Perfection Not Required: Growing an Online Business from the Inside Out

Ep.26 You Get to Decide What Success Looks Like

May 30, 2022 Lesley Taylor Season 1 Episode 25
Perfection Not Required: Growing an Online Business from the Inside Out
Ep.26 You Get to Decide What Success Looks Like
Show Notes Transcript

You never know someone's true story, the reasons behind the decisions they make...but every now and then you get a peek.  

I loved this conversation with Lesley Taylor of No Recipe Required podcast.  Especially the meat  pie discussion - yum!!  I was able to snag the "recipe" and it's linked in the show notes!  Ok, food aside, I was also super curious about her journey and what led her to leave a high level banking position to contentedly being "not in charge".  It was such a contrast to my previous guests and I love that I get to represent this entire spectrum.  It really truly just comes down to, what makes YOU happy?

Here's some of the things we discussed!  What's your fave?  

  • How much money do you need before you're destitute?
  • Just start playing!
  • You get to decide what success looks like for you
  • What's the price on emotional labor?
  • Recognize your privilege.

Don't forget the meat pie!

For full show notes and for all the links mentioned in this episode go here.

Resources:  Want to know 7 things you can do today to make leaving corporate easier?  Grab it here!

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Jamie Stephens:

Welcome back to a another episode of Breaking Up with Corporate today. I have Lesley Taylor here. And Lesley, why don't you go ahead and just give us a little bit of your background and tell us what you're actually tell us what you're doing today. And then we'll kind of get back into your well back into the backstory a little bit. Okay, well,

Lesley Taylor:

I'm coming to you from Toronto, where we're finally starting to get a little bit of warmer weather, but it's still kind of on the chilly side. And I just this week started a new job in retail, working in a cooking store. And some, some people might say, Oh, well, yeah, big deal with the store. But cooking is my passion. My podcast called no recipe required is all about food and wine and cooking and baking. And I love to cook and bake. So it's like I'm living in Nirvana in this cookware store that's got all the cool appliances and little gadgets and all the tools that you need for cooking and baking and cookbooks. And like all kinds of stuff like that. So I'm like, in a total happy place right now.

Jamie Stephens:

I love that. I mean, I think part of just kind of the journey that we all go through is really realizing that I get to define what success looks like, for me, you know, and it may not make sense to other people, it may not make, you know, logical sense on paper, or whatever, you know, it's like, because I know you came from a banking background and that sort of thing. And it's just like, how did you get that courage to really just just not give a shit, whatever, what other people thought about what you were doing?

Lesley Taylor:

Well, I mean, part of it comes with age, right? Well, once you get over 50, you the amount of like, you know, cares, you have to give, I don't know if you're allowed to swear on this podcast, but you know, the amount of cares that you have left to give or is like minuscule. And so and that can be both a bonus, and can also be a bit of a downfall. Because if you speak your mind too often, you start to become maybe a liability or a little bit expendable, because they know they can't really control you the way they thought they could. And so you can only speak up so often unless you have an exit plan, right. And I can't say that I was really like speaking out or anything like that. But I, I knew in the summer of 2019, that I was really starting to not enjoy the work that I was doing anymore. So even though I was in banking, I wasn't actually doing banking type work, I worked in more of a consulting role. I worked with managers to help them improve their business processes, I did a lot of training and development. So I was teaching people how to improve their businesses, that kind of thing. So I was kind of working behind the scenes, I wasn't in a bank branch or anything like that. But I just kind of was losing the love for it. And I did love it at for a time. But you know, I had a lot of family things come up in 2019. So my mum passed away in the summer of 2019. And then six weeks later, my cat passed away, he was only 10. And so it was just a lot of change. And I just it kind of deflated me. And it's sort of like not the the will to put up with BS in business. I was like, You know what, I just don't want to deal with any of this anymore. So I'm a planner, I've always been a planner, and I love numbers and spreadsheets. And so I put a financial plan together. And I looked at how much money I had saved, how much was in my retirement plan, how much money I would get as a pension. Because luckily, due to the number of years I'd worked in the bank and my age because that you had to be over 55. And you had to have at least 15 years of service, to get a pension and benefits and all of that. So I knew that I was on good footing. And I had a little bit of money that would be coming in even after I retired. But I still needed to run the number. So based on how much money I had, in my bank account how much I had in my retirement account, how long could I afford to live? Before I had to find another job knowing that, you know, I might not be able to find a job doing something that I love to do. My original intention was oh, I'm gonna get into the food industry because I love to cook and I love to bake. And you know, I want to do something in there. So I put my plan together and my financial plan and I knew I had about six months or so of savings before I really had to start like seriously looking for a job. And so I retired February 1 of 2020. And then the whole world shut down a month later. So all those plans that I had to try and you know, take on a new career because all the stores were closed and all the restaurants were closed and like everything that I thought I wanted to do and the whole food industry completely changed like every chef out They had to pivot to doing something new servers all found jobs doing other things, because there was just no work available anymore. So I thought, Okay, well, what am I going to do. And so I knew I was selling my house because I had prepared, I bought a condo. And it was about a year and a bit away from being finished. And I was my plan all along as part of sort of my long term downsizing strategy, because that's the other thing is that I didn't have an expectation that I'd be able to quit my job and continue to live the same lifestyle I live before, I knew I was going to have to make a few changes and downsize a little bit. And I had made this plan a long time ago, because I bought the condo before they even put shovels in the ground, you know, four or five years ago. So I knew that like this was part of an ongoing plan of what I was going to do. So that's what I would say like, for me, it's having that plan and being able to see the numbers in front of me and know that I'm not going to be destitute on the street, or money coming in and all of that. So, as we know, with a pandemic, I don't know if it was the same where you live. But where I live in Toronto, that real estate market is insane.

Jamie Stephens:

Yes. How's the same sense?

Lesley Taylor:

Here, it's like that caught the price of housing, took an initial dip. At the very beginning of the pandemic, I had a friend who sold her house, and she didn't get as much for it as she was hoping to get for it. But within a month, all of a sudden, the demand went through the roof for houses. And so I started working on my house, it's was an old house, it was almost 100 years old. So it needed a lot of work. And so all that time that I wasn't working or doing anything, and we were all locked down. I just spent a lot of time I painted everything, I repaired things, I put a new roof on them on that knee, but I hired someone to put a new roof on the house and a new H vac system and all kinds of stuff, and put my house on the market in September. So right after Labor Day, and I got more money for my house than I ever in my wildest dreams ever expected to get. And so that gave me that little bit of a cushion. And then I moved into my condo about six months later. So I lived in an apartment short term in between selling the house and moving in moving into the condo, but then we still had a whole other year here in Ontario of locked down, like a lot of things were locked down and things were not back to normal. You know, so there wasn't a lot of there wasn't a lot more that I could do. In the meantime, I took a course for entrepreneurs. And I think that was the same course that you took. And in the first one, this was in probably the fall of 2020. And one of the assignments was to create a podcast episode as like podcast episode, like, why would I do that? And so I did it because it was the assignment for the course. And I like

Jamie Stephens:

I'm checking the boxes. Okay, exactly, yeah,

Lesley Taylor:

I'm a good student, I'll do all the assignments that are, you know, all the things that are assigned to me. And, and I found that I loved it. So I started podcasting in January of 2021. And I did about nine episodes. And then I took a little bit of a break. And then I came back and did another seven episodes, and then took the podcasting course in the fall of 2021. Yes. And that's the one that you took. Okay, so I took a course with Kathy in the fall of 2020, then came back and did in the podcasting specific course, in the fall of 2021. And then that's when I started to pivot and change the nature of the podcast now, because before the podcast was more about helping people cook with whatever random ingredients they had in their fridge or their pantry. So I would like talk to people over zoom, because I couldn't meet them in person. And I would say, Okay, tell me what's in your fridge and I say, Okay, you have this and this and this, here's what you're going to make for dinner. And then they would make that thing and they would send me a photo of what they made. And I would post that on Instagram. And that was what my show was about. But I thought you know, I kind of want to change and broaden. So as I said, I did nine episodes, then took a break, and then did seven more episodes. Those seven episodes I did were about wine. And I got a lot of really great feedback from people that they loved the episodes about wine, so I thought, Well, why don't I just broaden and expand the, like the subject matter of the podcast, and talk about food, wine, cooking, baking, some of it would be me alone. And some of it would be interviewing guests. I actually have to say that I much prefer interviewing guests to just talking on my own. Yeah. I like to have people to you know, riff off and stuff. Right, right. So yeah, so I started doing that and now I just like five minutes ago. I'll finish editing episode 19 of season two, I never would have thought that I'd have this many episodes going as of now. So yeah, so that's what I've been doing. And then like I said, I just started a job this week working in a cookware store. And I'm really excited about that.

Jamie Stephens:

That's awesome. So you need to like work out a deal with your new cookwares store about being your sponsors for your podcast.

Lesley Taylor:

Right? I don't have any. So yeah, that's the other thing I should say about the podcast is I have no sponsors. I don't make any money. Oh, yeah, I

Jamie Stephens:

don't either. No. Yeah, cuz I mean, the

Lesley Taylor:

other thing is like the way like I use anchor as my podcasting platform, and anchor has a monetization option if you're in the States, but it doesn't apply if you're outside of the US because you have to have a social security number. So I can't monetize through anchor. I don't know if there's any other way of monetizing. And part of that, too, is I don't know if I want like random ads, or things that I don't maybe believe in and I'm like, Oh, here's an ad for Hemorrhoid Cream. My podcast about food. I'm like, No, I don't want that ad on my

Jamie Stephens:

right. Right.

Lesley Taylor:

So yeah, so being a little bit of a control freak. I'm like, I don't know if I would want to have just random ads on my podcast. So I haven't monetized it yet. But yeah, maybe a sponsor? Who knows?

Jamie Stephens:

Yeah. So what is what is your? I mean, if we can just talk freely, if that's okay with you? Sure. Yeah, your fellow podcaster. Here, you know, what is? What are your plans for the podcast and kind of growing that? And do you have plans to eventually monetize? Or have you thought about it? Or is it just for fun right now?

Lesley Taylor:

Right now, it's just for fun. I haven't thought too much about it. I think before I started working. I had a lot more free time. And I thought, well, I could use it as a way of potentially getting clients, I did do some catering jobs. I did a sit down dinner for a friend and seven of her friends or six of her friends. So a sit down dinner for seven people in the summer of 2021. I also did a more of a barbecue style, like buffet style barbecue for about 15 people for another friend. I bake cakes on condition for people where you know, they said, Hey, I need a cake for this occasion. Can you do that? So I've done a little bit of that. But that doesn't pay the bills, right. And I can only do so much in my own kitchen. At the time that I was doing a lot of my initial catering I didn't have a pet and I have a cat now, so I can't really cook in my kitchen with the pet in here. Like it's just not, you know, he just likes to jump up on top of things and stuff. I'm like, no. So I actually did rent a commercial kitchen space over the holidays because I was cooking some meat pies. So I grew up in Montreal, which is a French Canadian province and province of Quebec. And even though I'm not French Canadian, but lots of French Canadian influences in our cooking. And one of the traditional holiday meals at Christmas is something called tortilla which is a spiced meat pie. So it's you know, pork and beef and all kinds of like warm spices like cloves, and cinnamon and nutmeg and thyme and things like that in it. So I had taken orders for I think I made about 14 or 16 pies. So I rented out a commercial kitchen Adaline isn't actually

Jamie Stephens:

like a pie like in a pie shell.

Lesley Taylor:

And yeah, it's a full size meat pie. You can make little ones as well.

Jamie Stephens:

I was thinking like the little empanadas or something No, no, I

Lesley Taylor:

mean, you could make them that way too. But I made like full size, you know, nine inch pies top crust, bottom crust with this, you know, savory meat filling inside. And I knew I wasn't gonna be able to do it here in my condo. So I rented a commercial kitchen. So there's a church, not far from me, where I volunteer cooking once a week. They have like their community lunch. And so I cook every Wednesday and then they serve the lunch on Thursdays to just any member of the community who wants to come in and have some lunch. And so I started cooking there back in December. And then I asked him I said, Oh, do you ever rent out the kitchen because this beautiful commercial kitchen like it's fantastic. And they said oh yeah, we rent the space out if you're interested. So I rented the space from them and, and made like I said, I think it took me three or four days in total to make 16 meat pies. 16 tortillas.

Jamie Stephens:

Gotcha. Yeah, so

Lesley Taylor:

that's what I did like just for, you know, to keep myself dizzy because I wasn't working. But now that I'm working, I'm like, oh god, I've got to get podcast episodes out. How am I going to find the time to get an episode out if I'm working, you know, four or five days a week, so it's a little bit more challenging now. So,

Jamie Stephens:

yeah. So with your, are you doing your own editing? And all of that sort of stuff is that?

Lesley Taylor:

Yeah, I'm a one person show. So I've had people reach out to me saying, you know, oh, we can do this for you. And this view and this view, I'm like, well, that's really nice, but I don't have any money. You know, I don't have any money to pay anybody to do anything. And it's been a really good learning experience. You know, I've learned some basic editing. I've also learned that you don't really have to edit all that much. Sometimes the arms and ahhs and the little vocal miscues and things that people make, just make it kind of sound a little bit more interesting and natural. So I've kind of given up on using like Audacity to try and edit too much. I just try and go with the raw, the raw feed, and I will take a few things out here and there. But mostly, I just kind of record an intro record an outro. And then just the middle section is the interview that I did with whoever I spoke with that week. Yeah. What about you? How do you what's your sort of approach and how you're doing it?

Jamie Stephens:

Yes, to all of that, I just recently hired a podcast editor that kind of does a lot of the technical work for me. So I just kind of send it over and then have it done. And it's just magic. I mean, I still have to record the end, like the intro and outro. But other than that, like, I don't have to touch it anymore. And the hours that I was spending on it. I mean, it's definitely worth my time. So worth the money. So, yeah, but yeah, no, I did it for a long time to where it was just like, Okay, I'm the bottleneck. And this is like, I gotta like, I think it's good whenever you learn how to do something. So you have that knowledge base. And then as soon as you have the ability to kind of hand that off, if you I mean, it's just like it changes my whole week, because I don't have that like albatross over my head, you know, to where it's like, God, I gotta get this done. I've got to get a speaking up. I've got one to record, but an outro to record. But yeah, so it's like, these sorts of things that just kind of can weigh on you eventually. But

Lesley Taylor:

yeah, the thing that I find the most challenging is, is the finding, finding guests and scheduling and getting people like, Oh, God, who am I going to talk to you this week. And I try and do many in advance, like, I'll do like three or four. And then I'm not sort of racing to get one out. Because I do I release an episode every week. So every Friday morning at 6am, a new episode comes out. So I'm almost finished this week's episode, I just have to put I'm just writing the show notes. Right now. And, and but the rest of it is done. And the lucky thing about this one, so I also have limited my episodes to about 30 minutes, sometimes I'll go up to 40 sometimes could be 24 minutes, but it's kind of in that like, I'm never going to an hour that's just not where I see. You know, my where my talents are where my audience really wants me to be. I think a half hour is like the perfect length for for my podcast. But the the episode that I'm releasing this week is actually part two of a conversation because I started talking with my best friend, we were talking about wine, and we just went on and on and on and on and on. And now I have three episodes, maybe like four episodes worth of worth of content, that all I have to do is like break it up into chunks and add an intro and an outro to each one and I can publish it. So which is helpful because I'm going to be really busy in the next few weeks with this new job and actually haven't another part time job as well, that I signed up for before I found out about this cooking store job. I'm going to be working for the month of May. We're having an election here in Ontario in on June 2. And so I am working for elections Ontario training people to be election workers. So all those people who sit at the polls who helped people cast their ballots and all of that, I'm going to be training all those people. So between that job and the new cook store job, I'm going to be super busy. And I'm not going to really have a lot of time to be interviewing people. So I may after say 20 or 21 episodes of this season have to take a little break until things kind of calmed down a bit.

Jamie Stephens:

Yeah, yeah, I was thinking I'd also be interesting too, if you like just strike up comedy stations with people that come into the cooking store. And, you know, it's like that could be a whole series of like, well, what's for dinner? What is your favorite thing to make in this kind of pan? Or what's the you know, I mean, just right. All those little tidbits from people. But yeah, I'd

Lesley Taylor:

have to ask my new boss about that store. So I can't just sort of randomly like interview all their customers and you know, to use on my podcast, but yeah, be an interesting, definitely interesting thing. I've heard. There's another podcast I listened to quite regularly. Neil past reacher is, he's an author, and he has a podcast called three books. And every episode, he speaks to someone, and it could be like, some random person on the street, or it could be some like really famous person, like he's interviewed Brene Brown, and he's interviewed Adam Grant and other people who are like, you know, super popular about their three most formative books. But a lot of times like he like there was an episode you did a couple of weeks ago, where he was in a bookstore with a guy who's owned a bookstore for 30 years talking to him about books. But as random customers would come in, he would stop and he talked to the customers. And he'd ask them, oh, what book are you coming in looking for? And what's your favorite book of yours? And why do you like this book, and it was very kind of on the fly, and really kind of cool. So along the same lines of what you were just suggesting, of like, introducing people as they come in to buy some new piece of cookware, why are you buying that? And what are you going to make? And what's your favorite food to cook? And because I just love talking about food and cooking and wine and stuff? I can talk about it all day.

Jamie Stephens:

Yeah, you know, and I think it's, if there's still people that are walking into stores to buy that those people probably want conversation. I mean, like, otherwise, it's just ordered on Amazon or whatever. You know, I mean, it's just like, there's still that whole connection that I think a lot of us didn't realize we were so dependent on until the pandemic. I mean, that's

Lesley Taylor:

yeah, that's a big thing. Like, like I said, I just started this week. And so in the three days that I've been, there are two days actually, tomorrow's my third day, in the two days that I've been there the number of people who come in who do they really, they want to ask questions about the products, they want to understand the difference between, you know, this Dutch oven and that Dutch oven, why is this one $100. And this one's$500. And like, what's the difference between these two items, and where they could literally go online on Amazon and just order that product, but they if you're going to spend that kind of money on something, you kind of want to talk to somebody about it, you don't want to just you know, unless you already know what you want, and you're just going to spend the money and buy it. But a lot of people, you know, they're they're a bit more thoughtful about what they're spending their money on. And so they want to maybe compare the different products that are there, and they want someone who's knowledgeable, to be able to help them understand what those products are. And yeah, I think also people miss talking to other people. This talking to strangers. Yeah.

Jamie Stephens:

So how would you compare like how you feel about your days now, with this new job with your podcast, with everything that's happening, versus three or four years ago, when you were getting up to go to work at corporate? Like, can you articulate that difference of where things are?

Lesley Taylor:

Yeah, I think part of it is, it's nice to just be able to get up when I want to get up, I don't have to, I mean, I do set an alarm, because my bedroom is really dark. And I might not wake up otherwise. But oh, my cat would wake me up, because he would want to be fed. But it's seems like more of my time is my own now, as opposed to working according to somebody else's clock. That said, I mean, I have a shift that I'm working, I have to be at work at a certain time and stay till a certain time. So obviously, there's a little bit of that there. But there's so much more variety in the day. The other thing, and this is actually kind of an interesting thing that might resonate with people is the concept of emotional labor. And when I was working in my corporate job, a lot of the work I did was would sort of fall into the category of project management. So I had these projects that were ongoing for weeks and weeks and weeks, and sometimes months and months that had different stages to them. And you know, you had to get certain stakeholders on board. And so every day, you're like working on this project over and over and over again. And then it launches and then you know, you've got to follow up on it. And then there's another part of the project that launches and there's a lot of balls you're having to keep in the air all the time. And so your brains always like oh my god, this thing and this thing and this other thing, plus fitting that in with your life outside of work. And so when I stopped working Full Time, and you know, it's funny people are well meaning, and a lot of them would say things like, Oh, it's so exciting, you can start your own business, you could open a bakery, or you could start a catering company, or you could do this, you could do that. And I'm like, You know what, I don't want to, I don't want to be a boss, I don't want to have to run my own business. I don't want the emotional labor, of having to, you know, drum up business and market myself and, you know, manage my books and file corporate taxes and or business taxes and things like, I don't want to do any of that. I did all that kind of stuff. When I was working in the corporate world, I want to go to a job where I can show up, do the work that's assigned to me that day, and then go home, and then

Unknown:

leave it all there, leave it all there.

Lesley Taylor:

And so I didn't want to open my own cookware store. But I'm totally happy to be working in somebody else's cookware store. And I'll treat it like it's my own store, I will give it everything that I have. But when the door closes at the end of the night, and I go home, I don't have to think about it anymore. It's not mine, you know. And so, and I think especially for women, because the emotional labor that we have to keep all these balls in the air. In my case, I don't have children. But I had an aging mother who had a lot of needs, I had another family member, my uncle who could not really take care of himself either, and he didn't have any children. So I was taking care of him. So you know, taking care of my mother taking care of my uncle. Plus the, you know, my corporate job that I was doing, it was a lot of balls to keep in the air, and it was very draining. And so I've just been, that's the one thing about the pandemic I'm kind of thankful of, is it gave me a chance to just chill and do nothing and not have to worry about anyone but myself for a change. And that I think a lot of women who, you know, they talk about the sandwich generation, right, where you've got your kids and you've got your parents, well, I just had it on the one side, I had, like, my mother and my uncle who, you know, they were very high need, they, you know, were basically bedridden, and they couldn't really take care of themselves and, you know, had to find homes for them and caregivers for them and that type of thing. So not to mention, moving them out of their various houses and apartments several times to into different care facilities, like coordinating all of that, you know, with the help obviously, of other people in my family, but it's a lot to take on. And, and I was just exhausted by by that time. So by the time November of 2019 came around, I was like, You know what, I am just done. And I was ready to to hand in my my notice of retirement.

Jamie Stephens:

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's, that's a whole lot of responsibility and a whole lot to just juggle all of the time. So,

Lesley Taylor:

I mean, so there's really a lot, there's something to be said for not having a job where you're the boss. Yeah. You know, Oh, yeah.

Jamie Stephens:

Like you don't get into entrepreneurship because you want something easy.

Lesley Taylor:

Exactly. Exactly. Like it's, it's a lot of work. And you know, what, if I were 10 or 15 years younger, I would probably have wanted to do that. And because I knew that I had, it would be a lot of hard work at the beginning and, and doing a whole bunch of stuff I'd never done before and, and all of that. But knowing that once you kind of got into a groove, then maybe the business would sort of not that it would work on its own or anything. But it wouldn't maybe require as much maintenance after you kind of after the first year or so or two years of starting up a business. And then you kind of get your footing a little bit. But you know, at my age, I'm 58 I'm kind of like, I don't know what I want to do that. But I don't want to retire either, like retire and never do anything. Oh my god, I would be so bored. Like, I want to be out I want to be talking to people I want to be interacting with people, I want to have some type of purpose. And so this was a really good, like a good compromise in that I could do something I love but not worry about being in charge. I'm happy to not be in charge.

Jamie Stephens:

My husband used to laugh at me because like right now podcasting is like my favorite thing to do. I mean, it's just I feel really blessed that this is I mean talking to women and hearing their stories and highlighting them. I mean, like that's just really special to me before this, so like my favorite job like no lie was when I was 19 and I was working as like a coffee barista in slash information desk for like a surgical center. And so it was just like that opportunity to not have the responsibility that I've had my whole life, you know, to where I could just Just sit there and talk to people as they came in, and these little old people that are just trying to find their doctor, you know, and I can brighten their day with some coffee. I mean, it's just like, sometimes it's just the little things that can help you just kind of put things into, too into perspective and be like, Okay, I can lay all this other stuff down, and it doesn't have to be so heavy. Yeah, if I can just,

Lesley Taylor:

you're bringing a little bit of joy into people's lives. It's like, here's a coffee, you know. And even if they like you said, they just want to have like, especially older people, they just want to have a little chit chat or something like that. And, you know, having somebody to talk to and I can't honestly say that I can think of a job where I, where I loved it like that before. Because I didn't have when I was younger, I didn't really have the perspective, I think I was more on the track of needing to achieve, you know, I want that next job, I want that more important job, I want more money, I want more, you know, status, or, you know, whatever.

Jamie Stephens:

Well, that was probably one of the last jobs I had before I kind of entered in that whole mentality of just go Go, go, go go. And then you're like, Okay, I'm on this corporate ladder, but like, am I even having fun? And like, do I like what's happening here? I just feel gross every day. And I don't, you know, I mean, there's just that kind of reckoning, you have to eventually come with yourself to where it's just like, oh, like, I'm doing all the things unchecking the boxes, but I'm done. Like this, this doesn't feel good anymore.

Lesley Taylor:

Yeah, yeah. And you know, there's also a little bit of ever, I guess, I don't know if reckoning is really the right word. But there's a realization that you come to at a certain point where you're like, I don't know that I want to contribute to this profit making company anymore. If they're not, maybe running their business in a way that I feel good about, like, I don't know, I don't want to disparage where I work. Because, you know, the people I worked with, were fantastic. But you know, what banks job is to make money, like, that's their job, like, they're trying to make money, they're trying to do whatever they can to make money, and they make money off the backs of their customers, right. So I'm kind of like, oh, you know, working in banking, afforded me a great lifestyle, I was able to buy a house on my own, I bought a condo on my own, I bought a house on my own sold, that house bought another condo like, I would never have been able to do any of those things, had I not sort of, quote unquote, sold my soul to the devil for as long as I did. Because, you know, a lot of people follow their dream and follow their bliss and never had more than two nickels to rub together would never have been able to do the things that I did, because they just weren't earning the kind of money that I was earning. And so I fully recognize that the lifestyle that I have today, as even though it's much pared down from what it was before, is because of the work that I did all those years working in a bank, you know, and some people might say that's like, morally reprehensible, that I was working in that type of organization and making all that money. And now I get to live off the, you know, the, the fruits of all of that. Yeah, so there's definitely a moral. I don't know, it's like, not a moral conundrum. But there's definitely a moral aspect to it, that I think about it and go, you know, so I don't want to sit here and say, Do as I did, and, you know, your life will be fantastic. Because, you know, I'm sure I contributed to a lot of, you know, just by working for a bank, you know, contributed to a lot of the things that cause other people problems in their lives, right.

Jamie Stephens:

I mean, I think that's really generous of you to take that on. But

Lesley Taylor:

you're, yeah, I don't know that I'm not taking it on. Like, I'm not wearing it, like, Oh, God, I don't want to make this about me in terms of like, oh, I, you know, sold my soul to the devil for years. Like, you know, I'm such a, you know, noble person or whatever. Like, it's not about that it's, or it's just about being realistic about the privilege that I have. And that the lifestyle that I have now, I mean, I don't live an extravagant lifestyle, but I can afford to work for minimum wage, you know, and still put a decent roof over my head because of what I did for the previous 30

Jamie Stephens:

reps. Right? Right. You have options because of Yes,

Lesley Taylor:

and not everybody has the same options that I have. And not everybody necessarily had the same choices that I had. And, you know, like years ago, I would have said, well Oh, your choice was to travel the world after university. And my choice was to go work in the corporate world. And you know, but maybe, you know, they didn't have that choice, right. So I don't like I don't want to make it like, I made better choices than other people did. I made the choices that worked for me. And, and so and it worked out for me. And I'm very grateful for that. And I'm not I don't want anybody to think that if they didn't make the choices that I made, that their choices were wrong or bad, right? Oh, yeah.

Jamie Stephens:

I mean, we're all on our own. Our own journey, our own path, our own, I mean, even within like the same families, and all of that. I mean, everybody makes different choices and how it affects I mean, I think it's, it's really interesting to kind of sit down and kind of wonder, you know, just be like, I wonder if, like, during this point, if I would have done X, like how that would have impacted things, or, you know, I kinda like to do that. But,

Lesley Taylor:

yeah, well, there's I don't know if you've heard, he's sort of making the podcast rounds right now, a man named Daniel Pink. And he has a book called The Power of regret. And so I've heard him on several podcasts recently, talking about the different kinds of regrets that people have. And he kind of breaks them into four categories. And the one that really resonated for me was the most people actually, one of the things he says is that when people are younger, in their 20s, their regrets are 50, about 50%, regretting things they did and 50%, regretting things they didn't do. But as we get older, so they talk to people like in their 50s and 60s, most of their regrets, like 75% of their regrets are things they didn't do, not the things that they did. And so having these regrets over, not taking a chance not being bold, not, you know, telling the cute person that you saw at the coffee shop that, you know, you were interested in, Hey, would you like to grab a coffee sometime or something like that? Those are the kinds of regrets that people have or not studying abroad in their junior year of university or, you know, whatever. Those are the kinds of regrets that people have more so as they get older is this idea that the chances the risks they didn't take when they were younger. And so I do have some of those regrets. But then I look at, like, I think I didn't travel when I was younger, I didn't really travel till I was well into my 40s. And then I started going places, but up until then, I just never had the money really to travel. But so it's an interesting thing to think about is like, you know, what are the kinds of regrets that you might have? If you don't take a chance. But in my case, and as I said, at the very beginning, I needed to see all the numbers on paper to know what that taking that risk of quitting my full time lucrative banking job would have, and how long until I was destitute? You know, until I didn't have any money and was like, you know, begging people to sleep on their couch. And so I knew what that number was. And I knew how long I was going to have to or at least at the time, I thought I did but then of course COVID changed everything. But yeah, so I like to take measured chances not I'm not a leap off a cliff kind of person. I'm definitely a I'm more cautious planned out. taker of chances. Gotcha.

Jamie Stephens:

So do you regret leaving corporate? No, no, that was fascinating. Yeah.

Lesley Taylor:

No, I don't regret it at all. I you know, and everyone will probably say this. I missed the people. But you know, the people I liked, genuinely liked I still tasted keep in touch with. Yeah, right. And so, you know, some of them I see more frequently than others. And like I said, you know, the pandemic kind of changed everything. I probably would have seen people more often. Had I had that not happened. But I still keep in touch with a handful of people. I used to work with people I liked. And, you know, I'll continue to like I don't see them as often, obviously, as I did when I worked there, but that's really the only part that I miss.

Jamie Stephens:

Yeah. All right, Leslie, as we wrap up, go ahead and tell people where they can find more about you more about your podcasts and all other things.

Lesley Taylor:

Yes. So my podcast is called no recipe required. It's available on I think all the podcasting or at least all the popular podcasting platforms you can get on Apple, Spotify, Google podcasts, etc. And it's it comes out every Friday at 6am. Eastern time. So that's one way I'm on Instagram at no recipe required.ca Make sure you put the dot c And there because there is another no recipe required on Instagram. I don't know how active they are. But there is another account. So it's no recipe required.ca. And also on Facebook, I have a Facebook group, I have a Facebook page called no recipe required. Sometimes it's hard to find. But I do have a Facebook group called the no recipe required challenge. And that's where people post their ideas of things that they're making. I try and encourage people to make things without following the recipe and not sharing recipes from other websites and stuff. But just like what's some random thing you made? And or people might actually even ask questions to say, Hey, I've got this, this, this and this in my fridge. What are some ideas of what I can make with that? So that's kind of what the community is about. So it's a bit more of an interactive Facebook page. So if you just search for the no recipe required podcast on Facebook, you can find that as well.

Jamie Stephens:

Awesome. All right. Well, thank you so much.

Lesley Taylor:

You're very welcome. It was pleasure talking to you. All right,

Jamie Stephens:

you too. Let me stop recording