Ep.19-92-Report

SPEAKERS

Kelly Smith, Will Bachman

Will Bachman  00:01

Hello, and welcome to the 92 report conversations with members of the Harvard and Radcliffe class of 1992. I’m your host will Bachman. And I’m here today with Kelly Smith. Kelly, welcome to the show.

Kelly Smith  00:14

Thank you so much. Well, I’m thrilled to be here.

Will Bachman  00:17

Kelly, give us an overview of your journey since you graduated from college.

Kelly Smith  00:23

Whoa, well, I could take up the entire time. So real quick, I married our classmate, John petricola, right out of college December of 1992. And I was getting a master’s in biology at Tufts at that point. So we were apart for the first year. And I he was in the Marine Corps after doing ROTC. And I moved to Wilmington, North Carolina to be with him. We had kids really quickly 1994 and 96, they came to the five year reunion, which was crazy. And unfortunately, we split after seven and a half years, I moved back to Houston. During that time, I went to business school at Rice for a year, started working for myself right after that, as a marketing consultant. met someone else we ended up getting married moving to Pittsburgh, where I’ve been for oh my gosh, 20 years now. I’m have worked for myself ever since then, as a life coach. And currently as a marketing strategist and website designer and teaching people how to podcast, we ended up having a son who’s 15. Now, John’s and John and my daughters are now 26 and 27. And I’ve split from the second husband’s not a great track record. But also professional artists. I’ve been doing that since 1999. And that’s that’s the short story.

Will Bachman  02:11

A lot of material to cover. Talk to me about your career as an artist. And what kind of and I think you do some film you do some paintings or give me about about your work.

Kelly Smith  02:19

Yes, yes. So oh, it’s funny. When I was five, I started taking art classes and just loved it. When I was seven. I tried selling paintings at the end of my driveway. And my mom was like, No, you can’t do. I have always wanted to be an artist. In fact, I applied to the summer in Paris program through the Parsons School of Art and Design, summer after freshman year of college. So it’s an application process process. And I got in. And I didn’t go because my dad always wanted to meet to be an attorney. And so at the same time, I applied for an internship at a huge firm in Houston. I got that, like Fine, I’ll go do that. And that is like one regret in life. I think I wrote about this. Yeah, I did. And the red book. I haven’t reread it since I submitted it in September. And oh my gosh, what a dummy. So I’ve always wanted to do art. And finally in 99, right after that you’re in business school. I felt pulled to do it. So I went and got a bunch of supplies that Texas art supply, awesome art supply store, and started creating and it felt amazing. And after my second husband and I moved to Pittsburgh, I was creating even more and really painting and doing abstract work at that point. And I had enough stuff and it started doing this series of paintings then that I applied for a solo show at this particular gallery. And I got accepted and I had about six months to put a show together. So I I was worked on a short film at the same time. So I had this series of paintings, some installation pieces, and this film and they were all part of a series called dotted lines. And it was exploring the separation between my daughter’s in May they were living with John at the time, because we both wanted them. And so we agreed that he would have them for the first three years and then they would come to live with me for Are the rest of the remainder of their eight and 10 years before they graduated from high school. And it was really tough. So art was my way of exploring, being apart from them. And the short film, I shot in Pittsburgh, la Paris and Warsaw, I was crazy. And that played at the opening. And they kept playing during the day when the show was still running at the gallery. And I submitted it to the Three Rivers Film Festival shorts. I guess exhibition, and it got in, so it played one night there. And that was fabulous. And it got me into an IMDB listing. As much as I love movies that that excited me. So yeah, and I still create, I did a collaboration with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, and a local dance company called a tech theater. We did a one night performance where the Symphony played a tech theater danced. And I had shot some various pieces of film and projected that live during the performance. And that got great reviews, it was the last night in this theater before it closed for renovations and reopened a few years later.

Will Bachman  06:30

Amazing. Between the age of seven, when you were as an entrepreneur, selling your art at the end of the driveway. And 1999 Give us a little fill in the gap where you do it taking art classes at painting at Harvard, or, you know, subsequent to that what happened between the age of seven and something like 29 or so?

Kelly Smith  06:51

Yeah, I took art throughout school, not as much as I would have liked because I love learning languages. So I was always taking two languages in middle school in high school, I had to and in the middle school level, I was taking a grade above me, because I learned French in summer schools in France. So in eighth grade, I was taking upper school French, which means I lost a class time in middle school. So that year, I wasn’t able to take art. And I loaded up my my class load in Upper School, because I was taking French and Latin one year then French and Spanish the other years and raced through Spanish one during the first quarter of 10th grade and then jumped up to Spanish to for the rest of the year. And 12th grade, for example, they created a new level of French for me, because I finished five and 11th grade. And so for art and upper school, I was just doing it on my own, and then did like an internship with the art teacher and was working on sculptures with him like he was creating a sculpture for the school. And he knew they needed to make the prototype miniature first. So I was working on the miniature with him like well, as his apprentice essentially was having me do it and he would guide me. And then, you know, he signed it, and then they made it into the large thing. So that was awesome because I hadn’t worked in proper sculpture before really just painting and drawing mostly before that for clay and Lower School. So get to Harvard. And honestly, I wanted to concentrate and ve s and I didn’t feel good enough, like meeting other people there who seemed to have these really extensive portfolios and just seem to live and breathe art. And my forte was more in languages. I just felt like how can I do that? And there’s something else you know, I wish that I had and yet, so like I didn’t know what to concentrate in. And I ended up taking sex. That was the nickname for it. What was it science be 29 Something like that. Terry deacons, and Irv DeVore the that one of the choices and the two science not requirement. You know what I mean? The

Will Bachman  09:47

workloads? Yeah.

Kelly Smith  09:48

And oh my god, I loved it so much. Like what is this and it was biological anthropology which they don’t have today. Bio Anthro today Is evolutionary biology. And I fell in love. I loved biology before. But I didn’t know that that’s something I would ever end up pursuing. And I’m just like, I have to I have to concentrate in this even though I had taken a year Russian for freshman year and a French class freshman year. But that was just screaming at me. So I concentrated in bio Anthro. And that meant I didn’t do arts. And I dropped the languages, because I needed to make up for doing whatever classes I wanted freshman year. So didn’t pick up art again, until 99. And I you know, I was rusty. But there it was calling me Now was

Will Bachman  10:50

1. No sketching, no doodling nothing, always like no paint in the house. No,

Kelly Smith  10:57

no paints in the house. I had, I had charcoals, I had charcoals around. I loved charcoal, because you know, you can smudge it and get your fingers in it. I’m very tactile. So even now, one of the things that I series I did a few years ago was painting on myself, and then taking photos of it. And so it was it was combo paint, and photography. And the tactile nature of the paint was just fabulous. And then I even had, I hired a photographer to do some nudes where I painted more on my whole body instead of just face and, and upper chest and neck. And so then, you know, it was totally tactile. I mean, it’s not covered with paint, you know, like, I strategic and, you know, thinking about what I want it to look like. And then it was on for like an hour and a half, two hours. And I actually like wounded my lip and there’s even a little scar there now, because the crag I don’t use body paint, I use acrylic, because it just looks better. It starts to dry a bit and it’s thicker. And body paint is just waxy or oily looking. And so yeah, I just left it on so long that pulled it off. And yeah. It’s worth it suffering for your art. Okay, so

Will Bachman  12:27

for like seven years after college, you’re not really doing art. And then you get into it, and decide to do some paintings. And that’s incredible story. And and then you got it and you’re doing film like you produce, you create this film, which is I mean, just like out of the blue, right? You just, I mean, you hadn’t been doing film trained in film, talk to me about how that happened. All of a sudden, you’re making a film. Did you know what happened to get that to come on Tibet? Yeah,

Kelly Smith  12:58

I was just, I don’t remember exactly what hit me. But I just felt drawn to doing a film along that, you know, the same theme. And it was called dotted lines. Everything in that show was called dotted lines. And I just had this image of scenes. And it’s not a narrative, it’s it’s scenes cut together that that do tell a story. It’s, it’s broken up into thirds. It’s actually available online on my artists site, Angela Kelly Smith dot art. And it the first third is about separated, being separated from the girls that you see us together. But we look distant. We’re not smiling, we’re very stoic. And that transitions into being more manic. There’s just this sort of frenzy of activity. And then the final third is calm and coming out of that manic phase. And I’ve had people interpret the ending in a couple of different ways, either okay, you’re at peace, or oh god, you’re dead. Because of this one shot at the end of the second third. Like, oh, I don’t think I’m dead. However you want to interpret it is fine. I love it. When people come up with their own interpretations of my work. Sometimes they’re wrong. But most of the time now I’m totally cool with however they want to feel it and see it. So yeah, I had to teach myself how I done some photography in high school and some classes, but I never done Film was my first time to buy a camera proper camera and figure out how to use it. It was digital, you know, so I wasn’t having to develop film or anything. But, you know, back in 2005, that kind of digital. But I did have to figure out how to edit. And I was doing that in Adobe Premiere Pro. And so that was a learning curve, but I loved it. To me editing is like having different colors, like an infinite number of colors of paint, and just figuring out how you want them to be on the canvas. And the film is the canvas. So I love doing that. And now when I’m making videos for marketing purposes, or this class, I’m teaching it, you know, that’s not the same because I’m not editing and putting things here and there. But I do like the process just carried over from the art.

Will Bachman  16:06

So I mean, people go and go to school, and they study and they apprentice to become, you know, to learn editing. It sounds like you kind of figured it out and largely taught yourself.

Kelly Smith  16:19

I did. I’m not saying I’m as good as those people who take courses and years to master it. But yeah, I’m I’m self taught and in most things that I do in my business, I did do business school for a year and learned marketing there. And more recently, I went back to school, I got a master’s degree in communication from Johns Hopkins, when I felt like, Okay, what’s new, and marketing? What else can I learn? And do I need to learn? And so a lot of what I knew was was really validated and reconfirmed there. But I definitely learned more about social media marketing, and just, you know, updated and improved my my knowledge and skills there.

Will Bachman  17:13

And you told me before we start recording that you have actually been working on a couple films that are not just your own, but but larger productions. You want to tell us about those?

Kelly Smith  17:24

Yeah, so I was a, I say silent producer on the 2007 film control about the lead singer of Joy Division II and Curtis who killed himself, literally, the Eve that they were coming to the United States for the first time. And that won a BAFTA Award for writing for the screenplay. And right now I’m the assistant editor on a brand new documentary film called introducing Brian broom. And that is about Brian brooms, the author of punch me up to the gods a memoir, award winning memoir that just came out a year ago. And this film is has been showing in some film festivals, and is up for a Septimius award. I’ve never heard of it before. But it’s it’s pretty big deal. In Europe, it’s taking place in Amsterdam, the award ceremony is Amsterdam, Gil, June seventh. And so considering going from Boston right after the reunion,

Will Bachman  18:40

what does an assistant editor do on a film? Does the editor say, Okay, you take like these three scenes, or is it like you’re responsible for like certain types of parts of it or like, and then the editors stitches it all together? How does that work?

Kelly Smith  18:59

So the editor of the film was also the director or the creator of the film, the main producer of the film. And I worked with him to take seven hours of footage and cut it down to an hour and 45 minutes. And so he showed me all the footage that he had at the beginning. And I went through and labeled everything. I wrote down the timestamps, what was going on, and I told him, here’s what I would cut out. Here’s what I would keep. And I put it in an order that I thought made sense. So he cut out a lot. And then he gave it back to me. We went back and forth a bunch of times and then he shot B rolls and would share that with me and then so we did this through Several rounds, until we got it down to what it is now.

Will Bachman  20:07

Talk to me about your marketing consulting, what are your clients who what types of clients you take on and what’s the services that you provide.

Kelly Smith  20:18

So when I first started as a marketing consultant in 1999, I was still in use Houston, and I got clients through referrals. And they were established companies who were doing traditional marketing on the whole, they, they had websites, but they were still doing a lot of her additional marketing, such as brochures, flyers, mailers, a couple were even doing billboards, they were doing cold calling, in some cases, they were reaching out to potential clients. That way, instead of today, most people really focusing on online marketing, and even just completely dropping traditional marketing altogether. And now, I am working with freelancers, and mostly solo entrepreneurs, who are focused only on online marketing. And so they aren’t doing any of the traditional marketing. Methods, I mean, the, the concepts are still the same, you still have to find your ideal client, you still have to have your marketing message, you still have to know what your brand identity is, and bring that into everything. But how you use all that your your modes of communication are, are what are different between traditional marketing and online marketing. And you know, your focus is your website, and social media, and whether you have a blog, or a podcast, or video or combination of all of them. So that’s where I help people. And my ideal client is, again, freelancer or solo entrepreneur, they tend to be women. And they tend to be newer in their businesses. I’ll do websites for clients, and they tend to have already tried to do their own, and they’re not happy with what they get. So they hire me to completely redo it. I bring marketing strategy into it, because I won’t just do a website without looking at the whole strategy of their business and their marketing, because that’s pointless. You have to have strategy with it all.

Will Bachman  23:14

You mentioned freelancers or solo entrepreneurs, what sorts of categories or is this like management consultant type independent consultants, or people that are creators or course graders, or what sorts of freelancers do you work with?

Kelly Smith  23:30

It is all over the place. I get. I have some authors. I have a former Pittsburgh Steelers football player who has a podcast, I have some coaches. And yeah, those can be digital course creators. I do have another consultant. Yeah, it’s really all over the place. Oh, a freelance writer, you know, who needs to get she’s new, she needs to get her services out there. People making career changes into doing their own things. So they’re coming from corporate and have decided that they they’re tired of working for someone else and want to be in control of their own time and schedule and the services they offer. So yeah, it’s I’ll work with people in just about it. I mean, I’m just gonna say any industry I haven’t had someone come to me in an industry that I that I would say no to yet.

Will Bachman  24:41

So a listener wanted to find out more about that service that you offer you gave your artist website earlier. What’s what’s the best place to find out info on that?

Kelly Smith  24:52

Angela, Kelly smith.com

Will Bachman  24:55

All right, fantastic. The we get the whole portfolio of websites You mentioned a few times that you had this passion for languages when you were younger. Do you continue to work on your fluency read novels in French? Or are other languages? curious to hear if that has continued to be something that is important to?

Kelly Smith  25:20

Absolutely. Every time I travel to a different country or country with a non English language, I have to learn enough of the language to get along. I just I, it’s so important to me. So yes, I still speak French and Spanish. I haven’t read any books in those languages in a while. But when I watch movies or TV shows in those languages, I don’t turn on the subtitles because I want to challenge myself. It’s easier in French. I have to think more in Spanish than I do with French. So languages Alright, then I took a year of Russian in college since then, languages that I’ve learned enough to get along, and then forget afterwards. clear about that. Oh, all right. I haven’t been to China. But I did take an eight week class. So there’s that. Polish, Danish, Italian, Hungarian. That’s the hardest ever. Portuguese, Swahili? Okay, I think that’s it. Recently. I did Norwegian. Because my podcasting buddies and I thought we would do a trip to Norway this year. We’ve now pushed that off to next year. So in case I go to Amsterdam in a few weeks, I just heard it Dutch. Oh, German. Yeah. German just won’t stick for me for some reason. But I have learned enough to get along when I’ve gone to Germany.

Will Bachman  27:17

What is your approach for learning enough to get along? So are you using books are you using? Don’t get a tutor? Duolingo? Like what are you using to get it to get to get along?

Kelly Smith  27:31

I have not used tutors before. I I need to hear it so that I can get the accent and the pronunciation? Absolutely. Unfortunately, you know, there’s there’s a ton of stuff online and the apps to use. So I do have Duolingo. And that is great for pronunciation and some vocabulary. It’s not ideal for traveling them. So I can’t do it. Just with that. I love book learning. But obviously, I can’t learn pronunciation that way. So I need a combo of the two. I I start with or not start, you know, years ago, like when I did polish and Italian, German. It’s really been only recently that I did Duolingo. So Portuguese, all the others I did with books, and then looking at pronunciation on YouTube. Yeah, and that was it. So right now I did Norwegian on Duolingo. And I just started Dutch on Duolingo. And if we do go I will buy a baby dictionary and a baby like travelers vocabulary book. And I will learn phrases that way. But it’s imperative to me to be able to put my own sentences together. So when I did Hungarian, I bought a grammar book, A phrasebook and dictionary. And also did Duolingo. And when I got there, again, hardest language I’ve ever done, it lives on its own on the language tree. It’s crazy. So I had an experience there it was my older daughter and I who went for our double half birthdays. I was 50. And she was 25. And we were talking in a restaurant I was ordering and he asked me something and it was going fluidly. And he asked derives from me. He assumed it was somewhere in Europe and I said oh no, I’m American. Do you have family here? No, we’re just here visiting. Why do you speak Hungarian? Because we were coming to Hungary and he was just shocked and And I just told them now I have to learn a language before I go somewhere. So yeah, dua was very, very helpful with the pronunciation. Not at all with vocabulary though. The first thing Duolingo teaches you is the kindergarten teacher is flying out the window. Truly. Yeah, like, Thanks. That’s not going to help me order a beer.

Will Bachman  30:27

What is it about learning those basic phrases? That is so important to? Does it? I mean, to what degree does it help you experience the country in a different deeper way.

Kelly Smith  30:42

I get to talk to people. I mean, I’m an introvert. So it’s not like I’m going and introducing myself to people. But even just checking into the hotel, talking to cab drivers, Uber drivers today, or ordering in a restaurant, I want to show that I’ve made an effort. And I want to be able to have a conversation in those situations. I, I want to show that I care about them, and their culture. And on top of all of that, I just love languages. I love the way they sound. I love the feeling of pronouncing sounds that we don’t have in English, every language has sounds that we don’t have, even if it’s just a couple here and there. And I love the challenge of learning how to do those. And some languages have sounds that apparently, you can’t hear if you didn’t grow up hearing them. Supposedly you reach a certain age, I think it’s around three to five. And if you haven’t heard those sounds by then, supposedly you can’t hear them. And I think that I can hear some in some languages. There’s a sound in a Hindi Hindu, where I heard it in someone’s name in a business school professors name, his child’s name. And other people were pronouncing his child’s name, Devin. And I was hearing it is Dayton. And I don’t know that I’m pronouncing exactly correctly. And so I asked him about it one day. And he said, How are you getting that I sent out now that’s what you’re saying, isn’t it? He said, Yeah. Everyone else is saying David. And he said, Yeah, I said, but it’s Pavan. And he said, Yeah, so I was catching that little difference there. That’s like, a cross between a D and A T. H. And again, I don’t know that I’m getting it exactly right. But I just love that. It’s just it’s so exciting. So yep. So it

Will Bachman  33:13

sounds like there’s something about the actual experience of being able to, to speak this other language, the different sounds, it’s very appealing. Have is there, to what degree is there also an element that perhaps you would get access to certain experiences or have interact with people in a different way, because you have shown that respect for their culture that maybe you get let in or brought in or behind the scenes, or, you know, to the back of the restaurant or into someone’s home that he wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t learned the language?

Kelly Smith  33:48

Absolutely, I do believe I’ve had more conversations with people and deeper to the extent that I can carry on the conversation in the language. Because I have learned some of the language even at some times, I’ve started out in their language. And when I’ve reached the extent of, of my vocabulary or grammar, if they speak English or French, you know, a different language that I can speak more fluently, then they’ll switch so we can keep talking. But it does look they do appreciate that I have made the effort and then yes, I am sort of rewarded for that. And I love that in I went to Rio in 2014 and I gave a talk on at a International Coach Federation conference when I was coaching them, so I gave a a breakout session talk. And going back to the airport in the cab. We started chatting. And I told him in Portuguese. I think this is as much as I can say, I don’t know. And he said, No, you’re doing great, keep going. And so we just kept chatting. And I remember it being a struggle. Because I can’t think in Portuguese, I had to reel and I don’t remember any of it now, I had to really translate and it would it would start to flow. It’s, it reminds me of a cross between French and Spanish, which made it difficult for me, because you can’t just combine French and Spanish, you know it. So I had to think about it. But he kept challenging me. And I felt like he was really helping me by by bringing me along through the conversation like that. And he obviously wouldn’t have done that. If I had just said, oh, yeah, all I can say is, thank you. You know,

Will Bachman  36:08

you mentioned one course, certainly, Beyond The Beyond that science, B 29. That you took. Were there any other courses or professors that you had at Harvard that have continued to affect you or that, you know, kind of stuck with you?

Kelly Smith  36:29

Yes. So I took another class with Terry daikons. And he’s not there anymore. He was what level associate professor or he was not on a tenure track. So he left a few years later, I think he went to be you. He taught a class called the Brain and Language. And I met in that class. Well, at the same time, a statistics class. So I, I met our classmate, Amanda Yan, in that and statistics, and we’re still great friends today. But oh my gosh, that class on the Brain and Language was fabulous. And we just we learned stuff from Oliver Sacks. I’m sure listeners know about him and the Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. And he, his story was, it was on him that the movie awakenings was based. And what else Oh, Gregory, Nas, the concept of the hero and Greek mythology, or heroes for zeroes. I think it was nicknamed, loved that class too. That was just amazing. And sadly, I can’t remember the professor’s name. But the class was called War. I think yeah, I did take that freshman year. I loved that, too. I wrote my final paper on the concept or the portrayal of the Vietnam War in film. So I had to go rent at Blockbuster, a VHS player, and films, you know, whatever films they had available, to watch several movies, and then write the paper. And it was just so much fun. I mean, we read War and Peace, we read through acidities. You’ll Peloponnesian War, and just everything in between. And so I had to bring all of those in and you’ll make references to what we read in the court and apply it to how the Vietnam War was portrayed in film. And it was just challenging and fun. And I loved that I was able to be that creative in the final paper.

Will Bachman  39:03

Now, that theme of talking about popular culture, I think stayed with you. My understanding is you have a podcast yourself. Tell us about that.

Kelly Smith  39:12

Yeah. So I have two I have my business one called the marketing chat podcast where I talk about marketing. And I bring on guests to talk about various other fields that are that are related to marketing, and that would help my listeners, build their own businesses. And then and I started that one this past fall. But since 2011, I’ve been podcasting with Geek Girl soup, which I do with a few other buddies, one of whom I’ve known since middle school, lower middle school. Yeah, she was a few grades ahead of me. And that is where we talk about movies and TV shows that we’re watching and represent Haitian of women and underrepresented people, and the film and TV industries.

Will Bachman  40:08

So what would a typical episode of Geek Girl soup? Cover?

Kelly Smith  40:14

So this week is or for two weeks, we’re doing May of Thrones, we are rewatching some episodes of Game of Thrones, talking about that. Every October we rewatch our favorite HBO show as well, our favorite show the leftovers. Why October because that’s departure day for any of y’all who have watched the leftovers. Other times, we will just pick a theme and assign ourselves homework. And then we’ll also pick a new show to cover. Or we’ll have our other homework and also cover that show. So we just discussed severance on Apple TV plus, highly, highly recommend that we will we’re not doing Better Call Saul week by week, but we will be discussing it at the end of the mid season. And then of course at the end of the series.

Will Bachman  41:25

Wow. And in terms of sort of the objective function, is that primarily a chance for you to just have a conversation with friends. Does that kind of lead to anything professionally? Or sort of what’s the what’s the the outcome that that you get from from, you know, putting time and energy into into creating that show?

Kelly Smith  41:47

Yeah, that one does not make any money. It is for fun. We the three of us to do a weekly live in three different cities. Baltimore, Pittsburgh and Houston. We’re actually going to take a trip together this summer. So that will be awesome. Two of us know each other in person. The other two have met in person and you know, so one of them. One of us knows all three of us. Okay. Yep. But otherwise, like the one in Baltimore, I only know through our video meetings and texting. I mean, I feel like a no, we’re really well, of course, but we’ve never met in person. So our trip this summer, the girls on vacation will be my first time here to go. Oh, great. Yeah, we just have a lot of fun. We’re texting every day. We’re then doing the podcast every week. And yep, it is because we love movies and TV. And yep, and then get to share it through watching a few of the same things every week and sharing about it to our listeners.

Will Bachman  43:00

Fantastic. Well, Kelly, I think you’ve already shared him before, but why don’t we revisit it? What are the websites for people to come and find you or any other social media if you want to share any other kind of handles or tags or locations? Where should people go?

Kelly Smith  43:20

Great. So my main website is Angela Kelly smith.com. You can find Geek Girl soup at Geek Girl soup.com. And if you want to check out my art that’s at Angela Kelly Smith dot art, all really easy.

Will Bachman  43:36

Fantastic. Well, it has been such a pleasure having you on the show. Thank you so much for agreeing to spend time on the show. Absolutely. Thank you for having me. And listeners, you can go to 92 report.com and sign up for the email where we will notify you of each new episode. And if you want to help others discover the show, a five star review on iTunes would help accomplish that. Thank you for listening