely am
(33:37):
in awe of is your creative brain. That it's everything
from visual to oral, right with sound, mood boards that
you can put together. You just have this ability when
we say let's do a video about you know, our
the name of our show, or let's do a photo
shoot that really gets the new kind of energy of
(34:01):
down and you're like, yes, there will be gold hula hoops,
and I was like gold hula Of course, your attention
to detail on creative things is the execution becomes flawless.
And I think that that is crucial, right. I think
a lot of people have maybe a big vision of
a creative and never they want to go after and
(34:23):
then they're sort of like like, that's good enough, let's
move on, and you like, not good enough. You like
have a very specific, very attention to detail approach to
all of your work that says, I like this, but
move that font like three pixels to the last. I
(34:44):
like those hula hoops, but they need to be exactly
this many inches in diameter, and we want them to
be gold, but matt gold, not shiny gold. Right Like
that attention to detail is why your work is so good.
Thank you so much. So, Kate, tell me what's one
of the best qualities I bring to the partnership. Here's
(35:05):
the thing, Christina, listening to you say what you just said,
I wouldn't be able to step into those qualities without you.
What I mean is that you are such a pillar.
You are just this engine and your ability to just
not just wrangle all of the ideas and go here,
(35:28):
here's where I think we land there, but your vision
and your leadership. What that does is it really frees
me up to be able to focus on things like
the diameter of the hula hoop. Right, you have this
amazing way of creating a through line and also of
just being a driving force. Can't stop, won't stop. Well,
(35:50):
thank you, Kate. So I love this next question because
I think it tells you how well you know a person.
How can you tell when I'm frustrated or in a
bad mood? I mean, short of me telling you I'm
frustrated in a bad mood? What what do I what's
the first signal? Well, okay, first signal is your words
are cut by like an eight, like you will say
(36:13):
about an eighth as much that's correct. Your self awareness
is so strong and healthy that you're so good at
saying like, hey, I'm having a really rough day, just
f y I like it's not personal, or I'm having
a rough moment like you're so great. It's just articulating
that at the beginning of conversations or to say like, yeah,
I slept for two hours, like I'm not going to
(36:33):
pretend to be in any place that I'm not right now.
I think I said this when I came back right
after the baby, where I was like, I'm not sleeping.
So I'm going to be very direct in my text messages.
And it's not because I'm mean. It's because I do
not have the bandwidth to like say, hey, how are
you exclamation point? Um, I'm just gonna say, did you
(36:54):
do that thing? Okay, Christina? How can you tell when
I'm frustrated her in a bad mood? You add double
the exclamation point to your emails and text messages. Oh
my gosh, I'm crying. I do you know? There's that
phrase success makes you more of who you are. Apparently
frustration makes me more of who you are as well,
(37:14):
because I also I'm just a personal fan of the
exclamation point. One of the reasons why emails take me
so long to write, other than you know, like I
worry about grammar too much in them, is that I
actively delete exclamation points and replace them with curious. Apparently,
not when I'm frustrated, but at other times, oh my,
whereas I will go and look at my periods and
(37:35):
replace them with exclamation points so I don't sound like
I'm mad at you. What's something that, when you see
your experience other people doing it, you think, ah, that's
so Kate. Well, I mean, honestly, any time I interact
with anything San Francisco, obviously I'm thinking about you. Um No,
(37:56):
that's a great question. Honestly, it probably comes down to wigs, wigs, accents, costumes, anything.
At this point, when I see someone with a great wig,
I'm thinking Kate probably already has that. Let's be honest,
I am just like the queen of of different looks, accents, personalities.
(38:19):
You could have a one woman SNL show. Oh my gosh,
I thank you, I am. I am truly humbled and
flattered Kate. What's something when you see your experience other
people doing it, you're like, yep, that's Christina. Okay, I've
never seen someone do this publicly, and it's really great
that I haven't. But if I ever saw someone take
(38:41):
their pants off and starfish on the bed then, which
I've actually never seen you do, but I know that
it's it's a tip of yours. Given how many hotel
rooms we've shared, I'm surprised that I have. I know
that I'm trying to be respect you. I'm glad to
know that's a strong part of my personal brand. I mean,
(39:03):
it's really fabulous. It really comes down to just owning
who you are and giving yourself what you need, two
things that I've really looked to you for inspiration. And
on that note, I would also say, anytime I see
a toll just gorgeous and gorgeously confident woman, I'm always
like Christina. It's Christina. It goes back to my first
impression of you, of just your ability to just stand
(39:28):
in who you are and be a badass. Honestly, thank you.
To be clear, I also think about you every time
I see Kate Blanchet in anything. In case, Christina, you
were just making this the best Valentine's Day ever. I
don't to bring this home. We have some resources that
we thought we would just give a quick shout out
(39:48):
to for anyone who wants to learn more about partnerships,
how to build them strong, or to read about inspiring partnerships.
I know my go to this fabulous book that just
came out called work Wife by these wonderful female founders,
Claire and Erica, the founders of a Kind, which is
this fashion brand, and they just talk through their you know,
(40:13):
fabulous relationship, friendship, partnership in building this company over ten years.
And they on their Instagram page wonderful, wonderful account just
kind of pulling together other really inspiring female business partnerships.
So great place to look if you want to read
about some inspiring partnerships. But I know, Kate, you came
across some resources that are really useful as well. What
(40:35):
did you find? Yeah, so you might be familiar with
the book The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman. It's
something that I found just really illuminating in general with
how I moved through the world. My primary love language
is acts of service, which it just goes to show
how extra grateful I am when you do our taxes.
I have to say, like ultimate active service. You know,
(40:57):
my primary love language is not included in the book.
Not his tidiness so well interesting in want to do
a revision on that book, you can add a sixth one.
That's amazing. I mean I I could see tidiness being
an active service. It's like the person that you're sharing
in space with tidies it up. I mean to be clear,
Before I came home from the hospital with our baby,
(41:19):
Chas went home and tidied our apartment because I knew
I left it in a total mess when we left
for the hospital. He knew that coming home to that
would stress me out. So he went home and like vacuumed,
Like that is the ultimate I love you, I mean
to me, that is the ultimate romantic gesture. That's amazing. Anyway,
you found a version of this for working right, So
(41:41):
Gary Chapman co authored a book called Five Languages of
Appreciation in the Workplace, And yeah, he's replaced the word
love with appreciation, which really comes down to everything we've
talked about today. That slash like HR probably prefers it.
So true. Such a great HR move. You know, I
haven't yet read it, but I'd really like to, and
(42:02):
it's certainly at the top of my reading list to
see how, you know, we can continue to apply what
we've been talking about romantic partnership tips to professional partnerships.
You also found this great article on HBr as well.
It's called how to have Difficult conversations when you don't
like conflict and like who likes conflict? Sounds like this
(42:23):
good for all of us. That's really great to hear.
I know that I'm naturally conflict averse. I'll be like, no, no, no,
let's put out the fire. Let's put out the fire.
But that's really something that I've really worked on stepping
into in the past, definitely the past year and a half.
And it's really nice to just know that there's a
lot of resources out there. If you're someone who knows
you've got to have an uncomfortable conversation but you're really
(42:44):
nervous about it slash not sure how to go about it,
that's a great piece to look at as well. We
want to hear from you what some of your best
partnership tips are. Send us your tips, your updates, your questions.
You can reach us on Twitter or Instagram at tld
any odd or you can email us at hello at
t L d any podcast dot com. That's right, or
(43:05):
you can leave us a voicemail at eight three three
high t L d n E. We love hearing your voices.
That's eight three three four eight five three six three
And don't forget to dial the extension eight oh three
when you call it to leave a voicemail and we'll
link to the HBr article, the Esther Perell article, the
Work Wife book. All of these resources in our show notes,
(43:27):
which you can find at t L d any podcast
dot com, Slash one O nine. Thanks so much to
our producer, Maya Coole and Tu for tuning in. As always,
please subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts if you
(43:49):
like what you heard, it really helps us get the
word out to fellow human ven diagrams. Until next time, remember,
the limit does not The limit does not exist is
a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from
My Heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
(44:11):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Yeah
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