Warm Welcome

Kelvin Crosby 0:06

Welcome to Investing in Accessibility, a Samaritan Partners podcast. We're not waiting for change, we're investing in it. Join us as we speak with entrepreneurs and thought leaders that are focused on creating a more accessible world.

Kelvin Crosby 0:32

It's so good to see you even though I can't see you. It's another beautiful day in the neighborhood, and I'm so excited that you're here at Investing in Accessibility. I'm your host, Calvin Crosby. And let me introduce you to my co-host, Chris Maher. How you doing, man?

Chris Maher 0:47

Good Calvin. How are you, buddy? It is good to see you and to be with you as always.

Kelvin Crosby 0:51

It is. It's always good to see you, even though I can't see you. You know, that's one thing, you know. I've always wondered what Chris looks like. You know, I sometimes I create him like that's bodybuilder. Other days, he's a basketball player. Another, I don't know.

Chris Maher 1:08

Definitely not a bodybuilder. Um basketball days are over, getting a little older, getting a little grayer, but you keep thinking that I look like Thor or something like that.

Kelvin Crosby 1:20

Yeah. Well, I but I think that's the that's the beauty of being blonde, is that you get to create anybody the way you want it. And so, but anyway, so I'm excited about today's guest. And this lady that we had, she's done a lot for the disability community, in the startup space, done a lot of things to help people realize how to create accommodations and the different so many different areas. So kind of introduce us to our guest.

Chris Maher 1:45

You got it.

Introducing Cara Yar Khan

Chris Maher 1:46

Well, we have one of my one of my favorite people, and w it's such a treat today that our guest that's going to be with us is Miss Cara Yar Khan, who is the founder and CEO of the Purple Practice, and so much more than that. But Cara, welcome to the show.

Cara Yar Khan 2:00

Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Kelvin, for having me. I'm delighted to be here. Kelvin, I can tell you, Chris has got like one of those square jaws that you remember. Definitely a striker.

Kelvin Crosby 2:12

Like serious square jaw, or is it more like relaxed?

Chris Maher 2:18

It's a little softened. It's a little softened around the edges now that I'm getting a little older. And and and Cara, I'll give you that 20 bucks later for saying that. I appreciate it.

Cara Yar Khan 2:27

Oh, it was 25.

Chris Maher 2:29

Okay, we got it. Well, I as I said, Cara really, Cara, you and I met, I think it was about a year ago through some mutual friends. It was our actually our good friend Bob Ludke kind of triggered it. And then our friend Allison Aslan, who works at the State Department, and was just so fortuitous. And I just love how the universe does that, you know, serendipitously. And you've become a good friend and someone who I just admire so much for not only the work that you've done, but also just the way you've carried yourself in your personal life. And we're going to get into all that today because it's it's it is it is a story of resilience and and a journey that's just so incredible. And so let's first start off, though, Cara, with just your family background and your upbringing, because it's it's pretty amazing and multicultural a and it's wonderful. So why don't you start there?

Cara Yar Khan 3:24

Although I I like to think maybe I don't look my age because of the gobs of makeup I put on my face.

Multicultural Upbringing & Early Activism

Cara Yar Khan 3:30

I was born in 1976, November 20th, best day of the year in Hyderabad, India, which is in the south of the country, to an Indian Muslim father and a British Anglican Christian mom. We very quickly immigrated to Canada, where my father had lived for 10 years previously and done his academic studies at McGill University. So that's where I grew up. I was born in India, but raised in Canada. So culturally a very strong Canadian. What's great about being Canadian, it's a place where you very much celebrate your ethnic background. When you're introducing a new school, someone will say, before they even ask its name, what is he? And it's they're asking, what is their ethnicity? I remember in grade nine when I'd moved to Toronto, someone said, but what are you in front of the whole class? And I said, I'm a girl. And everybody laughed and made fun of me. They wanted me to actually explain that I was South Asian biracial. There's another element of diversity is this from Hong Kong kaleidoscope through which I see the world having grown up with not only these different religions and different cultural practices and traditions, but also languages. We speak English as a family, but the conversation is sprinkled with words in Urdu from India and also Mandarin, not Cantonese, which is the first language of my stepmom, but Mandarin because she and my father lived in China. I think all of this mix made or primed me for a career in the United Nations, probably the most ethnically and nationalist diversed organization in the world. And I knew at a pretty young age, age of six, actually, that I was on this planet, that I believed that I could make a change in the lives of children who were in need. And in this particular instance, it was a telethon because back in the 80s they did these telethons to sponsor a child who was starving, who was hungry. And I, as a six-year-old, wanted to send my dinner. But that's not the way things are done. So we took a shoebox and cut a hole in it and went around to our neighbors to collect coins, and I sponsored my first child. I realize that is totally politically incorrect now, I think. But this is how the origins of the story and the political incorrectness of the 80s. But I went to school the next day, grade one, Mrs. Lumen's class, telling all the other students and my teachers, anyone who would put up with me, that there were children starving in the world, and we as a collective had to do something. I believed that my advocacy could make United Nations, that I could devote my entire life, my career, my future to advocacy and changing the lives of people in need was to join the United Nations. That's what I did right after college.

Chris Maher 6:18

And so, so Cara, and and you were how old?

Cara Yar Khan 6:21

When I joined?

Chris Maher 6:22

No, when you like you like when you were?

Cara Yar Khan 6:24

12.

Chris Maher 6:25

You were 12, 12 years old, like you knew then that I am going to go help people and make the world a better place.

Cara Yar Khan 6:33

Yes.

Chris Maher 6:34

It's remarkable.

Cara Yar Khan 6:35

You know, I appreciate that. Thank you. But growing up, I was not definitely not the first person in my family to do that. I had really strong role models. My grandmother, my my paternal grandmother in India, my dad's three sisters were all human rights activists and advocates. And they set the example. So human rights issues and social justice issues were a part of our family conversations on a regular basis. In Canada, having a very social justice mindset, not only in society, but in the curriculum of our schools, I was trick-or-treating for UNICEF every Halloween. I was volunteering to raise money for the Canadian Cancer Society. I was climbing the stairs of the CN Tower to raise money for the World Life, Wildlife Fund, or sleeping in the library overnight to show my support for World Vision that was supporting children in need. So it was a lifestyle. It was a culture. It was a belief that or of responsibility and accountability that you create a platform if you have a platform, no matter how big or small, infamous or not, that you you devote your life to helping others.

Kelvin Crosby 7:49

Yeah.

Chris Maher 7:49

Well, I think that something we talk about a lot on this podcast is lived experience. And you had the lived experience of growing up in not only a multicultural family, but a family that you had some wonderful examples of siblings and adults, parents, aunts, uncles, it's in a community standpoint. And that and that makes a difference and it leaves an impression, right?

Cara Yar Khan 8:08

It does. It does. It sort of helps you see yourself in the world. And when you respect and admire your family as much as I did and wanted to be just like them, and then again, the guidance from teachers sort of like go for it, helping, coaching me to participate in UN speech competitions or to be the Canadian delegate to the World Summit of Children in 1995. I had adults around me that were nurturing my curiosity and intellectual desire to learn more and participate more in international development issues. Also, it was very clear to me, you know, that I would go to university. Education is very important in South Asian culture. And this idea that I would become a proficient professional before thinking about family or marriage, or not that those things were discouraged. It just was never the priority, at least not in my family, particularly for girls. You should be competitive, you should play sports, you should get a really good education. When I graduated from my master's, my dad, I said, Dad, are you coming from China for my graduation? He's like, When do you get your PhD. No PhD, but hopefully I've made up for it with other things.

Chris Maher 9:25

I think so.

Kelvin Crosby 9:26

Well, I mean, I think what's interesting is as you took in your life experiences, I mean, and we've talked about this so many times as you talked about Chris, is how we're shaped and from who we are. I mean, I know for me, the journey of going through my death blindness, that wasn't my identity until I was literally 19, 20 years old. And honestly, that acceptance of that took even longer than that. And so that's where what's interesting is the way you articulate your story, and I think this is gonna be fun today, is going into storytelling, and I love how you articulated your story in a way where I could feel where you're at, and how you were how we're there. And we're like, oh, well, we're gonna have m tiki tiki masala, we're gonna have some rice, we're gonna have some mango latte with that, with some naan bread, and then wait, we're gonna have some orange chicken, which is American Chinese food, so that's not really true, but it's something else, you know. But I was like, wow I'm there. And I think that is what is really really cool about the way you kind of experience the world. And I think the other thing people need to understand,

Early Signs of Disability & Diagnosis

Kelvin Crosby 10:42

there's a whole other component to your story that we haven't talked about, and that is your challenges, and I think that brings a whole other dynamic into that. Can you kind of talk a little bit about that if you're comfortable with that?

Cara Yar Khan 10:56

Sure, absolutely. So during college, I've always loved to dance. I'm you know, it comes, I don't know if it comes from the Indian side, the British side, my mother was an incredible dancer, but I've always loved to dance. And again, anyone who grew up around my same time, you my friends and I were making up dance routines in the basement to Madonna, you know, we all thought we were the true blue, you know, Madonna-esque, uh next list uh, you know, going to be a part of our dance team. But in college, I was also dancing, Latin dancing. And then as I began my career, it was a hobby that every single weekend, though, was out on the dance floor. And it helps when you live in South America for the first five years of your career. And I started limping, and I didn't actually think I noticed the limp. I noticed that I always had difficulty turning on my left when being spun around. But like these are pretty physical dances. I was also an athlete, but I was sort of just clear I'm better at rocket sports and I'm better at long distance running. I wasn't, I could never really sprint well. I couldn't sprint the stairs, and I just thought, oh, my brother's better at sports, at skiing and skating than I am, and I just suck. Oh, I must have weak ankles, or I don't have balance. I didn't really think about it too much. But in my workplace at the time I was at in Panama at Dell Technologies as a senior manager for corporate communications, people would ask, why are you limping? And I just thought, maybe I'm tired. Or when my parents came from China and they saw me and then, why are you limping? My dad, of course, it must be your high heel shoes and minnie skirt. I'm like, Yeah, dad, exactly. Of course, it's about my passion. But that did set off the alarm bells. And so we went to a doctor, and that doctor asked me to sit on the floor with my legs crossed and stand up without using my hands. Well, I was just annoyed. You're 26 years old. The last thing you want is one is somebody telling you what to do, but someone also implying you can't do something. And so I did could do it with, and I struggled, but then he asked me to stand up on my tippy toes, which is integral to really good salsa dancing. And when I couldn't do it, that set off the alarm. And I was sent to Canada to have the first muscle biopsies, and that started this really challenging, and I think the most difficult phase of disability and chronic illness was being diagnosed, the not knowing doctor to doctor, new needles, new procedures, they want their own tasks, and no one can tell you anything except that they suspect it is some awful disease. And this was in the time when the internet, you know, wouldn't think, oh my goodness, how am I gonna tell my parents? I didn't necessarily believe when I got the diagnosis at the age of 30, what the doctor was saying, you know, because it was so audacious. From having a stubbed toe, let's say, you know, when you nick your toe on the edge of a piece of furniture, to being told that I would be severely incapacitated, which was the language they used, need a wheelchair. If I ever wanted to have children, which at the time was a real desire, it would be a high-risk pregnancy and I would most likely have to stay in bed. I just thought, what? Me, someone who's so physically active, who had this successful international career and who had been dancing on dance floors and clubs all around the world. I was like, hell no. And so I think I put it in my back pocket. There was a relief of that we had a diagnosis, but there wasn't a lot of information. I was the only known patient in Canada, and now I don't think that there are many more. Now I know that there's only about 200 known cases in the United States and 2,000 worldwide.

Embracing Identity

Cara Yar Khan 14:42

This disease, hereditary inclusion body myopathy, which is a progressive degenerative muscle-wasting disease, a rare type of muscular dystrophy, does not have any treatment or cure. And now, 20 years later, I'm a proud disabled woman who just rips up the streets of Manhattan in a really ugly but powerful Permobil wheel chair.

Chris Maher 15:06

You're doing that. And so, Kelvin, earlier, and I did not, I should have given a little bit of a description of Cara because she was so kind u to give you a little bit of a me, but but Kara has this gorgeous long jet black hair that she usually wears pulled back, has these striking, and I mean this in the most complimentary way, exotic features, and is always dressed to the nines. So that gives you a little bit of a description of our friend here today.

Kelvin Crosby 15:30

So I mean she kind of ripped rip through Manhattan, you know.

Chris Maher 15:34

When Cara K enters the room, you know.

Kelvin Crosby 15:39

But I think that's so huge is when you start learning how to be yourself as an entrepreneur. I mean, I feel like so many entrepreneurs they try to put a facade on and say, Oh, I got this, I got this. And then I mean, I think about all those all the individuals that I know that are entrepreneurs, and the ego, you gotta have somewhat of an ego, but you also gotta have a h humility. And you think that's exactly what you're talking about, is realizing where you're at, realizing okay, this is it. When I think about me with the See Me Cane, when I was in like I had no idea how I was gonna fund the rest of the See Me Cane. And that moment in 2022 when the investor said, Hey, I don't have funds for you, I've lost all my funding, and I realized how am I gonna keep moving forward? How am I gonna put food on my table? I had to I had to take a humble reality at that point and realize alright, how am I gonna move forward? And I just started learning, started learning, persevering, and little did we know, my pottery business would fund my my endeavors. But with all that in mind, I think this is you're you're bringing up something really, really important, and that is being okay where you're at, and keep moving forward. And if we do not accept who we are as people and individuals with disabilities, and say, hey, this is it this is a challenge. Embrace it and then say, now how do I move forward? And and being honest with yourself. And y I love how you talked about you were trying to hide your disability, and then it just kept r rearing its ugly head, you know, and you're like, hmm, I might as well embrace it, dance with it, and have a great time with it. And I think that changes your whole perspective. It changes the way you can advocate, it changes the way you can have identify with the world around you. Like I tell people, I'm one of the best pole dancers in the world. I practice pole dancing three times a day, you know, but I hit them all the time, and people are like, huh? And I say, Yeah, blind people hit poles all the time. They might might as well do a spin and a twist at the same time. And I to me, that gives me joy, that gives me opportunity, like, yeah, it hurts. But it makes me laugh, it makes me be able to say, Alright, this is where I'm at today, this is where I'm at right now, let's just keep moving forward. And I love how you talked about that, and how you can just say, Yeah, I kept driving and driving, but now you're going with a season where you're like, hmm. I I need to be comfortable in who I am and being there so that I can help others in a whole different way. And I think that's so powerful.

Chris Maher 18:53

Yeah. What warms my heart so much is like, you know, I've been just sitting here listening to the two of you talk, and it and it warms my heart because one, I have the privilege of of being able to call both of you friends, but also what you're talking about is and and like it's it's a lot easier said than done. But to your point, Cara, and what you just said, Kelvin, about being comfortable with who you are, right? That's living an authentic life, which which I don't know if I know two people, who do that more than you two. But it that's I think that's really hard for people. And and but once you embrace that, that's when you can start moving forward. And so with with Cara, you touched on a couple of things earlier that I'd love for you to dig into because I, you know, a big part of our of our listener base, I think are entrepreneurs, early-stage entrepreneurs, right? And and so two things that you've done in your career very successfully is storytelling. And that's either about telling your story or your company's story or or the story to a prospective investor or donor or about a product or a service. And so can you talk a little bit about the the power of storytelling and and and the important elements of that that you've you've kind of developed over your career. And a big chunk of your career has been around using storytelling to sell and/or raise money, right? And raising capital is really hard in this market, especially for entrepreneurs that are in the disability sector, and then throw on top of that if they also might happen to be a woman, right? And so I'd love for you to dig into that and unpack that a little bit for our listeners.

The Craft of Storytelling

Cara Yar Khan 20:28

I appreciate feel like years ago, after my two-year tour with UNICEF USA Public Speaking, there was a necessity to set up an LLC to sponsor my work visa and to be able to continue working with the agency. It's so I almost feel like it was a fluke. And while I am someone who's very comfortable taking risks and I have big grand ideas that I've done, usually never know how to do it, but I'm like, well, I'll figure it out somehow. I'm not afraid to ask for help or find people who do know what they're talking about. I don't necessarily feel like I've been successful from a financial position. Now, I have been able to support myself financially, but I've never made big money. I've never made enough money to hire staff. So I just want to preface what I'm going to say with entrepreneurship looks different for different people and different types of companies, which story telling is paramount to all human interaction. It is the most ancient form of art. It is the way in which we connect with other people, particularly with people who don't look like us and who don't even have near a similar lived experience that we do. I think I've been a bit spoiled in development, poverty, elimin uh eradication, international issues, human rights. Even in high school, I was telling stories, not necessarily that I was telling them correctly, but I told them with passion and conviction. And there, although you do need to be intellectually passionate, and what I mean by that is having really good facts. It helps when you have data. And I think understanding the art of storytelling and the structure of storytelling, specifically when it comes to fundraising, is really important. First and foremost, it's not about you, it's about the the listener. And I actually cut my stories up into three bits. This is specifically for fundraising. It's issue, action, impact. So let me give you a really simple example. In Angola, when when I lived there, it was the worst place in the world for a child to be born. One in four children died before the age of five. This is the situation from preventable causes malaria and diarrhea and respiratory illnesses. That's the issue. What was the action being taken? UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund, was helping distribute malaria nets, was helping children learn how to wash their hands with soap, and was helping children in school receive their vaccinations. This is the action that we would take across the country. And impact, if you donated $1 million, I could provide 100,000 children with malaria nets to help save their lives. Issue, action, impact. What's really important there when it comes to fundraising is I'm not asking for money. I'm helping the investor or the donor understand how they can save a child's life within a context of dollar sense, which is at the end of the day, they know they're there to be asked for money. But when I can really clearly communicate the impact that it is going to have on this problem in coordination with the action effect of not only storyteller, but fundraiser. Now, obviously, I am super simplifying a very complicated and difficult task. Raising money for my film was the most difficult, humbling, embarrassing, heartbreaking task I have ever taken on. It's different than raising money for one of the most well-known brands in the world. But showing how whoever your donor or your invested can participate and contribute and be a part of change, changing people's lives is really, really important. There's other types of storytelling. Again, the foundation of human connection, of winning hearts and minds, because the only way we can influence behaviors is by first educating someone to change their mindset or giving them new knowledge. With new knowledge, we change our mindset about something.

Bias, Curiosity, and Grace in Public

Cara Yar Khan 24:35

And then it hopefully, in turn, that trickles down to influencing our behavior. So, for example, when I'm in a grocery store zipping around in my chair, dolled up, as Chris rightly said, full makeup, jewelry, hair, something fabulous, fashion-wise, there will be a kid, a child, who will just be like donned by oh my, what is this? And why is that lady zipping around on wheels? And the adult who is with the child will often hush them, pull them out of the way. Oh no, honey, don't do that. Get out of the way, leave the poor lady alone. That's not nice. These interactions beg the question when is it in our social development that we start to attach prejudice to people who look or act differently than we do? And it begins with our parents or the adults in our lives, our teachers, our grandparents, babysitters, even. The adult's reaction to the child's simple curiosity not only tells them that there's something wrong with their question and curiosity, but that there's something wrong with me. I would rather a child just come up to me, ask me, I'll give them an honest answer, and we'll be on with our way. Kids just want a simple response. I tell that story often because what's really delicious about that story is that it was short and simple, but it allows people to identify their own ableist ideas and their own bias about people with disabilities through my lived experience without me accusing them of doing something wrong. Without me, most people who hear that story will be like, oh, I've done that in the past. Whether it was to someone in a wheelchair, someone with a different type of visible disability, or someone who just looked or acted differently than they did. And yes, they might be embarrassed, yes, they might feel shaped, but I've given them knowledge to hopefully change their mindset and hopefully behave differently the next time they're in that situation. So I've had a lot of practice. I think rehearsal is really, really important. I cannot underestimate the importance of rehearsal. I think it's always great to maybe take a storytelling workshop, which I actually deliver them. It's really important to have people proofread what you're gonna write. Jeremy Cole, who's a former UNICEF colleague, I remember he like ripped apart a speech I gave. He goes, You don't need so many words to say the same thing. So there are a lot of techniques. In a film, if you're telling me like our film facing the halls, or in my TED talk, you'll see that there is a cadence of we present a problem and we solve it. We use techniques like voices, impersonation, the power of pause, yeah, changing your voice, et cetera, et cetera. So there's a lot of tips and tricks. I do believe I am a master of storytelling, but it's been decades of practice and decades of making huge mistakes and embarrassing moments.

Chris Maher 27:27

Well, Cara, thank you for sharing all that. And there's so many amazing nuggets in there, I think, not just for entrepreneurs, but for anybody raising that's applicable to any time you're asking anybody for money, right? Whether it's for donations or you're you're doing a capital raise for your business or you're just trying to, you know, sell to a new client. So I think it and you you said it it's it's simplistic, but it it it doesn't it doesn't have to be complicated, right? Keeping it simple, right? You know, keep it stupid simple, right? That old that old phrase of KISS. So I think great, great tips on that front. And then talking about the interaction of interacting with a family and and a child in a supermarket, I just wish more of society could approach situations like that with the grace and compassion that you do, because some people could approach that differently and get upset and get angry.

The Importance of Rehearsing

Chris Maher 28:20

You're you you approach it with the grace, with the compassion, and giving the people an opportunity to open their minds a little bit, and you help them kind of get to the right place on their own versus you like getting angry or force feeding it to them. And and then your comments about the rehearsal and the practice, you know, I came up in sales, you know, before I started running businesses a and then and I ran sales teams, and and it's it's kind of shocking how often people go into meetings not being prepared and not having rehearsed. And it's it's that what is what is the old adage you know, measure twice, cut once, right? Or if you're painting a house, it's more of the prep, you spend more time prepping, so then the painting takes half the time. Like if people would just understand that and practice that, things could be a lot easier. So I think you've just amazing, amazing tips and reminders there, I think, for for not just our entrepreneurs who are listening, but but for anybody.

Cara Yar Khan 29:15

So that's let me let me give you two things. One, I've had a lot of practice in not knowing because I grew up the first 30 years of my life without a disability. And I would say the first 10 years, I was still on a very steep learning journey. We're not taught this in schools. Social media, pop culture, fashion, business doesn't teach us not only these very open mindsets around things, but we don't have those values in our society. The charity model and the medical model that, you know, I somehow just need to be a recipient of society's welfare, and/or I must be cured or treated in order to live a full life are really still the main narratives. And I had to unlearn that for myself and that it isn't my wheelchair that we next need to fix, that's the issue. It's the barriers that I face, whether it's inaccessible transportation or an inaccessible workplace or someone else's crappy, you know, attitude. And I would say the whole prep, because then the painting will be easier, that's a great makeup tip, you know, it's all the corner. You want your makeup to look good. But I'll also say that while I and I appreciate you saying that I have grace because I definitely am doing a foul mouth under my breath sometimes, some of the frustrations, is that I feel a new fragility in my life. And that fragility is finally emotionally connected to my disease. And it isn't a fragility around the prognosis of what is to come. It isn't that I think that my voice or my life has less value or my voice will be less powerful when I am completely physically incapacitated. It is a fragility of maybe a little bit of fear, maybe a little bit of nervousness, and maybe a huge level of uncertainty as to how the world will perceive me. And will I still have a place? And as much as I can barge into a room being fearsome, fancy in my big wheels, figuratively and literally, the world still is not an accepting place. And this is why it is so important that we effectively tell our stories and shine the spotlight on others because we are not alone. We're such a huge community, and within that, there's a beautiful kaleidoscope and diversity of different experiences. And Kelvin, you alluded to the importance of humility. Humility that our lived experience is just that ours and only ours,

Fragility, Perception, and Belonging

Cara Yar Khan 31:45

therefore the solutions that work for us don't work for others. But that there are so many different intersections and experiences with disability depending on your socioeconomic status, on your level of education, on your ethnicity, on your religion, whether you're a minority or not, if you're a woman or someone who is trans or someone who is a member of the LGBTQ community, your age, et cetera, et cetera. All of these beautiful facets of the diversity of what it means to be human, we need to constantly bring those reminders to these conversations. And in our efforts, be humble in allowing people to make mistakes, giving people the benefit of the doubt. And I am not saying that we should allow people to step all over us, discriminate against us, or use stigma in a nasty way. No, we should be fierce in the face of those attitudes and behaviors. But when in our education and our advocacy efforts, we can be a little more open-minded. And if you're having a bad day and triggered and maybe responding in a way, I think sometimes stepping aside and taking care of ourselves, putting ourselves first is really important. So many entrepreneurs, if not every entrepreneur, uh has burnout, right?

Chris Maher 33:05

Yep.

Cara Yar Khan 33:06

And even more so for entrepreneurs with disabilities.

Kelvin Crosby 33:10

Yeah. I mean you're so true on that. I mean, like right now, I'm I'm in burnout. I'm in burnout regardless of the seaming cane, and I'm like, all right, where do I push off the balance? Now how do I get myself refueled? And those are the the like getting back on the pottery wheel and working on the clay and getting back into the deaf/blind potter stuff and and doing that. And those are things that I'm trying to realize, oh, I needed that so bad. And that that heals, that heals me. It might not heal everybody else, they might get frustrated because their clay collapsed and it's two feet high, and I'm like, I just accomplished that and nobody else did it for me. And people that can see they can't even do that. And I'm just like, see, look at me, you know, but I'm I feel confident, but then I collapse it because I remember I have to come back to the be grounded again, and it's so important that as I'm working through my burnout, I'm like, I gotta get grounded again. To get down back to the basics, get back to that moment where I can't get back. I can start being remolded again, I can start being shaped again, I can start working through the obstacles that keep feeling like I just kept failing and failing and failing again. And that's where it comes from. And it's so important that we work on that. And I love how you articulated all that. And uh and just how do we work through that? Like, and I'd be curious, like, what do you do today to really work through your burnout when you find yourself in those situations?

Cara Yar Khan 34:55

That's a great question, and I I really appreciate you sharing. And you said the word confidence, which I think is really important, and we don't have enough confidence as a as a collective, as a disability community, but also as individuals. Social media is just ripping us apart, telling us we're not good enough in any other way, the rat race, the competitiveness, and this sort of illusion that everyone,

Burnout, Coping, and Confidence

Cara Yar Khan 35:18

that not everybody is suffering or struggling or has a hard time, it's just hogwash, right? Coping mechanisms, I am really clear on what are mine. Sleep, first and foremost, good diet, time with friends and family. And if I'm having a moment where I realize I'm angry, which can happen often and I am fiery, I know that if I go and watch a comedy clip, I'm actually able to regulate my not only my emotions, but my chemical balance by producing endorphins by Laughing. And so I have a couple of cheeky comedians who I love, and I'll go and literally I'll go watch a YouTube clip and I will put myself in a position, pull myself out of what was making me feel really bad, and just give myself a moment to heal. When it comes to confidence, and I really think that this, particularly for people with disabilities, for women, for anyone who's marginalized, who are not part of the mainstream, or even for dads like Chris, who are having a tough day and doing an amazing job of being a dad and a husband and an entrepreneur and a support to people like me, confidence comes, I think, from one reflecting on where you've come from. Even though when you've made the mistakes, how did you achieve something? Not necessarily, probably not perfectly, right? There was failure in that. And think reiminder ourselves, at least for me, that the only failure is not trying. It gives me confidence. I think also obviously doing something as massive as was the Grand Canyon expedition in 2018 to make our movie Facing the Falls, it was huge. I was responsible for the fundraising, the marketing, the hiring, payroll, taxes, legal, all of it, and still was for the years afterwards. This is a 10-year in the making, and I'm still promoting it and putting it out, right? I run that company. Oh, do you want to hear something ridiculous?

Chris Maher 37:15

Yeah.

Cara Yar Khan 37:18

I never put this company, this production company that I've been running for the past 10 years. The film is on my resume, but not the company.

Chris Maher 37:27

I mean that talk about entrepreneurship.

Cara Yar Khan 37:30

Seriously. No, it's a balance.

Chris Maher 37:33

Yeah, you need to add that to the LinkedIn profile immediately. You know, some things that that you folks said that resonate so much with me. I literally had a call with a small group of people within our disability community just last week. And the people who set it up were calling it Failing Forward Friday. And as we talked about it, and the group made the commitment like, let's keep doing this. And part of it is like our own little advisory group and being vulnerable. And but we talked about that maybe failing isn't the best term for it. It's more falling. We all fall, we we fall all the time, but it's about picking yourself up and dusting yourself off and moving forward, right? So you I think of it not as failing, but it's opportunities to learn. Like, hey, I I wasn't as successful in this situation as I wished. Maybe I fell down. I guess you could say I you could say, you know, classically people would say it's failing, but it's really an opportunity to learn and to get better, to dust yourself off to get up, and that's where you build your resilience. It's where you build your problem solving, it's where you you build all of those great characteristics that are not only good in life, but that are good in entrepreneurship, right? Kelvin, I'm getting a little feedback here. What's going on? This is very much, and Kelvin, you and I talk about this all the time. Things happen to us in life that we don't have control over, right? Your folks' disabilities,

Everest Moments vs. Suffering

Chris Maher 39:00

my children's disabilities, whatever the case may be. You don't get this, you don't get that. But what we do have control over is how we respond to those situations. And that's what makes all the difference. And I think Cara, you're an amazing example of that.

Cara Yar Khan 39:14

There is a difference between being stoic and being strong. Yeah. And this sort of falling as you're describing it, it's actually a process that gives us clarity because you're weeding out what doesn't work, right? And it builds the tenacity and the resilience and the grit that's needed to whether it's run a company or live differently. To to give yourself the space to grow and learn and be different and make mistakes yourself. Like I will say the word crazy. I I mean it's it's the word crazy is something that was in my lingo growing up in the 80s and 90s, and I I check myself, or if I there are other words that are just colloquial words from those decades, and there's one that I'll say, and I'm like, oh, that actually is related to this. And I catch myself in the moment, and I'll say you'll do better next time. But I really love the idea of there being a collective. So I'll tell you a little secret. I don't know if I've ever said this out loud before. So I being quadriplegic now and on set tetraplegic, there's a lot of changes in my body, and I don't have since Judy's passing, Judy Heumann's passing, I don't have a friend close to me in my life who's also quadriplegic. And so I always think of Judy. Did I think differently of Judy because or Judy struggled with this? And I was like, no, of course not. How silly. So I give myself the space to acknowledge that yes, it's struggling and it's okay, like it's part of it. Does it make it harder? Yes. Does it chip away at this ideal of what we're supposed to be? If I wanted to be anything in the world, it would be like Judy Heumann.

Chris Maher 41:04

Yeah.

Cara Yar Khan 41:05

There's a really important barometer because I have to be realistic that I need more help, and in the future, I'm going to need more help in every way imaginable. Am I suffering? Suffering is the barometer that I use in my struggle. Kelvin, you talked about achieving, you know, in your pottery. So I call those my Everest moments. For me, it's like getting off of upstanding to a standing position off the moment. But I assess my struggles by is this just something hard and frustrating, or am I suffering? And if I find that I actually am suffering, then I acknowledge that maybe I need to give this task to my PA, or maybe I need to think about a new assistive aid or some additional support. And for me, it's just worked really, really well to maintain the independence as much as I can and the celebration and acknowledgement of those Everest moments, but also to be safe and practice self-care. Because I plan on being a fancy and fierce advocate for as long as I am on this earth. And in order to do that, I need to be at my best. And the responsibility for being at my best is a thousand percent on me.

Kelvin Crosby 42:21

I mean, I I I love how you talk about it. I mean, what I do a lot of times is I I talk about suffering. And but I I always say, you got a choice. Are you gonna grieve your suffering and stay in sorrow? Or are you gonna grieve that suffering and find joy in it? And it's not easy. But what happens is as you start rolling into that that grieving process or that that struggle that you're in, you start finding perseverance. And you start finding that, oh, I can have joy in this. Even though it's not easy. And then you start realizing, oh, I'm getting stronger, I'm building that confidence, I'm building that character. And then you realize I'm starting to have hope. I'm having hope in this. I'm having a hope that despite

Community, Falling Forward, and Grit

Kelvin Crosby 43:15

my struggles, I can continue to realize, yeah, this is a struggle. But I have joy, I have perseverance, and I'm becoming stronger. Now sense of your hope. Like you keep hoping, like, oh, I wanna I wanna fix all this. But when you go into the pain, you go into the struggle, you go into the difficulty, you find, oh, there's joy there. There's hope there. There's opportunity there.

Cara Yar Khan 43:49

You can't have one without the other.

Chris Maher 43:51

Right.

Cara Yar Khan 43:51

And I think it's important for us to, you know, our objective is not to have these rosy perfect lives that are just la-di-da happy every single day. But I think hope for me and the joy comes in finding solutions and in community. I I definitely am not, so my success is not because of me alone. There have been people, plethora of people, friends, families, colleagues, even my cat Baba sitting on my lap right here, who have given me emotional, psychological, physical, financial support to be in a position to have those moments of gratitude in their experience. And they've also been there when I have been in some of the less flattering moments of my life, not up to the task of being positive or feeling culturally important, particularly in disability community, and more so for the non-disabled community. I don't want them thinking, number one, that is my job to be happy, go lucky to make you feel better. And two, if I am a moody bugger having a really bad day, I am still as fabulous and my life just as worthy as when you are a moody bugger and having a bad day. We're all human, and and I think we need to remind ourselves of that. That the rainbow of human emotions that we experience are all valid and important.

Chris Maher 45:11

I think that was really well said, Cara. And I'm looking at the clock because I know we've got to get you off because you have another meeting. So as we wrap up here, and there are a few topics, I think we're gonna have to have a part two to this conversation because there's a bunch of this stuff with links in the show notes.

How to Connect with Cara and Her Work

Chris Maher 45:28

How can people learn more about you and your work and your TED talks and your movies, etc.?

Cara Yar Khan 45:32

Thank you. Well, they can check out my website, carayarkhan.com. That's C-A-R-A-Y-A-R-K-H-A-N as in Nancy dot com. They can look me up on LinkedIn. That's a great way to connect with me. They can check out the film Facing the Falls formats. And my TED talk is called The Beautiful Balance Between Courage and Fear. And that's available on YouTube and on TED.com.

Chris Maher 45:56

Love it. Cara, my friend, you are a gift. You are a gift to all of us, and it's so nice to uh spend some time with you. And thank you for being here.

Cara Yar Khan 46:03

Oh, it was my pleasure, Kelvin. You are a rocking host. So thank you for having me. And Chris, it's always a pleasure as usual.

Kelvin Crosby 46:16

Well that wraps up Investing in Accessibility and as I always say go live beyond your challenges, and we'll see you in two weeks.

Closing Credits & Calls

Kelvin Crosby 46:24

Kelvin Crosby 46:24

Thank you for listening to Investing in Accessibility, a Samaritan Partners podcast, where we invest in change for accessibility, not wait for change. If you want to follow us, you can find us on YouTube or LinkedIn at @Samaritan Partners. If you would like to invest in Samaritan Partners, email Chris at chris@samaritanpartners.com. If you'd like to learn more about us, go to www.samaritanpartners.com. You can take the first step in investing in change by giving us five stars and sharing this podcast with everybody that you know so we can spread the word so that we can give access to all by Investing in Accessibility.