Sustainable Marketing, AI Disruption, and Trust with Jen McFarland

Kim Allchurch Flick: Hello everyone. This is Kim Allchurch Flick and today I am delighted to have a dear friend, Jen McFarland. Jen McFarland runs Women Conquer Business and is the founder. Jen is a marketing strategist, former City of Portland digital transformation leader and founder of Women Conquer Business, a mission-driven consultancy helping women solopreneurs build sustainable, scalable marketing.

After a decade of shaping policy and public facing digital services inside government, she saw firsthand how small businesses are underserved and often preyed upon. She built her business to change that. Jen blends deep expertise in digital strategy SEO, and AI driven marketing with a values-based approach centered on accessibility, clarity, and real world results.

She now helps women-owned businesses cut through overwhelm, build marketing they can sustain and grow with confidence. Today we’re gonna talk about how small businesses grow lessons from city government to helping women survive the marketing mess. That has to be about the coolest topic ever because I feel it every day.

Welcome. It’s so good to see you. 

Jen McFarland: You too. Thank you so much for having me. This is great. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Yes. 

So 

Jen McFarland: good 

Kim Allchurch Flick: to see you. It’s, it is, and we have known each other for a while and both of us have been involved instructing at the small business development Center. So you’re a teacher, a coach supporting Accelerate women as well, and I’m so happy to learn more about your journey.

So what has been your journey and the inspirations that brought you through a city to this point in time? 

Jen McFarland: I know it’s so funny, like the question because when I, sometimes when I talk to people, they’re like, you did that too. What haven’t you done? Like I, because I am really into having really good experiences.

So I’ve worked at a paper, I was a DJ for a while. I’ve done, I’ve done a lot of things. I got my first marketing job in at a company on Swan Island here in Portland, Oregon in the nineties, because I knew. What a scanner was like. The person interviewing me amazing. I know pointed at and said, you know what this is, I’m like a scanner.

And so it’s just been it’s been a journey. I think the most transformational experience I had that probably set me on this trajectory was when I was in college and like right after I got out of college, one of my closest friends was in the Peace Corps. In Guatemala. And then and then I was like I wanna do that, and so then it started this whole thing of but then I got married and, but my husband wanted to go to, and so we had to figure out our finances. So it was this whole big thing about how to go serve. And then when you do have an experience like that, it just like. Sets you on a different mindset, a different place.

You look at the world differently because you realize contextually what goes on here is so different than somebody else’s context, and it makes you look at things through a different lens. Just because I think it’s because of the length. After the first year, you’re still holding on to all of your.

Ideas about we do it better America, whatever, but by the end of the second year, you have enough experience that you’re like, we really don’t, we don’t really know what we’re talking about anymore than anybody else does. We just do it differently. And I think for me, the biggest thing for me in terms of like equity and inclusion happened when, it’s really cold in Kazakhstan. That’s where we served. And so getting dressed to go to the school. Is like a big deal, like you’re, ’cause the whole, the apartment is cold. Like we’re not talking about central heating and stuff here, and so you put on all of your clothes and it’s 20 below and and you get to the school and there’s a padlock on the door.

And nobody told you that there’s no school today. And I remember that. I remember standing outside the school and it was the second year and nobody told me there wasn’t school. And like I started to lose it, and I remember saying to myself that just doesn’t happen at home, and I was like, wait, no, it does. I’m just part of the group that’s in the know. And so those are the kinds of things that happen when you live in a culture long enough. Like you start to see that oh, I’m the other, oh, at my, where I live, I’m not the other. And like you start to have these aha moments, and so after that, when I got back from the Peace Corps, that was when I ran an AmeriCorps program for a year, and then I got my master’s in public administration. And worked at the city and did do a lot of policy work and things like that. And tech projects.

Like my last project was bringing IRS data to the city of Portland for tax matching. You’re welcome. So for higher tax compliance at the city. And that was a big lesson like working with the federal government. That’s like a whole other thing versus working in local government. And then I just got burned out.

I really felt like I wasn’t, I was affecting, there’s more, but at the time, 50,000 business owners at any one time. And then when it came to like bigger projects, it was like every portlander, we were affecting with like apps we would stand up or, redoing the website was one of my projects.

All kinds of things. And then I was like, but I don’t really see. How it’s impacting people, and I got, I felt very disconnected from the community in that work, doing it at that level. And and a bunch of other things happened. Like it wasn’t a good environment for me as a individual.

It didn’t really work for me. I like to move a little faster and so I started helping people on the side, like just with websites and things like that, because I could see. That there was a lot that needed to happen and a lot of people who particularly with like technology would just pat women on the head and be like, oh, you’re okay.

And like they wouldn’t really help them or didn’t really have a real sense of. How the, as a provider, their actions were affecting these women business owners. And I was like I can help with this stuff. Like I can do this. And so that’s where at the time, foster growth, that’s, that was my, still my LLC was born, was out of that because I help and the name foster growth was because I help people foster growth and change.

And that was what was on my resume, like all kinds of stuff. And then I got out in the world and people didn’t understand what foster growth meant. So a couple years later I changed it to Women Conquer Business, which is a pretty cool name. And it does a good job of attracting the right people and repelling the wrong people, which is always a good marketing exercise,

Kim Allchurch Flick: wow, that’s my 

Jen McFarland: story of sticking to it. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Indeed. You said something that I think is profound because essentially a city and employees of a city or government, county state. All that are supposed to be there for the people. And it really struck me that you said you felt so disconnected from the people in that role and yet we’re learning so many things and what a viewpoint that must be, but also seeing what’s missing that led you to women conquer business.

Jen McFarland: Yeah. I think that. We tend to see and we talked about it a lot in grad school, we tend to see the street level bureaucrats. So those are like firemen, police officers customer service people, if you go to a public park or things like that. Like they’re there and they’re like the people that you see, that you interact with.

And then there’s a lot of people like me who are making decisions. Without public meetings, without any sort of discourse. And then you learn later oh my gosh, we like, we didn’t translate something. Or the form is confusing and people don’t do it. Or, people didn’t even know they were supposed to pay this tax.

There’s all kinds of things that happen and there’s a lot of fallout and it’s because there is a big disconnect. The, a lot of policies, the city happened because somebody got elected and they decided this thing was gonna happen, and whether or not people want it or not.

And that’s the thing that, that has always been frustrated. Frustrated. My dad, who worked at the Idaho Tax Commission for 42 years was like, politicians make decisions, but it’s the frontline, like workers of a state or county or whatever that get all of the blowback, and it’s.

It’s politicians who raise your taxes. It’s politicians who make decisions that you don’t like. But then everybody says that they hate government. And there’s things within the system that are not great, not good. I find most government was formed, like how we do things was formed in the 1950s.

And the world has changed vastly since then, but we don’t fund government to be agile at all. And if you look at some of the things that have happened since Trump 2.0 where they’ve just been slash and burning things like they’re, they have devastating consequences because everything is so interconnected that you can’t just be like.

Doge and like just cut through everything. It just, it’s too intricate and making those shifts take so long, and it’s good and it’s bad. If you’re like me and you want change to happen quicker, like it’s not the right place for you to work, but. Government taking a time to like shift is actually a good thing because then you have more time to make sure that everybody comes along, and the danger with a lot of the things that are happening is it just skips over all of the like, inconveniences that people think make government slow, but it’s also what makes it work better. For all of its flaws. There are some things that were good about government being slower. Especially at the federal level.

Kim Allchurch Flick: Yeah, that, that makes sense. And thank you for that insider view. And I think we’ll probably come back to that every once in a while through the conversation. And what been some challenges and obstacles, particularly also going from employment or an organization, which is the government to being an entrepreneur?

Jen McFarland: I. Every, I always think about it like, I’m so grateful to the infrastructure of like corporate life and like working at the city because I, and that’s why like I’m so grateful for my business operations manager, because there were just a lot of things that I didn’t realize I was getting help with.

You learn pretty fast as soon as you’re out and you’re doing everything like holy cannoli, there’s like a lot to do. And so that was like the biggest gap was like, here I was somebody who did a lot of work but I wasn’t the face of the city. That was other people. I wasn’t doing all the finance.

I wasn’t doing all the admin. I didn’t have an admin employee, but there was still a lot of admin that happened without. Me having to do anything. It was like magic, and all the magic’s gone. When you have your own, when you have your own business, all of a sudden you’re like, you’re the magic maker for everything.

And that was like, that was a big shift. Like it was a, oh, be careful what you ask for, Jen. You just got it,

Kim Allchurch Flick: yeah, be careful what you wish for it. It is true, isn’t it? I also came from more corporate life, not in a city, but through necessity after being laid off. It’s what’s next?

Have to build something and having business acumen, but not having been a, not having run a business had been a part of a bigger machine, and steady paychecks are. Very nice. Pretty nice, 

Jen McFarland: aren’t they? Yeah. Yeah. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: And work. Working hard for sometimes to build revenue that is not yet arriving is a good boy Cup call is, that is really 

Jen McFarland: something, isn’t it?

Or I remember the, and it hasn’t, I’ve been very blessed. It hasn’t happened very many times, but somebody didn’t pay, so I did all this work and then they never paid. And that happened to me like. Within two months of leaving the city. And I was like, are you kidding me? And then having like conversations with this business owner who just it was so vitriolic and adversarial, and I’m sending like proof of work, which she knew, she knew that I’d done the work, and I had to walk away from a few thousand dollars like.

And I was like, oh man, I didn’t even consider this, as like a possibility. And that was a, that was also a big thing that happened, like pretty, pretty new to business that I was like, oh yeah, I guess that’s why they have small claims court, or whatever. And so yeah, you have those moments, but then.

Then you learn how to analyze people when they come in to see if they’re really a good fit. And of course you can’t really know if people are not gonna pay. That’s still a thing that could happen I guess. You get better with time at assessing. If somebody’s full of it, 

Kim Allchurch Flick: absolutely. And knowing you through the years, I also see as being. A very mission-driven, values aligned business owner and caring about people in the community. And sadly, it’s too, sometimes along the way, there are those who don’t always see the same value set. They just want something to be done.

And unfortunately, I have heard more than once about people who don’t get paid. With that it strikes me that you stuck to your values so much throughout and actually building stronger ones, and I think that’s one of the things I admire about you and women conquer business so much. And what do you see in the community you serve and how do you share your values with your community?

Jen McFarland: I would say that, there’s a couple of different ways. There’s. There’s the community of say, like Accelerate Women or the work that David Mim and I put together for Prosper, Portland’s Inclusive Business Resource Network, where we built a digital marketing program from the ground up and served.

I think it ended up being several hundred businesses. In the beginning it was just the two of us. And then at the end we had, I think, six or seven consultants, who were all serving. BIPOC business owners. Through IBRN and Mercatus, which is how I also got hooked into SBDC and some of those other things because David and I were also training the trainers so that we could help people understand how to help businesses.

And that was really the foundation of getting into the community and really hearing about the problems and the questions that people had. It’s been a struggle lately. I’ve been talking to more businesses who are thinking of closing because of tariffs or the economy just hasn’t been what it once was in this immediate area, and then at the same time it all it’s all tied together. The nonprofit funding has dried up, which means the state funding has dried up. And then the city funding, is tied to how much business income we have. And if I talk to a lot of businesses that are thinking of closing, that means there’s not as much money then to go into places like Prosper Portland to support business development, and so the wheels go round and round. And so a lot of it right now in the immediate is how do we. Keep going. How do we do this in a way that is helpful? And so for a lot of people right now, I’m reminding them that everything isn’t online. You have to build relationships in the community.

You have to talk to other people. You have to share and collaborate with others. And that’s always been a part of it. But when you’re a digital marketer, that’s maybe not always like the front and center. Piece of it, necessarily. I’ve been really fortunate too that I built my own community and the conversations we have in the online Women Conquer business community have been really great because there are some people who’ve been there for three years now. And so everybody’s really comfortable. It’s a really safe space and very supportive. And the question comes up a lot, like, how are we supposed to do marketing in this environment? Where it seems like the world is on fire like every day, and. And then at the same time, I’m navigating like crazy pants changes to marketing at the same time, and so I just keep reminding people in all of these meetings and stuff like, okay, we do the work because we care about our communities and marketing is energy. And if we can keep showing up for our communities, it benefits yes, our business, but it also benefits the people that we serve.

And if we stop. Marketing and if we stop talking to people because we’re scared and we have so many things going on in the world that are making us fearful for the future, if we stop talking to other people, then we’re not helping. The people that we have vowed to surf. So it’s a real conundrum because if you feel scared and you feel uncertain, it makes marketing hard.

’cause like I said, it’s energy. So people can like, feel that you’re tentative about something. And it may not be like the business, it may just be like you read a headline, you doom scrolled and then you walked into a client meeting or whatever so it’s a really. Hard time to be a business owner.

If you are mission driven and , if you have feelings about what’s going on right now it’s a hard time. And so really it I was putting together next week’s newsletter yesterday, and there’s actually like a link. In there that talks about like less doom scrolling more books.

And it’s about just read and don’t read the book online. Read an actual physical book, so that you’re not putting yourself in a place where you could suddenly start scrolling something else, and and I bought myself, they sell like iPod lookalikes for $60 now, and I bought myself one so I can.

Put my music on an iPod and go for walks without having my phone with me. And we just have to separate ourselves from a lot of the noise. It’s good to be aware, but like, when it comes to running a business in an environment like this, sometimes we have to protect our peace or it’s gonna be too much for us.

Kim Allchurch Flick: We have to protect our peace and. That resonates so much because we do ’cause it’s constant fire hose out there, so if we don’t pull away from the fire hose, we will get watched downstream. 

Jen McFarland: Yeah. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Thank you for saying that. And this is from you working in like in depth so much about digital strategy and even though I am a marketing major and I’ve.

Earned a digital strategy certificate. I discovered what I like about marketing, which is more the idea of it and reaching people in authenticity and creativity. And what I don’t like about it is things like ad words and all the machinations that can go into marketing. And what I have noticed about you is you understand all of these things and bring.

Marketing to light in such a holistic fashion that it’s still important and yet it doesn’t need to be. It is still a game in a way. It’s always a game. It’s a game to get views. It’s a game to be noticed. I understand that part, but you make it really authentic and. That’s one of the things I appreciate and yet deeply digital and your understanding of ai, which to some people sounds new, but I know AI’s been around for 20 years.

It’s just the incarnations are so rapidly growing and the use of it is, I don’t even know how to express it. The use of it seems to be like. Not just one train it. It’s almost like an airport and every plane flying out is like the AI doing something without us gathering information. Also, creating some things that are good, creating some things that are potentially nefarious and trying to understand it all at once.

It’s like trying to understand how an airport works. It seems big, there’s a lot going on and in airport working where there’s no people. It’s just imagine that going on every day. Yeah. That’s how AI feels to me. It’s almost, I know it’s out there. I know it can be useful and it’s very large.

Jen McFarland: Yeah. There’s a few things that you said that I wanted to touch on, if that’s okay. Like 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Sure. 

Jen McFarland: Absolutely. Sometimes people say that that what I, that I only help people with marketing basics, and I’m like, no, you don’t understand. I make marketing so approachable that it sounds basic and it’s not that I do basic things, it’s that I give people.

Like a modular approach so that they can figure it out for themselves. And sometimes it’s really technical and sometimes it’s not. And the big thing that I’m excited about right now is that I’m helping people with something that it doesn’t have a sexy name. I’m sorry but it’s capacity aware marketing.

So it’s like you only have so much capacity in any given day. To do things, and you have to market your business. So like, how can you fit this in, and so it like changes the conversations with people where, they’re like, I wanna do this, this, this, this, and this. And I’m like, okay, but you have a whole business to run.

Is this really reasonable? And so I’m trying to really encourage people to ask those types of questions to really think about what they can, what their marketing strategy actually is, so that they can build it for success. Instead of saying that you’re gonna do 150 things and feeling like a failure because you did 20, like you should feel like a success because you did 20.

And it’s just what you had capacity to do. So if we can build the capacity from the beginning that gives people more opportunities to succeed when it comes to things like ai. And it’s so tricky, because I and AI has become so. It has disrupted marketing more than Elon Musk buying Twitter, which is now X or more than TikTok hitting the scene and now.

The US splintering off TikTok into its own formation with horrible, even more horrible privacy policies than we’ve ever seen. Like I know, I feel I sound like Trump. It’s the worst that we’ve ever seen, but it literally is the worst we’ve ever seen in terms of a privacy policy. AI has disrupted everything.

And when it came, I remember it was right after I had hired Alti and I said there’s this thing chat, GPT. I don’t know if it’s gonna be a big deal or not, because I’ve been using AI for five or six years, and then I was actually surprised when that was the thing that like everybody latched onto is a big deal, but it’s terrible for the environment.

We know this, it’s just as bad as crypto is for the environment. And at the same time I find that I have to use it so that I can compete with everybody else. And so it’s like a real, it like. It can be so cool. And then it also gives me some heartburn to use it and and I think that there’s a real struggle with that right now.

You’re seeing it right now where a lot of people are saying like they don’t wanna see the junk. They wanna see the potential for what it can do, but then it’s also like a huge privacy risk or, it’s not even a risk, it’s just a threat really, to the privacy. And then, so there’s so many ways that we can look at the AI conversation, like in a silo from a marketing perspective.

As a professional, I have to use it at least in some ways because I’m gonna get left behind, and also doesn’t mean I have to like it all the time, that I don’t like what it does. And I certainly don’t like the people in charge of it because I don’t think they’re using the right governance.

I used to say that Claude and Anthropic had the right governance, but right before coming on this call, I read that they have lifted their guardrails, which was what made them so special for military purposes at least. And that is terrifying, because it still makes a lot of mistakes and the guardrails are what protects us from some of this stuff.

I don’t. So I am very conflicted about ai. I help people navigate it. I do use it and and I’m concerned. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Yeah. Thank you for that. And for listeners, this is February, 2026 in a conversation that will span 

Jen McFarland: a long 

Kim Allchurch Flick: time, a lot of, a long time. But sometimes it’s good to make a record and make a mark in time.

And I agree with you. You said it very, very, very well. And with that, what makes you optimistic? 

Jen McFarland: Oh, like so many things, I’m like, I’m really optimistic about the generations that are coming after. Like I’m definitely not one of those people that’s like, oh, but we used to do it. Right. Except for drinking out of hoses.

I still think that was okay. But I think that, like aside from that, the new generation they really excite me and it makes me really hopeful. I think that also with, everything I just said about ai and I said all that stuff before, aside from the anthropic comment, like all of this stuff is pretty timeless.

Like all of those issues existed like three years ago. They’ll exist in three years too. So I’m optimistic because younger people as digital natives, as people who like. Understand the technology and how it works in ways that, like people older than me don’t, you know, because they grew up with it, like in their hand.

They have a different way that they relate to work. They have a different way that they relate to the world and what they want. I’m seeing some really exciting conversations around the environment that have never happened before. And that makes me really optimistic. And, I’m optimistic about business.

We survived this before, and and we’ll make it this time too. And it’s just, we just it just means that if you were in business, say during the pandemic, it’s almost like that again, where you have to really like, be agile and think about it. And I do feel like, we came through the pandemic and we were better.

I think if we come through this we’ll be better. It’s just a matter of what it looks like and I don’t know, but that’s exciting too. I don’t know. I don’t know what’s gonna happen. But I’m always optimistic, my, my tagline that I don’t use nearly enough is fine joy marketing your business.

And that’s why I like protecting your piece is so important because. If you don’t, you stop being joyful and optimistic and that’s really important for all of us. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: I love that. Find joy marketing your business and it can be fun. 

Jen McFarland: Oh, absolutely. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: To make an expression that people resonate with can be really joyous.

Jen McFarland: Yeah, and like marketing can be fun as long as you don’t listen to somebody who tells you you have to do. X, y, z like when you don’t want to do the things that you enjoy when it comes to marketing your own business. Yeah. There are people everywhere that, that need what you offer. So it’s about saying I like to do these things, and then doing it.

Kim Allchurch Flick: Yeah, 

Jen McFarland: It sounds simple. It’s not you have to do, put some thought into it. But but yeah, everybody can do it and you need to do it your own way. That’s how you stay optimistic and hopeful, I think. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Yes. And it gives some agency, may I share some data with you? 

Yeah.

Data. So I, I geek out on Nielsen every once in a while and they’ve done several studies on social enterprise and consumers, and I think it was 2014 and then another round 2017 where they said that. Two thirds of consumers globally are willing to pay more for products and services when they know a company has good values.

And then the later one was about 73% were millennials. And I’ve always thought, and where I come in my work is, okay, great. There’s somebody out there who’s got great values as a business and somebody’s looking, how do they find each other? And that’s where marketing comes in. And that’s where the big gaps have been.

And as a consumer, sometimes I am delighted when a company is very expressive about their values. And I have a friend that says, market your values like a product. Yeah. And yet I get so frustrated sometimes with the. The companies that I know have great values and I can’t find it anywhere unless I’ve had coffee with the person and they bring it up as an aside and say, oh yeah, by the way, we, we helped a village, or we help a village in some country, and they’ve done amazing things, but it’s nowhere.

So that’s part of it. And then there’s a couple of other things that I’ve heard along the way that just helped me get through these times. And it’s like running a business, enjoying it, and being part of a community is an act of resistance. Also the other one that is just as important as working hard is rest as an act of resistance.

Jen McFarland: Yeah. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: And that’s what I’m working 

Jen McFarland: on right now. I am not good at rest at all. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: And in a way it’s interesting though. I find being in conversation with you here restful. It’s like it’s, it brings me. Fun. Yeah, its fun. It brings me joy and we all find our own things. Sometimes it’s not always sleeping, but you’re also talking about handling a book instead of digital.

It gives the brain a break, and it may be different forms of rest, but business itself and how your values have always resonated to me, that’s, I think, one of the things I enjoyed from the first meeting and how dedicated you are to helping others. 

Jen McFarland: The one thing that I will say that I, that also makes me optimistic or could be like one other tidbit to share, is that with all of this AI stuff it has made people less trustful of brands that are not forthright about their values, that aren’t talking about what they do.

And so the underlying thing is that. Moving forward. So starting with this year, it really is about trust. So think about how you can get people, how you can share what you do so that people trust you. And a lot of times that comes back to things like values, impact, being integris in what you are doing, conscientious, like all of those types of things lead to.

Customer trust, and so it’s do good work, have honest conversations. If you can’t do the work, tell people and help them find somebody else. There’s a lot of things. And so that actually makes me very hopeful too, that people aren’t just believing what the AI overlords are saying.

They’re wanting to find and be in community with people that they trust. And so marketing is really about trust and I like that better than marketing being about AI and what it can make because it can’t make things that you and I can do. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Yeah, I agree. And even metrics. It’s nice to get the analytics, it’s nice to see how to tweak and adjust and, but I love that.

Moving forward, it’s about trust. What more would you like to add and how can people reach you and how can people get on that newsletter?

Jen McFarland: Yeah. I don’t know what else to add except, yeah I do think it’s important to get off. I also think that’s how we build better community among people that we don’t agree with, is to get them off of their devices and have real conversations. ’cause people say stuff online that they would, I hope it would never say to an actual person.

So the more conversations that we can have the better I think we are as a community. I am excited about the fact that trust is just so critical right now. And I think that that’s gonna stick with us for a long time. You can find me all over the internet at Women Conquer Biz and then that’s my website.

WomenConquerBiz.com. The newsletter is at WomenConquerBiz.com/newsletter and that’d be the easiest way to subscribe. I’ve also been very good about putting it on the bottom of blog posts and on every page to try and make it as easy as possible. The newsletter is super fun and it’s informative and really focused on.

Small businesses, local businesses and then people who work in professional services to an extent as well. So coaches, consultants, experts which is probably why you like it, Kim, as an expert. And yeah. So yeah, find me. Let’s hang out. Let’s have coffee. Let’s chat. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Absolutely. I love getting your newsletters and they’re the kind of newsletters I like to share, so I hope everyone will tap into that.

And the last question is, if you could have dinner with anyone living or deceased up to three people, one, two, or three people, who would they be and why? 

Jen McFarland: Okay, so this is hard because there are so many people. But I decided to go with the three that came. Right away, like top of mind. And my guess is it’s possible that one of these people you’ve never heard of, so that could be interesting.

So first, the first two people that you’ve heard of. One is Amy Poehler because she’s funny and fun and feminist. The next one is Ichiro Suzuki, ’cause he’s my favorite baseball player of all time. And the third person is Effa Manley. Who is the only woman in the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame. She was a civil rights activist and she owned a Negro League team with her husband and helped first of all, helped get African Americans into Major League baseball.

And then also was really helpful to players so that they had income after. ’cause like back in the early days, baseball players did not make enough money to live and so she helped them with finance. Then, like I said, she was integral into the civil rights era and I just think she would be interesting to talk to.

When I learned about her, I was like, wow, that’s so cool. Ichiro Suzuki has given the most money of any former player to the Negro League Museum to help keep the history of baseball alive. And and I just think he’s an interesting guy. He played for 20 years in Japan and then played another 20 years here.

When we lived in Arizona, we would go to spring training games and he just had the most interesting routine before a game, like to get ready. And I just thought, that’s just so cool. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: That blows me away. First of all, names I’ve never heard Amy, of course, no, but don’t know personally, but it’s what also strikes me about those two people is in their worldview.

They did something small that was really mighty and not small. Globally, small, but not small to the people that they were serving, that those things were huge and how we don’t all have to spread broad and do big things Sometimes. It’s the deep niche and serving people. 

Jen McFarland: Yeah. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: In a narrow sense and locally that can make some of the biggest differences.

And when you were talking about those two that really struck home that I know nothing about baseball, I don’t know anything, but the fact that they helped people knew how to do it and made a difference that’s lasting. 

Jen McFarland: Yeah. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Is something we can all think about in whatever niche we might wanna operate in.

That’s amazing. 

Jen McFarland: I guess that’s something else about me. I am. I love baseball. We have season tickets to the Pickles, which is our little Portland Pickles, wooden bat league. And and so yeah, the more I’ve learned about baseball, like there are these people who have like really helped with the community and then as they’re like butterfly wings, that have an impact beyond the immediate circle and, amy Poller would just be a kick, like Parks and Rec. I could relate to that on so many levels as a former like city employee. And and so yeah. And I just think that she would be fun and interesting to talk to. But yeah, I mean there are a lot of people who’ve done really big things and certainly I had some people in mind like JFK, who started the Peace Corps. But I’ve read some things about him that I find very troubling, so I’m like, I don’t know if I’d really wanna talk to him, as a person. These are people that I’ve read enough about that I think I would actually like, they would probably talk to me and be interesting.

So yeah that’s why. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: I appreciate that so much. What a delight. I appreciate you and I can see what people Amy Pohler, ’cause you make me laugh and have her you two in a room together, I think really something 

Jen McFarland: you should come to be. Yeah. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Fly on the wall. I’ll bus the table and.

Bring you dessert. Thank you so much. This is a delight. Everyone, I appreciate you listening. This is Kim Allchurch Flick signing off and wishing you a good day.