Transcript
Speaker: This is the Futurism Take One.
Speaker: Okay, I'm super pumped.
Speaker: Okay, so let's start.
Speaker: Yeah, welcome to the Futurism.
Speaker: This is our first recording, but me and Janae talk all the time, so it feels normal.
Speaker: But yeah, welcome to the Futurism Podcast.
Speaker: We shine a bright light on the extraordinary journeys of the ordinary person.
Speaker: Welcome.
Speaker: Welcome.
Speaker: You guys, I just want to know already that this would not be if it wasn't for Karina.
Speaker: Like I can talk about all of the wonderful things that I want to offer to the world, but this brilliant soul is the one that makes it happen.
Speaker: So when we are shining a light on you, who we believe to be extraordinary, it is because someone is making it happen.
Speaker: So thank you, Rini, for so much.
Speaker: This point in getting us to our first episode, it's a thing.
Speaker: I'm super excited to dig into the process of it starting as an idea and how we got here.
Speaker: But before we get to all of that, let's introduce ourselves.
Speaker: This episode is all about meeting Janae and Karina.
Speaker: You will hear Janae call me Rini.
Speaker: So yeah, I can go by Karina or Rini in this space.
Speaker: Let's jump into who we are.
Speaker: Who are you, Janae?
Speaker: Okay, like, who am I?
Speaker: That's such a complex and dynamic question.
Speaker: I am so full of words.
Speaker: I'm going to try my very best to simplify it.
Speaker: And Rini, please help me.
Speaker: Well, actually, what we said we were going to do, which I think is such a fun idea, is describe each other.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: So why don't you do an opening to our friendship and then describe me and then I'll describe you.
Speaker: Okay, that's perfect.
Speaker: Okay, so I'm a very visual person, so I often close my eyes.
Speaker: When did I first lay eyes on Karina?
Speaker: So met Karina in junior high.
Speaker: Karina was this very shy brainiac who I had my eye on.
Speaker: We didn't become...
Speaker: best friends until we went to CasTech.
Speaker: Shout out to CasTech, Detroit, Michigan.
Speaker: We were both in the ChemBio program because at that time we drank the Kool-Aid and we thought we were going to be doctors because doctors was acceptable.
Speaker: And that was what would get us the gold star and all of the accolades from everyone around us.
Speaker: So we were like, boom, let's be doctors.
Speaker: So we were both in the ChemBio curriculum and it was there that
Speaker: that we learned that our souls were one in the same.
Speaker: And from there, our friendship just grew.
Speaker: Who is Karina to me?
Speaker: Who is Karina to me?
Speaker: How can I describe Karina?
Speaker: Karina is very much like my little genius flower child.
Speaker: She lives in this world where she really genuinely wants to show the best version of herself.
Speaker: She is so kind and thoughtful and loyal.
Speaker: She is funny as fuck.
Speaker: She is super smart.
Speaker: She can see a process from start to finish.
Speaker: She can see a vision and make it come to pass.
Speaker: And she has been speaking Janae in that way since we were 15 years old, since we were meditating on the floor, on Pembroke and Seven Mile, trying to figure out what to do with all of these thoughts and feelings in our hearts and in our minds.
Speaker: And I don't know, she has been a gift to my life and I'm super excited to do this project with her.
Speaker: Oh, that was super sweet.
Speaker: And I definitely am like wanting to cry a little bit, but I'm holding it back since we're only five minutes in.
Speaker: I know, right?
Speaker: That was beautiful.
Speaker: And I want to add to, we went to middle school together.
Speaker: We went to high school together, but we also started like working together in high school at these various part-time jobs.
Speaker: And that really made our friendship grow because, you
Speaker: I mean, we were just hustling our butts off at 16 at TJ Next.
Speaker: We were at a marketing research firm where we caught people.
Speaker: And we just would, like, go to school and work.
Speaker: We were two little, like, grown women.
Speaker: Like, it was fun.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And let me tell you something.
Speaker: Rini and I have always been the type of people to put our heads down and do the work.
Speaker: Like we didn't complain.
Speaker: Like even back at TJ Maxx, I remember like them talking management at TJ Maxx because Rini and I was just going and like crack the whip like, let's go.
Speaker: We would have that story clean.
Speaker: And then we also had an internship at Henry Ford Hospital together.
Speaker: So it was a lot of little things that happened in high school that really
Speaker: bonded us and we were in a huge high school with 3000 people.
Speaker: So that's the basis of our friendship.
Speaker: I want to add that we are broadcasting from Detroit, Michigan and Atlanta, Georgia.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And we'll get into how we went from Detroit, Michigan, both of us to splitting up and where we've lived
Speaker: over the course of this episode.
Speaker: But if I had to describe Janae, I mean, she's almost the opposite of me.
Speaker: When we were in middle school, I remember her being this leader.
Speaker: She was the student body president.
Speaker: She was the person who would get up and speak and represent our class.
Speaker: She spoke at our eighth grade graduation.
Speaker: She was just that kid that the teachers and administrators would call on when they need it.
Speaker: To like impress somebody.
Speaker: And for me, having like social anxiety and being so shy, it was a beautiful like example to see somebody so confident and strong at such a young age.
Speaker: And I would say that that has carried into adulthood for you.
Speaker: It hasn't gotten much smaller.
Speaker: It's gotten bigger.
Speaker: But yeah, you are, Jenea's like the popular girl.
Speaker: She has always had an array of friends.
Speaker: But besides just being a popular girl, she was just ridiculously nice and kind.
Speaker: You still are.
Speaker: Like, I feel that I could...
Speaker: meet a complete stranger in Atlanta who doesn't have anywhere to go.
Speaker: And I could be like, I have a friend named Janae.
Speaker: And you would take them under your wing.
Speaker: Like you are just, you exude kindness and love.
Speaker: And I would also say that you like taught me how to love in some ways because of the love that you show
Speaker: for me and just for everybody.
Speaker: But yeah, kindness.
Speaker: You are a leader, a visionary.
Speaker: If you all heard her say, I had my eye on Karina.
Speaker: Yes, she's been a visionary since she was a child and still a visionary.
Speaker: So this podcast was your idea.
Speaker: But you're a mom.
Speaker: You are a mental health professional.
Speaker: You have done everything and you continue to just wow me.
Speaker: So
Speaker: How would you fill in the blanks?
Speaker: What did I miss about you?
Speaker: First of all, I am a crier and I literally could cry a river right now, but I shall hold it together.
Speaker: Shout out to all of the mental health training that allows me to be able to tuck my emotions away when it's not about me and I will not make this about me.
Speaker: But this is about you.
Speaker: This one is about meeting Janae.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: Like, that's crazy.
Speaker: Okay, so I do want to, Rini noted a few things that makes me want to kind of just circle back.
Speaker: Rini is an educator, like an educator's educator.
Speaker: Like, she lives to be able to simplify the complicated, and she's so great at it.
Speaker: She is a consultant.
Speaker: She is a person that can bring,
Speaker: your vision to life.
Speaker: And she works with leaders and entrepreneurs and creatives to do that very well.
Speaker: She is a wife and a mother.
Speaker: She's a friend.
Speaker: She's an amazing friend.
Speaker: And I don't want to forget those things.
Speaker: Where would I fill in a blank?
Speaker: Rini and I also connected and continue to connect because we just live for fun.
Speaker: Like that was always uniquely important.
Speaker: ours.
Speaker: So I would consider us both really nerdy, like perhaps forward facing, we wouldn't look that way, but she and I are like ridiculous nerds in a lot of ways.
Speaker: Like we love learning.
Speaker: We live in the opportunity to be able to understand concepts differently and to be able to master them.
Speaker: And she and I have always been aligned in that way, but we also like,
Speaker: live for the moment where we can let our hair down and have a good time and have a tasty drink and enjoy memory making with friends and family.
Speaker: And that has never changed.
Speaker: Like that has always been us and what brings us back to the friendship.
Speaker: So she is like Rini noted, I have, I'm,
Speaker: fortunate enough to have a lot of really good friends.
Speaker: Rini is my person such that she checks the boxes across a lot of domains.
Speaker: We are alike in a lot of ways.
Speaker: And I don't ever want to forget, like, we live for a good time.
Speaker: We do live for a good time.
Speaker: I had that written down.
Speaker: Janae will match your energy.
Speaker: So, like, if me and you are like, this party is dead and we are not feeling bad, we are going to both, just the two of us, like, light a little match and...
Speaker: you know the energy will go from there but all we need is like some eye contact and it's like all right we're about to turn this up a little bit and it might be just by doing something completely silly or goofy which we don't mind we definitely don't or it could just be you know
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: It could be anything.
Speaker: But yeah, we love a good time.
Speaker: We are not stiff.
Speaker: And that is why I had to check the explicit rating.
Speaker: I definitely think I've already dropped the F-mom.
Speaker: So I do want to let you know in advance if it offends you to hear an explicit here and there.
Speaker: This is not the podcast for you because I definitely...
Speaker: I'm going to make certain, I emphasize certain things.
Speaker: There's nothing like a good curse word to really drive that point.
Speaker: So just know that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So we just told people that it is not for them if these types of words make them uncomfortable.
Speaker: But who is this for?
Speaker: And what is the future it's in?
Speaker: Oh, that is so good.
Speaker: So one of the things...
Speaker: that Rini and I have been trying to grow through, I would say since we were like 30, is trying to find this balance between strength and vulnerability, between being who we know we're destined to be as professionals and honoring our truth as humans.
Speaker: And we both recognized early on that the way we were doing it wasn't okay.
Speaker: Like it wasn't sustainable.
Speaker: It was
Speaker: burning us out, but we didn't quite know how to get out of it.
Speaker: So I would note that this has been a 10 year journey for Karina and I to figure out what Zen looks like.
Speaker: But we also recognize that there are more people like Karina and I. So Karina and I don't have a network of resources and sororities and
Speaker: you know, families that are super connected in the professional world.
Speaker: She and I have really put ourselves up by our bootstraps to figure out how we can live the life that we've imagined.
Speaker: And we recognize that there are extraordinary people like us who deserve to first have an outlet and a space to say, I'm tired too.
Speaker: And I don't know
Speaker: how to move through this really difficult period and to have permission to say I'm tired and to just get resources and tools on how, if you do not have a network of people to help you through professionally and personally, that you can create your own and that you can still be successful in your own right.
Speaker: Yeah, I think that was a great, like,
Speaker: comprehensive explanation of what this is.
Speaker: The future of Zen is definitely a culmination of our 40 years on this earth.
Speaker: I mean, Janae and I have been rocking for 20, but we are growth focused and we have always been growth focused.
Speaker: And so
Speaker: The Future is Zen, that name is about introducing unapologetic joy as a change agent.
Speaker: How do you incorporate joy?
Speaker: How do you find joy?
Speaker: How do you like cling on to it?
Speaker: And with your dear life, we have unlocked some of those secrets over the years and we want to share that.
Speaker: I mean, I hope that people leave this
Speaker: podcast episode and they feel seen, they feel connected.
Speaker: They feel that, oh, I'm not alone because they are not and we are not.
Speaker: Another goal of this podcast is to just celebrate the growth continuum.
Speaker: We don't have all the answers right now.
Speaker: We are both in our 40th year.
Speaker: We will be both turning 40 this year. 40.
Speaker: And growth is a continuum.
Speaker: And we want to share that, that the future is zen as we continue to work on growth and work on being our best versions of ourselves.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And you know what, Rini, I really want to emphasize the concept of showing up unapologetically.
Speaker: That's a big thing because we live in a world where there are social constructs that convince us that we have to be one way.
Speaker: And I say, I disagree.
Speaker: I call bullshit.
Speaker: And so there is not one way for us to do this.
Speaker: And I want us to have permission to change our mind.
Speaker: I want us to have permission to make new agreements.
Speaker: I want us to have permission to awaken to
Speaker: our life's purpose based on what's presenting right now.
Speaker: And what that means is being able to show up unapologetically in your truth.
Speaker: And so let's do that.
Speaker: Let's do all of that, more of that all of the time.
Speaker: Yes, yes, yes.
Speaker: So if you, if any of this resonates with you, if any of these conversations or topics, or just the idea of having a Zen future and being on that growth journey with us, if that interests you, then this podcast is for you.
Speaker: We will bring on some guests throughout these episodes who have been impactful in our journeys because we didn't come here alone and we have this vast network of people.
Speaker: So you'll get to meet some of the interesting people who have interesting perspectives along the way.
Speaker: And you'll get to learn a lot more about our stories and our lessons learned throughout the episodes.
Speaker: So we look forward to being on this journey.
Speaker: Put your seatbelts on you all.
Speaker: We are not going to hold back.
Speaker: And we hope that when you connect with us, that you will be honest about your journeys and
Speaker: And we will be able to bring that to this space and highlight it.
Speaker: So remember, if we call on you to come and share your story in this space, you are our extraordinary person.
Speaker: You are our superstar.
Speaker: So get ready.
Speaker: Yay.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So anything else you want to say about the podcast or about us for this opening conversation?
Speaker: Meet Marina and Janae.
Speaker: I think it's a nice little intro.
Speaker: I do.
Speaker: I think it's really good.
Speaker: I think it's very much us.
Speaker: I think we have to be us in this space.
Speaker: I'm super pumped.
Speaker: I want to just close out by I want you guys to remember that you got to find your light.
Speaker: Y'all got to find your light.
Speaker: Okay?
Speaker: And stand in your truth.
Speaker: Because the future is in.
