Billy Keels  0:00  

Today's episode is sponsored by Billy Keels advisory services. If you want to learn more about how to make your 99 optional, just go to make it optional.com. Once again, that's make it optional.com.

Speaker 1  0:14  

Helping you build freedom without losing your edge. This is the going long podcast with Billy Keels,

Billy Keels  0:27  

if you've ever wanted to know how social media can absolutely increase the vibration in your life and bring people together from all over the world, well today is absolutely the episode that you're going to want to listen to until the very last moment. You know why? Because, aside from being able to sit on the this side of the microphone and speak to some amazing people just like today, because today's guest is she's absolutely amazing. She is, I guess she would call herself a rare person who's actually worked across Well, lots of different industries, from like nonprofit to small business to government adjacent and even even it's really, really close to my heart, large corporates. She spent over three decades, which you probably would never believe, because when you're watching the video version, you'd be like three decades, not even possible. But you know what? She raised hundreds of millions of dollars via corporate sponsorships or partnerships, as well as marketing sponsorships, and today, she is leveraging all of that experience the network to be able to help underrepresented small businesses position themselves to to compete and thrive in the US with us, government contracts. It gives me great pleasure. So Tongue Tied even so much to welcome to today's conversation, the founder of LinkedIn for GovCon, none other than Cecilia McDonald. Cecilia, welcome to the show.

Speaker 2  1:55  

Thank you very much. Really happy to be here.

Billy Keels  1:57  

I'm like, I'm super happy. Like, when I say that, when I kick this off at the very beginning, it's like we have been in touch with one another for is literally, like, eight years. I think it's a very first contact, and we've had some really amazing conversations through through LinkedIn, and the things that you have actually been able to experience and living on, well, I don't want to tell your story. I'm not gonna tell your story because you're gonna you're gonna tell yourself. So I don't want to give away all the greatness i So with that, Cecilia, I tried just a little bit to tell just a smidgen of your story, but I would really love for you to tell and share with the going on podcast more of your backstory in your own words. And then, if it's okay with you, we'll kind of see what question or what how you respond, and then I'll ask you some questions and see how where the conversation goes.

Speaker 3  2:43  

I think that's a great idea, because it's interesting. I have so enjoyed following your work and the podcast, and our paths have been many have been similar, and but then we've come to common things, and then we might divert. And so it's really interesting to see where your path went, where went mine went, and that all of these possibilities are out there for anybody. And this is the beauty we were talking before the show, the beauty of living in this new century, where you and I have lived through the tech bubble, and now we're going through the AI bubble, and it completely changes what's possible. And so that's really, I think it's really exciting time. My backstory, I was raised in San Francisco, I like to say from the AIDS epidemic to the original tech bubble. I lived in LA, St Louis, Washington, DC, Australia, Canada. Now I'm in Montreal, and my husband's from Ireland, and myself, so we're like at this very like yourself, a very international lifestyle, and really the common thread through is communications, whether it was actually formally, like my days at Charles Schwab, where our through the foundation, we connected the whole company and we connected the network employees nationwide, or whether it's just simple, like translating ideas between donors to social impact corporate executives to social integration, but I'm always in that intersection and just sort of putting that in perfect text, I'm the middle kid of 10 over 13 years I was born. I was born into bridging communication. That's kind of my back story. The

Billy Keels  4:30  

middle of 10, and that happened over a span of 13 years.

Speaker 4  4:34  

Yeah,

Billy Keels  4:34  

wow, wow, wow.

Speaker 3  4:38  

Yeah. It shaped my life. It's a great place to be,

Billy Keels  4:40  

yeah, I can imagine. And so you've shared so many different things. And you know, everything as I'm listening to you, you're talking about the corporate experience, you're talking about the things that you have learned as a result of living in different places and different contexts, and you know, a spouse from a different continent and different country, and all of these types of things. Is, and if I hope it's okay with you, I'm going to let the world in on a direct message conversation that you and I had, and it's one of the things that really has reminded me of you in the context that we had in I don't I also want people to understand, because I talked about the social media aspect. And of course, there's a lot of things that you can kind of go can kind of go wrong with social media, but you can also gain really great insight and perspective from people. And I'll never forget you mentioned something a couple couple years back that you were talking about asking your son, people ask your son, you know where he's from, and and you, you mentioned the city that he was born in, and you can talk about that if you want to. I know which one it is, because you and I shared it, and it was part of the part of the conversation, but it was his response that I thought was absolutely phenomenal, or is phenomenal, or he's, he said, and you share with me that I'm a citizen of the world, and and that was, that's what comes from your son. And I thought to myself, how powerful is that? Because I think of my own kids, and I think of the the life and the choices that I've made, that how that impacts my children, and I'm just it was such a powerful statement that you shared with me that you know that I'm now sharing with others, but a lot of that comes from you know, the perspective that you help your your child with, so maybe you could share a little bit of of how that being in different places has helped your family and specifically

Speaker 3  6:31  

love that. I would love that, because my son is amazing.

Billy Keels  6:35  

Of

Speaker 3  6:36  

course he is, but you know what he is, what he is, his specialty is just he's really intuitive, and he can read his environment, and we'll come back to that. But the real quick backstory on that was, I was born in San Francisco, met my husband, who was from Ireland. We met in San Francisco, we moved to St Louis. My son was born in St Louis, and then we had an opportunity to move to Montreal and Tiernan. My son was seven, almost eight. So think first grade. Then we moved but we moved to Montreal, and the way society is here, the cultural roles, he had to go French immersion, which we supported, because we moved to a French culture, he was thrown in to what they call a welcome class, and none of the kids had a common language. They didn't speak French and they didn't speak English. They came from all over the world. And so immediately, think of your formative years at those early years. And so instantly, I mean, he didn't have anything in his head to undo, so he just learned the world through all of them. They talked about their families and their their parents were typically successful business people traveling, or perhaps successful business people who then became immigrants, story of the world. And so he was exposed to all of these things. And then the other the other part was in learning French. And I didn't anticipate in learning French, and he sort of became ESL. His English became so much richer than mine, because we start to think about the word origins right. And you would know this from your own experience. And so it was really, really fascinating. But also just he, he sees things in depth, and so that his thinking is less rigid. And so when we think, we say, Oh, we could do this or that, and he says, or we could do this. Okay, so it is really, I don't know where he'll go with his life, but I think living in a what we call Third Culture, where you develop this third space, I think it has made him wherever his career takes him. It will give him a tremendous foundation.

Billy Keels  8:43  

It's such a unique perspective, and one that, you know, I hope that more and more kids have the opportunity to experience, because it does. It just helps. It's like you're talking about, it's you do this or this, and he's like, Well, probably, how can we do this and this? You know, so in a way that only, that, only he can think about

Speaker 3  9:03  

well and let me just, let me just simple. He once said, you know mama, you know mama, you and you and others are saying the glass is either half empty or half full. I'm very half full. He goes, You're both wrong. The glass is full. Just right.

Billy Keels  9:22  

Yeah, I love it. I love it. So, yeah, so, so we think about some also to more, some of the story that you were, that you were sharing with us, and I talked about you in roles in corporate, right? We'll bring it, bring it here a little bit

Billy Keels  9:38  

as well

Billy Keels  9:39  

that you, that you had experiences, and I had a very positive corporate experience, and most of my guests have there's no there's no perfect experience anywhere. But could you maybe talk to us about, if you think about how you're helping and serving others today through LinkedIn for GovCon, but maybe some of the early lessons that you learned through corporate. That are now helping you today.

Speaker 3  10:02  

Yeah, yeah, and and I would expand. So I, I, for several years, was the executive director of the Charles Schwab corporate foundation, and I was based in San Francisco, then adjacent to that, still within corporate kind of larger I worked at the Northern California corporate grantmakers. And so then I was facilitating all the major companies, you know, McKesson, Bechtel, Chevron, Pac, Bill, you know, all the major companies and their corporate outreach. So I and so I worked with all the leading executives to figure out what was their growth, culturally and community wise. How could we build those bridges? How, especially as they went national and international and so a big part of what I did was framing the framing the message right, framing the the narrative we talk a lot about. A typical line corporate person is exceptionally good in their line, but they don't have to necessarily translate. Why, like, why are you good? And you know, with them, what's in it? For me, why should anybody care? Because if you want to go to the next step, or you want to take a side, not side hustle, that's not but if you want to expand your reach, you need to say something better than you were the best accountant, or you did this plan because nobody cares. And everybody, everybody does that. So working with them to say, how can you make what you do relevant to the people where you want to be? So that was a big part of what I did, trying to reframe how we build those networks, how you tell your story, and how you get how you get leadership. I'll give you just a side little story on that. Also in San Francisco, I was with the World Affairs Council, and it's a nonprofit organization that brings world leaders in to make access for public audiences. But a part of my job as the networker was I would get corporate sponsors, and then I would bring in world leaders into corporate environments. And you know, these companies were really starting to do their international outreach, and they didn't know how to talk to foreign countries. So that's, that's how that came together. The world is full of options. Yeah,

Billy Keels  12:27  

you know when? So when you have so many, you have so many of these different options, and you're hitting on something that is really important. Because one of the things I talked about in the beginning was, you know, you have this very unique perspective of seeing across, you know, the nonprofits, the small business, the government, adjacent, as well as the big companies, right where I spent the majority of my time. But when you have this perspective, it's it's so unique because you can connect dots or help others connect dots that they can't see. It was very similar to experience that I had in corporate where I worked at the last company I worked for, which was SAP. I was there for 16 years, I worked at a regional level, and so I understood the business regionally. I then worked at a global level. So I started seeing, okay, well, there's differences between the way what they're trying to do, between the region and the in the global and then I worked at a local level. I worked for the Spanish market. And when you're working at each one of those roles, but you have experience from that are adjacent experiences. It actually helps you to connect dots, or help others to connect dots that they can't see. And it's something that I think a lot of people aren't thinking about, aren't actively thinking about, and so I love the fact that you that you talk about that was there something else you want

Billy Keels  13:35  

to

Speaker 3  13:36  

expand on that say, I think it's, it's shifting the focus, right? It's very tempting to when you're talking about what you do and why you do it, you're talking about how you do it, the mechanics, the metrics, the KPIs, all those things that ring all the corporate bells and help our stocks appreciate. But really, that's really, that might be really good internal communication and positioning. But when you're trying to move out and expand. Really, the message has to be about outcomes, like, what was the transformation? What is different now than than was before? And okay, the corporate example is not coming to mind, but I'll give you an example back from my fundraising days, right? So say we were raising money for a major hospital, and someone says, Well, I don't need a hospital. I'm not going to give my million bucks there, because it's not something that I can personalize the value. So we say, well, actually, a major hospital increases your property value, attracts a higher caliber of employee, that brings your overall as a corporation, your net worth, perception and everything, because you did over this. And it's funny, I remember early in my inspiration around corporate positioning.

Billy Keels  14:49  

Do

Speaker 3  14:49  

you remember there were great shows on PBS, Masterpiece Theater, whatever and mobile? We. Would sponsor the gas Exxon Mobil would pay, say, $10,000 to sponsor an episode, and they would spend 100,000 telling the world they sponsored the episode, right? And they're beginning to realize, okay, it's all about the narrative.

Billy Keels  15:15  

But, but you have, you're, you're very uniquely situated to be able to recognize this and be able to help others recognize which I think is great. Now, one of the things that also happens when you're talking about and this, you know, I talk about big company experience, but you have lots of different experiences, right? But at the end of the day, and it's sometimes sad to think about, right? But every relationship ends, no matter what, right every relationship ends, and even when we think about the relationship that we have with our roles, when we're working for others, there's a moment where, where things end right. There's a there's a shift. It's you decide, they decide, or whatever. And so there's it just is it is what it is. And so I know that at a certain point for you, that and, and I know a lot of people have some challenge around this, like this, this change piece. But would you be open to sharing a little bit what kind of led you to deciding that you want to be able to serve others and serve in your own way, versus serving under the tutelage of a different organization.

Speaker 3  16:21  

Yeah, sure. Depends on how personal you want to be about this, but you know, well, let's go there. Corporate, real corporate, like you and I were talking about before. It's intense and it's and when you sign up, you're all in, like usually, most of us that were just all in. And so it's exciting. You're changing the world. You're growing exponentially. It's super, super great. What I found after a certain point, though, is I totally lost work, life balance. I completely lost it. And I also noticed that in in my Schwab experience, you know, it could be any company at the time, the rate of women having miscarriages was huge, and it was all because the pressure was just too hard. And so, actually, I accelerated my career massively in San Francisco, but then I moved to St Louis, and that's when I just sort of decompressed, and we started our family, and that's just the reality of corporate life. So people leave for a lot of reasons, but one of them is where you wake up one day and you say, as my mother would say, it's not your name on the company. Like, Oh, right. And so, but when you have a passion for working like you and I both do, you might change the environment, but not your nature. So it was like, Okay, I can't work intense there, but I'm going to work how else, right? And so, you know, I had a music label for a long time, and then all of a sudden, that little music label, which started as contract negotiation for artists, turned out to be global distribution, and that was all the same skills and passion in a different environment. And then, you know, I shifted into political organizing, and it was the same kind of thing. We understand how people think you you were looking for the greater good. We were good with numbers, crunching numbers. It's a great skill, and so I found that I could drive things myself. That was another part of leaving corporate is when you're corporate, you there's an expression when you have your hand in another man's pocket, you have to walk where he walks. And so, right? And and it was really liberating stepping out of some of those corporate roles I had into my own work.

Billy Keels  18:48  

Yeah, you know, it's really interesting. So when you talk about you have those experiences, and there's something that's calling you, that makes you, that has you wanting to focus on your own work, right? And part of the reason that I do ask this question, and I appreciate you sharing it, is usually people think that it's about money when you are making a move. My corporate experience ended because my father was not doing well and I didn't want to continue to ask for permission to fly from Europe to the US I was financially. Didn't really need it. I was going to the job because I liked it. But you know, and I know with you sharing your story as well, there is a part of you know, when you're in a corporate role, I don't even believe there is balance. I don't for high achievers, there's no balance, because you're either all in or you're not in like you're in harmony, I like to say, not in balance. No, no high achiever I've ever known is imbalanced. It just doesn't exist. And so when you get to the point, it's about, how do you prioritize? And to your point, which is like, Okay, I prioritize myself, my health, and the things that I want to do with my family. So thank you for sharing that. But what you've led us to, and this is one of the things that I really. To I want to ask you to talk about it, because there's so many different skills and experiences that you've learned. Oh no, there's one other thing. Because I don't want everybody to think that everything is like perfect, because at some point in time there must have been some struggle or some challenge that you went through. And I would say, in your core, in your in your working for someone else, in your someone else's pocket experience, but that that challenge, or that issue at the moment has actually helped you in what you're doing today, and specifically, and then that's going to lead into what you are doing at LinkedIn for GovCon. But can you maybe go back to that challenge issue that is helping you today.

Speaker 3  20:42  

If I was to go back to corporate, sometimes when we work in silos, whatever your silo is, you know, you know your piece of the sky, right? And then you think your piece of the sky like that slice of blue, and you don't see the whatever. So there were times in various corporate roles I had where I thought I understood where things are going, and then things would change on a dime. And so that was really hard, like, just, just simple things, um, I like to say I'm, I'm, I'm okay with change. I've moved all over. I'm not good with indecision and transition, and the bigger the company, the more layers of bureaucracy and decision making, whereas when you're an entrepreneur or in a smaller company, you can pivot and drive your own process. But there were times where I just started to feel like people thought they could come dabble in, you know, when you make something look really easy, people think it's easy. They don't realize that you're just really good and have a system in place and a network, and, you know, all these things that you need to to really thrive. And, um, I think after a while, I got tired of the shifting priorities, and I know that it's the nature of the beast, but I knew myself. And then also, a couple of friends were starting to say, you know, that's not a good place for you to thrive, right? And when your friends are saying, you know, you can go somewhere else and be just as happy you should. Then Then you start to listen. I would say that's another thing. Just to leave it there, you need to get good at listening to to other things.

Billy Keels  22:27  

It's amazing, like, it's, you're just sitting on such a thing that's so important. Because it's like, this is for the going along family. I just want you to hear what Cecilia is talking about. Because this is also something that comes up frequently in it is, it's amazing the number of of you know, high achieving guests like yourself that will say, Well, my friends and family all saw it, but I couldn't see it like just the importance of what you just said right now, which is, listen to those that are around you, because they are able to recognize and see patterns or opportunities that many times are so right In front of your face and obvious that you just don't even see them.

Speaker 3  23:04  

And I would piggyback on that with high achievers. There's a reason people are high achievers, because they can push through the walls, they can push through the wrong capabilities, and they they can just fix it. And obviously, both of us, I think we have that gene, and I'm just a fix it person. The voices are saying, you know, it's not your responsibility to fix it or fix it somewhere else. And when the first person said to me, it's not your job to fix that, that was mind blowing. Going back to the middle kid thing, where I was responsible for everybody, top to bottom and in every job I've ever had, oh my gosh, in fundraising, just as a side, nobody ever told anybody else on the team that other employees would get fired if they didn't hit their goals. Other employees would just, you know, bounce if they didn't hit your goals. But, like, it's a different level of pressure, right? And then you need your friends to mirror back your values, just to hold up and say, you say you value this. I see you doing that. Where's the disconnect?

Billy Keels  24:07  

Yeah, that was, that was definitely the my son's third birthday party, and it changed my life forever. And because I was out of alignment, and I realized, like, I'm saying one thing and I'm on a flight over here doing this other thing when I didn't need to be there. And I always preface that there are moments are moments where you have to do certain things, but I wasn't in a moment in my career where I actually had to do it. I was just drinking the corporate Kool Aid and got lost, like I just I got out of I got out of alignment. Yeah. So thank you. So thanks for sharing that. And then so you've you've had this life experiences. You've moved you've lived in different countries. You have, you know, have this amazing set of opportunities. You have friends that are saying, hey, Cecilia, listen, there's other opportunities out there. Are that are out there. And then you've decided that you want to help others, and you want to be able to do it in a way that is considered. Stand and align with your with your values and how you want to serve other people, and you found this really amazing niche today, or niche, or however you want to say it, this is a guy who's from Ohio, but he's lived all over and stuff like that. You get where I'm coming from, but know now that like this, where you're focused today with LinkedIn for GovCon. Can you talk to us a bit more about that, because we want to shed the light here or shine the light here, and just understand more about what was the what was the driving force behind that, and then also who you're actually helping today.

Speaker 3  25:32  

Thank you. Yes, this is I've had more fun. Back to your thing about finding your place that motivates you. I've had more fun in the last year. So short, short big picture, short picture, the LinkedIn for GovCon. LinkedIn, we know GovCon is government contracting, and companies all across the country secure contracts with the government. And what my brother, who started at the top of the episode, who does LinkedIn lives, I started working with him years ago, and we realized that these small companies never learned to sell. Getting back to the whole messaging, right? They learned how to get contracts. They were doing, you know, multi million

Billy Keels  26:12  

tons

Speaker 3  26:12  

of million dollar contracts all across country, but they missed the basics. And then I went to work with Neil, and I realized not only that, they didn't even know how to talk about what they did and the outcomes. And I'll just give you a simple example. I have a client now, she's in Texas. She is a janitorial company. And I said, So what do you do? And she said, I you know, we go into federal facilities and we clean them up.

Speaker 4  26:36  

Said, no, no, no, you don't.

Speaker 3  26:39  

Your team make sure that that airborne unit is able to show up for work and defend the country, because there is not any exposure to any health risk. You minimize health risks through your quality, efficiency. Whole different message, I'm part of the national security I said, you bring employment to that entire town. You your, you know, your mission does this. So back to my point about outcomes. So now I work with companies to use LinkedIn for business development. I hope it's so. I have a thing, a pre network. It's positioning, reputation and engagement. Figure out how to define what you do, how to demonstrate your expertise, and how you reach people. And so it's, it's business to business largely,

Billy Keels  27:28  

yeah, but

Speaker 3  27:29  

it brings it all together. But it's, it's very much business to business.

Billy Keels  27:32  

Okay, fantastic. So it's business to business. And you know, we have a lot of people who are in big businesses, and some of them want to start their own business, and some of them want to stay at their corporate job, and they're like, Hey, I've got this thing. So, like, usually, what is the what is the major problem? So you gave us a really great example, right now, the major problem that you are helping your clients to solve? Like, I think that was a really good idea. Like someone, they're doing one thing, but to in order to get the right type of contract, they have to describe it. But maybe there's somebody that they don't even know, that they don't really know what they want to do yet. So maybe if you could talk to us about that where, where you see an opportunity?

Speaker 3  28:15  

Well, if I was to say straight up, where I'm seeing an opportunity, and then I'll see mistakes. A lot of times people have heard, oh, you can get rich quick. Get these government contracts. It's really easy. And there's a lot of people on YouTube and elsewhere spending that message, oh, and there's like, War Dogs and these movies that make people think, and that is not the way it is. And so if you're

Billy Keels  28:37  

Thank goodness it was super easy. They never would be doing it so

Speaker 3  28:42  

well. So the corporate sector is very different than the government sector. The government sector is heavily regulated, and the corporate sector is not. And so there's always a collision, like, you know, I'm saying this, and then I realized we've had the last year, which is kind of redefined reality. But traditionally, corporate sector. The corporate sector has a certain set of laws, more like tax and legal, but operating is just business, whereas and and also, you may not know what's going on, because it's internal business, whereas the government being tax funded, it's follows the laws. The laws are obvious. You can see, you can see everyone who's competing on the same contract as you are. I never saw that in corporate side. We have no idea who you're coming against. So there's that the real switch for people to be successful is to stop going after the prime government contract. Find another large business that's doing it. Take the sub so you skip over all the bureaucracy. You get all the revenue, because it's all about revenue, right? And you're getting your people and then. And for corporate people that are shifting from corporate it's much easier for them to learn how to have a business to business relationship, instead of dealing with the government, right? Right? So you're just, yeah, it's same as you would do in any other B to B situation. And then the biggest thing is just to be visible. And this is my real focus. Be where the buyers are, use AI, enlist in the right place, because the buying process is different. So I teach the how, and they teach visibility.

Billy Keels  30:19  

Okay, all right, fantastic. Well, and that just helped to have the light bulb go off for those of you that are watching, listening and thinking, Okay, I never even thought about that kind of Trojan horse strategy to be able to build your side business effectively. So, you know, in Cecilia, one of the things that I would like to share actually kind of probably the last question before I ask that last question, is there anything else that I've not asked you that you think is relevant, that you want to that you want to share?

Speaker 3  30:50  

I just, I think the one lesson that I learned leaving corporate is to leave in good graces, bring those relationships forward, and also just bring a little grace to it, because if you were under pressure, you weren't the only one. When you're in the fight or it really feels like it, and then when you leave, remember that the company has moved on as just the same way as you. So when you come back in, that allow a little space for that evolution, right?

Billy Keels  31:19  

Yeah, that's that's like platinum advice, as I like to say. So thank you. Thank you for sharing that. So one of the things that I do like I think, because I for such a long time, I was just achieving, achieving, achieving, achieving, and it seemed like success, success, success. And there were so many things that happened, and I just didn't really pay attention to them, because they were just happening. It seemed like that was always happening. And then there was a certain point in my life where things went quite the opposite way. You know, I have I went through divorce, I went through a bad business deal. Won't get into too many of the specifics there, but, but what I will say is that it seemed like those were moments when you're at the bottom of the valley and they just kind of keep going forever, but and you have the friends that come and they share the ideas with you. But what I realized more importantly, to have the friends and family that are close to you, that will share with you, that give you that outside in perspective, is one thing, but there's also a moment where, like, you have to just look yourself in the mirror when you're going and I'm specifically talking about the challenging times. Okay, you go through the challenging times, but those are real moments when you can learn a lot about yourself, about the environment, but most importantly, you have to tell yourself when it's the moment to actually get going. And it could be a special message, like, I know that there was a moment where I really literally looked myself in the mirror. Was like, said, what? I said,

Speaker 3  32:39  

Yeah.

Billy Keels  32:39  

And so knowing that you've been able to accomplish so much and help others to transform, and you know that, like, and really, it's to kind of think about three years from now, like, you know, you're going to have a lot of really, really great moments, right?

Speaker 3  32:53  

And the reality

Billy Keels  32:54  

is, you're going to have some of these moments too, where it's kind of like the valley,

Speaker 3  32:57  

yeah.

Billy Keels  32:58  

So I'd love for you to think about the valley moments already and say there's going to be a moment where you're going to have to tell yourself something so that when you look back three years from now, you can go, you know what silly? I'm really glad that you said that, and I'm really glad that I listened, because I needed that. So thank you for sharing that with me. So

Speaker 3  33:16  

yeah,

Billy Keels  33:16  

if you could share that one message that you have to leave yourself that's going to help you get through knowing that three years from now, you're going to be much higher than you are now. What's that one message that you would share

Speaker 3  33:30  

with us? This is really great. I mean, it is so great that you asked this. There's an expression my siblings kick around, you know, as they would, and it's just, so what's your point? I think you need to get up and ask yourself every day, so what's your point? And like some of those bad days, I love because I'm a spin person. I can paint my whole story full of roses, you know. But the truth is, there were lots of chasms. And for example, when we moved to Quebec, we were selling our house in the bottom in 2008 everything trying to, you know, we're trying to have a foot in both countries. I was trying. I was losing money. And then one day I woke up on that and thought, Who are you trying to impress? And that follows, what's your point? Who are you trying to impress, like, why are you doing that? I just thought, This is stupid. Cut the loss, sell the house, whatever it is, close that door. And that's another just sometimes you have to close the door behind you, or you cannot go forward. That's a huge lesson I've learned. And another thing, and this is just timely for what's going on in the world, you and I can romanticize moving abroad, and we both have really rich lives because we did it so we could sing that all day. It is not an easy thing. It is not an easy process. You reinvent yourself a different different country is a different country. Canada is not the 51st state. There's a foreign, different language. Everything is different here. Here. And so I would just really encourage people to, like, ask you, why is there another way to solve this? And I say this again because, you know, my husband's saying, well, wouldn't it be great to move back to Europe? And I'm thinking, that's not the right question. The question is, do I want to move my household again? Because, is it travel, or is it relocation? Let's just travel. But things are harder, so pick and choose and know your wine if it's worth it, go all in. But if you're doing it for someone else's notion of what's worth it, take a step back before it gets expensive in all ways.

Billy Keels  35:40  

Yeah, so, so what's your point? I love that. And when I think about what you said, and you said it, and it is true, it is very different. I'm going to put it in different words, but it's saying the same thing. It is very different to travel abroad than it is to live abroad. They are very different, very, very different. One word changes me

Speaker 3  36:02  

around tax time when you're we both logistically nightmare.

Billy Keels  36:09  

Yeah, it's, it's definitely not a fun thing. Cecilia, this, it's, I can't even these conversations go by way too fast. Like, way too fast for me. I like, I'm very fortunate, because I get a chance to continue to stay in touch with you. But I think about you talking about, just from the moment of having different moves around the world, and you even talking about, like, when you said that you were the mid of 10 kids that happened over 13 years, I'm thinking, wow, this is unbelievable. We didn't even get into too many of those, too many of those stories. But we also talked about the fact that you've had an opportunity to live in different countries, have different experiences, and as a result, it's not only helped to elevate your life and your way of thinking and seeing from different perspectives. You even talk about the impact that it has on your son, your son in terms of being like, would you say seven or eight? And he's thinking about, Hey, hang on a second. It's not half full, it's not half empty. It's it is what it is like. This is, this is the thing. And so being the citizen of the world that He is, it's also giving you the perspective to not only leverage the experiences that you've had in any of the different industries that we talked about before, the nonprofit or the small business or the government adjacent, and even the corporate but it's giving you this sense of realizing like, Hey, listen, even when it was time for you to end because life took the priority for you, it never meant that you were going to stop giving you continue to contribute. You continue to now, do it in a way that makes the most sense for you, that is aligned with you and your values, because you also listen to your friends that were saying, Hello, Cecilia. There's some opportunities here. But everybody here in the going along podcast is going Billy, just ask Cecilia the question, please, because we really just want to know. So I would love for you to tell me in the going long podcast, what is the best way for us to know more about you, what you have going on, and also how you're helping others with LinkedIn for GovCon,

Speaker 3  38:01  

you know, reach me on LinkedIn. Reach me and LinkedIn, tell me. You know, Billy sent me, and I'm happy to connect. And if you want to connect and just sort of run some ideas by I'm here. I love to hear where people are going. I love to give back. I get energy from meeting new people, and it sharpens me so absolutely. Reach me in linkedin.com, or, sorry, yeah, reach me through LinkedIn, and then you can find me anywhere after that. And the good thing is, just search my name. I turn up in AI all the time now.

Billy Keels  38:31  

Oh, awesome. Okay, and Cecilia McDonald so GovCon visibility, and she's going to help you. And the thing is, and I know she's already said it, but I just want to reiterate it, because I'm, you know, you know, Cecilia and I've been connected almost a decade at this point on LinkedIn, and so when you connect with her, when you connect with her, just let her know. Hey, listen. I've already listened to you and Billy on the on the go along podcast. It will help the two of you to continue the conversation. Cecilia is amazing. We've had some awesome conversations through chats. And Cecilia, I do want to say on behalf of the entire going long family, thank you very much for deciding to invest your time with us to share your stories, and I am sure that you are going to continue to add value to the going long family for many, many years to come. So thank you very much. Appreciate

Speaker 3  39:14  

it. Thanks, Billy. I really enjoyed our time together.

Billy Keels  39:17  

All right. Awesome. Go along family. Thanks for being here with Cecilia and I today, go out, make it A great day. And thank you very, very much.

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