“I never stopped praying and I never stopped putting one foot in front of the other.”

About Our Guest in this episode:

Chris Harbur
Chris has worked with over 20,000 children, ages 7+, across the US doing everything from teaching sports and acting, to mentoring young people in crisis through Crisis Text Line, and running the Impact Team at DoSomething.org, the world’s largest non-profit for young people. His team at DoSomething.org directly led to some of the largest world-wide volunteer efforts in history including the collection of over 100k pairs of jeans for homeless youth in 3 weeks, the donation of 30k pieces of sports equipment for kids in low income neighborhoods, and the clean up of 5 million cigarette butts in a month!

Over the past 10 years, Chris has worked as a coach to develop new methods for engaging kids to be active and healthy. Not only does Let’s Go Play get children excited to go outdoors and engage in exercise, it’s also a safe, creative space for them to talk about the things that matter to them most, bolster their self-confidence, and give them a life long love of sports.

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Transcript of Episode:

Robin: This is the Net Effect. I am your host, Robin Jones, Director of the ABF Career Alliance. Thank you all for joining us this afternoon. We’re here to cast our net on the right side.

This Net Effect is sponsored by the Albert Baker Fund. To learn more about the Albert Baker Fund, go to AlbertBakerFund.org.     You’ll find all kinds of information about the incredible programs that we have and our worldwide outreach. So again, thank you to the Albert Baker Fund.

Thank you to the staff of the Albert Baker Fund, the incredible team that we have there for supporting this wonderful series. It has been highly successful.

Welcome Chris Harbur, CEO of Let’s Go Play New York.

I met Chris in New York at one of our Career Alliance networking events a few years ago. He reached out to us and we became fast friends quickly.

Welcome to the Net Effect.

Chris: Thank you, Robin. It’s a pleasure.

I love the Albert Baker Fund and every thing you guys are doing. It’s such a beautiful thing. So thank you for what you do.

Robin: Well, thank you, and thanks for being a Career Ally. We really appreciate your supporting us.

As you were growing up as a child, tell us a little bit about the countries, the schools, and give us a little background on you.

Chris: I went to nine different schools growing up, in five different states, and three different countries.

That’s just kind of who my family was. My dad’s work changed quite a bit. And we just sort of rolled with it.

It definitely teaches you about culture. It definitely teaches you that you gotta be flexible. You gotta be able to roll with the punches.

Getting to go to three high schools in three different countries and getting to go to so many different schools, it allows for that freedom, that flexibility.

You gotta be kind of sharp because you’re going to have to start over with a whole new group of people who don’t know about you, don’t care about you, and you just got to find a way to roll with it and be flexible.

So it taught me a lot.

Robin: I thought it was really interesting when we were talking beforehand about your direction and how you landed, where you landed, but it really started when you transitioned from high school to college and you decided to go to a conservatory.

I love this story. Tell us about how that unfolded for you.

Chris: It was wild because I think for my whole life, I thought I was going to be the second basement for the Boston Red Sox. And then I had the rudest awakening when we moved from Switzerland and the Bahamas for high school to Florida, which is like the most talented baseball players on planet earth.

And I literally had no chance. And I was like, yeah. Okay. So that dream has gone. So now what?

I was a senior in high school. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. And I ended up going out for a high school play.

All of a sudden, I was like, oh my gosh, I love this. And I found out about this conservatory at University of Miami in Florida.

And I was like, I want to try to get into that school. And so literally on my way down to the audition to get into this conservatory, that only takes 20 people a year, you can see the photo right there. That’s the theater we performed in. I was learning my material, learning my monologue. Cause I just didn’t know any better.

I wasn’t, I didn’t realize you had to, spend months looking for material. And so I show up and I do this monologue for this panel of people who are going to basically decide my future. And they asked me one question about the monologue and I was like, huh, I’d never thought about that. I just learned this in the car.

Robin: Had you acted in high school? Had you done anything like that before?

Chris: I had done one play my senior year of high school, when we moved to the U.S., and that was pretty much it. So I had no background, really no idea what I was doing. Everybody auditioning had songbooks headshots, agents.

And I was like, what is all this stuff? And I was literally learning a monologue in the car.

So they were basically like, well, why do you think you should get into this conservatory? And I was like, look, I know what I just did was not very impressive, and I’m sorry.

I am not going to bring any baggage to this.

Whatever you teach me, whatever style of acting or singing or dancing, I will be all in because I literally don’t know anything about this.

They loved it. And I ended up getting in, and I performed at this theater, did my first musicals and all sorts of stuff. And had this really tremendous experience, and it was really wonderful.

Robin: What was it like performing with some really talented and gifted students or actors who probably had portfolios, and had been acting since they were five years old. How did you manage that?

Chris: That was difficult. I learned my first lesson in comparison and being really careful with how I’m comparing myself to others, because it was crushing, especially the first year or two.

I was so far behind everybody else. A lot of them had been dancing, acting, singing their entire lives. And I had just started a month prior.

It was a really, really big lesson in figuring out who I was, what unique qualities God had given me to express.

They weren’t the traditional ones. I couldn’t do the best triple turn. I didn’t have the best monologue. I didn’t have the best baritone voice.

Robin: Had you ever danced or anything?

Chris: On the first day of dance class, the teacher had to keep me after class because I had all the dance stuff put on incorrectly.

I was wearing nothing the right way and he had to like draw charts for me. I was lost. Totally lost.

Robin: How did you just be so lost, and yet still willing to keep doing it every day?

Chris: That’s such a good question. I’m a pretty spiritual guy. Early on, I just realized that you’re going to feel a little bit tossed around in the sea of life sometimes. And you might feel like you have no idea what you’re doing and everybody else around you is killing it and you’re doing a horrible job.

That is how I felt most of the time. I think recognizing that each one of us does have really wonderful qualities, unique qualities, I clung on to that and just recognized that if I was supposed to be here, God was not going to drop me in this top 10 conservatory and then leave me to go up in flames.

There was going to be a way for me to shine. As I went through those four years, I found little things here and there that just made me feel like, oh, I can do this.

It might be a very small sliver of this one thing. I found out I love stage combat. I was really good at remembering choreography, I loved the physicality of it and was very good at that.

And so I was like, okay, I get something, and then slowly start to grow in confidence. I’m not going to say it was easy. It was a challenge.

Robin: You work your way through college and you do all these different things within college. Tell us a little about the transition from college, into the professional world.

How did you get there?   What did you decide to do, and why did you decide to do it?

Chris: In the senior year of college, as an actor, you basically have to be like, all right, you’re going to go to New York City or Los Angeles. Those are kind of the two options that they throw at you.

I remember feeling like I have no idea. I just didn’t have a strong sense.

What happened was, I went to this audition where like 10,000 21 year olds show up in the biggest ballroom you’ve ever seen in your entire life in Orlando.

Robin: I just can’t imagine that.

Chris: It is wild. You go into a warm-up room and there’s like a thousand people warming up, and like screaming…

Then they drag 50 people at a time into this huge ballroom. And you are looking out at a thousand industry people who hopefully, one of them will give you a job.

You have a 30 second monlogue, and a 30 second song, and you do it for all of them.

The hope is that one of them will be interested in you and will be like, Hey, come work for us, and wherever.

Robin: How do you decide what the 30 second I’m going to do this and 30 seconds singing I’m going to do that. How do you decide that?

Chris: That’s one of the good things of going to a school that has a good theater program. They prepare you, they know who you look like, who your type is, and what kinds of material you should be doing.

So, thankfully, I was prepared for that one. I did not learn that on the car ride to Orlando.

So what happened is I do this audition, and a couple of companies are interested in me and you go to their hotel room and you talk to them about it.

One of them was this really wild, but intriguing job called Missoula Children’s Theater. You and another actor drive across the entire country, basically doing shows with the local kids in each town that you’re in.

So you show up. Our first week was in Napa, California. You roll into Napa, California. There are a hundred children waiting for you. You do a two hour audition, pick 60 of them, start rehearsals, and on Friday, you have an hour long production of The Little Mermaid that you perform for the entire town.

Robin: I’ve worked at camps,. It’s like 60, you don’t know anything about them. And you go, okay, we’re going to make this production with these kids and we’re going to put it out there and everybody’s going to come and it’s going to be fabulous. It’s just amazing.

Chris: It was ages 5 to 18. So there was a wild range that we had to work with. And this was a very professionally produced piece of theater. We had lights, music, costumes, sound, the kids had 60 pages of lines they had to learn in three days, by the way, cause it’s only a week. And then you pack it up, say goodbye to the kids and you drive to the next state.

And I did this for 15 months.

Robin: And it was like every week for 15 months?

Chris: Every week for 15 months. Yeah.

Robin: Wow.

Chris: I’ve never experienced anything like this in my life. I think only when you’re 21 years old and you have the zest of life as strongly as you can, can you handle a job like this.

I finished 15 months and I just like fell over. I just like slept for a week. It was very intense.

Robin: After the 15 weeks, and sleeping for the next month, where did you go then?

Chris: My best friend who I met in conservatory is like, dude — move to New York. You can sleep on an air mattress in my bedroom.

You can start auditioning, and we’ll get you figured out.

He had already started a show called In the Heights, which was off Broadway and is now a movie.

And that was his off Broadway and Broadway debut. So thankfully he had already been there for a year, doing the show In the Heights.

What was neat is that when I arrived in New York City, sleeping on his air mattress, he was like, Hey, we’re doing this new show. It’s going to be off Broadway. And we need a male swing.

A male swing is a someone who learns like every male part in the entire show. And then at any given moment might have to jump in and be one of those parts. And so that sounded terrifying, but I was like, whatever, I’m in New York, this is what I wanna do with my life, I’m in.

A day before this show, we started rehearsals. Someone dropped out, and I had a role in the show and an off-Broadway production, a brand new musical. It ended up being just a tremendous experience for me, meeting new people in the industry, getting my feet wet in New York City.

That was the start of a pretty fun acting career for me in New York City.

Robin: That sounds like a fairly easy transition. You have something you could hit the ground running with right out of school. And then you made a little money and had some really good experience. And then you do this audition and you end up in a leading role.

I’m sure that you had lots of challenges. Thinking about those challenges, what helped you? What helped you think through those kinds of things as well?

Chris: The first thing that I realized that I was really having a trouble with was anxiety. I had a tremendous amount of anxiety about moving to New York City with no connections, except for my best friend. I had tremendous anxiety about not having any money.

I had tremendous anxiety about going into a field with the most talented people in the world.

In one of my first auditions in New York City, there were 50 guys in the room auditioning for this TV role, and every single one of them looked like a better version of me. They were taller, they had better hair, they had nice cheek bones.

I was like, come on, like, what’s the deal?

That created in me quite a bit of anxiety. I recognized very early on in my career, I was going to have to get a handle on this thing.

I don’t know if this is how you’re supposed to pray, but a week before I moved to New York City, I was like, Look God, I’m freaked out about this.

I am very scared about moving to a huge city with no money with no means. I just didn’t know what I was going to do.

This verse from the Bible, which is one of my favorite verses of all time: Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding, and in all thy ways, acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.

That was in my heart, and I knew that if I could trust in the Lord with all my heart, about my finances, about my career possibilities, about my friendships, about anything, that there would be a path forward, but I needed to go all in on this.

I needed to really trust.

And so, I made a pact with God. I was like, God, if you promise to provide for me, so I can live and pay rent in New York City as an actor, I will pack my bag and I will be on the next flight out of there.

I don’t know if that’s the most eloquent prayer one has ever prayed, but I was 22, scared, and that’s what I went for.

And I really did put aside that fear and that worry and just trusted. I think that led to like some pretty incredible things that happened very early on for me.

Robin: I wonder if you might share a little bit about this incredible thing that you got involved with?

Chris: A couple of years into New York City, I’d done a couple of musicals, a couple of plays, a few commercials, all these things. This audition that ended up being in Philadelphia, came across my desk.

And I was like, I do not want to spend a day on a bus to Philadelphia to audition for something that could be a student film. I had no idea and they don’t tell you these things. I felt very led, and guided to go do it. And I was like, all right, I’m in.

So I auditioned for this movie. I ended up getting the lead in it. It was called The Descending. My mother was very happy. I played this psycho like killer.

Robin: Very nice thing for a Christian boy.

Chris: I have a hostages. It’s a pretty like, cutter kind of film. But it was this incredible experience and I ended up getting the lead that you can see my little face there on the post. I ended up traveling the country with film festivals. We won a bunch of awards. It was like this really incredible experience for me getting to travel and do these things.

And then I got back to New York City and I was like, all right, I’m gonna make such a splash back in New York City. And I go show all these casting people, this movie poster. And they’re like, yeah, we don’t really care. And I’m like, what? That’s my face! Come on people.

And they just didn’t, and it was just kind of a rude, kind of a rude awakening with how difficult it is to be in the industry.

But I’m very grateful for this and all that it taught me for sure.

Robin: So where did you go from there? You’ve had some success, obviously. What happened then?

Chris: This is now the part of the story where it’s my first big career transition.

I know there are probably people on this Zoom today who are thinking about a career transition and who are career transitioning.

I just felt it was time for me to move on. I didn’t really get to a place where I felt like I could sustain myself as an actor. And I was getting a strong sense that it was time to move on.

What I did is I said, all right, I’m going to do one more year in this business.

I have three goals. If I don’t meet any of these goals in the next three years, it is time to move on. I had a great experience. And so after a year I didn’t hit those goals. I didn’t make it to Broadway. I didn’t get into a TV series where I was a regular. And I didn’t have anything that was like paying me enough to essentially pay New York City rent, just being an actor.

And I was like, Hey, all good. I loved my 6, 7, 8 years. It’s time to move on. But what I realized about career transitioning is I actually wasn’t sure what other humans did for a living, because I had only ever been an actor.

I just didn’t know. I didn’t know what people did. Once again, an opportunity to get quiet with God, the universe, and be like, where do you need me? I know you gave me these kinds of neat skills, I want to use them. I want to be used.

What came to me is to send an email to 10 of my friends and tell them I’m leaving acting.

I have no idea what to do. What do you guys think I should do? This is the best plan I had Robin.

I got all sorts of terrible advice. Like you should be a lawyer go to law school. I don’t need any more school, I’m good on that front.

One of them was like, you should talk to my friend. He works at this nonprofit in New York City that works with teenagers, check them out.

I went to their website and it looked really, really interesting. So I found this company, I figured out how to get in for an interview. And ended up working at this company called DoSomething.org.

It’s the largest nonprofit for young people in the world. They essentially have 5 million teenagers and you can go here, sign up for a volunteer activity in your own community. And you can get started. And a lot of times you don’t need the help of a parent or a guardian. They can do it on their own.

The reason that they hired me is because I convinced them that I could make volunteering a little bit more fun by gamifying it, by turning it into a giant competition.

So you can see down on the screen there 5 million jeans donated. Well, several hundred thousand of them were from this initiative that I tried by pitting colleges against each other in a national leaderboard competition where they battled each other to see who could collect the most jeans for homeless kids.

It exploded and the CEO loved it. She gave me my own team of people and it turned into this really fun creative thing.

I ended up working there for three years and learned a ton about having bosses and working at a desk and using Google, the Google suite of products, all things that I’d really never done before.

It turned out to be a pretty enriching experience.

I remember going in for the interview and thinking to myself, I bet they’ve seen like 20 people today for this job interview.

I think it’s possible that like, no one did anything interesting or different. I treated it like an audition. So my theater background is like, okay, how do I frame in 60 seconds the most intriguing story about who I am, what I come from, and what I could give to this position.

Framing is something that you learn in acting school. You learn with the sort of theatrical background. I came in starting to talk about my experience in a really concise, quick way. I saw an intern wake up in the corner and I’m like I was on to something!

Having a theatrical background, knowing how to just sell yourself in a more interesting way to connect and talk to someone in a way that is authentic and loving and compelling, because you have to do that onstage, or the audience will fall asleep, much less an intern in the corner.

It impressed them. I think they were like this guy’s got something going on that we want in our ethos, in our pipeline and do something. That really did help.

Robin: So you were there for a few years, and had obviously really good success. What led you to leave or do something different or think about making another big career switch?

Chris: After a few years in this company, I started to have panic attacks and the anxiety became really, really bad.

We had a lot of pressure on us to perform at an extremely high level. It was only 50 people on staff, servicing 5 million teenagers. We had these huge companies, Jet Blue, Coca-Cola, all these companies breathing down our necks to perform, and do better, bigger things each time.

I wasn’t sleeping well. I’ve learned a lot here, but I don’t think this is for me anymore. I’m not sure I’m meant to be in an office environment, especially one that demanding.

My second big career change was coming about and I knew I had to get out.

My Christian Science teacher taught us about something called a spiritual bath. You wake up in the morning, and you get really clear about who you are, and about who God is, before anybody else tells you who you are, or what your day will be like.

You just sit and have that communion with God every single morning. And this is a time of my life, where I leaned on my spiritual bath more than I ever have before.

I remember leaving, having once again, absolutely no idea what to do with my life. I knew I didn’t want to work there, and I didn’t want to be a firefighter, and I didn’t want to be an actor again.

So those are the only three things I knew now. The one thing with this career transition is I decided I was not going to let anxiety or fear dictate any decisions during this second career transition.

Robin: That’s a big deal, man. That’s the thing I see, that just cripples people. The fear, the anxiety, the worry. You mentioned pressure. Those are all synonymous. How did you come to that and how difficult was it to get to a point where you felt like you had some strength and confidence in that?

Chris: I’m going to be honest about this and this might not be very popular amongst Christian Scientists, amongst spiritual people. It was a very, very messy road to pull myself out of this panic and this anxiety. Sometimes we read the periodicals, we hear about healings and things, and it just feels like, wow, that was amazing, and it’s got this nice tight pink bow on it. This was not a pink bow healing. This was messy.

I felt so bad at times that I was like, God, I will literally do anything to not feel so panicked all the time. I started going to therapy. I started working out more. I started taking anti-anxiety medication. I know this is not going to be a popular thing to say. I was in dire straits and I was really scared.

I started changing a lot of things in my life. The one thing that did not change in my life, the one thing that I stuck to through all of this messiness, is I never stopped praying and I never stopped putting one foot in front of the other.

Even days where I could barely pull myself out of bed, I knew that I had to get up and do my spiritual bath. I knew that I had to keep reading mary Baker Eddy’s works. I had to keep reading the Bible. If anxiety woke me up at three in the morning, I was going to get up at three in the morning and I was going to do whatever I needed to do, to pull myself out.

It was a really messy road, I have to say.

Robin: I hear so many people say, well, I just quit going to church and I just quit doing this. And I quit praying. I quit thinking, I quit.

Why did you continue to hold on to prayer? Why did you continue to move, and stay where that was a part of what you’re doing and looking for searching and try to discover that peace, to where you found that peace, to address those issues of anxiety?

Chris: Really good question. And I had days where I wasn’t sure I could do anything. I knew in my heart that even if it was the faintest light that I was going to be okay. Because God loved me even on the days where I was like, does God love me? Cause this sucks. Even the days that were just really, really challenging.

I’m out of work. I have no idea what to do. I’m paying $1,200 a month for a tiny studio in New York City. I had bills to pay.

Robin: None of your family lived there, right?

Chris: No, my family was spread out all over the U.S. No, I didn’t have any family. The sense that, no matter what I was doing, whether I was taking medication, whether I was going to therapy, all these things that are, I think are sometimes frowned upon, I had to remove the judgment about that because I felt very judged.

I myself was judging myself. And I felt the judgment from others. I had to remove that first. I don’t think God talks to us in a way that makes us feel badly. I don’t think God shames us. I don’t think that God makes us feel badly.

So every time a thought came that said, Hey, you suck because you’re taking anti-anxiety medication. You’re a bad Christian Scientist. I would think to myself, would God say that to me? Would God do that?

It did take some time, but eventually I was like, you know what, if God’s not saying it, I’m not going to listen to anymore.

I’m just not going to do it. I’m not going to shame myself every single day about this. And it was not easy.

Eventually in that line that God only says really loving, wonderful, empowering things to us, and if it’s not, we don’t have to listen, step-by-step I just started to kind of pull myself out a little bit, day by day.

Robin: And found the light and inspiration. How did you come to the next piece where you were starting to make decisions and how did that materialize for you?

Chris: So I’m pulling myself out of this thing. I’m in my second career transition, with really no idea.

I make this pact with God to not have any worry about this. What if this was fun? Here’s a crazy idea. What if my next career transition was fun? Like, let’s just try it, even as an experiment. It’s funny, because once you remove the fear, you really do free up creativity.

You can just let this creative spirit just talk to you and move through you in a way that you can’t, when you’re just feeling constricted.

The thought came to me, have a little brainstorm party for yourself with 10 of your best friends, bring them into your house and let them think about your career for you.

I set up my little New York City apartment and every station was a different part of my new potential life they had to think about. What were my best attributes? My favorite station was give me the names of three interesting people who are doing interesting things and write down their contact info so that I can talk to them.

It yielded some pretty interesting stuff. I ended up calling these people who lived in Denver, Colorado, and California, and I just went and visited them. Because I promised this transition was going to be fun.

I flew out and I met with a guy who ran the student center at Pepperdine University.

I met with these female artists who made experimental art in the desert of California. Not that I was going to do one of these things, but it just freed me up in a way that let me just let God talk to me more clearly.

I’m walking around this botanical garden in Denver, Colorado, and all of a sudden the idea for my next thing just dropped into my lap and I’m like, oh my God.

The idea was, do a fitness program for kids that marries video games and movement so that you can activate the kids who have low confidence or don’t feel good about themselves or don’t like activity or movement or sports. And it was just like, oh my gosh, I love that idea.

I called a friend in New York City, a mom who had a kid who fit this description perfectly. Didn’t like an afterschool activity, didn’t like to do anything, had low confidence. And I told the mom, I just had this idea. Are you crazy enough to try this? Let me pick your kid up next week from school and we’ll try it. And if it sucks, I won’t even charge you. And if it’s good, I won’t even charge you.

I just want to see if this thing can work. And she’s like, all right, let’s do it! So I found the kids’ favorite video game. I researched it online and I basically built his video game, which was like this pirate thing where they find coins and go on a scavenger hunt. And I built it for him in Central Park. So we went into Central Park together.

I had this big map that I made. I’m the worst artist in the world. And he was collecting gold coins and he had to do different fitness exercises to beat these bosses and discover these treasures. And the kid loved it and the mom loved it. And she told all of her friends and within a month I had sold a year’s worth of classes with kids all over New York City.

And I was like, oh my God, I need a website. I need a name of my company. I need insurance. What are these things? And it snowballed from there. It was unbelievable.

Robin: Well, it’s pretty remarkable, and it’s an incredible story. What creativity, it’s just amazing. So you ended up developing a website, you’ve got business and you’ve got people.

Tell us a little bit about how you came about the name and about what you’re doing with this.

Chris: I wanted to call it Let’s Go Play because I felt play is one of my favorite things. As I was researching, I found that it is instrumental for a child development that they have moments in their day, to feel like a kid, to play, to create, to get outdoors, to move.

This idea of using video game terminology, for instance, one of the things in our two hour sessions is everything is broken out into levels. So the first level is like, all right, you’re going to run to the three turnaround, catch this ball.

They complete the level. Okay. Level two. Now you’ve got to hop on one foot over to the tree. Catch two balls. It feels like their favorite video games because they’re leveling up at the end, they win a wristband, and the most fun thing, which I think you also have here, Robin, is we make a 60 second video of our session together so that the kids can go home and show their parents.

The parents and their grandparents, and everyone gets to see them running and jumping and playing, and we add filters and music, and this is the thing that this kid can have and feel good about.

It’s just play, and a lot of parents have told me that their kid comes home and feels more confident, is happier, gets through their homework with more joy.

What was amazing, that I had not realized until recently, is this is like my Christian Science practice. Right? I’m not sitting in an office taking phone calls all day, but like I’m out, in the field, working with kids helping them feel more joy, helping them feel inspired and loved and safe.

Why can’t this be a Christian Science practice? It sort of felt like it was. It had this sort of divinely led aspect as well. It just blew up really quickly in a really wonderful way.

Robin: How did COVID impact this? What happened when COVID started? It must’ve impacted your business in some way.

Chris: New York City was one of the first and worst cities hit with COVID last year.

I had to shut the company down immediately. Obviously I’m taking absolutely no chances with the children. I made the call very early on to just shut the business down, which was obviously hard. We didn’t really know what was going on at that point in March of last year.

Once again I had an opportunity to get quiet with God and be like, all right, I don’t have a business right now. What would you like me to do?

It came to me to go down to Florida, to hang out with family and see what would happen. I came down to Florida, crashed with family, started doing some virtual Let’s Go Play classes, which was kind of an interesting, messy work in progress, but ended up being really fun.

Then this new thing entered my heart where I started realizing that if my Christian Science practice was potentially with these kids and helping them feel loved and inspired and safe, could I expand that? I had all this time on my hands now. I wasn’t able to really run this company.

It started coming to me to talk about Christian Science more. And I know that might seem very obvious to some people, but it kind of freaked me out, the idea of just walking up to a stranger or a friend, or someone I really cared about a best friend, and being like, Hey, there’s this book Science and Health.

I wanted it to be in a way that didn’t feel Bible thumpy. I wanted it to feel authentic. It was just burning in my heart that I needed to start talking about this stuff more in a way that didn’t feel like I was proselytizing or judging.

It actually started on the New York City subway. I was reading Science and Health on the subway, cause everybody reads on the subway. This homeless guy walks by me and he’s asking for money, is asking for food and then literally looks at me and he goes, or anything else that could help? And then walks away.

Robin: Message from God, right?

Chris: I said, God, this feels weird to me to talk about this stuff. So you’re going to have to make this very clear. And God made it super clear that day.

This homeless guy is about to get off the train and I’m like, well, what am I supposed to do with this? Do I give him a book? There were all these people staring at me.

This is weird. I don’t want to be weird. I went over to him and I was just like, Hey man, I’m reading this book I love. And there’s the statement. She says: “to those leaning on the sustaining infinite, today is big with blessings.” I was just thinking about that. What do you think that means? I would love to hear what you think.

The guy looked over at me and he looks down and he reads the sentence and he’s like, I think it means we’ve got to take the steps that lead upward, not downward, and he gets off the train. And I was like wow!

It just blew my mind. I realized there can be authentic ways for each of us to share this stuff. Eddy says over and over in her biography, we have to circulate this book. We’ve got to talk to people about this stuff. And in a way that does not feel proselytizing or condescending or judgmental.

I had this genuine interaction with this guy and I was like, okay, so I can do this. So now what? It came to me to talk to my best friend about it. And I went to my best friend. I was like, Hey man, I’ve been reading this book. Do you want to read it together? And he’s like, sure. And so we met in a coffee shop every week and the craziest things started happening.

He started having healings, which is another thing that I was like, right. We forget, this book heals me and my family, obviously, but a random person, who’s never read this? He was on a Broadway show and he had a really serious neck injury. And he was reading literally one of the first lines in Science and Health.

I walk into the coffee shop and he’s like, dude, I don’t know what just happened. My neck is perfectly fine. And he’s like, I think it was because of something I read in this book and I was like, I think you’re right. It clicked in that moment. Right. This book heals, because we know it heals, and we hear testimonies that we read the last hundred pages.

But when you see your best friend who has just experienced a tremendous healing, for me, it connected the dots. And I was like, okay, I get it. I’m awake now. What do I do next?

It kind of just spiraled from there. Those were some really pivotal big moments for me.

Robin: That’s pretty incredible. Now you’re in Florida, you got your business up and running again, and things are moving in that direction. Where are you heading now?

Chris: That’s a really great question. I don’t know if I know the answer to that. I have a lot of Florida kids now for Let’s Go Play, which has been a dream to have all new families, all new kids. They’re super excited.

The other thing that has started to really open up and develop is, after my best friend, we read Science and Health together. We got through the whole book. He had incredible healings. He started healing his cat, his wife, his new twins, and every week it was something, it was bananas.

I started talking to other friends about it and people I met in coffee shops and people I met at parties and started Science and Health book groups for people who had never read Science and Health.

Every week on Zoom or in person, I have a couple of people, a couple of different groups, none of them have ever read Science and Health or known anything about Christian Science.

We’re all reading through the book together and we chat about it and every single person in every single book group, and I had a four at one point, has had a healing. Every single time it blows my mind.

I don’t know fully where that goes. I have Let’s Go Play with these kids that I’m working with and I love so much. Continuing on with these book groups and seeing where it goes. What really surprised me is the people in the book group started calling me for prayer.

They started asking for healing. I was like, oh, yeah, I took class instruction. I took this course for 12 days. A practice started. And so now I have people calling. That is sort of opened up in a way.

I realized from all of this stuff that when we do something that feels purpose full and purpose driven and right to us, you can’t believe the stuff that will unfold.

You have to check the fear, and check the anxiety, and as much as possible, not let it play a role in the decision making.

Robin: I love that. It’s remarkable, incredible, and awesome and wonderful. It’s why I asked you to be a guest because I just love your practical approach, your authenticity and the earnestness that you demonstrate, my friend. It is just so incredible.

When did you know that you were winning against fear? When did you know that you started to have those wins and those victories and what was it that helped drive that, and get you that victory that you started gaining that confidence that you needed to deal with those horrible pressures and worries, and anxieties and all those things?

Chris: Really good question. I’m definitely not an expert by any means. I still have days where that voice, which I know has no power, it’s still pretty loud. It’s definitely still a journey of mine.

Fear and anxiety play a far, far smaller of a role and their voice is much more muted than a couple of years ago.

When did I feel like I started winning the battle more? To be honest, it’s when I started talking about Christian Science. I don’t know if that sounds like the most obvious thing, but it happened when I was sitting in my Association which is after you have your class instruction, you come back every year and your Christian Science teacher gives you some really wonderful tools.

I’m sitting in that room with all of these amazing spiritual thinkers. God, this feels so good. And I was like, why am I not doing this more? Why am I not like cultivating this kind of environment more in my life? Why am I not talking about this more? Why am I not thinking about this more? That burned inside of me for like six months until I started implementing it more into my life.

Once I started talking to my best friend about it and watched him have healings, once I started incorporating it into my work with kids more and just started thinking about it more. It helped me win.

I just didn’t feel as freaked out anymore because I knew I was doing something that was purposeful and loving and healing.

When you feel like you’re on purpose, when you feel like you’re doing something that is uplifting others, when you’re asking the question each day, not what can I get from this day, but what can I give to this day? And you reframe it. It doesn’t leave as much room for error to creep in, for fear, for anxiety, for depression, for worry.

These are very challenging things. Eddy talks about unselfing the mortal purpose. We have to un-self. Become more unselfish in our action. I think that’s the key. I really do. I’m still trying to work through it, but I th I think that’s what I would say to that.

Robin: I love that. I think sometimes we forget that it does take that effort. Sometimes it does take the consistent effort to push and to humbly and thoughtfully consider, on a daily basis, that movement forward.

Often we want, Hey, I want it now. I’m tired of feeling like this. I don’t like to hurt. Take it away. Get rid of the pain, just do something. Cause I can’t take this anymore.

Talk a little bit more about your spiritual bath today. What does it look like when you take that bath in the morning today, when you’re living in Florida and that wonderful new house you got there my buddy.

Chris: So how does my bath look different now than 10 years ago? That’s it’s a good question.

As we go through these struggles, I think as we learn these lessons, whether they are with a nice little pink bow on top, or it’s like, what is this circus going on right now? We absolutely learn something from each and every one.

I remember having a chat with my buddy two years ago, we were playing softball. I’ve never seen this guy sad. He was sitting under a tree, looking so sad. And I went over to him and I was like, Hey man, like what’s going on? And he’s like, my wife just divorced me yesterday and I have no idea what to do with my life.

My heart just broke for him. And we were talking and he said to me, He goes, this is the craziest feeling, and I don’t even know if I should feel this way, but I know that me going through this right now, as horrible as this feels, I’m going to be able to have a little more empathy for somebody when they go through something like this.

It blew my mind that in that moment, he could already start to understand that this will bless other people. I think it’s that, that no matter what we’re going through, no matter how horrible it feels, you will get to sit with someone under a tree and be like, you know what?

I know how that feels. I really do. And that will bring them comfort. If nothing else I know that’s true.

It adds richness to your prayers. I think it adds richness to your career. It adds richness to all your social interactions when you’ve been through things and have stories to tell and can just have a deep compassion and empathy for everybody else walking around on this planet.

Robin: It sounds like to me that you’ve removed some form of judgment of yourself and that also then impacts that for others. It looks like today, there may not be as much of that as there once was in your spiritual path, then it sounds like you kind of got that dirt done, it’s down the drain.

Chris: Definitely, definitely a work in progress. I realized that shameful, judgmental thoughts about yourself basically just lead you into a circus that I don’t want to be a part of. The more that just becomes very clear, the more you’re like, yeah, this isn’t serving me. Maybe it’s time to rethink this or let this go a little bit.

Robin: You’re remarkable my friend. I so treasure the short amounts of time we get to spend with one another, but man, what a incredible journey you’ve had so far.

I just love the opportunity to be able to visit with folks like yourself and hear your stories and all the inspiration. It’s just incredibly inspiring, but we’ve got to got to move into that closure state. And if you all would love to visit with Chris, we would love for you to visit with him.

All you have to do is go to the ABF Career Alliance and do a search for Chris. His career connection is there, or you can email robin@albertbakerfund.org and I will be glad to get you connected. Chris is a Career Ally, been one for several years. He is representative of the type of people that are willing to share their ideas and their thoughts and help students and career changers and folks who just want to go, Hey, man, I love what you had to say. Can we talk a little bit about that?

Again, Chris, we so appreciate that you’re willing to do that.

We also have job postings that we post on our career connections and jobs board. I just posted two new ones today, technology specialist and early childhood support teacher in LA.

And then we have some others that are, that are still posted like associate director of admission. So be sure that if you are seeking a job, we do have some jobs that are on there. We don’t have a ton of them, but boy, we have a wonderful storehouse of career allies that are willing to help folks just like Chris.

Be sure that you’re following us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

My friend, you have been throwing your net on the right side. I want to follow you around for a little while. I think my net needs a little tuning after listening to you today. I got some holes and I need to fill them. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your time today.

I just love everything you’re doing. I appreciate all of that good work and your time and effort that you gave us this afternoon.

Chris: It’s my pleasure. I love what you guys are doing here. I love your community of spiritual seekers that listen to these things. I’m always available, open, happy to help and we can get under that tree together and chat, I’m happy to do that. Thank you for having me Robin.

“ I hope that anybody who’s trying to embark on an artistic journey will go for it, and not to be afraid and not give up.”

About Our Guest in this episode:

In addition to numerous stage and screen credits, Tricia Paoluccio is an accomplished artist who has elevated the classic art form of flower-pressing into unique design partnerships with luminaries in the fashion, publishing and music industries.

Most recently she collaborated on the design of the gown Taylor Swift wore on the 2021 Grammy Awards Red Carpet. Tricia says her goal is to celebrate the resilience and beauty of the wildflower through her art.

When not pressing flowers into vibrant floral designs, Tricia is a versatile actor and producer. She recently guest starred on Blue Bloods in NYC, where she played a judge. And the indie film she starred in, A Portrait of a Young Man, is currently being submitted to festivals.

Tricia produces and stars in the web-series mommy blogger, a comedy co-created with playwright, Eric Pfeffinger. Mommy blogger is being developed into a TV show, with the new title of LIKE ME, and is now being pitched to networks.

Her Broadway debut came as Brittany Murphy’s understudy in the role of Catherine in the Tony Award-winning revival of A View from the Bridge. Other Broadway credits include Julie Taymor’s The Green Bird and Fiddler on the Roof as Chava. Off-Broadway highlights include originating the role of Donna in the comedy Debbie Does Dallas, Cressida in Troilus and Cressida, and Carol in Edward Albee’s Lady from Dubuque.

Tricia grew up on an almond farm in Modesto, California. She’s an avid baker and crafter who loves dividing her time between NYC, where she lives with her husband and two sons, and her Modesto farm. In addition to her many creative and artistic pursuits, Tricia finds time to volunteer in the NYC prison system, which she has done for the past 9 years.

Connect with Tricia here:

• Personal Instagram: @triciapaoluccio
• Art Instagram: @modernpressedflower
• LinkedIn

Subscribe to our YouTube channel here

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The replay of our September career conversation with Dan LaBar, innovative educator and community-builder, is now available in video, podcast, and transcript. Click “Watch Net Effect Replays” below!

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Transcript of Episode:

Robin: This is the Net Effect, Career Conversations and Connections, episode 43. We have as our special guest today, Tricia Paoluccio. We’re so happy that she’s here with us.

I am your host, Robin Jones, Director of the ABF Career Alliance. Welcome, Tricia.

Tricia: Hi, thank you for having me.

Robin: It’s so nice to see you, and we appreciate you taking time out of your busy, busy schedule to be a guest today. I thought we would just jump right in. You’re an actor, right?

Tricia: Yes.

Robin: And an artist, and you kinda got your start acting, am I right about that?

Tricia: Yes, I moved to New York to become an actor when I was about 20. I’ve always been artistic and love to make things.

When I first moved to New York, I brought a little flower press and handmade papers and would make little cards and collages and sell them on the street or in boutiques while I was starting out as an actor.

I joked that for, 20 years, my acting career has helped pay for my artist habit because being an artist is very expensive.

So I like to say that acting is my day job and the art was my fun hobby that I loved.

Robin: So when you started with acting, how did you get rolling with that? Were there some special things that happened? Tell us a little bit of how you got started with it?

Tricia: It was a different time back then. It was before the Internet and social media and I would answer ads in the newspaper. There was a newspaper called the Backstage. My first job I got without an agent, without any help at all, was a Broadway show. I was Brittany Murphy’s understudy in a Broadway show called A View From the Bridge with Allison Janney and Anthony LaPaglia.

That’s really how I started my professional career. Ever since then, I’ve done quite a few Broadway shows and off-Broadway shows and a lot of television and film and voiceovers and commercials, and basically anything you can do to make a living as an actor I did in New York and do. So I’m really grateful and I’m proud about that. That I’ve been able to make a living as an actor up until this point.

Robin: So when the pandemic hit and you’re in New York, that was the epicenter of all of this.

Tricia: It’s such an interesting time to remember how we were all stunned and were like, is this real?

I had a friend that said you should go to your parent’s farm. You have a place to go. And so we bought tickets, they were like $75, it was so cheap or something to fly. And I called my parents like, are you sure? I’m like, yeah, I think we’re going to come home just for a couple of weeks till this blows over.

We ended up quarantining in their little cabin in the foothills. And it was a really special time. had a bunch of projects that I was working on where I needed flowers. I thought, if I am stuck in New York City, in an apartment, during this pandemic for months, I’m not going to be able to do my art.

So I said, you know what, we’re going to go quarantine in nature. We flew out the day that the schools decided to close. So we came out to California. Then we stayed five months. And I was able to pick and press thousands of flowers from my parents’ property and their farm and my sister-in-law’s farm.

I made a lot of art during that time.

Robin: Tell us a little bit about, how you got started with that, was that a hobby that you had that you mentioned earlier, why wild flowers?

Tricia: My mom gifted me a little book by a British artist named Penny Black and she made beautiful little handmade cards with pressed flowers.

My brother built me a press, and I started just doing it for fun as a hobby. And it became something that I really became passionate about and I always really loved it. For 35 years now, I’ve been making press flower cards and little collages, and it’s just something that I’ve always loved.

I had visions that it could be something more than what it was for all those years. I thought, oh, I’d love to write a book someday. I’d love to, put this on objects. And, but I didn’t really know how to do that. The technology wasn’t there for me to do that.

A couple of years ago, I had this idea. I started making digital copies and here’s one. This is a copy. It’s not real. It looks so real. Right. When I realized that the technology could enable me to do that I thought, wait a minute, why can’t this be on fabric? Why can’t this be on the wallpaper and wrapping paper?

Why is everything floral that we see water colored painted or drawn? Why can’t it be the real imagery? I couldn’t believe I had come up with something I thought was pretty new. So I started devoting myself to capturing all of my pressed flower art.

Rather than just selling the originals, I started photographing them in super high resolution so I could expand them and experiment with scale. A neighbor of mine knew what I was doing and knew some of the fashion houses that have reached out to me. I had quite a few different people in the fashion world reach out to me.

Someone at Steinway knew about this and they said, Hey, we have this idea. We’d love you to wrap a grand piano for us. And we are connected to this gallery in New York City and we showed them your website and they’re very interested in having a showing of your work.

All of a sudden I had this opportunity and I was so grateful because of the pandemic I was here in California and I made dozens of works of art.

So I was really ready to go.

Robin: And when you were ready to go, they were ready to have you go, right?

Tricia: It worked out so beautifully. Never in a million years could I have ever envisioned that I would have a gallery show in New York City. It’s just so prestigious and beyond what I thought I could ever pull off.

I was so grateful to be handed this amazing opportunity, to create that piano, that I was able to produce a lot of music videos and offer it to so many different performers and artists.

It became a symbol, I think, of the arts coming back alive in New York City to me. It’s a really special exhibit.

Robin: How do you find the inspiration? How did you find the courage and the confidence to launch it forward and how did it just materialize for you?

Tricia: Right before the pandemic, I had a very exciting meeting with somebody that wanted to do a collaboration with me, I couldn’t believe it. I was blown away, so excited. And then the pandemic hit and it was done.

There was no word from anybody, no contact, nothing. I remember being at the cabin and being just hit with a wave of grief, like, oh no, I can’t believe that I almost had something so exciting and it’s gone.

I remember just so clearly that in the same second that I had that feeling, I had another thought come to my consciousness, which was like, no, nothing good can be lost. And the good that you built and created, it’s not lost. I just, in a very simple way, just chose to say okay, I’m going to believe that. I just held on to that.

I everyday picked and pressed one little handful of flowers. I was very methodical about it. Very simple about it. I didn’t think about the future. I didn’t think about what I was making. I wasn’t trying to make beautiful art or inspiring art. I didn’t, I just, every day went to work.

And then, one by one, all of the opportunities that I thought I lost, came back, and I was ready because I had worked all those months without any indication that any of that good was going to come to fruition.

I did the work, and whenever I started to feel down or worried about things, I just said, no, no, I really felt like what is that, what is that phrase, where I stand is holy ground. I felt like that time period where it was so full of uncertainty and seeming loss, I thought it was a really, actually crucial, important time to be an artist.

Robin: So you’re, you’re casting your net on the right side, right. Instead of allowing fear and all those things to come in, you really were pursuing your passion. Do you pick the flowers yourself?

Tricia: My parents have acres and acres in the foothills and they have a beautiful farm here in Modesto. I have wonderful farmer neighbors just down the street, my sister-in-law’s next door. Everyone’s very generous letting me just pick and pick anything I want.

I have about 10 flower presses going at all time. So everything you see there, literally everything you’ve seen in all my art, I pick everything. I press everything. And it’s a very lengthy process. I’m actually teaching my class tomorrow on how to do this. That’s one other interesting provision that during the pandemic, I discovered Zoom and I started teaching classes on this, how to do this on Zoom. It’s been amazing how many people are interested in. It used to be, I would beg my friends, do you want to come over to my house? I’ll bake, cookies and serve tea and I’ll teach you how to press flowers. And all my friends, these are good friends, good people.

They’d be like, I’m sorry, busy doing the homework, doing laundry. Nobody cared.

And now every time I launch this class, I have hundreds of people from around the world that want to learn how to press flowers. It’s very amazing. I feel so grateful that the pandemic did allow people to slow down, look around them and say, Hey, what can I make with my own two hands? And this is something that anybody can do.

Robin: And it really is a family thing, right? , You mentioned your brother building the press. And how about the kids? Did they get involved?

Tricia: No, they like to tease me. They’ll be like, like when they see all my press flowers laying around, they’ll say, mom, this is garbage? And I’m like, no, no. That’s like my precious baby, you know? And so no, nobody’s really into it, but they’re all very supportive.

Robin: Where do you go from here with this? What are your thoughts for the future?

Tricia: I just partnered with two incredible people in the fashion industry who create and launch brands.

And I have about 30 emails sitting in my box of people wanting to collaborate and make something with this art form. I want to build it right. I decided to partner with these people. And so we are set to get to work, to try to see where we can take this because I I know that it can branch out into more fashion and to home line and paper stationary.

I feel like I’m creating a real business, so I’m very excited about that.

Robin: What other projects have you worked on while you’ve been in this state of transition and launching a new business. Are there other things that are happening?

Tricia: Yes, there’s something very exciting. I don’t know if I’m really allowed to talk about it, but I’m going to talk about it. Cause I’m so excited. So in addition to this, during the pandemic, we got an email from a theater that Gabe my husband had worked at, called Florida Studio Theater.

They said, listen, we got a PPP grant. And if there’s a one or two person show, you want to write, we can offer you this grant, if we approve of it. And for about 20 years, I’ve had an idea of a two person musical. Because I know probably doesn’t look like it. You probably can’t envision it, but I can channel Dolly Parton, and I have my whole life.

I’ve always been able to sing like her and sound like her. I played her in Nashville at the Ryman Auditorium. I did the Broadway musical Nine to Five. I did all the demos as Dora Lee before the show went to Broadway and I did the ad campaign as Dolly. And did Sacramento Music Circus production of Nine to Five.

I’ve always had this little thing that I could do that brought people a lot of joy. I always wanted to write a two person show about like an über fan and his fantasy friendship with Dolly Parton. An opportunity for me to sing all of her amazing music. I didn’t want to be Trisha. I didn’t want to talk about me.

I didn’t want to have it be about me at all. I wanted to, I just wanted to be her, and talk like her, and have a conversation with someone, and get to sing all those songs.

So we got the grant. We wrote a two-person musical, our lawyer loved it and said, I know Dolly’s lawyer and sent it to Dolly. She read the script, watched the Zoom reading, listened to the recordings.

I have professional recordings of me singing the songs like her, and she loves the show. She approves of me. She had one note to fix one little thing.

And just yesterday we got the signed contract. I’m going to brag now.

Look.

So she gave us the grand rights to her show. I don’t mean to be too biblical, but my cup runneth over. There’s too many good things happening right now. Look at this!

That’s Dolly Parton’s signature, everybody.

Robin: Oh my heavens, that is so fun!

Tricia: She’s like, I approve of Trisha playing me forever and all time.

Robin: How fun, that is so great!

Tricia: You know, I cannot believe it. My age, and my stage of career, that this could have happened. It’s really wonderful. If I ever, feel like, oh, no things aren’t working out or I’ve lost this… I’m going to remember this period of time and say, wait a minute. I can’t believe all of these years, decades of working towards something, working on honing, something has led to this great, amazing fruition. I’m just, I’m blown away.

So anyway, that’s a two-person show, that’s going to be on a little national tour. We just had a meeting today that people want it in the UK.

We have the worldwide rights for this musical. So I’ve got to work really hard the next couple of months. Well, my fingers can be dirty and short making all this art because then I’m going to be like, that’s my brand managers are going to take this and run with it.

And I’m going to be doing a musical as Dolly.

Robin: And singing and dancing, right?

Tricia: That’s right!

Robin: I do have a question as it relates to the flowers in the project. Actually, it’s not my question, it’s Betsy’s. She would like to know how you relate the art of the flower, and beauty, to God to the divine Principle, to that grand intelligence.

Tricia: You can’t believe the perfection in a flower, it’s just unbelievable. And so there’s something so pleasurable and beautiful about working with nature like that.

I didn’t have an intention to try to create something that was inspiring or happy or beautiful.

I really didn’t. My job is very, very practical. I pick the flowers, I press them. I know how to do that well. I understand the craft of how to do that. I’m very good at gluing, but I give all of the artistic credit to God, to mother nature, to his creation because I didn’t make this. I’m really just shepherding it from one form to a different form that can be saved forever.

At the gallery show it was really moving, how many people walked in and said, oh my gosh, I feel so happy right now, just being. And I knew that they were happy there. They’re surrounded by God’s creation. I really don’t feel a sense of ego, like I’m this great artist at all. I just feel like I absolutely just get out of the way.

All I’m doing is taking care of the botanicals and the way that keeps them the most beautiful. As I’m laying them out in the composition, I really just am following direction. I’m not willfully putting it this way now. I just instinctively lay them out and they turn out the way they turn out.

I feel like the process for me being an artist, when it’s really good is when you’re most out of the way, when you’re the clearest reflection, or the clearest windowpane for something else to shine through, that’s when the art is good, you have to get out of the way.

Robin: Do you have any advice for a new person entering into the business? I’m not sure if they mean artist or actor, so let’s just look at it in general, what would you say for someone entering into a new business today, being a business owner and being entrepreneurial you’re whole life?

Tricia: Well, I, I read a wonderful Christian Science article decades ago that really has stuck with me. And it’s about a young man was talking to his father about wanting to become an actor and he was gonna move to LA and be an actor.

The dad said, son, I want you to remember something about the horse and buggy business. The horse and buggy business went out of business because their sense of themselves, their identity, was that they were a horse and buggy business, and not in the business of transportation. And this is crucial because if you are holding onto this idea of yourself as an actor, as a painter, that’s what I am. And if I’m not doing that, I’m not doing my art, you’re in trouble.

You have to say, wait a minute, I’m in the business of telling stories, of creating beauty, of disciplined craft. Those are all translatable between being an actor, being a visual artist, being a good baker, being a gardener.

These are just qualities of life. When you have that very expansive view about what your career is, you’re never unemployed. You always have the opportunity to be a good storyteller, or to share beauty, or to express soul through music. You don’t have to have a paying audience, to be an artist, or to be a performer.

It’s the small mortal mind, ego thinking that thinks that I’m not validated until, unless I have X and here’s the truth. It’s like, once you’re in a Broadway show, you’re like most people, when you’re in a Broadway show, you’re dying to get out of that Broadway show. You’re like, what’s my next Broadway show going to be?

People don’t stay satisfied in that. It’s not satisfying. After a few weeks, you’re like, oh my gosh, I have to do this show again, eight shows a week. I got to get out of this, and where’s my next job. This is not satisfying. So you can’t be like, oh, once I attained that, then I’ll be happy.

Every single celebrity that I know is like, oh, what’s my next job going to be? You can’t have this mystical fantasy about like, oh, as long as I hit that goal, I’ll be happy.

The way to be happy as an actor, as an artist, is to be really clear about what your real career is. It’s about expression, and not about that end result.

I could never, in a million years, envision that my artwork would be in high fashion or on a piano. It’s not how I envisioned it, at all, but it turned out to be so great.

Robin: That’s often how it works, isn’t it? When we really find that inspiration and we get immersed in it, and then that pursuit of that passion, it does allow for things to unfold that you never thought or would never even considered might happen.

Tricia: Right.

Robin: Thinking along those lines and, looking at your career, moving forward and then looking back, what do you say to folks, that are challenged a little bit and say, yeah, I just don’t know if I can. It’s all coming together for Tricia, but I’m not sure what to do with this? What do you say to them?

Tricia: Well, inspiration can hit anybody at any time. And there are so many people that I know that have not had the amount of credits on their resume as somebody else. Some people have had very few job opportunities, but they come up with an idea that’s theirs and they make it happen. And so, there’s no excuse.

You could create a little vignette that’s 10 seconds long, that’s just perfection. That’s so funny. Or that’s so truthful. That’s so spot on. You can put it on TikTok. We live in a amazing time of opportunity to be someone creative.

I created a web series a couple years ago, I was so proud about. It got picked up. It was optioned. I never sold it, but I don’t regret one second of that time.

It’s about a wannabe blogger with 17 followers, who forces her husband to quit his job, to devote himself full time to the family culture and the making of her blog.

And every episode is their attempt at making a video for their followers. And the characters are real narcissists who have delusions of grandeur. It’s making fun of the mommy blogger culture, influencer culture, and social media. I had a blast doing it. It was so fulfilling. It was so creative.

I didn’t get paid a dime. I spent a lot of money on it and never got paid. But I don’t regret it. It was wonderful.

You cannot go into this business thinking the world owes you something, they owe you nothing. And if you stop, no one will remember you.

My kids don’t even know who Marilyn Monroe is. They don’t know who Cher is. They don’t know who Barbara Streisand is. I’m like, I failed you as a mother. You don’t know these icons. This doesn’t last. All you can do is be in the moment of your life.

Let these great ideas come to you. They’re available to everybody.

There’s not just some people that have access to these good ideas, and some people don’t have them. It’s really about what you do with them. And this is where I think, gosh, being a Christian Scientist is a wonderful thing. When you take it out of personality, it’s like, I don’t give credit to myself for good ideas.

I feel like Christian Science life or practices is about staying receptive and open. The ideas that are meant to hit you, in your consciousness, will hit you and you can make something with no money. My press flower art, you don’t need a dime to make something stunning.

Robin: Tell us about the workshop that you’re doing?

Tricia: I teach a two hour workshop on Zoom. I sit here and I pick a bunch of things ahead of time and I have in the basket, and I show people exactly how to do it, the principles of how to press flowers so they don’t turn brown.

And I can’t believe that when you Google this or YouTube it, people are giving a lot of false information or information that’s not helpful. I feel like after decades and decades of doing this, I really know how to teach something, that’s so specific.

Now people care. I can’t believe it.

My husband’s really cute because he used to help me with my Zoom and he would see that there were people that were in the class and then they would ask for the recording to watch it again. And he’s like, who wants to watch that again, I’m like, I don’t know. People like to learn how to do something. I don’t know.

I have people from around the world, I have 350 people signed up tomorrow to take this class. I’m so grateful. I think I’m a pretty good teacher because I embrace all the mistakes.

When a mistake happens, I always say, ooh, I’m so glad you saw that because now I can show you how I would solve this problem.

The viewer just gets to sit back and relax and just watch the show. And I’m talking, talking, talking, and then the last half an hour, I answer questions.

It’s been really rewarding. I like it because I feel a lot of the people that I teach are women who have a desire to start their own little business. I love this idea that there’s no competition in this world, right? I’m not in competition with the person in Texas who wants to press bridal bouquets for the local brides. That’s her place, and I have my place I’m doing and somebody else has their place.

I like this idea that I’m enabling these people to be better at a craft that they could make money doing. It feels good to support women businesses. I’m saying that because 99% of the people that take this class are women. There are a few men that have shown interest.

I think people are enjoying getting back in touch with making something themselves, with their own two hands, the time that that takes. My dad always said that people are depressed in modern day society because they don’t have to wash their clothes in a river. And I think there’s something to that.

To be active and focused on an activity that’s just looking and touching beautiful flowers is it’s such a pleasurable way to spend an afternoon.

Robin: So, if someone is interested in attending your workshops, will you be doing more of these in the future as well?

Tricia: I do it once a season. So this is my spring class and I won’t do it again until the summer. I don’t know that date yet. I found that it’s best to do it once a season. Once in a while I do other workshops like collage making or gluing. I have a funny idea for a book called the Zen Art of Gluing because I really think there’s something about very tedious tasks that seems like what, how can that be inspiring?

I think there’s a lot to learn about how to do that well. I’ve taught a class on how to do that specific thing. I like teaching arts and crafts, much more than acting. I have no desire to be an acting teacher at all.

I like to be an actor, but I like teaching art. I really do.

Robin: When you said earlier that the technology’s helped you and really bringing this forward in a way that you weren’t able to before, what things do you do with your art besides the piano? Can you do wallpaper? Are there other things that you do with that?

Tricia: About 15 years ago, I made a calendar. I made artwork and I made this calendar and I mass produced this calendar and I still have it. And it makes me laugh because it’s so grainy.

It is so not a high resolution scan or photograph. It just looks like a bad Xerox copy. And I’m sure that those kinds of copiers or printers were available to, high-end books or art books, but not to a normal person like me. What I discovered a few years ago was that I could take a work of art, huge work of art, this big and take it to a company and they would put it on a flatbed scanner, or they would put it on the wall and photograph it with the camera that enabled them to get a super high resolution image.

So a flower that’s like this can now be blown up in scale, like to be this big, but with all of the detail. And that makes all the difference. It doesn’t look like a cheap, bad image. It looks so lifelike. And what’s so fascinating with that piano, is people say, oh, are those real flowers?

And I’m thinking to myself, the rose is this big, like, there’s no such thing as a rose of this big, but because it’s so realistic, it’s an illusion, and people go, it’s real.

Robin: It’s hard to imagine, it’s so unbelievable. I’ve seen some of the other things under your Instagram page and it’s like, is that really a flower?

Tricia: Yes, it’s a copy. It looks so three-dimensional, the shadow and all of that. It looks like you can touch it. This one that’s next to me, doesn’t that look like you can touch that?

Robin: Yeah, it really does.

Tricia: It couldn’t do that before. That’s how technology has enabled me to can really think outside the box and what can I do with this imagery and these collages and these designs?

Robin: I’m going to go back over to the acting piece of this and this may be a little tougher question. So today there’s so many opinions and it just seems like everybody’s all over the place, and extreme this and extreme that.

How do you keep yourself grounded? How do you keep yourself in that place where you feel God’s presence. How do you keep yourself in there and not get mixed up?

Tricia: I’m not saying I don’t get down when someone criticizes my work. , I want everyone to like me, not everyone likes me. Not everyone will like my show.

Not everyone will like my art. There are people that say, gosh, that, Steinway’s ugly, it should be black. And I’m just like, it’s black underneath. This doesn’t get me down. That stuff doesn’t get me down.

Robin: Yeah, I think for some people that’s one of the things that keeps them from diving into something or trying something new.

Tricia: I grew up with a dad, who’s an inventor and his whole life is about trying, and making, and experimenting, and building, and then it doesn’t work. And he is the happiest, most optimistic person. Nothing can get my dad down. And I grew up with that. I saw that every day. And so then I just think I’m blessed with that ability to be totally optimistic.

I really believe that I’m always going to get every job I audition for. And then I do it. I do my best. And then, you know what happens? I have total amnesia about it. I can’t even remember what I auditioned for yesterday. Just decades and decades of being in that state, it’s just become really natural to me.

If I were to ever speak to young actors, I would say, oh, just get ready. Because the only way to do this without becoming someone who has to numb themselves with alcohol or drugs or food or something, is it have that state of mind, like you cannot care. You have to just be so into it. So committed and then have total amnesia. So I think that’s just practice of letting go.

My mom is on here right now. We like to tease her that she’s used to winning. So when she loses, she’s like shocked. I’m used to losing. So I’m never shocked when I lose. That’s just par for the course. It doesn’t bother me.

Robin: I got a question. My wife, Libby, says one of her favorite comments that you make about your work at the gallery, was when you mentioned the individual beauty of the wild flowers and weeds, correlating it with embracing humanity, seeing the beauty and appreciating something that is typically cast away and considered undervalued and sometimes worthless.

She says I love how Trisha shows that truth in her art and brings that joy and is inspiring so many to not discount something or someone, but in love in a bigger way.

Tricia: Oh, that’s so kind Libby, thank you for remembering that. You articulated that better than I did.

One of the murals I made, which was huge, featured a lot of weeds. And you can’t believe how gorgeous these weeds are. And these are weeds that I found literally growing out of the sidewalk. These weeds weren’t watered, they weren’t fertilized. They weren’t weren’t tended to, they just grew.

I feel that’s what we need to be as artists, keep on growing. And even if you don’t get any validation or sunlight, or water or anything, you just keep on growing, you know? I really love that you appreciated that sentiment.

Robin: Trisha, any closing comments, any thoughts that you’d like to share?

Tricia: I think it’s so nice that you’re doing this, and I hope that anybody who’s trying to embark on an artistic journey will go for it, and not to be afraid and not give up if the first thing that happens doesn’t work out.

It’s all about the journey, you have to just really love that step-by-step journey of it and not have an outline of how it’s going to go, where it’s going to go, get really good at something. And you can do that.

Robin: When you start a project like this Dolly project, how long does it take to prepare for that and then get it in motion where you’re actually on the stage?

Tricia: I had to act as if it was going to happen, just the same way I do with my flowers. I had to act as if it’s, it might happen. These, these jobs that I had. Even though I had no word of them. I had to act as if, so I’ve been singing and practicing and I’ve been trying to get back into learning my guitar because I really have a vision. I want to at least play a few songs, pretend to play, because I don’t really play, but I just booked my ticket today. I’m going back to work with the musical director on the music.

We have commercial producers. It’s a tricky time with the pandemic. Theaters are being cautious about reopening. So if it wasn’t this state of the world I would have a different answer for you. So it’s a little up in the air, but I’m sure in the next couple months we’ll have a official announcement for sure.

We just got the signature yesterday from Dolly herself. So now we can really move forward with confidence. If you guys are interested in that show, follow my regular Instagram, not Modern Press Flower, because that’s where I’ll share any acting stuff.

Robin: Tell us again where that is?

On Instagram, it’s @triciapaoluccio and then my Instagram for my art is @modernpressedflower.

Thank you. It’s probably time for us to start closing out. If you’re interested in connecting with Tricia, please reach out to me, or you can reach through the Career Alliance.

If you have never been to the Career Alliance, it’s ABFCareerAlliance.org. We’d love to have you come visit. We have some incredible resources there. We do have some new jobs on the website, student outreach, head volleyball coach.

ABFCareerAlliance.org. It’ll take you to the connections and jobs board, and you can do the searches there for the new jobs, plus the existing jobs and career connections that we have posted.

Again, one last time, we have a special workshop coming up with Dr. Don Asher, America’s job search guru. It’s a two hour, two day workshop. It’s going to be really good, really special. Don is famous for making these kinds of things fun and really resourceful. So check out ABFCareerAlliance.org, where you can register, and look forward to seeing you guys there.

Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. And remember, this is the Net Effect. Just as Jesus challenged his disciples to do, I challenge you to cast that net on the right side and Tricia, oh my goodness. Your net is so full, I don’t even know how you get it up. I don’t know how you do all you do.

Tricia: I don’t know. I need help, I need God’s help right now.

Robin: Well, it’s just incredible to see the success and to see the fun things that you’re doing. It is so wonderful to see that talent being manifested in such beautiful work. I wish I could have got you to do a little more Dolly, but we’ll just wait for the really polished stuff.

Tricia: Oh I could do one little song.

Let me see. I’ll do:

Here you come again,

just as I’m about to get myself together

you waltz right in the door

just like you done before

and wrap my heart around your little finger.

Here you come again,

Looking better than a body has a right to

and shaken’ me up so that all that I really know

is here you come again, and here I go, here I go.

Robin: Oh, gosh, that is so beautiful.

Tricia: I’ve been singing her since I was six years old!

Robin: Oh, fun. How fun for you! Well, thank you, Trisha. You’ve been so generous with your time. We so appreciate it. How fun.

Tricia: Well thank you very much! Thank you. I hope you all come see Dolly show when it happens!

Thanks everybody. Thanks for indulging me.

Robin: Okay, you bet, see you soon, bye-bye!

Tricia: Bye.