Recognize the people in the image above?

Yes.  That's my husband, Dae (aka @LuggageDonkey) on the left, me on the right.  

Back when we had just started dating, my husband introduced me to the idea of "windshield time".  Knowing is half the battle - knowing the idea of windshield time allows us to intentionally use it with each other.  Dae uses it to catch up and bond with his aging father (who is now 79 years old).  I use it with colleagues to prepare for meetings when driving together to a meeting.

I never thought I'd actually work with my husband... and here we are.  We've argued and fought, and battled our way to actually LAUNCHING the pilot podcast episode this week.  WHOO-HOO!  I wish you could have seen his face on Tuesday - Dae was so happy.  He was beaming about the beautiful weather, the view of Mount Rainier that was magnificent as we were driving to a meeting. We're on anchor.fm now. Check us out - give it a listen, send us some good mojo/feedback/ratings if you can to help us out. Thank you so much! 

Can't believe we actually got this done.  Whew! 

Here's the link: https://anchor.fm/windshieldtime206.

For my next post, I'll work on a list of quick early lessons that I've picked up in working with my husband. We both have strong opinions and personalities - and we are married, live together, and have two very young children together.  We're both sleep deprived.  That makes for an interesting mix.  

Hope you like it.  

Hugs,
Arry 
P.S. Second pilot episode of Windshield Time going live today! 

I saw this image fly by my eyes at about 330AM this morning - and I saved it as a reminder that I want to share/write about this... A LOT MORE ABOUT THIS.

Many of us humans, we have our dark down days.  Some have them more than others.  At my worst, I think I did not leave my room/bed/apartment for weeks.  Some times, the idea of being alive is just so exhausting.  Some times, I am able to push myself into being somewhat functional, going through the motions of a fully productive day - only doing what is absolutely necessary to not let anything blow up.  Other times, I've written long goodbye letters to my husband and family - only to "wake up" and throw it away.  I even daydreamed about getting in the car, alone, and driving endlessly on the highway to just go away from this surreal non-reality reality I was living in. 

I had a really tough time with postpartum depression with our first baby.  Really bad.  I had no idea how bad it was at the time.  Only looking back today, do I realize how deep in the depths of velvety despair I was living in day to day, night after night, month after month.  To help myself with this newest baby who was recently born, I did things differently. 

Five Things I'm Doing Differently with Our Second Baby to Avoid Postpartum Depression: 

1. Proactive Communication (before giving birth) - I told my OBGYN, my husband, friends, and more about how challenging postpartum depression was for me with our first baby.  With more people aware, they can help me when they see me teetering on the edge.  Recently, I woke up.  For some reason, everything felt so difficult.  I sat down on the couch ready to feed our newborn, and tears just started rolling down my face.  My husband looked at me and said, "go put on something comfortable to go outside with.  I'll drop you and the baby off at the mall and you can walk around a little while I do this quick 30 minute meeting this morning."  I started to object - and then something in me said, just do it. The day turned out to be really great because my husband was aware.
2. Lots of Photos - while pregnant, I put up photos all of over the home of wonderful memories, family, and friends.  It's seriously made a difference.  When I'm home, the photos are constant reminders of good memories, loving faces, and comfort that keep me from falling into that dark place too much.
3. Therapy - I see this Phd psychologist/leadership coach quarterly.  Todd.  When he saw me pregnant, in my second trimester, he asked, "did you get postpartum depression with the first pregnancy"?  I said, "yes, it was really bad".  Considering what I was going through last year, he strongly advised me to get a therapist ASAP to start working weekly on building some strong mental foundational tools before the baby was born.  Oh my goodness, SO HELPFUL.  He even looked up a few folks for me to call to find the right fit. 
4. Breathing Room & Forgiveness in Breastfeeding - For those that have not breastfed a newborn baby before, it's REALLY hard.  It's hard to produce the milk - enough milk.  It's hard on the body physically.  There's a lot of pain associated with it.  There's a lot of stress related to it knowing that this amazing adorable innocent human life form depends on you for it.  There's sacrifice - the sleep, the social events, what I can or cannot eat/drink, and then some.  This time around with this baby, we're going with "fed is best".  I've been supplementing with formula from the day he was born.  With our first baby, I felt so ashamed to even go there, so I pushed and pushed to have him exclusively breastfed until about 6 months of age.  I still feel the shame with not producing as much milk as with our first baby - and at the same time, I feel a tiny bit happier and freer.  It's a weird discombobulating feeling.  My husband has been reminding me, fed is best.  Whole generations of humans are and have been exclusively formula fed.  The baby will be okay. I don't know if it's the same for other mothers - my self worth and self esteem daily seems to be based on how breastfeeding is going that day.  
5. Indulging Myself with Food and Sleep - to my heart's content.  It took about a full month before I even allowed my husband to take care of our newborn ALL NIGHT LONG while I slept in the other bed with our toddler.  A full month.  For some reason, I have this innate feeling that it is fully my own responsibility to stay up all night, every night, with our newborn.  I feel an immense amount of guilt letting my husband do that.  I've been learning to let go - with coaxing and coaching from both my husband and therapist.  Sleep is amazing - milk flows so luxuriously and freely after a night of good sleep.  Same goes with when I've had some delicious food/beverage.  Oh, and this time, proactively recruiting help from not just family - but also the community has helped.  I now know what a MEAL TRAIN is!!! 

Having a baby - it's like the whole family getting hit by a bus.  For the mother who just gave birth, it's like getting hit by the bus a few more times.  The physical and mental demands are big - and not knowing any better, I really struggled with recovery with our first baby.  This second baby has been easier in so many ways, and more difficult in other (like having survived the unplanned c-section, that got infected... more on that some other time.)  

Net-net?  
Ask for help.  
Accept and embrace the help.  
Don't add more stress than is really needed.  
​Eat/sleep as much as you can.  
Have strong mental and visual anchors to stay strong daily.

Arry 

This is a blog post to... warm up my blogging self again.  It's really hard to start something again after dropping the ball for so long.  I am trying to pick the ball up again.  

​Smile.

I look at our growing family, now with two amazing little babies (technically, one is a toddler). Never say "never" is the lesson.  To think I was adamant with my (at the time) soon to be husband that I did not want children is crazy.  Never say "never".  I did not know what I was saying.  Of course, it's hard - sleep deprivation, mess everywhere, our home has been invaded with kids' items and baby gear.  Giving birth is hard - 36 hour labor with Lentil, and an unplanned c-section with complications with Quinoa.  Feeding them (or convincing them to eat healthy) is a constant negotiation exercise.  

On the other hand, I'm probably a better human for it (than if I hadn't been lucky to have had our children).  I see the miracle of life, the blessing that life is, and have far more empathy for how babies grow up to be people.  Probably, most of the troubles we have in our lifetimes are because of how someone was or wasn't wired properly based on who the parents were, on top of all the emotional baggage we collect as adults.  That about sums it up.  To fix some of the biggest world problems, be pro-human and make sure that the world's babies are brought up with love and the proper nutrition, from birth.  How can we prioritize that globally as one human race? 

​Seriously.

Lentil is our toddler, full of passion, curiosity, energy and zeal.  He loves to learn, sing, dance, anything art/creative, help in the kitchen, and most definitely, anything red with four wheels on it.  I'm sitting in his bedroom right now as I write - smelling his toddler smells and smiling. 

Quinoa is our newest addition and now barely over a month old.  He arrived, after being breached (twice), and a failed second attempt at a versioning, via c-section.  I'm mostly recovered from the c-section and its following complications now, as I'm now starting to worry about my vanity and how I am going to lose the extra baby weight (15 pounds to go).    

Dae keeps referring to himself as "grandpa-dad" - mostly because he'll be about 70 years old when our kid(s) graduate college.  :). I refer to Dae as "Benjamin Button" because he looks seemingly younger and younger each year that goes by.

Life's truest blessings is family and friends,
Arry

I pushed and pulled and fought as hard as I could to create something out of nothing.  I met some very talented and inspiring people along the way.  Thousands to people were part of this journey, and I could not have gotten anywhere as far as we did without everyone.

• Advisors like Gina Cuff and Hoon Kong.  Advisors that also personally invested themselves into the company like: Jonathan Sposato, Barbary Brunner, and Rob Adams.  Even informal ones like Leo Novsky and Travis Jones that helped me navigate those tumultuous waters.  I worked for Logic20/20 from 2011 to 2014, and they have continued to support me even after leaving the company in ways that I will forever be grateful for - Thank you Christian, Ellen and Travis for everything.  
• Investors like Gary Rubens, Heather Redman, Rebecca Nordlander, and Rudy Gadre that go above and beyond with the quality time they spend with you.  Gary would take me out to hit golf balls for hours while coaching my golf swing and my business acumen.  Heather Redman would take me to go get our nails done.  Barbary who would take the phone call day or night, within hours of needing help.  Man, I remember the day Rebecca called me and said, "I woke up this morning and decided I'm wiring you money.  Go out there and make it happen!"  She's awesome.   Rudy, heart of gold and one of the best brains out there.
• Past employees, founders and team members like Stuart Owen, Christie Tarazon, Sean Zhong, Gina Cuff, Melissa Glidden, Arianna O'Dell, Hoon Kong, Jon Peck, and Valentine Gunko.  So many memories.  The other co-founders: Stuart is raw talent and incredibly smart.  Christie not just talented, but my goodness, one of the strongest women I know.  What Christie endured and pushed through during that first year is super human stuff.
• Lawyers like Lee Schindler and Adam Phillipp.  They are absolutely my go-to humans when on a startup journey and would not go anywhere else.  
• Accelerators and incubators that gave us a shot like 9Mile Labs and 500 Startups.  500 Startups where all of this startup theory really landed.  Hard.  Very pregnant.  So much truth and learning.
• Family and friends that helped give us hope, especially when times were REALLY tough.  Susan L. who surprised me with gifting requests and proactively gave so much insightful feedback.   
• Partners like butter LONDON, and B&H Photo Video that went above and beyond to help give the business shape and life.  B&H Photo Video Yosef called me days after our first ad-hoc meeting and gave me tips that ultimately gave birth to our beautiful business model.  Oh, and Stacy Kincaid who worked with us during the Providence Health relationship.  Really good people left and right.
• Most importantly, my husband, @luggagedonkey.  He covered so much on the family and home front, with our baby, my in-laws, my mother, my brother, everything.  And he cheered me on so fiercely, there's no doubt that he's my co-founder in anything I do in life.  The best kind of co-founder one could ever ask or pray for.

Spring to Summer of 2016 was really hard.  I thought I could be superwoman, having just given birth to my Lentil - that with the help of my awesome team, we could pull through this together.  Deep post partum depression.  I spent the summer of 2016 in a deep depression.  Deep despair.  My husband often had to peel my salty existence off the floor and into bed.  I did not feel like I even deserved to be alive.  I often thought the world, my husband, Lentil, everyone would be better off without me.  A waste of space.  Unworthy of the air I took in.  I looked at the sweet innocent face of Lentil and would end up crying because I felt I did not deserve to be his mother.

My advisors and investors starting sitting down to give me the "talk" in 2016.  They told me it was okay - to close it down and give them the write-off.  They told me to get going on the next startup because that one was the one they wanted in on.  I tried for one last hurrah in the fall of 2016, with my "AJ" by my side (thanks to my investors, especially Rudy, for giving me that one last swing at the ball).  Fall of 2016 was not the season of generosity and giving.  Power was changing hands - and the air was filled with emotions between the Clinton versus the Trump camps.  

​January - March 2017 I spent most of it on the verge of tears or crying my face off or finding a place to belong.  I'd be fine, and then while brushing my teeth with my husband in the bathroom, I'd tear up.  Standing in the kitchen I'd tear up.  I tried to get "out there" and involved in the community to pick up my spirits.  I tried to do this "Red Scarf" thing which was all about giving it forward to another woman entrepreneur.  I spent a bit of time doing office hours.  I put together events.  I volunteered to help the Riveter launch.  I did consulting on the side.  I advised any startup that came our way.  I really wanted to help this tiny little startup company called CakeCodes (which later became Storm and one I am part of today).  

And here we are.  May 2018.  I should really have called it quits back in the Winter of 2015/Spring of 2016.  I definitely should have in the Summer of 2016.  I absolutely should have sometime in 2017.  It is now officially May.  We are in the first week of May 2018 and I am finally officially and publicly - calling it done.  

Hope this post helps someone out there.  If you ever want to talk, please do not hesitate to reach out to me.  It is so lonely being an entrepreneur, a founder, in startups, being a founder CEO, raising funds, doing the grind, having employees, figuring out how to be a mom as a founder, all of it.  The emotional depression and the depth of despair that one experiences is so great, I wonder how many of us are suffering silently. 

Hugs to you out there trying to change the world.

​--Arry
​

You'd think that a founder of a company called "GiftStarter" would be AWESOME at gifting.  I'm not.  Especially when it comes to husband.  Remember, I really dislike gifting for the sake of gifting.  I really dislike "junk" gifts.  Good gifts I think take a lot of time or a lot more budget.  ... Sigh.

Here are examples from my husband-gifting my track record so far.

1. 40th Birthday gift: a hand-written birthday card saying I'd be his and only his forever (we had just started dating for a few months at that point.  As an entrepreneur at that point, I was living on a very very tight budget.)  To this day, he says this is his favorite gift ever.
2. Christmas 2011: a cool RED Eddie Bauer down jacket.  He exchanged it for a down blanket.  I learned he's into name brands.  Eddie Bauer is not a cool name brand.  Really made me sad.
3. Christmas 2013: Slippers.  He still wears these, every day.  Funny.
4. Christmas 2014 + 2015 combined: A perfectly built-to-spec Macbook Pro. He loves this.  I've learned that he enjoys the dreaming of, finding the PERFECT specs and details, and then actually going and getting it.  The gift of an endorsement and support to indulge is what he really likes!
5. Christmas 2016: 1 year membership to the Shop, a coworking/hang out space for car-loving affectionado's.  We'll see how this went...  :)

He's my best life's decision I've ever made joining forces to live life together.  Forever.

--Arry  

Top of mind.  Crap, it's my husband's birthday and we're in the middle of a crazy ICO.  Trying to setup our corporate entities and all that fun legal operations stuff.  Not fun at all - all this not-so-awesome-fun detailed stuff is what separates the doers from the dreamers.  Lots of chasing down people left and right, paper signatures, documents that have to be couriered to so-and-so place, notaries, and more.

And it's my husband's birthday week.  Thankfully, the StormX team jumped into help make it special by getting him a cake and also signing a card for him too.  He literally singlehandedly changed the course of many lives and companies, because he believed in the vision whole heartedly.  

It's my husband's birthday next week...  and in the midst of doing an ICO.  For his birthday gift, we are making the trip down the Oregon coast to see the once in a lifetime solar eclipse happen.  Long drive down.  Some cheap hotel because they're all sold out.  Long drive back up.  We're doing it.

I'm trying to calm myself into thinking it'll all be ok.  It'll be ok.  It'll be ok.  Husband will be happy.  We'll have good memories.  Yes, it'll be ok.

​--Arry

This is the aftermath of my 1 hour session with Heather Redman of FlyingFish VC. She's an investor in GiftStarter (my startup I've been quarterbacking since 2014).  Usually we meet over coffee or drinks, and I give her my update.  She gives me feedback, helps answer questions, and connects me to helpful people.  This week, we met and got our nails done.  My nails are bright purple (as inspiration to myself to be like a purple unicorn!)!

After three years of wooing, and then continuing to woo our investors (GiftStarter), I've learned that really, when it comes to all meetings, it's completely always about the relationship.  Not just, do I like this person, do they like me back?  Honestly, do we like each other as people?  Do we respect each other?  

All I can say, is that I LOVE the investors that invested in me/GiftStarter - investment of dollars, time, and resources.  Some really really really (emphasis on really really REALLY really) awesome people.  I am so appreciative of the opportunity, the opportunity to go to battle with a very tough set of cards, and the opportunity to have learned all that I have gotten to learn (and continue to learn).  To all founders out there, investors are people, too (not just dollars).    

--Arry

It's my birthday week, so the family and a couple friends, we flew down to Cabo, Mexico for the week.  This is a photo of our #Lentil bean (though, now he's much much much larger than a lentil bean now) at one of our favorite places to eat in Cabo, the Office.  We devoured guacamole and chips, salads, tacos, steak and lobster, and coconut shrimp.  Momma, of course, had a few margaritas (Lentil stuck to drinking whole milk).

(While traveling with an infant/toddler isn't the easiest, the memories afterwards definitely make the trip worth it.)  Both momma and daddy came home, EXHAUSTED.  Took us a week to get the family back to a normal sleeping schedule.

And now... we're all taking turns getting over a cold of some sort.  :(

​--Arry

This evening, I was on a panel titled, "The Growing Gender and Race Gap in Seattle's Startup Scene".  I got to share the panel with some amazing people.  Then as I was on my ride home, it dawned on me that maybe, just maybe, the challenge with the whole not enough "minorities" getting funding (across the board from arts, nonprofits to startups), is that this game we are in is actually like dating.

Seriously, humor me for a minute.  

Fundraising is like dating.  There's usually two players in dating - one doing the pursuing, one doing the being pursued.  Sometimes you go back and forth in playing a role.  

MAYBE women (for example) are struggling to get funded because we (most of us) are not used to doing the wooing, like men are.  Maybe women have less practice and socialization with this.  Maybe?  Some of us are able to understand how to woo and attract very quickly.  Some struggle.   I personally love it.

Simple dating tips applied to fundraising:

1. Communicate, proactively.  Communication in person > communication by phone > communication by email/text > no communication at all.  Laziness typically won't win.  Find enticing ways to meet in person.  
2. Don't talk too much.  Embrace silence.  Ask good questions.  Listen.  Give them opportunities to ask questions.  Observe the room (and yourself).  Manage the energy, not data points.
3. Be interesting, and be interested in your date.  Ask good questions.  Offer something funny or insightful.  Ask about their children or if they like the newest Tesla updates.
4. Be dependable.  Show up when and where you said you will.  And on time, if not EARLIER.  I've noticed most (good) investors are really good about that.  Remember important dates (birthdays, etc.).   
5. Be very responsive.  Lead if you can to set the rhythm of communication.  If the other person sends a communication, like an email, do everything you can to respond quickly (under 2 hours best, under 4 hours acceptable).  Demonstrate that they are VERY important to you.
6. Be polite and respectful.  Say please and thank you.  Follow up after your date to recap that you enjoyed the conversation.  See if there's interest in doing another date or keeping in touch.
7. Compliment.  Notice the details of the person(s) you are in pursuit of.  Notice if they like sports or whiskey.  Demonstrate you appreciate their feedback or opinions.  Give extra kudos when they say or do something awesome.  Read up on them and compliment them on their latest press/news.
8. Study them.  Do they like meeting up during the day or evening?  Are they casual or not?  Do they lean forward or are they more laid back?  Do they prefer coffee or a beer?  Does ambiance matter to them or is it all business?  
9. Figure out how you disagree.  The precedent set on how you handle conflict with each other is important.  See if there are some benign topics you can try out together.  There will be some micro-actions or non-actions that'll be good cues on how this will go.
10. Tell them directly you want them.  Pursue. Find the right method that will match what they will respond best to and tell them you're into them.  Really go for it and woo them.  Close the deal.  Don't beat around the bush.  Make the ask.

Maybe it's a stretch, the dating analogy.  Let me know what you think.
​--Arry