The Impostor Syndrome World Championships, w/ Jocelyn Collie

Rob Collie (00:00:00): Hello, friends, I'd like to start this one with a little bit of a thought experiment. Will you join me on this thought experiment? You and your partner, the spouse kind of partner, are both kind of nerdy and you decide years ago to start a tech company together. So you're co-founders. Now you're not just romantic domestic partners, but you're also business partners now.

(00:00:21): And over the years, this company really blossoms. The company grows to be more than 70 people strong. It's helped hundreds of organizations achieve transformational impact with their data. And along the way at this company, you start a podcast. Occasionally, you'll even have employees from the company on the podcast. So of course the move is to wait more than 100 episodes to invite your wife and co-founder to be on the show. That makes total sense, doesn't it?

(00:00:52): Well, I have a decent excuse, which is I didn't think she'd be up for it. Now, of course, it turns out that she was, because, hey, otherwise we wouldn't have this episode, right? This does bring us back to one of the ongoing recurring themes, if not the biggest single recurring theme of this show, which is imposter syndrome. I think my wife, Jocelyn Collie, might be in the running for worst case of imposter syndrome ever.

(00:01:18): Now, of course I'm her husband, so I'm biased, but I really think Jocelyn has done some super impressive things with her life. And you know that other theme we've got on the show, which is sort of the accidental path. Well, you'll hear that she zigzagged quite a bit, and along the way showed enormous resiliency and self-reliance. And she still doesn't think she's anything special.

(00:01:39): When we recorded this episode, she was sitting upstairs, and I was down in the basement. I already knew most of the things we talked about on this podcast. But to hear them all again and essentially be like making eye contact with her on the screen as she told the stories, well, dear listener, I hope it's not too touchy feely to admit that if somehow I had fallen out of love with my wife, I would've fallen right back into love with her full force over the course of having this conversation. So it was obviously a super powerful experience for me. But setting aside that personal connection, these are some really, really interesting stories. She has done some really unique things. I know you'll hear that. I hope you enjoy it. So let's get into it.

Announcer (00:02:25): Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please?

Announcer (00:02:29): This is The Raw Data by P3 Adaptive Podcast with your host, Rob Collie, and your co-host, Thomas LaRock. Find out what the experts at P3 Adaptive can do for your business. Just go to p3adaptive.com. Raw Data by P3 Adaptive is data with the human element.

Rob Collie (00:02:55): Welcome to the show, Jocelyn Collie. Wait, that's the same last name. What's going on here? That's weird. So we have had husband and wife on this show, not the same episode, but we had Scott and Darinee Louvau on separately. So we've had partners on the show. And recently we had half of a husband and wife co-founder team on the show, Alice Drummond. And it occurred to me that you and I, Jocelyn, are married and we're also co-founders of this company. Why oh why have I taken, what, two plus years to invite you, of all people, to be on the show? What do you call that? Would you call it bad hweetie?

Jocelyn Collie (00:03:37): Bad hweetie.

Rob Collie (00:03:39): Bad hweetie. Yeah.

Jocelyn Collie (00:03:40): Bad hweetie.

Rob Collie (00:03:41): That's right. Which I used to have a T-shirt that said that. How do we spell hweetie? It's H-W-E-E-T-I-E?

Jocelyn Collie (00:03:46): Hweetie.

Rob Collie (00:03:49): I don't know where that came from.

Jocelyn Collie (00:03:50): It came from me making up words all the time.

Rob Collie (00:03:55): Which is something that you do. So I think the reason why it's taken me so long to ask you is that I assumed you would say no. Let's test that theory. And you're like, "Ah, I'd love to do that." And then I felt like a real schmuck.

Jocelyn Collie (00:04:07): It's funny that I never thought about it either. It never occurred to me, oh, why hasn't Rob asked me to be a podcast guest? And I get so little social interaction.

Rob Collie (00:04:16): Yeah. Well, this is great. You get to see the person that you share a house with on camera. What a change. But you also get to interact with Luke today.

Jocelyn Collie (00:04:25): Yes.

Rob Collie (00:04:25): No Tom today. Luke's always here. But we've told Luke that his job today is to fill the 7% LaRock line of content. So Luke, are you up for the 7%?

Luke Pirozzoli (00:04:36): Yeah, I think I can muster up at least 7% of the words of this podcast. Yes.

Rob Collie (00:04:41): We moved the scheduling of this thing around so many times that we sort of did that like we were trying to throw Tom off. Like in the movies where the car is swerving back and forth, and there's a guy clinging into the hood. I think we successfully dislodged Tom.

Jocelyn Collie (00:04:53): I'm sorry, Tom. We just have a complicated life.

Rob Collie (00:04:56): Okay. So let's set the stage, and then we're going to rewind. So in 2009 is when the original PowerPivotPro blog was launched. But it wasn't until 2013 that we registered that as a company and went into business for ourselves. And you, Jocelyn, were one of the chief advocates encouraging me that this is what we should do, encouraging us. And that poster I showed you the other day on Facebook, the big inspirational banner that was hanging in a gym that said, "We don't do this because it's easy. We do this because we thought it would be easy."

Jocelyn Collie (00:05:33): Yes.

Rob Collie (00:05:35): I think that applies here, right? Yeah, it'd be great. It would be fun. What could go wrong?

Jocelyn Collie (00:05:40): But I don't think we did it because we thought it would be easy. I think at the time, we were with Pivotstream, and you were a mess. You were feeling marginalized and angry.

Rob Collie (00:05:53): We were both working at a place actually, at a startup, that I think our time there, Jocelyn and my time, it had run its course. And I in particular, I was really getting frustrated with what we were doing. At the same time, we were seeing the opportunity that I had seen in 2010. It took a few years for that opportunity to really become viable in the marketplace. And by 2013, the demand was sufficient, that now was an opportunity to go and launch the company that we thought was needed.

Jocelyn Collie (00:06:19): And I didn't see it turning into what it is now. I saw it where, Rob, he had this blog that he was doing, and he was doing some individual consulting and public training, which pulled in a lot of money when it was just us. I was like, oh yeah, we're going to take these public trainings around the world, and we're going to get all this cool business travel out of it. And then I discovered that my husband, he was like, uh-huh. So we did a public training in London. That was the one international training that we did. And it went really well. I did all the event planning for it, and sold all the seats for it, which was one of the roles I was filling back then. And it went off really well. People loved it, and true to the company now even, we didn't skimp on what we did for the attendees.

(00:07:08): So the first night of the two day training, we would always book out a room at a bar or something. We found this really cool pub near where we were doing the training. And we had British pies and pints and super fun. People loved it. And I thought that was the greatest experience ever. I was looking forward to also the extra time that I had booked us on the other side to spend time in London. And Rob crashed. After two days of training, he's like, "I don't want to leave the hotel room," which he ultimately did come around, but it took a good 24 hours plus of that. That was when I kind of realized my dream of our international trainings and Rob going around speaking at conferences and things around the world really is not going to happen.

Rob Collie (00:07:56): All right. So two things. Number one, Luke, can we get a sound effect here, like a ding so that we can keep score for all the times that I was disappointing.

Jocelyn Collie (00:08:12): No, no, no. No. That is not it.

Rob Collie (00:08:13): Ding. That's one disappointment.

Jocelyn Collie (00:08:15): I am not disappointed in you. It was just I had a different fantasy, right? I had a different fantasy about what the company was going to do. And I never really thought about growing the company initially because it just seemed scary, and we're not business people. I had no idea how we were going to grow that. And so it just seemed logical to me that it was going to be you as the primary and me as support

Rob Collie (00:08:40): As the back office. That's right. That's right. Which is a really interesting thing because now we have, not quite, but approaching 10 people doing what you used to do.

Jocelyn Collie (00:08:50): Doing it in most areas considerably better than I did.

Rob Collie (00:08:55): Well, I mean at the same time it's a bigger operation now. I mean, it just sort of gives a sense of, the old joke was I did the blogging, the consulting, and the training, and you did everything else. That turned out to be quite a bit. And we had a good two and a half year run as just the two of us. That was two and a half years of you doing, let's just see here, and this goes back even before then, but you did graphic design.

Jocelyn Collie (00:09:22): Yeah. And web development.

Rob Collie (00:09:23): You did our accounting, invoicing, event planning.

Jocelyn Collie (00:09:29): Sales.

Rob Collie (00:09:32): Yeah, sales.

Jocelyn Collie (00:09:32): And all the customer interaction. That was me.

Rob Collie (00:09:34): Which is really just a natural role for you because you just love interacting with strangers, right? That's your favorite.

Jocelyn Collie (00:09:39): Fortunately, I was able to do it over email primarily, which does work for me. If it had to be over the phone, oh my god, that would've been disaster.

Luke Pirozzoli (00:09:48): I am in part, or in full, one of those individuals that Jocelyn's tasks were under. And it might be more than 10, if you're including all the sales and the invoicing. I mean, it might be well more than 10.

Rob Collie (00:10:00): We need to do an infographic, a silhouette of Jocelyn. It'd be like the cuts of meat on a cow. The left shoulder, that's Luke.

Luke Pirozzoli (00:10:07): I'm probably closer to the rear is all I'm saying.

Jocelyn Collie (00:10:12): I'm just imagining the pig in the cow pictures that you see all the time with the different-

Rob Collie (00:10:16): Exactly. And we're going to use dotted lines to represent the different regions. And it's going to be very, very weird. I doubt we'll actually do this. You don't get as much public credit for this company, Jocelyn, as you really should. There would be no P3 Adaptive, 60 plus people and counting and growing super, super fast, and changing the way that the industry works. This wouldn't exist without the things that you've done.

Jocelyn Collie (00:10:41): Thanks.

Rob Collie (00:10:41): And people like Luke wouldn't have the job that he has. And this episode, this will be the last time you ever get any credit. We'll get you all the credit, and we're going to squeeze it into 90 minutes here, and then that's it.

Jocelyn Collie (00:10:54): No more appreciation for me.

Rob Collie (00:10:55): That's right. You get 90 minutes. You better make the most of it. So your story, large parts of your life journey, also fit on this show. And when we started this show, we didn't know that this was going to be kind of one of the ongoing themes, but the accidental path into tech. The people who may or may not have enjoyed or been drawn to the math and science stuff in high school. So let's get a lot of your origin story. So we know where you are most recently, co-founder of P3 Adaptive. It takes a village to do all the things that you used to do. Let's start in high school.

Jocelyn Collie (00:11:34): One little tidbit, pre-high school. I had an experience in middle school. So I was in all the honors advanced classes. And I had a math teacher who made an example of me in front of my entire class, told them I was the best math student he ever had. And I mean, I've always been socially anxious, and not really like that sort of attention. And that was really embarrassing for me. And at the time, I didn't have a whole lot of friends and a teacher calling me out for being this exemplary math student in my mind was like, oh, this is the worst thing that could have happened to me.

(00:12:18): And so I kind of pulled this 180 and did something that I now wish I could go back and undo, but I decided that I didn't want to be the smart kid. I wanted to be the popular kid. And middle school brain thought that all you had to do to be the popular kid was be cute and be a cheerleader and people would like you. And I discovered that doesn't work. But that proceeded to be what I tried to do through high school as well. So I said no, I mean, I still did some of my honors classes, but I did not pursue any AP classes, which I should have.

(00:12:59): I didn't know what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to go to college. I kind of lacked direction. So putzed around a bit in high school. Also had narcolepsy that was undiagnosed, and so I would fall asleep all the time in high school. So it was probably good that I wasn't in those AP classes because I remember one math class in particular where I fell asleep, and another math teacher made an example of me. Apparently these math teachers, they like to make examples of their students.

Rob Collie (00:13:24): This wasn't a positive example, the falling asleep one?

Jocelyn Collie (00:13:27): Well, it was funny though because she made an example of me. She's like, "Look, Jocelyn falls asleep in class every single day, and she still has the top grade in the class."

Rob Collie (00:13:37): She's just telling everybody else how much they suck. That's exactly right.

Jocelyn Collie (00:13:42): But that was my high school career was I was in these classes that weren't challenging, and I got really good grades while falling asleep and not really caring. I was a cheerleader. I didn't really fit in with that crowd. I didn't get invited to a single party in all of high school. I was kind of a sad sack in some ways. But I still enjoyed my high school career, I guess you would call it. I enjoyed cheerleading. I did a few other activities. I mean, I was good at art. I tried to get a spot in student council and did not get elected.

(00:14:16): I graduated still top 10% of my class, but I was not a valedictorian like my husband was. And I didn't try for that, right? My attitude was, and this was my attitude in college also, I just thought I was naturally smart, but I didn't know how to work at things. So it was like, well, let me be lazy in my classes and see how well I can do while being lazy. So I went to a lot of universities. I had a very strange college career.

(00:14:46): But one of the places that I did go for a year was West Point, and it was really challenging and it terrified me, but I still wasn't about to change my work ethic. So everybody I knew was studying for things. And I'm off at the radio station. I happened to be a DJ, Luke, at the radio station at WKDT. And yeah, I'd be at the radio station eating pizza and ice cream and DJing while my classmates were all studying really hard.

Rob Collie (00:15:14): They were either studying or working out, and you're at the radio station eating pizza and ice cream.

Jocelyn Collie (00:15:21): Yeah. That was the one place I gained the freshman 15 was at West Point, of all places.

Rob Collie (00:15:26): That's hard to do because everyone else that I knew that did something like that, they came back lean.

Jocelyn Collie (00:15:30): I did do basic training in AIT. So the way I paid for much of college was with money from the Army. And so I joined the reserves in high school, delayed entry program. So I had already done basic and AIT, which is what gave me the crazy idea that going to West Point would be fun or good for me. I came back for basic training at AIT totally ripped and in great shape. So West Point wasn't quite the same deal. but be truthful, I mean, my parents were sending me care packages all the time, filled with giant bags of Starbursts. And there was a lot more eating at West Point and less working out than there was in the regular Army.

(00:16:08): Oh, but what I was going to say about my laziness, I was super excited when I left West Point after one year. And I was like, look, I didn't even try, and I was in the top third of my class. That was what I was proud of. So I was a little bit mixed up back in the day. I wish I could go back and actually be who I know I am now and try, take those tough classes, and actually push through those tough academics, and probably pursue a STEM major in college as well. My actual major was media production. I thought I wanted to be an editor for films, go out to Hollywood. I never made it there because I ended up getting engaged to somebody I dated at West Point, and I moved to El Paso, Texas for a brief stint.

Rob Collie (00:16:55): That's like Hollywood East, like El Paso.

Jocelyn Collie (00:16:58): It is. And I mean, I actually got into production when I was down there. I found a company that did web development, and they did video production for local commercials and informative videos. So I got to do some stuff with them. I did grip work and lighting, and that was kind of it. And then when I ended up moving to Seattle, which was on a whim, when I moved to Seattle, I was looking for positions in media production, and I was finding mostly third shift positions for $10 an hour. And in Seattle, that was not going to cut it. And also third shift was never going to work for me because having narcolepsy and-

Rob Collie (00:17:37): Narcoleptic on the third shift. Yeah, sounds great.

Jocelyn Collie (00:17:39): Yeah. And when I was in the Army, even being on fire watch, fire guard was the worst for me. I would fall asleep all the time on fire guard. I'm not the person that could be trusted to be editing video or watching video footage or whatever in the middle of the night. That just was never going to happen. So I was like, ugh, I need to pivot. And I ended up waiting tables. Waited tables through college, and I knew it was good money. I highly recommend it for any college student that needs money. Don't go work retail or campus library, or any of that stuff. Go wait tables because, cocktailing, you can pull down a few hundred bucks in one night.

Rob Collie (00:18:18): And this is with social anxiety?

Jocelyn Collie (00:18:20): This is with social anxiety. But I have a weird flavor of social anxiety. It's like when I first started waiting tables, I was really, really anxious, and I still have nightmares about tables leaving. Rob has dreams about being late for tests or missing tests, right?

Rob Collie (00:18:35): Yeah, yeah. Skipping class all semester, and then going to the exam and not even knowing what the subject is. Yeah.

Jocelyn Collie (00:18:40): My version of that is that I'm waiting tables, and I have too many tables and I have tables that start to leave because I can't get to them. And that used to happen when I first started. I had terrible social anxiety and terrible anxiety about screwing up. And I was, I was a terrible server at first. But then once I got the flow, then I was like, I got this down. And then I started to have fun with customers and I actually got good at it. So my flavor of social anxiety, I can often overcome it if I just put in enough reps. I can't with everything. There are definitely certain people that, no matter how hard I try, I am always going to be anxious around them. But I mean still maybe wasn't as good as somebody who was non-socially anxious. I didn't pull down the biggest tips, but I did all right.

Rob Collie (00:19:30): Well, before we move on from there, let's rewind a second. Another theme that comes up a lot on this show is imposter syndrome. I think you have a very interesting flavor of it. You said you wish you could go back to high school and college knowing what you know now and do those other things, the things that you didn't do. Most people that we've talked to on this show, whether they were into or good at those sorts of things in high school or not, I've never heard any of them regret that they didn't pursue those things aggressively in high school.

(00:20:01): One of the things about you, there's something about achievement for you. Have you achieved enough in life is a question that you're asking yourself all the time. And I almost never ask myself this question. If I were you, if I had your history, I would look back and say, I didn't do any of those things. Look at me now. I'm fine. That's the conclusion I would reach. I wouldn't reach the conclusion of, no, I wish I could go back and show those trig students what I was made of. That wouldn't be something I would do to myself.

Jocelyn Collie (00:20:32): But it's not like that. It's not me wanting to go back and show those people what I could do. It's me wishing I'd followed a different path, more true to myself, who I am. And I closed off a lot of opportunities for myself. So you asked me about tech, we didn't even get to that point.

Rob Collie (00:20:50): Because someone I know taught herself C++.

Jocelyn Collie (00:20:52): Yeah. So I mean, that was my thing, right? I definitely have talent. I just wish that I could have focused it and used it to do something more deliberate, right? Everything has been just this flow for me. Just see where the world takes me. And that's fine. I mean, I've definitely had a lot of great experiences. And I met Rob, and that's been mostly amazing.

Luke Pirozzoli (00:21:28): The truth is spilling out now.

Rob Collie (00:21:29): Ding.

Jocelyn Collie (00:21:31): No, you're not a disappointment now. I'm saying we went through some rough patches. That's all I meant by that.

Rob Collie (00:21:38): That's right.

Jocelyn Collie (00:21:38): We're in a great place now. But we had some bumps. That's what I meant.

Luke Pirozzoli (00:21:43): You, self-described lazy person doesn't usually go to West Point, go to the Army, do all these things that you've done. I think the challenge, you seeking out the challenges, is you seeking out these experiences because most people wouldn't. I didn't. I didn't go seek... I took the path of least resistance almost every time. Almost every time.

Jocelyn Collie (00:22:07): That is a good point. I definitely sought out challenges. When we talk about my social anxiety, it's been crippling in my life. And I was like, no, damn it. I'm not going to let it stop me from these things. Like cheerleading, I was terrified to try out for cheerleading.

Rob Collie (00:22:22): No, I would never do that.

Jocelyn Collie (00:22:26): But I was angry about what I viewed as handicaps. I didn't ask for that stupid social anxiety and I wanted to beat it. And I mean, I've now learned that I've never going to beat it. It's always a process of trying to improve, overcome it. Yeah, I mean, I've always loved trying new things. So I definitely wasn't lazy, Luke, in that regard. I tried so many things.

(00:22:55): I loved playing musical instruments. I've played a ton of instruments, taught myself instruments, in fact. I played the flute growing up and a little bit of piano, but I've taught myself some trumpet, clarinet, oboe, saxophone, bassoon. I even played in the Microsoft Orchestra on the bassoon, and never had any formal training on that. Taught myself to skateboard. I taught myself to unicycle.

(00:23:16): I found a unicycle at my grandma's house one day when I was nine years old, and I was determined to learn how to ride it. And so there was no internet. I couldn't go look up a video and see how to do it. But I developed my own plan for how I was going to do this. I'm going to use a chair. I taught myself my own technique for riding a unicycle, and I mastered it in a few days. And then when I was 11, my dad got his hands on a six foot unicycle temporarily. Just borrowed it from someone he knew from work, I guess. Apparently more people ride unicycles than you would think. He brought it home, and we used a six foot ladder, and my dad holding this thing stable. And it took me two days of trying, and I was riding the six foot unicycle around the neighborhood.

(00:24:00): I was all about trying new things and adventure. My biggest regret though is in the academic space. That's where my fear was. I was afraid to fail. I wanted to know that I was going to succeed or I wasn't going to take that class. Okay. So part of it, to be fair, was the anxiety. It was so crippling that I couldn't ask questions of professors. I couldn't ask questions of my peers. And so I was on my own. That's how I got through college. I never had a single study session that included another person. I didn't study a whole lot, mind you, but when I did, it was always solo because I was terrified to ask anybody to study with me. Like I said, I couldn't ask questions of professors. I was terrified, A. But B, the terror went so deep that I couldn't even formulate questions. I would freeze and I wouldn't even be able to think of a question to ask. My entire life I've been teaching myself things. So I read books and/or learn by doing.

(00:25:03): And so that's kind of how I got into tech too. So I was inspired by the guy that I met and moved out to Seattle for. Okay, I should probably backtrack. Joined the reserves to pay for college, went to basic and AIT shortly after I graduated high school. Left, went to Southern Illinois University for a year. Had to go to Army Reserve drill every month while I was at Southern Illinois. That's the year I was applying to West Point because it takes a while to apply and get in, and you have to get all these nominations from senators or congressmen, and went to West Point. That counted as a year of my six year reserve commitment.

(00:25:43): But when I decided to leave West Point, I was reinstated back into the reserves, so had to start going to drills again. And that also includes two weeks of training in the summer, where you go wherever your unit tends to go. So the unit I was with at the time went out to Fort Lewis, Washington for two weeks. While I was there, I met a guy. He and I were stationed on the same post together. He was active duty in the army, and we hit it off. And so we hung out. And at the time I was still dating a guy from West Point. And I mean nothing romantic happened with this guy, but there was definitely a connection.

(00:26:17): So anyway, we stayed in touch a little bit after I left Seattle. And I fell in love with Seattle while I was out there as well. Went back to Illinois, talked to that guy from Seattle a couple times on the phone, and then never heard from him again. Was still dating the guy at West Point. Got engaged, moved to El Paso. After deciding that was a disaster, breaking it off, I moved in with a gay friend of mine that I waited tables with, and trying to figure out what I was going to do next.

(00:26:47): All of a sudden out of the blue, I got a call from the guy in Seattle while I was in El Paso. And he asked me what I was up to. And I said, "Ah, actually not a whole lot of anything. I'm trying to figure out if I'm going to move back to Chicago area, where my family's from, or stay here." He's like, "I'll buy you a ticket. Why don't you come hang out in Seattle for a little bit?" And so I was like, "Meh. Okay." So, buy me a plane ticket. I flew out to Seattle. I decided the second day I was there that I was moving.

(00:27:17): So I basically went back to El Paso, packed up all my stuff into my Jeep. My roommate at the time drove up with me in Seattle. Looked for some media production jobs. That didn't work so well. Got a job waiting tables at Rock Bottom, so I knew I'd have some income. Moved straight in with the guy that bought me the plane ticket. Always a smart move. But I mean, he was a really nice guy. He ended up being my first husband, and my inspiration for how I got into tech. So he doesn't even have a college degree. He didn't go to college. He joined the Army right after high school, and he was a counterintelligence agent, Korean linguist, which I was supposed to be a Russian linguist and an interrogator. But I lost my security clearance for having smoked pot one time, and lied about it on my federal forms, which is a whole other story.

Rob Collie (00:28:11): Technically she lost her clearance for smoking pot, lying about it, and then telling the truth. Don't do that. You can smoke pot, you can lie about it, but then don't go back and tell the truth. The reason you lost it is because you admitted to lying.

Jocelyn Collie (00:28:26): Yeah. Well, because I mean, I was supposed to be in military intelligence. They're like, well, clearly we can't trust this girl with top secret information. And it was really just awful, that whole thing too. Because my recruiter was the one who told me to lie. He's like, "You only tried pot once. Don't ever mention that." And the thing is, when I got to basic training, my anxiety once again got the best of me. I'm in this top secret security interview, and they're baiting me. They're like, "Okay. We're going to spend $20,000," or however much, "to talk to everybody and find out absolutely everything about your past. So if there's anything that you're not telling us, you better tell us now. If you tell us now, you won't be penalized." So I fell for it. I was like, "Okay, I confess. I tried pot once." And they're like, "Oh, you can be court marshaled." Blah, blah, blah. "And by the way, no security clearance for you." So I ended up having to pick a new job, and there weren't very many options.

Rob Collie (00:29:21): Think about all those Russian prisoners that got off easy. You were going to break them.

Jocelyn Collie (00:29:27): I would've been very useful right now.

Rob Collie (00:29:31): Those Russians got off easy. Interrogate some Russkies.

Jocelyn Collie (00:29:35): Well, and I was really bitter about that too. Losing that security clearance was also part of the reason that I wanted to go to West Point because I was going to redeem myself. Going to West Point, I had to have a security clearance, not a top secret, but I needed a secret clearance, which I got approved for. And I was studying Russian while I was there, so I was determined to do that. But anyway.

Rob Collie (00:29:55): Let's get back to Seattle. I'm glad that we're taking this tour of all of your previous romances that led you to me. Yes. I mean these are important.

Jocelyn Collie (00:30:05): Bill was the inspiration for the tech. So that's what I was trying to say. So no college degree. So he had gone straight from the military to working for Microsoft. And he had taught himself all the technical skills that he had to get this job at Microsoft. And I mean, he was making what I considered to be amazing money. Because waiting tables, I mean, I was pulling down an okay living waiting tables, it's like 50 grand a year. I mean, he was making 150. And I was like, "Oh, how can I do that?" And he's like, "Well, I'm self-taught. You can do this too." So I was like, "Oh, I totally can. I've taught myself a million things." So I sat down at the computer, and I started teaching myself how to program C, how to program ASP, SQL. I played around with Flash, taught myself HTML. And I wasn't super skilled at any of those things, but this is where imposter syndrome didn't hit me, I was the person that thought I knew enough to get a job.

Rob Collie (00:31:11): We do these things not because they're easy, but because we think they're easy.

Jocelyn Collie (00:31:16): Yes. So anyway, I put my resume out there and I got hired by a dot com. This dot com, it was called Kiss.com, and it was a dating site who got acquired by Match.com. And unfortunately, I wasn't still with them at the time, so I didn't make bank. It was crazy. The founder was an ex-marine from Vietnam who had a mail order bride. Kiss.com had originally been a mail order bride deal. Most of the women posted on the site were from Eastern Europe. And we had women in their underwear and topless posted all over the office. This was just part of the culture that was acceptable. I was like employee number seven or something.

(00:32:01): So this was my first startup experience. And so I was hired as a junior web dev. And my first project was one that I actually asked if I could do, which was to put a horoscope matcher on the site. And most of my time there was doing like ASP and SQL. Did a lot of SQL, a lot of writing stored procedures and things like that. Eventually though it became apparent to me as they were growing that I was going to get laid off. This was kind of the dot com bust period, and a lot of places were starting to lay people off. And I got wind that I was going to be a casualty, along with another good friend of mine who had joined the company about six months before that.

(00:32:45): And so she and I started looking for jobs as soon as we kind of got word that that was going to happen. And I ended up getting hired by Microsoft as a software design engineering test for MSNBC.com testing web stuff. And so I was writing web code to test web code, and that was my foot in the door to Microsoft. And then I spent a little more time at MSNBC.com, and then my boss left MSNBC.com to go over to MSN.com. So I followed him. I was at MSN.com for a little bit. And then that kind of morphed into a team called shared services, which I feel like at Microsoft we had 500 different teams called shared services.

Rob Collie (00:33:29): Many, many shared services teams. Yes.

Jocelyn Collie (00:33:31): Yes. So I was part of a shared services team that then kind of fell apart. And so I was absorbed into a team called Newsbot, which was actually a news aggregation service. And that's where I met Darinee. She was first hired into Newsbot. And then from News Bot we got absorbed into what became Bing. So we were MSN Search first, and then it became Live Search, and then Bing. And throughout all of that, I was a software design engineering test. When I got absorbed into what became Bing, that's when I had to learn C++. C++, C#, self-taught.

Rob Collie (00:34:10): And I went to college to learn things like C++ and never really learned it, even though I was forced to go to classes and do homework and tests and all of that. So I'm positive that there was at no point in time where I was better at C++ than what you ended up being. Without overthinking it, I don't want you to think about what the right answer is. I want you to give me the answer that you immediately feel your life story that we've covered so far, if you had to give it a grade from A to F, what would you give it?

Jocelyn Collie (00:34:38): I'd give it a B.

Rob Collie (00:34:39): Really? That's higher than I thought you would give it. You're so hard on yourself. I think it's an A. I think it's an out of the park A.

Luke Pirozzoli (00:34:46): I agree. Maybe you recounting this, Jocelyn, is giving you a little bit more, hey, I did a lot of stuff.

Jocelyn Collie (00:34:51): I did a lot of stuff. Okay. This comes, I think, for my dad. My dad always emphasized, and this is one of his regrets, he's never had focus. So he's always been kind of on this where life him some sort of path. And I think that hearing that so often growing up is probably why I wished that I could have been this person that knew in high school like, oh, I want to be a doctor and I want to be this type of doctor. And then I went on that path to go do that. And I'm not saying I want to be a doctor. But my friend Amy, she in high school knew that she wanted to be a chemical engineer, and that's what she went to school for. And now she's a chemical engineer, has been for 20 some years. She's great at it and she loves it.

Rob Collie (00:35:39): And that would be better. I mean, first of all, that shit isn't normal. To call your shot in high school for something like chemical engineering. I mean more power to you.

Luke Pirozzoli (00:35:49): I tried, I tried to be an entomologist. I was like, I can do this. I'm fascinated by this world. I couldn't do it.

Rob Collie (00:35:56): Well, it's because of organic chem, right?

Luke Pirozzoli (00:35:58): Yeah. That was my big blocker.

Rob Collie (00:36:00): Honestly, in the end, you wanted to study bugs, you had a passion for it. If you could have just gotten over that stupid weed out class that has really, in the end, probably zero to do with actually doing the job of entomology, right? If you could have just gotten past that, you might have been amazing at that job, right?

Luke Pirozzoli (00:36:18): Maybe.

Jocelyn Collie (00:36:19): And it's stupid that they had that.

Rob Collie (00:36:21): The computer science curriculum at Vanderbilt required me to take more calculus, even though I'd already had AP credit calculus from high school. I needed more of it. No. Trig wasn't relevant, nothing was relevant.

Jocelyn Collie (00:36:33): And that same thing is hanging our kid up. Our kid had to take AP calc in high school, and now he's on his third try of calc in college for a business degree. Why does he need calc?

Rob Collie (00:36:46): Okay, now actually, I think he has it coming. I mean, learn to do some hard things.

Jocelyn Collie (00:36:55): Well, that's a different lesson.

Rob Collie (00:36:56): I agree that these barrier classes, these things you have to check the checkbox to get to the other side, we need less of that.

Jocelyn Collie (00:37:02): And that's what I was afraid of. That's one of the reasons that I didn't take the hard things. I was scared to death of those weed out things actually telling me that I was bad.

Rob Collie (00:37:12): It occurred to me that, ironically, when it comes to these math and science classes, you were afraid of failure and afraid of success. That first math teacher that held you up as a shining example, if you're scared of success and scared of failure, I don't know what you're going to do.

Jocelyn Collie (00:37:26): I am always measuring my life against things. And I'm like, I haven't done enough. I haven't helped enough people. I haven't helped enough animals.

Rob Collie (00:37:34): All you do is go adopt five more sickly animals, and that'll just straighten everything out. I mean, in the middle of this podcast, I have had a cat hanging off of my back with its claws sunk through my skin because the cat thought that would be fun. In the middle of another podcast, I had to leave and get a dog to bite my neck.

Luke Pirozzoli (00:37:50): Yeah, that one almost got you. That one almost put you in the ground.

Rob Collie (00:37:54): That's right. Yeah. But we tried.

Jocelyn Collie (00:37:58): Bailey was a sweetheart, and it's a terrible, terrible thing-

Rob Collie (00:38:00): Oh boy-

Jocelyn Collie (00:38:00): ... that happened.

Rob Collie (00:38:01): ... the cat's climbing my chair again. There we go. No, it's a different cat. Different cat this time.

Jocelyn Collie (00:38:06): You have all the cats.

Rob Collie (00:38:08): Well, with you having the door closed, I had to leave the door open to the basement so that if you they need the bathroom, they can get to it. And so that means I have to leave the door open to this thing, otherwise they're clawing at the door. And so now, hey, Marty. All right. So I think there's two reasons to do this. Number one, any opportunity I get to have you see who you really are, as opposed to this distorted self-view that you have, I'm going to take it.

(00:38:32): The other one is though that I think there might be people out there listening who share this. This is the only thing that I wish I could surgically remove from your brain is this bar that you keep measuring yourself against. Which by the way, is not reachable. Wherever you go, that bar is going to be just out of reach, like the carrot in front of the horse. It's going to constantly float upwards away from you.

(00:38:53): And Jocelyn, we've had so many people on this show. Not one of them was the deliberate I want to be a chemical engineer. And these are extraordinary people who have done extraordinary things. And the things that you've done are on par. But none of them were filled with regret about their accidental path. I walked the path that you're wishing you could go back and walk. And I'm telling you, ain't so great. I just came from there. No, no, no. Don't go walking down that hallway. And yet I'm still accidental career path. I went to Microsoft because my checkbook was empty when I went to apply for a grad school, go to the test. I'm like, well, it wasn't meant to be. Go get a job. Yeah. Luke, actually, one of the reasons for this is that Art Hellyer, Jocelyn's grandfather, was kind of a big deal. Yeah. Just like Ron Burgundy in Anchorman.

Jocelyn Collie (00:39:58): So my grandfather was a DJ in Chicago for many years, starting in the '50s. He had the top morning shows in Chicago, and was on billboards everywhere. And he considered himself the original shock jock. He got fired from a lot of radio stations for doing things like throwing records out the window, all kinds of stunts that would get him into trouble. And the Radio Hall of Fame wanted to honor him. And I think, I don't know, he freaked out and declined or something.

Luke Pirozzoli (00:40:39): I think we talked briefly about this, but I don't remember the shock jock part and the records. That's incredible stuff.

Rob Collie (00:40:44): And Art was still on the air in various forms even after I met him, right?

Jocelyn Collie (00:40:49): Oh, he turned his bedroom into a studio, and he was on satellite radio and things into his mid or late 80s. And he still had women sending him fan letters and emails and stuff all the time.

Luke Pirozzoli (00:41:04): Oh, Art.

Jocelyn Collie (00:41:04): It was crazy.

Rob Collie (00:41:05): Yeah. Like girlfriends 30 years his junior.

Jocelyn Collie (00:41:08): Oh, yeah. In his 80s and 90s, he was dating women in their 50s. It was very-

Rob Collie (00:41:15): This is a hard act to follow.

Luke Pirozzoli (00:41:17): Well, I'm looking at an article about Art's career, and it was impressive. Radio, you either have a long career or you have no career. And he was one of the long career people. That's pretty impressive.

Rob Collie (00:41:32): What was it like Jocelyn teaching yourself C++? All this fear of failure that we talked about. But then of course there's the no one can tell you you can't do something.

Jocelyn Collie (00:41:41): So I did skip something where I did get a certificate in C programming at the University of Washington before C++ and C#. So I did actually have some formal education in C programming. I had started teaching it to myself, but I decided to take the certificate program thinking it would help my career at Microsoft. But let's step back a little bit. Because at West Point, I had to take a programming class, and that was in BASIC, and I bombed that. I could not grasp the concepts of programming. It just confused me so badly. And my teacher actually laughed at me. I went in to see him for extra help, which was something that was terrifying to me. But like I said, I never did that. But I made one exception at West Point because I didn't want to fail a class. So I went to go see him, and he basically implied that I was hopeless.

Rob Collie (00:42:36): That'll teach you. That'll teach you to ask for help.

Jocelyn Collie (00:42:40): I know. And this has been my experience with a lot of things like this in my life. I've been shamed so many times for actually having the courage to ask for help. So I didn't do well in that class, but I've had so much more success with teaching myself things. And so I felt pretty confident after I started teaching myself the various web programming and C and things after moving to Seattle, I was like, oh, this actually does make sense to me. It's just the fact that I don't learn well from other people. And that was still the case, even when I took the certificate in C, I didn't really learn from the instructors. I learned from writing the programs that we had to write for homework. Having to teach myself C++, it was just a little bit more, I guess, than C.

Rob Collie (00:43:26): You learned all that constructor and destructor shit.

Jocelyn Collie (00:43:33): Yeah, you're right. And I don't remember super well anymore because I finished up what we were using C# a lot, and C# made everything so much easier. Once .NET came along, everything became so much easier. So that's what I probably remember the most. I just know it wasn't easy. And I remember spending long nights in my office at work and pulling some all-nighters. Occasionally I'd go in super early just because I liked the quiet, which is weird because now I can't get up before 9:00. There were times I'd go in at 4:00 in the morning at Microsoft so that I could have several hours before other people came in. Eventually, I realized too that I was never going to be a great programmer.

Rob Collie (00:44:13): So that's key, right? Is that you were in an environment at Microsoft that harvested the top 1% of programmers in the world, maybe even more elite than the top 1%. And these would be the people that you'd run into in the halls, or you'd have meetings with, or they'd be your peers or whatever. A terrible measuring stick. Oh, I'll never be great. You're right. Not everyone gets to be in the top half of 1%.

Jocelyn Collie (00:44:39): I mean, you're totally right about that. And I was terrified to ask questions of people. These people scared the crap out of me, so I couldn't learn from them because I was terrified that I'd be found out as an imposter. Therefore, I wasn't going to get better because I wasn't going to ask the people who knew more the questions that I needed to. So yeah, I ultimately decided that I'd be a better fit as a program manager, and I definitely was. I managed to make that transition. It was Mez, who I actually talked to about becoming a program manager. And he talked to me very thoroughly to kind of vet me, and he was like, "Yeah, I think you would make a good program manager." And so I think he made the interview loop happen. That was definitely a better fit. I enjoyed it a lot more, even though it required more assertiveness with talking to people was a challenge.

(00:45:35): But the thing is, and that's again, going back to my social anxiety where it's strange. It's like when I feel confident that I know what I'm talking about, I don't have a problem. If I don't feel confident, and I have to go talk to somebody about something, then I will freeze and totally bomb. Additionally, if I feel like they have some sort of superiority over me, like authority figure, or they know more than I do about something that I want to, or they have better social skills, all those sorts of people I end up being really anxious around. That's something I wish I could change.

Rob Collie (00:46:13): Your original interest in media production as your original major, do you think that had something to do with Art and radio? And it's a two part question. The second part of the question is, did you ever find Art, your grandfather, intimidating to ask questions of in that field?

Jocelyn Collie (00:46:31): So it might have had to do with Art. The thing is, my Uncle Jeff was also in media production. He owns his own business doing editing. So he taught me how to use Avid, the gold standard for non-linear editing. And this was early in the days of non-linear editing when I did an internship with Jeff. So this was when hard drives were not big enough to handle very much. So you had to load little bits of video onto your hard drive and edit little chunks, and then back it up onto other external-

Luke Pirozzoli (00:47:06): It sounds tedious.

Jocelyn Collie (00:47:08): It was very tedious back then. It was crazy.

Rob Collie (00:47:11): Better than cutting and splicing film.

Jocelyn Collie (00:47:13): Which I also did. I had to learn how to do that in college. And we had to shoot stuff on eight millimeter in college for a project, and then edit it. Yeah, I don't know. I think I may have been steered toward it by my dad too. My dad had a lot of ideas about what I would or would not like to do before I went to college. My dad really encouraged commercial art. I remember one time I told my dad I was thinking about accounting, and he's like, "You don't want to do accounting. You'd be really bored by that."

Rob Collie (00:47:44): Narcolepsy and accounting. What better pairing?

Jocelyn Collie (00:47:48): I mean, it would not have been a good pairing. And my parents also had this philosophy too. My dad was kind of just like, "Go get a degree. It doesn't matter what your degree is in. Just go get a degree." So I was kind of like, well, what would be fun? What would I actually look forward to going to class for? And so media production, it was really fun. Some of the classes I took were incredible. I was part of this CNN local edition news program where I got to direct live news, a six minute live news broadcast each day. And I mean, I didn't get to direct every day. We rotated who got to direct and who got to produce, and things like that. I loved doing that stuff. I thought it was great. Learning how to operate the cameras, and going out, editing, and all of that. So I enjoyed it. I don't know how much of it comes down to Art, my grandfather, versus me being like, oh, something that will be fun.

Rob Collie (00:48:45): Were you nervous or comfortable asking Art questions because he's an authority figure with a big shadow. Were you able to ask him for shop talk?

Jocelyn Collie (00:48:54): So I don't think I asked him a lot of shop talk. I remember sitting in while he did one show, and so he asked me if I knew how to find the exact position on a cassette tape. And I was like, "Yeah, I do." And use the pen or whatever. And he's like, "Good." I mean, he was pretty supportive, but I was probably scared to ask him actual questions. I was happy to engage with things that he would ask me. And then also, my Uncle Jeff and I did a video documentary of Art that involved going around and interviewing some of the biggest names. My grandfather was also on ABC Chicago. He did television news, so he knew some of the biggest news broadcasters in Chicago. They were some of the people that we got to go interview as part of this documentary on Art, which was pretty cool. But I also interviewed my grandfather for the documentary. That wasn't scary. I didn't come up with the questions, my uncle did. If I had had to come up with the questions, I probably would've been terrified.

Rob Collie (00:50:00): All right, so next question. And the answer is there's multiple choice. Yes, no, or I don't know. Do you have the data gene?

Jocelyn Collie (00:50:11): It's somewhere between yes and I don't know. I think about this a lot actually. For some reason, I've never gotten into Power BI or even doing pivot tables in Excel. It's challenging for me, and I don't super love it. But I do love other forms of data. I pay attention to trends and I find them very fascinating. This is where I kind of wonder, because God, I loved SQL. I had so much fun when I used to spend most of my time in SQL. So I really enjoyed running queries and creating stored procedures.

Rob Collie (00:50:56): I mean, that's pretty sick. It bodes well. I agree with you. I think that, at minimum, the answer here is I don't know. I just think you actually haven't had a lot of real world reason to deploy pivot tables or to deploy something like Excel. You and I use Excel in all kinds of record keeping. That's not really getting into it. Until you start aggregating data to reach conclusions, you're not really seeing the world that's so compelling.

Jocelyn Collie (00:51:21): Yeah. And I'm taking a class on data and statistics right now, and I'm not really enjoying the reading very much. But if I ran an experiment that I was super interested in, I could see myself being very curious on what the data might tell me, and wanting to spend time trying to answer questions. The other thing is, I haven't figured out what is that thing that I'm really super interested in that I want to run an experiment on.

Rob Collie (00:51:54): One thing that I say all the time is that you have to have your collision to find out. As strange as it is, with all the nerdery that you've done, the hallways you've walked, and even the SQL you've slung, look at that alliteration.

Jocelyn Collie (00:52:08): Yes.

Rob Collie (00:52:09): You really haven't had your data crunching collision.

Jocelyn Collie (00:52:12): I have not.

Rob Collie (00:52:13): I think it bodes well. I'd round up to yes.

Jocelyn Collie (00:52:16): I mean, I think that I could learn the DAX language. I really don't know why. I just haven't. And maybe it's because it's been your thing.

Rob Collie (00:52:22): Yeah, I mean, I know. I cast a long shadow. I'm like the Art of... No, I'm not. You should listen to the DAX draft episode to see how bad I am compared to the others.

Jocelyn Collie (00:52:37): Well, that's fine. It might have to do with that though.

Rob Collie (00:52:39): Again, you don't want to measure yourself against this.

Luke Pirozzoli (00:52:42): Let the listeners know. Rob did puff his chest out slightly when he said this.

Rob Collie (00:52:51): I think it's a reasonably meetable bar, Jocelyn. I mean, I would love to explain to you, like we've done things where we've modeled the half-life of medications and things like that to sort of figure out what the approximate blood level is and things like that with regard to health for you. I would love to explain to you how those models work. It's cool. And it's actually something that was doable in Power BI much, much more easily than it was in Excel. I think you'd be good at it. You've learned SQL, you learned C++. I never learned C++ and I never learned SQL. DAX and Excel, and let's say VBA, Office Visual Basic, right? Those are the only three professional languages I've ever learned. I don't even know HTML. I really don't know HTML. I sure as hell don't know JavaScript and never have. It's not like I had it and lost it. You're a lot more technically inclined.

Jocelyn Collie (00:53:42): Oh, and CSS. CSS has gotten crazy too.

Rob Collie (00:53:45): Yeah, I wouldn't know because I've never done any CSS. By the way, looking over your shoulder at this reading you're doing in this research methods class that you're talking about, I don't find the reading compelling either. Boring, boring, academic. No. Again, those same things that they're talking about, if you were applying them rather than reading about them, probably half of it would be interesting. Half of it would still be boring.

Jocelyn Collie (00:54:08): Well, you can help me with my IBM SPSS that I have to do this weekend.

Rob Collie (00:54:13): Oh, good Lord.

Luke Pirozzoli (00:54:15): Another challenge that you're facing, huh? You re just stepping up.

Rob Collie (00:54:19): Just random question. Have you ever tried out for an NFL cheerleading squad?

Jocelyn Collie (00:54:24): Yes, I have.

Rob Collie (00:54:25): Yeah.

Luke Pirozzoli (00:54:26): Are you serious?

Jocelyn Collie (00:54:26): I did.

Luke Pirozzoli (00:54:28): Well obviously you knew the answer to that.

Jocelyn Collie (00:54:29): He did. Yeah.

Rob Collie (00:54:31): I ask that of everybody. I ask that on every single show, and you're the first person to say yes.

Jocelyn Collie (00:54:36): I tried out for the Sea Gals twice. The first time, I progressed further than the second time. I made it to the semi-final round the first time I tried out, not in the second time. I got cut after the first round. So anyway, that was my stint with that, but had to try.

Rob Collie (00:54:53): Next random question, have you ever played roller derby?

Jocelyn Collie (00:54:57): I knew that was the next one that was coming. Yes, I played roller derby in Seattle.

Rob Collie (00:55:02): You made a team? You tried out and you made a team?

Jocelyn Collie (00:55:06): I did. In fact, I remember we were dating at the time, and I got the call that I was accepted onto the team called Grave Danger, and I ran downstairs. I had just showered.

Rob Collie (00:55:19): You were clad in a towel, and jumped into my lap to tell me that you'd made this team. I was very excited for you.

Jocelyn Collie (00:55:27): It was awesome.

Rob Collie (00:55:29): Wait a second. If you made a team, that means you had a name?

Jocelyn Collie (00:55:32): Oh, yes. I was Natalie Fatality.

Luke Pirozzoli (00:55:36): That's awesome.

Jocelyn Collie (00:55:36): It was very hard coming up with a name. My second choice was Jocelyn For Position, which I probably should have taken. But there were some awesome names. Carmen Getsome, Miss Fortune. It was fun having these stage names and these stage personas. And that was another place where my anxiety got in the way. There were definitely women who could play the crowd really well, and I was not one of those. I was just another part of the team. I was just so nervous all the time. And that played into how good I was as well because I was a jammer, which is basically a forward. So I was pretty quick, but I was always so nervous I got taken out a lot. So as a jammer, it's best if you don't have a whole lot of anxiety. You got to be able to dodge blockers.

Rob Collie (00:56:27): I'm going to go out on a limb and say that playing roller derby at any position, it's probably better to not have a lot of anxiety. There's no armor. You're wearing helmets. Injury after injury.

Jocelyn Collie (00:56:37): I saw so many women break arms and collarbones. My worst injury, Rob knows, was an enormous hematoma on my butt cheek. My entire butt cheek turned black for ever. And from the side, my butt was so round. I turned to one side, I'm like normal butt cheek, turned to the other side, I'm like, woo, look at that. And it took years for that thing to go down.

Luke Pirozzoli (00:57:04): Wow. Was that just from a straight fall to the rear end?

Jocelyn Collie (00:57:07): Yeah. Anya Heels. Anya Heels was enormous. She was a really tall, solid woman. And she hit me and laid me out on my back. And yeah, that's what did it. So that was really painful. And even without that injury, I was always bruised and banged up. It was hard to sleep. So when we moved to Cleveland, I took up ice hockey, which I'd never played before. Because of Rob, I played some inline hockey and I loved it. I'd always wanted to play hockey my whole life, but we didn't really have the money for that when I was growing up.

(00:57:38): And I don't think my parents at the time, I mean I know there were girls playing hockey, but my parents, one of the things they were always saying is, "You're a girl." They really weren't too keen on their daughter playing ice hockey, I guess. So I'd always wanted to play ice hockey. So I tried it in Cleveland because we live 10 minutes from a rink that had a women's house league, which was really awesome. And even ice hockey, it's significantly less painful than roller derby because you have a lot of pads. And I mean, it was a no checking league, but even though I did break a back rib, but that was completely accidental.

Rob Collie (00:58:12): That happens. Yeah.

Luke Pirozzoli (00:58:13): I don't know a lot about roller derby. I know there's an object of the match, and it's one team against the other. Is the unwritten or written intent to injure the other players?

Jocelyn Collie (00:58:25): The goal is not to necessarily injure, but the goal is to stop the jammer. So the jammer, there's one jammer and four blockers per team out on the rink at one time. And the jammer is trying to skate laps around everybody. And so the blockers that are on the side with the jammer are trying to take out the other team's jammer by hitting her or forming a blockade.

Rob Collie (00:58:56): Obstructing in any way, right?

Jocelyn Collie (00:58:57): Yes. But hitting is legal. The types of hits, they're very clear about what is legal though, and it's only hip and shoulder. Hip is the primary one because it really causes people to go flying. If you do a good hip hit, that will nail someone. But anyway, so the jammer's trying to lap. And so each time the jammer laps the pack, that's a point. You get a point for every time you lap the pack.

Luke Pirozzoli (00:59:23): It's highly entertaining.

Jocelyn Collie (00:59:24): It is entertaining.

Luke Pirozzoli (00:59:25): I remember watching it. They used to have roller derby matches on TV, like ESPN even, right?

Rob Collie (00:59:29): Yeah. Something was on TV in the '80s too. It was like-

Jocelyn Collie (00:59:33): That was more theatrical though. The '80s roller derby was more like WWE. It was more theatrical and planned out ahead of time. This was actually competitive.

Luke Pirozzoli (00:59:44): Competitive league, I see.

Jocelyn Collie (00:59:44): Yeah. It's really hard as an spectator to really know what's going on other than you just see bodies flying, right? You're like, oh yeah, that was a great hit.

Luke Pirozzoli (00:59:54): That's what I remember from it must have been the theatrical version that I remember because I do remember it was more of a show than a competition, it seemed like.

Rob Collie (01:00:02): The environment and the vibe around these bouts kind of felt like pro wrestling. Even though the game wasn't rigged, there was nothing scripted about it. I mean, people were there to see the hits.

Jocelyn Collie (01:00:12): Well, and the cute outfits and the personalities.

Rob Collie (01:00:14): It was a show. Yeah. It was definitely a show as well as a game.

Jocelyn Collie (01:00:19): One of my favorite things was after I made the team and I got to go get measured for my uniform, the uniform had to meet certain guidelines, but you could design the uniform. So I went in there and I was like, "Yeah, I want cap sleeves, square neck, drop waist, circle skirt." I totally specified what I wanted for my outfit. I wanted it to be different than other people's. Like some people had hot pants, some people had leggings, some people had fitted short skirts, some had sleeveless, some had long sleeves. It's kind of like the whole ice skating thing. You et to go in, and be like, yeah, this is what I want to wear.

Luke Pirozzoli (01:00:55): That's cool.

Rob Collie (01:00:57): All right, so I find this life that you've lived to be very non-extraordinary. It's pretty much just the usual run of the mill shit. Nothing to see here. All of this, and co-found and boost phase a startup company in analytics. I'm really waiting for you to do something important with your life.

Jocelyn Collie (01:01:19): Well, thanks.

Luke Pirozzoli (01:01:21): His tongue is flying through his cheek.

Jocelyn Collie (01:01:25): Oh, and I've nursed Rob back to health several times, and he's nursed me back to health too. So I guess-

Rob Collie (01:01:32): Yeah. I mean, I don't know why I would've ever been injured. Why would I have ever been hurt? We'll keep it short, but usually it's doing things that Jocelyn encouraged me to do.

Jocelyn Collie (01:01:39): My 38th birthday, I wanted to go to Sky Zone.

Rob Collie (01:01:42): Sky Zone. Trampoline park.

Jocelyn Collie (01:01:43): We're in Columbus, Ohio, which is two hours away from home at the time. And Rob ruptures the patellar tendon in the last five minutes that we're on the trampolines. And so that was catastrophic. That was actually right after we started the company, and I was in the process of trying to get us health insurance. So this was a pay cash for a surgery and physical therapy sort of deal.

Rob Collie (01:02:09): Expensive, expensive car level of expense. It was awesome.

Luke Pirozzoli (01:02:12): Ouch.

Jocelyn Collie (01:02:12): Yeah, super fun.

Rob Collie (01:02:14): Just what you need when you're starting a new company.

Jocelyn Collie (01:02:17): I'm so sorry. And then the other one was, so I used to have a motorcycle and I wasn't great at keeping this thing up. So every spring when I would go to start it, it would not be running. And so we got kind of tired of that. Plus I don't think it was Rob's favorite thing that I had. So anyway, got rid of it. But I was sad, so I'm like, "Let's get scooters. Scooters are safe and easy." And they're super not, especially when you get, Rob, the scooter that has a faulty throttle. So he had an episode.

Rob Collie (01:02:48): And a foot pointing the wrong way. We're playing roller hockey together again now. Jocelyn's the only woman playing in the league at the moment.

Jocelyn Collie (01:02:55): I'm not very good.

Rob Collie (01:02:57): Well, neither am I. I mean, we're playing with and against people who grew up playing hockey. I see jaw dropping stuff happen every single week. I can't believe what these people are able to do on skates and with a stick.

Luke Pirozzoli (01:03:08): And that's at a community level. I'm sure maybe one or two of the folks have had some kind of connection to maybe some minor league stuff, but I mean, you're talking low level skill, and they're amazing.

Rob Collie (01:03:20): We have at least one player who made it to the minors of the NHL. And he would absolutely have made it to the NHL if he'd been bigger. I remember watching this guy play. I was sitting there going like, how can anyone in the NHL be better than this? It's just unreal, right?

Luke Pirozzoli (01:03:35): You said it. Size, right?

Jocelyn Collie (01:03:36): He's small. Yeah.

Rob Collie (01:03:38): If he'd just been bigger, he'd be a star. He'd be a household name. The most important thing if you're playing against his team is whether or not he shows up that night. We beat his team in the playoffs the other night because he didn't show. Playing with him on your team is the best. He doesn't want to score. To score a goal is the easy thing. The challenging thing is to set you up, the terrible player. It's also the most humiliating thing you can do to the other team is to set me up to score a goal. That's just insult to injury.

Jocelyn Collie (01:04:08): We have some other people in the league who are showboaters.

Rob Collie (01:04:11): As soon as they get the puck, you're like, okay, yeah, there's not going to be any passing.

Jocelyn Collie (01:04:18): Everybody's nice. Some people are totally about the other people and some people are about themselves.

Luke Pirozzoli (01:04:25): Well, speaking about, I think you are very true to yourself, but that's just me.

Jocelyn Collie (01:04:28): Thank you.

Rob Collie (01:04:28): We're going to work on this thing, the new zero. Wherever you go, if you're constantly recalibrating the zero on your chart, you always look like you're performing poorly. Every new growth, every new development, every new accomplishment. If you just move the axis up, say that's the new zero, you always feel like you're inadequate.

Jocelyn Collie (01:04:46): I've always had these really high standards for myself, for others, and they're not my best attribute.

Rob Collie (01:04:52): Well, speaking of this, I was expecting the counter of disappointment to ding more times during this. We got to two.

Jocelyn Collie (01:04:59): But I'm not disappointed in you. I think you're wonderful.

Rob Collie (01:05:02): I know, I know. I know. I've told you this personally. It only makes sense to tell you again here that so many people, and more every day, owe their careers, and most importantly, a career situation that they enjoy that's fulfilling and validating for them, they owe that in part to your efforts incubating this thing. Getting it off the ground. Soaking up all of those things that you've talked about that you're like, "Well, I wasn't great at these things," but you were competent at so many things that were required to get this show off the ground. And by the way, it's not just the people who work here, it's also all of the clients that we help. They're getting a level of career success and advancement. The world's becoming a more efficient place because of our efforts. All of that, again, without you completing that circuit, we wouldn't be here. So add that to your list of everything else.

Jocelyn Collie (01:05:57): Well, thank you.

Rob Collie (01:05:58): And I'll do my best to remind you of all the things you've done.

Luke Pirozzoli (01:06:02): And by the way, I am one of those people that have been directly affected by this company, and obviously in a way better place career-wise than I ever could have been. And for that, I appreciate it.

Jocelyn Collie (01:06:12): Aw, you're welcome, Luke. And I am so happy that you're with us. You have been an amazing addition to our team, and I'm so happy you're here. It does make me feel really good every day to know that you're part of our company and that you like being here.

Luke Pirozzoli (01:06:25): I do indeed. If this somehow isn't the last stop in my journey, the next place is going to have to step the fuck up, because talk about big shoes to fill. A bar that has been set. I'm never going back to some crappy large company again. I done that with their terrible policy and their treatment of human beings.

Rob Collie (01:06:46): We're going to turn this into a non-crappy large company.

Luke Pirozzoli (01:06:50): I like that. I like that.

Jocelyn Collie (01:06:53): And the other thing about having you here, Luke, that makes me really happy too is just that you and Rob get to interact a lot more than you had been interacting before he joined the company. So it's nice to see that rekindled because it's hard to maintain relationships from a far distance.

Luke Pirozzoli (01:07:10): Agreed.

Rob Collie (01:07:11): I'm really glad we did this. This was great. Thanks for doing this with us.

Jocelyn Collie (01:07:14): Well, thank you guys. It's been really fun.

Speaker 3 (01:07:16): Thanks for listening to The Raw Data by P3 Adaptive Podcast. Let the experts at P3 Adaptive help your business. Just go to p3adaptive.com. Have a data day.