Ashley Sumner – Founder & CEO of Quilt

Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be, I want to just sort of make sure you will get knocked down. But just make sure you don’t get knocked out knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control control control. Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Kara golden show. So join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go. Let’s go. Hi, everyone, its Kara golden from the Kara golden show. And I’m super excited to have my next guest here with me. We have Ashley Sumner, who is the CEO and founder of this awesome company called quilt. And we we met actually on a really, really fun trip that we were invited to in England and the two of us became fast friends. And because of the pandemic, I haven’t seen her in a while and I’m like, I need to have you on to talk more about your journey because it’s been so much fun watching you build and definitely I know everyone’s gonna really really like all of the inspiration you brought to me and and want to hear your story a little bit more as well. So Ashley, as I mentioned, is the founder and CEO of quilt. And for those of you who do not know about quilt, they are a community designed to help people connect and share. And I’m not doing it justice. So I’m going to leave it at that and let let Ashley get into it a little bit more. But let’s just jump right to it. And let Ashley just talk a little bit more. But first, what I always do is start at a little further back. So Ashley, welcome, first of all,

Unknown Speaker 2:11
thank you. It’s so awesome to be here and to see you again.

Kara Goldin 2:14
Super, super excited to see you as well. So tell us a little bit more about where you got started. Not even further back than quilt. But how did you like where’d you grow up? What What did you think? Did you think you were going to be an entrepreneur?

Unknown Speaker 2:31
Ooh, that’s a great question. So I grew up mostly in in Pennsylvania in the Poconos. So it’s like an our small town out outside of New York City. I thought I was gonna be a performer. I was really I loved like dancing and singing in an acting. So I went to NYU for that. I definitely always felt like I was going to create things. And not knowing if that was a business or a musical or kind of whatever that looks like. But there was definitely this like early burning desire to create things that could help people support people, inspire inspire people. So no idea I’d be a founder of a tech company. Probably wouldn’t have bet on that given like my degree in tap dancing. But yeah,

Kara Goldin 3:21
that’s hysterical. So you left the Poconos and you went to New York City. And what did you do after graduating?

Unknown Speaker 3:31
So after graduating, I auditioned a little bit. And I worked at this nonprofit Theatre Company, and I randomly fell into the world of matchmaking, actually,

Kara Goldin 3:43
matchmaking. Yeah, this

Unknown Speaker 3:46
is pre, you know, Tinder wasn’t out yet. People weren’t really even talking about being on you know, match.com or eHarmony. And I met a small startup, three months old. And I fell really in love with this idea that you could connect people and they could fall in love and, you know, be together forever. So I ended up matchmaking as like my first kind of real job slash career for about five years outside of school.

Kara Goldin 4:13
That’s why and how did you think about did you think about it as a business? I mean, or how, like, were people just saying, Hey, can you set me up? or How did this all start? I

Unknown Speaker 4:23
got into it, because I had a friend in college, who was one of the first two employees there and she wanted to, honestly, she wanted to set me up on a date with a client of theirs. She thought of me as like a match for him. And so that happened, I can fast forward and say we ended up dating for a long time. It was a significant relationship in my life. And the fact that that worked, like I was, I was, it was wild to me. So I ended up kind of going and saying, Hey, can I can I help? I want to I want to, I want to convince other people To do this because, honestly, the time it was so taboo, that people felt like, oh, there must be something wrong. Now everyone’s like sharing their dating profiles on, you know, their Instagram accounts. And it’s cool, right? Wasn’t back then. So I really wanted to be on the train of like inspiring people to utilize all avenues to find love and greet families and all that stuff. So that’s, that’s how I got into it. And then I just realized very quickly, I had a skill, like, I had a knack for spending time with someone and then thinking about who they should be with, who would enhance their lives and inspire them and all of that kind of stuff. So I ended up just pouring myself into the work

Kara Goldin 5:41
that is wild. So were you working for a company doing matchmaking? Or did you actually start this company?

Unknown Speaker 5:48
So I worked for one, and then I partnered with a couple of people, and then we created our own. And then I did that for a couple of years. And that was yes, we I did like matchmaking but I also kind of set up dining experiences, like ways for groups of people to come together. This was when I was living in New York, and I really got to this place. Honestly, I loved doing that work, it was, it was incredibly fulfilling to connect people that you know, fell in love. But there was kind of a, this No, this kind of burning desire to have how I described as like a bigger impact, like it helped more people come, you know, come together. And when you’re doing one to one, or like, you know, 12 people coming together, I just wanted to replicate that, like, I wanted to go beyond New York, I wanted to help beyond, you know, this small, you know, this small islands, but like I wanted to, I wanted to go better. So I kind of made the decision to translate those skills into doing more true community kind of development and experience design, which definitely set me up for where I am today.

Kara Goldin 7:00
I love how you took the one on one and sort of connecting, and then figured out what you liked about it. I mean, so often I share with people, it’s it’s, people have said to me, like I never should have done that job, or, you know, or and I said, No, you have to figure out what are the components that were great that you really did enjoy about it. And also experiences that maybe you think were like lousy experiences, there’s always a little bit of good and a little bit of learnings that can be done. So that’s awesome. So you take you take that into your next venture. So coillte. So tell me a little bit about that.

Unknown Speaker 7:44
Yeah, so from matchmaking, I ended up working in a couple of different companies that were really real estate focused, so bringing people together physically for experiences. And while I was doing that work, I just realized how confining it was to only build community inside, you know, a 10,000 square foot social club or quarterly yoga festival or a yearly social impact conference. Again, I was like, This isn’t this isn’t consistent enough people need community always like, we need to find support, we need to feel connected. And I want this to be a daily experience for us all. So I started to think about quilt, originally, as can we use technology in a way that can help inspire people to come together physically offline. And so Originally, it launched as a platform that would inspire people to open their homes, and host conversations and shared experiences out of their homes. So that was kind of the translation of it was doing these really intimate, special, you know, community gatherings for these different types of you know, community focused brands, can that just be our day to day like in our neighborhoods? Can we know our neighbors? Can we welcome people in? Can we talk about things that matter to us. And so this kind of began this, this wild journey that is quilt, that’s

Kara Goldin 9:11
amazing. So, so the model really started was were you still in New York when you started it, or I know you live in La,

Unknown Speaker 9:19
la, so I made it to LA at that point. This was a couple of years ago now I was kind of new to LA, I was hosting a lot of like 10 person conversations to meet people. So I would go to a coffee shop in Venice, I would go to the lobby of a hotel in Waco, like a friend would open up their home. And I was bringing groups of people together and I’d say just bring people you know, and and I ended up going from knowing zero people to having a list of like 1000s of people who will come to these weekly coffees. And so I wanted I was doing it, I wanted other people to do that too. And it really like it kind of took off from there that we have our own spaces that we can use, there are homes, you feel safe in a home? Why can’t we utilize that and lean into having real conversations with one another, which is always something I’ve craved from a very young age?

Kara Goldin 10:17
So, did you come up with the conversations? or How did they kind of? Did they organically start to, you know, flow over time? Or what? How did you kick off with topics? or How did this all start? Yeah, so

Unknown Speaker 10:35
in the beginning, like, I was just doing it kind of based on what I was, I was going through or inspired by so I’d end up in a conversation with someone we’d be talking about our relationship with money, I’d be like, why don’t we talk more about this with each other, you know, there’s so much shame around and can be around money. And so with quilt and when quilt launched and, you know, people wanted to be able to host these conversations themselves, we actually ended up picking these monthly themes, like campaigns. And I would write a discussion guide that anybody could use, kind of get bringing everybody together, creating the space, and there will be a list of questions they could pull from the kind of rain from like, scratching the surface and getting everybody like comfortable, you know, like one word to describe your relationship with money. Right? Okay, like everyone can, can answer hopefully answer that, then it would go deeper as time would go by, you’d have other questions, kind of like, in your little conversation kit that we would share with you. And you could, it could end up being like, you know, what belief system do you have about money because of you know, how your mom thought about money or how your dad thought about money. So we would, we would go deeper with one another over time. And we would prepare that. So if somebody didn’t feel like they were equipped with it, to come up without or maybe felt nervous and hasn’t done facilitation before they had kind of this guide, I guess,

Kara Goldin 12:03
if you will, so interesting. And in general, who are the people that would come to these get togethers?

Unknown Speaker 12:12
Yeah, the get togethers were primarily women. And, you know, anywhere from, you know, 20s to 60s, from like, you know, having their first job and getting the first raise and starting a company and having a family and being an empty nester. So it was an incredibly diverse age group. We had sparked in almost every neighborhood in Los Angeles. So it was it was pretty across, you know, the mark there. And in the course of just under two years, there ended up being 5000 conversations that were hosted out of homes with anywhere from like five to 15 people coming together.

Kara Goldin 12:53
And when people pay them to come to these, I mean, would

Unknown Speaker 12:56
they would, yeah, at the time, they could pay for one or they could have a kind of like monthly membership where they would pay and we would split the costs with the hosts.

Kara Goldin 13:07
So interesting. So what is what do you think is the most important reason why people want to come to these get togethers and like, what do you think? I guess it really boils down to why do they want to create these communities, especially with people that they don’t know? I mean, it’s just I mean, these are some of the conversations that you would have with people are not, like you said, they’re not necessarily things that they talk about, or that they’re comfortable. Do you think that that actually makes conversation better? In many ways? Because they don’t know all these people in the group?

Unknown Speaker 13:47
Yeah, talking to strangers is great. I mean, have you ever been just like hanging out at a bar waiting for a friend to come or a coffee shop, and all of a sudden, like, a stranger is telling you something like this happened? I don’t know. This happens to me all the time. Like I’m on a plane and I’m next to someone and all of a sudden you get off you’re like, I think I know everything about that person. You know, it’s so nice to connect for the same reason we want a therapist we an objective view, you know, I believe we our natural state is to want to connect deeply with human beings. It’s you know, it’s the number one cause of death is like social disconnection. And we are we are more disconnected definitely now than we’ve ever been in the reason I think for that I feel pretty strongly as you know, we’ve spent now at least 20 years kind of being human beings have been kind of guinea pigs to all of this technology that has come out, right like social media on the rise dating apps marketplaces on demand delivery, like all of this technology that we use, that’s supposed to improve our lives, but we’re, we are so much farther apart from one another. We don’t often like I don’t know sometimes I’ll go hike I’m in LA, and I’ll be in a very narrow like to footpath walking by someone and no one’s making eye contact or saying hi. That must be like,

Kara Goldin 15:08
yeah, that’s

Unknown Speaker 15:11
right. Like, it’s, it’s fascinating. I’ve even experienced it myself, like, I’ve developed social anxiety. And I wasn’t born with that. Growing up, I didn’t have that. But I after New York and after LA and the socialization of being a part, so I think it’s this I honestly, it’s this intuitive feeling of coming back to what it means to be in connection with one another. And it’s the thing that keeps us healthy. And I think we can all probably connect a little more to that now in a pandemic, and being isolated and spending even more time on technology, like we need to, we need places that feel good with other people.

Kara Goldin 15:51
So when you’re gathering people together, do you? Is there some sort of filter that you place on? on who can? I mean, I guess, you know, the background, because I think it’s, you know, something I always think about that my parents used to say is you have to consider the source, right. And when people are saying things that is, so that upsets you, or is just so against, you know, what you believe on the one hand, I love I mean, part of the reason why I love social platforms is that you can actually get different perspectives than maybe you hang out with, right. And I love to know what the world is thinking. That can go too far in some ways. But I think especially when it’s when it’s sort of a curated, get together in some ways, like if you knew, for example, that you were, I don’t know, sitting in a group with a bunch of white supremacists. Right, like, and they’re telling you that you’re wrong. I mean, maybe you’d eventually figure it out. But do people? I mean, how do you, I guess, how do you filter that in some way?

Unknown Speaker 17:02
Yeah, I mean, I think it’s, you know, I mean, quilters since the pandemic, obviously, strangers aren’t gathering and home. So quilt has evolved, and, you know, is this audio social space? No, so we’re experiencing quite a bit of that, and then not what you just described, of how important it is for people.

Kara Goldin 17:19
That’s an extreme, I’m sure that’s not happening.

Unknown Speaker 17:23
Well, yeah, but you know, it’s it is important to a be a brand that stands for something, and that has values, and we deserve that as a humanity. And we are ready for that. I think you see a lot of the types of moderation and privacy laws around around data that are servicing the need for transparency. And I like in building quote, I’ve been very clear about what quilt is what quilt stands for what quilt doesn’t stand for, what are our community guidelines, making sure that we have like a really steady community that understands, like, what it means to honor those and what happens when people don’t. So I think it’s there’s, there’s, it takes a level of integrity in a community to know that, like, this is what I’m coming into, and to build trust with your community. And we definitely have built trust, and we’ve kept trust because of how thoughtful we’ve been. But this kind of goes back to like, I feel very strongly that it’s should be always less about the individual and more about the groups and the groups I want to be in and participate in. So if I’m joining a group that I know is on, you know, women in the workplace, and sexual harassment, I know the context I’m going into, I know the space that I’m in, I maybe know that that’s primarily women, versus if I’m in a grief group, right. I know the context to that. So I do believe it’s important that like, you have a brand that stands for something, but then you have micro spaces that people can go to so they know what to expect. And they also know that they can always leave and not be there and go over it and be like, maybe you want to be over here. You’re spending less time here. And so maybe something’s changed for you.

Kara Goldin 19:13
Can you share some of the success stories from the quilt community? I mean, what were some of the most memorable ones that you’ve seen happen?

Unknown Speaker 19:25
I mean, you know, something most recently so we relaunched quilts. You know, we built a new platform during the pandemic and we relaunched it earlier this year. And you know, to be an audio social space now means that people are connecting daily for live interactive conversations on on quote, so they haven’t met in person which calls us to be like, so about bringing people in person, yet they’ve developed you know, everyone that has come on has come on, not knowing anyone else ever. Right. So most social platforms. exist today, you start by connecting with the people you already know. It’s just in a different way, right? So maybe you know them professionally, maybe you know them because you saw them on Twitter. Now there’s this new social platform, you recognize them their quilt is really like, people come in as strangers and meet people and become close based on what they’re going through. And so a couple of months ago, I found out that there, there were 100 quilters, who ended up buying plane tickets and meeting up in person for a picnic. And they they spent a weekend together, they housed each other, they had slumber parties wild. Yeah, games, they dressed up, like I mean, these were people from, you know, men and women, like from literally all over the country who saw I watched me and cry because they basically bare their souls to one another, and hung out and carried each other’s through a pandemic that we’re still in, and they met for the first time, and now they’re moving in together, they’re starting businesses together, they’re repping each other, you know, in their businesses. So, I mean, so many are pretty endless, but that one for me, like, hit home, you know, the fact that they, on their own decided to find each other.

Kara Goldin 21:17
Wild. I mean, that’s, that’s awesome. So And do you think that, like, the topics were more personal? I mean, I guess, or how many do you know, like, at what point do they have to get together? How many times do they have to get together in order to feel like, this community is there? And and they have some sort of affiliation with it?

Unknown Speaker 21:41
Yeah, it definitely goes deeper, right? Like, we’re, I’m seeing right now that, you know, for the people that come and stay every month, their time on the platform triples, so they’re going to go much deeper. And when they do it does mean they found their people and for the ones that you don’t, they haven’t done that yet, you know, maybe they’re still coming in, like once a week, to an interesting topic. And that’s also okay, but I’m like, Okay, what would have been different here, right. And so I do think, you know, I, I have noticed that if somebody comes on and within the first week, you know, jumps into two or three quilts, we call the conversations quilts. They’re pretty hooked. After that, if they like if they you know, if they just came in and just listened to something and in left and didn’t even kind of come back right away, it might take a little bit longer. But bopping around from quote to quote two or three times in your first week usually leaves you having met some really great people.

Kara Goldin 22:39
That’s amazing. How did you decide to do it as an audio versus video?

Unknown Speaker 22:44
Yeah, this was one of those moments where I had no idea I had no idea how big social audio was going to come become. But we did last year, you know, obviously, the In Home gatherings like that business model evaporated in a day, right on March 8 of 2020. That stopped, and we like, you know, everyone else became as resourceful as humanly possible and said, okay, everything is on to. And so we did 5000 zooms. I mean, a lot of zoom meetings, people needed support more than ever between like March and April and May, and more. Friction came up between community members on zoom than ever did offline in homes. Granted, we were all going Oh, interesting crisis. But they were personal things. It was people people’s feelings were heard that they would lead a conversation and someone’s video would be off. We had more no show rates, because they didn’t want to get ready to be on video or they couldn’t multitask. They didn’t want that type of attention. And so I mean, I love audio, I you know, I was music was a part of my major. My mom worked in the radio advertising business growing up, like I’ve always been really like exposed to the world of audio. And I just thought about, I really want quilts like what’s the most frictionless way somebody could quilt somebody could get into a supportive conversation and connect with people when they need to. And that was the exercise I went through. I was like, well, video is friction. planning something in advance is friction, like it became like spontaneous audio platform. And so we started building it. And you know, I’m, I love I really, really love how quilters evolved. It’s become such a special unique experience, especially online in this digital world where I don’t know really where to go to feel good and quilts has has kind of translated into that space. So

Kara Goldin 24:45
I love it. So great. So would you say that that was? I mean, how did you know how to do that during the panel. I’m always so interested in all these different entrepreneurs and all these different interests. Trees, how they dealt with it. I mean, for for me, one of the things that I talked about, I was launching my book and had turned in my manuscript right before March of 2020. And one of the toughest times and growing hint was the 2008 2009 financial crisis. And I never wanted to ever think about that time, like tried to, I mean, the banks were just dried up, no one was investing, and we needed money. I didn’t have enough money. I mean, it was just, it was a nightmare. And what I realized about that time that really helped me to figure out what to do, during, during this next crazy time, was that I knew I was going to be able to figure it out. But the most important thing for me was to not stay complacent was to figure out, Okay, what can I do next, and I’m going to run into barriers, but I have to figure out how to crush those down how to go around and try something new. And every day was so exhausting during that 2008 2009 time, only because I had never been in it before. And it was, you know, it was it was a try. It was an incredibly trying time, the most trying time. But that period of time helped me so much dealing with the pandemic and figuring out what to do. A few people made comments to me a few CEOs said, You seem so Zen during this time, and I said, You know what, it’s, it is really a scary time. But we’re gonna figure this out. It’s just we’ve got to think differently and figure out how to continue to move forward. And that’s the key thing. And, and we were as an industry, we’re, we’re an essential product. And so we’re an FDA regulated essential product. And so we had to keep working through this entire period. While many industries were sheltering in place I was sharing with my team know where we’re working. Here’s your mask and hand sanitizers. Not the most popular person and certainly not the person to trust during this time, because I had never been through a pandemic before. But again, I realized that it was just, it was those challenging times before that really helped me to figure out this time. So So anyway, I just wanted to mention that that’s why I love hearing stories from different industries, like how did you know how to pivot and and change the business at this point? Well,

Unknown Speaker 27:32
about a month into the to the pandemic, and 22 out of March in 2020. I put a one pager together for our investors and just said, like, I’m going to bet on this lasting two years. Like I just spent the month researching as much as I possibly could talking to as much as many people that are 10 times smarter than me, what’s going like, what’s going to happen here, I listened to the new york times daily, you know, every morning, that was like, I have to bet on something, you know, the failure mode, and startup is inaction that you have to do something. And I definitely like as a human being I go into doing mode and crisis. I’ve always been like, Okay, what can I do? So I had doing mode, I had a bet on what quilt was not coming back. So much so that the day that our office close, which nobody’s ever seen again, that we don’t have it anymore. I just said take everything. I don’t think you’re coming back here. Like I just, I’ve heard the term new normal, and I was like, Okay, so then this normals not the same ever again, like something in my mind clicked. And I was almost like, really like, okay, with letting go of everything and starting over? Mm hmm. And I don’t know, I don’t know why. That is, I probably could have a couple of therapy sessions on my therapist on Thursdays. So because I was so decisive in that period, and I was like, Okay, well, let’s test and I also have always felt like, I wanted to use technology, like technology had to be a part of the DNA of bringing people together, because otherwise it could not happen at scale. So to take what quilt was and translate it, and like spend enough time on honestly, the merchant probably spend time on social media. I was like, Oh, this is this is that they get this is, this is not going well for my mental health. And so if I think it takes all of that together, in me asking, again, that question of how does, how can quilt be this frictionless way of, of coming together? It just the answer was just there through that process and those elements of me as just how I’m architected as a human being to survive, you know, chaos?

Kara Goldin 29:53
That’s a great answer. What’s been the most challenging thing about being an entrepreneur and from You know, the beginning as you think, obviously starting the company, but then you know, you pivoting in the middle of like when you feel like you’ve got your stride, right, and then all of a sudden boom, you know, and as I always, I think about it as someone takes the puzzle pieces away and you’re like, wait, you can’t do that I I’m like, right in the middle of this. And then you know, you’re just like, you just have to deal. I mean, what, what was? What do you think was the most challenging thing about being an entrepreneur? For you? Maybe it’s one that, you know, you just never saw it coming?

Unknown Speaker 30:36
It during the pandemic, you mean? Well, just overall,

Kara Goldin 30:39
for your entire, you know, from the beginning, what was something that you just never knew was going to be that challenging,

Unknown Speaker 30:47
you know, for me, because my unique makeup is to community build and lean on my emotional intelligence and read people for a living. T, even with that, team building is hard. Like, especially as a remote team, like finding the talent, finding the people that are as in love with this mission as you are willing to, like leave their job with a 401k. Like, you know, just bringing, like bringing the people together that have the skill and that fire and this this love for the purpose. I’ve met amazing people, but it’s honestly taken until today, like I have, I have that team now. And I wouldn’t have thought that that would have taken up so much time, I thought I’d be able to just do that part in my sleep. So that was, yeah, that was a blind spot for me, for sure. But now it’s my favorite thing. Like now I love it. And it’s my favorite thing. But it’s complex. And it’s intricate, especially leading a team in a pandemic, but people’s lives also just, you know, they’ve had babies, they’ve gotten married, they’ve separated, they’ve moved their fantasies or fear of our families getting sick, like so much, you know, and to really hold space for their experience and stay as like calm and grounded as humanly possible for them and wanting to take care of them and not wanting them to be worried about their job or their salary or any of those things. Like, that’s been the hardest. I’ve been clear about how to show up to it. But it’s been I’ve never I just haven’t wanted to fail this team.

Kara Goldin 32:35
Yeah. Now, it’s tough. And it’s also really tough, particularly during during this time, because people are still many people are still not working. I mean, they’re taking, you know, checks. So that said, the laborers, you know, to actually get, you know, great people today I think everyone is is it everyone that we’ve talked to has been really challenged by it in every single industry. So it’s incredibly challenging. So what do you think is the is the future for quilts? I mean, will you go back to doing in person events as well? Will you have some kind of hybrid model?

Unknown Speaker 33:13
I mean, I am so obsessed with building quilt to this technology today, you know, we’ve become this social wellness, community space, you know, a place you can constantly go to, to feel good. I definitely like I see quilter quilting as this way of coming together for, like having healthy conversations. And I want to see and feel everything that’s going on in the world. And I see the amount of disconnection and misunderstandings that are happening between people. You know, in industries, politically, like with our climate, like there’s, there’s kind of so much breaking down all around us in every possible sector. And my hope is that like quilting becomes almost like synonymous or this lifestyle that inspires people to come together and have a healthy form of conversation and communication. So I, I’m hoping that like what you can kind of build and develop and practice in technology is something you then want to bring out into, into your lives, like into your office with your families. So I can see us inspiring that wanting that wanting I want, you know, quilt even as a brand to represent, hey, like, let’s have a conversation together. So absolutely. That could look like something in person partnering with brands who want to do that in person, you know, or organizations and nonprofits and cities and schools. I don’t see us bringing back like the marketplace model on top of this kind of ever flowing social network experience now, because it’s just, it’s just working so well. So I’m hoping that you have that in that inspires you to go out into the world and quilt every day no matter where where you are.

Kara Goldin 35:06
I love it. It’s so interesting as I’m thinking about the word quilt and and hearing you speak when, when. One of the stories I share in the book was when my father when I was in high school was laid off from he had developed a brand called healthy choice, and he had been laid off, because he didn’t have an MBA. And that was like the 80s. Like, if you didn’t have an MBA, he was in his, you know, late 50s, and his pension, everything like went away, but when they had pensions, so and he was incredibly loyal, had it, you know, still to this day healthy choices. You know, one of the number one products for conagra. I mean, it’s still out there. And you know, he developed it years ago, and yet he was dispensable. Right. And anyway, the net of it is, is that I won’t get into sort of what ended up happening totally. But he, two years later, he ended up getting his job back at conagra out on the condition that he moved to Omaha, Nebraska from Scottsdale, Arizona, and my mom was not happy about you know, this move because she thought, Wait, what? And anyway, so she moved up there and she loved to sew, she was always into art. She was an art history major. And so she moved to Omaha, Nebraska. And so she was in this fabric store one day, and there was this woman who saw her buying different fabrics. And she said, What are you making? And she said, Oh, I don’t know yet. I always buy different fabrics, if they’re good prices, and I save them for later. And sometimes I make things out of our backing to something or whatever. And she said, Do you ever quilt and my mom said, No, I’ve never quilted. And she said would you like to join us? And so I remember my mom calling me she didn’t know anybody in Omaha. And so she showed up at this quilt at this quilt community. So for years, I mean, my mom was in this quilting community for eight years. And every week she got together with these women and they would, they would decide that they were going to do the Hawaiian quilt. And then Anyway, my mom made over 100 quilts like I think 130 quilts in like, eight years she became and she was very, like, you know, it was all about hand stitching not machine. I mean it was there was like a whole stuff that we used to like hear all about this. And when my mom passed away, they had moved back to Scottsdale when my mom passed away. Half of this group flew from Omaha to show up and had these stories about my mom. That was Yeah, and it was really powerful about you know, and I mean, it was crazy because it was at a time when none of us kids knew any of these people she was on her own and doing her own thing. But they It was really, really lovely and sort of how they came together. So I love Love, love your name and all of it it just sort of weaves together but it’s it’s so amazing to hear all of the story and hear all about this and everybody needs to go on to quilt how what’s the best way for people to to sign on?

Unknown Speaker 38:38
Yeah, you so you can you know in the app store, you can look up quilt or quilt app and we are there and everyone is welcome and there’s no wait lists like you can come in and I just recommend hopping into a couple different types of conversations because there are there are q&a listening their you know, group deep dives there are fun, quick hair, you know reminders in the morning to be productive or drink water or meditate so just you know, I recommend checking out a few but anyone can come on and then you know an Instagram we are we are quilt so feel free to hear more about us there and we’ll help guide

Kara Goldin 39:15
you. I love it. And where do people find you, Ashley as well and hear more about you.

Unknown Speaker 39:21
I’m Ashley j Sumner on on Instagram so you can go there and I’m just I’m on quilt a lot. So if you want to come and talk in real time and real kind of life in air quotes, come talk to me on quilt.

Kara Goldin 39:35
I love it. So Ashley, thank you so much. I’m so thrilled that you were able to come on and tell us a little bit more about this and I love how you just got the started and you’ve evolved and yes and even since we’ve met I it’s it’s really really lovely and inspiring to hear it so hope everybody really enjoyed this conversation. Please give Five stars and definitely subscribe to the podcast and follow me on social channels to at Kara golden with an AI and if you haven’t read my book yet undaunted, I hope you’ll get a copy or sign on to audible as well and hear me reading the book. And thank you everyone for coming and supporting this community and hope you all will come back and see us every Monday and Wednesday to hear from great founders and CEOs and every once in a while authors that have some great stuff to share with this community to and thanks, everyone have a great rest of the week. And goodbye for now and goodbye, Ashley.

Unknown Speaker 40:43
Goodbye. Thank you everyone.

Kara Goldin 40:46
before we sign off, I want to talk to you about fear. People like to talk about fearless leaders. But achieving big goals isn’t about fearlessness. successful leaders recognize their fears and decide to deal with them head on in order to move forward. This is where my new book undaunted comes in. This book is designed for anyone who wants to succeed in the face of fear, overcome doubts and live a little undaunted. Order your copy today at undaunted, the book calm and learn how to look your doubts and doubters in the eye and achieve your dreams. For a limited time. You’ll also receive a free case of hint water. Do you have a question for me or want to nominate an innovator to spotlight send me a tweet at Kara golden and let me know. And if you liked what you heard, please leave me a review on Apple podcasts. You can also follow along with me on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn at Kara golden thanks for listening