So MANY UPDATES, Revelations & a Question

I am back. I am back. I am back from my road trip, in my opinion. You can tell me if you agree with this, but I think I feel like I must be doing something right if I am so absolutely thrilled to be home. And not just because home's the sanctuary and gets you away from all the ickiness. But there are so many things I missed. I have a shower with water pressure that could knock you on your butt. Thanks to my partner who I was with at the time, I have a killer mattress that always delivers a great night's sleep. My fur babies are here. Like, there are so many reasons I'm thrilled to be home, but it was an amazing trip and there were revelations that happened, and there's some big changes underway that will affect the videos you receive. So I wanted to give you that update now that I'm home, because I really super missed you. So let's talk about it. Hi, everybody. My name is Sandy Boucher. I'm Red Thunderbolt, woman of the Loon clan. I'm a proud member of Scene River first nation in Treaty 3 territory in Northern Ontario. And I make a living as an Indigenous Canadian reconciliation consultant. I'm a public speaker. I give a lot of keynotes. I give a lot of workshops and seminars. I work in First Nation communities helping Indigenous people to realize our value and our strength and do some healing. And I spend equal time working with non Indigenous Canadians, helping them, giving them missing information, helping them unpack the misinformation they've received, all of those stereotypes, and just really being a catalyst for Indigenous Canadian reconciliation. We got a lot of work to do before that can happen, but we do it one step at a time. Now. One of the things I'm super proud of is the fact that in my career, I've become really good at balancing the feather. And what I mean by that is I often use the metaphor of an eagle feather, which is absolutely sacred to Anishinaabe like me, Ojibwe people like me. I like to imagine that half of the eagle feather represents non Indigenous Canadians. The other half represents Indigenous people living within Canadian borders. Both sides of that feather have been damaged. But if we do the work on our side of the feather, no coming over to the other side to help. We have enough non Indigenous people thinking they still want to save Indigenous people. That is literally how we got in this mess in the first place. Non Indigenous people, your work is on your side of the feather. That's where the problematic people are. We need to hear your voice. We need you to help correct the missing information or to direct those people to us, the indigenous people that are quite willing to help them understand. So there's so much work to do. But I believe if we do the work on our respective sides, Canada can fly to heights it's never even seen before. I'm really passionate about this. Can you tell? I believe there's valuable content in my videos. So if you're new here, subscribe. Subscribe. I would love to see you again. And if you've been on this journey with me for a while, I love you so much. Thank you for your support. Now, as I mentioned, I have not a handy dandy index card today. I actually have an email that I sent to myself because there were so many things I wanted to mention to you. The road trip I was just on, well, for one, I just turned 60 a couple weeks ago and I wanted to take some kind of trip for my birthday. But everything I looked into it, just one reason or another, it just didn't seem what I wanted. It just wasn't working out. And then I had two events book back to back. One event was on a Friday. The next event was on the Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday of the following week, both in the same geographic location, which happened to be southern Ontario. I live in Thunder Bay in Northern Ontario. So I decided to bring my Mustang out of storage and to go on an epic road trip. And that's what I did. Now I'm super glad I did. It was also super exhausting. That was a lot of driving and a lot of energy goes into my, like doing a full day seminar takes a lot of energy. So, yeah, I'm flying next time, let's put it that way. But I got to do the two events and it wasn't until I was at the second event that I realized the first one, the Friday event, was with the non Indigenous entity, who just the most amazing group of people who are open and willing to learn. Love it. And the second event was a First nations event. It was actually First Nation female entrepreneurship. I was surrounded by my people for three days. It was absolutely amazing. So once again, without even planning it, I was balancing the feather. Gotta love that. Now, what was the revelation? Well, one of the things at the First Nation event, I realized just from the feedback from the people that first nations audiences, indigenous audiences, need to hear success stories. They need to hear how you overcame challenges. They need to hear that you are generally happy being successful and still Indigenous, that you didn't have to give up who you are. They need those examples. We need so many more examples like that. So I was so thrilled to be able to do that and share my story for so many. And with the non indigenous audiences, they need information. They need a first nation perspective. They need to understand. Like, often I'm like, you don't want to use that wording on that poster because do you want to hear what that sounds like to me, how we interpret that? So I help with things like that. But the other thing I noticed this has been happening for a while, and it's now happening so often that I just thought I had to comment on it. So often, when the non indigenous entity brings me in, and these tend to be large entities of various forms, they. They often have, like, an indigenous unit or some indigenous employees. What happens is I often become the unofficial voice for the indigenous employees. I get to explain why something is uncomfortable or why that terminology is offensive, even if it's not the stereotypical, you know, the classic stereotype or racist slur, why labeling someone a certain way might be problematic. And what I've come to realize is this is often something the indigenous employees know all too well, but they can't say it because they're employees. And whether there would be backlash or there's just perceived backlash, internalized oppression is a thing. Like these corporations, these entities, these large non indigenous entities have to really start looking at how safe is your space. And when I say safe, I don't mean safe from physical violence. Of course, that's part of it. But a safe space is a place safe enough to have uncomfortable conversations. And if an indigenous person cannot say this makes me uncomfortable and be heard, like, if nothing changes, even though they're saying I'm uncomfortable, then that's not a safe space for indigenous people. And that is not an entity working on reconciliation. So I have come to realize that that is often the role I play on stage, that I am the voice. I am saying the things these employees can't say. And that is a huge responsibility that I take incredibly seriously. Even if there's one voice silenced, one person that wishes I could speak to something, I'm gonna be there. Because that's how change comes about. So I totally, totally intend on continuing my work. Now, changes are underfoot. So here's what happened. And anyone out there self employed or started a business, of course I had to yawn. I haven't done that in ages. I've been gone. So here's what I did. I've been in business for 15 years. And, like, I stopped doing it by myself a long time ago. But through like it wasn't a conscious decision. It was definitely unconscious. Something I didn't see or wasn't aware of. I started adding the staff, but I was the bottleneck. Everything still came through me. You know me as someone who produces videos or produces blog posts or does both, but I also run not one but two businesses. Everything comes through me. It may divert off to one of my staff, but it comes through me first. That got a little exhausting that I was starting. I didn't realize it at the time. This is one of Those hindsight is 20 20. I wasn't just tired, I was exhausted. I was feeling overwhelmed. I can say and own then I'm gonna yawn again. I've gotta eat something. I can. Oh, did I remember to eat today? I think I forgot that. Gotta fix that. I had less patience with my staff who had questions. I had enough patience for the first or second question. But if it went on after that, I was not the type of manager I want to be and I own that. I think we have to hold space for mistakes. We have to hold space for someone to be able to say, I can do better at that. And I knew I could do better and. But something had to give up and I was actually contemplating cutting back on some of my creative endeavors. But that's my joy and that's why I exist. That's why I'm here. I have no doubt in my mind. So mid May, my brand new general manager starts and he will be running the office so that I can focus on quality content for you, for the people that follow my blog, for the people that are on my email list. And I am already enjoying less stress just knowing there's light at the end of the tunnel. So I am so freaking thrilled for that. The general manager, the original, the primary task will be running the office eventually. He's also going to be my contact, the first contact for first nations business, indigenous business. And I've already hired someone who is my contact for the non indigenous work. So things are looking up. I now have a team. I have my finance admin person, I have my social media manager, I have my non indigenous business manager. And now I'll have my general manager who in time will also handle my first nations business which allows me to focus on creation. The seminars that make a difference, the keynotes that resonate with people, the videos that add value. And I am so pumped. Which brings me to the last point and I wanted to get your opinion on this. So now this is going to be different for a Lot of people, especially if you're not indigenous, because this is definitely not the colonized way of doing things. You may not know this, but my business was built on a daily blog post. I have been releasing a daily blog post for the entire 15 years of my business. I used to do it seven days a week. I now only do it five. And this year it's actually entries out of my last book. But what you wouldn't know and what people used to freak out about when they realized I would actually write my blog post five minutes before it was released. Like, it, I was, I'm awake now. What are my thoughts? These are my thoughts. And I would release it. In my way of thinking, I was not part of that process, or I was a small part of that process. That was creator telling me what you needed to hear or what my blog post readers needed to hear. And I loved it. Not really good from a time management perspective or yeah, you can't go on vacation. You're like, I was updating blog posts from camp on the weekend cottage for people in southern Ontario. So and way back when, when I started my business in that first year, I was also releasing a daily video. And again, I'd be walking around my office or my home either, or something would come to me. I got to do a video on that. I would walk into my office, turn on the video camera, shoot the video, release it. I knew nothing about video editing back then. There was no intro, there was no outro, there was no editing, there was no text added in. It was just raw videos. And that is how I built my business now, over the course. Why am I sharing this with you? Over the course of my business, I started batching videos, which means I would shoot like a week's videos all at once. You can tell because I'm wearing the same clothes. And that is all well and good for if I have to travel or if I have a super busy schedule, which for the last couple years I definitely have. But to me, it makes it more about the process and less about the authenticity. So what I am toying with is going back to shooting like a video a day now. By the way, I'm a huge Phil DeFranco fan. I follow him here on YouTube. I have for years. My kids turn me on to him and he does his daily videos and they're now longer form videos. I will never be able to shoot a video and release it that day, especially since I release my videos first thing in the morning. Don't particularly want to change that time slot. As a lot of people start my day or start their day with my videos, but I can shoot a video and release it the next day, which means if I'm responding to a question of yours, which I'm often doing in my videos, you don't need to wait a week or hope to find the video where I respond. It'll be way more quick. I'll also be able to respond to scary things in the news. I so have to eat something. I am so sorry. But what do you think? What do you think? I mean, if there's two, three, four things that I have to speak to, then, okay, I can see shooting those videos, but I want to go back to that authenticity that like, hey, friend, I missed you. I've been thinking about this. What do you think? And I'm just wondering, what do you think? So let me know. I have a reaction video for you tomorrow. When I was on the road, I. I get links sent to me or I spend a lot of time on YouTube, not as a creator, but as a consumer. And this wasn't a YouTube video. It was actually a TED talk. And she wasn't speaking to reconciliation. But what she said definitely relates to. Because what she was talking about is how to offer an authentic apology. That was worth the reaction video. So that's what I'm gonna have for you tomorrow. So I am back. I am thrilled to be back. So many changes going on. I cannot wait till my general manager starts. What do you think of that? Probably about time, right? I should have thought of that sooner. And what do you think of the idea of me shooting videos real time, 24 hours, as opposed to a week in advance? I would love to know your thoughts. Any entrepreneurs out there who face the same thing, I'd love to hear from you. Until tomorrow's reaction video, I am so thrilled to be home because it means I get to chat with you again. I love you. Take care. Bye. Bye.