Episode 004: Miranda Beard

Christian Moore:
Welcome to the Resilience Breakthrough Podcast.

Dave Biesinger:
Episode four. This time around, we are talking about a topic that I think is particularly close to your heart Christian. street resilience.

Christian Moore:
Yeah, I love street resilience. Do you know Dave, that’s my passion. We’ve had these four sources of resilience out for several years, and people always ask me, if you had to pick a favorite one, which is it? And I shouldn’t say this, or maybe I shouldn’t be saying this on the podcast. But if I’m being honest, if I’m with a friend I’m telling them Street is my favorite.

Dave Biesinger:
Picking a favorite source of resilience has got to be a little bit like picking a favorite child. It’s just taboo, you’re not supposed to do that Christian.

Christian Moore:
In the book, I define street resilience as you take the pain of disrespect, social inequality, and even past mistakes, and use it as fuel to propel you forward. And I think all of us can relate to these power struggles, where someone is one up and someone is one down in a relationship. And that tends to motivate people when they’re one down, that is a fuel source we could all tap into.

Dave Biesinger:
That’s right. And it’s interesting, we were talking with Miranda kind of in the pre-show, and one of these topics came up of the power of words. And I hadn’t really thought of street resilience through that filter before. And I think she’s going to get into it a little bit more, but we have to remember. The words we say to each other have a lot of power. A lot more power than maybe we realize. Sometimes we’re saying something, we don’t even mean it. Maybe we’re feeling insecure, or maybe we’re just frustrated. But we’ll say something to another human being, and that will stick with them for years sometimes. And they’ll have a hard time reconciling it. and it will shape their identity. I mean we have a lot of power over each other, and I don’t know that we always wield it responsibly.

Christian Moore:
The big story I tell all the time Dave is when that professor in college said to me, Christian if you can get a college degree with a sixth-grade Math level [crosstalk 00:02:05] level, my degree is worthless. And that was a long walk home. I was enraged.

Dave Biesinger:
Yeah. Dude that’s rough. But why were you able to use that as a reason to write a book and start a company? I’ll be honest with you, I’ve allowed those kinds of labels to essentially shape my identity. I’ve listened to those people. And it sounds like what you’re doing is not listening to them and saying, “You know what? You said that about me. That’s not true. And I’m going to use the anger that I feel as a reason to prove that it’s not true.” Whereas I got to be honest with you, Christian, over the course of my own life, I’ve allowed those labels to shape my identity. And I’m just now frankly, mindfulness meditation, stripping away the layers of programming that have been inserted into my own brain. So what’s the difference between somebody who turns on street resilience and somebody who allows those powerful words that someone says to them to shake their identity for years or decades?

Christian Moore:
Even if you’ve already predetermined you’re going to use it as a fuel source. You’re going to use it as a reason to grind on, to prove people wrong. That doesn’t lessen than the emotional abuse, the pain, the hurt. And I’ll be really frank with you, my own life, similar to you, a lot of my life, I didn’t know what to do when I had low self-esteem, I had anger. I think a lot of my acting out behaviors in my youth came from not knowing how to create a productive outcome with those negative emotions. Just like I get so passionate about this, why I wrote the book is, and I committed to social justice issue is, you have a huge advantage when you’re aware of exactly what to do when another human being puts you down, disrespect you.

Christian Moore:
And so it’s like so many things in this world. It’s access to the knowledge, the experience practicing it, it’s information and … Yes, I do [inaudible 00:04:02] across this country in the last few months. I mean, I’ll go into communities and will teach children, when someone’s bullying and putting you down, attacking you, you can use this as a reason to become greater, to work harder, to fight back stronger. But it’s an awareness. It’s funny, as I teach this to kids, adults will pull me aside all the time, just like you were saying Dave. And they’ll go, “I’m in my 30s, 40s and-

Dave Biesinger:
I didn’t even know, I could do that.

Christian Moore:
… “no one has ever showed me what to do with this.”

Dave Biesinger:
It’s so true. And Christian, it’s great because we actually, you mentioned earlier, social justice and I think this is one of the great social justice issues because we know that there are whole classes of people who are implicitly or explicitly told that they are less than. And we have as our guest today, one of the great social justice warriors of our time, Miranda Beard, welcome to the show.

Miranda Beard:
Well, I am delighted to be here. Hello, I should say to both of you, Dave and Christian. And Christian, I’m one of your biggest fan, so you’ve got a fan group following and I’m one of them.

Christian Moore:
Hey, that’s an honor coming from you. I appreciate that.

Miranda Beard:
Uh-huh (affirmative).

Christian Moore:
I do [crosstalk 00:05:20].

Miranda Beard:
Absolutely, I’m glad to be on the podcast with the both of you today.

Dave Biesinger:
Well, absolutely.

Miranda Beard:
And I hope whatever we share will be helpful to the people that are listening in.

Dave Biesinger:
Yeah. And as I mentioned before, Miranda, in the pre-show, you were talking about the power of words, and honestly, I got to be honest with you, I’ve never thought of street resilience through that frame before as really going back to the words that we say to each other. And it was funny how we got to that because you were recently in a freaking tornado, Miranda. Are you okay?

Miranda Beard:
I am fine. But it was a scary moment when this storm moved through the area and I saw it coming, I could hear the thunder saw the lightning. The alarms were going off all over the place. They were tracking the storm on the weather cast and it was right in my back door, literally.

Dave Biesinger:
Okay. It was right in your back door. And what was your response to having a tornado in your back door?

Christian Moore:
I guess it was Mississippi.

Miranda Beard:
That’s right. And just imagine seeing all of this and your human nature is, “Take cover, get in the … center of your house somewhere so that when this thing hits, because we were in the direct path of it. I believe in the power of words. I’m serious about this. So I spoke to this thing and said, “No, not today. You’re not going to tear up my community, not today.” And when went to the television to see the path of the storm. The thing had shifted over, bypassing us … Sure, we got some of the wind and some of the rain, but not a deadly destruction. But initially, we were in the path of it.

Dave Biesinger:
Well, I have to say-

Miranda Beard:
So I believe, [inaudible 00:07:22]?

Dave Biesinger:
Go ahead. Tell us what do you believe? I mean, what do you believe that made you go outside and confront a freaking tornado? Please tell us, Miranda?

Miranda Beard:
Well, my faith for number one, and the fact that I believe in the power of words. Death and life is in the power of our mouth or tongue. I can speak life to you or I can speak death to you. It is a choice. I made a choice to speak to this thing and say, “look, not today. You’re not coming here today. You’re not going to cause destruction here today.” So even when I’m dealing with children or leaders or education leaders dealing with children, I have to remind them what you say to a child can have a major impact. It could push them forward to cause them to be resilient or it could scar them for life where they never feel like they can make a move to do anything in life. So [crosstalk 00:08:18]-

Dave Biesinger:
It’s so true. And the hard thing about that is, words fly out of our mouths without … sometimes, have you ever had that feeling like a word just flew out of your mouth and you were like, “Oh, whoops, I didn’t … I wish I could take that back but I can’t.”

Miranda Beard:
That’s right.

Dave Biesinger:
You know what I mean?

Miranda Beard:
You’re absolutely right because what’s in you will come out.

Dave Biesinger:
So if you don’t want bad words that you don’t mean to say to come out of your mouth, watch what you’re putting in your brain. Is that what you’re saying?

Miranda Beard:
Come on, yes Dave, you just hit right on the head.

Dave Biesinger:
Wow!

Miranda Beard:
What you feed yourself through your ear gate, your eye gate will get internalized and then eventually come out. That’s why children tend to … little children. I don’t know if the two of you have children. Well, I know Christian has children, but I don’t know about you, Dave?

Dave Biesinger:
I have children. I like to refer to them as little devils, but sure we can call them children.

Miranda Beard:
No, don’t say that.

Dave Biesinger:
They’re wonderful children. [crosstalk 00:09:33].

Miranda Beard:
When you label them to be devils, guess what they’ve already been, Dave? They are going to act like the Devil.

Dave Biesinger:
Well, I’ve always wanted two little devils for children. No, my kids are the best, if they’re listening to this, you’re the best.

Miranda Beard:
Absolutely. And I know you constantly tell them that. That’s why some children excel so much quicker than others because they’re getting those words of affirmation to help them move out of the negative circumstances that most people would look at their lives and say, “Oh, they’re not going to make it” because I was one of those kids.

Dave Biesinger:
So you were told you’re not going to make it?

Miranda Beard:
That’s exactly right, because of where I live, my zip code dictated whether I was going to be successful or not in some people’s minds, my race was also a possible factor in all of that.

Dave Biesinger:
Your zip code, your race, your gender?

Miranda Beard:
Yeah. Even my socioeconomic status. My parents were working-class poor folks. They worked in order to put a roof over our heads and food on the table. So because they worked so hard, they didn’t necessarily have the resources or the means to provide tutors for me or to give me some of the extra things that I needed exposure to in order to excel at a faster rate. It’s not that I’m stupid or dumb, not at all. It’s just that I lacked exposure to certain things to help me to excel to the next level. And sometimes because they were so busy working I didn’t get those words of affirmation, to tell me, Miranda you can be and do what you were born to do. You’re gifted to do all of those things. I didn’t get that.

Dave Biesinger:
What did you get in terms of words, in terms of people painting your future? What kind of things did people tell you were in your future?

Miranda Beard:
Well, I didn’t feel like I had a future, Dave and Christian because when you have low self-esteem as a child, you don’t feel like you have self-worth. Then there was self-motivation. See, I had to … school put me in another environment to help pull out some of the things that were on the inside of me that I would have dreams about, but I didn’t know how I could accomplish those things.

Miranda Beard:
So sometimes people can see your gifts more than you can see them and will give you those words of affirmation to help you push forward or be resilient, as you talked about street resilience, to use the negative words that have been spoken over you as a way of motivating you to say, “Well, they say I can’t do this, but somebody else told me I can.” So I have a choice here as an individual to decide, I’m I going to believe those that said I can’t, or am I going to make the choice to accept those words that say, that I can. It’s a choice. Life is choice-driven, but some children may not understand that or know that it is choice-driven. We have a choice.

Miranda Beard:
But as little children, sometimes we don’t understand or don’t know that because we see teachers, we see our parents in positions of authority, so whatever they tell us that’s what we believe. [crosstalk 00:13:12] So I started out believing I can’t do anything, I can’t be any … But as I got older and got out of my environment, I began to see and hear things from a different perspective and that motivated me to want to pursue what I could potentially be in life, but initially, it didn’t start out that way.

Dave Biesinger:
I was going to say, didn’t you have a dream about where you would end up? I recall from our conversations that you actually had a literal dream. I mean, we could say, “I have a dream” but you actually had a dream. Not like a figurative dream like an actual dream.

Miranda Beard:
An actual dream. I just said, I didn’t have self-esteem, self-motivation, or self-worth, at times I felt darkness so thick that I felt like I could cut it with a knife. When you are born in a certain area of a community and people don’t feel like anything good can come out of the community, you don’t see that you have something that you could possibly use to be successful in life. So here I am with this masculine sounding voice, I want it to sound like all the other girls in the community. I didn’t sound like everybody else, but I wanted to. But what I would do-

Dave Biesinger:
For the record, Miranda you have a freaking beautiful voice. You have an incredible voice. I mean, for the record, come on.

Christian Moore:
I would [crosstalk 00:14:42] power.

Dave Biesinger:
There is.

Miranda Beard:
I initially didn’t see it that way because when I would voice people would laugh at me, they would bully me. So I didn’t see it as something useful. In fact, at times I saw it as a curse. Those words were powerful enough and had such an impact on me that a lot of times I wouldn’t say anything. But going back to the dream, I had a dream that I would stand before thousands and thousands of people, at 12 years old I say this in a dream. And my thought was, how in the world can something like this happen? And I didn’t give up on it, although I had no idea how this was going to take place.

Miranda Beard:
I saw myself doing that and when I became president of the National School Boards Association in 2016 when I was doing the A novel speech and I stood on that stage, standing there about 8,000 people in the audience, I suddenly realized the dream I had at 12 years old was manifested at that moment. And talk about motivation, that really motivated me at that point. I said, “Oh my goodness, this dream I had at 12, all of a sudden I saw this thing come to pass right before my eyes. It different when you’re sitting on a set speaking to a camera, you can not see your audience. You cannot communicate with your audience-

Dave Biesinger:
So even when you were a broadcaster, like even when you were an anchor at that station and you were a broadcaster speaking to a really big audience, you still did not feel like your dream had been fulfilled?

Miranda Beard:
Absolutely not. Not at all.

Dave Biesinger:
Wow. But it was that moment when you took the stage in front of the National School Board Association that you felt the dream was fulfilled?

Miranda Beard:
That’s it. School Board leaders, Educators from all across the United States of America.

Christian Moore:
I need to go back and listen to that speech, but I’d like to know a little bit of what you … what was the emphasis of that speech?

Miranda Beard:
The emphasis was every child has value. The mustard seed as an example. And I’ve shared that in my speech and when I go and I speak to groups across the country. In that seed, mustard seed its potential. The potential is a tree that can grow 20 feet tall. So when I look at little children, as I think about my own life, I didn’t see my potential, but I needed help to water that potential, to provide me nourishment for that potential to bring out what was on the inside of me to the surface so I can be fulfilled. If you keep the seed on the surface and never planted in the right soil and give it the nutrients and the vitamins and the water that it needs, it will always remain a seed, and the potential will never be realized.

Miranda Beard:
I say a lot to people, oftentimes my objective in life now is to die empty. That means everything that I was born to do, my intention is to fulfill it before I leave this earth. I will not take my potential of any kind to the graveyard where it has no value there. I want people to realize Miranda Beard’s potential while I’m still alive on this earth to have an impact.

Miranda Beard:
Our gifts are not for us anyway. Our gifts are really for other people. That’s why I admire Christian, I admire you because you’re using your gifts and your talents and your abilities to serve other people. That’s really what this is all about and so as I was talking to leaders, I was trying to hold them accountable, letting them know it’s not about us. It’s really about using our gifts, talents, and abilities to serve others, to bring out the potential that’s on the inside of that. My existence is for a reason. And that’s what I try to emphasize with parents and teachers and educators, helping children to see and understand that they were born here with something very important that they are to do in life.

Miranda Beard:
That’s why Math is important. That’s why English is important. For example, if I asked a child who says, “I want to be an architect one day, I want to be an engineer, but they hate Math.” Now, we all know if you want to be great at this, you’ve got to learn Math. Well, you should learn Math in order to build to the next level. Why not tell that child, “Well, I know you can do this. You will be a great architect one day or engineer. But you know what, Johnny, you’ve got to learn how to do Math.” All of a sudden it shifts my thinking.

Miranda Beard:
There’s got to be a mental shift, a shift in the way some children thought about things in life or even their parents have thought about things. Some things are generational, Dave and Christian. Some things have been passed on for generation, after generation, after generation, and somebody has to help break the cycle of some of this mental conditioning that has told some groups of people that they are less than, or they can’t do, or can’t have, simply because of the way you look, or where you came from, or your gender, you cannot do certain things.

Miranda Beard:
And see, for me, after I was able to get that affirmation later in life, that motivated me to say, “I don’t care what anybody else says.” If I feel this is something I need to do, I am unstoppable. Codes were put in place to segregate or put people in certain categories to make sure they get or don’t get certain things. You see what I’m saying? Or I label you, “Oh yeah, she’s this or he’s that, and they can’t do this.” Those codes do those kinds of things that keep people separated. We’re all part of human rights. There’re resources out here for everybody.

Dave Biesinger:
Yeah, there’s enough role. It’s not a zero-sum game. The more people we have who are thinking and out there creating and striving, the more value they create for all of us. There’s not just one pie and we’ve got to make sure there’s enough pie for this person or that person. We’re all out here making the pie bigger every day. I think that’s one of the biggest false things that we’ve been taught as a human race is that there’s not enough for everybody. The more people who are successful, the more they feed their communities, and the more that we all have.

Miranda Beard:
And you know what? To thrive in certain communities, and I’ve often thought this and do my research and all of this. Some communities look like they’re thriving, they’re profitable, their homes look nice, their streets look nice, and then you go to other communities and it’s like, what happened? Why are these individuals not thriving and successful? Why are their communities, they look like they’re broke. Well, if people are not investing in their communities and they’re taking their monies and their resources to other places, then how can you build up a community? I said, Dave when you and I were talking the other day, you can take a dollar and change it over 12 times in a community and you will see the effects of all of that before it leaves the community. But you got to socialize children to understand that.

Dave Biesinger:
Yes. So Miranda, if you could wave a magic wand and instill one single belief in every community across America, across the entire world to have the biggest impact, what would that one idea be that you would implant in Intergenerational families?

Miranda Beard:
Every community, I don’t care whether it be, black, Latino, white, whatever the community, invest in your community, invest in your children as the future that will keep those communities thriving. Build businesses in those communities. And in other words, invest in those communities. Invest in the education, providing the resources, find equitable ways to create wealth in community, and then share, we can share.

Dave Biesinger:
Are we properly our children to be able to become business owners? I mean, we talk about social-emotional learning and obviously, that’s very important, but I don’t know that we’re teaching kids how to become entrepreneurs, how to start businesses. I mean, is that something we should be teaching kids in these communities?

Christian Moore:
And financial literacy, financial literacy is a huge thing too. It’s interesting, I’ve been talking lately with quite a few people in several school districts that there’s a lot of emphasis being put on the reality of a capitalistic society. Capitalism is a doggy dog. And are we spending enough time showing children, this is how economics work in America? And I know we’re talking about more global as well, but do kids know how to build economics? I’m 50 years old, I’ve only learned in the last two years all kinds of things about investment and dividends, and all this stuff. And I’m thinking, “I’m 50 years old, I’m just learning about this stuff, figuring this stuff out.” With the resources that I have, been an entrepreneur for 20 years, I barely understand some of this stuff. What are the odds that many of these kids across this country have access to this financial literacy stuff? And so anyway, it’s something I’m passionate about, we’re looking at doing more work in that area. But there’s a whole literacy around economics that our schools are not teaching.

Miranda Beard:
Well, [inaudible 00:25:13] children taught, get an education, you can get out of poverty. Go to college, that’s your ticket out. But they’re not taught how to take what they have learned and invest in the communities that they came from. They’re not taught that. They’re taught the things they need to know as far as Math and English and all of that, but they don’t know how to take a dollar and invest that dollar to compound it. Many of them don’t know how to invest that way. I wasted a lot of money on things I really didn’t need. Whereas I could have taken those dollars and would have been probably by now a millionaire, I know I would have been had I known how to invest what I was earning in the right way and not put it in some other things that may have made other people wealthy but didn’t help me.

Miranda Beard:
We’re not necessarily teaching them how to invest in the stock market or invest in companies, or in fact build your own company. There are some communities that teach their children early on, they started looking at their gifts, what they’re gifted to do. And they may like doctoring on a doll, for example, pretending to be a doctor or a nurse. Well, these parents will tell those children? Not only will you be a great doctor, but you will open clinics. You will have many practices, not just one practice, but you will have many practices. You will be a doctor. And they tell them that from the time they discover what that gift is in that child and start paying attention to it. They start investing in that child to pull out the potential of them being that great doctor with many practices.

Miranda Beard:
So they’re creating wealth, but they’re teaching their children early in life. In my background, I wasn’t taught any of that. My father was a sharecropper’s son and he got all the way to sixth grade, but my father was one who managed his money well because he had to; to take care of his family. So he would buy property sometimes and invest in this or that. But he didn’t understand annuities and FORM 1-K, and all these different things. He had no knowledge of these kinds of things. He had to stop his education because as a sharecropper’s son, what do you do? You got to work in the field.

Dave Biesinger:
You got to work. That’s right.

Miranda Beard:
You had to work. So your education is put on hold. Mom got all the way to 12th grade. So work was in their DNA, so to speak. But didn’t have that opportunity to get the education that they would’ve liked to have had because the opportunity they felt wasn’t there for them. But yet I had a grandmother who would work in other people’s homes for $12 a week. I didn’t say $12 a day. Not even $12 an hour. $12 a week, she would be so exhausted when she came home, she could hardly take care of her own family. My mother would have to step in to try to help my grandmother with some younger siblings in order for them to keep going. But she did what she had to do because my grandmother was not an educated woman because she didn’t have that opportunity.

Dave Biesinger:
Well, she was told from a very young age what her future would look like. There was a spell going back to kind of what we talked about early on in street resilience, there was a spell that was cast on your grandma and it and it locked her into a future and she didn’t know that there was anything else that she could do, right?

Miranda Beard:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). She did what she had to do. Let’s let me share something with you. When you look at community, when you look at people in general; number one, if I have a job and a business, I’m good. I’m street resilient, I can make it. But if I don’t have that job and I don’t have a business where I’m making a living or an income, the next thing for me to fall back on is the system, the government system for welfare and other means to take care of my family. Then if I don’t have the job, the business, or welfare-dependent on the government. I can’t get welfare because of certain things, then guess what I’m going to do? I will go underground and began to do criminal activities and criminal things to make sure I have the money that I need to take care of myself or take care of my family. That is the bottom line.

Dave Biesinger:
And any human being will do that.

Christian Moore:
Yeah, I saw that over and over in my childhood, growing up in my neighborhood outside of Baltimore, I saw that all the time. And people should never have to be in that situation with the resources we have. No one should be in that situation.

Dave Biesinger:
But people will do it. It’s natural.

Miranda Beard:
For some people live it every day.

Christian Moore:
Yeah, absolutely.

Dave Biesinger:
I mean, I don’t care who you are, any human being if they are put into survive or die situation, they will do what they have to do to survive.

Miranda Beard:
And that’s why understand to an extent what our president is wanting to do, and what some governors are wanting to do, and mayors, and leaders across the country. They understand that we don’t try to get things back to normal as quickly as we can. That’s why I played there is a cure. There is some kind of a vaccine so that people can get back to what they do, normal routine, their jobs, all of that. But they know too, there’s an undercurrent or underlying circumstance that people will start dealing with. Because if I don’t have a job, I don’t have money, and my babies are crying and they need something to eat, I’m going to do what I got to do. So I’m saying this now, I will do what I have to do to make sure my children get what they need.

Miranda Beard:
And that’s unfortunate because some people will come out and do things that they normally would not do, but they do it out of fear. The spirit of fear is running rampant in this country, this nation, and all over the world. When people get in a state of fear, they would do things that they normally would not do. But it’s a fear of not having enough resources. That’s why we’re running out of toilet paper. I went to the store one day, I couldn’t find toilet paper.

Christian Moore:
The only way I see us really working through this fear is to really understand at what level we really are interconnected. We really are one, and that fear lowers when we come together. That fear gets more and more intense when we see each other as different. I have, you don’t have, you’re going to take something from me, all of that increases fear. We have to start seeing a unity that we are all tied together because even the people who have the most, they’re going to be in a better situation if the people who are struggling the most have access to basic resources, have access to resources, and have opportunities to grow and to advance their lives. Everybody wins. Wherever you are on that spectrum, everybody wins if we can see that we’re all interconnected.

Christian Moore:
And this attitude of, “there’re those people”, I’ve gone, I always thought about 7 million miles around this earth. I’ve never met, “those people”, I don’t see our differences. People tell me there’s always differences between us, but going 7 million miles, I’m one of the few people I’ve literally met millions and millions of people. I’ve never met, “those people” and I don’t see the differences. And so, one of the things that I hope is possibly a silver lining in this COVID crisis is we start seeing humanity as one. Finally, for maybe the first time we can see we’re all interconnected. If someone can sneeze on the other side of the world and that can impact the whole world, then the world has changed. We’re a very small world now. We’ve got to see that we’re all dependent and interdependent on each other. And there is no such thing as, “those people.”

Miranda Beard:
But it goes back to the three things I pointed out. Job, business … It’s about security, it’s about resources, it’s about having what it needed to take care of yourself and your family. It shouldn’t be about the have and the have not because guess what? It’s growing, that divide or that gap is growing, those that have and those that have not. And so we’ve got to look at those kinds of things, and teach people … I used an example the other day, Christian with Dave, I said there was a man; this is a true story, a convicted felon, while he was in prison they didn’t teach him how to bounce back or be resilient back on the streets with how to get a job, because when you’re a convicted felon most people don’t want to hire you.

Miranda Beard:
This man could have gone in a closet or began going back to the criminal activity, but he made a decision that I’m not going to do that. I’m going to do the best I can. Get a broke down lawnmower, work on that lawnmower, and began mowing yards. He went from mowing the yard. Nobody would give him a job, he created his own job. We got to teach children how to create businesses, find something that the community needs, and give your services to it, and people will pay you. He began the to mow yards, and then he got lawnmower. He had so many yards that he began to take this money and opened up a daycare. He opened up multiple daycares.

Miranda Beard:
The man went from being a convicted felon with nothing and nobody giving him a job to a millionaire.

Christian Moore:
That’s awesome.

Miranda Beard:
He took his circumstances and turned it into something positive. Although, yeah, he was a convicted felon and still is. It’s part of his record. But he was able to take the knowledge and use the skills that he had, what he knew he could do, and provide a service for people, and that service people paid for, and he created businesses as a result of that.

Dave Biesinger:
That is a beautiful thing. I mean, I think that is the dream. That is the dream that we have for everybody who feels the pain of discrimination, who feels like they’ve been labeled. Whether that’s because of an action they’ve taken or whether that’s because of their voice.

Miranda Beard:
That’s right. If they’re getting the right information. If they’re getting those words of affirmation, if they’re being taught those things. As I said, some families teach their children early in life, but if I am part of a generation that has continually generation after generation understood nothing but poverty, understood nothing about welfare, understood nothing about mental anguish, wounds, living on the street. If that’s all I know, then that’s what I’m going to produce out of me because that’s what I know. But when somebody can change or give me a reason to try; that’s why I love why try, give me a reason to try, help me to understand that I can be resilient, give me some affirmation and some positive feedback and other ideas on how I can do things. Then I can take that information and start applying it. And when I see one that’s a success, it motivates me to move to the next level of success. I’ve got to see at least one success in order to move to the next level of success.

Miranda Beard:
So that’s why some children, they look at athletes, they look at musicians and they think, “Well, if I become a basketball player or football player, I can make it.” But the chances of them getting to that level, we all know that’s a small percentage that [inaudible 00:38:26] go to the NFL or become those great athletes or a singer, rapper, or a jazz artist. What is the percentage of them making it to that level? We’ve got to help them not only dream about becoming those things-

Christian Moore:
Becoming an entrepreneur. I think entrepreneurship has got to grow in this country. We see the people who tend to be thriving the most, they’re entrepreneurs. There are people who are in positions where they can make their own decision. They’re empowered, just like the story you told Miranda, is so powerful with that gentleman who was a felon there. But you have to specialize-

Dave Biesinger:
You know what’s so interesting about that Christian, and Miranda, you and I talked about this the other day. When you’re talking about someone’s specializing, a lot of times there’s something unique about them. So, for example, Miranda, your voice was unique and I think for a number of years you viewed that as a weakness, as something that was … you were bullied about it, or you were mocked about it. But actually, it became one of your strengths. And I think for a lot of people who feel the pain of discrimination, or who feel … a lot of people who could use street resilience, there’s something unique or different about them. And maybe that’s why they’re being mocked or made fun of or discriminated against. And that could be a source of strength.

Miranda Beard:
Well, I think so because if I had been told earlier on that my voice was my gift, then perhaps I would have been farther down the road. I believe I would have been than I am now. Now, I’m 63 years old, I wish I had known that when I was 12. I think I would have written books and probably been on a speaker’s circuit somewhere sharing my experiences, sharing what I know, helping other people become better speakers or communicators, or how to take knowledge and develop it. It’s those kinds of things that I see all now. Helping other people develop or stand before groups of people and say, you can do this. Using what I have to share with other people to help them do even better in their areas of expertise. And now people are calling on me to speak on equity issues, and I never would have thought, but I saw it.

Miranda Beard:
I didn’t know how it was going to happen and I didn’t dare share it with anybody in my family, or any of my friends, or people I was surrounded by because out of that fear that they would make fun of it because they were already making fun of me, and bullying me because of my voice. And I didn’t see it as an asset. I didn’t see it as something that I could use in the future to help somebody else. I really didn’t see that. So part of our job is to help children understand that they’re gifted to do something. That’s why I’m writing a children’s book, or I have written it. I’m trying to find an illustrator and a publisher; called, You Have a Gift. G-I-F-T, letting every child know regardless to your race, your ethnic background, your gender, what side of the track you’ve come from. You are gifted to do something powerful and significant in this world and let nobody stop you, nobody hinder you, nobody tell you, “you can’t do it” despite where you’ve come from.

Dave Biesinger:
Well, you’ve been so generous with your time. I think that’s the perfect note to leave us on. I think each of us has something unique about us. Oftentimes that can be something … the thing that makes us different is the thing that people mock us for. But it’s also the thing that we could give to the world to make the world a better place and lift ourselves out of poverty and create a business out of it. I think that all these ideas are connected together.

Miranda Beard:
Well, it’s been an honor. And if I have to say anything as we end this podcast, learning to channel those emotions when we feel disrespected in a positive way rather than a negative way, to bounce back from what we’re going through right now in this crisis. Showing love, showing respect, showing kindness, and forgiveness. And that’s one of the things I had to learn, forgiveness. Forgiving people that may have tried to stop me along the way, because there have been people along the way that tried to stand in the way to keep me from reaching the goals and doing the things that I need to do, but not focusing so much on the past. I can’t look at my past and continue to move forward into the future. We’ve got to press on, press on to what I call a higher calling.

Miranda Beard:
And sometimes you have to leave some people behind that try to stop you. Just like the gentleman I spoke about earlier when he was told he was a Monkey and couldn’t learn, this man became the best selling author of 30 [inaudible 00:43:44] books. And the very teacher that told him he was a Monkey ended up standing in a long line to get one of his books just to get his autograph on the book. We have to forgive one another as well as care for one another.

Miranda Beard:
I can’t keep thinking about what happened to me that will hinder me from moving forward. You can’t look in the rear view mirror and not run over something and cause something destructive if I keep looking back. So I have to keep looking to the future. And I believe this has positioned us to look in the future, to do things more equitably, to learn to help children learn at a level that they can learn. It’s just that they need lack of exposure to certain things. We need resources put in the right place. We can’t give everybody a 5’11 shoe and expect that shoe to fit. We’ve got to find ways to reach children earlier in life. Help our teachers with professional development through this. Helping them to learn digitally to help with children learning digitally.

Miranda Beard:
Some teachers are in that position where they never had to deal with this before. This was a [inaudible 00:45:05] they have not had to deal with before. We’ve got to create professional development to help our teachers in the future because there’s a chance that this could happen again.

Dave Biesinger:
Absolutely.

Miranda Beard:
But I also [inaudible 00:45:19] is an opportunity to use the digital learning aspect to help those children that have fallen behind, those children that drop out of school that can still learn, but they may not be able to learn in a regular school environment. This is an opportunity to develop something in that area to say, “Look, we understand you want to drop out, don’t drop out. We’re going to develop a plan where you can digitally learn and graduate and still be successful in life.” With that being said, this is great. I appreciate it so very much. You guys are doing a great job.

Dave Biesinger:
Well, Miranda, your voice, I have to just say, ironically enough, it is your voice that we just love hearing so much. You imbue your voice. It’s this deep, resonant, beautiful thing and it’s kind of a representation of your soul. You have the soul of a champion and it has been a real honor to have you on our show today. We just love you so much, Miranda. Thank you for spending some time with us. And, thank you for imparting of your wisdom and knowledge. If anybody wants to get ahold of you, how can they do that, Miranda?

Miranda Beard:
I’m on Twitter.

Dave Biesinger:
What’s your Twitter handle? Tell us your Twitter handle.

Miranda Beard:
Well, if they just type in my name, it will pop up. There’s not too many of me out there.

Christian Moore:
Well, I think this is going to evolve over the next two years, so buckle up for this ride, it’s going to be an interesting two years.

Miranda Beard:
I believe it. And the equity, that topic, I can go on and on and on.

Christian Moore:
It just became a hundred times more important.

Dave Biesinger:
That’s right.

Christian Moore:
So, that equity just became very important-

Miranda Beard:
Bye [inaudible 00:47:07].

Christian Moore:
… Hey, love you. Bye-bye. See you, my friend.

Miranda Beard:
You all know I’ll keep going if you keep talking to me. If you keep talking I’ll keep talking.

Dave Biesinger:
Love you, Miranda, thank you.

Miranda Beard:
But I appreciate you so much.

Dave Biesinger:
It’s incredible, thank you.

Miranda Beard:
I appreciate you, bye-bye.

Dave Biesinger:
Bye.

Christian Moore:
Bye.