I'm Making It Easier for YOU to Get What You Need!

Hello, you absolutely amazing person, you. For a wide variety of reasons, I am thrilled to be back in my office today. But that is not the point of this video. I wanted to finish off this week reflecting back on 2024. The reality is the year's coming to an end for people like me in business, we're definitely looking at the numbers. How did the year go? What do we want to take into 2025? What are we definitely not doing again? And I can say 2024 was definitely a year of growth for me. And as a result, I definitely believe I'm doing things better. But improvement is needed. That includes on this YouTube channel. So let's talk about it. Bonjour, Mishko Paganan Kwei Nadishnagas Mang Do Dam Hi, everyone. My name is Sandy Boucher. I'm Red Thunderbolt, woman of the Loon clan, a proud member of Seine River first nation in Treaty 3 territory in Northern Ontario. And I have dedicated my career, my life, my energy, my time to the small task of reconciling a country, namely Canada. I am an Indigenous woman living within Canadian borders. I always have been. And I knew from a very young age that I just look at the world differently, I assess things differently. I may have different values than non Indigenous colleagues, coworkers, friends, neighbors. And it is that knowledge that I brought into my career. I help non Indigenous businesses understand why their initiatives are not working, why they can't hire Indigenous people, find them to hire them, and why they don't stick around after they hire them. It's really easy to blame the other side of the feather, the phrase I use so often, but you have way more power when you start looking at and fixing things on your side. That's where your strength is. And of course, I spend a lot of time in First Nation communities, helping with healing and empowerment, remembering the strength of our teachings and resting on our resilience that I have been doing for 15 years. And honestly, in the beginning, I didn't jump into this career because I was a trained public speaker or because I knew the ins and outs of creating videos for the Internet. I dove in because I believe in the people I work with, Indigenous and non Indigenous. I believe in this country. I believe in the potential of this country. And if we could just stop judging each other and actually genuinely work together, but because I didn't have that strength in running a business or shooting videos. Trust when I say it's been a learning curve. And I love the fact that 15 years in, I am still learning. I'm still improving. As I said in 2024, it was a year of growth. I brought on a dedicated salesperson to the team for the very first time. Now, in the end, that didn't work out as well as I hoped it would, but it did. It was a joy and it was a learning curve, and I have absolutely no regrets. And then I did something more that I never even envisioned doing. For one, I hired a general manager to basically run the back office so I could do content, I could do events, I could focus on you as opposed to the numbers. Didn't actually see myself hiring a general manager until the idea presented itself. Definitely didn't think I'd be hiring my older brother, but that proved to be the best business decision I have made in such a long time. We know each other. We have an idea of how each other works. He is so supportive and he pushes me. He doesn't just. You knew my brother. He's not just gonna say yes to everything. He does what I need him to do, but he definitely has input and suggestions and pushes me when I'm the one holding the company back. And yes, that does happen. Internalized oppression is a thing. And of course, I have many, many professionals outside of my staff or team. Miranda, my graphic designer, who has been with me for years, runs her own company, Shout Media, are my webmasters and help me tweak things on the website and they help me with the massive migration. When I shut down my second company, Reconciliation Works Canada and amalgamated everything under sandy boucher.com. that's not something I could have done without them. They make my membership work. They make online sales easy. Totally out of my forte. I have it. That's. That's Lowry. It's another outside business that makes sure that what we need to do, what we do works. And I wouldn't change any of that. And of course, I have Anita, my bookkeeper and admin, who has been with me for years, and she continues to be a joy. But at a recent meeting, we started discussing my YouTube channel, which a lot of people. I get emails every single day in response to my videos. I absolutely love that. But thinking of you, trying to view it through your eyes. It was pointed out to me that there should be a few tweaks made. And I say that sarcastically because the tweak I'm referring to is a really big deal in the work involved in doing it. So what I'm talking about last year was, I don't even remember the steps to reconciliation. Is that what I called the 2023 videos. I don't know. I would have to check on my own website to be sure. And then of course, the 2024 videos were through indigenous eyes. So here's the thing. If you were looking for a specific video on overcoming oppression, maybe you're an indigenous person and your internalized oppression is just limiting you and you want advice on how to do that, are you really gonna go searching through 200 plus videos to try to figure out which ones speak to that? Of course you're not. So me dividing videos by the years, not really helpful, was it? And, and you know what? I am humble enough to realize I missed the bus on that one. So we are in the process of doing this. It's going to take a little bit of time, but in 2025, what you were going to see is a variety of very specific playlists on my YouTube channel, which should help you get to the information you need because no one's searching through 200 videos. I know that. So here are. And by the way, I'm gonna list off the playlist that I think should be created where I think my videos are going to fit. If, if you've been watching my videos or if you would like to see a playlist called something else or on another topic, please comment below. I would love to hear your input. So here's what we've got so far. Number one, and this is in no particular order, these are just the. The topics we came up with. The first one is understanding indigenous worldview. So that's all the videos where I'm explaining how something looks through indigenous eyes. Okay, so if you're wondering how your indigenous new hire or your indigenous students may interpret something, that's the videos you would look at. Okay, the second one I called it. And all of this is subject to change in tweaking, creating attractive work environments. That's the safe spaces. So obviously, if you're looking at attracting new employees or new students or retaining them, you're going to be interested in that playlist. Okay, next one, Indigenous retention and recruitment. So when I speak specifically to how to retain your indigenous staff or when you're at risk of losing them, that's where that's going to go. Number four, stereotypes and misunderstandings. Where I point out where this has gone off the rails, that's where you're going to find those videos. Yes, I have a whole section, or will have a whole section on indigenous empowerment and or overcoming oppression. Make it easy for you to find those videos. And of course, last but definitely not least, some of my most popular videos, everything to do with Pretend Ians and Descendants. Okay, what do you think? I think that's going to make it easier for you to find the content that you need. Obviously for the people that watch every single day, they're up to date on all of it. But if you were mentioning a video to a friend and you wanted to find it to share it with them, I believe this, this dividing into playlists is really going to help. So what do you think? Do you think that's a good idea? What playlist would you be interested in looking at? Or what area of Indigenous Canadian engagement would you love to see me speak to? I am open to any and all suggestions. I had a really good year this year. 2024 brought about a lot of changes but a lot of growth and for that I am thankful. I hope you have a super duper double delicious weekend and I will see you on Monday. Take care. I love you. Bye Bye.