Episode 7: Chelsea Good

Greg sits down with Chelsea Good, recent Penn State grad, to discuss her upbringing in New Zealand, moving to the other side of the globe, AI in education, and navigating fear vs want in 2026.

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Original music by Ham On A Stick

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:09

Hello and welcome to the Greg Woodman Podcast. I'm excited because today we have Chelsea Good, a Penn State graduate who just graduated a couple weeks ago from New Zealand. And Chelsea, welcome. Thank

Why Penn State?

SPEAKER_02 0:22

you. Chelsea, just to jump right into it, a little bit about your background. New Zealand, and here you are at Penn State, now a graduate.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 0:30

How'd you get here?

SPEAKER_01 0:31

That's an interesting question. I do have a little bit of an unconventional path. So I am from New Zealand, as you said. I did my first year at the Victoria University of Wellington in our capital city. And I came to Penn State in January of 2023, I think, on what was supposed to be a 12-month study abroad. Except I absolutely fell in love with the place and I never went home. And here I am, what, three and a half years later, graduated, and hopefully get to stay a little bit longer.

SPEAKER_02 0:57

And so your plans going forward?

SPEAKER_01 0:59

Mm-hmm. Again, interesting question. It is a little bit difficult being an international student. I get what's known as 12 months of OPT training. So I am authorized to work in America for 12 months. And then after that will require sponsorship. I do plan on hanging out in America for the next few years, but we'll have to see how that goes.

SPEAKER_02 1:20

And three and a half years here at Penn State, what are the takeaways?

SPEAKER_01 1:24

Oh, I mean, I'm the biggest fan of this place. I wouldn't have stayed if I wasn't. I think that Penn State just has this absolutely infectious energy that just grabs whoever has the pleasure of touching it. I had never experienced anything like being here. And I just wasn't willing to give that up. I mean, university back home is great. We have an incredible education, but it is very much just that. You you go to class and you take your you take your exams and you do your homework and you get your degree. Whereas I feel like Penn State is much more a lifestyle and much more an experience. And to me, that was so exciting.

SPEAKER_02 2:00

And your three and a half years here, this exuberant lifestyle you speak of, what are some of the things that captured you? Go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 2:07

I think that the biggest part for me was what you guys call college spirit. We just don't have that. I never heard that term, I never experienced that. And I've really tried to boil it down over the last few years, and I think it really comes down to size. I mean, as such a big country, you have these sports teams, right? And everyone has their sports team, whether it be a college or whether it be something else. And from that sports team comes rivalry, and from rivalry comes pride, and from pride comes what you call this college spirit. And we just don't have that back home. I I would never wear Victoria University of Wellington merch. I would never go watch a sports game. There's barely any teams you could even watch. Whereas here, there's just this deep set pride that, I mean, what, we are. We are Penn State, right? This whole idea that everyone is so proud to be from Penn State is something that to me is incredibly exciting.

SPEAKER_02 2:56

So you you were a big tailgator here?

SPEAKER_01 2:58

Oh, absolutely. I never learned the rules of football. I tried very hard, it's too complicated for me. I don't know why they made so many rules, but tailgating is something I could get behind.

SPEAKER_02 3:07

Did you go to the games? I did. And so you would be in the student section cheering, wearing white.

SPEAKER_01 3:12

100%. I never lasted past halftime, but I'm a big fan of the cheerleaders and the band at halftime, so I always stayed for that.

SPEAKER_02 3:18

That's great. And why did you select, even for the 12-month study abroad program, why did you choose Penn State?

SPEAKER_01 3:24

Yeah, I think that's an interesting question. I was given a list of, I'm not sure how many schools, maybe 10 to 15, and I looked them all up on TikTok, and there's this one video of the Penn State whiteout that my brothers were obsessed with. I think they're playing Mo Bamba in the background, and the crowd's going crazy, and there's like 100 and something thousand people, which is more than my city back home, all packed into the stadium. And it was just absolute peak American college lifestyle. It looks like every American movie I'd ever watched. And I fell in love with it on that video. I got here, it was even better in real life. So it was a bit of a random choice, but it was a good one.

SPEAKER_02 3:59

Wow. Mo what's the name of the song?

SPEAKER_01 4:02

I think it's Mo Bamba.

SPEAKER_02 4:03

It was the white art game.

SPEAKER_01 4:05

And the team's running out, everyone's going crazy. Yeah. My brother sent it to me.

SPEAKER_02 4:10

And then you chose Penn State. What was number two on your list?

SPEAKER_01 4:13

I don't even know what I put for number two or three. I think I got to pick my top three, but Penn State was number one, and clearly the other two weren't important enough to remember.

SPEAKER_02 4:22

And what did you study here at Penn State?

SPEAKER_01 4:24

So I had a major in agribusiness management, and then mine is in creative writing and entrepreneurship innovation. So a

AI In Education

SPEAKER_01 4:31

bit of a strange mix.

SPEAKER_02 4:31

Aaron Powell And now you arrived here at Penn State when AI was just taking off.

SPEAKER_00 4:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:37

And so in this moment of time, and it is June 6th, 2026. I mean, it's June 2nd, 2026. What was it like to experience AI and the impact on your college career?

SPEAKER_01 4:49

Yeah, I mean, I was the biggest laggard of AI ever. I was very resentful towards it. I was very judgmental towards people that would use it at first. And I've spent a lot of time exploring those opinions since. And it very much was resentment that came from jealousy. I was very upset that I went through all my high school years and all my first years of college and I had to do everything by hand and it was so hard. And then this incredible technology came in, and I felt like everyone had it a lot easier than I did. And so out of some moral high point that I thought I was standing on, I resisted it for a very long time. I thought it was taking the easy way out. And last semester a little bit, but this semester in particular, I have come around to it and explored that actually can, if you use it in the right way, it's not necessarily making life easier, but making you capable of so much more. It's not the easy way out if you use it in the right way.

SPEAKER_02 5:55

Well, I appreciate that insight. Now, the commencement speakers around the country who are speaking about AI, I don't know if you're following that, are getting booed. They're getting booed heavily by college graduates and some parents in the crowd. You know, and so those involved with AI are are in shock of like, why are college students booing any speaker that gets up there and say this is the biggest inflection point and this technology is going to create the next renaissance and they get booed. Have you followed any of that?

SPEAKER_01 6:28

I haven't seen that. Are they booing them because they support AI or because they don't?

SPEAKER_02 6:32

Because they support AI and they're trying to motivate, you know, commencement, let's, you know, go on to the world and conquer it, you know, and and and yet these speakers are in shock, and now it's like happening all over the country over the last couple weeks that people at a visceral level are just booing Eric Schmidt, you know, and and some of these other speakers. And so it's there's a real backlash happening amongst certain recent grads. And you had to go through it. And you you talked about your own kind of Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:00

I would I would think that perhaps I can't speak to everyone's opinion, but I would, if I had to hazard a guess, I would say it would probably be from something quite similar, like a an old school view that these kids are using this technology and they're not writing their own essays and they're not taking their own exams and they're taking the easy way out, they're not using any brain power. And sure that is one potential aspect of AI, and if you use it in the wrong way, I can see how that's very frustrating. But what we spent a lot of time talking about this semester is that when you have a tool like AI and you put it in the right hands and you educate someone on how to do that, you're capable of so much more. And that inflection point that you're talking about is so right because the education system is changing. What's the point in setting these paper or online exams where you can easily just look up the answer, you copy it in from AI? I agree no one's learning anything from that. But instead, if you take it from the perspective of instead being more creative or more original in your ideas, as opposed to just memorizing and regurgitating things, that that is where we're going. And I suppose that's scary. And when things change like that, people do do bite back. But I think you can only resist it for so long.

SPEAKER_02 8:06

Well, and so at the root of it, would is would you say it's fear? 100%. Now change is scary. Change is scary, and this tool is quite a change. And it's it's so 100%. It it that's why I wanted to say the date here, because you know, it's it's advancing so fast that a year from now, looking back at this podcast, we're gonna be chuckling a little bit, like we had no idea of the capacity of this tool. Like you, Chelsea plus AI, you know, I'm reading, can create a billion-dollar company now.

SPEAKER_01 8:38

That's a big change.

SPEAKER_02 8:40

And you know, what used to take thousands of employees, three people, like three high school kids just created a billion-dollar company by using AI chatbots that does market research. Yeah. And like they're the hottest thing ever, and are three kids in high school plus AI.

SPEAKER_01 8:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:54

It's unbelievable.

SPEAKER_01 8:55

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. In the right hands that can unlock so much capability, as opposed to viewing it as cutting corners. It's not necessarily taking the easy way out. I think we can do a lot with it.

SPEAKER_02 9:06

Yes. And so

Fear VS Want

SPEAKER_02 9:07

for our audience, um, Chelsea was in my class, an entrepreneurial leadership class this past semester, you know, and I asked you to lead a lecture on fear versus love. You kind of tweaked it to fear versus want.

SPEAKER_03 9:20

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 9:20

And you did an amazing job. So if AI, if we're afraid of it, in context of like the the lecture and the seminar that you gave to 45 students, where where is this fear versus want thing? And and and speak a little bit about how you deal and mitigate fear as it relates to AI in your own life at this point in the snapshot in your movie.

SPEAKER_01 9:43

Yeah. So for a little bit of context on that lecture, I based it around this book that I've read that's become such a big life, such a big part of my life this semester, Victor E. Frankel's Man's Search for Meaning. And so I think I pulled out the quote from the book, sort of like the central thesis of the book, a man who has a why can be almost anyhow. And that's how that whole fear versus want title came around for it. And I think that, like I said, change is scary. But a lot of the things that I talked about in this lecture was you can be afraid of something, but the biggest part of overcoming that fear is finding a reason that makes it worth it. So for something like AI, yeah, change is scary. The education system's gonna change, the workforce is gonna change, gosh, our day-to-day lives are gonna change. But if you can find a want, a reason for using this AI, perhaps it is that you can create more things, or you can start these million-dollar businesses, or you can bring to life a passion project. If you can find something that is your want, that is your why, that is your reason, and to you that means enough, that is the reason to get over the fear. If you hold that reason in your heart, sure it is scary and you're not discounting the fear, change is scary. We've established that. But if you have something that means enough to you that you can wake up and face that fear every day, you keep that in your mind, it makes it so much easier.

SPEAKER_02 11:06

And you mentioned to the class too a qu a famous quote from New Zealand.

SPEAKER_01 11:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:10

What was that quote again?

SPEAKER_01 11:11

So it's a quote from someone called Tana Umonga, and he was a rugby player. I think he was the captain of the All Blacks at one point, but don't quote me on that. And it goes, I can't teach you want, I can't want for you. Which is very fascinating. We we have a tradition in my family, the back of the toilet door, we write quotes on. So you sit on the toilet and in the morning you look at all of these inspirational quotes, and that one's right in the center of the door. So I've spent a ridiculous amount of time looking at this and pondering it. And to me, I can't teach you want is an important thing. You can give someone all of the skills that they need to do something. You can give them whatever assignments and make them meet deadlines, but at the end of the day, you cannot force that inspiration into them. You can try as much as you want, but when it comes down to it, want is something that's internal. And to achieve something, you have to want it bad enough.

SPEAKER_02 11:56

And it's very interesting about your bathroom. Yeah. And is it a whiteboard in there?

SPEAKER_01 12:01

No, it's just a painted door. It's written in Sharpie.

SPEAKER_02 12:04

And so you each write quotes on it?

SPEAKER_01 12:06

Yep, it has to be dad's handwriting only. But you can submit the quotes, he can review them, and you're lucky enough it makes the cart.

SPEAKER_02 12:13

Well, interesting enough, I had on our bathroom wall quotes also. Um, but they were pre-printed. Okay. You know, there's about 80 inspirational quotes, and my children have memorized all of them.

SPEAKER_03 12:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:25

And in a lot of their speeches and swimming banquets, whatever, they'd always use one of the quotes. Yeah.

A New Zealand Upbringing

SPEAKER_02 12:30

So interesting. Talk up talk a little bit about your mom and your dad. Aaron Powell In what context? Well, you are this student, and and I had 90 students this semester, and and you you stood out just as just this very unique, you know, class favorite, you know, in winning all the cases and and everything else. And so I always, as I get to know students and I and you had to write a life plan, you know, I always kind of go upstream and say, well, I want to know more about their parents because they they they seemingly produced this very unique, this unique product called you.

SPEAKER_03 13:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:03

Um and so this quote thing is very interesting, is that you were at what age did you start reading these quotes?

SPEAKER_01 13:13

I honestly couldn't even tell you. They've been on that door as long as I can remember. We actually just built a new house on the property and we took the door from that bathroom, this old, oh gosh, it's gotta be over a hundred years old, the old house. We took the door and we've put it in this new house. It's not even a functional door anymore. It's just, I don't know, a wall decor.

SPEAKER_02 13:33

Well, and what was fascinating to me is, you know, I'd I'd attempt to have a lecture and I'd attempt to have the class engage in what we talk about why things, the why versus the what versus the how.

SPEAKER_03 13:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:46

And and and my thesis often is most college students have been raised to be how people, to be able to memorize, to be able to spit things back and get A's. You know, you always came up after class and threw a New Zealand quote at me or a Victor Frankel quote and said, you know, this is what I think you were trying to say, Greg. And I was blown away that philosophically you were at this why level in a class of how people. And and and can we attribute it back that you were studying these quotes at age seven and just, you know, these little parables that you would wrestle in your mind? It activated the why part of your brain, the strategic part, the philosophical part of your brain in a world that memorizes. And that's why I get intrigued with a student like you, and then I start asking you questions and start reading your stuff closer, and then it always gets back, I have found, to the parents.

SPEAKER_00 14:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:38

Is that you were raised in a unique environment that allowed you to be in flow at a younger age versus just being a robotronic test taker.

SPEAKER_01 14:46

Yeah. I think for sure. I mean, we talked a lot about in the class, it was an engineering class, obviously, about these kids that have been put into boxes their whole life and perhaps study certain things because that's what their parents wanted them to do, and have never really explored that. There are there are other alternatives and other paths that you can take. I'm very lucky that I come from a family with parents who have supported whatever path I wanted to take, which has allowed me this creative freedom to explore different things, um, which I'm very grateful for. I think that in terms of the context of my parents and instilling this why thinking into me at a very young age, a big part of my life growing up was that every night for dinner, the family sat down together at the table. It doesn't matter what you're doing, what extracurriculars you have, we make a time for dinner every single time. And we sit down and we're not allowed to have any devices, and we play a game called Favorite Part of the Day. And we've played this every night for my whole life. And you have to say your favorite part of the day, your least favorite part of the day, and then what you learned about your day. It doesn't matter if we have guests, they have to play too. It's like a it's a rule of the good family. And I think that I've never really considered perhaps the aspect that had on my life was just a part of daily routine. But I think that taking the time to sit down as a family like that, have open dialogue, talk about perhaps what your favorite was, what your least favorite, and then what you learned combined with these quotes and this open discussion. I think you're definitely right. I grew up in an environment where why thinking was not only encouraged but celebrated.

SPEAKER_02 16:18

Wow. And your last name is good.

SPEAKER_01 16:20

It is.

SPEAKER_02 16:21

The rules of the good family. 100%. I think there's your book.

SPEAKER_00 16:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:25

And your parents can co-author with you. Yeah. And you can unlock the secret to the meaning of life. Yeah. Victor Frankel would tip his head. The good life. The good life. And it's so simple recipe that you were sitting down every night around a family dinner that was teaching gratitude. It was teaching just communication, you know, and and so interesting. Interesting. And so a little more about the philosophy that your mom and dad, where did that structure come from of this recipe for the good life, the good family that is just a very simple recipe to follow, that very few people are doing that now.

SPEAKER_01 17:06

Yeah. I think that's interesting. I'm not sure if it was something that they grew up with or not, or whether it's something that they established together. But I I know it's not a thing that a lot of my friends had, and they loved coming over to our house for dinner. My mom's love language is cooking for people, so she loves to feed, and these people would come over and sit down at the table with us and talk about how, you know, every night for dinner they all eat at different times, or they all eat different meals. And I always thought that was so weird because I'd never had anything else. And reflecting now, obviously, I'm in college, I'm on the other side of the world from my family, and I cook dinner for myself every night. It's still something that I love to do. I invite my friends over for dinner all the time. I think that a meal is something that should be shared, and it's such a good opportunity to connect with other humans. Um, and it's definitely something that I would continue with my own family. I think that you're right, it's such a simple thing, but it is really important. I mean, humans need connection and to share it over a meal at the end of the day and reflect on your day, that's really important.

SPEAKER_02 18:05

So if your mom's love language, and I love that expression, is to gather and serve food and have community and connection. What's your dad's love language?

SPEAKER_01 18:15

I think first of all, to touch on mom, there's a concept in Māori society called monarchy tonguer, and it basically means hospitality in a basic sense. And it's this whole idea that people sit down over Kai, which is the Māori word for food, and sheer connection. And my mum's Australian, which is, I mean a little bit of context, but she speaks basically fluent Māori and she's adopted this culture so wholeheartedly as her own. And monarchy tonga is now one of her values. I think that if mum's value is monarchy tonga, I'm not sure what dad's would be. We, as I said, we just built this new house out at Pukahina, which is which is our family home now, and part of it has been creating this staircase. This is gonna be quite a random story, but part of the staircase is each step has a carving on the base of the step, and it's a Mori shape, and each Mori shape represents a different thing. Things like Fana, which is family, and Aroha, which is love, Monaki Tanga, which is basic human connection. And so as a family, we sat down and talked about what things we value and what things we find important, and then got a Mori artist to translate that into a visual representation, and then carved it into this staircase that you have to put your feet on every single day. So I'm not sure that I technically have the words for what dad's vision for life is or what mum's vision for life is, but more so that they spend a lot of time thinking about what it is.

SPEAKER_02 19:38

So they measure twice, cut once, and they're very strategic versus tactical.

SPEAKER_01 19:43

Yeah, very, very deliberate. 100%.

SPEAKER_02 19:47

And so wow. And how do you spell it?

SPEAKER_01 19:51

Monarchitonga. I'm not even sure I could say it. And that's an Australian So our native people in New Zealand are called the Maori, M-A-O-R-I. Um, and that's one of the cultural words. I don't think it translates directly to hospitality, but that's the closest.

SPEAKER_02 20:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 20:06

The closest translation.

SPEAKER_02 20:08

Okay, so we went upstream a little bit to find out the the creation and why you are who you are in kind of your value system. So here you are at Penn State.

SPEAKER_03 20:18

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 20:19

White out, uh, 50,000 students, you're sitting side by side with people largely from Pennsylvania or the mid-Atlantic states, New Jersey, Virginia. What's it like being here surrounded by people of a different culture in different value systems, it seems.

SPEAKER_01 20:37

I think this is something that I definitely didn't expect, and what a lot of other people don't expect. We both speak English. Obviously, English is my first language, English is your first language. But the cultural differences was something that absolutely caught me off guard. I thought that, you know, I'm going, I'm going to America. I've seen plenty of American TV shows. I know what it's gonna be like, I know the way they're gonna speak, we can communicate very clearly. But the cultural differences are absolutely astounding, and I found that over the past three years I've developed what I like to call my American filter, and I don't even really notice that I've put it on until I go home and I find it, you know, sort of melting away. But in order to connect with Americans differently, better, I suppose, I have to phrase things in a certain way, and I have to filter the things that I'm saying and shape the context that I present them in. And it did take me a while to figure that out, probably about 12 months. Uh, there's so many different things that I could say, but I think the biggest is that back home we're a lot more direct and confrontational than I found Americans are here. And I spent my first semester here and I didn't realize that and didn't feel for myself. And I had one particular instance where I was talking to this new person that I met, and they turned around and said to me, you know, are you French or are you just really, really rude? And I looked at them and I went, Oh wow, I'm definitely not French. And after that moment, I had to sort of reevaluate the way that I was saying. Things because I didn't realize that I could say stuff back home, not even what I was saying, perhaps the way I was saying it, and that Americans weren't receiving it in the same way. So it's definitely been a lesson in cultural differences, learning to adapt here.

SPEAKER_02 22:14

Well, okay. And so you come here to Penn State and the cultural differences, and uh interesting that you were considered abrasive or assertive because you're very direct.

SPEAKER_00 22:23

Very much so.

SPEAKER_02 22:24

And and so you you you flourish here at Penn State. You know, it's you you shared with me that you've never gotten a B. You're a 4-0 student.

SPEAKER_00 22:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:34

And and and you kind of rock just about every class you were in. You became a MC for your college, you were a marshal at your graduation. So you you come into this new environment and you and you thrive and you flourish. Why?

SPEAKER_01 22:49

I think I just like want so much out of life, which sounds like such a cop-out answer. But I came came to America, I packed up my life at 18 into two suitcases. I said goodbye to my parents. Never been on a plane by myself before. And I stepped foot off, and I think I flew into Chicago first of all. And I'd never seen an airport that big in my life, especially not by myself. And I didn't know a single person in this whole big wide country. And I just arrived here, and it was this fresh start and this clean state, and and I could do whatever I wanted. And so I decided that I wanted to do everything. And I had this newfound zest for life. I I've always, you know, sort of had my finger in multiple pies at once. But I came to Penn State and suddenly there's all of these extracurriculars that I'd never had back home, and all of these sports games that I could go watch and all of these cool classes that I could take. And you know, I'm on the other side of the world from my family, and I've sacrificed so much to be here. Why would I not want to make the most of it? And so that's 100% been my philosophy. I'm very much a yes person, sometimes a little bit too so. I I do tend to take on a lot of things, but if I'm gonna be all the way over here, I'm gonna say yes to as much as I can.

SPEAKER_02 24:01

And so rattle off some of the things you said yes to, you know, from swimming to whatever.

SPEAKER_01 24:06

Mm-hmm. Some of the random things that I've been involved in.

SPEAKER_02 24:09

And and and and not only random, but you've excelled at.

SPEAKER_01 24:12

So I am on the club swim team, which has been one of the best decisions I ever made. I've been able to see so much of the country through that, which has been incredible. Uh, I'm also on the agri marketing team, part of the NAMA National Agri-Marketing Association. That is a really cool extracurricular that I only picked up in the last two-ish years, where we get to create a product from scratch that benefits farmers in any way you choose to, and then you get to go compete against the rest of the country, which has been really exciting. I also have only just picked up this creative writing minor this semester, actually. Um, I finished all my classes for my major and all of my GNEDs last semester, and again, I wasn't ready to go. Mary Hit can't seem to get rid of me. So I added on these two miners, entrepreneurship and creative writing, and have been in this sort of very intense creative workshop all semester. And so part of that, I did get one of my stories published in two journals, which was really exciting. And I've just finished writing my latest poetry collection, which has been sent out to journals, so waiting to hear back about that. I don't know. I mean, entrepreneurship. I took all of the entrepreneurship classes this semester, and I've been sort of running this singular next generation insulin pump across all three of them, which is another random side quest that I've been on lately.

SPEAKER_02 25:30

And in my class, your your cases both won. And we always have a question of the 45 students who is the most entrepreneur-minded presenter, you know, person you want to work with on the next case, and you overwhelmingly dominated the votes from these students, which fascinated me. And uh

Bloodlines

SPEAKER_02 25:50

So talk about this literary piece that you submitted and was published and the topic that you wrote about.

SPEAKER_01 25:55

Yeah. So the it's titled Bloodlines. It's a nonfiction piece. Traditionally, I am a fiction writer, that's why I added the creative writing minor. I'd I'd never written something about me in my life, and I had to take this nonfiction class, and our final assignment was that you had to send off one of your pieces to a few publishing agencies. I honestly forgot about it until I got the emails back, but I was super excited and it reinvigorated the sort of energy for me, and it's why I did end up sending my poetry collection off. But it was titled Bloodlines, and it was a mix between a visual and a written piece, so it's very deliberately presented on the page. Presented almost like a family tree genome sequence connection thing with me at the top, my two parents, sorry, at the top, and arrows connecting them to me and my two brothers. And it's all about how my family relates in my eyes to the topic of blood. I went last summer to get my blood taken with my mum because I didn't know what my blood type was, and I thought that I that was a very fascinating topic, and I couldn't believe that I didn't know what it was. And I had this idea in my head that it would be something really rare, which is kind of random. I mean, I think you'd want your blood type to be common because if anything happens, you'd want to have someone that could help you with common blood, but in my head, I had this like deep desire to have this really rare blood type. So we went to get them tested, and I didn't pass the qualifications. I have a quite rare genetic heart condition that comes from my mom, actually. So we weren't able to get our blood taken, and I never found out what my blood type is, and I have no idea what it is to this day. And so I wrote this piece exploring the idea that I didn't know what my blood type was, but I knew what blood meant to me. And so, what did my family mean to me within the lens of blood? Which is kind of random, but it was a very explorative piece, and I enjoyed writing it very much, and I learned a lot about myself and my family throughout it, and obviously other people liked reading it too, which was quite a bonus.

SPEAKER_02 27:46

That's great. Now, you also have some ink on your arm tied to speak to that a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 27:51

So, this is again a moldy custom, very much similar to the carvings that we have on the steps. Uh, the traditional one is called a tamokor, but because I don't have a lineage of moldy blood, it's called a kidatuhi, which is explaining a white person's story through Mori means. And it is a very cultural practice back home. I sat down with an artist, her name is Sarah Palmer Pingali, she's a wonderful Mori artist, and you sit there and have a conversation very much like what we're having right now, and you tell her about, you know, my family and my lifestyle, my ancestry, my connection to Mori culture, where I live, the values that I hold dear, the things that are important to me. And I lay down and two and a half hours later I looked up and this was on my arm. So she freehanded the whole thing. It's essentially a visual representation of what it is to be Chelsea and what this whole picture of who I am is. It grows with your life, which is pretty cool. You know, once I get my own family and I achieve my own things, I sit down and update it. Uh, but it's something that's very special to me. It's such a great conversation starter, first of all. I get to talk about New Zealand, I get to talk about my culture, but it really truly is a visual representation of what it means to be Chelsea.

SPEAKER_02 29:03

Wow.

Choosing A Full Life With Cardiomyopathy

SPEAKER_02 29:04

And you mentioned a heart issue. Speak to that a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 29:09

So I have what's known as arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy or ARVC, which is a quite rare genetic heart condition that is one of the only ones that gets worse with exercise, which is quite fascinating. I mean, most heart conditions, exercise helps. Uh, it comes from mum. My grandma has it as well, but she never exercised to the extent that it was discovered. Mum used to do iron, and she ran the Oxfam 100 kilometers and all of this stuff, and one day she got really sick and went to hospital, and then we discovered it was this, and all of us kids had to get tested, and I tested positive for the gene, and neither of my brothers did, which was quite fascinating. It's extremely rare in general, more so in women, and it tends to run through the line of women in our family. And obviously, we talked about how I swim, and I was basically told that I'm not allowed to swim anymore, and the more that I exercise, the worse it's gonna get, and swimming, competitive swimming in particular, is a very intense sport. And I guess this again comes down to this whole fear versus love thing. And I had to sort of make the decision that I could stop swimming and perhaps protect my heart, and obviously that's what everyone in my life told me that I should do because they love me very much, and I'm lucky to have that. But I love swimming and I love competing and I love exercising, and it's so good for me, it's so good for my mental health, it's so good for my life. And so you weigh up the fear and the love, and in this case the love one, and swimming's not the kind of thing that I'm willing to give up.

SPEAKER_02 30:38

So And so literally, when you swim and you competed at nationals this year, I believe broke a record.

SPEAKER_01 30:44

Yes, a club one just just for the skill.

SPEAKER_02 30:47

But you're you you're you're love versus fear, you're taking the risk that this is hurting your heart and shortening your life.

SPEAKER_01 30:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:54

And you're opting to do that.

SPEAKER_01 30:56

100%. Essentially, every time my heart rate gets over 160 beats per minute, roughly 80% of my max, it does essentially irreversible damage to the right ventricle of my heart. But what are you gonna do?

SPEAKER_02 31:11

I have a heart issue and I choose to run also. So we're we're in the same cardio club kind of thing there of either we're smart or stupid. Yes to be determined.

SPEAKER_01 31:21

I mean, you know, you could live a slightly shorter life, but it's more fulfilled, or you could live a little bit longer, but perhaps not have the quality that you enjoy. And I mean, you weigh it up, and to me, that's what came out on top.

SPEAKER_02 31:35

There you go. Now you talk about your two brothers. Yes. Because they were birthed by the same bloodline of your parents and lived in the same environment, walking on those steps, looking at the looking at the slogans and the philosophy. Speak to them. Are they are they versions of Chelsea? Are they different?

SPEAKER_01 31:53

We're all very, very different. Uh we're all two years apart. I'm the eldest, so I'm 22. I have a 20-year-old brother and an 18-year-old brother. And we're all very much the same person, different font, I think is a great way to describe it. Someone told that to me once, and I I love that description. We each have our different avenues of specialty or passion or love or want. Uh, and we all give our own to that, but they're all very different. Uh, I think that growing up with brothers is a very unique experience. Uh I I mean the age that they're at at the moment, lovely. We get along so well. We're all beautiful communicators, very empathetic people, but we fought miserably growing up. Absolutely fought, like very physically.

SPEAKER_02 32:38

Um that was encouraged by your parents.

SPEAKER_01 32:41

I'm not too sure about encouraged. We did get to a stage where there's obviously three of us, so usually it's two of us are fighting and one gets to be the referee, and we did get to the stage where we would formalise it and put the gloves on and take it out, which I'm not sure if it benefited or harmed us, but I think that growing up with brothers is a very interesting thing. I wouldn't trade it for the world. I would never want to have a sister. I tell everyone that always. I think that growing up with boys toughened me up a lot, for sure, and just gave me a very unique perspective on life. I think that boys, obviously, boys and girls think in different ways. And, you know, I always had mom, that was my my girl exposure, but growing up with the boys, I mean, what did I describe them to you as feral, my feral brothers? They're wonderful and they're very exciting, and they've taught me a lot about life, but yeah.

Life as a Recent College Grad

SPEAKER_02 33:29

Okay, so here you are, just graduated last month, and you have your life in front of you.

SPEAKER_00 33:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:35

And you certainly I read your life plan. Yes. And uh we had 15 weeks of various prompts, and and with someone with such vast skills, such a solid value base, what's it like to have so many options ahead for you?

SPEAKER_01 33:50

I think that it's a very scary thing. I think that I'm very grateful, as I said, to have grown up in a family where my parents accept whatever I choose to do. And so I have had the freedom to explore all of these things. Uh, but suddenly, you know, I've gone through the school system and and life is very small when you're in school, you get your assignment and you complete it, and you get to the end of the semester, and then there's the next semester, and and the future is very short term, and you have goals to achieve, and you tick off all of these boxes, and then suddenly I've graduated and I have the rest of my life ahead of me, and I have no idea what I want to do. And I think, as you said, I I have a wide range of passions and a wide range of interests and perhaps a wide range of skills, and so it's a matter of what do I put my mind to? You know, I ha I have a lot of passion to give, and I have a lot of I have a very competitive nature, and so what I put my mind to, I would hope that I would excel at. But how is one supposed to decide that? There's so many years ahead of me, and so many opportunities, and so many choices that I I sort of hit this wall of wow, what do I commit to? And I still don't have the answer to that.

SPEAKER_02 34:55

Well, let me let me read you a quote. Yeah. It's uh and it's a back to the fear versus love thing. And this is by Marion Williamson, and she wrote a book, A Return to Love. And I just want to get your response to this situation or inflection point in your life. You know, our deepest fear is not that we are an inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. And then it goes on and I pick up. You're playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. So I'm curious, what does that quote mean to you?

SPEAKER_01 35:42

I think that's a very inspirational quote, first of all, but also something that's very prominent in today's day and age here in America, but even so back home, perhaps more so, perhaps. Uh another cultural difference between America and New Zealand is that back home in New Zealand we have what we call the tall poppy syndrome. And I think the best way to describe it is that if you had a field of poppies and one poppy was taller than the rest of them, as the poppy, you're supposed to cut yourself down so you're the same height as everyone else, before someone else can come along and cut you down because, you know, we all should be equal in the end. And so New Zealanders inherently have this opposition to presenting yourself as anything more than the people around you. You know, it's seen as very rude to brag about yourself, very inappropriate to share your successes. And this has created so many cultural issues. There's so many papers on it, so many studies on it. It's very bad for the mental state of the younger generations. But I think that aside from New Zealand, it's something that people deal with in today's day and age in general. And, you know, I've just graduated and I'm trying to get a job. And it's very difficult to flip the script and sit down with these employers and say, you know, you should hire me because I'm amazing and I can do this and I can do that. Whereas I think that when you're in a situation with your peers, you're taught to perhaps dampen that and to play it down. You know, how'd you do on the test? Oh, I was fine. I probably could have done better. Whereas inside you could perhaps be very proud about it. So I think that's perhaps one of the things that is most wrong with today's society is that we're taught you shouldn't talk about yourself like that, where successes should be celebrated, not hidden away.

SPEAKER_02 37:18

Well, you have so much, and you said it to serve, to give.

SPEAKER_01 37:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:21

And and so what do you think is the way you're gonna find flow to maximize your vast skill set and your value system where you can give more you know, and I always go back, I'm watching a lot of documentaries about the Beatles.

SPEAKER_00 37:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:37

You know, they have so much footage of those guys coming up with their songs and they're in fighting and and how George Martin did this, and you know, it and so I'm just fascinated that those guys from Liverpool, you know, age 16, 17, created, you know, 400 songs that are the best in the world. You know, four guys coming together and and and and they seem to be in flow, and then they break up, you know. And but, you know, so so what if you're Paul McCartney?

SPEAKER_01 38:05

I mean, I think it comes down to this whole crisis that I had at the end of your class. We'd spend all this time talking about why. And I had the best time in this class. I was I was the biggest adopter of it. And I was like, you know, yeah, I've got my why. And then suddenly I'm graduating and I have to get a real job. And why seems so big and scary now? And I face this big crisis. I think the easiest way that I can break it down in terms of finding flow state or whatnot is that you can have your one big life why. But sometimes it's okay to just wake up in the morning and find your why for that day. And to someone like me, that's a lot easier to comprehend, it's a lot easier to digest, and it's a lot easier to face that I can wake up in the morning and perhaps I don't have a huge philosophy for life, and maybe today I'm not going to have that. But if I can just find my purpose for that one singular day, then that's okay. And that's what I'm starting to realize is that yes, I have to get a job and yes, I have to have a career, but what I do today is not necessarily what I'm going to be doing in five, 10, 15, 20 years. Committing to something like that, you can give it your all, but it doesn't have to be all of you. And I can pivot and I can wake up one day and realize, you know, I'm not in flow state anymore. And and quitting isn't necessarily quitting. It's not failure, it's instead pivoting and finding something else. But as long as each day you have a little bit of a focus on what your why is for that day, I think that's good enough. Or I'm telling myself that.

SPEAKER_02 39:30

No, you just describe design thinking. Yeah. It's the iterative process, minimal viable product. You know, you're always getting new data points, and you reserve the right to pivot, change, weave, and bob.

SPEAKER_00 39:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:41

But what's fascinating to me is you've gone through an entrepreneurial leadership class. You know, and the hallmark of the class is you can work outside of traditional boxes. You can create the magic of and. It's not either or. You can do both. You know, and it that's often entrepreneurs think there's a sucker's choice if you have to go either or why not do both? Why not look at what's flow and you love to travel, you you love freedom, you know, you know, and that's the hallmark of what entrepreneurial leadership is about creating an existence where you can have it all, yeah, make money, be in flow state, have freedom, continually iterate and and weave and bob and kind of meet the market as long as you're market sensitive.

SPEAKER_03 40:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:26

You know, and so you you, and that's why I'm so delighted to have you on this podcast at this snapshot of your movie, is you have a a whiteboard in front of you now, and you have so many options and you're gonna get so many offers now that you've decided not to get your MBA and get into the job market. So I wanted to capture on film, because we want to track you now going forward, of like what what X are you gonna put on the pipe as Steinweitz did for Henry Ford? Like, we we're only just a collection of our strategic decision making.

SPEAKER_00 40:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:59

And and hearing how you were brought up by your parents, and boy, I love the the whiteboard and the steps and the bloodlines and and and the community and connection you had at dinner. You know, so I I've also studied that people in your situation, high performers, you know, unique special skills you have, it does cause a lot of anxiety and pressure because you have more options than most. You can go into marketing, you could go into product development, you can go into and you have so many opportunities as you're looking at New York City and jobs. Speak a little bit to the anxiety and the pressure that you have to check another box called a prestigious position and secure income, and then you have to get your visa. You know, what what's that pressure like?

SPEAKER_01 41:44

I I have always put a lot of pressure on myself. As as we've said, I've been quite a high achiever because I am very competitive and I have very high standards for myself. Um, and that's always been an internal thing for me. Uh, never really come from other people. And I think that when you're in school, that's very easy to cope with because the thing you have to achieve is to get good grades, and that's very simple. Uh, you have that end goal in mind, and then we're talking a lot about how I've just graduated and suddenly the end goal isn't necessarily there. The end goal, I suppose, is getting a job, and there's no learning outcomes for that. You can't tick off that and get an A in that. And so, what does it mean to get a good job? Is it one that has a high-paying salary? Is it one that's in a cool city? Is it one that allows me the freedom to travel and be creative and do the things that I love? And to be suddenly faced with this big wide world where I don't have that direction anymore. I need to create my own direction is very scary because that internal pressure is still there. I still want to succeed, but I'm not sure what I need to succeed at. And so it's sort of going in this big spiral of I want to do something successful, I want to impress myself, I want to live up to my own standards, but I'm not sure how to get there. And so I think that that's one of the biggest struggles for me going from school into the big wide world is suddenly it's very open, and I do have a lot of opportunities and I have a lot of choices to make. And you gotta start somewhere, I suppose. Just gotta take that leap.

SPEAKER_02 43:08

Well, and getting to know you over 15 weeks is that you know, and I suffer the same thing. You don't wanna get locked into something where you then have to say no to other things.

SPEAKER_01 43:19

Yeah, very much so.

SPEAKER_02 43:20

And then you've got to you know, go into a big company that's 40, 50, 60 hours a week, especially as a competitor as you are, you're gonna you're gonna go all in.

SPEAKER_00 43:28

100%.

SPEAKER_02 43:29

But you know that if you say yes to that, you're saying no to this freedom on your ability to pick up and travel, yeah, and and you know, you're gonna be in a box.

SPEAKER_01 43:37

Yeah, I mean, as as we've said, I like to have my finger in multiple pies at once. I've had all these extracurriculars on the go. I've sort of always I always operated 110%, but across a lot of different things. And I think that's very true. I a part of this fear that I have internally is that choosing one of these routes feels to me like I'm blocking off all of the others. And so I'm at this cross. Road really looking down all of these paths, and I have to take a step down one of them. And I suppose it is a matter of finding this and. Yes, I can have this, and how can I have this as well? And it's quite a juggling act, but it's something I'm exploring at the moment.

SPEAKER_02 44:14

And and what's the stress level?

SPEAKER_01 44:16

It's pretty high.

SPEAKER_02 44:18

And that's all self-imposed.

SPEAKER_01 44:20

100%. Yeah. It's pretty high. It's crunch time.

SPEAKER_02 44:22

Trevor Burrus, and what advice would you give to people who are going through similar decision-making stress? Yeah. And however, you did say if you use design thinking that life is an experiment, it's a laboratory. If you say yes and do this for so long, you also reserve the right to say no and then switch jobs.

SPEAKER_00 44:40

100%.

SPEAKER_02 44:41

And that's what most people are doing now. They're not they're jumping around a little bit until they find where they fit.

SPEAKER_01 44:48

I mean, I think that I've been really trying to tell myself that lately because it's not something that I necessarily pictured for myself. Uh my original thought process is that it's a failure if you get a job and you don't like it and you don't want to do it anymore. I mean, it's called quitting. You quit your job, and I just don't like that phrasing in general. But I've been trying to tell myself this design iterative thinking process. And I think that the biggest thing that's helping me with that is sitting down for these conversations with people like you, Greg. But the biggest part of my last few weeks has been getting anyone and everyone on the phone to give me advice and to talk me through it and to connect me to other people and to help. As I said before, like the baseline of being a human is connection. And when you get stuck in your own head like that, the best thing you can do to get out of it is to let the words come out of your mouth.

SPEAKER_02 45:31

Well, and back to the Mary Williamson quote um, return to love.

SPEAKER_00 45:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:35

You know, my whole thesis is if we can get people in love first with themselves and then with what they're doing and their skills and ability match, you're in flow.

SPEAKER_00 45:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:45

And then it's not work, it's play almost, and you get rewarded heavily because you're doing what you're naturally good at.

SPEAKER_01 45:52

100%. I think one of the things that stood out to me from this class that we had was I'm not even sure when you mentioned it. It might have been in week two, and it probably never came up again. But you said that when you were six years old, what did you love doing? And I think about this all the time genuinely when I was six, you know, what did I love doing? And how can I make a career out of doing that again, but in grown-up form? And I think that that's such a great way of visualizing it. And you'd be surprised how many people I've said that to over the last week.

SPEAKER_02 46:17

We we gotta put that on the video in grown-up form.

SPEAKER_01 46:20

100%, yeah. How can I be a grown-up six-year-old doing what I loved? I'm still figuring that out, but I hope I get there one day.

SPEAKER_02 46:27

Well, a bit of advice that I give is that I'm 67, turning 68 in a couple weeks, and I'm still figuring that out.

SPEAKER_00 46:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:35

And I found the six-year-old picture of myself that I now use on my email just because it reminds me of that's when I was in flow and I was really good at it. And if I can can get in flow doing that, and this and this is part of it, I enjoy this so much because you know, you you are such an interesting character. And you're a character in your movie, as we talk about in class, too. And what is intriguing from my position of even interviewing you or is that what if you are a Beatle? You know, what if you are like Motown, 19 in Detroit, you know? Like the conventional thing, and I've been teaching entrepreneurship since 2007, is, and as you know, I'm kind of the anti-box checking professor. Very much and I and I challenge the students that you guys are really good at checking boxes, and that's why you're sitting in this class and you're all perfect students, perfect SATs. This class is to kind of blow up the box a little bit and say there is an alternative to the next step that has been programmed as the safe route, and that is entrepreneurship. You know, and so when I uh sit across the table from you, and now we're on TV, is that the box that any one of these companies in New York are going to put you in, it gets down to okay, six, seven thousand dollars a month. And maybe they pick up your visa. I just, in having worked with you and watching you perform amongst my 90 students and in context of 450 over the years, that almost says that that's just not right. You're too talented to be in that box. Now, if you justify that you're gonna learn from a great boss who's gonna teach you direct marketing or marketing skills, and you're gonna be in New York and you're gonna have fun and you're gonna learn a lot, and it's a stepping stone into what your real talent is, is to contribute strategically to help and serve others maximize their potential of their brand or their consumer product or the human being. You know, that is seems to be where you you were in flow in my class and dominate it, and people saw you in your natural state and were blown away by it. And so I'm sitting here thinking as a you know, as a guide role that I'm trying to play as Annie Sullivan in a world with students, is like it's you you you you can create hits of Paul McCartney Lenin magnitude, and and what would position you to be able to do that where you can give more of yourself, as the Mary Marian Williamson quote said, give more of your skills and talent. And even if it's just taking what your parents have taught you guys and helping other families learn that on how they create a product and a brand like you are, you know, you have so much to give.

SPEAKER_01 49:21

I think that the best way that I could describe that is my end goal in my career is eventually to end up in strategy and directorship. As you said, that's very much when I'm in flow state, when I'm moving the pieces around and and doing whatnot. And so the way that I have viewed this next stage in my life is just as that is a stage. You know, I I stood there and I looked at the big wide world and the rest of my life and I got really overwhelmed. And I did have to break it down. And I sort of said to myself, this next block of my life, the next few years, I'm going to work and it doesn't have to be forever, it doesn't have to be my forever job that I'm gonna build a career off and I'm gonna look back in 20 years and and think on it as this like foundational aspect. But instead, it's just a small chunk of my life. And I just have to do something for the next few years, and then if I don't like it, design thinking, pivot, go travel, go somewhere random, see more of the world. Like I do have this deep yearning to see the world, as as we spend a lot of time talking about. But I think that the way that I do view it is as this educational part of my career. I'm not doing my MBA as you said. I I consider that for a very long time, and instead I've decided to take the leap to get this industry experience. And so I'm viewing it just as that. These next few years, this next stage of my life is what I'm titling in my book. The book of my life would be my industry experience chapter.

SPEAKER_02 50:35

That's great. That's great. Well, what didn't I ask you that you wanted to share with the audience about Chelsea Good?

SPEAKER_01 50:43

I think we covered it all. I mean, we hit my New Zealand quotes, we hit my experience in engineering 310, and we hit the future plans. I think that we wrapped it up very nicely.

SPEAKER_02 50:54

Well, one more question though. When you when you did teach the class on fear versus one, what did that feel like for you? Were you in flow doing that?

SPEAKER_01 51:02

100%. I I think that when I if I had to best describe my flow state, it would be being presented with a case or a problem or a situation of some sort, creating a solution to fix that or communicate that, and then presenting it to people at the end. And that that seminar for me was very much a very short crass-core cycle of doing that. You said, I need someone that can talk about fear versus want. Okay, how can I best do that? And then getting to actually talk about it. And and I love being in front of people, I love speaking, I love human connection on that level. So for me, that was very much in flow state. It was a path of very little resistance for me to come up with an idea and put together slides, and and I loved being in front of the classroom like that. Uh, it it did help that it was a topic that I was passionate about. Obviously, I was coming up to you after class with all these quotes saying, you know, we're talking about this in class. I'm thinking about it outside of class. It was very much a theme of my semester. Uh so yeah, I loved doing that.

SPEAKER_02 52:01

Well, it was the highlight of the semester. All the students said that was their favorite. Hurt my feelings. But no, no, no, actually, you did a great job. And it worked out, it worked out very well. Well, I want to thank you, Chelsea. This was great.

SPEAKER_00 52:14

Thank you for sitting down with me. That was this is good fun.

SPEAKER_02 52:16

This was great. And thank you for listening to the Greg Woodman podcast. And see you next time. Thank you.