Danielle is an aesthete and a cat lady to the bone. Don’t take that the wrong way, I’m a cat lady, too. As the sun was going down we took a seat at the Webster Groves Starbucks and I quickly came to the conclusion that Danielle and I are pretty much the same person. We grew up in towns only 15 minutes away from each other, we both went to Webster University and studied music for two years, we both changed our degrees to be business related, we knew some of the same people and we both have two cats.

After becoming fast friends, I asked her how she became so interested in music. “It was kind of a weird beginning…” She first began by playing piano when she was 7 but really wanted to play in a youth orchestra. So when her parents and school band teacher asked her to pick up the oboe she acquiesced on the condition that she also be allowed to join an orchestra. They agreed, meaning that every week Danielle took both piano and oboe lessons and had youth orchestra rehearsals.

According to her, she was “obsessed with music as a child”, but I don’t think the obsession stopped at childhood. Recently, banjo lessons, english horn lessons and voice lessons gave her the flexibility to play bluegrass, jazz or classical music. While her favorite is still classical, she says, “I just like having eclectic ability.” Eclectic indeed. While she does listen to almost anything, she loves Shostakovich.

If Danielle could have her way, she may have been a musicologist, but how practical is a degree in 20th century music? So, she got a degree in management and now has a great full time job at a local art organization, instead.

Now that she is around art everyday, Danielle finds herself becoming obsessed, most notably with a new on-site installation at the Art Museum called ‘Stone Sea’ by Andy Goldsworthy, her favorite work of art. She was poised on the edge of her chair as she excitedly described it to me. "It's actually outside and it's between the old building and the new building and it's a series of these giant arches made from these chunks of limestone. It's really really beautiful. What I like about it is you can see it from so many different places in the museum, cuz it looks cool from the top but then you can walk along side of it and look at it from the windows too and get a totally different view. It's really pretty! Whenever you're walking next to it, it's kind of an incline up and it feels like waves almost."

I recently finished a book by Steve Martin, called ‘An Object of Beauty’ that I recommended to Danielle. We discussed having paper books as opposed to e-readers and I told her that inevitably all of my conversations turn to literature in some form. That was when the idea for ‘Free Books with Aubrey’ came about. I’m going to have to consider it! Some of her favorite books are those that connect art and science, including one of my favorite authors, Oliver Sacks.

Our mutual excitement over the resurgence happening in St. Louis became clear shortly after we began talking. At my behest, she began reading articles on Techli about the start-up community. After we chatted about where her future may take her, I recommended that she just stay here and work for one of the new tech companies. Fingers crossed that we can keep her in STL!

For the present however, Danielle is here and living with her roommate and their cats Miko and Gigi. Her cat (Miko) is “kind of an asshole to be honest”. She warned me that if I ever meet him to stay away because he will most assuredly bite me. The other cat belongs to her roommate and they like to pretend that Miko and Gigi are dating. I told her that wasn’t weird, my sister and I used to make our cats get married when we were kids.

Once you start talking about cats, you risk looking like a crazy cat lady, so we changed the subject to her favorite thing about St. Louis. “Oh my gosh, it’s such a tough question. I guess that there’s just so many opportunities to get involved with so many different things, be it tech things or art things and no matter where you go everyone is just so friendly and open and inviting. It’s just, it’s a really nice big cozy home, with just, lot’s of lovely people. That summarizes it nicely.”


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Discussing finances, more specifically financial difficulty, is something we usually reserve for our closest family and friends. Kathryn is very open about the problems her family experienced because she believes in educating people on how to avoid common mistakes or get through the results of past mistakes. After all, she says ¼ of American’s credit scores are below 600, meaning they can’t purchase a home or a car.

We met at the Starbucks in Webster Groves one evening and within an hour Kathryn saw three people she knew. That speaks volumes about her personality and likeability. After she said her hellos, and we had settled in with our warm drinks, we began to talk about how she found herself in her current job.

“It was traumatizing and totally scary because we were never taught what to do,” Kathryn began, explaining how her husband lost his job four months after they were married. He had been doing high-end installation of TV’s, internet, alarms, etc., but because he was working with low voltage equipment he was not a certified electrician. His company decided to replace him with someone who was certified.

It was only a few months that he was out of work, but it doesn’t take long for money to become a problem. To complicate matters, Kathryn had signed up for numerous credit cards when she went away to college. “I show up on college campus at 18 years old and there’s the Capital One booth and they’ll give me a free t-shirt if I fill out this thing and I was like ‘sure, I want a free t-shirt’, you know?” she laughs. Without a savings account and with only Kathryn’s part-time job to sustain them they accrued substantial debt and a credit score that was “embarrassingly low”.

Working for a financial services company was a no-brainer for her after she finished college. Her education degree fit perfectly with her new role at Financial Education Services, teaching people about their finances and credit.

Kathryn found this job after she worked with the company to improve her credit score by 100 points. She and her husband have also been able to save some money and are close to being able to buy a house for themselves and their two boys, Isaiah and Joel. “I’m really passionate about it. It’s been really fun to work with this company and be able to help others, because it has been crappy. This economy has hurt a lot of people.”

Speaking of children, Kathryn’s sons are two and four and according to her… “both boys are totally nuts. They are crazy. They are absolutely crazy!” The stories she told me seem to back up that statement, including the time Joel accidentally stabbed her in the cornea while trying to tickle her.

Kathryn had to get to her small bible group meeting, so as we finished up our drinks I asked her a few more questions, like tips on how to improve credit scores. Here are two:

• make sure it’s actually your own information (sometimes similar names get confused)
  
  
• you can dispute late payments. they have 30 days to prove you actually paid late and if they don’t/can’t, they have to take that off your score
  
  

Finally, I asked the question that has become a refrain throughout this blog. Kathryn’s favorite thing about St. Louis is...“The zoo! My kids have really made me fall in love with the zoo again. I grew up loving it and kind of walked away. Middle school, high school I wasn’t really into it anymore. As soon as I had kids, man, I’m like… I don’t know. I take it for granted. I really really love going. It’s so easy to be entertained for free.”

As we gathered our things and headed for the door, Kathryn told me, “My life is nowhere near how I had imagined it would be and I wouldn’t change anything about it.” 


Do it. Sign-up for coffee with me. I’ll even buy. Crazy, right?

(P.S. #48 is correct. I wrote #47 prematurely because Mike had an event he wanted me to write about. If you would like to read about him, here you go.)

Jaime and I met at Foundation Grounds in Maplewood, after Kai (Coffee #33) told her about my blog. We sipped coffee and chai tea, while discussing her family and the evolution of her business, AmberSky.

Growing up in Garden City, Kansas wasn’t very exciting for Jaime, so as soon as she turned 18, she moved to Colorado. “I was like, I’m out!” After Colorado came Alaska and finally in 2005 she moved to St. Louis for an internship with the World Bird Sanctuary.

Only a few months after moving here she went rock climbing at Upper Limits. Little did she know that decision would lead to her staying in St. Louis indefinitely. While there, she met a guy and “pretty much the rest is history!”

Almost. Life doesn’t usually take us in the direction we predict for ourselves and neither has Jaime’s. After graduating college in 2011 with her teaching certificate, she was prepared to teach middle school science. But once she had her son, plans changed. “I thought ‘I can do this, I can put him in daycare’, but I have a soft heart.”

I recently read an article about how it can be challenging for women to begin a career again if they have been out of the work force for awhile. Because technology is changing so rapidly, skill sets are difficult to maintain. With this in mind, Jaime began working at Cotton Babies, the worlds #1 retailer of cloth diapers, based right here in St. Louis. Until her son was able to walk, she brought him into work with her, but after he began pulling things off shelves, it was time for a change.

That is how AmberSky was born. Jaime had grown to love photography over the years and had begun doing shoots out of her home, so this was the perfect time to start a studio. DON’T peg this as just another photography studio, yet. She told me that AmberSky also has a lactation consultant for new moms, a doulah, a play area for kids and even a boutique that sells items for preemies.

Because Jaime’s son was born healthy (although she did endure 13 hours of labor and the umbilical cord was cutting off his oxygen), I wondered why she decided to sell clothing for preemies. Apparently, many parents who deal with premature birth are forced to purchase clothing at Build-a-Bear because there are no stores that sell clothing small enough. The regulations surrounding the dyes and chemicals used are much less stringent in doll clothing than in baby clothing. Jaime looked mournful as she told me that formaldehyde is commonly used. “It’s just heartbreaking.”

As we concluded our coffee chat, I asked Jaime to tell me her favorite thing about St. Louis. Her answer lines up with what you’ve heard in my blogs before and what we pride ourselves on in the Lou. “I would say… probably the community. Especially with having a son, it’s opened a whole new world of all the moms that are out there and they are just so supportive and it’s just a wonderful community.”


I have met some wonderful St. Louisans, but I’m not even close to being finished. Sign-up!

There are only 1,516 people who live in Bismarck, Missouri and Lindsey was one of them until recently. Growing up in the country gave her access to experiences that she feels lucky to have, including harvesting and refining sorghum, four-wheeling, riding horses, and canning fresh vegetables from her family’s garden.

Lindsey and I met at Hartford Coffee Company after she heard about my website from Coffee #38 and #39. We talked for almost two hours about her job at The Covering House, her mission work in Jamaica and growing up in southern Missouri.

Before moving to St. Louis, Lindsey finished school in Springfield where she was working at a psych hospital and a church, and then moved to St. James for a job. She made a risky decision to quit that job without having another lined up, because the position was incredibly stressful. But, two days after she left her job, The Covering House called and asked her to interview!

St. Louis tops a list we don’t want to be on. We are one of the top 20 cities for sex-trafficking and The Covering House helps these victims. Lindsey and the staff work predominantly with female minors aged 13 to 17. With approximately 100 to 300,000 minors sexually trafficked each year (the numbers are hard to pinpoint because often the girls will lie and say they are not being coerced), they have their hands full offering counseling, workshops and helping them cope with normalcy.

I asked Lindsey if it’s difficult for her and the girls not to be jaded in relationships because of what she hears at work and what the girls experience. “We’re launching a male advocacy program and the idea is that we want the girls to be able to see healthy men. These are the men that will respect you. These are the men that are going to protect you. These are the men that are going to love and cherish you, because they’ve never seen it. It’s inspiring to see these really amazing men that are stepping up and saying, we don’t know how we can help but we’ll help with whatever you need.” I was also informed that it is becoming more common for women and parents to pimp children.

Lindsey first learned about the issue when she was on a bible school trip to Jamaica. After working with the kids, she asked someone what would happen after they left and was told that most would be adopted, but some would end up being trafficked.

Talking about Jamaica, Lindsey lit up as she delved into her favorite stories. She remembers waking up one morning and looking through her bedroom window (open-air with bars) to see the kids staring at her and waiting for the “white American” to wake up and walk with them through the village (or parish). But, Lindsey’s favorite story was when a young girl she had taught 10 years before approached her and introduced her daughter. “It was very cool. I even have a picture of her and her brother Kamani and I framed it. It’s still my one of my favorite pictures I’ve ever had. I have it in my living room.”

We both began to tell our travel stories. I told her how I traveled solo to Hungary and had seen traditional dancing. But, my favorite memories are from Turkey when I joined a group of dancers and when I was woken up before dawn with the call to prayer echoing all over the city.

Would we take the same risks here in St. Louis that we took while abroad? No. Lindsey and I asked ourselves why we don’t have the same mindset about trying new things when we’re in a place that’s familiar. “When you’re in another culture, it’s easier to lose your inhibitions… It’s like the inhibitions that hold me back, suddenly are gone.” Moving to St. Louis has helped Lindsey fill the void of needing new experiences. But she mused that once things settle down, it doesn’t mean you have to get into a routine, you can still wake up every day and think, ‘how can I have a new experience today?’

Speaking of experiences, Lindsey’s great aunts and uncles used to grow cane sugar or sorghum and they wanted her to have that experience. So, one summer for their family reunion they harvested the sorghum, built a fire and trained horses to grind it. Lindsey explained that it became a tradition because everyone had an amazing time, and soon people outside of the family began participating!

I had an amazing time with Lindsey. We discussed her travels to Alaska and China, staying in the moment to get the most out of life and how the small decisions we make can have a huge impact on our lives. Like moving to St. Louis. I asked her what she thinks so far. “You know, I love it. It feels like there’s always something to do. It always feels like people are friendly, much more friendly than I’d expect… it’s amazing to see how the small town feel is still there in pockets of St. Louis.”

Of course, who doesn't love hearing positive feedback on something you put a lot of time into? I really appreciated that Lindsey commented on my work for this blog and the amount of time I put into it. “I really think what you’re doing is amazing. I just think this is one of the coolest ideas I’ve ever heard. I love hearing people and hearing their stories, so when Laura told me about your blog, I was like that’s one of the greatest things I’ve ever… just the creativity of it and just the time!”


Now it’s your turn to sign-up!

October 7th will go down in history as the day Jonathan and I were born! His parents, formerly teachers at my high school where he and I were a year apart, had run into my mom recently. She told them about Free Coffee with Aubrey and they told Jon, who signed up! We sat down together at Park Avenue Coffee downtown early one morning and quickly figured out that we share a common birthday.

When we met, Jon worked at Northwestern Mutual where he ran the college program. He was the one who interviewed, hired, coached and mentored students who were interested in a financial services career. It is not an easy field to work in, he describes it as a “kill what you eat business.”

Despite the challenges and a 15% retention rate, Jon loves meeting people and networking, skills that allowed him to thrive in the position. But after 5 years he wanted a change for several reasons, one being his age. “As you and I approach 30 right, we’re getting to be old people!” Very recently Jon accepted a new position as an IT recruiter.

“I am the least musically talented person you will come across. Singing in the shower is about as far as it goes for me. It stops there.” I asked if he played any instruments. You can gleam from his answer, that he does not. But Jon does play volleyball and softball. It was through his participation in rec sports that he met his current girlfriend.

Occupational Therapy… with dolphins? Yes. Jon’s girlfriend is studying occupational therapy and just finished her clinical in Key Largo Florida doing OT with dolphins. Um, what? I had to ask, “What does that mean?” Laughing at my reaction Jon agreed, “Exactly. Ok, it sounds like a vacation. Swimming with the dolphins and have like margaritas and stuff on the side? Kind of sketchy. I don’t know that I believe this.” But, it’s legitimate. Called Island Dolphin Care, it’s primarily for children or young adults with physical disabilities, to help develop their self-esteem and motivation through swimming with dolphins.

Here are a few things I had never considered about working as a financial advisor until Jon enlightened me near the end of our conversation:

1. It is difficult to maintain friendships because of the high turnover. “It’s a weird aspect of the job that I never really thought would bother me.”
   
2. You learn a lot about body language and psychological triggers
   
3. Doing sales makes you a lot more confident with women. “No becomes your second favorite answer.”
   
4. “Whatever you go into, the relationship management, the networking skills, the learning how to talk to people, it’s going to transcend.”

Jon and I have a mutual interest in the brain and psychology. He recommended that I look into Simon Sinek and specifically recommended his TED talk called “How Great Leaders Inspire Action”. We are also both fans of Malcolm Gladwell. “He sees what everyone else sees but he puts a different spin or perspective on it.” I told him to look into Oliver Sacks and Dan H. Pink (I think I talk about them at almost every coffee meeting).

Never having had a conversation when we went to high school together, it was really great to get to know Jon a little better. But… now it’s your turn! Sign-up!!