[00:05:17]
So we're going to talk a lot about that today because I just want the whole audience of our world to hear this because it's not just for LSATs, it's for, I think, because I've been using it for anything. Like, I use it just when I'm out and about and I have an idea and I want to remember it. So, anyways, we're going to talk about it today.
[00:05:33]
Among, if it's cool with you, what I didn't know is more about your background. Yeah. Which is pretty, well, incredible. And also, you know, some, there's, there's definitely some, you know, some, some trauma there, but maybe like speaks to why you do what you do. But from what I understand you, this was not what you set out to do with your life, but you had a party and something happened where you're in some conversation and then like you went home and bought the power score, you know, books to start learning about, you know, how to learn how to prep for the LSAT.
[00:06:01]
And then fast forward, you created this company, Elemental Prep. If it's cool with you, I also want to talk a little bit about, like, your childhood, because I didn't realize, you know, about, you know, growing up with a single father and, you know, so the addiction in your family, because I have to imagine that probably has an impact on a lot of the things that you're doing today.
[00:06:19] Ellen Cassidy:
Oh, it definitely does. I feel like I learn more and more every day, all the ways in which it does have an effect, and it does, you know, make me who I am, but No, definitely. Why don't,
[00:06:30] Josh Sharkey:
can we, do you mind if we start there? And just a little background. I mean, from what I understand, your mom was a, was an addict and that, you know, like led down a path of a lot more trauma.
[00:06:41]
And then I think you left your house at a pretty young age, but maybe if you could just add, add some color.
[00:06:45] Ellen Cassidy:
She left my house, but yes, no, I'll tell, I'll tell the story. So yes, Up until I was five, I had, you know, a pretty idyllic childhood out in Western Pennsylvania because basically my family had gone out into the middle of nowhere and it's like a detox.
[00:06:58]
And so then my mom had no access to anything. And so then, you know, that was a fine five years. And then we moved to Philadelphia where, you know, the crowd is a little bit different and that kind of thing. And just from the ages of like five to 11, I kind of saw her, like, fall back into that life. But, of course, I didn't truly understand a lot of this.
[00:07:20]
And, like, it's funny because when I talk about it now, I talk a lot about drugs, but actually the drugs part was pretty invisible to me. I didn't really understand that as, like, a seven year old. The thing that was, like, very omnipresent to me was her eating disorder. and I was very involved in, you know, as like a little kid trying to, you know, micromanage and help and coach her through, you know, beating this eating disorder that she had or like various other addictions and things.
[00:07:45]
And I look back now at how I was, you know, I was eight and I was so invested in her success with this eating disorder stuff. And I look back at me, it was very, it was very irresponsible of her to make me as invested in it as I was. But I look back of that kind of buy in to I have to make this person succeed no matter what.
[00:08:08]
I care about their goals more than my goals. Like I live to make them better. I can see the shadow of it a lot in how I work now. Like why is it so easy for me to care so much about students, so much about making people's dreams come true? And it's like, Well, there was one person that I, I never got to save because, you know, my mom disappeared when I was 11, you know, then came back and had, you know, outbursts and random things like that where you've just seeing her, she'd be there for like 15 minutes and yell and scream and get arrested and leave.
[00:08:43]
And you're like, Oh, but she overdosed on heroin when I was in my early twenties.
[00:08:48] Josh Sharkey:
That's crazy. Were you already in school in college when that happened?
[00:08:52] Ellen Cassidy:
Yeah, I was actually out of college. So it was when I was applying to law school. And so, funnily enough, Columbia Law School was harassing me about not wanting to give me financial aid because I couldn't get financial information from my mom, who I hadn't spoken to in years and had no income and all this stuff.
[00:09:09]
I, I was going back and forth with them on that and they were saying I needed documentation to prove and all of this and I didn't have it and I was feeling so ostracized and then I, I found out that she passed away right, right then as I was making that decision on whether or not I was going to go to law school.
[00:09:26] Josh Sharkey:
Wow. That's how you found out?
[00:09:28] Ellen Cassidy:
Yeah. No, my dad, my dad called me and like, I, I often struggle with how Like, am I, am I cold? Am I a bad person? Because you know, by the time that that happened, I had had my grieving for a lot of years, you know, that like the time when I was really losing her was those six years from when I was five to 11.
[00:09:54]
When I was trying and trying and trying so hard to save her. And like, she was, she was a person I trusted more than anyone in the world. And losing that, that was my real loss, and by the time she passed away, I had had, you know, 13 years of the person that I loved was gone. Do you know what I mean?
[00:10:17] Josh Sharkey:
I do, and also, you know, my wife has a similar story with her mom, not with heroin addiction, but very similar.
[00:10:24]
And also, you know, not being able to get power of attorney and things like this. You know, it's, it's traumatic. It's also like you feel a little bit powerless. Like there's things you can't do and, and, and, and also I'm sure angry and things like that. So that was while you were, while you were in school, you found that out and then it was passed after college.
[00:10:38] Ellen Cassidy:
Yeah. Yeah.
[00:10:40] Josh Sharkey:
And you ended up going to Stanford, right?
[00:10:42] Ellen Cassidy:
Yeah. So yeah, I, um, honestly, the biggest like turning point moment in my life was the moment I got into Stanford when I was 17. I. Because I, I had been expelled from high school for starting a gay prom, like, less than six months before that happened, and so I
[00:11:00] Josh Sharkey:
Isn't that crazy they expelled you for that?
[00:11:01]
Like, nowadays it would be the opposite.
[00:11:04] Ellen Cassidy:
Nowadaysit would be very different. That whole school would be canceled.
[00:11:07]
Exactly. Oh God. Cancelled culture would have had a field day with the Academy of Notre Dame. Um, but You know, I was obsessed with getting into Stanford my entire childhood, that that was like all I wanted and the idea that, okay, you're gonna have to check the box saying, you know, you were expelled, it's suspended or committed a felony, you know, like, girl, you know, this isn't good.
[00:11:30]
And yeah. The fact that it came through anyway, I mean, it really felt like I cheated death.
[00:11:37] Josh Sharkey:
It's amazing that you, I didn't know you could get into Stanford after being expelled.
[00:11:43] Ellen Cassidy:
Neither did I! I mean, that's, that's pretty nuts.
[00:11:47] Josh Sharkey:
You know, I remember, actually, I just remembered this, but when I was in high school, I went to high school in Virginia, and I was on the wrestling team, and Dyed my hair blonde.
[00:12:00]
I don't know who did it. We did that on the wrestling team and and there was an article in the Washington Post about like me going to culinary school and it had me it was like Sharkey cooks off the mat or something like that and it was me with blonde hair and they pulled me out of school and they Said you can't wrestle again, and we're taking you out of class until you dye your hair back
[00:12:22] Ellen Cassidy:
What?
[00:12:22] Josh Sharkey:
and there was a cosmetology department in the school and actually I had to leave class to go dye my hair Get my hair dyed back.
[00:12:29]
My mom was pissed, I told you, I actually forgot about that. It's crazy though, like what, you know, what schools would, I mean, totally secular, schools are secular, most of them are.
[00:12:37] Ellen Cassidy:
Oh, I mean, there's a reason I never became a K-12 teacher, even despite loving teaching, that like, I gotta, I gotta live my own rules.
[00:12:44]
Like, I can't have a boss, I gotta do what I wanna do and, you know, have my laboratory.
[00:12:49] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. That's so weird. You know, I heard something when we were scouting this out. That someone told you, cause you, you got into Harvard, and you turned down a bunch of times, and ended up going to, to Stanford, and someone, your friend, I think, for law school.
[00:13:03] Ellen Cassidy:
Not quite. I, I, I got into Harvard Law School and deferred three times before saying no. I don't know what
[00:13:08] Josh Sharkey:
that means. I went to culinary school. I don't know, I have no idea what that means. I heard Harvard, it's Harvard. But a friend of yours said, which I thought was really poignant, like, if there's anything else you can see yourself doing other than coming here, definitely do that.
[00:13:23] Ellen Cassidy:
What did he tell you that? Oh, I mean, well, his point was, and I really need to thank this guy. His name is Connor and he's a great guy. Um, his point was. This is the only thing.
[00:13:33] Josh Sharkey:
You've said that twice now, by the way. So I think we've got to shoot this person at least a social media note and say, Connor,
[00:13:40] Ellen Cassidy:
I really need to thank Connor. No, I feel really bad that I haven't, to be honest. I mean, you have just now,
[00:13:47]
but he's been thanked now on podcast. Anyways, he's a great lawyer in Seattle. He said, Ellen, like. I'm here at Harvard Law School. He was a 3L at the time. Like, this is the only thing I ever could see myself being happy doing. Like, being an attorney, that is all I've wanted.
[00:14:03]
It's my plan. It is my life. And it's hard for me to get through this. And for you, I know that the people here would kill your spirit. Like, your vibe is not their vibe. And I took it really seriously because like we, we lived in the same co-op at Stanford for a couple of years. So he knew me pretty well.
[00:14:27]
And I mean, honestly, Connor was right. And then going and teaching that first LSAT class afterward and giving it a chance to like it really completely changed my life. I'm so grateful that I I did not go and that I did eventually turn them down like three years later.
[00:14:44] Josh Sharkey:
What specifically, because you didn't want to be an attorney or because of that, the environment at Harvard Law, like, what do you mean specifically?
[00:14:52] Ellen Cassidy:
Well, like, I loved the admit weekend I had at Harvard Law. There's nothing in particular against them. It's much more that I, I love what I do and I am so, I'm so called to, you know, unlocking reading and critical thinking for people. Like, I love working with people directly. Like I said, I love my laboratory.
[00:15:12]
I love making new things. I like, that to me is play and I didn't want to make a 300, 000 bet. I would like being a big law lawyer more than that.
[00:15:22] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. Yeah.
[00:15:23] Ellen Cassidy:
That's what it really came down to.
[00:15:24] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. That's super smart. You're lucky also that you knew that. Early enough that you can make, make that decision, right?
[00:15:31]
Okay. So we're going to get into the meat of a bunch of this, because this is selfishly, again, this is me just kind of like taking up your time again. To learn, again, we'll probably reiterate a bunch of stuff I learned, but generally speaking, you know, you have this process through your company, Elemental Prep, of where you help folks take the LSAT, and what I interpret it as, you just help people understand how to ingest and retain information through these practices that you have, and I definitely have seen where it's helpful just if I'm reading a book, and I want to remember a premise, you know, if I'm out and I have an idea, And of course, just sort of learning.
[00:16:06]
What's funny is I reread Benjamin Franklin's biography by Walter Isaacson, and um, he did this. This is something he did. So he, in the book, there's a chapter where he talks about like part of his learning process was he would read something and then he would reiterate it in his own words. And that's how he learned.
[00:16:25] Ellen Cassidy:
I have to find this in this biography. Oh yeah, I'll send you the
[00:16:29] Josh Sharkey:
let me make a note. I'll send you the, uh, The page number and everything, because I actually wrote it down. I'm sure I have it somewhere, but I'm not going to waste our time on this. That's so cool. That was his practice. I was reading it and I was like, he does that, he does what Ellen does.
[00:16:42]
That's so cool. So anyways, without further ado, can you just talk about like this whole process of what we're going to call it, at least for the context of this conversation, retaining information and all the, you know, the steps and sort of how it works.
[00:16:59] Ellen Cassidy:
Yeah, yeah. So I will tell you how it originated of what I see the problem as and how I how I solve the problem of retaining information.
[00:17:06]
So when I was teaching the LSAT, I basically teach people how to do little riddles that are nothing to do with the legal profession. They're tiny little paragraphs about lemurs and do they go out at night, you know, things, things like that. It's, it's actually very fun. But one of the primary difficulties that people have in trying to improve their LSAT score that at, you know, in 2015, or whatever, I did not know how to solve is people do not, when they read something, actually really understand it to the depth that they need to, which means the ability to actually work with it in their own analytical memory and retain that information for, you know, whatever period of time it's needed.
[00:17:42]
And so I saw this in my tutoring. I had like an experience where I told a girl, read that paragraph. And then I covered it. I said, what does that say? And she did not know what it said even a second after reading it. And so I was like, okay, this has to be solved. And so. through, I mean, it's been almost 10 years now of research on this process of getting it to work.
[00:18:03]
I created a system called RTQ, which stands for Read, Translate, Quip. And that first step, which is the similar to Benjamin Franklin's step of like reading and then translating. When you're reading information, you want to be coding it with emotions by intoning the words as you say them. Like here, I have the login information of like, you can join the show to record here.
[00:18:25]
Like notice there's a music to that, versus a monotone, like, you can join the show to record here. No one can remember a monotone, and when we read in a monotone, we're basically asking our brains to retain the single most boring, difficult to retain type of thing in the world. And so you can make it a lot easier to retain by like, giving the words that music in the read stage.
[00:18:45]
But then when you translate after you read, you say what you just read back to yourself without looking at it in the monotone. In your own words, and then this allows you to actually process that information enough that it can be yours. You know, you've put it through your own filter, um, not to get rid of information, but to make it your own.
[00:19:04]
And then it stays much better. And then the last stage of the process is the quip. So after you put the information in your own words, you say something about it to yourself. Just, and it could even be just a laugh. It could be a snarky joke. It could be an example. It could be, Oh, that reminds me of that time.
[00:19:21]
Or, Oh, come on. It doesn't have to be some kind of your groundbreaking thesis, but it gets you in that habit of responding and creating a conversation with everything you read. And the idea that like neurons that fire together, wire together, that when you recruit other parts of your brain into the action, it's just going to stay without you having to brute force memorize it.
[00:19:46] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. Yeah. It's almost like, you know, putting it into action without actually being there, which I, I found a lot was very helpful, especially like the intonation, you know, changes the intonation. And then also this, this quip helped me a lot because, you know, when you learn a craft, let's say, and you learn how to cook and you want to learn how to brunoise a shallot, or you want to learn how to, you know, make a gastrique or something, you make it, you're there, you do it, you see it, you feel it.
[00:20:12]
And, and also either, you know, there's. Sort of this just in time versus just in case information. If you see that happen, and then like a month later, you're supposed to make it, you probably won't remember. But if you do it a bunch of times, you're more likely to remember. But you can't do that all the time.
[00:20:26]
Especially if you're like, if you're reading, you know, you're sort of doing something in theory that later you want to put into practice. There isn't a good way. And this was a big unlock from when I was learning from you is, it's like, Oh, here's how you can do that. Even if you're not going to, you know, because it's such a, you know, especially, you know, as a founder, as a business owner, like I'm always reading books about whatever, some premise, and I want to put that premise into action, but I'm not, I can't, you can't put it into action like in that moment.
[00:20:56]
You know, I can't like read about like a better way to, you know, have a critical conversation with my, with my team member and the ways in which to respond and then go do that. You know, I have to read it and then a week later or a month later. you know, go do it. And so like this, this process is so helpful, you know, and it's interesting.
[00:21:15]
I'm curious how you think about like the difference between, it's funny, it reminds me of Good Will Hunting. Remember that scene in the bar when, and he's like, we'll address the underestimates. And he's like, the guy's like, basically just like, you know, repeating back words he read from Vickers, some book.
[00:21:30]
I'm not smart enough to know what the hell that means. But like, he's just saying the exact same thing that he read in a book. So probably doesn't understand it. Yeah. How do you. How do you help push people away from, and I'm sure with the LSATs, there are people that are just really good at remembering words as opposed to retaining information.
[00:21:47]
Like, are, do you have things that you do to help combat that?
[00:21:50] Ellen Cassidy:
I mean, a lot of what I, what I do is, the process is made to confront that because if somebody is really good at just, I call it like word sounds or word skating or ghost reading, all of those are words for like what the problem you just described where people are like, they want to memorize noises.
[00:22:09]
And so what you do is really emphasize the quip stage and the intonation stage. that if somebody's just memorizing sounds, they aren't going to be able to quip. And the thing they'll always tell you, they'll tell you the, the key to diagnostics of RTQ problems is they'll be like, well, this is just the fit is kind of thing.
[00:22:25]
This is just a statement. You can't quip this. And I hear this probably four or five times a week. It's like, no, but Ellen, that you can't quip that. And what I hear when I hear that statement is I can't have an independent thought about that kind of information. Which, I mean, that's not the way the human brain works, that's just like a barrier they've placed in front of themselves for no reason.
[00:22:49]
But, if they really think there are certain types of statements for which you cannot have an independent thought or reaction, I mean, like, you can just think about how deeply instantiated this problem really is of like, if it's like muscle memory, it's like a locked muscle, like a frozen shoulder that they have believed they're just paralyzed, but they're actually really not.
[00:23:16] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, it's so funny. It actually, I wonder, this sounds like it would also solve The polarizing left versus right, you know, where if you hear something on your side of the aisle, make yourself first translated back, you know, the, the notion that you, that everybody is saying and see if you actually, you know, resonate with it.
[00:23:37] Ellen Cassidy:
100 percent that, like in a debate, very often people, it's like, they're just waiting to say their next preplanned bullet point, but they aren't actually present in what they're doing at all. Which like. That level of presence where it's like the thing I am doing right now is the only thing I am doing. It is the only thing that matters and I have to be fully in this mode.
[00:23:56]
Which I imagine when you're cooking something in like a high pressure situation, it has to be like that, right? Like your focus has to black everything out.
[00:24:02] Josh Sharkey:
I mean, there are things that become rote where like you can, I mean, you can perfectly, you know, chop chives and talk to somebody once you know how and things like that.
[00:24:09] Ellen Cassidy:
Yeah.
[00:24:10] Josh Sharkey:
But if you're, you know, Seasoning a sauce, let's say, or something like that. Yeah, you have to be focused on that thing at that time. Yeah, there's definitely instances of that. I don't want to put you on the spot, but I feel like the context of this. Could we, like, do an exercise?
[00:24:21] Ellen Cassidy:
Of course!
[00:24:22] Josh Sharkey: Where
we, there's something that we're supposed to learn, and then the way in which you would go and translate and equip them.
[00:24:27] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah! Yeah!
[00:24:28] Ellen Cassidy:
Let me, alright, what piece of text should I use? I can use a little passage from Marcus Aurelius, if you want.
[00:24:34] Josh Sharkey:
Ooh, yeah! Is that good? Yeah, you're talking my language. Yeah.
[00:24:37] Ellen Cassidy:
Yeah, okay. Let me let me just open it up.
[00:24:40] Josh Sharkey:
Are you a partaker of the of the Stoic philosophy?
[00:24:44] Ellen Cassidy:
I I like Marcus Aurelius. Am I a Aficionado?
[00:24:48]
No, I'm definitely not an aficionado. I'm a person who has read it and enjoyed it but I I also know I feel like Marcus Aurelius is like the number one thing that like a guy would like to understand at a high level. And so I sourced actually a few short passages from Marcus Aurelius to have as examples.
[00:25:14] Josh Sharkey:
That's so funny that you say that because a lot of the things there's, sometimes people, I've heard people, you know, call out some of the notions of Marcus Relief as toxic positivity and things like that. Yeah.
[00:25:25] Ellen Cassidy:
Productivity has a bad reputation right now, so. Yeah.
[00:25:29] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. I'm more of a Seneca than a Epictetus, but anyways, let's, let's do it.
[00:25:34] Ellen Cassidy:
Awesome. Okay. And so I, I will just kind of RTQ a couple of sentences for us here.
[00:25:40] Josh Sharkey: So read, translate, quip
[00:25:42] Ellen Cassidy:
Retranslate quip. RTQ. There we go. And I can send you this passage for you to have in the notes if you want. We'll see. Yeah. Okay. In the morning, when you rise unwillingly, let this thought be present. Okay.
[00:25:53]
So when you're, when you're there in the morning and you're getting up and you're upset, so you don't want to wake up, like think about this, which is like, Oh God, like, hasn't everybody had that feeling? It's like, you can feel the, like, uh, I'm rising out of the mud. I am rising to the work of a human being.
[00:26:11]
Okay, I am getting up right now to go and do the work that a human being does. Like, essentially, this is essential to my nature. What I am doing right now and the, the muck that I am pulling out of, it's like letting me kind of rise to the sun. Why then am I dissatisfied if I'm going to do the things for which I exist and for which I was brought into the world?
[00:26:30]
Okay, so like, why am I pissed off right now? I'm
like doing the things that I am made to do. I was brought in the world to do these things. And so what are these feelings? That I am carrying around and it kind of makes you think like, you know, is it really that important how bad I feel when I wake up or have I been made for this to lie under the blankets and keep myself warm?
[00:26:51]
Or is this, is this my purpose? My purpose is to like sit here and be warm and be in bed and feel, you know, the single best feeling on earth. But, but is feelings really the point of life? Like probably not. And so I'll, I'll stop there. I'll pause and let us talk.
[00:27:06] Josh Sharkey:
Well, what I'm hearing is it's not, it's very short amount of information at a time that you're processing.
[00:27:14]
So you're not reading an entire page. And translating that, you're reading like almost a sentence or two at a time, which I imagine it's more relative to like, okay, where's the general, where does it stop the premise that they're, they're talking about, but that also takes a lot of time. Like, so it probably takes 10 times longer to read a book, right?
[00:27:33] Ellen Cassidy:
So, yes and no. I, I would say, you know, it takes an Olympic athlete a different amount of time to run a mile than, you know, Joe on the couch. And just because it's like this right now doesn't mean it's always like this. So, for instance. When I, I was reading things, you know, throughout my life, I never knew that I was doing this automatically.
[00:27:53]
I had no conscious awareness. But if you would have asked me at the end of that paragraph, Ellen, what happened? I sure as hell would have been able to tell you. Like, and to me, that would seem obvious that I would be able to tell you, like, I, I never would have questioned my capability to do that. I took it completely for granted, but because reading is such a black box, we don't get any insight into what everyone else takes for granted.
[00:28:15]
What's going on in everyone else's head, what process everyone else is enacting. And so I was doing a lot of what you just saw automatically without even knowing I was doing it. And the difference between, you know, someone who's doing it automatically, who say like a top. I don't know, 2 percent reader or something like that.
[00:28:32]
And the rest of people is the rest of people. They just never learned the process. They never learned to get good at it so that they could join those elite readers. And so what I just demonstrated for you is like the out loud, unpacked, systematized version of how to practice this enough to get good enough at it that you start to translate without even realizing it.
[00:28:56]
And so the quipping, honestly, the part where I'm like, doesn't seem so important now. That's probably the only part I was doing really consciously back in the day. And I, again, That was the last part of my methodology to get added. I had no clue I was doing it. So much goes on hyper fast in our minds that we have like very little conscious awareness of.
[00:29:18]
And so while we have to let it be slow in the beginning, that's only because we are toddlers and we have to let ourselves toddle for a while.
[00:29:27] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, that's a verb. I didn't know that. Toddle is a verb?
[00:29:31] Ellen Cassidy:
Maybe. That's a great verb if it is.
[00:29:33] Josh Sharkey:
I love that. You know what's funny is I think I also have done a fair amount of that when I read, but the problem is, is that what I'll do is I'll actually just say it to my wife, who I'm like sitting next to, because I always read at night in bed.
[00:29:47]
And I'll be reading and like every two minutes, like, you know, there was, I went through this long phase of the universe and, you know, physics and all these things. I was reading like Brian Green and things. And every page I would be like, Hannah, did you know that? And she's like, dude, chill. It's 11 o'clock at night.
[00:30:04]
But I would have to like, talk to her about this. Mostly because I was excited, but then also I would like remember. And, you know, cause I would say it after I read a page. So it does it. What's interesting here is that it also, I think, I don't know if you think about this, but like fostering a community of other people that are learning the same thing to do this translating and quipping is probably really helpful too, because you then have to say it to others, like, here's what I read, here's what, you know.
[00:30:29] Ellen Cassidy:
Yeah, and part of my goals is like, I really do want to port this as like, a course, a system, a community for people outside of LSAT, because like, as you can see, it's very, applicable. It doesn't actually have to change at all. And you know, I have 10 years of knowledge of this in the field of how it works with like very willing participants that It would be so, so cool if, you know, kids, professionals had the ability to practice all of this and bring themselves up to that elite level just through training and like, you know, trying it out, but, you know, the future.
[00:31:02] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, no, I think you're totally right. And there's just so many applications for it. Even something as mundane as when you're learning, you know, you have to train a team on HR things, right? And it's like there's a handbook. Nobody fucking reads the handbook. No, it's so true. Nobody remembers any of those things.
[00:31:19]
But if, and if you have to take a test, you know, you gotta memorize the day before and then you forget it the next day. Yep. But this is probably a good way to, to like, in a group, if you all do that together and you talk about like, Hey, this is our core value. Can you repeat back to me in your own words why that's, uh, You know,
[00:31:36] Ellen Cassidy:
that would be perfect.
[00:31:37]
And tell us what you think about it, too. Like, yeah, having them actualize that information. Because like within Elemental, it really is a community. Like we have a channel in our Slack called Translation Checks and where people post what they did. And you know, it's like, Oh, was that good? Was it bad? And they get feedback and work together, which is really, really helpful.
[00:31:59] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. You know, One thing as I was working on this more, that I realized, and I started getting really self conscious about, is I feel like note taking is a terrible practice while I read, because it's almost like this lazy, like, and I, and I catch myself doing it all the time, where I'll like, I would read, right away, write down the thing, and then basically I'm just saying, okay, I'm not going to remember that anymore, and then maybe I'll go back to that note, without context, and then it's all this extra work to try to create context, and You know,
[00:32:30] Ellen Cassidy:
Exactly. It like it's like it divorces it from context and like I, I take a lot of notes when I'm in tutoring. For instance, if I'm working with somebody and, uh, they're giving me, you know, a 10 minute monologue on every single thing, what I'll be doing is I'll be looking at them and I'll just, my fingers will be moving that I'll be writing down every single thing that's going on in my own words.
[00:32:52] Ellen Cassidy:
And in a way, I feel like that's my form of translation.
[00:32:55]
like, there's an input and output going on at the same time. And I might write little quips as I'm going of like, okay, watch this, watch that, and. So, like, notes, they can be an extension of translation in practice, but, like, also, I'm not really looking at those notes to tell me what happened.
[00:33:12] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. You do make a good point, though, because there are, the way I used to take notes, and I don't take notes this way anymore, actually, because of you. Is I would, I would sometimes literally write word for word what I read. Like this sentence makes a lot of sense, I want to remember this thing. And if I have a Kindle, I would copy it.
[00:33:28]
And now when I take notes, because I still at night will take notes. I'll read and I'll take notes, but I just do the translation and quip in the note. So like, you know, when it's a premise about, you know, Conversational sins from Ben Franklin. I'm going to write down like my like what I think about that and then the quip and and then I do like put a link to like page number two doesn't go back to it.
[00:33:51] Josh Sharkey:
But it's a much better way of taking notes, but I never took notes that way. It was always just like notes would be a Just sort of reprinting a thing that I, that I read as opposed to, you know, translating it into something I can understand. This show is brought to you by, you guessed it, Me's. Me's helps thousands of restaurants and food service businesses all over the world build profitable menus and scale their business successfully.
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[00:35:13] Ellen Cassidy:
I think notes can be a versatile tool. I think the way people use notes a lot is basically like if you imagine every thought like every piece of information you have is a cardboard box that people want to take what's inside the cardboard box and put it in the note so then they carry around empty cardboard boxes.
[00:35:29]
And the weird thing is, like, you aren't actually getting any benefit from carrying empty cardboard boxes around. Like, that, that's just fake and it's, like, not real knowledge. But notes don't have to just be unloading the components of the cardboard box somewhere else. Like, for instance, When I was preparing, I was doing a, like, 60 minute talk on this inside of Hampton, and I, like, of all the re translate quip stuff, and I opened up my notebook, my, like, paper notebook I have, you know, right, right here, and I just wrote down Everything, all the, like, points I was going to hit, and I did this for, like, three pages from memory without looking at anything else I had planned, at the slides, at nothing.
[00:36:13]
And like, I would say that's like a form of note taking to a certain extent. I never looked at those notes again because they weren't, they weren't for me to reference to not remember. They were to prove to myself that I did remember. Do you know what I mean?
[00:36:27] Josh Sharkey:
Yes, yes. I think there's a tactical way to sort of like, you know, to use a note when you need to for a presentation, let's say, and then there's this way we're talking about, which is I'm using a note to do this, to emulate the same process that you're teaching, right?
[00:36:41]
To translate and equip and things like that. I do wish there was some way to take And index notes such that my brain could query them when needed. Do you know what I mean? But they will!
[00:36:53] Ellen Cassidy:
Well, I mean internal notes, not external notes. Well, but
[00:36:56] Josh Sharkey:
even external notes, like all the things I write down, I don't remember all the things, you know what I mean?
[00:37:02]
And over the years, especially if you're an avid reader and you read lots of books, and I don't remember all of them. And maybe I just don't have a great memory. And maybe I'm not doing enough of this stuff. of your process, but like I've read and reread so many things that I wish I could query everything I've ever read and, and, you know, like pull it up when I need for certain things, but I can't.
[00:37:24] Ellen Cassidy:
But you will create that internal indexing within your brain over time. That, that's honestly what quipping is. Like one of my students has like a curiosity with how my mind works. So she asks me all these like, kind of like deeply introspective questions of, because I don't really, I don't visualize, I think, in the way that most people do.
[00:37:43]
And she asked me like, Ellen, what is, what, what does go on in your mind? Like, what is happening? And I said, I was like, if you imagine like a lake and then under the water, there's like a ball of light that's linked to all like infinite balls of light. And inside the ball of light, there's like a million little connections.
[00:38:01]
I was like, It's like you're in that ball of light and you're like zooming around and like, and when, when you hit one pinpoint, all the associated pinpoints light up at once and you get to pick the one that you want, but it's all subconscious. And so, like, I, that's how I experience information and. I mean, you can wonder, you know, why did I end up like this?
[00:38:27]
I sometimes guess it's like how I talk, that I am super expressive about every single piece of information that enters my brain, and I've been that way since I was like, a baby. And so I've always had like coded information going in to the point where it's all created this big matrix for me. But like, you can get there, but it's, it's just like fitness level or skill level and anything else that like, if you are trying to run a mile for the first time or the 80th time, you're not going to be quite as good as the person who's the 800th time.
[00:39:02] Josh Sharkey:
It's so cool because you've kind of, I mean, this might be an over exaggeration, but you've kind of systematized and operationalized how to, like, become super smart, right? Because that's basically what a lot of intelligence is, just being able to query the right information at the right time and synthesize it the way that, the way that you need, and you know, I'm learning what you just talked about at age 43, 42, whatever I am.
[00:39:25]
But, you know, man, start doing that practice early on. everything that you learn, translate it into your own words and then create some sort of, you know, analogy of quip of what that is. Use the right intonation so that it's, you know, creating this energy in your body. Just do that over and over. Yeah. Over the course of many years, it becomes, you know, easier and more natural.
[00:39:45]
And then you start being able to, you know, index. All this information. It's really cool. I wish I had met you 20 years ago.
[00:39:52] Ellen Cassidy:
Well, one of, one of our Hampton friends, he, he described my process really well. He was like, Ellen, it's not compression. It's indexing.
[00:40:03] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah.
[00:40:03] Ellen Cassidy:
And I was like, Yeah, man, good words that because very often what people want is like, well, I want to go through faster with less effort and I want to be able to get the smallest piece of information to, you know, meet the minimum or whatever.
[00:40:19]
And like, all of this is a sham. Like, I mean, I, I imagine it like, you know, has some value for some people. It's just not how I see the world as like, you know, a productive way to be. But, you know, people can be different. It's so funny to me, though, how people want to race to the bottom so hard and they want to put so much energy into finding where the minimum is all also that they don't have to do extra.
[00:40:45] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's just all of the self-help for like, there's five ways to increase . You, I think of Ben Horrowitz right now. There's no silver bullet , just a bunch of lead bullets.
[00:40:55] Ellen Cassidy:
No, it's true. I I love Ben Horowitz for that reason.
[00:40:58] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. Yeah. And it really, I do think indexing is like the key. I, I, I think, but also like, just with a advice, you know, as a, as a founder, as someone getting, investing, all these things, I get so much advice.
[00:41:08]
Mm-Hmm. . And I have this thing I tell myself like. Don't take anyone's advice, but index everyone's and yeah, that's how I, you know, like make decisions is like, you know, even the people that I trust the most of their advice is just one other piece of data that gets indexed and then I have to use all that information plus mind plus experience to like make, you know, make the decision and it's all about it.
[00:41:28]
How well can you index all of that?
[00:41:30] Ellen Cassidy:
Yeah.
[00:41:30] Josh Sharkey:
All that advice. So
[00:41:32] Ellen Cassidy:
Like, I can tell you one good way to index advice in particular is when you get advice, immediately mentally apply it to your situation and guess what would happen.
[00:41:41] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah.
[00:41:41] Ellen Cassidy:
And as soon as you do that application procedure, even if it's not, you know, good, like none of these insights have to be life changing, but the mere step of not just letting that advice die on the vine.
[00:41:56]
But actually, like, listening to it being like, Hmm, okay, what does this really mean? Okay, got it. Alright, how would that work? And, that can happen in a split second, or you can have a whole conversation about it. That, that application step will make sure that it is truly integrated into, you know, the mental web.
[00:42:13] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, I mean, I do find that I'm typically looking for advice for things that are, More complex. And so my problem is as I'm sure most is it isn't easy to understand the impact of taking that advice because there's like these 50 downstream things that can happen, you know that you're trying to sort of understand that you probably haven't seen before.
[00:42:32]
And that's part of why you're looking for the advice is that someone has done that already. A couple of times, but they've done it this way. And so playing it out becomes that's why it doesn't have to be
[00:42:41] Ellen Cassidy:
good. That's why it doesn't have to be good. But have that split second gut check of you can make it super simple.
[00:42:48]
You know, it could be like red, yellow, green, where it's like, and then a confidence interval, you know, of, okay, I, I'm at yellow on this, but I'm about, you know, 40 percent confident in that yellow. Okay. Even that, I would call that an application.
[00:43:07] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah.
[00:43:07] Ellen Cassidy:
And it would grab all of the things you're like intrinsically feeling, and then you'll also get, get more used to listening to your intuition.
[00:43:14]
Because even when we have these complex things, and like, I have the same thing, where people give me, you know, advice about the structure of my business and all this stuff, that, you know, I, I know a lot more complexities of the situation than the person giving me advice. And so I'm always like, well, uh, But even if the only thing I did was like, Mm, that's a red, and I'm 100 that it's a red, I feel like that would help me retain the advice way more.
[00:43:40]
And then also, you know, index it against other similar sorts of advice. Or it's like, that's a green, but I'm at about 2 percent on that green.
[00:43:50] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, yeah, I like that. That's cool. Quick question.
[00:43:56] Josh Sharkey:
What's Portfolia? It looks like it's a sort of venture fund that you're involved
[00:43:59] Ellen Cassidy:
with. Yeah, so I'm an LP in the Portfolia Venture Fund.
[00:44:03]
It's um, a fund like, basically women VCs, and it's not only women who are in it, but, Women VCs are LPs in it and they invest in primarily, um, women founded or like women missioning businesses, but I'm just an LP. I went to their conference and it's like a lovely group of people, but I've, I've been doing a fair amount of angel investing since I got into Hampton, which has been really fun.
[00:44:28] Josh Sharkey:
That's awesome. Is it a pretty fresh fund or has it been around? Do they have another fund they're raising? It's
[00:44:33] Ellen Cassidy:
been around for a minute. I got into it actually through South by Southwest. I was at South by Southwest and I met one of the general partners in the mentoring session at South by Southwest.
[00:44:44]
And she was telling me about it and I just decided to do it. And they have pretty low min check size. So it's a good way, I think, to learn by doing when it comes to investing. And I'm really passionate, especially about like women and underrepresented founders in general joining the investing cohort.
[00:45:03]
Just because I think that's like how a lot of positive changes will happen is by different sorts of people being the ones who control the money. And so I always want to like, you know, live that and also try and encourage other people in similar sorts of positions to do the same, just to uplift,
[00:45:22] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. When I was taking a look, there was some food investments as well. I saw Omni on there. Is there a particular vertical that they're going after? Is this really any women owned business or?
[00:45:30] Ellen Cassidy:
It's not all women owned. And sometimes like the Food and Ag Tech Fund that I'm in, it's not all women mission businesses.
[00:45:36]
There's like a Fem Tech Fund and stuff like that as well. But I think it's more the LP pool that's like primarily women.
[00:45:43] Josh Sharkey:
Oh, gotcha. Okay.
[00:45:44] Ellen Cassidy:
But I think they're just like looking for things that are like new and innovative in food and ag tech. But they've had some really interesting stuff that it's interesting to listen to, you know, the calls and stuff like that.
[00:45:55] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, I love that. Okay, I ask this question a lot for some reason. Actually, you know, why I ask it is because I was at a Hampton retreat and the facilitator asked it to us in our groups and it was just really, It stuck with me because it's a great way to sort of understand your true sort of like personal values.
[00:46:14]
So I don't know if you remember this, but you weren't at the retreat, but you've probably been at other events. Anyways, what makes you really, really angry, like blood boiling angry?
[00:46:26] Ellen Cassidy:
People who break my trust, definitely.
[00:46:27] Josh Sharkey:
That makes a lot of sense actually, you know, given.
[00:46:31] Ellen Cassidy:
Given, yeah.
[00:46:32] Josh Sharkey:
How does it manifest?
[00:46:34] Ellen Cassidy:
I'm not somebody who blows up at people. So like I. It's like it internalizes and feeds this like, you know, like hot metal in a fire that's like bubbling iron, just like in my chest, this like bubbling iron that then externalizes and cools and creates even more of an exoskeleton. Then it's like, I'm never gonna let someone do this to me again, you know, but like, but in the moment, the way I cope with it is I'm uber professional.
[00:47:07]
Yeah. I will be like, absolutely. And I hear your concern 100%. Thank you for bringing that to me. All right, so let's work on action steps. Like, my voice goes like that. It's actually a really big tell that, you know, now I'm giving away.
[00:47:21] Josh Sharkey:
All right.
[00:47:22] Ellen Cassidy:
Because it's like, I can't. I can't give them the privilege of seeing how much they've hurt me.
[00:47:31]
And I always say, how I really feel is a privilege if you don't earn that privilege. And I give everybody the privilege starting off. But if you decide to sacrifice it.
[00:47:43] Josh Sharkey:
Do you start with a level of, a lot of trust?
[00:47:46] Ellen Cassidy:
Yeah, I'm an extremely trusting person. And that's also part of the problem is I love individual people so much and I want to help individual people so much.
[00:48:02]
And like, you don't be, you see me in Hampton. I'm constantly trying to help this, that, and the other person all the time. And I just want to, you know, I want to love on people and help people a lot. It's just who I am. And I open, I'm with open arms for all these like individual people. And, but I'm very skeptical of quote people in general and groups.
[00:48:25]
So it's like, then it's like, Oh, well, you know, you know what people are. But then when one of those people that I've, you know, opened my arms to shows me that they have betrayed my trust and they do not value me. And they are. walking all over me thinking it's nice Ellen and you can get away with anything, then it's like, and you're just like everybody else.
[00:48:49]
I think I've, I've spent my whole life trying to find people who won't do that to me.
[00:48:55] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. How big is your team at your company?
[00:48:58] Ellen Cassidy:
Well, so it's, it's interesting. I am the only one you can book tutoring with on the website, but we do have a growing team of contractors and I actually just hired an executive assistant in Egypt who is starting on Monday, which I'm very excited about.
[00:49:15]
She seems absolutely fantastic. I'm really, really excited. But we can have a sidebar
[00:49:21] Josh Sharkey: a
bout that, by the way, because it took a while to figure out how to use my wallet.
[00:49:25] Ellen Cassidy:
No, for real. It's hard, but I, but I'm hopeful. I've been doing a lot of prep work, but we've got a team of three LSAT people who work on a contract basis for different, different versions of helping with the LSAT, whether it's responding to videos, contributing on our Slack channel, who they all do really fantastic work.
[00:49:41]
And then I have a fractional operations person who helps me with the book publishing business. And so it's growing to be. You know, a team of maybe four or five contractors, but I'm, I'm the only W2.
[00:49:52] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. It's funny. I had a conversation. I don't remember when it was like, it was a podcast episode like weeks ago or something with a really, really incredible CEO of this other food tech company.
[00:50:02]
And, um, they've been around for quite a while, very successful. And, and he said, you know, fast forward 10 years. One thing he learned is like, especially on his executive team, Everyone starts at like a battery level of half trust, you know, 50 percent and they have to sort of get to a hundred. I've always been sort of the opposite of like, Oh, you get everything and then it sort of works backwards, but I'm starting to, you know, that that's not necessarily the best way, but I'm curious how you think about that for your business.
[00:50:31] Ellen Cassidy:
I think that your friend is probably right that it isn't the best way, but I also, I just don't know how to be other than that. Because especially it's with hiring for LSAT that these people are my former students who I, you know, obviously if I'm hiring them, I think they're really, really good and I'm close to them.
[00:50:50]
You know, we've had their dreams come true together. You know, it's a long standing, like years long relationship and I want them to succeed so badly. That I probably am in the past, at least not commenting on anybody who's currently there, but people from the past have been guilty of putting on rose colored glasses and hoping so much that these people I, you know, care about as students will thrive as people who contribute to the mission.
[00:51:17]
And that is then made me be blind to issues. I think I'm much better with operational people. Much better.
[00:51:26] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, I think me too. But, you know, the thing that I realized with the whole sort of trust thing with folks is it's almost never the personal trust I'm worried about that I have an issue with, but I will give too much sort of runway of like, I trust that you can do this job.
[00:51:39]
Yes. 100%. When, realistically, there's all this historical. information and empirical data that you just don't know about what's happened that will allow you to do the job better. And sort of that, like, you know, I do, we do, you do, you know, approach to getting folks, you know, onboarded is taken for granted, but I think it's actually really important.
[00:52:00]
I don't know how that like translates to, you know, friends and relationships, but yeah, I find that like, I have to sort of like, you know, take back some of that quote unquote trust. You know, for their benefit more than mine, you know,
[00:52:12] Ellen Cassidy:
No, definitely true. And I, I've also been guilty of that, of being like, well, you know, you got a one 75, which is, you know, the 99th percentile on the LSAT.
[00:52:20]
And you studied with me for a year. Of course, you know, everything. And that's not fair to them. You know, like it, it shouldn't be like that. I think I've been guilty of being overwhelmed with. Everything I'm trying to do and then just wanting to it to be this like magic pill that they're going to be Able to do all of that and then it's like actually Ellen.
[00:52:40]
No, it won't be but I imagine in in a kitchen It's probably this on steroids, right? But show visible the errors.
[00:52:50] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, it is. I mean, there's usually there's so many things going on at once that it's tough to and that's why it's so important to have, well, really good recipes, really good process, because especially nowadays, there's not as many, you know, folks that are as experienced when they come to your kitchen.
[00:53:05]
And so you have to be really dialed in with exactly how you want something done. You have to be far more explicit than implicit. Otherwise, you know, it just won't get You know, every little thing adds up to the sum of its parts in a kitchen and it can very quickly turn into food that is not what you want it to be or service and you have to sort of start on the, on the opposite side where like, just assume, assume, you know, almost nothing when you come in, right?
[00:53:28]
And assume that of the, of the team member, uh, there's a restaurant called Le Bernardin in New York City, very famous chef, and it. And simple to And so, You know, he's had this philosophy for, I mean, they've been open for 20 plus years. One of the best restaurants in the world. No matter who you are, no matter how much experience, you always start at the bottom.
[00:53:44]
Yeah. You know, and I think that's, it's been his premise since day one. I think it's, it's, it's worked out well for him. So.
[00:53:50] Ellen Cassidy:
Oh, that's what I do at Elemental too. And I, I recently, actually, I had somebody who came in and was already in the 99th percentile. And I've taught a lot of students who they come and they want the perfect score.
[00:54:01]
And I told him in the intro call, I was like, you know, you're not going to be able to skip ahead. And the benchmark at Elemental is you have to be able to read and translate and quip a logical reasoning section, which is 25 questions, like 25 little paragraphs in 20 minutes. And I was like, you're going to have to pass the translation benchmarks just like everybody else.
[00:54:23]
Like, is that something you're willing to do? Is that something you want to do? Because if you don't, like, this isn't the right place for you. And he was like, that is why I am here. That's what I want. And I was like, Oh man, you're awesome. Come on in. But I think it's very powerful that certain people don't get different privileges than someone else.
[00:54:39]
Everybody has to pass the exact same foundational benchmark because it also unifies the community. Everybody knows everybody else there has had to do this exact same tough goal.
[00:54:51] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, well, and also can just sort of coalesce the way in which you want things done, right? You know that everybody is on the same playing field of how they think or how they approach things, so.
[00:55:01] Ellen Cassidy:
Yeah.
[00:55:01] Josh Sharkey:
So, you're, I mean, your business is growing really well. It's pretty, by the way, congrats. It's awesome. I'm curious if you ever, I don't know if you ever think about this, but like, If you had unlimited capital, unlimited resources, unlimited time, like what would you be doing differently today? Is there something else you would do and, or a way that you would do things?
[00:55:21] Ellen Cassidy:
I would still teach students. I would, I'd probably fire people faster, which maybe that's a good note for me that I should do that anyway, but I, I would hire a CEO. and operational people, so I never had to deal with someone's billing ever again. I never had to think about whether somebody got the contract ever again.
[00:55:43]
That would be totally outside my life. And I would teach four to six hours a day. in my, my one on ones helping my kids, you know, and when I say kids, I mean people, it's 21 to 60. Helping my kids and seeing and being in the lab. I love making new things. I make new things all the time in my teaching. And so Elemental is always changing and growing and there's always new drills, new things coming to light.
[00:56:10]
So I would never want to lose that, but I would have, you know, this magic ops team. They would also have a team of software developers. So I wouldn't have so many technological hurdles because I, I invented an asynchronous digital learning technology to train translation, and it's being a non technical founder, especially one who, you know, works all the time already in session, makes it very challenging to get those sorts of projects to the level that you want them to be.
[00:56:37]
And so I, you know, throw a bunch of money in there so that I could have a really, really good software platform that asynchronously teaches translation of the way I want.
[00:56:46] Josh Sharkey:
Very cool. What would it look like to do some of that, like, in the next six months? How could you get some of that done sooner? I mean, I am.
[00:56:52] Ellen Cassidy:
So I, thanks to a lot of support in Hampton, if anyone from Hampton listens to this, they know who they are, who, um, have supported me in making me raise my tutoring rate. I doubled my tutoring rate. in January to February and with the goal of maintaining the same revenue and cut the hours. And so I will go down to that four to six hours a day that I was just talking about and then have time for creative projects and, you know, managing people who actually can do this sort of stuff.
[00:57:22]
And then in addition, I'm starting a bubble subscription platform where I actually like recently got really into Coda. This like new, it's like a version, it's kind of like Notion, but I think a lot better. And I'm getting really excited about putting a version of my book, The Loophole. So The Loophole is my LSAT book that teaches all this stuff I've been talking about into Coda and doing it behind a bubble paywall as a multimedia subscription.
[00:57:48]
And then I can add in all kinds of cool shit, you know, like I can have videos I can have. interactive AI quizzes. I can, I can edit it. I can add supplements. It could be this like really cool version of the book. And that's happening. Like that's awesome now. So it's all on the way. Cause I like my goal for 2024 is I want my non tutoring revenue to be equal to my tutoring revenue without decreasing the tutoring revenue to jam the goal.
[00:58:15]
And so the more Like non Ellen's time products. Also the more equitable the company, because then those will be less expensive, you know, and there'll be ways a lot of people can get more help. The more I see myself as pushing this all forward. And so I'll, it's called living flashcards is the asynchronous learning technology that I think once I have this bubble subscription platform up, and I also I'll be selling subscriptions to like the various proprietary answer keys I have and all my videos and all of that.
[00:58:47]
Once that's in and I have some developers I can trust, ha ha ha, then we'll head back over to the living flashcards of it all. Because right now, it does exist as a web app. It's just that it can only have 50 people at a time. It doesn't scale because it was made jankily.
[00:59:01] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, I love that. And I also, I love Coda.
[00:59:03]
I agree. It's a great, it's a great platform. Okay,
[00:59:06] Ellen Cassidy:
Where are the Coda loyalists out there? Because I, I need to post it Hampton. I was like so surprised how good it is and no one talks about it.
[00:59:14] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, it's, I think Notion gets a lot more play than Coda and I don't know why. They're both, I mean, they're both really good.
[00:59:21]
Coda's, you know, more document than, than, and Notion is more database y, but yeah, I don't know why. I don't know why.
[00:59:28] Ellen Cassidy:
Right? It's so robust. The, like, the packs of how you can bring over and connect so many systems. Like, I'm an Airtable shop, so like my whole business is in Airtable. I'm obsessed with Airtable.
[00:59:38]
You know, I'm not leaving Airtable. But, you Coda feels like the midpoint between Notion and Airtable to me. Yeah. In like a really positive way.
[00:59:47] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Well, and if you ever need any, if you ever wanna talk about developers, happy to. Please. Yeah. We, we do a lot of those. So what's like the next five years for you?
[00:59:58]
I, I, now I hear what the next six months is, but like, do you have a, an idea of like what the next, you know, big phase of, and what you're doing is
[01:00:05] Ellen Cassidy:
So, I mean. I always in my head answer that question with still hating this question, no shade to you, but I always feel like I can't, I would be closing myself off to so much possibility if I constrained my version of five years from now to my current understanding of the world.
[01:00:24] Josh Sharkey:
That's actually the answer that I always hope for it that people don't say because yeah, I do it on purpose actually because Whenever like I don't I don't think that way and but a lot of people do is like, okay The business will be here and I'll be doing this thing and I'm also big fan of Jason Friedman, you know Yeah, and You know, just planning six weeks at a time is like the world changes so much.
[01:00:46] Ellen Cassidy:
Yes.
[01:00:47] Josh Sharkey:
That, you know, this water, this idea of this waterfall, like here's what five years from now will, will look like. Now I feel bad because I feel like now everybody's going to know how to answer this thing. You know, the world changes, right? So I promise whatever you say in five years, it's probably not like I never, five years ago, I don't think, maybe six years ago, I would have never said I'm going to have a tech company.
[01:01:07]
And, you know, you know, eight years before that, I would have never said I'm gonna have hot dog business or something like shit changes, you know, and I think I think more like what is the next three months look like and what am I going to accomplish, you know, and then because that's. The one thing I will say is like, you know, some sort of North Star of, I know I want to have sort of like my generational wealth for my kids.
[01:01:30]
I know that's a thing that has to happen and that I can, you know, feel like I've left like the industry I'm in better than, than when I started. Other than that, it's about it.
[01:01:41] Ellen Cassidy:
100%. Like I have that North Star of, I always say, I want to teach the world to read and think. And I want to show people that ceilings are imaginary.
[01:01:49]
And how I do that is going to be so subject to a million unpredictable things. Like, five years ago, the loophole had just come out. I was like three or four months into being an LSAT celebrity. I had no idea I could ever even have the, the dream of being on this podcast with you right now.
[01:02:13] Ellen Cassidy:
I had no idea what my life could be, how good my life could be.
[01:02:17]
I was in a way worse situation then than I am now. And like, I would never want to trade where I am today for 2019 Ellen's Wildest Dreams.
[01:02:28] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. And also, just knowing a little bit about how that, how that all went down, because we never know tomorrow brings, like Reddit existed then. And I think if Reddit didn't exist, who knows what would have happened, right?
[01:02:40]
You had this huge audience of people that could like talk about a thing and, and talk about your book and share it with other people. And that spread very quickly. If there wasn't a place for it to spread from, it might be the timing, the timing happened to work that way. So something else like Reddit or something completely different might exist in two years that changes the whole trajectory of how you think.
[01:03:00]
So I, I totally agree. I'm so glad you answered the question that way.
[01:03:03] Ellen Cassidy:
Yes, I'm glad, I'm glad I gave my honest answer and I didn't try and give you some kind of bullshit about OKRs. I, I will say,
[01:03:10] Josh Sharkey:
I actually, I've screwed up OKRs a hundred times, maybe a hundred, and they typically, 99 percent of the time, don't work.
[01:03:18]
And OKRs are kind of like the ketogenic diet, I always say this, like, they're either, like, amazing if you do it absolutely right, and everything culturally is aligned, and your company all follows this thing, But if you're off by like 1%, like if, if it's not completely like culturally embedded in your, in your world, then it's actually terrible.
[01:03:38] Ellen Cassidy:
Yeah.
[01:03:39] Josh Sharkey:
Or if you're not ready to be able to set those kinds of objectives. But once you, if you can actually, I think it's really, you know, a great way to align everybody into a unified goal and, and be very clear about like a QPI. They also, I mean, they're not five year olds right there. You know, three, three, six months.
[01:03:53]
Um, anyways, apart from technical issues, and the earthquake that we had this morning, uh, we literally, I can't believe we had an earthquake in Brooklyn this morning. This was awesome.
[01:04:08] Ellen Cassidy:
No, thank you. I love it. You clearly know my story so well, and I appreciate all of the research that you guys did. This is phenomenal.
[01:04:18] Josh Sharkey:
Well, I mean, you're taking the time to be here, so I wanted to make sure I took the time to not have you reiterate things that you've already said a bunch of times.
[01:04:25] Ellen Cassidy:
Oh, I mean, I appreciate it. I just gotta, I appreciate it immensely, because it's so, so fun to be able to, you know, work from a shared foundation.
[01:04:34] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, well, we'll keep chatting in the Hampton Channel, and I hope that everybody that listened to this can now start reading Translated. Equipping and yeah, and reach
[01:04:44] Ellen Cassidy:
out like I have a newsletter. I'm on TikTok. How do people find you? Yeah. I mean, I'm, uh, @LSATEllen on TikTok. Um, and so you can find me over there.
[01:04:55]
That'll have a link tree to everything else. Or you can go to Ellen Cassidy dot com. You can elemental prep dot com. Um, and
[01:05:03] Josh Sharkey:
The Loophole,
[01:05:04] Ellen Cassidy:
the loophole in LSAT logical reasoning. And so, yes, it has LSAT in the title. You know, that was so people could search LSAT and find it, but not my favorite for the music of the title, but there is a lot in there about what we just talked about.
[01:05:19]
And so if anyone's curious, I'm always happy to chat, especially for people who are not in LSAT and want to learn these sorts of methodologies. Like y'all are my new laboratory and I really want to build things for you. And so if you want this kind of thing to be built for you, you know, reach out.
[01:05:36] Josh Sharkey:
Amazing. Love it. Well, thank you.
[01:05:39] Ellen Cassidy:
Awesome.
[01:05:42] Josh Sharkey:
Thanks for tuning into The meez Podcast. The music from the show is a remix of the song Art Mirror by an old friend, hip hop artist, Fresh Daily. For show notes and more, visit getmeez.com/slash podcast. That's G E T M E E Z dot com forward slash podcast.
[01:05:58]
If you enjoyed the show, I'd love it if you can share it with fellow entrepreneurs and culinary pros, and give us a five star rating wherever you listen to your podcasts. Keep innovating, don't settle, make today a little bit better than yesterday, and remember, it's impossible for us to learn what we think we already know.
[01:06:13]
See you next time.
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