Anika Chabra & Jennifer Siripong Mandel

“Find the quietest person in the room and start there.”

What happens when Root & Seed co-founders Jenn and Anika get together with mics on to interview each other? Lots of storytelling, advice shared, and reflecting on their Root & Seed journey. For our season 6 finale, on the theme of relationships, they couldn’t help but provide a peek behind the curtain and answer the most asked questions from the Root & Seed community. Everything from how their relationship with the business has evolved, to a look at their relationship with THEIR families, and how their own stories have blossomed. “Ask us anything” style, expect a speed round of info, laughs, and reminiscing. Anika shares what she would ask her mom if she had the chance, what her favourite podcast and community spotlights have been since launch. Jenn shares a revealing story about her father that leaves her with a new perspective on Mr. Siripong’s personality... and as our resident conversation expert she helps us understand how to truly get the crowd talking, especially as we enter the holidays.

If you’ve ever been curious about the behind the scenes of Root & Seed, this is an episode you don’t want to miss!

Reminder to rate and review our podcast on Apple - it helps other like-minded people find our pod and grows this beautiful community! If you’d like to tell us your story or chat about your thoughts on culture, family, and heritage, we always love to chat. Find us on social @rootandseedco and subscribe to our newsletter to never miss a Root & Seed moment.

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Episode Transcript

Jenn

We thought the challenge that we were trying to solve was preserving tradition. And it's so much more than that. It's kinkeeping, it's relationship building, it's creating confidence. It's creating resilience, it's reducing cognitive decline, and it's, like you said, creating empathy. It's improving sleep. Who goes into “let's help keep Raksha Bandhan alive” mission, and then all of a sudden we're helping people find purpose in their life. It's pretty amazing. 

Anika

It is amazing. One of the things I love is when you and I don't even see the possibilities, right? All of a sudden somebody wants to feature us and they're from a completely different nook and cranny of the world or corner of the world and we're like, “Oh, that's really cool.You see it through this lens.”

Jenn

Welcome back to Root Seed, a podcast about tradition seekers who are sparked to explore, define and celebrate their family and cultural identity. Mine is maybe not the voice you were planning on hearing, but I'm Jennifer Siripong Mandel, the executive producer of the Root & Seed podcast, and I'm excited today to be our co-host!

Anika

Hi, Jenn 

Jenn

Hi. I'm nervous. 

Anika

I'm here too. So this is our final episode of our sixth season on, Oh my God, has it been a journey? It has been a wonderful season and the theme this season, as you know, being our executive producer is relationships. And we've heard from some incredible guests. Oh my gosh, everything from like Darius who was talking to strangers and helping people to really come out of their shell and understand themselves better all the way to Brittany who's actually launching the week that we are recording this podcast who is in a mixed marriage and her relationship with understanding how to be amazing and kind of guide of her kids who are in like now a mixed family is just so inspiring. You don't actually have to be part of a mixed background to actually really resonate with her story.

But we thought it'd be fun for us to turn the mics on each other and along the lines and the theme of relationships,  is to kind of really ask each other.  Relationships is such a broad theme, but it can, it can transcend so many different things. So, the idea of….what's our relationship, with Root Seed like, what's our relationship with ourselves, with our family. With each other. 

Jenn

With each other, exactly. And I think that's what's special about this theme.

Anika

And I think probably one of the reasons why we felt so confident to do this season and this episode, is because I think that's such a great theme for us to really drill down on what are the things that make us excited about guiding the ship as it moves into 2024.

Jenn

And we've definitely been on other people's podcasts together before. It's not our first time chatting with each other. Obviously we spend all day together with each other, but it was definitely time for me to make an appearance, get out from behind the curtains., I'm not looking forward to hearing my own voice as I have to listen to this and think about being an executive producer.

But it was time. It was time. 

Anika

We've been asked way too many times. In fact, I remember it was season one for sure. But I felt like a couple of the guests were asking us for our stories. 

Jenn

I feel like nobody wants to hear our stories.

Anika

Yeah, no, no. I feel like they're waiting! So here we go.

So question one, um, I'm going to go first. So being an entrepreneur means that you have a bit of a relationship with your business. And to say that that is a point in time, a finite thing that is always the same is…Any entrepreneur that's actually listening to this will know…. that it definitely evolves and your relationship with your business evolves as time passes, as you yourself go through the seasons and the phases of your life.

So my question for you, Jenn, to start us off is how has your relationship with Root & Seed evolved? 

Jenn

Oh my gosh. Well, when we started this, we both said point blank, we are not cultural anthropologists, we are not historians, we are just two people who are going on a journey, and I think that in itself has been an important foundation to have laid at the beginning, to have allowed us to evolve.I feel a lot more confident now saying that I have so much opportunity. To continue to learn about my family when we started, I knew very little about an entire half of my family, and it was a really awkward and kind of scary process to start asking my dad questions about things that we'd never talked about, things that he had never brought up, things that I was afraid he didn't want to talk about.

And now that we've gone through a little bit of this experience ourselves, we have that context in which we can say, these are the things that you should try, these are some tips that we have. It keeps us constantly curious. We also have tons of advisors who we can always go and ask questions about, depending on different religions and cultural and ethnic, and I think it's made us a lot more confident in going forth and putting stuff out there.

Anika

Hmm, that's a good answer. I think for me, if I had to turn the table and mic on myself, which I'm doing. I think the way that I would answer that question is, I'm a launch energy type of person. 

Jenn

Oh, you love the live event. And I love you for that. 

Anika

I love the live event. I love the planning. I love the execution of the launch. When we were in advertising together, I'd get so excited about, campaign launches and getting things off the ground and all the craft and the care that goes into really understanding how you're going to connect with consumers. And I think for me, I think building a relationship, with our business has to be that I need to also accept that we're not always going to be in launch mode. 

Jenn

True. 

Anika

Right? Like we actually have to run a business day in and day out, which means doing the finances, doing the admin. 

Jenn

Oh, but you're so good at it.

Anika

I try.  But bringing back some of those things…it's interesting to think about how we balance and how I balance the excitement I get around launching new things, new products, new events, talking to new people, all those other things with the day to day of the business, which can sometimes be a bit of a grind.So I would say it has evolved. And now we're going into our third year. I have just had to make peace with things and times that it's going to be a day to day grind and I owe it to you and I owe it to our business and I owe it to our community and our customers to make sure that those things are taken care of. And then get really excited about when we're launching stuff. 

Jenn

Launching is fun. But now that you mentioned that, I realized that there is another big element. I have had to experience as being an entrepreneur and that's with change and with risk and with the unknown. And I mean, we both worked for other people.We didn't start off as entrepreneurs and when you're responsible for what is our priority this week or how are we going to pivot based on this feedback or this reality that just got dropped in our laps. I think that's been, a big change for me is my relationship with change and I'm glad I've gone through this because it's fundamentally evolved who I am as a person.

Anika

Mm hmm.  I'm slightly laughing in my head because you told me that you told me how you don't like “change”, like new cars!!

Jenn 

I just changed my phone. It only took me 18 months. I pick and choose my battles.

So I came into Root & Seed knowing that there were big gaps in my personal history. You told me about your mom and how you wanted to end the secondary grief in other people after a loss of a loved one. And that's when I realized that I, as a product of assimilation, just never was given the opportunity to learn about half of my family. As we  get into our next topic, I think it's fitting to ask “How starting Root & Seed changed our relationship with our families and with our identities, with our culture, with ourselves.”

Anika

I'm also laughing because we're in the middle of the holiday season. Oh, so much family! So much family, which can be delightful for us who are kinkeepers, but also very stressful. And as much as we love our families, they also drive us nuts, guys. So I think that's one thing I want to make sure everybody knows. My relationship with my family has evolved to be…. first of all, obviously I had major gaps. I had gaps. I hadn't taken the time to understand my mom's story. But then even when my mom passed away, the first thing I did was ask my dad to write a memoir. So that was really important to me that more was not lost. And I think grief, losing somebody physically is definitely a trigger for wanting to understand your stories better, just as assimilation is in your case, Jenn. I think for me, um, my relationship with my family has evolved so that I'm just more empathetic. I'm more understanding of the nuances and the textures of people and their lived experiences so that I really understand and as much as I can understand, I have empathy towards, the way that they are from a personality standpoint, from an event in their life standpoint, from all those sorts of things.So that's made me a more empathetic family member, more forgiving, more understanding of the differences between myself and other generations. I used to think that my dad, oh, he's so cheap and he doesn't like to spend on frivolous things, and now I've realized it's because of his upbringing, because he came here as an immigrant, because he came here with very little. And that empathy goes further to developing a stronger bond, than I've ever had. So I think for me, it's very much about having that empathy towards my family members.And then compassion for myself on how I work with those more challenging family members. But I remember you and I, Jenn, like, maybe a couple months ago, we even said, like, we're kind of in the business of building empathy between people. And I think the more you understand somebody and you take the time to really understand and listen and understand their narratives and understand their perspectives as they are growing up, I think the more you have an ability to connect with people.

So that definitely has evolved for me and my family. 

Jenn

I feel like a lot of families have. You know, one or two stories that loved ones always tell. And I know my family was like that as we've talked to our community. We've heard a lot of people saying, Oh, yeah, my father always tells the same three stories.And these questions have opened up the opportunity to ask different questions and has motivated people to think about things other than the standard two funny stories that they always tell I think that's something that's been really important for my family is like even now my children are curious. Yeah, my whole family. We've we've like broken the seal of talking about stories and before it was almost like do we even want to get in there now like I ask a question and they're right into it and I love it because one of the questions in our Memoir deck is What did you want to be when you grew up? such a simple question! Nobody ever talks about that and my aunt who's a librarian and an incredibly successful woman she was like, I really wanted to work in computers and back then like in the 70s  she's was a high school teacher and as a woman you'll never work in technology and that decimated her confidence and my daughter was overhearing it and she was just like, what? How could that even be possible and just having these conversations hearing your own family? Think about the past and how their future essentially changed because you know their lived experiences. It's so great for families and then the younger generations to hear that and the older generations to remember they were motivated for something more.  

Anika

As you know, for Thanksgiving this year, for Canadian Thanksgiving, because we're recording the week of American Thanksgiving. I had a card that was at everybody's place setting on our dinner table, and we had 17 people there, mostly relatives.My daughter had brought her friend from university, so there was one person. But she was participating just like the rest of us, which was fun. It was amazing what I learned. Like you were saying, what I learned from it. My son, who's 16, his question was, what is a tradition that we used to celebrate that we don't anymore? And I'm thinking he's gonna have no answer to that or it's gonna be something very, I don't know, generic. And he pulled out the fact that he and his sister don't do Raksha Bandhan from a traditional standpoint anymore and I was like, oh wow it's really cool for me to know that he has as a memory and frankly that he can bring that back and I can bring that back and it'd be familiar to him so I thought that was really interesting.  And then there were a couple of people around the table frankly and because some of the questions were a little triggering, and they answered them to the best of their ability, and obviously we went really briefly over each of the answers, it wasn't like the entire dinner. But what was really interesting was that it gave me a little bit of an understanding, again, back to empathy, an understanding of what might be a story or a time in someone's life that wasn't actually pleasant, and so I can always circle back, and now it just gives you a little bit of a window into each person's soul, which is I think is so cool.

And I loved that whereas there was like 11 year old there all the way up to my dad, who's an 82 year old. And so it was, it was very enlightening. 

So Jenn. Yes. Next question is for you, or for you to start off with at least, um, you are a resident authority on the ways to yield better, more meaningful connections and conversations. And so one of the things I was wondering is how has your relationship with the core mission at Root & Seed changed or not? 

Jenn

I love this question, because we started off feeling like Root & Seed was not a solution. We realized there's a challenge in the world, and we're a challenge based organization. And we thought the challenge that we were trying to solve was preserving tradition. And it's so much more than that. It's kinkeeping, it's relationship building. The conversations that we're creating within families because of these conversation prompts, it's creating confidence. It's creating resilience. It's reducing cognitive decline and it's like you said, creating empathy. It's improving sleep. Who goes into a “let's help keep Raksha Bandhan alive” mission and then all of a sudden we're helping people find purpose in their life. It's pretty amazing. 

Anika

It is amazing. I think you've covered it actually. I don't know if I'd add much more outside of one of the things I love is when you and I don't even see the possibilities, right? All of a sudden somebody wants to feature us and they're from a completely different nook and cranny of the world or corner of the world. And we're like, that's really cool. You see it through this lens. And the way that people actually come back to us and describe our platform using our words, but also using their words and their lived experience and their perspectives. That to me is the most satisfying thing. And that's the thing that keeps me going because to your point, we didn't come up with a product, we had a mission and then whatever products and tools and inspiration and ways at it. We're going to leave no stone uncovered as we go through that. And so I think that's really cool, right? Because that keeps us going. 

Jenn

Totally. And just one point to bring this back down to the family side - as we've been going through this experience, we've heard a lot of feedback. And we've seen a lot of families use the cards in different situations. And one of the cool things that we learned that was pretty unexpected was how to start the conversation. Because so many people are like, oh, yeah, the cards are a great permission. But how do I even bring them out? And sometimes it's not a big affair where you say okay, everybody gather around we're gonna have a conversation now. Sometimes it's just finding the quietest person in the room and that happened to be you know my uncle Bob - he was always there, and he was always lovely, but he was never a part of most of the conversations. And so, I decided to just go over to him, and he was so happy to chat with somebody, and ask him a question. And, worst case, they walk away, but luckily he was open to answering a question. I found a lighter one just to get him talking, and the Dig Deeper questions were a huge help. But, my quiet uncle is my new favorite person in the family because of this very reason. We start chatting in a quiet corner, somebody else will be like, ooh, what’s Bob talking….what are they talking about? They enter in, they answer the question, they join the conversation. Other people will walk in and tell us the story that we're recounting is wrong, it really happened like this. But it's just, sometimes you just need to start with the quietest person in the room and have a private conversation, even if it is a loud, boisterous holiday gathering.

Anika

See, I knew you were our resident expert. Clearly. Normally we end our podcast episodes with a question from the Root & Seed conversation cards. You know that well, being our executive producer, but instead we had our community submit some, “ask me anything”, or in our case, ask us anything, AUA style.  And we went into Instagram and LinkedIn and we asked people to submit their questions. So it only seems fair that we answer some new questions. So it's our very first Root & Seed official “Ask us anything” I'm going to make a sound now….

Jenn

That's exactly how I feel about this. 

Anika

Okay, here I go, Jenn. So, the first question is for you. Oh, this one is specific. After I ask this question, you're going to understand why it's for you. So, this person is asking, being born in the U.S. and now a citizen of Canada, what Canadian traditions have you adopted into your life and for your family?

Jenn

I've lived the majority of my life in Canada now, and I still don't know what is a Canadian tradition, but I will tell you that having grown up somewhere else. And having now lived in a different country, I will tell you there are things that are Canadian that I will not do. I don't say eh. I will not refer to a hat as a toque. A traffic cone will never be called a pylon in my house. Um, and, Canadian Thanksgiving? No, no. Not a thing? When, when we're in Boston, it's just Thanksgiving. And not American Thanksgiving. It's just Thanksgiving. So, those are my Canadian traditions. Love it. It's folding through to vocabulary.

Anika

Do I say eh? 

Jenn

I think you do. Not often, but you do Yeah. So, Anika, let's get a little bit heavier. From the community, someone asked, if you could ask your mom something, what would it be? 

Anika

This changes all the time. I feel like if I could have conversations with her daily, it would be a different question for sure. So it's not an easy one for me to prepare for. So it's just kind of like whatever comes to my mind at the moment. So it's my mom's birthday coming up on Sunday. And so we're recording this a few days before her birthday. And you know, one of the things, if you've listened to any of the podcasts that I've been on -  I was on one that was about my grief. My mom spent the majority of her life grieving, like she had lost her, her dad when she was, I believe it was 18.

I think I would want to know, I'd want to just, now that I'm in grief, I'd want to know about her relationship with grief and how she kind of dealt with things and how she honored those occasions like her dad's birthday and things like that. I didn't get a chance to really understand her relationship with grief. It wasn't something that was table time conversation. 

Jenn

Another thing you never thought to ask. 

Anika

Exactly. So I think that -  I would ask her just for some advice on how do you honor a person when they're gone? 

Jenn

Lovely. 

Anika

Okay. Back to the light side. What has been your favorite standout moment from the last few years, Jenn. 

Jenn

Oh, gosh. Okay. Root & Seed, when we started, it was hardcore lockdown pandemic. So, the first year, you and I didn't see each other in real life. Root & Seed was born over Zoom windows. And, um, we didn't know what we were going to call Root & Seed. Eventually, we found the name and we knew that the URL was available. We just hadn't secured it yet. I think that is the standout moment because we had to fight everything standing against us to get www. rootandseed. com. We had bought it and then our domain people told us that the people we bought it from didn't have the right to sell it. So, sorry. You're out of luck. And then we went to a negotiator. That didn't work. Uh, it turned out that there was someone who wanted us to just send them an e-transfer to Africa. Cause you know, that's what we're gonna do. In hopes that they transfer our domain. Eventually we got it and you never gave up. You were so confident and you, like, it didn't matter. You, you were like, we've created a brand around this name. This is not a deal breaker. The URL is there for us to get and you just went out and got it. And that's when I realized, cause I was like, that's it! We're done before we even launched. And I knew that standing next to you, even virtually, and your energy, we could do anything.

Anika

We could do anything, and we have done everything. We continue to do it. I do remember that day. I was actually on a call, I remember, and I had to get off the call to like, make the transaction happen. I was like, I gotta go. Something's happening. We're making this happen. 

Jenn

Okay, next question. 

Anika

Yeah, please. 

Jenn

So we've had a lot of podcasts and community spotlights. Do you have a favorite episode or meaningful community spotlight that you love? 

Anika

I feel like this also changes all the time. Oh, there's so many good ones. And then, like, we record something, or we write something, and it's like, oh, this is now my favorite.

Jenn

It's definitely not this episode. 

Anika

This is so much fun. We need to do this more. We need to do more quarterly. Quarterly Anika and Jenn, AUA's. 

I think for me, I mean there's been so many, but Winnie, Winette Sampson had written about her journey to reclaim color in the workplace.

Jenn

Oh, yellow jacket, the blazer!

Anika

And she wasn't talking about …well she was figuratively talking about her skin too, but she was talking about how her aunts and her mother used to wear color and it wasn't about wearing color. They were wearing what they were wearing and, you know, how after the pandemic, she would wear her hair relaxed at work and how she was doing that in a way so that her daughter would not have to face the sort of discrimination and the changing of her own persona as she went into the workforce. Now her daughter is still young, but I just love that. It was very much a quintessential Root & Seed sentiment. And then I would say the two people who I will never forget the actual interview, forget about the actual edited interviews, but Asha Frost and Dr. Jenny Wang, because I cried in their episodes. I’m a bit of a suck. So yes, they let me, they allowed me to cry. And I remember Asha, it was almost like I felt like our ancestors were in the virtual room with us. And for Dr. Jenny Wang, I mean, we were just bringing up so much about generational trauma and microaggressions. And it was just so stirring for both of us. Actually, in fact, both of us cried during that episode. And then most recently we had featured Allisa Lim, who was a woman in her twenties who had made it a mission to go back to Cambodia and plant roots there, even though she had ancestral roots and her elders were from there, but she had never spent more time than actually just a family vacation there. And she's actually moved there and is now reconnecting with her roots. I don't know, I just, she just seems so confident and I think she's made such a bold move at such a young age that I, in some ways, wish that I had done that, so. 

Anika

So at the end of each of our podcasts, you will pull for our guests a conversation card question for them to answer.

Jenn

Yeah. I know you leave it up to chance, but do you have a favorite conversation card question? 

Anika

This is a newer one. Um, so I think the one that I love is, is there a profession or trade that's prominent in your family history? 

Jenn

Yes. And that isn't even in one of our memoir or family decks. Spoiler alert, that's from our workplace deck.

So stay tuned for that. 

Anika

Okay, so Jenn, what was the most surprising, meaningful thing that you learned from using the cards in your own family? Okay, so I told you  I was afraid to ask my dad questions because he's the one who didn't tell us a lot when we were growing up about his history, his culture, his background, and, um, we were testing some questions for the Memoir deck and I decided to ask him, what is the first thing that you bought when you immigrated to this country? And he's a very fiscally responsible person, he's very straight laced. I was not expecting his answer and I love his answer because it has changed my entire perspective on him as a younger human. His answer was a boombox. Like I thought it would be something like a car or blankets, like something responsible and the fact that music and entertainment and joy was so important that that would be the first thing he put, you know, any money from his paycheck into.

I, yeah, it's just changed how I think about him. 

Jenn

Oh, I love that. Okay, off the topic of our cards, or Root & Seed, what are you currently reading? 

Anika

Mmm, so, um, there is a book that I'm reading, it's called Becoming a Matriarch, and when I saw that book, I was like….

Jenn

So much for veering off topic. 

Anika

Oh my God, I know, seriously.

And Nancy Lam, who was on our podcast and in a community spotlight, and we hosted her book launch. She knows this too. I've had a really hard time reading after my mom's passed away because my mom was such an avid reader. In fact, at her funeral, we gave out bookmarks and it was like just such a big part of her life and she was in book clubs and just loved reading.

So it's triggering for me, but when I saw this book, um, it's by an Indigenous and her name is Helen Knott. It's her second book and I just started reading it and I actually cannot put it down. It is, from what I can tell, and I don't know a lot about her and I don't know a lot about the book, but I think it's just, it's going to be really interesting for me to do it obviously through a personal lens, but also through Root & Seed. And I think it is just interesting to think about how she, in the face of loss, has to redefine who she is and then redefine her relationships with her deceased relatives. So it's really, it feels close to Root & Seed, but not really. Uh, and so I think it's going to be interesting for me to kind of unpack it and see if there's some gems in there that we can understand and learn about our community and consumers and humans in general.

And just again, back to the theme of this podcast, relationships, the relationship with herself now that her mother and her grandmother pass away and rewriting that and understanding the narrative and I don't know I think it's that like just seems like it's going to be really cool so I'm excited about like digging deeper into it.

Jenn

Well you have to let us know how the book ends. 

Anika 

Will do, will do. Ooh, this one was definitely a LinkedIn question. Because this is heavy. Um, no, but we love this question and we love the person who asked this question. So I'm going to do a little shout out to her - Charlene. What's your five year impact vision for your work in the world and how can we fuel it?

Jenn

Oh my gosh, I saw this one come in and I was like, need to think about it for a bit. But ultimately I think we've realized as we start to enter the Age Tech world that there's an epidemic of loneliness and isolation, especially with our aging population. And so, that's something that we need to combat. We need to take on ageism. We need to redefine healthcare. We need to inspire intergenerational connection. And I think that is going to take a lot of time, but it's so worth it. 

Anika

Oh, I think so too. The impact is just, it's endless. I love that she's asked this question. You know, I think I'll still go back to our roots. Ending, the loss of tradition for me remains central to what we're doing and you know, a lot of people are like well, do people actually write down traditions and should it be done through storytelling? Whatever you want to call it. Um, I still think that there is a real need for us to claim and capture these stories before they're lost. And I think for me, it really requires that shift in thinking from sort of end of life to like, let's talk about these things now and celebrate them now and do them over Thanksgiving dinner and make it a game and make it fun and make it inclusive.  So that my 16 year old son and my 18 year year old and 82 year old father have the same ability to share wisdom amongst generations. So I think for me, that's really important. And then being really intentional with gatherings. Right? So like, even I was at a girlfriend's 50th on the weekend. It's like, you know, I brought cards and we started talking like I wanted to, but we ended up not having a lot of time, but having the intention behind having more meaningful connection with people I think is important.We have to bring back the joy of oral storytelling. We really do tell more stories. So I would say to Charlene, And she's doing this through her platform. I really, I think she's an incredible ally to us. Um, I would say just keep telling stories. 

Jenn

Totally. What is something, last question, that you wish you knew when we started Root & Seed?

Anika

This is an interesting one for me. I think I, because so much of when I think about Root & Seed and the beginning of Root & Seed, it's like I did a lot of comparing and contrasting to me and you in corporate. I certainly did it to myself. How about I leave it to myself at this point? You can weigh in in a second. But I did this whole thing where it's like when I was in corporate and then now I'm an entrepreneur and there was like a fine line in between like those two phases of my life. And I realized I think I've always kind of been like this…But whenever I've ever done anything, whether it was in corporate and ad agencies or, or in entrepreneurship, you know, like you, I put my heart and soul into things. So the interconnectedness with who I am, how I'm feeling, am I taking care of myself mentally, am I taking care of myself physically, are my relationships (back to the theme of this podcast) in a good place. The interconnectedness of me and whatever pursuit I have is next level. And so I know when I'm like not taking care, I'm having an extra glass of wine a week type of thing, if I'm not at the gym working out, if I'm not taking care of my primary relationships, it shows. And it shows through like my relationship with, again, back to relationships, relationship back to our entrepreneurial endeavor. And I had I known the impact, direct impact of taking care of me physically and mentally with Root & Seed,. it's a good reminder, I think, probably since we're going into the holidays too, to, especially if you're an entrepreneur, but also if you're in corporate, to really make sure you're taking care of yourself because there is such a relationship, I believe, between those two things because I, I'm so into what I'm doing when I do something, there is, it's just like you can't divorce the two.

Jenn

Great advice. 

Anika

That's what I would say. Do you have something? What is something you wish you knew when you started Root & Seed? Some advice for entrepreneurs and budding entrepreneurs. 

Jenn

That success doesn't happen overnight, but on the same token, there are going to be a lot of small wins along the way. And if you don't recognize them and stop to appreciate them, it's a long, hard, tiring journey. Yeah. And you're, you're going to burn yourself out unless you stop and, Yeah. Appreciate. 

Anika

I totally agree. 

Jenn

Okay, so that's a wrap on season six, plus a little look behind the curtain at Root & Seed. We're still having so much fun and we hope you guys are too. So let us know what you'd like to hear in Season 7. We're planning it now and we'll be back in the New Year. Until then, start asking your own questions. Grab a deck of the conversation cards and like we said, go find that quietest person in the room. I think they're gonna really like your company and they're gonna like having a conversation with you.

Anika

Root & Seed is hosted by me, Anika Chabra, executive produced by Jenn Siripong Mandel and edited by Emily Groleau and Camille Blais. Bye for now!