Susie Coelho, Board of Trustees/10 ARTS Foundation, New York Film Academy

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Hi! I'm Shannon, Lucas.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): And I'm Tracy Lovejoy. We're the co-ceos of catalyst constellations which is dedicated to empowering catalyst to create bold, powerful change in the world.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: This is our podcast move, fast, break burnout, where we speak with catalyst executives about ways to successfully lead transformation in large organizations.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: And today we are very excited to have time with Susie Coelho. Susie is a best-selling author, a television personality, a lifestyle expert, and an entrepreneur as founder and CEO of Susie Coelho Enterprises, a Multimedia Lifestyle Company, created in 1997, and was one of the 1st Indian American actresses to break through in the Us. Entertainment industry.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: She's won awards for her contributions to the industry, including the prestigious women of Vision award Woo-hoo in 2,007 from the women in film and video organization. Susie began her career as a successful Ford model in New York. So if you're not watching the video, you might want to. And later, as an actress in La, she went on to become a regular contributor on the today. Show the view, and Oprah, who we love is a total catalyst, suzy welcome.

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Susie Coelho: You so much that's so sweet.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Thrilled to have you all right. Well, we'd love to jump in by having you introduce yourself and hear a little bit about your catalytic journey, and maybe sharing a few career highlights that you're proud of. To see that catalytic nature throughout your journey.

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Susie Coelho: Well, great. So Hi! Tracy Shannon! Thanks for having me. Gosh! You know I've been doing this. It seems like for so long. I like to think I'm really young, but I'm really not because I've had a lot a lot of jobs in my life, you know, starting out in the in the early days, just working, working

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Susie Coelho: trying to make money to buy a car, you know, just as a young girl, and because my parents are from India. My dad came to the States to do his Phd. At Harvard. That's how we ended up in the States, and although I people say, I don't look Indian. I pretty much look like my mom and my mom's looks.

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Susie Coelho: Well, I don't know. I guess she looks Indian, I mean, how do you look Indian, I guess, unless you were sorry.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yeah.

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Susie Coelho: Well, people didn't recognize me as Indian, but yet they knew I was ethnic, so I always kind of had that ethnic stamp from the time I was a little kid because I had darker skin, and I was growing up in a very you know, sort of white society in Washington, DC. And in Bethesda, Maryland, and so my early days were

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Susie Coelho: really the desire to fit in. Everything was all about. How can I be like everyone else. I didn't want to be different. I wanted blonde hair, blue eyes, straight hair, you know the proper nose. I wanted to be just like everybody else. I want to dress like them, be like them.

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Susie Coelho: And I think that's the challenges of a lot of young girls these days, even my daughter when she was younger, you know. Do they get you to get invited to the party, do you wanna be? You know you wanna be like everybody else. So, especially if you're different.

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Susie Coelho: And it was hard to say that because you just kind of want to fit in. So as

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Susie Coelho: things ha! Through my life, I just became a worker, Bee, because that's what I went to. That's what immigrants do. That's what my family said we had to do if we wanted to make it in America, and of course we wanted to make it in America. Here we were lucky enough to be here. And

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Susie Coelho: now you know, what were we gonna do with our lives? So I came from the scholarly background. But I really didn't follow that route. I left college after a year at American university. I felt I was smart enough. I don't know if my parents thought I was or not.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Thanks.

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Susie Coelho: They felt confident enough that I had enough skills, work skills, cause I'd been working so much. And I bought my own car that I could make it. And I decided to. I worked at Nih actually as a secretary, the National Heart and Lung Institute, because I learned how to type in school. That was a great skill. That's now really good, now that we have computers.

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Susie Coelho: But I decided to move to La to be a model, and then, of course, it was even worse, because now it's all the blonde hair, blue eyed girls, and the you know Cheryl Teague's, and all these fabulous models, and of course I wanted to be just like them. I wanted to be the 1st Indian to break through, and of course, my 1st job. Oh, my gosh air India ad.

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Susie Coelho: Oh, please, no, they're gonna type. Cast me again. I'm gonna have the stamp again. So I went through that for most of my early career. I left New York after 2 and a half years

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Susie Coelho: I ended up doing Alice Cooper's fan mail to pay the rent, dragging the bag from the post office all the way back to the apartment to open up, and, you know, get

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Susie Coelho: get the little luck.

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Susie Coelho: Oh, we wanna be part of Alice Fan club and send them back a picture. And so, as I went through my life, I just sort of

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Susie Coelho: kept those roots of hard work and making money. I never borrowed any money from anybody to this day. I've never borrowed a dime from anyone, and even with my businesses I've always had to make the money, because I've put that on myself, and I might have had a little money in the bank from something else. And I thought, Okay, I have that money. I'm gonna use that money in order to create this business, because otherwise you're borrowing. You're stealing your whatever, and you don't have a

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Susie Coelho: a benchmark of

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Susie Coelho: what you really can spend and what you should spend. And there's something about necessity level. I call it the necessity of having to accomplish something or having to make the money. And I feel like, I always tell my kids, you know, I'm not gonna just give you things. You have to have the necessity cause. That's what the driving forces people say. What's your passion?

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Susie Coelho: Well, you have to have passion, but you also have to have necessity. I need to make money. I need to be someone I need to make my mark. I need to transform something, whatever that is.

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Susie Coelho: you have to have that. And that's the driving force. So anyway, I continued to new to La, to be an actress, and then I continued to open up businesses. Later I changed my career to be a television host. I opened up a restaurant with my ex husband, Sonny Bono.

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Susie Coelho: who's now gonna be back at the press because Share has written a book, and so now then, I opened up a store called a Stars Warren, that sold celebrity clothing and collectibles. Then I went back in television. Long story short, I ended up starting after I had my son and had to lay down for 5 months during my pregnancy, because he was coming early.

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Susie Coelho: and somebody who's, you know, go-getter, it's pretty tough to lay down.

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Susie Coelho: So I decided when he went to school that I was going to go back to business, and I didn't know what I was going to do, so I could talk more about that later. But then I started a whole lifestyle company.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: I mean, I'm so glad.

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Susie Coelho: Already just thinking about this journey, but it's just continuing.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: It is, and you're getting started on a new thing, which is amazing.

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Susie Coelho: Crazy is the better word.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Inspired. I don't know. I hear.

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Susie Coelho: Crazy. I like crazy.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Okay, crazy. Yeah. The catalyst community will probably relate to that.

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Susie Coelho: Community crazy. I think that 3rd word is good.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yes, the crazy catalyst community.

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Susie Coelho: That's right. No, I like that.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yeah, you and I got to talk a couple of weeks ago, and I would love for you to just double click on like the how you got into television cause. It's such a catalyst story. Can you? Can you share that part of your journey.

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Susie Coelho: Well, are you talking about the last part of the

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: The Http type. Yeah.

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Susie Coelho: That was interesting. So after my son

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Susie Coelho: was, I think, 3 or 4 or 5, maybe, and he was at school every day, I thought, Well, why am I sitting home waiting for him? I gave up my career to lay down to raise him, to make sure he was doing well, which he was doing terrifically well. And now I need to go back to work. And what is it that I'm going to do? And I think a lot of us have had jobs in the past.

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Susie Coelho: Whether it's being a mom or whether it's being in business or whether it's helping the community, whatever that job quote unquote is, it's still a job. And

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Susie Coelho: you kind of look at your life at a certain point, and you say.

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Susie Coelho: Well, what's my next thing you know what is, what's my next vision and or

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Susie Coelho: my next plan. The kids are growing up or they're at school. I have a lot of friends, girlfriends now going through that, you know, they might be 60 years old. Some of them are 50 years old. They go. What am I going to do you know, because now my kids are grown and I'm not running them to camp, and I'm not running them to school, and they're trying to find their way. So I was trying to find my way

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Susie Coelho: again. And so I thought, I have so many different things that I've done, but none of those are valid. Now I can't go back and be a model. I'm too old. The acting industry probably doesn't want me because you're as good as your last movie, and I haven't done anything in a long time. Da, Da, I'm not gonna open up another restaurant or a store. I'm done with retail and and brick and mortar.

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Susie Coelho: So where do I go with this? And what skills do I have now? I felt I had a lot of skills because I'd done a lot of jobs. But I didn't know how those skills were going to translate. So I called, I decided to survey my friends. So I called my very good friends. And I said, Okay, you're gonna think this is really strange. But you know me. I'm just like

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Susie Coelho: sometimes just come up with these things. Could you just tell me what you think I do?

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Susie Coelho: And they just burst out laughing, and I said, No, no, really! Tell me, what do you think I provide?

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Susie Coelho: What do you think I do for a living, or have done? What do you think of me as

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Susie Coelho: like a talent, or like as a product.

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Susie Coelho: What is it that you are? Is the essence of Susie all these kinds of questions to try to get almost some brand positioning. But I didn't really know that I was trying to create a brand of Susie Quayle Brand.

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Susie Coelho: and it always. And I said, Why do you invite me to your house, or why do you ask me over to help you redo your living room? Because I'm not specifically a trained decorator.

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Susie Coelho: you know. Why do you always call me to ask me which restaurant to go to, or fashion advice or this or that?

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Susie Coelho: Why, and so it kept coming back as I interviewed my friends. This word style.

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Susie Coelho: and the stylish way of living, and this sort of passion about it, and the desire to help others, because I'm always I go to their houses, and I'd start moving around the furniture myself. Oh, you don't need that pillow there! Why don't you be Kluge? That? Oh, that doesn't need to be there, and I'm very confident about what I do, because I just

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Susie Coelho: love to dive in and do

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Susie Coelho: do things like that at other people's houses in mine as well, but more in other people's houses so.

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Susie Coelho: and they love it. Who wouldn't want somebody to come over? And I wasn't a skilled designer specifically, but I'd had an you know, some pretty good background and style and business and such.

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Susie Coelho: So I kept putting it together, putting it together, and I went to the bookstore to see who else was doing style stuff, and I couldn't find anybody in lifestyle, and I looked around, looked around, and the only thing I saw on the end. Cap was Oprah's sorry was Martha Stewart's books.

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Susie Coelho: and she was a cook at the time she was. She had not gone public.

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Susie Coelho: and she had the end cap. So she was the most prominent perf person in this lifestyle world.

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Susie Coelho: and I was just looking at style.

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Susie Coelho: and so I thought Martha Stewart and I looked at her, and I thought, Oh, I'm nothing like her, you know. I don't look like her. There we go again. The blonde hair, blue eyed Connecticut girl has made it, you know, was probably a model, too, and was probably, and lives in Connecticut. Of course she's gonna make it.

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Susie Coelho: And so I thought, Hmm, and I'm not. I'm a cook, and I had a restaurant. But I'm not I. That's not the world I wanted to go into long story short, I kept looking, looking, looking, and then I started to decide. And I I now I'm willing to say this, but before. I never was willing to say this because it was my own personal positioning. But through this process of research, and trying to figure out how I could take those skills.

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Susie Coelho: I kept thinking, I'm not really just like Martha. But who am I like? Well, I really wanted to have a talk show my whole life. I wanted to be more like Oprah

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Susie Coelho: because I love to inspire people. And I had a good television background already.

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Susie Coelho: I'm I was good on camera. And I thought, That's what I want to do. I wanna have a talk show.

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Susie Coelho: But I wanted to have a talk show. They had to do a style. And so I sort of put together this Oprah, Martha, mix in my own positioning, mind.

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Susie Coelho: and I think that's great, I think, and when you're getting into business, or when you're doing something or presenting something. I now always tell people. And my friends

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Susie Coelho: think of your positioning. Who is it that you admire. Who do you want to be like, or who do you think has some of this and some of that? And you could put together that mix? And so for me. And again I never told this to anybody, I mean. Now I think I've told it a few times, but I thought them. Oh, this Oprah, Martha Mix and the Oprah. Martha was Oprah, inspiring, inspiring others. And Martha was lovely style, because she has good taste and

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Susie Coelho: and really nice style.

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Susie Coelho: So. And even though my style was different because I had some ethnic background and some different ways of looking at things and colors and various things, but I thought, Okay, maybe I'll be like the West Coast, Martha, and nobody has to know that I'm wanna inspire like Oprah, or have her talk show or a talk show. So that's how I came about starting the lifestyle company. And so I

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Susie Coelho: thought, great. I'll just do a business plan. Well, I didn't go to Harvard myself, and then we didn't have AI at the time. So to do. A business plan was going to be a major effort. So I thought, well, what areas of business do I want to be in? Oh, television, publishing endorsements, licensing and personal appearances. Those are areas of business that I can look at and monetize. Oh, well, where am I gonna start?

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Susie Coelho: Nobody knows me in publishing. I can't sell a book. I can't do a licensing brand of Susie Quayle products, because I'm not Susie Quayalo yet.

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Susie Coelho: In this new incarnation. So where do I start? And I looked at television and it kept popping up. And television usually is the latter thing that people end up

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Susie Coelho: doing. You know, they write a book. First, st they become known. They end up on personal appearances, they build their brand, and maybe they're lucky enough. They get a TV show. And I thought, Oh, television, I can do that.

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Susie Coelho: even if it's not my own show. But I know how to do TV. So I thought, I'll just call an agent. So I started calling big agents that I'd been with before, or that I knew in this arena, and I could not get through. I could not get a return call. I couldn't get the big agent to call me back, and I kept pursuing it, and finally I ended up with a junior agent.

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Susie Coelho: and I said, Can I take you to lunch in Beverly Hills? And she said, Yeah, so I took her to lunch in Beverly Hills. It's nice restaurant, and I told her what I wanted to do. I told her I'd gone to the bookstore. I told her I was going to be this Oprah, Martha Mix, don't tell anybody, and I wanted to get into the lifestyle world and do home. And you know, entertaining and

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Susie Coelho: inspire people. And she said, Oh, yeah. And you could do garden, too. And I said, Oh, yeah, you know I've landscapes and properties. I'm not a horticulturist or a botanist. But yeah, I could probably do garden. I mean, just add to the list like a fashion, fashion. I love fashion. I'm to be a model.

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Susie Coelho: She goes great. So she goes back to the office. She calls me not 2 weeks later, and I'm not kidding how this works.

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Susie Coelho: cause I had it put out there. I was putting out the vibes big time creating creating it in my mind, creating it on paper, writing down, talking to my friends, finding out, and it was started to become real. And that's it just starts to become real like a living, breathing thing. Now I'm actually doing something to pursue it.

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Susie Coelho: and she calls me, and she says I have an interview for you.

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Susie Coelho: I said, oh, that's fast. Great, and she's not even representing me. She said it just came to my table because it's kind of a small job, and so the agent didn't want to handle it. So it came to her table, and she said, I said, Well, what is it? She said, oh, it's on a cable network, and I was like, Oh, I'm gonna go really backwards now. Used to be on network television. I'm gonna go back to cable and cable wasn't happening then. That wasn't like a big thing. There's a few cable networks.

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Susie Coelho: So I said, Well, what network? She said. Hgtv. And I said, Hg, who? What was that? And I had never even heard of Hgtv. It was only in its 3rd year, and we didn't have it in La, where I lived. It hadn't come through there yet. So

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Susie Coelho: it's like, Okay, it's a gardening show. She said. Yeah. So anyway, I went. It was raining and they put me on camera. They'd been looking for weeks to replace a host. It was already an on the air show.

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Susie Coelho: and I got the job. And literally the next week I started shooting.

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Susie Coelho: and that opened up the door, and from there I built. I waited till the show got picked up. Then I got a publicist. Then I started to get more press. Then I started to build up, you know, do other shows and show up. Then I got the today show

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Susie Coelho: I set. I sent my own letter. I didn't let the publicist do it to. It was Jeff Sucker at the time.

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Susie Coelho: Who is the head of the today show. I sent it to him, he passed it to his next person. They called right away

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Susie Coelho: and said, Send a tape and just this gregariousness of

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Susie Coelho: but I have to say the thing that I think I did. Well, that particular time is I got the timing right

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Susie Coelho: often I'm ahead of the curve or I've thought I I could do something before I could really do it, and I think you know they said timings, everything. Well, it's timing, but you have to know when they're ready for you.

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Susie Coelho: And so when you put yourself out there, it's a win.

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Susie Coelho: You know that they're gonna receive it and say, Oh, my gosh! I'm so glad she sent it, even if I don't need her right now, or even if I don't need

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Susie Coelho: I can't do that deal.

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Susie Coelho: She's she's great, or she's got the goods or whatever that is. So I wait till the right time. And when I feel like, Okay, when I put that letter in front, and I work hard on the letter. At that time it was snail mail, and I sent my books, but I didn't send a video because I didn't want to be so pushy, which is kind of foolish, but I had it in my mind at that time. I didn't want to.

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Susie Coelho: and normally I'd send a whole package. So I sent the books, and I just said, Look, if you have any need, you know you're going to a 3rd hour. At that time they were going to a 3rd hour. If you have needs for a lifestyle expert.

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Susie Coelho: please keep me on in, on in your files. Here are my books. I'm on Hgtv.

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Susie Coelho: I could come into a segment on blah blah blah blah blah.

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Susie Coelho: and it was just kind of that. And then I got a call. The next day

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Susie Coelho: same thing happened with my licensing agent. When I got to the point where I could finally felt I was built enough big enough brand to

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Susie Coelho: to sell my brand as a licensing, as licensing deals. Susie Quayle Brand. I then researched online the Perfect.

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Susie Coelho: What I thought was the perfect licensing agent and sent them the same kind of package, and then I waited the next day, and I told my staff. This is how cocky sometimes I can be.

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Susie Coelho: I can't believe they haven't called yet. Of course I'm saying it. Tongue in cheek. I'm not. I'm not fully serious, but you know I'm kind of putting it there, and they're laughing, and they go. Oh, they'll call, and I said, I'm sure they'll get back for sure. They'll get back.

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Susie Coelho: And then the next day the Senior Vice President calls

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Susie Coelho: like

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Susie Coelho: or he sends an email and says, Can you get on the phone today? And I said, great. And when I got her on the line I said, You know I'm so surprised you didn't call yesterday. I was waiting for your call. She laughed, and I laughed, and it became this great thing. And then I ended up with the Beanstal group in New York, and so.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: In, the.

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Susie Coelho: Kind of the way it goes. You know, you just kind of feel, and it's the fun of creation and the fun and the passion, as you guys know, when you started your business. It's like, Oh, I have an idea. Okay, I don't know if it's gonna work. Well, it's gonna work. Of course it's gonna people need this, and you just barrel through, and you find the niche and then you tweak it. And

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Susie Coelho: there he does.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: So. So I'm so glad I asked the question, cause it's such an amazing journey. And I mean, I just wanna pull on a couple of threads I love part of. Why I love. That story was what you did with your friends, which I think is such good advice for catalysts who are listening, which is, you know, doing a listening tour of the people who know you in lots of different capacities, and seeing where the common threads are where your superpowers are, cause we don't always know, especially.

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Susie Coelho: Yeah.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: This is the way I operate. But then you start to see the value of the things that just feel so intuitive and natural to you. And then from that you started to be like. And here's the vision. Okay, I synthesized all of that. And there's a lot of places I could go. But you got down to like 5 things.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: and then you got down to the one thing and the power of having the vision, and also what I love, too, is we talk to catalyst about having a clarity of vision. Often we talk about having a visual representation, but when you say you are Oprah and Martha Stewart, on the west coast.

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Susie Coelho: Little right.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Get it totally.

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Susie Coelho: Hey!

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: It could not.

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Susie Coelho: I didn't remember. I didn't say it because I was too embarrassed to say it.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Fair.

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Susie Coelho: Fine because I created something, but

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Susie Coelho: it doesn't matter. You could just have it in your own.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Heads.

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Susie Coelho: And you know what you could put it out there if you feel confident enough, and I was confident enough to have that in my own mind, but not to put it out there, because I just wasn't ready to put that out there.

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Susie Coelho: You know. They were both at their pinnacle later, you know. So it was hard to. And then other people started

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Susie Coelho: in the press, they'd say, Oh, she's like a Martha Stewart, in fact, I wish I had it with me. But I have all this press, which is really kind of one of my favorite things of press.

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Susie Coelho: is, who will be the next, Martha. I have like 8 articles with who will be the next Martha, and there are a few people, but of which I'm 1. And so again, that's the vision coming to reality. And then when Oprah calls and says, Come on, you're like, Okay, good. You know.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Check, yeah, vision realized.

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Susie Coelho: Yes.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: But you have this beautiful part in your story. We're like, there's this massive aspiration, ambition, passion, all of the things, and the humility to be like, I'm gonna take that junior agent out to lunch.

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Susie Coelho: Well, I think. Well, that's a very good point, Shannon. That's a really good point, because people think.

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Susie Coelho: see, everybody is somebody

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Susie Coelho: I know that sounds trite, but everybody's somebody who has an opinion and who's connected to someone.

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Susie Coelho: and or who's your public.

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Susie Coelho: So I never. I'm never snotty about. If I have to make it get to the top person. There's a reason I have to get to the top person, but if I can't get to the top person. I'll start with anybody.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yeah.

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Susie Coelho: I'd walk in there and just stop somebody and say, you know, could you tell me who who is the young agent to? I I would just. You have to just be tenacious, not so pushy that people don't like you.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yeah.

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Susie Coelho: Have a cute personality, and you can just sort of make your way through. If that's 1 of your skills, then that you can do. If you're a good writer you can write something and try to get a leg up. If you're you've got contacts, you can use those. I think that one of the things I would say is, you have to know what your resources are as a person. And again, this goes back to interviewing your friends. That's kind of your resources.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yeah.

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Susie Coelho: And it becomes style attributes. You know. You're vivacious. You're char, you know this charming. Not that I am, but I'm these could be attributes of somebody, your go-getter, or your you know in you inspire people, or your stylish, or your this or that, or whatever, and those become brand attributes that then you put together.

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Susie Coelho: When you're sort of selling your brand, let's say, as a to a retailer, you know, they want to know what is the public getting? Besides, you know, nice pillows and bedding and bath like you're selling yourself. And what is that brand about?

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Susie Coelho: You know? What does that represent.

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Susie Coelho: So I think, looking at your resources. And I did a talk recently. Well, I've done a few talks. Recently. I used to speak all the time when I was in the lifestyle world to home and garden shows and different women's events and such. But recently I was asked to do a talk, and then I redid it. So I did the talk for

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Susie Coelho: for a group of women were very accomplished and didn't need to be inspired, but they wanted to know about my life story kind of like what we're talking about. And after a lot of people came up, quite a few of them, the younger ones said, Oh, I'm looking for my next gig. I'm looking for my next thing. I just raised my kids. How do you find something? How do you get that

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Susie Coelho: desire to do it again and to reinvent yourself?

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Susie Coelho: So I thought, Oh, yeah, you know this is important for them. I'd love to help people do that. And then other people came up and said I'd love my granddaughter to hear you. I'd love my daughter to hear you. So I put together. Another event. My girlfriend actually did. And it was supposed to be 2025, you know, young girls who are gonna come and end up being 65 moms and girls and I gave it again, and at the end of this talk, which was only 4 or 5 months ago, I had a slide on the Powerpoint

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Susie Coelho: cause. I had some video and such to show, and the slide said, the best is yet to come.

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Susie Coelho: I don't know why I put that in there. I put it in there. I didn't have the best is yet to come yet. I'm kind of working on another book. I'm kind of working on, you know.

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Susie Coelho: on a board. I'm trying to find my own way on my next venture.

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Susie Coelho: and I'm telling you I inspired myself because I said at the end. You're never too old. You're never too young. You're never to this. You're never, too, that you know. You can just go for it again.

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Susie Coelho: and I walked out of there, and I thought, well.

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Susie Coelho: I should take my own advice. You know I want to help people. I want to motivate people. I want to jump back in and give back

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Susie Coelho: in a way it could be a business, but it could be something else. It could be philanthropic. How do I take my skills? Now? I know my skills. I'm old enough to know my skills and what I've marketed before. How do I take that and help others now either build their businesses or motivate them.

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Susie Coelho: So I started to think about that met with a friend. And I said, How can we do a motivational thing, and

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Susie Coelho: after I talked about it enough, I thought, you know, it just seems like starting from scratch. I think I'm going to go back to my old idea from 16 years ago that I never got done.

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Susie Coelho: and move the motivational part into that idea. And so.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yes, totally. And that's such a great thread, because there's 2. There's sort of 2 challenges that you just mentioned, that we often experience in our lives as catalyst. You landed on one which you had mentioned early before, which is, when is the timing right?

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Because we can be so passionate about I ideas, and especially when it's connected to helping other people, or whatever your purpose is, it's like I can't put that thing down right now, so I'd love to hear about that. But the other thing that used to sort of alluded to is like the the feedback of you're too much. You're too old. You're too young. You're too aggressive. You're too Smiley, especially for women in the business world. So I'd love to hear like.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: how did you? Successfully? Because you're massively successful. How you successfully navigated those 2 big catalyst challenges.

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Susie Coelho: So the 1st one about the timing

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Susie Coelho: would be that you have to you. Ha! I think you have to be smart enough, but smart enough means you just have to be thinking it through. You have to be thinking that there

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Susie Coelho: is a proper way and a proper time. I think sometimes people are maybe overly aggressive, and they think they have everything, and then you kind of are put off.

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Susie Coelho: That's not my style. I wait till I see that there's a need, or I

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Susie Coelho: find what I can produce that I know I can produce to then fulfill a need. So the timing is that

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Susie Coelho: you have to. You have to be ready. So let's just take a girlfriend whose kids are grown, and she sees me as an inspiration in this talk, and she's thinking, well, I haven't done much in my life now. That's not what I wanted her to come away with. Luckily she's a good friend. So we got over that really quickly. But people sometimes think just raising kids is not enough. Oh, my gosh!

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Susie Coelho: If you really talk to business women, they're like, it's so much easier to go to work than to be home raising kids and running around. It's difficult. And it's definitely difficult to do both. So they're all big jobs, and you can only do so much. So. No matter, I said, are you kidding me? Look at you've raised kids. You supported your husband, I mean. She was traveling the world with him as he was a big executive.

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Susie Coelho: Since you know what you've gotta look at what you've done and what are your skills like? You know, you're with the Queen of England, and then you're with somebody else. And so you've gotta look at what your skills are and your personality. And the way you've built things

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Susie Coelho: So where you are in life, and what you have as resources and.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: So the.

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Susie Coelho: One of the points that I said in my talk, that if you.

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Susie Coelho: your your resources are, can be anything. They could be your skills

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Susie Coelho: they can be, you know, something that you do, and that you provide, and that you know you're good at. It can also be. Who do you know that's a resource. If you happen to have parents that are connected to certain people, you happen to have friends that know other people. These are all resources, and you need to tap into them, and you can go to your parents, cocktail parties and chat it up with some of these people who actually

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Susie Coelho: are the 1st people to say, I'll help you. My husband was at Yale University. One of the execs running Yale for 9 years, and often we're with a lot of our friends who have teenage kids.

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Susie Coelho: They're calling him for advice, for school or for navigating Hr type things you know, in their business.

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Susie Coelho: And so he's on the phone a lot of times with our friends. But it started with, Come to, you know. Come over for dinner, and then they'd start to talk, and then our friends would say, Oh, Mike, would you mind talking to my daughter? And she could really use some advice? So there are resources there that sometimes people don't tap into, whether you're older or younger, and I think you should be confident enough to use them. It's okay to sit down with somebody and say, Look, I'm at a new stage in my life.

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Susie Coelho: I really would love to get your advice. You're a great executive, or you're a great

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Susie Coelho: leader. You're a great, this or that, and I'm thinking about these different things. And how should I be thinking about it and maybe interview a few people and start to get an idea and not be, you know, embarrassed to do that, and they'll pull it out of you. Oh, well, what are your skills. Well, what do you want to do? Well, what are you passionate about? Da da da da.

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Susie Coelho: And then I think the big key is you have to have the courage

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Susie Coelho: even now with this new business

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Susie Coelho: my husband was 1st like, why do you need to go back into business?

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Susie Coelho: You know

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Susie Coelho: it's not like we need to make, then our next dime to pay our rent cause. Luckily we've built our business, you know, our lives, to to have that and be secure enough like that way.

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Susie Coelho: So it's not about money.

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Susie Coelho: And I said, You know, honey, it's never about money. I've never started a business. If I was going to really just set out to make money I wouldn't have done half the businesses that I did, because not about making money, even though. Yes, it has to translate. But I never set out to say, Oh, if I do this thing, it's gonna make me a lot of money. But that's okay. If that's your goal. And that's what you wanna do. And usually you find something you're passionate about.

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Susie Coelho: So for me, it's it's always some purpose. It's always some inner purpose that I follow that thread, and when I was young I didn't know what that purpose was. I just thought I was a dilettante. I just thought I kept shifting from thing to thing, because either I was bored

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Susie Coelho: and I wanted to try something new. I had already proven it to myself.

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Susie Coelho: or I wasn't making it so I needed to move on. I I wasn't quite sure, but I kind of just went from thing to thing to think well later that became a huge amount of skill sets.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yeah.

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Susie Coelho: Interesting amount I'm like, Wow, I thought I was a dilettante. Now, I'm just gonna use it as I have that experience.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Amazing. Yeah, a catalyst. I just was on the phone with someone yesterday. And it's like we can be generalists. It's like we might go down a rabbit hole. But then we're so interested in all of the other things going on. And just before I hand it over to Tracy, I wanted to say. I love the advice about the intentionality, about the phases of life, like often when I'm coaching or mentoring, like I was a single mom. And so for 8 years I had a job that I made enough money

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: that allowed me to be a single mom in a way that you know my mom's generation just couldn't didn't have the flexibility right. But then, you know, and and a lot of catalyst executives like in in our catalyst leadership trust we have all these very senior catalyst leaders, and they started asking us like, What does the next phase look like for a catalyst like? Do we retire? And all of them were like, I have 0 desire to just go play golf or tennis.

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Susie Coelho: I might.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: More of that.

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Susie Coelho: Yeah.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: But like that's not gonna be the thing that keeps me lit up.

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Susie Coelho: 100%. I said to my husband, Great, we're in this beautiful environment. I can play tennis every day, and I can go to lunch with the girls, I said, that'll last me. I mean, I will go play tennis to get my exercise, and then it's like, okay. Now, what am I gonna do? Well, I have a grandson. So for the last 2 years I didn't jump into the business, even though I was thinking about it. And I did. Oh, this is the other thing. I did what I call

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Susie Coelho: a pilot program. And so I think that's important for people, too. It's sort of how do you ease into it, or how do you test it? So when I started the store, a star is worn on Melrose

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Susie Coelho: I'd been. I just had gone through a divorce with Sonny. I had to make money, and I thought, I'm in television. But I'm you know, again. You're you know. You're as good as your last gig, so I had a show. Then it went off the air. Then I needed to get another show, so I had to make money cause. I just bought a house, had to pay the mortgage, and so I had had this idea.

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Susie Coelho: selling celebrities, clothing, really selling my own clothing, which I did so I did a garage sale.

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Susie Coelho: and honestly, I have to say cher inspired me because she had done something similar with just some friends who said, you know.

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Susie Coelho: dying to get your clothes, and I remember going over there as well and buying a few things. Her sec. Her assistant, had put it together, and it was kind of fun, you know. It's kind of a girl's gab, and we brought some share clothing, and it was great. This was many years ago.

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Susie Coelho: and I thought, you know what

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Susie Coelho: I think. I'm gonna do the same thing and believe it or not. Cher came over and she helped me tag my clothes in the garage, I said, How do you price the clothing? And she said, Oh, like I priced it like this like that. And luckily I was a big shopper. So I knew

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Susie Coelho: what the retail was. And I thought, Okay, a little bit less than half. There was no real. There was none of these kinds of there. There was maybe a little consignment store down the street, so we price the clothes. I called only friends and models, and the bookers at the agency, and all of that

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Susie Coelho: they came. I sold $12,000

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Susie Coelho: literally in a weekend, $12,000 of clothes.

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Susie Coelho: You wouldn't even think I had that many clothes. I even pulled out Sonny's clothes. I was selling jackets and Armani jackets and stuff. This is so much fun. I'm making money, yay, and so, and these people were so happy to get these pieces. I had racks of it that I'd store it for, you know, so long, because

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Susie Coelho: we were but in the Celebrity we were in public eye. So you couldn't really wear the same thing twice if you're going to be photographed. So you end up with these outfits that you don't know where to wear them to, and they're beautiful, and they're incredible, and you can only give away so much.

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Susie Coelho: So after I did that a bunch of my friends called me

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Susie Coelho: happened to be a few celebrities, and they said, We know that you did this thing we weren't able to come. But we want you to do it for us, I said. I'm not going to run your garage sale, but if you guys all come and we do it in somebody's backyard.

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Susie Coelho: you know. So it's bigger. And let's say there's 5 people. Then it would be really fun. Then everybody calls their

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Susie Coelho: you know, their group, and then it will be cross pollinating. It will be great. So I did it

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Susie Coelho: did it at another actress's house.

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Susie Coelho: and we ended. Everybody ended up selling a bunch of stuff, and they were all excited. And I thought, Bingo.

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Susie Coelho: now I've done 2 tests. I wasn't thinking of it as a business, and I thought, I'll open up a store. The next day I went down to Melrose, and I signed a lease on a place, for I think it was. I don't know. Couple only a couple of grand a month

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Susie Coelho: to to rent at the time on Trendy Melrose, when it was really kind of happening.

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Susie Coelho: and with $15,000 I opened up a store

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Susie Coelho: and it became.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: The, in.

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Susie Coelho: Assess. But again, timing is everything.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Being.

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Susie Coelho: Internet, we couldn't scale it.

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Susie Coelho: We had big business. I ended up opening up a second store, which was not the right thing to do, because it's hard to then decide which things go here which things go there.

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Susie Coelho: And we got worldwide press for free. But how are we gonna scale it. People were calling on the landline. I'd get a call from Lucille Ball, and I'd say, Oh, yeah, you're Lucy, right? Cause I love Lucy.

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Susie Coelho: Lucy. I grew up watching every Lucy go. Hi! The Lucille ball like what?

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Susie Coelho: Who? You're not, Lucy? Oh, come on! I thought it was one of my girlfriends who's an actress playing a prank. She did. Voiceovers. I thought it was her she was. No, no, really, it's Lucy, and you know her voice had gotten deeper by then. She was older. It was just maybe a year before she passed away. She said, No, no, I have this dress. I wear the Academy awards, and

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Susie Coelho: I said, Oh, the black dress! And she said, Yeah.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: You knew, of course.

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Susie Coelho: Like. Oh, my gosh, yes, we can come, and I was so embarrassed to go after I, you know, messed up that I sent my manager, and she was so thrilled it was a big highlight.

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Susie Coelho: and she got the dress. Lucy came down the steps and gave her the said, oh, well, Susie would love to get an autographed photo because we wanted to authenticate all of our collectibles, and so we'd like to get a photo that you signed. So she went upstairs, came back down, and she said

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Susie Coelho: she showed up, gave a picture of her when she was so young, you know, like like on the cover of the move the movie that they've done.

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Susie Coelho: And she said, I'm so sorry I don't have the current one of me and slacks

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Susie Coelho: beautiful, you know. There she is, Lucy. Oh, my gosh! So she passed away, and then

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Susie Coelho: My manager called me, and she said

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Susie Coelho: so. How much do you want now for the dress? And I said, You know what

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Susie Coelho: I should raise the price. But I just can't. We're gonna sell it to the 1st person who comes in.

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Susie Coelho: and that's what they're gonna get, and that's gonna be our good fortune and.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Nice.

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Susie Coelho: That's what we did. And there was a line waiting outside. And I thought, I can't capitalize on her death. And yeah, just I'm not gonna do that. And so those kind of choices sometimes

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Susie Coelho: are important because you feel good about yourself, or you feel good about.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Really.

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Susie Coelho: Somebody else getting something, and you know, winning okay for others to win too.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: It's so nice and how you brought your assistant along. Okay, I'm gonna hand it over to Tracy. But I just have to say, like your sensing ability is so strong, cause it's that timing thing like you just sounds like you deeply pay attention to the sensing.

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Susie Coelho: That's exactly right. Yes, if you wanna call, that's exactly right. You sort of get.

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Susie Coelho: That's a good way to put it sensing. You do have to sense the moment the right time, the right.

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Susie Coelho: you know. Time to approach somebody, you know, even if you're at a cocktail party or something, you know. Just go on your own thing. You have to really sense. It's kind of having Eq. You know.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Me right.

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Susie Coelho: Eq. It's like having Eq. Good, emotional, quotient, and sensitivity to.

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Susie Coelho: to not just others, but

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Susie Coelho: what the kind of what the universe provides. I know that sounds kind of ethereal. But to really listen to the, to the sensibility, and to your own inner voice that says, maybe no, maybe not now and what you know, why, you can question yourself.

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Susie Coelho: And then, okay, I'm gonna just let that go for a minute. It's okay to let it go. I mean, I used to push. I remember I've done it the other way, and sometimes you push, push, push, and it goes nowhere. You back, up, you retreat for a moment.

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Susie Coelho: and the thing comes to you

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Susie Coelho: cause there's kind of this region withdrawing the universe, you know. If you push too hard it goes the other way. You know, it sort of has to be at the right. That's kind of the right time, and the right energy flow and.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Cosmic equation is one of the most in insane things to try and get your brain around like, when are you pushing too hard? And when are you not pushing hard enough, Susie? I talk about that with my CEO friend, who has our other company cause it's like you can't just be like. Oh, the universe will provide. That's not true.

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Susie Coelho: Not true.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: So like if you push too hard, you're pushing too hard. So it's.

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Susie Coelho: And it's pushing things, and it pushes things away.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: That's right.

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Susie Coelho: Have to feel that it's like a person if you think about it as a person, if you're I mean I I tend to do this often with my husband, you know, pushing too hard, you know, to do something. He goes back off because you're pushing and and they're not receiving. But you don't care

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Susie Coelho: now. You could do that in your family because they know you, but you can't, you know that's not even the best thing. But you certainly can't do that in business. They'll just go the other way.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): Susie, you started by telling us that as you figured out your brand and what you wanted to do, and you realized that it was style and inspiration. I could listen to you all day.

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Susie Coelho: So in.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): In terms of the inspiration like it is so clear why your friends see that in you, and what you bring, thank you for sharing that with us. I. This is, for sure, one of my favorite conversations ever.

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Susie Coelho: Oh, my gosh! Well, that means so much to me, especially given what I'm wanting to do now, and how I wanna do it, which, you know, I'll get to

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Susie Coelho: a little bit later. But I really appreciate that. That makes means a lot to me, because I really have it inside me and people.

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Susie Coelho: I remember I used to always. My mom used to say.

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Susie Coelho: why do you always sort of pick the wayward girl who needs help

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Susie Coelho: to be your friend

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Susie Coelho: like. What do you mean?

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Susie Coelho: I bet

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Susie Coelho: I can help her, you know.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): Yep.

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Susie Coelho: And on on that.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): That note. If you get one message to leave with our audience, what do you want to share with them? Related to what you're doing next?

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Susie Coelho: Well.

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Susie Coelho: that's a big question. Well, I think for the audience mostly.

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Susie Coelho: I would say you have to have courage, and I know that's a big, broad.

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Susie Coelho: you know, sort of blanket statement like, how do you have courage? You have to just be willing to put yourself out there, because if you think of all the people, of everything they've done from all the people you admire.

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Susie Coelho: They don't start with anything, either. We all started with nothing, you know, we all put together our skills. And you just have to figure out what your skills are or your abilities and your resources, and how you can put something together. You're not like everybody else. What you have is different. What I than what I have. Then what Shannon has them, what my friend has. They have resources I don't have. And so I think the smart thing to do is to really figure out what you have

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Susie Coelho: and really look at that, and how you can translate that into your life, into your goals, into your passions, or that maybe that's part of your passion, because people have these great skills. And they're fabulous people, but they don't think they have anything.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): That's right.

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Susie Coelho: Translate, to work or to a job or to a career. And I think that's where you guys often come in is to help guide them in that. And for me, I want to inspire people in the style world. And so I've decided to start

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Susie Coelho: a company. And it's kind of a tech company, I guess, but I don't think of it as a tech company, because it's I'm using tech in order to provide this service, because now I can reach more people this way. But 16 years ago I came up with this idea to connect homeowners with people in design because of my girlfriends, saying, Well, we need somebody to come over. Well, who should we call constant barrage of this kind of, you know, wanting style advice.

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Susie Coelho: and I thought, there's nobody doing that. And then different companies came up with different marketplaces and ways to do it, but never with style the way I saw it.

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Susie Coelho: And so, 16 years later, during this whole time, when I'm trying to motivate others, I got motivated to then start it so that I could then motivate others in a bigger way, but through the area that I know best, which is lifestyle through the public that I know best.

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Susie Coelho: which are the ones I've reached. And so I thought, Okay, those are my resources. I could probably be successful because I know this world. Now, I have to match it with the technology. And now the technology, 16 years later, had come to be.

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Susie Coelho: And so I was able to

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Susie Coelho: look at it and say, Wait a minute.

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Susie Coelho: I would never take a 16 year old idea, and think that it was current now.

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Susie Coelho: But wait a minute. Let me rethink this.

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Susie Coelho: That idea was great 16 years ago, but I didn't have the tech expertise, nor did tech, nor did. Nor were there all these platforms and different ways. You could modulate things. And there just wasn't that I met with programmers who are sitting down trying to understand what I was talking about.

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Susie Coelho: and that was never gonna happen. I would have been hundreds of thousands of thousands of dollars later, which I didn't have to try to put together, something that I barely knew what the back end was. What's the back end.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): Right.

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Susie Coelho: Beauty. I don't know what the back end is. It's like, what is this talk and all this tech talk?

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Susie Coelho: So I thought, I'm not suited for this. I'm never going to make it in this world to create this. So I put it aside.

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Susie Coelho: met my husband, ended up moving to New York did other things. Got my daughter through school

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Susie Coelho: then? I thought, well, wait a minute.

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Susie Coelho: Now. The tech is caught up. All these people are doing these things.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): All the timing.

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Susie Coelho: Mvps, and what's an Mvp.

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Susie Coelho: I'm like most valuable player. Oh, I could be the most valuable player that I, Google it. Oh, it's not most valuable player. Okay. Minimum viable product. What kind of cost they talking.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): That's that's like.

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Susie Coelho: I had to start from scratch. Luckily we have AI. So I started using AI, what is this? What is that? What is this? And I started to learn. I thought, oh, well, let me just see who could help me with this. And then, of course, I found Adam, and how we met. So shannon's husband, who was doing this.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Think, that.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): So circle.

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Susie Coelho: Crazy crazy how this stuff happens. But again

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Susie Coelho: I was putting it out there. I was just.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): Were.

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Susie Coelho: Putting it out there, and I thought, maybe now is the timing. Let me check.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): Yeah.

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Susie Coelho: Now it's just been flowing.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): Going. You gotta pay attention to Shan, said the sensing and the flow, Susie, this has been incredible, incredible to be getting small insights into your journey from the hard work and tenacity and clarity of vision, pulling the right people in having the courage to do so. I know that I'm going to be listening to this again and again.

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Susie Coelho: It was a clock. I was on it.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): Those next ventures. As you said it is, there's no doubt the best is yet to come, so thank you.

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Susie Coelho: So much I appreciate it. Appreciate both of you.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): With us. Thank you.

Susie Coelho, Board of Trustees/10 ARTS Foundation, New York Film Academy - The Best Is Yet to Come

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Susie Coelho, Board of Trustees/10 ARTS Foundation, New York Film Academy - The Best Is Yet to Come

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