From Reporter to Founder: Wendy Parker’s Journalism Pivots

In this episode, we talk with Wendy Parker, seasoned journalist and editor of East Cobb News, about a career that spans decades of reporting—and a bold pivot that led her to build one of the most important local news outlets in the community. After years working in traditional journalism roles, Wendy took a leap and launched her own independent online publication dedicated to covering the people, issues, and stories shaping a growing and vibrant East Cobb.

In our conversation, Wendy reflects on the dramatic changes that have reshaped journalism and why the future of the industry may actually be more local, not less. She also discusses the ethical responsibilities that come with being a journalist—standards that are increasingly blurred in today’s era of instant, cellphone-driven “do-it-yourself” reporting. 

Wendy shares how she navigated the turning points in her career and why, at a stage in life when many people consider slowing down, she chose instead to start something new. Her philosophy was simple: “If not now, then when?” The result has been a thriving local publication—and a powerful reminder that reinvention is possible at any stage of life.

Thanks for listening! 

Julia 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to Now It Gets Interesting. I'm your host, Julia Kern. This is a podcast about the moment when life quietly shifts. The moment you look up and realize the path you took may have changed. For many of us, we assumed life would only get smaller or more predictable as we got older. Then somewhere along the way, often when we least expect it, that's when we realize this is getting interesting. My guest today is Wendy Parker. She's a journalist and a longtime East Cobb Atlanta, Georgia resident with a wealth of experience and deep roots in the community she covers. Since 2017, Wendy has been the editor and publisher of East Cobb News, the independent online publication she founded to focus on local reporting. Before that, Wendy was the first editor of East Cobb Patch. Wendy was a reporter at the Atlanta Journal Constitution, and a writer and editor at wABE.org, the website for public broadcasting's Atlanta NPR affiliate radio station. She began her journalism career at the Marietta Daily Journal before returning to Cobb County with the AJC. Welcome, Wendy. I'm excited about our conversation today.

SPEAKER_01 1:29

Thank you very much for having me.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

So take us back to the beginning. How did you get started in journalism right out of college? What did you do?

SPEAKER_01 1:39

Well, actually, I uh started working um at my high school newspaper. Um I was 13 years old. I was allowed to go to high school school a little sooner than I should have. And I just from the time I um started as a freshman in high school, working on the student newspaper, I knew that's what I wanted to do. And in fact, my mother told me years later she figured I'd do something with writing because I was always reading. We always had books around the house, and she got the newspaper subscription at home. So I think it was just in the in the bloodlines uh early on. But but I worked on my high school and college paper, and I never really thought about anything else. Um, and that's what I've been able to do, fortunately, for more than 40 years now.

SPEAKER_00 2:25

So, what skills and instincts do you think are important for someone that is in the journalism space?

SPEAKER_01 2:32

Well, you have to have a lot of curiosity. You have to be very open-minded to the experiences of other people, and that's the first thing that you realize when you start interviewing. You you you know, you don't know where someone's come from, what they've dealt with. And you have to, you know, you have to be a good listener, you have to be curious. Um, and I I think those are two traits that are still in short supply in society today. And sometimes I have to challenge myself to do a better job of those things. You want to cut to the chase and rush and get something done. But um, I I really feel like over over the years, that that instinct for curiosity is something that that really needs to be instilled early on. And I mean, for a lot of a lot of work, but especially now um for journalists doing work probably in very different ways than they might have imagined, it really, really matters.

SPEAKER_00 3:29

How do you balance being curious and wanting more information with um, say, privacy issues, or you know, is that something you've learned over your lifetime lifetime? Is how to go just so far with a story and yet keep some good personal boundaries for people. Can you talk a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_01 3:52

Yeah, you've you've got to be really careful about legal issues. And, you know, when you're running your own business and you you you know, if you know been in journalism, you know the history of libel laws and court cases involving media. But to me, I think the real easy thing to keep in mind with that is just having a sense of fairness. And that's a very subjective thing. Um, and it depends on each issue, each interview you do, or you think, well, okay, what are going to be the boundaries for these limits? Um, for example, I I know when I'm dealing with minors, uh, you know, there there are certain things that you you don't do. Um, you make sure it you run, you you get the parents' permission to run photos or other kinds of information. I've had people ask me, will you please take down my child's photo or something like that, some kind of information that might be a little bit too privacy invasive. Um, you know, a man who lost his wife. Um, he asked me to take down his street address just for the privacy of him and his child. Things like that happen over over time. And you learn to understand people's boundaries and sensitivities along those lines. But I think it's just a sense of fairness and under understanding a situation. You know, I had someone who asked me to take a story down because her son uh had been charged with a crime and he was he succeeded in a in a special court where he was going to get his record expunged. And so those are things that come up from time to time, and you don't always know how to proceed. And in that case, um, I talked to another publisher who um had gone through something very similar. And, you know, he had recently lost his wife, um uh his wife's son to a drug overdose. And so, you know, you you you you understood what he was going through. And that's really all I needed to know was it basically said, you know what, life is short and we need to be fair. And we got into this business to do no harm. And and that that's a that's a really good guideline that I've thought about, you know, if if anything like that should happen again, I think I'd have a better understanding of how to proceed. But these things kind of pop up and they surprise you from time to time, no matter how much experience you've had. And it's it's good to keep in mind the fact that the people really do watch what you do and they are paying attention. And and if if it affects them, especially covering local news, it really matters deeply.

SPEAKER_00 6:30

You know, it's interesting. Um, just listening to you speak, I would say that there are a lot of people out there who think they are journalists in this world now, uh, because of all the different ways that you can capture information and share it and all the different channels out there. And um I am always shocked at the people that don't get that you need permission for a child, a minor's photo, that um that ethical boundary is not it, it's unless it's taught or you somehow absorb it, um, the ethical boundary issue is makes you a good journalist. And um what do you think about that? About all the different ways that people can post things or um put things out there, what do you think that's done to our I think I think I think the lines are getting blurred again.

SPEAKER_01 7:28

And you know, the incident involving Don Lemon in Minnesota at the church, he says he was doing journalism. Okay, you could go in and and you know, journalists cover things where they're in a chaotic situation. Um, and I think it's gonna be really hard for the prosecutors to uh it's gonna he's he's he's got First Amendment rights, but where where do you draw the line between being a journalist and being an activist? Yeah, and who gets to define what that is? Yeah, that's really different now in an age where everybody has a phone camera, anybody can can can write something down and put it on a website, a podcast, you know, a YouTube channel. And anybody can do that. And I don't know if if media law has gotten has caught up with that yet, because First Amendment rights apply to everybody, not just journalists, but for those of us who are in the profession and did get that training, it is interesting to see where those boundaries might be shifting a bit. Um, I know where I stand, but how how how those things get played out legally is is another matter. But ethically, um, I just don't know everything about what happened up there to know whether he was taking part in the in these in in the invasion of that church or the disruption of that church, or whether he was just merely recording it. It just it's a really good gonna be hard, I think, to define in a court. And as a matter of law, the prosecutors are gonna have have to uh jump over a really high bar to to assert that he didn't have First Amendment rights.

SPEAKER_00 9:08

Yeah, you know, and that's actually, I I guess this is something we've really seen over the last 10 years. People inserting themselves. And I haven't done enough of a deep dive into the Don Lemon Lemon story to know if that's what happened there, but people inserting themselves in law enforcement enforcement situations. We've obviously had journalists, reporters embedded in war zones and things like that, but we now have situations on our streets that are um, you know, very um emotionally loaded, um, I guess warlike, and people are embedding themselves, inserting themselves into law enforcement event events. And um yeah, it's gonna be very interesting. I was reading something recently about someone saying, you know, you have a first amendment, you can you can record, you can record, you can record, you can take video of things. Okay, that's fine, but um you can't insert yourself in the middle of a law enforcement event. That's different from recording.

SPEAKER_01 10:21

If you if you uh obstruct, if you get in the way, um then you're you know, then you're you know, you're you're just as um, you know, you're just like anybody else. And the thing about the um you you can, I mean, I know this from very early on. You go onto someone's prior property, whether it's a church, a home, a business, and they tell you they don't want you there and you don't leave right away. You're you're you're considered trespassing. You don't have you don't have a First Amendment right to do that.

SPEAKER_00 10:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:50

If they tell you to leave, then you leave. I mean, I I I shot some video once um of a of a daycare center after a tornado when I was across the street and I posted it on the website, and the owner of the child care center said, Take that down. You you came on my property. I said, I didn't. So, you know, that's you know, it and it was a matter of him believing me, I guess. Yeah, he could have pursued it. But if if I had stepped on his property and done that, then that would have, you know, he could have he could have charged me or you know, um filed a complaint of trespassing. And I knew enough not to do that, but but some people don't always know that. And um even even if you're not trained as a journalist, like like in college, like I was, if you get into a a regular news organization, you should be told that. I mean, those, you know, or you should know that at some point. And I don't really know what news organizations are doing to prepare their journalists for that. But but those are those are pretty basic ground rules, no matter what, even for new kinds of news organizations.

SPEAKER_00 11:55

Yeah. So pivoting a little bit, I was very interested in your um story because from the little background research I did, I noticed that you were print media at the AJC um for quite a while. And then you pivoted to starting this um to patch and then to East Cop News. Um so how did you, if you don't mind talking about it, how did you make that decision to move from the AJC to more independent your own thing?

SPEAKER_01 12:33

Well, I was a newspaper reporter for about 20 years, most of that at the AJC. And the last few years I was there, um, I was asked to go to the website and be an online editor. So the decision was kind of made for me. Um, and this was in the mid-aughts from 2004 to 2008, and we're going through a big transformation at that point. You know, I had been a reporter uh in the in the suburban bureaus, and then I went downtown for the Atlanta Olympics in 1996 and stayed down there and covered sports for a few years. And but they need they were beefing up their news uh staff on on the website. And so I went over there and it was really an eye-opening experience. I saw at that point, and this was 2004, that old media, legacy media companies were really behind the curve on this transformation of the news industry. And I just kind of jumped into it. I really liked it, it really energized me. We could we could compete with the radio and TV stations on breaking news, on weather stories, on traffic accidents, on crime, you know, crime scene, um, you know, um uh election night coverage or late baseball games on the West Coast. We we could get that up and and not have, you know, plan it for the next day's paper. I really liked it. I was really bullish on it. And I saw early on that we could really engage with our readers who were already online anyway.

SPEAKER_00 14:06

Um, so I'm gonna stop you there. So that's really interesting. So you went from, say, you know, a morning edition, an afternoon edition, being pigeonholed by that with print media, to being able to be instant online, get the story out there.

SPEAKER_01 14:23

Okay. Well, one one one of the things that really got me liking this was my frustrations as a reporter, not being able to get something online. Like I when I was the sports runner, I covered the the World Cup soccer tournament for the AJC. And this was in 2002, and I was in Korea and Japan, and that's a 15-hour time difference.

SPEAKER_00 14:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:44

And we uh the year before we got we got rid of the journal as as the afternoon paper, and and it was journal constitution, it was one daily paper in the morning, and I could not write a game story off of what happened in South Korea involving the US team right away. It would had to be a feature story on the next game two days later. And so I really, you know, we we just they didn't have a website staffed to get my story up. And so I thought, this really, I mean, what am I doing over here half the world away? You know, and I I just if if we'd had someone who could have at least posted my story on the website, I would have felt a lot more useful. And so, and I just and I was doing some freelance writing for MSNBC's website way back when they started at that from some basketball tournaments. And like, I love the adrenaline rush of just getting that out there.

SPEAKER_00 15:40

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:40

Um, and it's over with. And so that was kind of in my thinking as I was beginning my time as a web editor. It's like, we can really do this. And I was an online sports editor when I went over to ajc.com and we worked with the beat writers, and they had to produce a blog post every day when their team was in season. And the guy who was covering the Braves, Dave O'Brien, he loved it. He was great, he could write 3,000 words. He's a music fan, he's putting in Johnny Cash lyrics when somebody's supposed to know Andrew Jones' batting average, right? And he was really, he he understood it, he got into it, and I just felt it was really re-enter energizing. And our readers loved it. We engaged with them, and we were meeting our readers where they had gone to, they'd gone online. But but that there was a lot of resistance in the newsroom to to any kind of change, especially something that they thought number one was gonna make make them have to do more work, and number two might eclipse what they're doing in print.

SPEAKER_00 16:41

Because it was, because it it it because it was more work. I remember, I mean, I guess this is 30 years ago. Um, I worked for a PR firm and we were the agency of record for GE Power Systems. And uh I remember sitting around a table with a bunch of colleagues and saying, now wait, we're doing press releases, we're we're handling print in magazines, and we also have to do the website.

SPEAKER_01 17:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:07

So I said, wait, does that mean our work is doubled with no additional hours or compensation? And we all just shook our heads and said, Yeah, that's what it is.

SPEAKER_01 17:18

You know, when I was a traveling sports writer and you didn't have set hours, you didn't have a shift, um, you probably worked more than what you got paid for.

SPEAKER_00 17:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:28

And it taking in the time that you're traveling. And so I learned how to kind of squeeze that in, but I could understand someone who was used to, okay, I'm working 11 to 7 today. I'm not gonna work 11 to 8, you know, or whatever it was. So, and in it initially, I think the assignment editors didn't know how to pull back. Okay, you won't do this for print. We need you, we we need you to do this extra, you know, in hit right after the end of the game, and then go back and do your print game story. It it was, I mean, I was working doing this when we were making this transition, and it was it was kind of frustrating for a lot of people. We didn't know how to balance that out. But for me, it was easy. I didn't really mind it at all. And I I wasn't really, I wasn't really working any extra, but I could understand the writers and editors having to do more. I I just think there was a resistance to change. A lot of people like us who've been trained for newspapers, and we were there during the great years of the 90s getting ready for the Olympics. And after that, I mean, the paper was making money. We had huge newspapers, if you remember. I loved our Sunday papers. They were massive papers, and then and then it just kind of went away pretty quickly. And so we knew something was going to change and and to what extent and how how that was gonna be managed. That was that was an open question for a long, long time.

SPEAKER_00 18:54

Yeah, I I want to dig a little bit more into your pivot into um the online to into East Cop news and East Cop patch. But while we're on this topic, uh what are your thoughts about the future of newspaper with the AJC going online only and the layoffs the other day at the Washington Post? Yeah. Talk to me a little bit about what you think about that.

SPEAKER_01 19:14

Yeah, well, I left the AJC in 2008 and they were going through buyouts, massive buyouts. Um, we've I was one of 70-something people in the newsroom that left and uh 100 plus people in advertising all at once in the fall of 2008. And this was right when the recession was starting. A couple weeks later, Bear Stearns collapses, Lehman Brothers, all that. Like, well, gee, my job search is gonna be a little more complicated now. Um so I was on the front wave of what's been happening ever since. And yeah, the AJC went all digital in January, and a couple days ago they announced they were making some more cuts, and that was a little bit of a surprise.

SPEAKER_00 19:59

Um were you surprised they went digital? Were you surprised they went all digital in January?

SPEAKER_01 20:04

And then they were you surprised by that? A little bit. I don't know if that was part of the plan or not. Okay. Um, Cox Enterprises is investing $150 million in a digital strategy, so I don't know if this was part of the plan or not. Um, I I you know that about 25 of the 50 people who are being let go or in the newsroom. So I don't know what areas are being are being affected by that. Um, the Washington Post was really sad. I mean, I I lived in the DC area in the mid 80s, and it was a great newspaper. I know two of the uh I know two of the sports writers who were let go, they shut their entire sports department down.

SPEAKER_00 20:44

Oh, I read that.

SPEAKER_01 20:46

Great talented writers, but the Washington Post have been losing money for decades. Um Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder, purchased the the the newspaper in 2013. They were losing 40, 50 million dollars a year. Last year, they supposedly lost 100 million, and and like a lot of newspaper management, they kind of fumbled around figuring out how to redo it. And so it's it's it it it I don't think there's any one thing to blame, but it's a very, very difficult industry. Um, the last two or three years, newspapers have taken a huge hit. The Los Angeles Times cut a quarter of its newsroom a year or so ago. Um, so it's really, really hard. And at the smaller papers, even more so, they're consolidating more um hedge funds and private equity companies are coming in and just and just you know, getting rid of whatever's left. Um, I don't think that they're gonna go away completely, but they're just not gonna be what they were. I mean, Warren Buffett invested in some newspapers a few years ago because he was always an avid newspaper reader, but he He he sold his newspaper holdings and realized that it was an industry that just you he just did not see a turnaround in it. And it is it is unfortunate, but you know, I've known this for 20, 30 years. So it's it but it it is really hard to watch good people get put out. And I guess they they had hope at the post that they could hang on, but I don't know how much longer you have to keep losing that kind of money to think that you're you're not going to be spared at some point.

SPEAKER_00 22:28

So what'll be interesting will be to see whether or not, I mean, as you well know, you know, as a genealogist, I I live by newspapers from 200 years ago, 100 years ago, when there was, you know, people could get five newspapers a day, right? It was a a more granular local newspaper situation. And then we got bigger and bigger, and the little the little newspapers went away. And I wonder if we're going to find that we return to local media more than the larger um larger news sources, news sources.

SPEAKER_01 23:10

What do you think? Well, I think that's one reason why a lot of us were doing this. Um I I was when I when I went to work for Patch, AOL saw that the local news dearth was big. And the the head of AOL at that point was a guy named Tim Armstrong, who had been an ad ad executive for Google, and he couldn't find local things in his hometown in Connecticut. And I think he he started this with good intent. Um, there were there was a need for to kind of replace what the papers were not able to do anymore. Um, and for three and a half plus years, we had a chance to do that. And I started out doing local news early in my career, then did sports kind of in the middle, and then went back to local news with patch and um wanting to be you know more invested in my home community here in East Cobb. And you know, with the transformation of the news business has hit local really hard, not just local newspapers, but local TV, they're not doing nearly what they used to do either. Um, and they they've they've had to cut back a lot. They have corporate ownership that you know it's really bottom line. So, and I know people who've been affected by those by those changes as well.

SPEAKER_00 24:24

Um Talk a little bit more. If you would talk a little bit more about that, how how is it to survive as a local news source? A local online news.

SPEAKER_01 24:35

There are local independent publishers who are doing well, who are uh making money advertising-wise. They understand uh the the online advertising dynamic that's very different from print. In fact, the the the people that I was inspired by to do this are very successful business-wise with lots of advertising, and they're in smaller markets. One of them is in a Rust Belt town in upstate New York, not too far from Buffalo. The other is in a neighborhood in Seattle, Washington, and they were husband and wife teams when they started, and they they saw that there was the people wanted more local news, local connection, you know, one ads, calendar listings that the papers just weren't doing anymore. And so they were part of a group of uh a trade group of local independent online news publishers, and they got that going about the time I was working at Patch, and this is the early 20 teens. And so I'm monitoring what they're doing. Well, I'm working at AOL, and I thought to myself, at some point, maybe I'll try something independently because AOL was struggling with this, with this um, you know, kind of like a franchise model, although we weren't owners, we were editors. Um, and I I really saw the value in local news, and the readers were telling me when I was the patch editor, I love what you do. You know, I you the it was such a gratifying thing to hear that. Yeah. Um, and I'd worked in corporate media for a long time and I knew people liked what I did, but to hear that, it just you you were so you were so much directly connected to them, and everything that you did mattered, whether it was a lost pet's notice or a church concert. We thank you for you know posting that church concert in your calendar. We had a hundred people last Sunday, whatever it was. I mean, that sounds kind of small when you work in big media like I was in, but that was a huge indicator to me that there is a real hunger for this.

SPEAKER_00 26:41

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:42

And I really felt like at some point, um, I was writing out at uh when I was still at Patch, if I were to do this independently, what would I do? How what would I take with me what I learned at AOL? And I and I've taken a lot and applied it to what I'm doing now. It really was kind of an eye-opening thing, even though that job didn't last. And and and patch is still around, it has fewer sites, but I learned invaluable things about kind of reconnecting to local news and what it the future of local, I really believe is online just because it's a lower air uh barrier to um entry. And it's you know, you can you can adapt a lot more, uh, not just for readers, but for advertisers online. And that's a big pitch that I make when I'm talking to advertising prospects. Uh you can measure, you can give them metrics that it's really hard to replicate that or or even estimate that in print. And so um I I but I I I this is not an original idea that I had. I've learned from people who've made it work. Um nobody's getting rich, and nobody's getting rich at this, but but but there is a real community connection that is really, really hard to to to to get now in corporate media.

SPEAKER_00 28:03

You actually explain to us, just for our listeners, it is a very locally focused online news news source, right?

SPEAKER_01 28:14

I I call it hyper-local, and some people think that's a bad word, but it's not. It's a really down to the local level. I get moms send in their kids getting Eagle Scout. Um, someone, uh a woman, her her pet bird um left, a purple, a pink parrot. Um, he didn't come back, but we we posted it. It was a pretty picture of the bird. I mean, that might seem too small. And when I started out at the beginning of my career doing local news, I'm like, God, this is so small, but it's it's somebody's hometown, it's somebody's home community. And you know, I I kind of wanted to reconnect with my own community after being in big media and traveling a lot. I love that, but but you know, you know, tap my ankle uh uh and toes a couple of times and say there's no place like home.

SPEAKER_00 29:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:04

Um that really, really matters. And and what I I really believe that that local news is is is the cornerstone of of news media. And if we don't have if we don't have strong communities with with news outlets that not only keep tabs on government agencies, but but give people a chance to have their kids' photo in, you know, in there or their their missing parent, that then that that's a sense of community that the people really love. And even in a suburban area where people come here from all over the place, people want to feel like there's a sense of home there. And that's what I'm trying to do.

SPEAKER_00 29:42

Mm-hmm. Well, I I I I find it to be an incredible, a incredible local news source. And um I I know a lot of people follow you, and uh and a lot of people are subscribing. So um, how long have you been out there with these cob news?

SPEAKER_01 29:58

I started this in July of 2017. I declared my independence on July 4th, 2017. So um what was that pivot like nine years? It'll be nine years, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:09

So so what was that pivot like? Did you look up and one day and you just thought, I'm doing this.

SPEAKER_01 30:16

I mean, when I got laid off from AOL, I thought I would do it, but I had enough freelance work and contract work at the radio station, doing some freelance sports writing. Um, and I liked that I could make a living. I still wasn't sure if I was ready to do this. I I felt a sense of being overwhelmed. Um, but I I I thought maybe I can make a living as a freelance writer, but I found that, especially working with magazines, very, very frustrating because from the time you get the assignment to the time it your story gets published and they pay on publication, it's like five or six months. I'm like, I can't wait that long. Um again, the people that I learned this from had very similar careers, and they kept saying, if we can do this, anybody can do it. Um, and so I just I just got the gumption up on like, I need to do this. And it was a little more than three years after I left AOL that I started it, but I I was in my mid-50s. I thought, if not now, when?

SPEAKER_00 31:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:17

Um, let's do this. And you know, I just could not imagine doing anything else. And that was what it really came down to.

SPEAKER_00 31:24

So, what do you say to people who are thinking, uh, that I've written my last chapter and I need to start considering retirement or something? Um, people people who think, okay, I guess my professional life is done, you started something completely new. Um what do you have to say to people that are thinking I can't start something new? Because I mean, you're you're working all the time and and very passionate about what you do. So there's no slowing down for you.

SPEAKER_01 31:58

Yeah, I I think it, I think it helps to have that burning desire. Um, and I I just feel like I I can't leave this behind without giving it a shot. If it doesn't work out, if I decide next week I'm I'm done with it, okay, fine. I I don't regret doing it. It it's it can take a toll, but I don't I don't regret it one second. Um, and if you still feel like you have something to offer, whether it's in the field that you've been in or in something else, trust your instinct if you feel that strongly. If you want to stay in it and try something else, like I've done great if it's if it's something else. I admire people who do something completely different. And I've thought about that from time to time, but I can't get away from this. Um, don't don't don't listen to yourself because um I I I used to think I was too old to try new things, and and society will make you feel really old, and especially in the media industries, you hit 50 and you're like, you might you're you're a dinosaur for them. And I I was at the top of my game when I left the paper, and I still feel like I'm doing really, really well. Um, and and there's still you have so much more to offer than you realize. I and I I I I feel that every day. I I used to worry about the young whipper snapper wisdom dispensers. And I'm thinking they don't really know what they're talking about. I've I've living things that they're only speculating about.

SPEAKER_00 33:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:26

And that's given me a lot of confidence. And sometimes your confidence will ebb when you see these younger people with seemingly more energy, but you've got so much more going for you than you realize. And you have to give yourself that kind of positive self-talk.

SPEAKER_00 33:41

Yeah, that's that's true.

SPEAKER_01 33:44

Or you go to work for somebody else, you know, at an older age, you have to do that because the perceptions about people our age are not going to go away, but it's how you how you value what you do and what you bring to the table. I love the idea of learning things, the hard things that you think you could never do that you never thought you would ever have to do in your life. Um, I welcome it as a challenge. I feel like you know, there's always things that you can learn. You never stop growing, and that's what keeps you feeling young. That's what gives you energy.

SPEAKER_00 34:16

Well, thank you very much. I really appreciated our conversation, and you are definitely an inspiration to many. Well, thank you. Thank you.