S1E5: Pam vs Deb - The Great Lego Debate | Cooking | Life Beyond Corporate

This week, Pam and Deb discuss the freedom they've found outside the corporate world, from ditching office politics to embracing new opportunities. 

They'll tackle everything from cooking debates, managing busy schedules, the joy of Legos, and their journeys in the corporate world. 

Whether you're juggling a hectic lifestyle or seeking inspiration for your entrepreneurial path, this episode has something for everyone. Don't miss it – subscribe, comment, and join Team Pam or Team Deb!

Transcript

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And Lego is how I find peace. During breaks, during my pomodoro breaks, I find peace. Oh, here it comes. They're gonna do this one here, and this will be on my half of the table. And it'll be a thing I come down to, to do breaks with. And it just further elucidates the differences that we love about each other. Right. You realize if you bring that down here, we will not be able to let the dogs be down here unsupervised because all of these little pieces. No, there's a trick. Couple things. First of all, we're going to get a bunch of little Tupperware. Not really Tupperware, but fake Tupperware things. And you, I sort the pieces into those. Welcome to she said, she said. I am Pam Pryor, CFO, author, host of Cash Flow podcast, and co host of. She said, she said podcast. And I balance the books. I'm Deb Reinhardt. I am a chofer certified master, life coach and meditator. And most of the time, I balance. Pam most of the time. But each week, we're going to dive into the stuff that drives us in business and our home life. Being together 33 years. We're just going to explore some of the subjects here and see if anybody. Can resonate and see what we can stir up. Maybe a few lightheaded arguments. I say, let's see what we can stir up today. And I know exactly what that is. Yeah. Go. Roll. Okay. So she said. She said, we have half the room is you and your Chopra things, and half the room is me and my cool number left brain things. But we have not divided this table yet. Right. So there's this esoteric thing. It is a lovely bowl that was made from a tree that died during hurricane Sandy. Props to Ron Perollo for his beautiful woodwork. Beautiful woodwork. And it's gorgeous. However, you know, we're not really using it for anything. So I'm proposing we divide the table diagonally here. Right? So, Diagon Alley. So that's your side and on my side. Hang on a sec. I'll show you what we're going to do. You ready? Go. Shoot. Okay. My dread. I'm not really digging this idea. I'm just sharing that with you right now. Holy Jesus, Mary, mother of God. We are going to build. No. Is this the White. This isn't the White House. No. That's like an entire. This is one I've already done. But we have a White House. That's okay. We are going to get the right Lego set. No, no. And Lego is how I find peace during breaks. During my pomodoro breaks, I find peace. Oh, here it comes. They're going to do this one here. And this will be on my half of the table. And it'll be a plate thing I come down to to do breaks with. And it just further elucidates the differences that we love about each other. Right. You realize if you bring that down here, you will not be able to let the dogs be down here unsupervised. Because all the little pieces. No, there's a trick. Couple things. First of all, we're going to get a bunch of little tupperware. Not really tupperware, but fake tupperware things. And you. I sort the pieces into those. Awesome. Then you close them and there's no dogs getting things. And we'll be able to watch it grow from flat to big. Francis can do time lapse stuff on it. Great. I can do time lapse photographs from my perspective. He can do time lapse from his. And we'll be able to watch it grow. Awesome. And then what do you do with it? Then we put it up for show. Or we can leave it right there on the table. No. Or we can record, like, Murphy going through, like, income. There you go, crushing it. Yeah, there's that as an option, too. So that. That's what I think. But additionally, you just came back from a road trip. I did. I did. I spent three days in lovely thousand Oaks, California. How hot was it even? They were complaining about that. It was hot. 111. 111 the first day. It was 114 the second day. And that wasn't like. Feels like. No, that was the heat. Yeah, that was the heat. So here, sometimes we'll get a 100. Feels like 195. Feels like. Oh, my God. I have never felt anything like. Even when we were in Vegas in July. Wow. You walked out of the car and it was like walking into an oven, into like. And there was like, occasionally a breeze to, like, a convection oven. Wow, it was that hot. And everybody there was like, oh, and it's so humid. Like, you people know nothing about humidity out here. No, it was not humid. Wow. So you mostly stayed inside? Unfortunately, yeah. We didn't. We didn't. I didn't get to spend a lot of time. I don't know that I wanted to in that temperature. Yeah. But we had another. We had. So how was the house when you came home? So this is an interesting story because we talk about the fact that I batch clean. You weren't gone long enough for me to hit a batch. Right. So couple things piled up. Yes, yes. So we had, first thing you do is vacuum. Vacuum the tumbleweeds, as we call them. Major tumbleweeds. I emptied vacuum device. Pam, the vacuum has to be done. You know, they're picturing, like, six foot tumbleweeds rolling through our living room. Dust buns. Dust buns. But yeah, I mean, that had to be done. Sink was empty. The sink was empty? Yes, the sink was empty. The guest bedroom was completely unmade, stripped for you. Yes, but nothing would start it. Oh, you mean like the laundry? Well, see, I didn't even look at that end of the house, quite honestly, while you were going. Yeah, I know. So I didn't know. Yeah, the cat. I went upstairs. The cat's food had been completely demolished by the dog. No, no, no, no. Let's be clear on that. So it was empty. Pam. First of all, he can't have empty food. Pam. He's supposed to be able to eat whenever he needs. It was not empty the whole time. It was, how do you. And it wasn't completely empty. I don't know. So here's what happened. He had a full bowl when he started, probably the second day you were gone. I refilled, had a full bowl. Next day it's down a little bit. Next day it's down a little bit. Oh, my gosh, I need food. The cat got no food. I looked in the closet because Deb says food's in the closet, where all the cat stuff is. There's no food. Like, oh, good thing she's getting home. I don't know where the cat food is. It's got got to be somewhere. She comes home. I said, where's the cat food? She goes in the closet. I said, no, it's not, ha ha ha. It's not in the closet. Go look. Show me. She wasn't talking about the cat closet, because, of course, when you say the closet and you're talking about the cat, you mean what? I mean the human walk in the closet. Yes, yes. So here's the deal, Pam. There is no way that you could get bags of food the size of the cat, bag foods into a tiny little closet that we use for his litter box. Who wants to put their food in with their, where they're, where they're doing their business? You don't do that. And, and the fact that you didn't know where it was is pathetic. And two, it's not like you can't text me or call me or send a smoke signal for crying out loud. I am in California. I am not, like, halfway across the world. You could wears Gilbert's food across the country. Come on up, baby. Boo. And the. Yes, you're right. I could have done that. But it was the day before you were getting home. He still had food. You can't do it, baby. And then I do think I left the door open that last day. It was open when I walked in. It was just the last day. And he probably did just go ahead and Diego probably did go ahead and do that, but there wasn't much left. It was totally crumbs at that point, to be fair. His water bowl was a mess. I can't help but anyway, so it was typical pam. But the interesting thing was, like, after she came home and she did, like, stuff for a couple hours, I could definitely tell the difference. Like, the house felt better, fresher, cleaner, but I didn't feel it getting to the point where it wasn't better, fresher, cleaner. It's like I saw the contrast. You're, like, living in your dirt. You don't see it if you're living in it. It is not dirt. Except maybe in that way. One recliner chair. What can I say? But anyway, to move on. But anyway, I would say California is lovely. I mean, it really was so. It's such a beautiful, beautiful area. Next time I go back, when I go back out, we went up the 405 and the 101. I think whatever the. All the roads are those, and they don't talk about distance and, like, x number of miles. Like, I can't tell you how many miles away from the airport that my. That my hotel was. They talk about it all in time. Distances is equated to time because traffic's so bad. Traffic, yes. So he said, the driver said, should I. The next time that I come out, if I come during the traffic time, he said, ask to go up the Pacific coast highway. He said, it's a beautiful drive. It's right along. So who cares if you're stuck and. And you don't have as many cars. It's there. You can have traffic jams, cars, but it's not traffic jam. It's not like a gazillion people trying to go, got it. Got it into place. That just sounds. That would be fun. But to go with, like, thousand oaks, that, like, beautiful valley, semi valley mountains around it. It, like, everywhere I turned, I felt like there were, like, pretty mountains, you know? It was pretty. Is this near the redwoods and stuff, or is this way south? This is way south. This is way south. Okay, well, that's awesome, because one of the things that I know is on our topics for today is corporate versus entrepreneurial work. And we both made decisions multiple times around whether we want to work in corporate or whether we want to work as entrepreneurs. And I loved my corporate life. I absolutely loved it. Every single day of it until the day I didn't. Yeah. And it was a particularly ridiculous situation that kind of pointed to, this is not for you anymore. It kind of took all the politics that ever were and, like, superimposed them on one cartoon and said, this is your life. Yeah. In one place, I'm like, okay, yeah, all done. And then I made that jump to entrepreneur. And I think the one thing that really jumped out at me when I first did this was, and you remember this, I'm like, I've had a great corporate career. You know, I really love what I do. I always did well. I'm pretty smart. I'm just gonna roll right into this entrepreneur thing and. And eat it up, eat it up. Spit it out. I'm not like other. Everybody says it's gonna take x number. Yeah, it's gonna take a long time. But I'm not like everybody. I'm gonna be able to do this in no time flat. I've been the exception everywhere. I'm gonna be the exception here. In other words, what we call that, ladies and gentlemen, is arrogance and ignorance all tied up in a bundle. Arrogance and ignorance. Self confidence. Self confidence. There you go. That's so much nicer. I think self confidence is when you have something to back it up with. Arrogance and ignorance is when you truly have no clue. Although in that particular situation, you just didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't have a clue. So it's a big, big, big change. And I love it. I absolutely love it. I don't regret it. I never will. This is what I love. And the thing that struck me the most is regardless of all the stuff you give up with, and you do give up a lot, we'll talk about some of the stuff that we noticed pretty quickly. But the freedom was so overwhelming. Like, I don't have to, and in this one particular case, sit at a desk to impress somebody at a CFO level in a company anymore. I can do things the way I need to do things and make a difference and be able to direct rather than have to comply with some, you know, stupid, ridiculous politic. Yeah, you got in. You got to the point where I think the political environment and navigating egos. Yeah, I was, I always, I will say challenging. I always won when I went into a political battle, but I hated it by the end. It was tiring. Yeah. It's just like, this isn't how I want to be spending my time. And that became kind of a thing for drove me to leave. Now I get to work with entrepreneurs and help them understand things that will help them, and they've hired me for that reason. So it's those politics aren't there and I don't. And you're deliberate about that. I think that's the one thing that I have really, really admired about you in this business, is that you've been really deliberate about just saying, look, I'm going to tell you the way it is. This is who I am and this is what the deal is. And if you don't want to hear it directly, then I might not be the person you want to be working with. You won't put up with it for their sake, for their sake, for your own. But it's also not judgment. It's not like, oh, you've got this kind of a mess on your hands and you're going to do it my way. It's not like that at all. It's, you got here because like every other entrepreneur, you've been running 100 miles an hour and nobody taught you this stuff. Now I'm going to make it so that all your finances work for you. But you got to let me do a few things and I'll show you why it's important to you. And that's just so much more fun than the other thing. But you miss things like, you know, the benefits. The payroll system's already set up, you know, all the supplies are there and available. You have a regular salary. You have all these things. Yeah, but they didn't, they just don't overweigh that. Okay. Now I can really do what I want to do, how I want to do thing. And I think that, that, I think maybe that's the thing that stands out for me the most. It's not that you couldn't do what you wanted to do. I think you have a great amount of freedom to do it how you. Want to do it. And that's been the sticker. As I got older, it got to be sticker. Kind of moving from that number two role into the number one role in my own business. And then now you took a similar journey, but you retired from corporate after. 30, almost 33 years. Yep, 33 years. And your thought process in making that move was like. It was a similar. It had gotten pretty interesting. Yeah, I. You know, we. We've gone through, you know, through a merger. There were a lot of changes going on, a lot of cultural changes, and the challenge was just kind of watching people with whom I'd grown a business, you know, and we spent time growing things together. Seeing those people leaving, I think that that was actually really, really hard, because they just as. And I stayed because I'm like, mom. Everybody calls me mom. But I stayed for a long time to keep people steady. Like, steady. It's a leadership role you play. And then, you know, it just. It just was time. Well, it felt like not for nothing and not intentionally, but you saw an opportunity to. For your role to be more efficient, split up, and had the balls to say, hey, you know what? Yeah, that was. And I. This could be a win win. I could be ready to retire. And that was one of the things that was probably most unexpected, because I did go to my leadership and say. I think it's time. I think, you know, there's been enough change, and things are starting to settle, settle out in different ways. And my role had changed multiple times. And I just felt like, you know, my opportunity was to figure out how to. How to scale. Like, I've. I'd gotten to the point within my career that my goal is to develop folks and to do it at scale. And because of some of the changes, my ability to be at scale kept getting. It didn't need to. They were scaling down. They were scaling down. So that was a, you know, it was hard for it, but it was time. Yeah. And it was a really. It's been a really nice, in many regards, a really nice way to kind of decompress. And I do like it. And the thing that I think is different about you and I is when I left corporate this time, there was no question I was not entertaining full time work again. And who knows? That could change, but it certainly wasn't. Whereas people, of course, chased you down and have been ever since you left corporate because of your skill set in pharma. So. But it's never been something where you're like, oh, I'm never going back, no matter what. It's a. It's an environment that you're really good in. Yeah, I guess. And, no, you're right. I didn't have any, you know, I'm. Never doing that again. I'm not gonna go back. Yeah, I did. And you love the fact I needed a break. I needed a break to just for my own self. It's been really a great time like that since my retirement, you know, it's not that I've gone in hibernation and done nothing. Started a business, started a business, got. My certificate, completed about 700 different certifications that we tried to keep track of on one episode that I still can't keep track of. So that was really. So that's been really, really good. I always knew that if something came by. Yeah. I kind of trusted that if the universe presented me with an opportunity, I would just be open. Yeah. And so I've tried to just stay open. So that meant not saying I'm never going to go back to corporate or I'm, you know, or even saying I have to go back. Right. It was simply saying, I'm observing. I'm just going to. Going to be aware of what's going on around me. I love it. Because you love coaching, too. I do. And honestly, when you get to a certain level of leadership, the skills of a coach have huge value. Oh, my God. Yes. And, you know, having now been trained, I think even more so than what I could have trained and certified and certified, but even more value than I think I might have been able to articulate, even as a, you know, an executive prior to this. Oh, okay. Yeah. Because coaching as a discipline is very different from managing or directing. It's a way of helping to elicit the best out of people, but it really requires this partnership between yourself and someone else, because what you're doing is you're inviting them to come into their fullness of being. Got it. A lot of times in, you know, in a, in a leadership position, depending on where you are, you know, you're shaping. Yeah. You're really doing a lot of shaping. Or molding also with peers as you're trying to influence change. Yeah. Oh, my God. The coaching. Coaching skills for being able to listen. Yeah. To be able to influence in ways that are increasingly sophisticated and benefit everybody. Benefit everybody. And that's some of the skill set that you pick up by doing this coaching thing. I'm thinking this is something they should internalize to corporations, is to develop a fleet of really good coaches, because quite honestly, that's as meaningful to getting to the way you ran an organization and your people just engaged like the Dickens. For you or for the team. It was never for you. You made sure that wasn't the case, but it was because they knew they had this ear that was more than just listening. Like, you are also helping draw them out in a different way. Even before you took any of the coaching stuff. So to me, it would be high value to have in a leadership team as a key skill set. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm looking forward to kind of seeing how that plays out. Yeah. If there's a place in the world for it. If there's place, I love it. So that's the last trip for a little while until you and I head to Austin. The end of September for scalable. And then you're going somewhere in October. And then October for femmefluence. Yes. Yep. Actually, the end of October. End of September. Beginning of October for scalable. So that'll be fun. We'll have to send videos back. It'll be wonderful to see. I will come home to a really clean house. I always do. Yeah. Because there's nobody here making a mess. I swear. She just sits in one chair and say, still for the whole time I'm. Gone, I do not. But I'll tell you what they're like. Everything is a little different when you're not here. Like the dogs are. As we've said before, you look forward to missing me. I do look forward to Ron Perlaux again. Thank you, Ross. Yeah, it's just quiet. I love it. It just tends to be a little quieter and a little bit more disciplined when you're not here. Disciplined, I like that. So Deb was gone. I actually don't mind cooking. I just never find the time for it. In fact, we have chicken thighs in there. We should cook tonight before they go bad. But I had the chicken thighs and I was going to do them, but then when was over? Thursday night and Friday night. Thursday night, I think it just got to be so late. I had soup, they had something from the fridge. We had leftovers. Friday I had to go get my hair cut. It looks great, by the way. Thank you. Thank you very much. But I ended up getting home till late because it was a late haircut, so I didn't get home till late. And then who can cook chicken at 738 o'clock? That's insane. So we had to order and we ordered a. I forget what. I don't know. But whatever you ordered, it was gone. So you must have ordered something that. Like Iron Hill maybe. Yeah, I did the schnitzel. Iron Hill. We did Iron Hill Brewery. And then Sunday you got home. No, Saturday night you got home and that was late. So we had to order for you to be home. We had to have something waiting for you when you got. So I couldn't cook. But if what I lived on my own. I will tell you exactly what I had. I had steaks and pork chops and hamburger, and I had boxes of minute rice, and I had squash. And I would consistently make one of the meats fried or grilled minute rice, and usually green and yellow squash sauteed in butter with onion. So shoot, every meal, I could eat every meal. Like our homestead guy. Good. I'm like, totally down the squash. But when she talks about, she talks about herself cooking. Right? When I first met, when I first met her, lunch. Lunch for Pam was a small stack of saltine crackers. With butter. With butter. So good. She would just butter salty. You gotta try it. So good. You get to. And it's really kind of fun. You put a little butter in the middle, you turn the salt side to the outside, and then you mush them a little bit, and butter comes shooting up through the holes like zits. I'll show you one before you go today. She won't cook. I will cook. I do the. I will do. I will do hamburger. But you know what? But you don't think to cook anymore. Like, honest to God, like, did you have lunch today? I've been very busy. Did you have lunch today? I had a beer for lunch. You wouldn't have breakfast if I didn't come downstairs and say, and pick up your coffee and say, but if I. Didn'T have breakfast, I would definitely cook pork chops and rice for dinner because I'd be hungry. You just don't. You don't. You don't think about it. And especially, I want it. Especially on days when you are, like, in it, like, there. Seriously, it's nothing for me to see you in. In your, like, executive chair. Chair. I don't even know what I want to call it, your nest. But you sit in that chair

from the moment you wake up until, like, ten or 11: 24:54

00 at night. I pee a couple times. Maybe you get up to grab some crackers. That's it. Soup. But I do love me some. Like, tonight. I'm really looking forward to it. Like, we do that chicken. Maybe do some flat noodles with butter and a green veggie. That'd be so good. But, yeah, I love to. I just don't do it very often. We just need to make time, Pam. Yeah. And it's really not a lot of time. I literally slap the things on the grill for ten minutes. Minute rice is a minute. You have to make the time. Like, you have to. You can't say you're not hungry. I'm not hungry. I'm not hungry. And then, like, the apps come out. I'm sorry, I don't know about any of you, but when you're ordering on doordash or grubhub or ubereats, like that meal for one is like two or three meals that you could get if you just cook for yourself two or three meals. Oh, price wise, you mean it's expensive to do this constant ordering from the app? It is, because it's not just that they charge you a lot, which they do, but then you're tipping, which you do at the restaurant anyway. But you're tipping on top of tipping. It's just an insane proposition. So I'll cook the chicken tonight, I promise. Look what you started. You're gonna cook the chicken unless you do. What did you want to do with the chicken? I just want to get. I wanted to do the butter. I wanted to get crispy baked in the onion. So it's got crispy skin. Yeah. Salt, pepper, crispy skin. Maybe some rosemary. Do we put on chicken? Yeah, you can put rosemary on chicken. I don't know if we want rosemary on it. I don't know. Thyme. Thyme is good on chicken, but, yeah, that would be good. And then just white noodles with butter and a veggie. Okay. That'd be perfect. I'd love to see you actually do that. I could do it if I didn't have meetings all the way up till. Ah. And there's the truth. Oh, this is perfect. This is perfect, and this is what it is. But you can do it today. I'll do it tomorrow. Tomorrow. I don't do it almost all the days. I don't have meetings. Too late tomorrow. So I'll do, I'll pull out steak and do steak tomorrow. I promise. Check in next week. We'll see. We've got to reduce the red beets. You have to reduce the red meat. We're not reducing red meat. Wait, whoa. How did you go down that lane? I've really been thinking. Nobody mentioned anything about reducing red meat. Long and hard about reducing. You think away. You do need to do it. Yeah, do it for our health. We are not reducing red meat. We may cutting it out, reducing the red meat. And then you're going to say, we need more fish. So by yourself and cook some fish. Pork chop steak. I will do what doctor K says. Deer meat's good, so I'll do deer or buffalo. That, that's good. Red meat. Well, I'll get the bison. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we do get bison. And I do. I will ground bison. I will cook with ground bison. I'll make burger, bison or chili. This no red meat thing, that's just not happening. But you can't have. It's. It's really not gravy. Pam, you know what? How often are you eating with me? Twice a week, maybe? Oh, I was just saying, like, that's. I eat it five nights a week. The guy we watch on the wilderness channel, this man first. Okay, but let's stop. This guy's building a homestead in Canada on 40 acres. Wild homestead. Cool guy, whatever. But here's how he eats. Twice a day, he gets a steak, he puts it on the grill. He eats the steak right off the grill. That's it. And every now and then, he'll get a bag of frozen berries, or if it's fresh berries, and he'll just guzzle a big old cup of berries, berries and meat. Who cares? He's healthy as an ox. What I will say, right? So the dude is really, truly living. He's living in the outback, right? He's in the wild. He's doing everything from, like, cutting the trees to build the cabin, showering. You know, he's on the ice cold. River in the middle of the. In November, December, January, in the ice. So I'm sure that the number of calories that this dude is burning, the way that. The way this guy is burning up. I do the same thing when I'm thinking, when I'm thinking in my chair. Just as much energy burning as when he's building a log cabin, heaving up these massive logs. You can track that? I could track that if I charged it. I keep forgetting to put it on my charger. This is one of those things that happens with me. So it is staged now to go to my charger, but it hasn't made it to the charger yet. But it's staged with all the letter sealing stuff to go upstairs. So the next time I go upstairs, I'll be able to get the watch and put it on the charger. If you just, every day at the end of the day, just put all of your little things away. I thought about carrying that thing up. Yesterday, but, you know, I'm gonna need it after up my letters. Then I get drunk. Trouble. That's right. What did you do with that? Where did you put it? It's in your office. Where? Because you sweep it away so fast when I have plans for things. You can't move things out for days. But I have plans for days. I plan for days. Knock yourself out. You'll need to leave your plans laying around for days. It reminds you that you need to do it once it's put away. Out of sight, out of mind. Hold on. Did I go down a blind alley. So badly just to keep opening these shops? She has. She's there. Just is not my best day on. She said, she said she will. Every day. Every day is a holiday with me. That's what she's. At the end of the night, she'll sit down. She'll sit down and she starts working on her to do list. I'm like, what are you doing? I'm making my. I'm going through my to do list. All right, show me your to do list. I actually cleaned up your notebook. I cleaned up your notebook today and I looked at your to do list. 42 things. They all have to be done. Make it 43 things. And just. I do too. With signs like, I have little. You'll notice there were some circle stars on the left. Those are the today things. And then tomorrow things will just have a circle. And then this week or whenever, things will have little arrows. Yeah. It was ridiculous. 42 things. You could have 43. Just clean up all that stuff and remind yourself to put it back. I don't have time for that. You saw my list. It's got 42 things on it. All right, smart ass, you started that. I got people in trouble today. All right, we can round now. So now, like subscribe, add your comments, and please tell me whether you are Deb side or Pam side. Because I think we should rename. She said, she said. I'm right, she's wrong. I'm right, she's wrong. And y'all get to pick who the I and who the she is. So what do they call it on that old movie where it was the two different wolf and a thing they had? Vampire movie. No, wasn't a. Oh, Jacob. Jacob. Team Jacob and team. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Twilight. Team Jacob and team Jacob and Edward. Team Edward. Yeah. So team Deb or team Pam. Not team Pam. All right, you all have a great week. We will see you on the next. She said. She said.