JD's Journal
Having roamed this planet for six decades, and after 47 years of full-time employment in a smorgasbord of roles and locations, I'm sharing the gems I've gathered plus the wisdom of other remarkable leaders and innovators who I've encountered along the way. I don't have a clear destination yet, but based on my historical experience, it's certain to be a dynamic and unpredictable adventure. Welcome aboard!
JD's Journal
Claudette Rechtorik's Crusade for Our Oceans and Youth
Have you ever wondered how one person's passion can ignite a global movement? Claudette Rechtorik, the driving force behind Ocean Youth, joins us to share her powerful story. Her journey from a student discovering a later-in-life love for environmental science to a powerful advocate for our oceans is nothing short of inspiring. Claudette's commitment to teaching special needs students at Rivendell School reveals the profound connection between education, mental health, and nature.
This episode isn't just about what's beneath the waves. We delve into the pressing issues affecting our blue planet, from overfishing and pollution to the daily choices we make that shape our environment. Claudette's initiatives are not only raising awareness but also empowering our youth to take a stand.
Finally, we tackle the topic of self-care and the delicate balance of leading with conviction while nurturing personal growth. Through Claudette's experiences, we uncover essential strategies for overcoming doubt and the significance of resilience when championing a cause. This episode swells with the powerful message that anyone is capable of sparking change, encouraging us all to take that first step towards a healthier, more sustainable future for our oceans and ourselves.
You can learn more about Ocean Youth and the tremendously important work the Claudette and her volunteers are doing at https://www.oceanyouth.org/. This is such an incredibly important mission for our planet now and for generations to come.
When I met Claudette about a decade ago she was leading the Sea Life Conservation Society and then her passionate drive were incredibly inspiring and it was an absolute joy to work with her and also to collaborate with some of the remarkable young leaders that she gathered around her on that quest, and she's gone a long way with that and we're going to talk about that in the podcast today. I want to call that as well. Claudette is a science teacher at Rivendell in Concord West in the suburbs of Sydney, where she works with students with special needs relating to mental health, and I think that's part of her passion as well and we'll kind of peel the onion on that. We'll talk more towards the end of the podcast, but the Ocean Youth Summit is coming up in April at the Maritime Museum in Sydney and I think that's going to be an incredibly exciting event, 10 years into that journey that I'm aware of. I'm really really ticked about that.
JD:Claudette, did I introduce you appropriately or is there anything you'd like to add or change that introduction?
Claudette:Oh my gosh, I sound amazing.
JD:Well, you are.
Claudette:No, that pretty much has covered it in a snapshot. It sounds pretty spot on Good. Okay, I love that.
JD:Well, you are remarkable, there's no question about it, and I think what you juggle and what you deal with every day is quite incredible, and with that, I'm going to talk about your energy, right. So I want to ask you that big question that I always open my podcast with, which is that? So, now that we know that what you do, what would you say is your greater purpose? We think about the legacy of Claudette.
Claudette:What will that be For me. I'm always and have always been about leaving the place better than I found it, and it's what I've taught my kids. It's what I live by. And it can be minute or it can be as big as you have the energy to muster, but it is all about leaving the place better than you found it. And I suppose it comes from it actually comes from a deep, deep, deep love of animals, of all things, and just seeing as I wake up to what's happening around me and, at a macro level, what's happening on this planet. It's about understanding that a lot of these creatures don't have voices to speak up or speak out. And when you pay attention and you realise the plight that we're in.
Claudette:My policy I suppose personal policy of leaving the place better than I found it is more important than ever when I think of what's happening to the species that I share this place with. And it's all come together in my personal passion project. I've tried to find other things to do, I've tried to find other jobs to do, but I keep coming back to this same place because my purpose just seemingly it is as stubborn as my Dutch heritage.
JD:I would say a couple of things. I think, for a lot of us to have that clarity of purpose. It's gold.
JD:I think a lot of us feel passionate about animals and looking after animals and being good to animals of all kinds. I think I feel that way, but I don't think I get out of bed and put my foot on the floor every day thinking about how do I do that? And so to have that clarity of purpose is quite a remarkable thing and, as I said at the beginning of the intro, the way you manifest that, what I see you do and the energy you apply to that is something quite remarkable. Is there something more to that? Is there some event in your life that you think gave you that sense of such a direct purpose on that one topic? Or was it just something that was naturally inherent within you?
Claudette:Oh look, it's been a journey of. Actually I've asked myself that question a lot and I had two parents who had a deep love of animals. They didn't necessarily work in the environment space there was a flight attendant and one worked in accounts receivables but they deeply had a deep love of animals and we would always go to national parks and so I think that was very formative in my upbringing was actually my dad. If he was home we would always get in the car. On a Sunday we would discover a new national park. And when I asked people who had to share a deep love of the environment or a deep love for the species that we share our space with, that seems to be a common denominator. They actually got out into nature when they were young. And it's that subconscious education, I suppose, or that subconscious awakening of being aware of what actually supports us. And when we travel through life and we experiment and then we come back, we experiment, we come back, you start to sort of figure out what switches you on and what keeps you going, and for me it is always that nature place and nature space and I think it was always there.
Claudette:I tried to be a flight attendant for Qantas. I worked for Qantas back in the day and I'd found myself in the PR team advocating for sustainability back in the 90s. So I wondered myself when did this come? How did this happen? How did I end up here? It was always there and it would manifest in different ways and I think it was just this deep connection to nature that just kind of oozes out of every cell of my body and I think now I've learned to embrace it rather than sort of turn it off. I've tried to turn it off multiple times because it can be painful when you wake up to what's happening and try and not tell yourself that you are just one person. What difference can you make? It can get very demoralising and at some points deeply sad. So if I could turn it off, would I? I've tried, wasn't able to.
JD:Well for the planet's sake. Thank goodness you don't right, and it's interesting the way that you describe that, because so often it's frustration that results in the energy to make change. It's frustration that drives, whether it's animals or something else. It's that level of dammit something has to change here and I can't keep feeling this way that causes change to happen. So thankfully, you're converting that into an incredibly powerful energy that's having broad impact and so again, acknowledging your frustration and what a weight that is to carry at times. But gee, that energy turns into something that's quite remarkable. You shared a little bit of your journey just now. In terms of what you talked about, Would you elaborate on how to get here? What was the pathway to get you to where you are today?
Claudette:So I was on a career path within Qantas and you know, when I was 20s and I threw it all in and bought a one-way ticket to Mexico because you've got to do that sort of rite of passage, travel and I went to Mexico and did a whole big year-long trip through Latin America. And as I was going through Latin America I started to be alert to poverty and you know what was happening in the environment. So I started researching what degrees I could do, because I hadn't done any sort of postgraduate or undergraduate learning. And I was looking it was literally looking through the handbook of University of Sydney and seeing what courses actually spoke to me. And they all happened to be within science and they all happened to be within environmental or marine science. I read these course descriptions and I was like yes, that's me, that's me, that's me, that's me.
Claudette:And that led to a science degree which, if you had told me that I was going to do a science degree, I would have absolutely swore black and blue that that was not even humanly possible. I was not science-oriented, I didn't think I was. And so there I was, mature age student, doing a Bachelor of Science Ecology actually and absolutely loved it. I found my people, I found my content. I found a whole new world. That, basically, was the start of that part of my life, and I worked as a research assistant at university. I was running tutorials and I was doing volunteer work at the aquarium and all of a sudden, my whole world just opened up and that led to a lot of the things that I ended up doing.
JD:So when it's right, it's right.
Claudette:When it's right, it's right.
JD:Yeah, so I was going to ask you was the study hard? It sounds like it wasn't. It sounds like you just embraced it and the energy was there for you and it just clicked yeah.
Claudette:Well, the study was hard because it was a lot of science that was unfamiliar to me and so I would go to sleep. I had to do chemistry and that was ludicrous. The thought of me doing chemistry was absolutely ludicrous, and so I would actually fall asleep with a textbook on my chest and wake up and do it all over again, and the amount of hours that I studied this course was you know. It was out of this world, but I managed to scrape through with a pass. I think I got a pass in chemistry. So it was. You know.
Claudette:I look at that poster on your back wall where it says grit, and I have to say it was grit and bloody determination, sheer bloody mindedness, that actually got through, got me through a lot of these really quite difficult topics, and it made me realise that you know when they say that you can do anything you set your mind to, I'm sure that's got some parameters around it, but seriously, if you really want to do something and you put in the time and the energy and the brain power, I reckon you can actually have a really good crack at some of this stuff that you don't reckon you can. Yeah, I talked about it in my episode on Mindset.
JD:I did an episode specifically focused on that and I said the same thing. Basically, humans are incredibly resilient and capable to do things well beyond their expectations and often the limitation is our belief in ourselves In fact, largely the limitations that belief in ourselves. Beyond physical constraints, you had an end game in mind and clearly that was the energy that got you through that stuff, you know, through the stuff you didn't want to get dragged into there, so you knew the destination.
JD:It was about getting through that journey, that hill so fantastic you did. I want to switch over and start to think about and talk about Ocean Youth, which is, I think, kind of the core topic of this podcast, because of the importance of that mission. Again, I mentioned in the intro we were talking about this 10 years ago or maybe nine years ago as this thing was being born, and I remember you and I in discussions when you came into a call one day and said, ocean Youth, that it was this brilliant new spark that you had in terms of how you were going to mobilize. So, looking back over the decade of this organization, can you share with our listeners what is it, what's it all about, what's the mission and how did you get here?
Claudette:So Ocean Youth is about empowering young people to make and take choices and actions that have a positive impact on our ocean. It came about because when I was working at Sea Life Conservation Trust so I was running the conservation programs at the Aquaria, sea Life, aquaria Sydney, melbourne, sunshine Coast and Auckland and I was getting a spate of emails and inquiries from a particular demographic. It was this high school sort of early university age person who was basically writing to me with a lot of anxiety about what was happening in our ocean and in our environment more widely and wanting to know what they could do personally. What can I do to make a difference? And I thought this is really interesting. It was about that 2014 mark, where plastic pollution in the ocean and climate change were becoming really quite mainstream issues and these young people were growing up in surround sound, with some of these existential crises coming to the fore and with no information about what was being done about it. Nothing really was being done politically, and so, therefore, it was like, well, what can I do? I can't just sit here and go down this trajectory. So I ran. I thought, okay, well, what can I do here? I'm in a position to be able to try something.
Claudette:And I ran a couple of focus groups with some 15 to 16 year olds and just sort of asked them what was going on for them. And, sure enough, they felt as though they lacked a voice. Their voices weren't being heard. They didn't really have the confidence to know what to do, let alone what to sort of tell their peers and families and communities to do. They felt really quite helpless. But they knew that. They felt really angry and passionate about this particular issue and I thought, wow, when you get them together, they are very, very powerful. In fact, I get goosebumps just thinking about it. And so I realized, okay, this was a very underserved demographic we were getting. You know, it was a garden projects at primary school and if you were so inclined you could do a virus science at university, but there was nothing really in between for this demographic and I thought, okay, this is it.
Claudette:It just also coincided with the fact that I was trying to target this group called Ocean Elders and you know this story, john. So we were Ocean Elders. It was quite an influential group of ex ministers and prime ministers and you know business, very successful business people and very rich people. And so I was thinking how do I tap into this network to try and get some of our turtle work funded and some of our shark work funded? And whilst obviously there was, you know, the universe playing its role of planting seeds, and as I was having this shower moment, thinking how do I get to Ocean Elders, ocean Elders, ocean Elders, and I went, oh, they've got to hand the batten over. Like, who are they going to hand their wisdom and knowledge over to? It's got to be the next generation.
Claudette:I wonder if Ocean Youth is available on crazydomainscom. And so therefore, sure enough, ocean Youthorg was available, and I could not believe it. So this was all happening around the same time. So clearly the universe was guiding me in this direction and that's how, literally, how it came about. I registered the domain, then I ran these focus groups as I was getting these inquiries from these young people through, and it all kind of was very organic from there.
JD:And listeners. I have to tell you that to be with Cordett during that period and to see that spark, that imagining, that vision of what she had back then, of what this could be, was just to be around, it was quite special. To be honest with you, it was quite remarkable. Ocean Youthorg still exists as the domain. We'll share it in the show notes as well, but if you want to find out more about the organization, that's a great place to start. I was actually poking around the site this morning just having a look at what's up there, and there's some great stuff. Claire, can you share given that we're approaching a decade, I think, of Ocean Youth I might be right it can you share the things that you're most proud of? What have you achieved? What are the highlights of that decade?
Claudette:The highlights have been many, so it didn't take me very long to build a team of allies within the aquarium who wanted to be involved, and so I had a lot of the guest experience staff or the education staff within the aquarium who were volunteering to be part of the program. We created a sort of a just shy of a year long program where they would come together, the young people would come together and we would guide them through some skills stuff. So all of the things that they felt like they didn't have confidence in. You know, knowing how to make a difference, how to tell your story, communication skills, how to put an event together. If you wanted to influence your community, how would you put an event together to bring them together to have this discussion? So some of these you know skills building activities, but also whilst releasing rescue turtles on beaches and coming in and learning about the animals that they cared so deeply about. And so it was this process of bringing them in, connecting with them, connecting with each other and culminating in a pitch fest. And I think well, I know for sure that every pitch fest across the different sites, we were all in tears every single time about what these young people were capable of as far as finding solutions to some of these huge challenges that even you know. If supposedly, we have a lot of the solutions, we're just not implementing them.
Claudette:Some of these solutions, but also the passion with which they felt they wanted to implement some of their solutions, it was there are no words to express what happens when a young person comes before you and just blows you away with what they're capable of coming up with, and that in itself is like the fuel that just kept us going.
Claudette:Because, to be honest, the challenge in all of this is trying to find funding to keep us all going, because I think people have a. They don't really understand the value of education, what education can unlock, the potential, the solutions, the change in trajectory, the difference in voting power you know all of these things are changed by education. Yet you know, trying to convince funders and so on of the value of that, a lot of that is intangible, and so we have had challenges with funding, but you know we still maintain we can support our young people, no matter how much funding we have or don't have, and it's what they need. They need people who have their back, who are on their side and who want to support them, as they want to go out and make change, and that's what we've done, and it has blown me away from DOT to see these young people just go into full flight. It is, it's beautiful.
JD:What an incredible, incredible result.
JD:So I did have a chance to meet some of these folks in the early days when I was engaging with you, and I've obviously been well, not obviously, but I've been regularly been following their updates on social media as well, and if I park the conservation piece which I'm not going to, but if I park that, I just thought about those individuals. You've got the leaders of the future there and I love the work that you're doing in terms of building those other incredibly vital skills that they're going to need to have the impact on the world that they need to have. I think rounding that out in terms of leadership skills and presentation skills and storytelling skills and so forth is incredible, and so it is quite remarkable that when you bring that all together around conservation, the leadership traits, the energy and passion and the mission itself, it's such a great situation. When you think about the state of our oceans today and the situation that you project in the future, I'm curious are we getting better or worse, and what are you most worried about in terms of our oceans?
Claudette:It's very difficult to talk about, because people don't like hearing scary news and we always want to end with hope and we always want to end with a happy ending. The story with our ocean is dire. It took millennia, more than millennia, hundreds of thousands of years to get the ocean to you know, it's vast. How could we possibly be impacting upon the ocean? It is so vast, so deep. It is beyond our capacity to influence change. It's just going to be what it always was and it's not the case On every measure.
Claudette:We are not just intervening, but we are transforming. We are emptying it through overfishing. We are heating it up through climate change, which is resulting in changes in pH. You know we're absorbing a lot of the carbon and it's changing into carbonic acid. So we're acidifying the ocean. We're heating it up, we're emptying it out, we're creating dead zones. You know these have significant impacts on currents and Gulf streams, which affect our weather systems. We are negatively impacting upon the thing that enables us to survive. It is a story that is. It's scary to hear and it's scary to tell. However, we all need to hear it because we all need to know that every single one of us can make different choices to make different outcomes, so it's not good. The ocean is our life support system. It is what and it creates the weather, it gives us oxygen, it supports billion plus livelihoods and it is in a bad way and deteriorating.
JD:It's. It's usually put that way. It's so easy for all of us to put out of sight, out of mind. I think you know. You turn the tap on at home and you get fresh water, and it all seems very straightforward. You can go to the supermarket and buy your fish and and you see food and there's no issues there. So so right now, for me it's not inconvenient. The world's fine, so good.
JD:I think what's brought it home for me in terms of the reality check is living in Asia now for the last three years and certainly traveling Asia for the last three decades.
JD:To be honest with you, I was recently in a in a beach resort gorgeous beach resort, a few hours south of Mumbai and India, and and you would look at the sprawling breeches in front of you and it was a resort location, so you expected it to be pristine. But I recall getting up very early in the morning to go down to the beach with the intention of going swimming and and from a distance the beach looks superb. But the minute you got to the waterfront to step into the water, it was refuse of plastics and and just junk, and I was staggered, in this area so remote from from dense population that there was just so much garbage coming being washed in from the ocean nearby and not not obvious, and so I think it's a reality check for everybody to really take a good look at what's below the surface and try and understand better that what's below the surface.
JD:And I, I I don't want to pretend that I fully comprehend the implications it has on the chemical balance or the impact on the life as it is, but certainly I think the sense is there that that it's not the way that it should be and the harm we're doing is is significant for the benefit of our listeners. You know, if they, if they could walk away from this podcast with committing to doing just one thing like one thing that they could do or stop doing or change in the way that they live, what would that one thing be for it?
Claudette:I look. There are obviously lots of things that we can do, but I think it all comes back to asking yourself a question when you buy something anything a coffee, a takeaway coffee, a takeaway meal, a pair of jeans, a new widget for your house, whatever it might be thinking about what's going to happen to that product when it no longer works, no longer fits, when you're finished with it? Where does it go? What is it going to be used for next? And I think if you think about everything that you do, it can get. It can get hard before it gets easy.
Claudette:So if you think about where is this thing, no matter what it is going to go, once I'm finished with it or once it's broken or once it's ended, you might start to make different decisions. So when you're buying a coffee from your local cafe, you might actually start to bring your own takeaway coffee cup because therefore, you've got minimum impact. When you're bringing your own cup, they fill it up and take it away and you're done. You'll use that over and over again. Similarly, for reusable takeaway containers, there's a movement happening where you bring your own takeaway containers to the takeaway shop and then bring it back, and you don't have to do the whole plastic thing.
Claudette:So I think, just having a little bit more consciousness around our purchasing about where is this thing going to go once I'm finished with it, done with it, broken, whatever, in order to start to make some different decisions about it, you might actually start to think, well, actually, do I really need that thing? Or if I really do need that thing, can I buy a thing that it might come into another life once I'm done with it? So I think if we all start to be a little bit more conscious around our staff that we're consuming, we might start to think a little bit differently about what we consume and how we consume it and the types of things. It might spark this innovation around a circular economy, which is becoming more and more, I suppose, mainstream, because more people are starting to think about their staff and what happens to it once we're done.
Claudette:I walk out on the street here and you'll see there's a washing machine across the road. If there was a washing machine on the street in some of these countries that are resource constrained, that thing would be the dismantled in every single part, used for something else or fixed and put in someone's house. Here we are just chucking our stuff on the street Does my head in, and so it's like, okay, well, let's start thinking about its end of life before we even purchase it. We might start to shift some of these markets.
JD:Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I know this thing packing materials using mushroom materials and biodegradable materials and so forth.
JD:I think that's a really good thing to do as well I can see a habit that I've adopted because of the work I did with you and the consciousness that you raised in me is that often you'll buy beers and the slabs are in a plastic holder that holds the cans together. Anything that has plastic and rings today plastic bags and so forth I'm super sensitive of, so I cut them up so there's no rings before I put them in the waste, because I've seen so many pictures of dolphins are what it would be these things wrapped around their mouths and that's killing them. So it's a little thing to be conscious of. But I think you're right. I think it's all about just that moment of awareness when you're buying stuff to think about it, but also when you're getting rid of stuff, what's the most, what's the safest way that I could discard that plastic bag or that carrier or that package that I know it's not going to end up wrapped around some animal in the ocean later on?
Claudette:Don't assume that it's a yeah, there was a spate. There was a spate of weedy sea dragons here just off Botany that were all wrapped around in the elastic parts of masks all those disposable masks that were being. They ended up in the ocean and they're getting little weedy sea dragons getting wrapped up in them, devastating.
JD:And he wouldn't think about masks. He's thinking about masks as being a threat to our ocean wildlife and never even crossed my mind. I can tell you. Here in Singapore, elastic bands elastic are used for takeaway meals on a regular basis. I've made it my mission, as I'm doing my walks around Singapore, to pick up elastic bands wherever I find them. I now have a massive rubber band ball that just gets bigger every day because I just keep collecting more of them. It's kind of fun, but it's another good way to get these things off the street and let them not wash into the waterways and so forth.
JD:So I think again that consciousness, just to have it in the back of your mind, whether it's sea conservation or land animals, frankly, we're doing a good thing by doing that. I want to come back to the group that you've assembled and one of the observations I made, which is particularly interesting to me, given I've got such a strong focus on diversity, is that the bulk of the volunteers I've met and seen and observed in your organization are female. So I'm curious is that right? Am I seeing reality and do you think there's a reason for that?
Claudette:It is right. We are very aware that we have our own diversity challenge because we've estimated between 90 and 95% of our participants and ambassadors are young women and we've thought about how we thought that having lots of young girls in would bring the boys but instead it just brings more girls. Because we think biologically and I'm sure there's evidence out there to suggest women take on that caring, nurturing role. And I think, in this trying to fix the environment, women naturally get it. They naturally it appeals to the natural instinct to want to take care of the place that sustains us and it's that caring, nurturing role. And we will be trying to bring more of the mechanics and the STEMI stuff, the engineering stuff, to the program and maybe that will bring the boys.
Claudette:But at the same time, we're quite proud because I know there's a lot of programs that are, you know, a lot of STEM programs particularly targeted to women in order to try and get women into the sciences. We have it. Naturally they're coming to the marine sciences and the environment sciences very naturally. And so you know, do we need to be conscious of trying to balance out our diversity challenge? I'm not so sure, you know. At the same time, we've got really, really activated young, smart women who are going forth and literally changing the world. So, yeah, we have a diversity challenge and it's working for our planet.
JD:It may not be bad right, it might be a good thing. I'm just jealous. I mean in the infrastructure space, in the mechanical, electrical engineering spaces and the compute spaces. In my role, I'm desperately keen to balance gender diversity and we've been working on it for as long as I can recall, certainly the last six and a half years at Amazon. It's been a major focus for me as a leader in the organization. We're hovering around 30% today in terms of female representation across my organization and it's been hard work. We've had to do some remarkably clever things in terms of promoting the sense that this is an environment that's welcoming for diversity. So I'm just jealous of what you've achieved. It's fantastic. I'm just thinking about how I can learn from you and I will no question about that.
Claudette:But I just wonder if it is a problem if we have male-orientated industries or roles and women-orientated, like naturally-oriented roles and industries. I don't know when this became this mindset that we have to have gender diversity, maybe in areas that probably naturally should, and it might be a way to stop those male dominant more, to break those ceilings where women can actually pursue higher leadership. But as far as across industries goes, there might be this natural tendencies for certain genders to go to certain industries. I think it's not so bad as long as we're not stymying career progression or wage equality or things like that, because I sometimes wreck my head thinking how am I going to get more boys into the program? But at the end of the day, is it a problem? It may not be. You're absolutely correct.
JD:In our industry. Certainly, we do believe that diversity is important in terms of having well-rounded thinking, real rounded innovation, and we also want to create an environment that's welcoming. So I don't want to have an environment where 2% of my organization is female and they feel uncomfortable about the environment. So I want to make sure we've got a good representation. But you may be right that there's just a natural gravity to certain roles and genders and certainly, again, it's working for you, so why change it?
Claudette:And, frankly, the boys are missing out.
JD:You're working with some incredible young women and credible leaders and so forth. So if you're listening to the podcast and you want to get involved and you're a young man you want to get involved in a group that's changing the world and is incredibly dynamic and interesting reach out to Claudette, don't miss out. All right, I want to change tack a little bit, because we've talked about half of your life, which is incredible, but I think the other half of your life is pretty incredible as well, and I mentioned in the introduction, claudette is working at Rivendell School, working with children with mental health issues, in education and science. Can you share a little bit of what you're doing at Rivendell?
Claudette:I became a science teacher at Rivendell, which is a special school for kids with acute and chronic mental health challenges, last year. I find it interesting that I've landed here and at first I thought it was because of the environment that the school sits within. We're on the water, there's mangroves, it's incredible. It's got a very strong, you know, cool factor for those who love our nature. But actually, the more I work with the kids, the more I realize that there's a whole other world that I'm finding passion within. And it's always gravitating to the next generation, to young people, because I feel a lot of empathy for young people at this moment in time. It's a very, very, very challenging time for them. You know, we've got social media, we've got environmental crises, it goes on and on and on. Inequality and being a deeply empathetic person, I just find myself gravitating towards these young people and I see young people who are facing all sorts of challenges in their lives and I'm finding it quite invigorating and just opening up again, cranking open my mind to a whole different way of thinking about education. I suppose it seems as though many, many, many more young people are being diagnosed with something or other or experiencing a mental health challenge in their lives. I know that the Mission Australia Youth Survey, which is one of the biggest surveys that Australia does around youth what's important to young people and environment, mental health and inequality are the top three challenges or issues that they're concerned about, and this is from 19,000-odd young people. For anyone who works with young people, trying to get them to answer a survey is nigh on impossible. The fact that they've got nearly 18,000 to 19,000 that fill out this survey is miraculous and consistently these top three are on their radar.
Claudette:I can see a connection between all three of these things when I'm working in this space. I can see that they're ungrounded, they're untethered, they're often coming from very risk-averse family situations and so they haven't had the same upbringing as I have. That freedom to explore out in the wilderness, going for a hike, going into the ocean, all of these things. These are natural, what I would think would be normal everyday things. When we first took our Ocean Youth Kids out snorkeling, most of the kids came from Sydney and had never had a mask on their face to look under the harbour, under our beaches.
Claudette:That is the case with these kids when I want to take them outside to do a lesson outside in the beautiful bush, it's like eww, I don't want to go outside. There's bugs or they're just very, very detached from these beautiful grounding places and I'm just so curious to see A where the nexus might be between connecting these young people with nature and improving mental health outcomes. I think that's what's sort of driving me to this place. But as I go along, I'm learning all about these diagnoses autism and ODD, which is Oppositional Defiance Disorder, and all of the things that are affecting many, many of our young people. So I originally went into education to try and figure out what the curriculum was being taught within science, to understand how to incorporate more environmental science, marine science. But it's taken me on this path to this mental health path where I can see how much of a different impact I can have to a demographic that I hadn't really considered before, and it's actually mind-blowing how interesting it is.
JD:It's interesting to hear you talk about it in the sense that at the beginning of how you described this, what was going through my mind is that working with these children could be advantageous to your other mission. But in fact, what I've come away from what you just said with is that your mission in terms of sea life conservation may be advantageous to these youths to help them develop perspective, to help them break through the boundaries that they've got and to see the world differently and immediately. I'm drawn to the idea, like the notion in my head. How do we make that broader? How do we get the education system in general to take advantage of that marriage of understanding the world and the world?
JD:that we're in and having that enrich their learning experience, enrich their perspective and so forth. And I do think, gosh, you're onto something in terms of that trifecta, that you talked about the three topics, because I think our youths are so often, because of social media and all the things that we've got available to us in terms of entertainment, are quite shielded from the world.
JD:And I think about me as a youth and I suspect you as a youth entertainment was getting lost in the bush somewhere or going out the back paddock or doing whatever, and so you're well, or hopping in a canoe and going on the river which I talk about in my first podcast, so that awareness of the world outside was very rich. Now it's kind of lived through a screen somewhere and I can see where that insulation has come to play and that loss of perspective is happening. So I've got a really fascinated now about the bringing together those three topics and that positive impact that that could have.
Claudette:Yeah, and I'm very lucky actually that I've got a principal who is similarly, is passionate in similar areas, and so he comes from an environmental science background as well, and so we're talking about, you know, all sorts of things that we can do on the grounds to bring nature to the kids, to bring indigenous learning to the kids, because the more I go on this journey, the more I take, the more I deeply respect our First Nations people and their ways and their respect, for you know how to live well on a very sensitive land, and I just want to incorporate that more and more into into our school environment, and there's a lot of support for that.
Claudette:But I think the time is right. You know we've got the UK that is now prescribing vitamin K or vitamin N, as in vitamin nature, to actually prescribe nature time for when you're feeling mentally unwell. We intuitively know that we need this, but not all of us are intuitively good at getting it, and so now it's being prescribed as a medication. I feel like we're in a really interesting time in this place. The nexus between mental health and environment, or nature time it's. I think it's going to take off.
JD:Good it needs to. I think the pandemic, for me, brought that home very deeply. And, speaking personally, you know, during that period it wasn't unusual for me to be sitting in this office here for 12 hours a day, literally not even getting out of my seat, because everything was a meeting. And I got to a point where I observed my own situation but also observed the situation of my workmates and my own teams, and I could see the same thing. And so the little nuance or little shift that I made in how I operated was I started introducing walking meetings, where I actually put a headset on and go outside and walk and do my meetings.
JD:I still do my meetings, but I would tell my staff and my stakeholders when you're talking to me you might find me out by the bay or you might find me on a track because I need to get out and do something. And I do recall one afternoon where I said to my wife I've got three more minutes to go, I'm going to go for a walk, and 14Ks later, somewhere in north of Singapore, I ended up. I called her and said well, I don't worry, but here's my coordinates Get in a car and come and meet me. We will have dinner up here because I've gone so far away.
JD:Anyway, a little thing, but I think from a health perspective, I see that I see the correlation there in terms of what you're doing. It makes a lot of sense. So I think, again, it's magical to hear how these two very strong passions within you are coming together and forming a unity that's going to probably drive even greater impact. So I think that's fantastic. I want to share, go through a couple of questions where we can share a little bit for our listeners in terms of lessons that you've learned. I think the first question I want to ask you is along that journey that we've talked about, in whatever area, what's been the most significant hurdle, what's been the most significant roadblock that you've encountered and how did you overcome it?
Claudette:Oh my gosh, there are so many. Trying to start an NGO from scratch is not for the faint-hearted. I think there are so many, but I think a lot of the time is my own self. I have learned that I'm very stubborn. But there's this thing about not being able to ask for help, and I think when you are doing hard stuff, the one thing you do need to do is surround yourself with supportive people who will help you or take some of the load off or find a way to support you so that you are feeling supported.
Claudette:And I don't think I've done that very well. And so a lot of the time I felt like I'm carrying this big burden single-handedly and I have to do this all myself, and it's actually been really energy inefficient. I've burnt out I can't tell you how many times. But also, you know, your confidence takes a bit of a kick when you don't get the results that you're after because you're trying to do too many things by yourself that no human can do. It's taken me a long time to kind of start to learn that lesson. I haven't learned it properly yet, but I think the more energy I don't have as I get older, starting to realise actually, you know what. You're not meant to do this by yourself. I should have been smarter very early on about asking for help.
JD:I do recall you and I having a conversation very early after you and I met in terms of what we were doing you were doing with the organisation then, and I think I don't feel special, by the way, I think it's very common. I see it in the corporate environments as well. We all like to be the hero, you know, with the cape that gets everything done by ourselves. But there's a reality there and I think at the time the conversation you and I had was you know, you've got people around you who've signed up to work with you. Sometimes it's a gift to give them the problem to solve. Sometimes you're actually giving them an opportunity to shine, and so you know, that's one way to maybe address that thinking pattern that you have and I'm as guilty as anybody, by the way, in terms of wanting to do it all myself. So, you know, got to catch myself doing that too, but I think that's the lesson I've learnt is that sometimes I'm actually holding back on giving somebody else the opportunity to shine by trying to solve a real problem myself.
Claudette:I think delegation is a skill. Or delegation or asking for help, you know that whole realm of building support and knowing how to use that support is actually a skill that if you're not taught or you don't witness it being implemented in the workplace or you haven't seen someone model it really well, you actually you don't know how to do it. You think how, what part do I delegate to someone who may know not as much, not a that sounds really arrogant not know as much as you, but have an idea of the outcome that you're seeking? Sometimes it's really challenging to know exactly what to delegate and how.
JD:Yep, totally. Again, I've been there. I can relate to everything you've just said in terms of that fear of, if I give that piece off, a thank you note, get it done. If they don't get it done, is it just going to end up back in my lap and am I going to be behind? Is it you know that old, it's quicker to do it myself, kind of thing that comes in. But. But there's a, there's a reality around scale and what you're trying to achieve is so big and so incredibly important. It's going to be uh, that's going to be a perpetual challenge for you, for sure, but you've clearly done a lot. I mean, again, if I think about what you've done with Ocean Youth, you've got a lot of people, an army of people who are, who are working there to try to support this effort. So you're doing something right there in terms of that. Claudette, who's um who's?
JD:that the most significant influence on you. You know who do you? Model in terms of your own style or your own approach.
Claudette:I think this, actually I've thought about this and this goes back to that previous question. You know I often I seek out, depending on where I am in my, you know, stage of burnout. I'm not sort of seeking out people who are doing similar things to me and and much further along or in bigger organizations, and think, how would I, what do they do? And you get the front facing, customer facing side of things, but you don't get the inner workings. You don't get the sleepless night stories or the lack of confidence stories or the imposter syndrome stories. You don't get the, the nitty gritties that that are behind the the cupboard, and they're the things that you want to know, because I'm pretty sure we all feel them and myself often feeling it quite alone and just going right, just, you know, pick yourself up and buy, buy the bootstraps and go again. I wish I had, I think, closer models to me, because I've just taken long, longer periods of time to learn things just by sort of estimating what might be going on behind the scenes, because I haven't been very good at reaching out to mentors or to people to go right, what's the deal? This is where I'm at, where are you at? Often it's because I've been caught up in my own busyness where I haven't felt like I could have carved out the time to do that, whereas that's the most important pieces of time you can create is to go and it's part of that whole support network to find out what's working for other people and things that you might learn to do yourself.
Claudette:So I've modelled various, mostly women, who are in leadership roles within the environmental movement and trying to sort of pick their strategic brain by their, their campaigns or their newsletter. You know what they feed you as a supporter and sort of taking that and going okay, well, that looks like it might work. I might take a piece of that and put it into. You know what I'm working on. So it's pretty unsatisfying answer and I'm I think it's something that I it's probably never too late to model somebody that might be. My challenge for this podcast is to go and find, tap someone on the shoulder and go. How do you do what you do? Because I think it's imminently valuable.
JD:All right, listeners, if you've got a similar journey to Claudette and you've got some wisdom you want to share with her, you should reach out to her and collaborate. I was curious. I mean, you know, there are a number of organizations, of course, that have a focus on on conservation and some tremendous leaders in in those organizations is there any level of? Collaboration. Is there any sense of a of a collaborative group at that? I?
Claudette:think they would like you to think that there is, but ultimately it is like crabs in a bucket. As far as there's a finite amount of funding philanthropic funding there's about two or three big, big organizations and I think we can all guess who they might be. They get about 80 percent of the philanthropic donor dollar and the rest have to kind of compete for the remaining. So there's this. There's very much a competitive vibe within the NGO space. I'm sure it's across all industries. It's not just environment, because we are competing for limited amount of funds, whereas I actually do remember getting you know a number of these larger organizations together and going wouldn't we be smarter if you're going to do this piece of the pie? You're going to do this piece of the pie and we can fill in the gaps by doing this piece of the pie. So we're not all duplicating, we're not all being really inefficient with the limited funds. We can all bring each other up a whole another notch because we're using our funds efficiently.
Claudette:I would have thought that would be the most logical thing in the world, but it turns out not. No, we like to just operate in our silos and do what we're going to do and often, again, it's, it's dependent on that donor dollar. You know, the donor sometimes has an idea of what they want to fund, and so an NGO will respond accordingly. They'll, you know, it'll be the the tail wagging the dog. So I would like to think that we could get to a place where we could all collaborate properly, meaningfully, in the, with the view that we do have limited funds but we have such big jobs to do.
JD:I saw a parallel when I work with a cancer-related NGO some years ago. It was the same situation. I think that there's a strong competition for the limited funding that's available, and so we had the same conversation at a time. Couldn't we get these groups together and and have more impact? And I think everybody has positive intent. But again it's the there's a business to run effectively. There's a there's a limited amount of resources available, so so you struggle to do that so again I get it.
JD:I get the the human nature of it all and and the complexity of it all, but yeah, it's frustrating. I can, I can hear the frustration there. I want to move to a standard set of questions I ask all of my podcast guests, and that the first one is that if you, with you know, with your journey, if you could only read one book, you're stuck on an island or wherever, and you could wake at one choice for one book that you would have access to for the rest of your life, what book would that be and why?
Claudette:this was so hard to decide.
Claudette:I was once, before children, a prolific reader and have so many favorites.
Claudette:It was a toss up between Cervantes, quixote Quixote or a book that I've read recently actually called this One Wild and Precious Life, by Sarah Wilson, who was a big advocate for sustainability and for being yourself, you know, your whole self, in this particularly unique period of time that we're living in, and I think that resonated with me because she was calling on all of us to to be bigger people than what we think we can actually be, but just appealing to our humanity.
Claudette:So, you know, just being kind, being brave, living our best lives, and it's not about money at all, it's actually it's. It's about the fact that you are here once for this wild and precious life and all that that entails. So I really loved just the humanity in this book and I think you could read it, you know, at in different moods and at different stages of your life and you'd get new things from it, which is similar. Same for Quixote, actually, which I found one of the funniest books I've ever read, and to think it was read, you know, written in the 16th or 17th 1600s is phenomenal. So I'm going to cheat and say it'd be one of those two I'll let you have two.
JD:That's fine and I'll include those books in the show notes for everybody so you can check them out. The second book in particular, it's got my interest. There's no question about that. I'm I'm going to look out for that one and see if I get my hands on it. Is there a ritual or a habit or a hack that you've employed that's given you? You know it's helped you with your confidence or your effectiveness or your success?
Claudette:I keep positive feedback from things that I've done because I think, as many of us that don't have much confidence. You kind of think, well, I don't know what I'm doing and you kind of jump over that you know wall and go and do what you're going to do. And I think keeping feedback or bits of things that people have told you is not necessarily a hack, but I suppose it's a reminder that I can do what I'm doing. I know that sounds weird, but it's like when you're unsure and I'm constantly unsure, you know, when I'm teaching new content in a classroom or, you know, publicly speaking at an event, I'm always unsure, as most, I'm sure a lot of people are.
Claudette:But when you get the feedback and you go, oh, my god, you, you know, you taught me something that I never knew, or now you made me want to do science or whatever it is, it's like a reminder that, okay, I do. I kind of I'm okay, I'm doing. Okay, I've just read atomic habits recently to try and find some hacks to make me do things that I know I should be doing, like not procrastinating. So if anyone else has any good hacks, I'm open to them because I feel like I'm unhackable. I don't, I don't really know. Not consistent, I'm in, I'm consistent at being inconsistent.
JD:Another great book, by the way atomic habits. I'm glad you mentioned that one, so I don't think it's weird at all. I actually think it makes a ton of sense and a couple of things come out in what you've just talked about.
JD:So one of them is in every episode so far, and I suspect that everybody's so to come imposter syndrome is going to come up at some point. It's actually remarkable to me. I can recall thinking that I was the only person who had that, those kinds of thoughts. Right, and as my career progressed, I've learned that people of all levels, of all levels of success and financial and positional stature and what it's.
JD:The imposter syndrome is rife across all of us and it's incredible that the world's leaders may question themselves in the morning about whether they're in the right place or whether they're going to get found out as a fraud one day.
JD:So I think you know what you're describing is words of affirmation, but words of affirmation which are personal to you, and I think that's incredibly powerful. I don't think that's weird at all. I think that to be able to open something up and go this is my little dose of reality that somebody objectively told me that I'm in the right place, doing what I should be doing, and I'm doing it damn well.
JD:I do think that's a great hack and I recommend it to everybody is if you're getting feedback that is personal and specific and relative to what you're trying to achieve, then have it handy and turn to it. By all means, use that. That's a tremendous asset. It actually actually leads in perfectly to the next question I've got for you, which is that when you've got that insurmountable hill to climb, that that massive challenge you're about to do, where do you get your energy?
Claudette:where's your?
JD:superpower come from what do you? Do to give you that jolt?
Claudette:this is. I think this is my Dutch stubbornness that comes in and I kind of just dig deep and go. So there are a number of situations within my fields that have just been holy moly. How am I ever going to get this thing done? And ultimately I don't even have the words. You know, you kind of you can't literally get to a point where you're just putting one foot in front of the other, so you write you to do list and you're just chipping away and you know, going through the drudge.
Claudette:I loved once someone told me that get comfortable in discomfort, because most of life, when you're trying to change things, when you're doing hard things, is wildly uncomfortable.
Claudette:And that's where I think a lot of the self-care comes in is to understand that what we're doing is really really hard.
Claudette:And it's only taken me all these years, decades in the work, to understand that it's okay to be exhausted.
Claudette:Well, it's not okay to be exhausted, but exhausted is a function of trying to change things that are really really hard or to do things that are really really hard, and to look after yourself.
Claudette:And I think you know it's okay to. You know want to go and do the hard things if you're so inclined and I think we all should be for the things that matter, but that you need to look after yourself while you're doing it, you know, not beating yourself up when it doesn't work, but being caring with yourself. When you've tried a lot of people that I talked to, you know I used to think everyone thinks the same as me. Oh my gosh, we all think the same, and the more I talk outside of my bubble of, you know, amazing people, I realize that that is absolutely not the case, and so what we're trying to do is really hard, and I think fundamentally, it is that need to be kind to yourself and not beating yourself up when things don't go the way you wanted them to or the way you expected them to or the way you were aiming for them to go.
JD:There's definitely a belief that when you are uncomfortable, when you're in that not exhaustive but pressured situation or you're feeling frightened, is often when the good stuff is happening, when you are making a difference or you're making change. You've stepped way outside of your comfort zone. Again, going back to the whole growth mentality, I would argue that it's that what you're doing is, in fact, expanding your comfort zone. You go out of your comfort zone, do something that you never thought you could do, or climb that mountain you never thought you'd climb or it was to be. Then you know you can do that, and so your comfort zone grows with that. The question I've got for you, kind of following on, is what is being good to yourself look like for you? So what is your resilience strategy? How do you look after you?
Claudette:Switching off, which is really hard, but it's getting easier as I get off. Switching off, you know, closing the diary, closing the computer, turning off the phone and not feeling guilty, that you know. I thought I was going to do all this work today. I had a list, you know, as long as my arm, and then if I don't get to it, it's okay. You know the whole world's not going to fall down if I don't get to my to-do list.
Claudette:And more weekends than not now I can actually switch off and not do work for work on the weekends, which I've now more and more, it's my time. It's my time to actually garden or go out in the ocean or spend time with my kids. This has taken a very long time to get comfortable. Usually my poor kids are dealing with a mum that has got so much on her brain that they have to say to me mum, I'm speaking with you because I'm looking at them, but they can see that it's not going in because it's so full of my to-do list that is just clogging up my brain. My poor kids and they know me well enough now to know, okay, yep, she's present. We only have to say things once rather than four times because I look like I'm paying attention, I'm actually not even in the room, so it's as simple as just giving myself permission to take that time out, on the weekends, for example.
JD:I love that and it's tough. It's tough less than one of the podcasts I did recently with Julian. He talked about blocking. He talked about setting boundaries and standing by your boundaries and he quite deliberately blocks time in the morning which is dedicated time for him with the kids, their breakfast with the kids, and then he has dedicated block time in the afternoons where he works on his podcast and his effort, and he is pretty hardcore about those two little periods during each day where he says I don't care if you're even my manager, that period is sacred and it's mine and you don't get to go there. I can't say I've got the same rigor, but I was inspired by that approach and I think it's something we could all learn. Is that ability to block and say no, my time and I bet you do better work, you're more effective after having had that downtime over the weekend as well.
JD:I think that that's the other thing that we kid ourselves sometimes is that we can work ridiculous hours under ridiculous stress and we're still effective, but the reality is we're not, and when we take that break, we come back with a different capability. So again, great, great feedback. Claudette, thank you for that.
Claudette:I wanted to be for people to learn to do this earlier, like I'm in my early, very early fifties now, and it's taken me a long time to feel less guilty about this. You know, as we become more connected, I want more people to go. You know what self care means, self time and not feeling guilty, because that guilt of taking the time out can be just as destructive. You know you carve out that time, but you spend the whole time feeling guilty about it, understanding that you are allowed to have some time out in order to be a better worker, more productive, happier, all of those things. Let's learn this stuff earlier.
JD:And that's going to be tough. That's that's our challenge, isn't it? How do we get that message through? I think the work that you're doing with Ocean Youth and the work you're doing beyond the core mission, but teaching them those leadership skills, those life skills, is a place for that. No question about that. Around, around, learning, discipline, learning, blocking and so forth. Gosh, how do we get that into our schools? How do we get our schools to think that way?
JD:Simon Sinek, who's another great auditor that I absolutely love. He talks a lot right now about the impact that devices have had on us and the fact that even when we're sitting with our loved ones at the dinner table, we've typically got the mobile phone in our hands waiting for messages to come through or whatever. And that ability to put not just put it face down, but to actually get rid of it and not have it, even in the same room as you, so that you have the ability to focus on family or on study or on research or just mindfulness, is such a hard discipline to develop because of the expectations around us. But I honestly agree with you is how do we get that message through to our youths, who are bombarded with this stuff even more than we were and give them a sense that there's no guilt in being unavailable. Unavailable is good. It's fine for those periods where you're focused on you and you. It's a great lesson Work to do for all of us, claudette, no question about it.
JD:Second last question I've got for you is I asked you about your superpower, or about that burst of energy that you get, and I get it. You get it from within you and that and that stubbornness, that fire that you have within your own belly to get things done. What's your kryptonite, what is the thing that will actually sap your energy away from you, and what do you do about it?
Claudette:Budgets, talking about money, and it's probably why I still live pay to pay at age you know, early fifties Doing the administrative component of what I do. I realize you know there's there's different people, have different skills and I'm understanding myself more and more that I'm a visionary sort of strategic. You know that, that bigger picture thinking person, so you can't force someone like me to then get into the nitty gritty details of you know the micro accounting budgets and so on of which, as a CEO of you know an organization, you've got to be across everything but it.
Claudette:If I was to offload something, it's all those tasks that require minute levels of detail with respect to money and budgets, and I think that's my drag. Unfortunately, it's a reality of life.
JD:Have you found a way to make it less or have you found a way to manage it?
Claudette:I know I have, I do it and I try and just be patient with myself. I don't know, I think it's just something that I know I have to do. So I just at least try and focus on getting myself into a mindset that is not going to completely just have an internal tante at the thought of doing it, because, you know, we all, yeah, we have to learn to do things that we don't like to do, and I think it's one of them. I don't know, have a big coffee and a piece of chocolate cake, at least to try and make yourself feel a little bit happy whilst you're doing it. But yeah, it's not been a forte of mine forever in a day, and I've had people who have come and helped me with these things, either as a voluntary purpose or voluntary capacity or paid capacity, and that that makes me feel better because I know that someone else is doing a part that I need, but I need to be able to know what language they're speaking. So, yeah, just get on with it.
Claudette:Basically is the. It's the short answer. There's a lot of things that I just have to get on with and get done, but that is definitely one.
JD:I think the lesson for our listeners is that everything's better with cake, Sweet things. That's right Now I can go with that Alright.
Claudette:Last question I've got for you and you've got.
JD:It's a multiple choice. You can either go with question one or we go question two, right? So either have you got a quote that that is meaningful to you, a famous quote that that resonates with you or has some kind of special meaning for you, or, if you don't, is there a bad dad joke? I don't know if the Brad tells jokes or not, but is there a really, really bad dad joke that you can share with the audience? Which one would you like to do?
Claudette:Look, I've got, I've got temptation to do the dad joke. But I actually really think, in the context of this particular chat, and also what I try and do with every single person that I meet, is understanding that every single person can make a difference. It's the Margaret Mead quote of you know, never underestimate the power of a small group of committed people to make change. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has, and it is so powerful because it really really is about us. We created the mess. We have to fix it as individuals. We don't go around as a collective. We go around as individuals that talk to each other and influence each other, and understanding that we can make these choices or those choices is leading us down this path or down that path.
JD:What a great choice and so incredibly relevant to what you do, Claudette. I think it's a perfect quote for you to share.
Claudette:Well, this has been fabulous.
JD:It's been such a great conversation with you. I think you shared some great perspective on this, such a vital challenge for our world and the work that you're doing there. As I said at the beginning, if you listen to this podcast and this is something that you care about we'll make sure the links are in the show notes. It's very easy OceanYouthorg If you know somebody who might be interested in getting involved as well, get them on that site. Get them to reach out. There's contact details on the site as well, but some really great information shared. It's always good to see you. Thank you for making the time to be on the podcast today, claudette, and I continue to wish you so much success with this incredibly vital mission.
Claudette:Oh, such a pleasure to chat with you, as always, john, and thank you so much for the opportunity. I feel like we could sit here with marbles under our mouth talking under the water, but there's so much good stuff to share. But, yeah, thanks, it's been fun.
JD:Absolutely. We might have you back at some point. You can tell us about the summit and, hopefully, the great work you're doing with Ocean Elders. I'd like to be able to tell that story at some point.
Claudette:And the most embarrassing moment.
JD:Do you want to talk about that?
Claudette:When I dropped Valerie Taylor's piece of artwork in our art exhibition.
JD:Oh gosh, Okay, I'm going to save that because that's a story that I think will say for another podcast. It sounds like a good one. Listeners that's one you're going to stay with us for, because that's going to be a great story. All right, claudette. Thank you, buddy. Thank you, listeners. We'll see you in the next episode.
Claudette:Thanks, john, see you.
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