Kate Avino

I'm Danny Ruderman and this is Extraordinary youy, a podcast that shares inspiring stories of young people who've done incredible things and how they did it. Our guest today is 24 year old Kate Avino. While she was in high school, Kate started an online magazine called Her Culture, in which she recruited girls and women from around the world to share their cultures and the traditions that make them unique. Seven years later, Kate has graduated from NYU and the magazine is still going strong. She also currently works as an editorial assistant for a new publisher of children's novelty nonfiction under macmillan. Kate, welcome to X you.

Thanks for having me.

Let's begin with this important question. What's your take on pickles?

Love them. We'll take as much salt as I can get with them and I will put them on anything and everything. Wow.

That was a good question. I did not know that about you. Now, do you have a specific type of pickle? Because I love dill pickles, but sweet pickles make me want to jump out of a window.

Yes. You know what? I have to say that I like the dill pickles and I like when they're the rounded kind that you can just, you know, sandwich on things. Those are kind of the best.

I knew I liked you. That's awesome.

Yeah.

All right, well, let's get into other things. Tell me about your family. How were you raised?

Yeah, so I grew up in New Jersey. I lived the typical life. My parents divorced when I was two and a half and my mom and both of them got remarried when I was around 5. And my mom and my stepdad really raised me and supported me. They did everything for me. I felt like I was just the end all, be all. And they really made me feel extra special all the time. And about when I was seven and a half, they had my brother and he's grown up since I was younger.

Then things went downhill from there.

Yeah, right. I was no longer an only child. I was like, who is this? No, I absolutely adored him. And I really on the second mom role, in fact, my mom calls me the strict mom with him because I'm very tough on him because I feel like I got all the rules and he didn't have any. So that's awesome. It was cool. And yeah. And they've just completely really supported me and gave me the pathway to do whatever I wanted to do.

So I'm curious, what do they do or what did they do that might have influenced the route that you took?

So my stepdad is a dentist, which is cool. I'M not a scientist. Hated science growing up.

But your teeth are really clean and good.

Well, thank you. He would love to hear that. And then my mom was a bit of an entrepreneur a lot of the time. When she was younger, she worked for a mass mailing communications company that her father had started and she really ran the boat there. Later on in her life, she worked at an elementary school. And then her most recent retail job was she actually owned a yarn store for knitting and crochet. And she completely loved that and just was such a people person and really, really made that business strong and a strong community aspect. So. Yeah. And now she lives with a puppy who's a little four month old and a bit of a terror. So that's basically her full time job now.

That's fantastic. Now, do you knit? Did you learn how to knit?

I do knit and I actually just started to crochet, so I'm getting a little bit better at that.

So. Sidebar. Because I've always wanted to know, what is the difference between knitting and crocheting?

Biggest difference is the number of tools. Probably knitting has two needles and crochet has one hook. So you just work the stitches differently.

With those tools, but the outcome is sort of the same. You're knitting or crocheting a sweater.

Yeah, you could do either. Okay. Not a big deal. Not a big difference. That's why it was easy for me to pick up crochet.

I've heard that it's really, really relaxing. I make fun of knitting all the time. I use it a lot of jokes, but in actuality, it's supposed to really just sort of soothe you out.

It is, it's very soothing. Especially if you're not like reading a pattern or anything. You're kind of just watching Netflix and just chilling. You could totally just be like sitting there, walking away, working away.

Yeah. Nice. So you go to public high school?

I did go to public high school, yes.

And at what point did an interest in writing or journalism take place?

So basically, I had always wanted to write. I remember in middle school, actually, I had an English teacher that totally supported my writing. And I really thought that I was gonna be an author. When she had asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up, I was like, I wanna write a book. Cause kind of half jokingly, but that really started my journey onto the writing track and the journalism track. And she, she was really a wonderful pioneer of that interest in me. And then kind of when I got to high school, I started. I mean, my favorite classes were My English classes, I took a lot of AP Englishes. And I remember loving the. Not only the nonfiction part, but the fiction part and just kind of generally analyzing works and being a part of that. And so that kind of led me to my senior year of high school when I wanted to do something a little bit more. I started taking a journalism class. And then I was like, okay, I have to be a leader somehow in this. And so I applied to be the editor in chief of my newspaper.

Let me just interject. Were you already on the newspaper staff?

I had been there since I was a freshman, which was nice, but I didn't have a lot of leadership roles. I was kind of just doing, like, movie reviews, like, something silly here and there, what they do in high school. And so I knew that I wanted to do a little bit more. So I had applied for the editor in chief position of the newspaper. And then I was like, okay, that's not enough. I feel like I need to do something else. And so then I applied to be the editor in chief of the yearbook. And they looked at me. They're like, are you crazy? Can you actually do this? I'm like, yeah, let me do it. So they actually let me be the editor in chief of the yearbook as well. So I really did. You had a.

So you won the editor in chief of both the yearbook and the newspaper, which is very rare because usually they promote from within.

Oh, I was very convincing. I was like, just let me do it, and I'll do a great job. Which is very odd for me because I'm not someone to really go out of my comfort zone and do stuff like that. So that was tricky. I really had to.

Was there an interview that you just wowed them over? Did you have to submit writing samples?

Both, actually. I had to do an interview, and I had to submit writing samples, I think for the newspaper, for the yearbook. It was more kind of looking at my overall trajectory of what I had been doing in high school and things like that. And I had been really involved with a lot of different things. So I think that for the yearbook in particular, they really wanted someone that was kind of involved in lots of aspects of the school.

So they knew the school.

Exactly. So, yeah. So I was doing both and loving both. And luckily for the yearbook, I did have, like, a co editor in chief.

So the design person, I would imagine. Right. Because you didn't have any design background.

No, no, I didn't have any design background. I was strictly about the writing, and I wrote some copy for some of the, you know, like, team photo captions and things like that. But, yeah, so then I also had the experience of being the editor in chief of the newspaper. And still after that, I felt like, oh, this is not enough, because you.

Had so much free time that you just said, you know what? I just need to fill up more time with my AP classes and editor two times over.

Yeah, I definitely had no free time, but I tried to make it work. And I'm like, okay, I need to do something else. I feel this energy to do more, but I didn't know what that would look like. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I just knew that there was something more of an impact that I wanted to make. And around that time, I was in AP Italian, because, like you said, I was also juggling all those. And my teacher had asked us to go home to our families and talk to our families about what their traditions were and their cultures and if they had remembered anything from our ancestors, if they continued any of those traditions. And, you know, growing up in New Jersey, my family is very Italian. We obviously had our pasta and our pizza, our good ones, by the way. And. But we didn't have a lot of that, like, language. Like, I was taking Italian, but nobody in my family took Italian or knew Italian. And I had a little bit of the Italian culture from my class, but they didn't really share that as well. And so I was a little bit frustrated. I'm like, I kind of want to know what my great great grandmother was doing, you know, before she came over to the United States. And it kind of started me thinking, like, okay, the world is becoming more globalized. It's so easy to get from one place to another, and all these cultures are blending, and it's absolutely beautiful. But I also want to show off what makes people unique and what cultures they do take with them when they go somewhere else.

I love that.

And so that. Yeah, it was really. It was really like this gnawing feeling at me, like, oh, I want to share this. Like, I want other people to know about my culture, and I want to know about other people's culture. So I really took some time, and I thought about it. I'm like, okay, how can I do this? How can I blend all that I've been doing with what I want to do? And so out of that, I really thought about it, and I thought, okay, I know how to write. I know how to basically manage a small group of people with the newspaper and the yearbook and things like that. Okay? And I sat down at my computer, I started. The first thing I did was look at names. Because I'm like, okay, I need to name this thing whatever I want it to be.

Of course.

Because then I figured, like, oh, it'll all figure out after I know what really cool name I want it to be. Because there was like Facebook at the time and Twitter, and I just knew that it had to have a catchy thing. So I had to Google and make sure that all of the social media and website names and everything were available. And so I named it Her Culture out of that. And that's basically how that got started. I signed up for a website. I had never designed a website before and it was just. Yeah, I quickly designed it over a weekend and started the blog.

So did you use a particular program, WIX Squarespace, to make the website?

Initially, yeah, my first rounds of the website were on wix and it got shout out. Wix.

You can just send the checks to me.

Yeah, right. Let's get those ads coming in.

No, I, like, I've used it too. It's a very. I say it because a lot of kids say, how do I make a website? And it really is a nice visual builder.

Yeah, I started with wix and after a while I kind of grew out of it and I started to have a little bit different needs and so I switched to Squarespace. Squarespace, actually. And what I liked about both of them is that you didn't need to code, you didn't need to know anything about piecing together a website to work with them. And what I really like about both of those sites is that they allowed me to have kind of creative freedom in that space with block builders and things like that, and it allowed me to do that. And also the thing that I love about Squarespace now is that they have a really good blog function. So they helped to really grow what I have and have been able to. You know, I've been able to add writers easily. And so I literally came into it with no knowledge. And I still, to this day, I've tried to take coding classes. It just doesn't stick in my brain. My brain is like, no, it goes right out the door. So I know that, you know, it would probably help me if I did, but honestly, it's just not easy.

It wasn't necessary.

Yeah, exactly.

It's good to know.

Yeah.

Now, it was called. You decided to name it Her Culture. Why did you decide to focus on women?

I think that women bring a unique take on culture that can easily be Shared and shareable. I feel like women often foster communities of people anyway, and so just having a place where they could foster an online community that felt safe and inclusive, it just felt natural to me to kind of gear that towards women. It's funny that you should say that. We have had male writers before which have contributed to the conversation, but I just felt like I had a particular interest in how women would talk about culture and how they would preserve that.

And was your goal originally to just write yourself, or was it always to try to bring in other women from around the world to write about their experiences?

Yeah, so I think when I first started it, I knew I wanted to write a little bit, but I wanted to kind of stand back and be the platform that they could write on, rather than have my voice be the loudest one or the one most frequently posted. And I think that by allowing other women's voices to come to the front and to stand before me, a lot of women have felt safer that way. I felt like I needed to build out the platform so that women could share their voices and not be the voice of that platform.

Understood.

So, yeah, actually, now I don't write at all for it. Sometimes I'll go in and I'll think about writing something, but I just. A, I don't have time, but B, I really want the voices of the women I work with to stand and to be at the forefront.

That's great. So a couple questions. Let's go back just a little bit.

Sure.

So you are taking this challenging academic schedule, and I know a lot of students might be listening to this, can relate to that. And you're, again, you're editor of both the newspaper and the yearbook. And anyone who is in those things knows that when the yearbook deadline comes, your life gets taken over by that, let alone the regular newspaper deadlines. When half of your staff don't turn stuff in and somebody takes pictures and the pictures don't come out right. You know, it's just constantly put out, putting out fires. So my question is, how did you balance getting your schoolwork done, doing all of this editing, and then on the side starting this blog slash magazine?

Well, in terms of the academics of it, at the time, I was also applying to colleges. And sure, because I was a senior, so that was also on the docket. And I just remember that I'm such a list person. I love crossing things off. I'm a visual learner. So I would literally write everything down and be like, okay, what is the priority here? What do I have to do. And I would just get it done. I would find the time. I would kind of make sure that my schoolwork always came first. I mean, my parents would always encourage me to. While they loved that I was creative, they also knew that school had to come first. And so they encouraged me to not procrastinate when I wanted to and focus on my schoolwork. And I think that putting that first really helped me. It helped me to prioritize the extracurriculars and putting them after the academics. And I think that did help me to focus better on school in terms of the extracurriculars. I did have a lot of people helping me. I mean, I had a great newspaper advisor. He was wonderful and would fill in the gaps if I needed help. Same thing with the yearbook. I had a co editor in chief, so she really stepped in. And while she was doing design, she also did help me a bunch.

And they understand that you had these other side projects go on. Because I would imagine there'd be some tendency to say, like, why aren't you giving us your full attention? And you're not so distracted with all these other projects. Was there any of that?

Frankly, no. I mean, I was able to not let it show that the timing I was good enough, that I, like, didn't. It didn't affect anything. But I also did not like to talk about it, funnily enough, because I wanted. I was starting at the time that I was like, actually everything was coming to a head and I was applying to colleges and getting accepted to places and then also finalizing the yearbook and things like that. Her culture started to get recognized in various ways. And so I actually didn't talk to anyone about it. I felt like I needed to kind of keep it private. Like, this is my thing that I'm doing on site. No one really needs to know. And I felt embarrassed to talk about my accomplishments. I did feel like an imposter a lot of the time. Like, who am I to have any accomplishments with it or anything? So I actually kind of did keep it this side. And to this day, I still have a hard time telling people about how cool it is, honestly.

Great. Well, I'm going to give you a national audience here.

Well, thank you. Yeah, you're really pushing the border.

I'm trying to put you out there. So actually, let's talk a bit, little bit about that now. So you are sitting at your computer and you have a WIX site, and you write a couple of articles and you have this really cool name. Then what. How do you Even go about getting women to write for you. How do you even contact them? And how do you get people to read it?

Right. So this was actually a bit tricky in the beginning. I had been a part of some online journalism groups on Facebook and also other websites. And so I did have a network of some other girls that were interested in journalism in general. And once I had built the website, I knew that I wanted to have a blog component. That was the first part. And the blog would be updated frequently. And so I had this website, which was not very good. Looking back on it, I did not know what I was doing, but I thought it was the coolest thing since sliced bread. I'm like, okay, so now I'm going to reach out to the network that I have already and see if anyone's interested. And I kind of half expected that nobody would want to do it. They'd be like, what is this? No, I. I would get pushback. And I didn't have that many girls that wanted to do it, but I had enough that I started to build out the articles. And when I had asked them, you know, will you join this project with me? Will you share your cultures? It was most mostly in the United States. There were only, you know, 10 or 15 girls at the time. And they were like, okay, we'll do this with you and we'll submit articles. And I had been the only editor since I was the only one running it, and I wanted to start building it up. And so since that point, it's kind of grown by word of mouth, actually. And I've still used kind of the same networks of journalism minded girls. I'm part of some of my alumni groups on Facebook from college, and I still reach out to them and ask if they're interested. So I've really utilized my social media, honestly, to kind of recruit people. And actually, once I started to get more writers, this is probably about three months or so after the website launched. I knew I wanted something a little bit more concrete and something that I could actually design and work with different design programs. I just felt like, you know, if I'm calling myself a magazine slash journalism endeavor, I want to have an actual magazine. And so it was at that point that I really needed to find women to speak and to. To write. And so it was then that I had designed the magazine and I started just kind of throwing things together on a Word document, essentially.

Never designed.

A little bit more high tech. Yeah, right. And then, yeah, started getting more and more girls from there. And so.

So let me be Let me understand. So you have this blog component which you know, looks like a blog and there's different dates and postings. Right. And different girls are giving you this content and you're basically posting it, you're editing it and then posting it yourself.

Right.

So when you say that you decided that you wanted a magazine component, what does that mean? You were putting together a eight page spread, basically including pictures and text, like a magazine that's electronic. Is that what you're talking about?

Yes, exactly. I wanted the articles to be a little bit more in depth and I wanted them to have the high design that I wanted. I basically wanted.

And you had already basically been working on yearbook. So you're starting to pick up design. Right, for publishers and you're bringing that into it as well.

Yeah, 100%. My yearbook knowledge really did come into play here. And even with the newspaper, we worked a little bit with InDesign, which I'm still not perfect at, but we did have a lot of those kind of layout programs. So I just wanted to make something that I could like show the visuals of the culture because you can only do so much with like a blog. But then if I could really do fun things with text or pictures and then, you know, like the headlines and things like that, it really, it really made the cultural articles come to life. And so I had published it, published all the articles as E magazines so that they're always for free. I mean, the point of this was to show women's cultures in an environment that felt safe to them. And I felt like a barrier to entry to that was kind of counterintuitive to what I was trying to do. So the magazine to this day is still for free. It's published every few months and you can have it printed and sent to you, which I still have to do for all of them for myself. But I just, I think that designing it and still running the blog, it kind of just brings an element to the website that not many websites still have agreed.

So. And how. Now here's the big question. So you're great, you've got these articles and women are writing. What were the age of the writers, by the way, initially? And when you.

It's kind of grown. Originally it was about high school age. That's the network I had. So it made sense. Now it's kind of hovered in the 18 to 22 range. Got it. Basically because of all the college contacts I've been able to maintain.

And so how do people find out about this?

Yeah, so it was mostly word of mouth originally, and it's still to this day. A lot of girls will speak to their friends and get them on the team, but it's also a lot of kind of social media marketing and reaching the right networks on those platforms.

If I may jump into that a little bit more, what does that mean? Are you putting ads? Are you actually paying for ads? Are you just posting on Instagram? What does that look like?

I basically don't pay for anything for this other than the actual website platform itself. So I'm not paying for ads. I go to alumni groups and I recruit there. I also go on LinkedIn, which has been very helpful for us because people are looking for internship type of roles on LinkedIn. I've also posted it on Twitter, which has gotten us a lot. And the thing about what I like of social media is that I can reach girls everywhere. And, you know, I have a team of about 80 right now, 80 writers and editors and social media managers. And while most of them are in the US because that's where I'm based, we have about 25% that are out of the country. That's amazing. It's exactly what I wanted for it. I wanted it to be. I didn't want it to be us focused, you know, I wanted it to be worldwide and truly global. So I think that just posting for free on these social media websites has really gotten us some traction that way.

And just for other listeners out there, when you say post on social media, are you posting, for example, titles of your articles?

Yeah, we do. We have an automatic push from Squarespace for our articles. But when we're specifically recruiting for both writers, editors, and social media managers, we actually will put out application posts and that will redirect to the website where girls can just apply on simple forms on the website. And it's really pretty seamless once that happens.

And so the girls are basically posting their articles and sharing it with their friends. So the growth is really organic.

Exactly. It's mostly organic. You know, unless I'm talking to my actual friends and being like, can you come over here and do this with me? It's really cool to see. I actually love it when girls are posting on their Twitters or whatever and they're. They're sharing their articles and showing like, look at what I did. Like, this is, you know, so cool.

Yeah, I mean, we're talking about, I mean, you at one point, I mean, you have like 10,000 people a month reading this or downloading the magazine. Right. So, I mean, that's. That's amazing that, you know, you don't have to be this traditional publisher with all of this background. You can develop an audience worldwide simply by putting the word out and putting out good content.

Yes, exactly. And those numbers still shock me. And I know that, you know, they're not like Facebook numbers, but it's just this little seed of an idea that started in my little brain is now reaching all these people. And I just. That feeling never goes away. That really happy feeling.

That's incredible. Let me ask you what. What are some of the obstacles that you came across while you were trying to put this together?

For one, it was definitely the coding, not knowing what I was doing with that. But I've since realized that you don't need it. But I think another thing was that I definitely felt like, who am I? And I think that some people.

Self doubt.

Yeah, exactly. Self doubt. And people did doubt me. I had one writer, one time that was unhappy with the way that I ran things. And I remember that she had emailed me and I was truly upset with myself for weeks because I felt like I don't want to do this anymore. I feel like I'm not helping anybody. You know, I want to make sure that everyone feels safe and is. Is excited about this and will believe in it the way I believe in it. And I remember just feeling so awful and like, I can't do this. This is not for me. I'm not the one to do this. And then around that time as well, I started to have some other recognition from some other places. I think, like Business Insider was one of them. And, and then it kind of. Not that I wanted the recognition, but the fact that someone had said no, like, this is cool. This is something that you can be doing and should be, that really kind of quieted that self doubt in me and allowed me to continue to do it. And as it's kind of grown, I would say that my biggest issue now is that time I work a full time job. This is not my full time job. And it's, you know, luckily it's become more sustainable as more people have joined. They've been able to help me and kind of take some of the load off of me personally, but definitely overcoming that, like, choice paralysis of like, okay, I have an hour. What am I going to do with this hour? Is it going to be her culture or is it going to be editing this book that I have to do for work? So it becomes kind of that, you.

Know, catch 22 and how do you navigate that? In other words, like I've had guests on that talk about time blocking, where they set aside this hour to work on this thing without distractions. Turn off my phone. I'm only focused on this. And when I'm done with that, at least I might not have gotten everything done, but I feel like I've accomplished something and now I can move on to some other task.

Can you do that? I absolutely do the same thing. And I like to also kind of reward myself with some time to do something fun. So if I do an hour of some type of work related thing or her culture related thing, then I'll take 10 minutes to crochet or I also do calligraphy. I'll do 10 minutes to do calligraphy. So I think that that kind of reward, you know, do the task, get a reward kind of thing works really well for me. And that also helps me stay on track. And it's really satisfying to finish a whole magazine. Just be like, okay, I could upload this now. Like, it's, it's done. And so that also motivates me to kind of get it done and do the thing.

So did you have any mentors? I know you talked about your English teacher and your parents have been supportive and you had a newspaper advisor who was really good. But was anybody else advising you on how to do this or did you reach out to anyone for advice?

Yeah, so I came up with the concept and did the whole thing by myself. And to this day, a lot of it is still on me. But I've definitely had some people kind of pave the way in. One group. Group in particular has been her campus, which is not similar to us. And we don't affiliate. Like, we're not affiliated with them. But that was part of the group that I was in when I was in high school that allowed me to kind of recruit some writers. And so they really showed me some journalism tips and, you know, how to manage a group of people and things like that. And I've also just had incredible professors in college that have shown me just how to be thoughtful. And I went to school in the city, I went to nyu like you said. And you know, it's a very tough place and it's a lot of cultures. I mean, this is like the culture mecca, I feel like. So I was definitely advised from my college professors on how to like communicate with people better and how to communicate a message in the right way. So in that way I had a lot of mentors, but specifically herculture related. It's been me, and I've done The Googling. I've done the research on how to do these things and that kind of allowed me to take creative control over it. But definitely if I was talking to a younger self of mine, I would have said get a mentor that will follow you the whole way through. Because that's something that I regret not having, honestly.

And how do you think that you personally have grown since then until now?

I think that I've learned to have a thicker skin for one. Like not everyone is going to like it, not everyone is going to appreciate it or understand. So that was definitely a growth for me. I think that I have also understood more of how people work and how I can't expect everyone to put in 110% like I will all the time. And so I have to be okay with that. I've also learned to delegate a lot, which is something I'm not the best at.

I know that feeling.

Yeah, I just want to do everything myself because I know it'll be the way that I want it to be. So that has also been something that I continue to work on to this day. And yeah, so it's been very much a learning experience the whole way through.

Well, the big question is, you know, we were speaking earlier. You decided to not take this venture and blow it up and make it your job. You graduated from college and decided to actually go get a job in addition to this. Why is that?

I'm very much a person that likes stability and likes to have something concrete set in place before I jump into something. And so I knew that I wanted to have a full time job and it kind of happened pretty easily once I got out of college, which is not the normal. I know, but I had graduated a semester early and this job had opened up and I had been interning at the company anyway. And so it kind of just all aligned and I haven't had the experience or the challenges yet to actually get into like funding this, her culture and making it something that is self sustainable that I could rely on for an income, especially because so much of it is free and accessible. Like we don't make money off of ads or anything like that. So it is something that I'm trying to work on. It's like One of my 2020 goals is like get an advertisement. You know, just kind of things that will propel it forward into something that could be sustainable someday.

Got it. But you intelligently said, you know, you need a backup plan.

Exactly.

So you want. You could. And you realized too because you had balanced it all the Way through school that you could do both.

Right, right, exactly. And that's what I found to be true. You know, I do my work nine to five and I do have the mental wherewithal to do it when I get home, you know, do her culture when I get back to my apartment. So that has been fine.

Do you think that you sacrificed anything by having to do two things? Or even through college or high school, did you sacrifice everything by making this project a priority?

I think one of maybe the biggest sacrifices is a social life. I have friends.

But that's when you go out and you do fun things with people.

Right, right.

I gotta look into that. It sounds.

Yeah, right. That's something that people do sometimes. I think that all of my friends are very understanding of my workload and I'm so grateful for them because they get that. But I think that, I mean, there's something that has to give somewhere and it just happens to be that, you know, I spend my weekends recording podcasts with people or, you know, working on the magazine. So I think that that has probably taken the biggest.

So what I hear you saying is that since we're doing this on a Saturday, I'm in Saturday at 6:00 your time. I'm ripping away your social life yet again. This is my fault. No.

Well, maybe. No, I'm kidding. Totally kidding.

So let me ask. I have three questions that I ask every guest.

Yeah, sure.

And the first one is, how much of the success that you've had so far do you feel is natural talent versus how much is hard work?

I think that most of it has been hard work. A lot of it was stuff that I had to learn and research and figure out along the way. And doing so helped bring out my natural talents. I think. I think that I had always been a leader. I remember my mom told me a story that when I was in kindergarten, all the kids would come up to me and ask me how to, like, work a computer or things like that, or they would ask me to read them parts of a book. And I think that I had always had that natural leadership talent, but I definitely didn't have the design talent, I didn't have the management talent or the delegation talent. And so that really came out of hard work for me.

Got it. Thank you. The next question is, what. And you've given lots of advice, but what additional advice I should say, would you give, say, an 11 or a 15 year old out there listening to this?

I think that any young person should not feel afraid to take a chance on something that they may feel like is not right for them. You know, like I said before, I didn't feel like I was the person to do this. I felt like maybe, you know, someone else should do this. And, you know, why am I the one doing this? And I think that overcoming that and realizing that I could be the platform on which people shared their voices and shared their cultures, really, it was hard to overcome that. And so I think that a young person should realize, like, no, you can be the voice of change, or you can do that really cool thing that you're thinking of and to not be afraid that you're not the one to do that.

That's great. And there's a theme with almost all my guests. You know, I would say 20, 30 years ago, there wasn't the Internet, and so there wasn't a platform for young people to get their voices heard.

Exactly.

But now, you know, you are essentially. I'm sure that there's. Adults were reading you when you were in high school with these interesting cultural stories. And again, this wasn't just a local thing in your town. People were reading this all over the country. So, you know, your voice is worthwhile at a young age. And like you said, that is something that I really. I would love the message to get out there, which is why I love this show, and I love having people like you on, because it's amazing the difference that teenagers can even start making these days that they might not have been able to before.

No, it's incredible what social media and the Internet can do. Seriously. Because not only does it connect people on bases that are similar to each other, but it also connects them on really unique ways, and anyone could share their voice that way, which is so cool.

So cool.

So cool.

All right. And the hard question, if you can come up with something, is, what is one thing you wish I would have asked you about?

I think that I would have liked if you asked me what my favorite story I've ever gotten was to publish.

You know, that's funny. And I usually make the joke and say, well, what kind of story? I actually, in my back of my mind, wanted to ask you about the favorite story, and I totally slipped my mind. So thank you.

No. No worries. Yeah.

Yeah. What was that?

So one time I got. This is a little bit of a more serious topic, but one time I got an article about this woman that had been assaulted in India, and she was talking about the. The assault culture that exists there. And I remember receiving the article, and this was anonymous. She was not a frequent writer of mine, so I don't know who she actually was. But the article showed the faults in the culture, but also how beautiful it could be and how survival mentality it could be. And that really changed the way that I thought about her culture as a platform because originally I kind of wanted it to just be like, oh, people are talking about this dance that they have in Russia or something. And then I got this article, which I had not. I didn't know anything about that. And it was something that had really struck me. And so then it kind of changed my whole understanding of what it could actually be and really made me think about like, wow, this could actually have an impact. And it was a hard thing to post and read, but it was definitely something that changed the course of how I thought about it.

And what were the comments from if any of the readers out there? Did you. Do you get feedback from people?

Yeah, I mean, everyone was supportive. A lot of people. I mean, it's so hard in the United States to pick through the noise and find these things out. And so I know that in, in my particular group of people, those that had read it, it really was eye opening to them and it really made them feel supportive of women that go through similar things all over the world. And, and so that really, really impacted me.

That's amazing. I love the work that you're doing.

Thank you.

Well, thank you so much for being on. I really appreciate your sincerity and your passion and it was just great talking to you.

Oh, it was wonderful talking to you, Danny. Thank you so much.

If you want to learn more about the specific steps our guests took to follow their dreams, go to our website Danny ruderman.com and become an XU VIP. You will not only get access to all our episodes, but you will also be able to download free guides that have stick step by step action plans and resources that will help you become extraordinary. If you want to tell us your story or ask for help, go to dannyruterman.com YourStory or reach out via Instagram @dmNuterman. You can also subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And while you're there, please leave us a review. Extraordinary youy is produced by Anna Darling, music by Gee Om sound editing by Rob Pera. Extraordinary youy is a production of Acast.