Speaking Up & Showing Up in Chaotic Times – With Melissa Dalton Bradford

The time is now episode 317.

The time is now to learn all you can to educate others

to move in solidarity and mobilize.

Welcome to the Time is now the podcast for mission-driven

solopreneurs ready to take action and go from invisible to in demand.

I am your host, Amel Derragui.

My mission is to help you cut through the noise, get crystal clear on

your strategy, and position yourself as the go to expert in your field.

But this podcast isn't just about marketing.

It's also about building your resilience and staying ahead of the

shift in our world so you can be the leader and change maker you truly are.

This is your time to create more growth, alignment, and impact in your business.

Today we're diving into a question so many of us are wrestling with.

How do we show up and speak up when the world feels so chaotic when humanity

and democracy are being challenged?

If you've been feeling the weight of global crisis from the genocides that

are happening, the erosion of democracy, the rise of violence and authoritarian

worldwide, know that you're not alone.

I have been there too if I'm not still there.

The thing is that I'm a true believer that as global citizens, but also as leaders

and solo entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs, we do have the responsibility to speak up.

In the past couple years, it felt difficult to do so in full

integrity for me and in a place of empowerment rather than anger.

Our guest today, Melissa Dalton Bradford, played a crucial role in

helping me find hope again, and I cannot wait to share her wisdom with you.

Today in this conversation, we will explore how to resist misinformation,

reclaim agency, and take small, powerful steps to defend democracy

and humanity using our voices, but also our platforms and our audiences.

Melissa Dalton Bradford is an author, speaker, a global citizen who has spent

decades advocating for human dignity.

She co-founded two NGOs to support refugees and amplify their stories.

For instance, with initiative TSOS, which means their story is our story.

Growing a community of over 240,000 followers on Instagram, inspiring a global

movement of moral courage that refuses to return to the authoritarian rule.

So Melissa, I cannot tell you how happy and excited and

grateful I am to have you here.

Thank you for being here, and welcome to the time is Now.

Thank you, Amel.

I'm so glad that we can have this time together.

Me too.

And you know, it's interesting how Destiny works.

You have been one of my first podcast guests at the time where I started

10 years ago, and you had shared so much deepness into your story, and I

will be sharing your past interviews in this show, notes of this episode.

For the listeners who want to know more about you, we talked a lot about your role

as a global mom going through grief and the books that you wrote about this topic.

It's interesting that we are in way grieving again, somehow

we're grieving our freedoms now.

It is challenged and you have been speaking up and showing up before

you got so visible in the past year.

You have been engaged throughout your life and your story into humanitarian

work, so I would love to know what got you to where you are today and how, how

does everything come together for you?

If you can give us a snapshot of what do you think you're

doing, what you're doing today?

Well, I think that it is the blessing of, of geography.

We were living in Geneva and fate would have it that we

moved to funk foot Germany.

It wasn't a place that we had on our map, but it was the

professional move for my husband.

It was very good for one of our children.

And you know what I thought ah meant?

I thought, well, here's where I'm gonna write my historical fiction.

This is where I'm gonna finally write my novel.

So I laid out everything on my big writing desk, ready to

write this book, and within.

Months.

The entire crisis in the Middle East began and Frankfurt became a hub

receiving hundreds of thousands of refugees from Middle, middle East.

That immediately drew me in, and our episodes from before would probably help

people understand why I was somebody who understood moving a lot what that means,

even in the most privileged circumstances, our family had also experienced traumatic

loss in the middle of one of these moves.

I knew something about that.

But I have to add as a caveat that with all of those moves, we're now on

our 21st move over nine countries and our, our tragic cataclysmic loss, none

of that really touches even the hem of what these refugees are experiencing.

'cause I never have experienced war persecution.

Nobody accepting me for my faith, my, my ethnicity, whatever.

But I knew that my heart was going to be engaged with these people.

I knew it instantly, and I've taught language on the university level, and

I knew that language is the key to entering and stabilizing in any culture.

So I was at the train station when the first train started coming into Funk Fort

with the big sign that said, come in, do.

That juncture, right?

There was a major pivot in my life, and I learned lessons from my close

engagement with people who were fleeing war and, and persecution.

I, I understood what the rest of my life was gonna be about.

I just knew it instantly.

And that work, like you mentioned, turned into nonprofit work.

It turned into speaking tours, it turned into a book project, all of

that and deep, deep relationships.

And then COVID hit.

And within a short time, the war in Ukraine began, and if anybody's watching

that, you know that many of these people, again, hundreds of thousands landed in

Frankfort, and I immediately jumped in.

I was teaching halls full of Ukrainian refugees, and I've been

doing that up until last week.

Up until last week, so several classes a week.

That's how it happens, I think.

I think the universe has been kind to me, however we wanna describe

this, the universe has been kind in placing me in exactly the geography

where I needed to be so that I could understand what the value of my voice

and my life experience would be.

You see what I'm saying?

I

do think that is geography, but I think this was in

you before you came to Frankfort.

You found the platform for you.

There's many people who have the proximity that you have, but don't

feel that they needed to take action.

And you did.

I think, I think you're right.

I, I, I should add to that then.

Yeah.

I, I do believe you're right.

I shall add to that, that I grew up in a culture that values humanitarian

aid and, and public service.

I saw it around me all of the time.

Um, and, and so that was natural for me.

I think also, and it's fair to mention this, I am in a position in

my life where I can do what I'm doing.

If I had many small children at home, if I had a very demanding

nine to five inflexible career.

If I were ill, if I were living under really austere financial

constraints and that describes a lot of people, maybe I couldn't have done

exactly what I have been able to do.

So I understand the privilege and the latitude, but I still think

that there are things that people.

Can do small things and that's gonna be the topic I think of our

conversation.

That's the, that's the topic of our conversation.

I do have a couple of questions for you, uh, that I don't wanna forget,

but we are gonna dive into that.

But before, I want people to understand why I brought you here.

Why are you the person, why I'm asking to come speak about that.

Not only you have your history that led you to be very sensitive

and to have taken action.

You also have expertise, right?

So if you can tell us a little bit about your academic background and

professional background that led you to have the expertise to be able

to speak online and teach people about democracy and civil action.

Thank you.

I'm a gist is what they call it.

So I specialize in German history, literature, philosophy, studies, and

I studied that as an undergraduate degree with a minor in journalism.

Always thinking, oh, maybe I could work somehow with a UN one day.

Wouldn't that be great?

I'll be able to speak and write.

Then we ended up living internationally and I, and I knew that the one career

that was absolutely portable was writing, so I've written academically.

I research a lot.

That's where I'm very, very happy.

At the same time, I trained as a public speaker.

I have a theater background and grew up kind of on the stage.

It's a weird hybrid of my strengths.

Very introverted and very extroverted.

So I've taught language on the university level.

I've, I've written books, I've worked in those spaces.

In between raising four children in multiple cultures, and

I always kept that active.

Maybe this should give everyone out there a little bit of hope is that

in whatever landscape you might find yourself, recognize what your

training and your expertise is.

Then always keep them alive, even if it's just for a while.

I was just writing small academic articles along the way.

I had contact with important publishers.

I did that.

I started speaking and moved into that, that arena of, of speaking

thanks to entities, organizations that invited me, and I just said yes.

I said yes.

I, I thought I, I can do this.

And stepped out on the stage and started speaking.

So there's a background in public speaking, a background in

academic research, a background in language and history and history.

My graduate degree, it was in a deeper area of German studies, which is

pre-World War II German literature.

So I was steeped decades ago, steeped in, in understanding the fall.

All of the signs of the fall of a democracy, of a free culture and

the rise of authoritarianism, and I literally thought at one time

in my life, that's all behind me.

We'll just lock that up.

It was nice that I studied it and now it's come to full use

because I am watching step by step the signs of democratic erosion.

Exactly like I studied in my graduate degree, ex, exactly like all of

the literature that I analyzed and Rose wrote papers about.

That's exactly what you're teaching.

On Instagram.

We've been friends for many years now.

I've been following you for many years and I'm devouring everything you

do because it's so full of meaning.

But you had maybe a couple thousand followers, I think a year ago.

Yeah, something like that.

A thousand something.

I remember.

I don't know why I looked into it, but I had the instinct, but

this was gonna explode and it did.

You're over 200,000.

Followers right now on Instagram, followers don't matter, but still, the

engagement that's on your content is through the roof and it's responding

to a need that many people are feeling.

And that's, I think, how you transform all that experience you had into something

meaningful today to help people navigate what's happening with the erosion

democracy and how to respond to it.

I wonder what has allowed you to step into that visibility and into

taking your phone, using social media to share what you had to share.

When I started, which was February, I stayed

very, very calm and self-contained from the time of the US elections.

So that was November until a couple of weeks into the new administration.

Again, I'm a US citizen, but I've lived outside of my home country for 35 years.

So I've always been eyeing my home country's politics and culture

from outside of its borders.

And then a couple of things happened that just.

Pushed, I knew that I couldn't stay silent.

I recognized suddenly the, the confluence of my geography, my

background, my teaching, my.

My work, I had already been working with Ukrainian refugees.

Like I said, since the beginning of the war.

I was deeply steeped in that and I couldn't stay silent anymore.

So literally one day I sat down on my, on the carpet in my bedroom.

It's the only room in our entire home that has carpet, and I needed

to have that acoustic quality so it doesn't echo to be honest with you.

And there was really good light.

And I said, okay, I'm just gonna introduce myself.

Why should anyone listen to somebody who has a background

in German studies right now?

And I just started and I vowed to myself I was gonna do it every day.

That is important is that you do it every day and you keep on talking into the void.

Then I started getting responses and they were unilaterally grateful and desperate.

Wait, there's someone like you out there and you're talking about this.

Wait, you're going to educate us about it?

So you're right, Ima, the numbers say one thing.

It's the quality of the responses that say something very different.

And there are more people than most people would imagine that are desperate.

For a voice to lead, for a voice to clarify, for a voice, to educate, for

a voice, to encourage, for a voice to move and motivate and mobilize.

And these are the comments that in sifting through every single day

and a voice of trust, I would add.

I think that might be the most important thing.

Maybe that's the most important thing and, and that's a delicate thing to

develop trust with people that have never.

Met you in person is a delicate thing.

That was my biggest issue, and this is why for me, you

are the right person to have here.

While I was trying, the past two years to speak up, to use my voice,

the biggest thing was knowing that no matter what, as human beings, we are

all biased no matter who wanted or not.

And there are so many voices out there, but very few.

I actually trusted.

To be able to educate myself on making sure that I'm not speaking

from a place of bias, rather a place of fear of our humanity and

our democracy being in danger.

Yes, and that was a fine line to do, especially in my case with the

topic of the genocide and Gaza.

That was extrAmely paralyzing.

I would like to dive deeper into how this happened, but I wanna go back

to something you said before because this whole episode is about one.

Making sure that we do speak up.

Second, how do we do it when we don't know where to start and we

are not sure we, we are equipped.

Right?

And third, you did mention something.

Maybe that's a good place to start.

Not everybody has the resources, the time, the energy, and the mental

bandwidth to actually become activists and to become agents of change.

But you also sad, but we all can do something.

So tell me more how you would encourage us to find our voice, but also what is

the one thing we can do as civilians, as global citizens, but also as leaders

and solopreneurs who have a voice?

Yes.

Let's go back to your word trust, which I think is key.

We all have trusted relationships.

We all have colleagues, family members, neighbors.

Friends from our childhood, whoever it might be, and I think

that's where everyone can start.

So everyone can start by educating people within their closest

circle, their closest sphere.

That requires a co course that we are educated ourselves, so we need

to inform ourselves correctly.

You don't need to study all of the platforms, but find

two or three voices I suggest.

Certain scholars that are experts in the field of the erosion of democracy,

they've been doing this for the entirety of their careers, their

key voices that I always refer to.

I could name them here if we want to, or we can keep, we put

them in the, the show notes.

Show notes, yeah.

Um, one of them is, is Timothy Snyder.

Timothy Snyder, a Yale professor, multilingual, uh, he's now moved.

To be a professor in Canada, if that says anything to anyone.

Mm-hmm.

His book on tyranny is a guidebook for the average person anywhere to understand the

steps that we have seen historically that walk us through the erosion of democracy.

Another key voice is Anne Applebaum.

Very brilliant author.

Her book, Twilight of Democracy, should be on everyone's bed stands.

Everyone should be reading that.

Um, I would just, I'm not going to overload because I could give 20,

but I would say start with those.

Start with those two Timothy Snyder and Anne Applebaum.

Inform yourself and then just start having conversations.

Ask questions.

Why?

What are you most nervous about Uncle?

Alfred, you know what?

What are the things that concern you or your work colleagues?

Are you noticing things that don't feel like they're quite

what democracy used to look like?

And let's have a conversation about it.

And then when you're equipped with that information, then you can reliably,

reliably respond and say, well, you know, this expert said this, and it

looks exactly like this point in.

Chile's history or Argentina's history or Hungary's history or Turkey's

history or the or German history.

And that's usually where I'm coming from, from is German history only

because that's my, that's my expertise.

So we start in our relationships of trust, we start close to our feet, and

then we speak in the larger circles.

Then we have gained confidence in ourselves.

We've refined our ability to talk about these topics that are

delicate and they're polarizing.

And they hit very often on the nerve of identity.

You know, who am I as an American?

Who am I as Algerian or as Palestinian, or whatever it might be.

And you.

What I'm suggesting to my followers is that you create what I'm

calling a democracy defense pod.

It sounds very cheerleader ish, but folks, we need to have tools in our pockets.

So I'm just gonna call it the DDP, the Democracy Defense Pod.

It can be five people, it can be 15 people, it can be 50 people.

But you meet whenever you can face to face and you talk.

You share the ideas of the wisest, most reliable voices in whatever field.

It's they're very reliable voices out there that have built their careers,

that have built their, uh, reputations on speaking deeply about these topics.

And from those democracy, democracy, defense pods, then you

identify what the most necessary action is that you need to take.

Because we need to get out of the comfort of our sofas and from behind

our screens where we talk and we analyze, which is highly valuable.

And we need to get on our feet and we need to move.

We need to mobilize.

We need to mobilize.

And that could be showing up at the demonstration.

It could also be showing up to protect the vulnerable.

Might they be at risk for being deported?

It could be standing shoulder to shoulder with anybody in a marginalized community.

That's mobilizing, that's acting.

I'm suggesting for my followers in the US to start right now in getting people

registered to vote for the midterms, getting people educated about how

to vote, organizing carpools to the polls, sitting in the polls themselves.

That's sort of very practical.

The real life space action.

It does a number of things.

Not only does it break down our despair because action is the antidote to despair.

We will despair if we only sit and think about these things.

But that's what.

The enemies of democracy want.

They want us to despair.

It is a strategy.

We have to understand that, that we're being played.

It's a strategy.

We are supposed to despair.

We're also supposed to say, ah, there's no truth anywhere.

I'm an unplug.

I'm not gonna listen to anyone.

That is also typical authoritarian strategy is to make us just p. Give up.

There's no truth anywhere.

Don't believe it for a moment.

There is truth.

There is viable action.

And when you're in a space with other people, you're taken out of that

vacuum of soar, of, of isolation.

Solidarity, solidarity will help us.

To, uh, not feel alone.

It gives us energy.

We also breed better ideas when we're working in our pods.

Okay?

It also sends a sign to those who think that we're despairing and we're crouching

in a corner that hey, we're numerous.

We're numerous.

We're not backing down.

We're linking arms.

We are a force to be reckoned with.

One more thing, this is the last very practical thing.

There is an app.

It's called the Five Calls App.

You can just put, you can just re just search it.

The Five Calls App and the Five Calls app gives you scripts.

If you happen to be in the us It gives you scripts for how you call your elected

representatives and you tell them exactly what you, what you elected them for.

You are paying their salaries.

They work for you.

And so in a constitutional democracy, you have that right and you have that

responsibility to remind your elected representatives what you expect from them.

So use the Five Calls app.

I would highly recommend that all of my DDPs, the Democracy

Defense pods, use that.

First,

I'm just gonna summarize three important tips that you gave here.

Start in your own circle.

Demo, create your own pod.

It can be about democracy or any other topic you care about.

And then take action, mobilize, take action and mobilize.

I love how effective it's right.

The one thing that you said that I wanna highlight is that the

enemy, what they want is for us to feel despaired and action.

Action is the medicine to feeling despair.

And this, the other thing I wanna highlight is when you talked

about the people who simply then choose to unplug because it's too

much, because we can't keep up.

And I'd rather just, I feel, I, how many times I've heard this, I feel

so depressed when I look at the news that I don't watch the news anymore.

So how would you respond to those people?

Hmm.

With empathy?

Uh, my first response would be, no kidding.

I get it.

And again, I'm somebody who is not dealing with a chronically

ill parent or a chronically ill child or a chronically ill partner.

I myself am healthy and hail.

Um, we're sitting in a, in a stable place.

So I, I want to respond with empathy and say, I get it.

Of course, of course.

It's how you feel.

You're, you feel like millions of people do, and then just gently say.

That is precisely what the enemies of democracy want you to

feel, just to quietly say that.

And so are there small steps that we can take?

And it's because when trust is eroded on the highest level.

It trickles down.

And you, and, and this is also part of the strategy, not only do we stop trusting

any of any of our politicians, how often have we heard they're all crooks,

they're all, you know, rotten and corrupt to the core, that's actually not true.

We know that that's not true.

We know that they're not all equally corrupt, but because

it becomes so overwhelming and because the strategy has been too.

Throw so much dirt in our face that we can't even clean cleanse our

lenses so that we can see clearly.

We have to recognize that, that that's, that's one of the tactics that's being

used so that we give up, recognize that, recognize that the next step is for us to

lose our trust in the people around us.

And that's what's happening right now is that we are

entering a phase that is really.

Real, I'll just call it what it is.

It's what happens in authoritarian cultures is that you are

afraid of your neighbor.

Your neighbor's gonna turn your in, you, in your neighbor is going

to call the authorities on you.

That is, that is authoritarianism.

Yeah.

And, and so we, we need to create, then we need to create empathy with those

who feel that way, not blame them.

They have been, they have been infected with fear.

Intentionally infected with fear.

And fear is the most driving emotion.

And authoritarians know that they want us to be afraid.

So get close to the people who have given up and say, just follow me.

Just look at this one thing.

Look at this one true thing.

Look at this one heartening move.

Look at this one bit of of fact.

Feed in a way to bring people back to a sense of, number one, trusting

someone, even if it's just you, but then trusting maybe one or two other.

So sort.

That's why one of my main emphasis, emphasis going forward will be media

literacy because the media is being also hijacked to confuse us and, and that's

why people stop watching the media and they'll go to TikTok just to watch cute.

Cat videos because that is a form of medication.

It's a form of escapism, right?

So it, it's an, it starts with empathy with those who feel overwhelmed and

then making sure that you have a warm and trusted relationship with

them and sharing small bits that will encourage them to reenter the arena.

They can watch you, they can watch you do something.

They can

watch you, oh, I'm taking this away.

They can watch you do your thing.

Which leads me to the second obstacle that I'd like to talk about, which

I would summarize in one word.

I've never understood this word until these past two years, which is loneliness

when you feel like you are the only one who truly cares to the

point that you wanna do something.

Mm-hmm.

So how would you handle that?

Well, I feel, feel emotional when you say that.

I start feeling emotions sort of rising up in me, so I'm gonna

try and stay really rational.

This is a time of extreme loneliness.

And I think that, um, one of the, well, that's the flip

side of social media, right?

We, we think that we're so connected and we live in these isolated silos that.

Don't give us what our, our souls really need and what our souls really need.

Our deep conversations face-to-face, this is the next best thing, just seeing

you on a screen and talking about these things for extended periods of time.

The human body and the human soul is not intended to live in sound bites.

Our whole mechanism is mechanism is made for long human stories and

we're not getting enough of those.

And so we need those face-to-face.

And I can't even tell you how many of my followers have written to me privately and

said, I'm, I'm on my last gasping breath.

I feel so isolated.

I feel so isolated.

At least I have this place.

So the loneliness again, is another tactic.

It comes from a strategy that is used anciently and in modern

history that polarizes people.

Let's talk about polarization for a moment, because

polarization is the strategy.

One of the first steps that an authoritarian will take is

to demonize the opposition.

Not just that this is healthy debate, but they are enemies of the state.

Anyone who is not in full and complete alignment with my whim of the day is an

enemy of the state, which immediately drives a, a, a wedge not only in society

between left or right, or one ethnicity or another, but it starts splitting

neighborhoods, work, colleagues, families.

I can't tell you how many family members are at odds with one another.

I'm not saying anything new.

Anyone listening to me is saying.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

That's what's happening.

People are split down the middle.

When our core relationships are at risk, then we don't know where to turn.

How would you recommend to take action from there?

I mean, it's been a journey for me.

I could speak for Brian for a long time, but I'm curious to see what

would be your take to move from that place of feeling like I'm alone care.

It's not even about demonizing feeling demonized.

It's sharing.

To wanna do something, but you feel like it's hard to bring people with you.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and that, honestly, sometimes I think people would think I was

completely nuts for being so obsessed about what was going on, and I would

bore people at dinners and tables.

I could literally see that nobody wanted to hear anymore about my

stories and what I cared about.

So how would you, how would you have recommended to, to

deal with that situation?

Okay.

Okay.

A lot of thoughts on that.

A lot of thoughts on that.

Let me try and organize them.

This isn't necessarily in ranking as as the most important, the

most salient to the least, but leadership is always lonely.

Mm-hmm.

Leadership always carries with it the burden of loneliness.

You read any of the autobiographies of the great, you know, faith-driven

leaders, the great political leaders.

My goodness.

Winston Churchill from Winston Churchill to Abraham Lincoln to Gandhi to these

are people of tremendous loneliness because they felt the passion that

you feel, that I feel and couldn't quite get everyone to follow them.

You know, to follow with them.

Uh, another one is that when we feel grief, okay, we're going back to the

very beginning of our time together.

Let's go back to that tender nerve When we feel grief, because we are feeling grief.

We're feeling grief not only at watching the slaughter of innocence,

but also watching the erosion of something precious and, and luminous,

which is democracy and freedom.

We are carrying the burden of grief.

To just recognize that we are in some, some state of grief in and of

itself, allows us to feel that and say, because I'm telling you as a

bereaved mother, I've been the woman.

I've been the woman at the dinner party.

That everyone wanted to get away from, because that's the thing

that I needed to talk about.

And, and now I've folded, folded that sort of into this other kind of grief.

And everywhere I go, I wanna talk with people about what on earth

is happening to our freedoms.

And not everybody wants to hear that.

All you need to do is to find one listening ear, one

listening ear to hear your story.

Remember that leadership leadership is going to be lonely.

It's going to be lonely.

That's why you need to find your pod.

You need to find, I need to find people like you.

Amen.

And I need to talk with you regularly.

I don't need to have 250,000 even as long as I have those core people that

will remind me, you're not insane.

You're not crazy.

I'm with you in this and that.

We are experiencing grief.

We're gonna move through this.

We're going to bear it because we are strong.

We have been through lots of different layers of loss before, and when we

have our group, our safe group, then we have solidarity energy, we have

wind beneath our wings in a way, and, and we will make our way through this.

I never, I knew that there was a connection between

our first episodes and this one.

Now it's becoming even clearer and I have an aha moment.

We talked a lot about the five stages of, it's very typical,

the five stages of grief.

Everybody has heard about it, but now I can see how it's important to go through

those phases before we can take action.

So if I had to use my experience to share my take on this is the biggest

challenge was to go through the grief, go through the healing, and the same

time having that urgency of action.

It's not, I don't know if you see what I'm talking about.

I do like how to juggle, taking the time to heal while at the same time

knowing that there's not much time.

Yeah.

There is a stage.

There is a stage also where of grief, it's not talked about a lot, but where

you must take action if you stay.

I've written about this actually.

If you stay curled up in the nautilus of grief, I call it the nautilus of grief.

If you stay there too long, you shrink.

Mm-hmm.

You come out, you might be walking bent over for a long,

long, long, long time, right?

'cause you can curl down on yourself.

So it's gonna be a different time for everyone.

But, um, we're all experiencing, anyone who's listening to this is here because

they're experiencing pain, they're experiencing loss, fear, isolation,

loneliness, all of those things.

We have to recognize when it's going to be unhealthy for us to not move.

That for me, um, in, in the literal grief of, of burying our child, it was.

A moment where I realized, and it was a flash of intuition, if I stay here

much longer, I will either never emerge or I will emerge a smaller person.

I want my sorrow and my life experience to be of benefit to other people.

That's what we all want.

We want to be useful in this world.

And so at that moment we step out, it's going to make us frightened.

Our palms will be trembling, our knees will be shaking.

We'll think that we're all alone, but I can promise you love

is waiting for you out there.

Loving, receptive.

Listeners are waiting for you to move.

I didn't think that, I didn't think it when I was sitting on

my base, my, my carpet in my bedroom, just recording reels.

I didn't.

Ever anticipate and frankly, it wasn't my goal to have a

really big following like this.

I wasn't charting the numbers and then it just took off.

And that alone is proof for me.

That love is waiting out there.

The need to connect is waiting.

So listeners, friends, everybody make that step, even if it's just baby steps.

Out into that place.

Raise your voice, build relationships of trust, help others mobilize.

It's the world is waiting for you to do that.

Waiting for you to do that.

We don't have the time to dive deeper now onto it, but I do

still want to talk a little bit about the fact of being so entrepreneurs,

small business owners, which are the listeners of this podcast.

We talked a lot about now how to deal with this different stages of

wanting to take action from realizing we have to, to figuring out how to

do it, but also how to deal with all those obstacles were discussed.

I'm curious to see how do you see, what's your take about the responsibility

that we have as solopreneurs to speak up and how can we do it to balance our

voices, our platform visibility with actual the work that we have to do that

hurting our income and our revenue?

I wonder if you asked, you saw this question?

Yes.

Well, I'm, I'm fielding these sorts of questions all the

time because people are afraid.

Mm-hmm.

They're afraid of, and, and I have a number of stories that

I could rattle off right now.

People are afraid of offending their clients, of offending

their followers, of being.

Stocks or canceled.

There are people whose livelihoods hang in the balance.

I can name them right now if they speak about things politically.

Um, but there are ways to speak, let's say in code, in, in very humane terms

and not necessarily political terms, where you just say, we really, we

really do care about everyone, don't we?

And gosh, you know, my neighbor has a. Has a migrant or an immigrant background,

and I've been so inspired by her.

Those are code ways of supporting things that have been extrAmely politicized.

You see what I mean?

So you can still include that in your conversations.

You can still make it.

You can make it.

Clear, um, in a way that will appeal or at least speak to a broader audience.

The, the ne next step that I am taking, um, where it really does make it an

entrepreneurial effort is that I have now a digital marketing and a, and a branding

organization that's going to help me, just help me understand the landscape.

A little bit better.

And how to, how to build, how to build a brand.

You're investing

in it now.

And I wanna talk about this briefly because that's another thing at

some point we need, just like when we talk about investing ourselves

for our personal growth, you are now investing in this purpose.

Do you wanna share a little bit about what was this journey like to

professionalize now your activism?

I know, and it's, and it's very new for me because

I want to be clear, and this is not virtue signaling, everything that

I've done up to this point has been.

Has been volunteer.

All, all my trips around the world and speak, it's been volunteer, it's

been out of, it's been out of pocket.

Um, and I have felt that that has been the thing that I could offer is that I can

speak for some people who are voiceless and, and so it's been humanitarian

philanthropic workup to this point.

There comes a time where you're going to build a team and if you have a team.

Which you need.

When you have a significant online presence, then you can't

expect that everybody's going to work for nothing for you.

And so you need to monetize something.

And for me, actually, it's been a big ethical question.

You know, it's been an ethical question, can I require people

to even subscribe to my substack?

You know, people are willing to do that.

So it's a, it's, it's a big step.

But here's something I want to say also to anybody who might be making that same

move from, from humanitarian, volunt terrorism or Phil Philanthropy, to turning

it into a solopreneur, as you talked about it, or a business model, that that also

helps other people take you seriously.

And it also is another level of taking myself very seriously.

We're all in.

This is not some sort of hobby.

This is my mission.

This is my mission, and this is my work.

And so not only does that send a signal to, to others, but

it's a commitment to myself.

We're all in on this.

And, and that's actually tremendously empowering.

It's tremendously empowering.

Um, and I feel deep gratitude that I'm in a position where, where I can do that.

Deep gratitude for them.

Yeah.

Oh my God.

Hope that all of you who are listening, just feel that energy that Melissa's

sharing with us today and would highly recommend you to listen to her videos.

Are you also on TikTok?

I only follow you on Instagram.

That's the next

step.

So I'm on Instagram and I'm on Substack.

Where I'm Upper Works longer works.

And then we're moving to TikTok.

We're moving to YouTube.

There's going to be a website, there's going to be a a weekly newsletter,

and then eventually a podcast.

I do think that we should follow you very closely.

A lot of things are gonna happen.

I would love to have you again, so I hope you'll be fine and okay with

coming back to share with us more about that because I think this is such an

important work and if you can reflect back on your experience and the journey

you're going through would be wonderful.

I would love to.

I would love to.

I do have a last question, if we could make it short, although it's a big one.

Okay.

'cause I realize we did not say that clearly.

Why do you think it is important for solopreneurs and small business owners

to speak up and use their voices?

Because you are a small business owner

and because you have a small, um.

I don't want to say it's an audience, but you have a, a small

community, a smaller community.

You know your clients, you know your customers.

You know the people that you are speaking with because it's tidy and tight.

People trust you on a level.

We talk about people's trusting these huge global brands.

They trust Adidas and Nike and they trust Coca-Cola.

I guess, but it's a very different relationship.

When you are a solo printer, people actually have met you, they work with you,

and they, there's a higher likelihood that they're going to know you in real life.

Isn't that true?

Right?

Mm-hmm.

You have a smaller community, so the level of trust is much, much higher.

It also means that you can have a different kind of

connection with your community.

You can speak with them in a way that the CEO of a huge multinational

can't speak to his people.

They try.

They try.

Mm-hmm.

Very different for someone who is,

has a tighter, a tighter reach.

So you already have that big issue of trust in your pocket.

You trust.

Your customers and your clients, your listeners, and they trust you.

That is, that is power.

And like you and I said before we even started recording, recording,

that is a responsibility and I think it's a sacred responsibility.

There's something sacred about that of, of, of building on people's trust.

Okay.

That's it.

That's it.

Jennifer, thank you so, so much.

Melissa.

I cannot, I don't wanna.

Add more to that because I think that's a perfect way to end

with the word responsibility.

And that's what had made me pause the podcast for a bit because I felt I was

responsible to say the right things and I did not have the right words.

But now I'm so happy to be surrounded.

People like you, to feel that we can start.

Speaking up louder now to take action.

I did take action in many ways as a civilian, but I do think

that it is a responsibility.

So thank you so much for helping me in my journey, inspiring me in my journey,

and I really hope that every one of you who's listening, go check out.

Melissa, could you please let us know?

I'll put all the links on the show notes, but could you please us?

Let us know where we can find you?

So you could find me on substack under

my name, Melissa Dalton Bradford.

You can find me on Instagram under mdb.

Those are my initials, global Mom.

You will find me soon and I'll just make sure that I get all of those links to you.

On TikTok, on YouTube, and, and I will be, uh, I'll be opening

up a, a newsletter in my website.

I'll let those all come.

So much impact.

So my dear listeners, if you wanna find all the resources that Melissa

mentioned earlier as well, all her contacts, the best way is to go to

the time is now biz slash three 17.

Thank you so much Melissa, and to end, would you like to please complete

the sentence, the time is now.

Two,

the time is now.

Two.

Educate yourself and others and mobilize.

Thank you so much

my dear listeners, I cannot wait to continue this journey

with you, and I hope that together we can continue to speak up to

take action and make a difference.

Let's continue this journey together and stay tuned to turn all your

challenges into great opportunities