Title:
The Heart of Inclusion: How We Built a Global Speaking Brand

Subtitle:
From Dreams to Reality: The Alycia Anderson Company’s 5th Anniversary Celebration

Transcript:

Alycia Anderson: Welcome to Pushing Forward with Alycia, a podcast that gives disability a voice. Each week we will explore topics like confidence, ambition, resilience, and finding success against all odds. We are creating a collective community that believes that all things are possible for all people. Open hearts, clear paths.

Let’s go.

Welcome back to Pushing Forward with Alycia. We’ve got a big episode in celebration today. We wanna talk about entrepreneurship, growing businesses, and Marty’s on because we are celebrating our five year anniversary of being in business officially. Happy anniversary, Marty.

Marty Anderson: Happy birthday, The Alycia Anderson Company.

Alycia Anderson: Welcome back to the show.

Marty Anderson: Thank you so much. It’s nice to be here.

Alycia Anderson: I cannot believe that we have hit five years in business. Can you believe this?

Marty Anderson: It sure does go by fast, but we’ve been through a lot.

Alycia Anderson: I am really excited about this episode ’cause we have a lot of our listeners and community asking us about our business and how we’ve gotten to where we are and all the things. And so I thought it would be fun to kind of dive into entrepreneurship specifically on this episode and tell our story and as we’ve been preparing for this episode, it’s been kind of serendipitous, that we just had this reminder or this memory on our Facebook or something that was a post that I put up a little over five years ago talking about my dreams. And I really wanna take a minute to read this post.

And then have some reflection about it because it’s pretty interesting to look back when we were just in a dreaming state, like dreaming of what we could possibly accomplish. And reading through this has been an incredible experience for me. So I wanna like look back, read this, post this letter to myself, if you will.

And then we’ll dive into all the happenings of the business and celebrate it a little bit. Does that sound like an okay path forward to you?

Marty Anderson: Sounds exciting.

Alycia Anderson: Okay, so this letter was about five years ago and it was to the future me and I wrote this on December 7th, 2020, and the post goes like this. I was asked in an interview recently.

If our country moved a work week to four days, how would I spend the fifth day of work? And a side note, this is back when I was still working in my corporate job and all of the things, and my answer to this question was in this interview that I was given, was I would spend that extra day writing speeches, trying to speak more and share my story.

That I felt a calling to be a role model in inclusion and diversity and belonging, and that right now, this was my side hustle, but I would love for it to be more, to find a place to share my message, fine tune a message to be impactful and poignant, and something that could be used for good. This weekend, I wrote this post on a Labor day.

And I decided to nestle in and write and explore content. And the more I wrote, the deeper I was able to get and the richer and more impactful the message became. And it was a very personal journey in hopes that one day I would write the one speech, and in this letter I write. You know that one speech that you see famous speakers speaking all over the world, that they give over and over and over again.

That most important speech that will literally stand the test of time, that speech that even when you read it yourself or when you’re writing it and you’re creating, you get goosebumps and you know you’re creating something magical. I was dreaming. Of having this moment that this speech would be developed under our platform at some point that would not only motivate and inspire the world, but also within myself and thinking back on this post and all of the dreams that I had.

And I ended this letter saying, so I’m gonna sit today and write and I’m gonna craft and I’m gonna dig deep and put pen to paper. I end this post with The Heart of Inclusion is coming soon. This speech, The Heart of Inclusion that we created was and has been that one speech. We did this. We have given The Heart of Inclusion speech in our platform that we call The Heart of Inclusion now over and over and over and over and over and over again over the last five years, up to probably 200 times around the world.

And looking back and thinking five years ago, we were just dreaming. That we would be able to create something that would stand the test of time, and we’ve literally built our business around. And I just think that it’s so incredible that we have the opportunity to kind of reflect back on that moment.

And then six weeks later, we officially launched The Alycia Anderson Company on October 22nd .Not knowing what the world, what the future would hold for us, just believing deeply that our message mattered. And five years later, Marty, you and I are celebrating this leap that we took this major risk of leaving our corporate positions, and we’re celebrating the lessons and the late nights and the joy and the pain, and the fear and the accomplishments.

And the impact. And from that one dream, that one moment, we could never have imagined where this business would take us. And today we’re entrepreneurs. We’re running a global company. We’ve been on TEDx stages. We are one of the leaders in disability advocacy in the workplace, giving keynotes and workshops and helping organizations build inclusive, high performing workplaces that include disability.

And we are empowering people to embrace who they are to elevate their purpose into the world and hopefully empower others along the way in our work. And we’ve just had all these accomplishments. Sitting on Task force in California, and right now we’re launching, spoil alert, we’re launching an Own IT Mastery where we’re hoping to guide other entrepreneurs on how to speak and sell and scale their businesses with purpose too.

Our work has literally been featured around the world and we’ve worked with companies like Microsoft and Netflix and, all kinds of incredible brands. And it all started from just a dream. And so I’m excited to kind of jump in, have everybody grab a cup of coffee because we wanna look back, celebrate this dream that we had and celebrate the five years of building a business.

And, honestly reaching the five year mark, this has been a pivotal moment for me to reach five years of being in business. Because if you look at statistics, 50% of people that start businesses fail. So for us to reach this moment is a huge milestone and maybe can allow us to take a little bit of a deep breath.

And it’s been such a beautiful experience for you and I, to be exploring not only the world and helping others, but on an adventure and creating new relationships with our own disabilities and our own expertise and everything we’re doing. It’s just been so amazing. So I’m excited to jump in.

Marty Anderson: Yeah, it is amazing. And doing that one big step of leaping into our own business was courageous even back then. But Yet in many ways it was something that we had been doing our whole lives. And it was a defining moment that really shifted way that we were doing things. And I remember that there was so much going on in our world back then and there was a lot of, turmoil and people on the streets, and there was a lot of discussions about where our country needed to head and we didn’t see disability anywhere in that conversation. And, that really led us to think about these things as we were already in motion with moving in that direction. You had worked on a speech for your opportunity in Miss W heelchair California a couple years prior to that, which also had stirred some feelings.

And then You’d been asked by your work to start talking about your disability a little bit. And then, yeah, this Heart of Inclusion speech was formed and has been the foundation of what we’re doing today.

Alycia Anderson: And, with all those things that you just mentioned, it was also just time, right? Like we had this feeling that was calling us so intensely that it was almost too difficult to ignore anymore, though we had suppressed it for a very long time, almost 15 years of a career. And I agree with you. There was things going on in our country, COVID was happening. Social justice movements were happening, disability wasn’t included in it. We were doing the work already side hustling it. We have degrees and all these things to back it up and we had this feeling and then.

You really encouraged me to take the leap. There was a moment where you said it’s now or never. Like just do it like it’s time to quit your job and go for it. And that whole like serendipitous timing I think is another thing to acknowledge here because you were working at Wounded Warriors. We felt good about me leaving my job and then right when I left my job.

You got laid off and we were both unemployed from the universe coming together, I think, and we just went to work. And I think all those little breadcrumbs coming together put us in this moment of time that it was just time to foot on the gas. Let’s see if we could do this.

And if we can’t, we’ll go back to work eventually.

Marty Anderson: Yeah, I like that you bring up that I was laid off. I haven’t been laid off by many, very many people in my life, but yeah, Wounded Warriors did give me that surprise meeting. But that, falls in line with the theme of this month, National Disability Employment Awareness Month, and as you said, the serendipitous coalescence of all this stuff happening was really formulated before this time though was this sense in our hearts that we had done so much in our lives by this time. We’d been married for over going on 10 years or over. And we had bought our own home. We had moved out of our parents’ house. We had lived on our own. We were self-sufficient and we were doing all kinds of great things. And yeah, I had, been working at Wounded Warriors. albeit for a short period of time, although it was a job transition that I had made from being a support manager at I-Tul Web Design and, other web jobs. And so all of these things that we’d been through, you transitioning from On-site and into Knock and all the things that had happened throughout that time.

And we had seen and been feeling all the pressures of career, life and wanting more is where this all stemmed out of , and feeling that, in some senses, our skills had been overlooked by our former employers, or we had missed opportunities that had maybe had the chance to propel us even further. Even though we had both successfully moved up the ladder and were well established in our careers and respected by our associates. There was this personal, feeling of wanting which really led to being our own bosses and having our own schedules and setting the work and the tone for our day ourselves, and not letting someone else dictate that for us.

Alycia Anderson: And I think that was really important, I love that you just mentioned that, becoming your own boss and me saying that you got laid off is something that a lot of people are going through right now in our world. In 2025, a lot of people are being laid off. There’s a lot of transitional things that happen in our careers and me sharing that.

I guess maybe I should have asked you if I can share that, but me sharing that is sharing with the world that sometimes things happen in your career that force you to do something that maybe you were afraid of, or maybe you weren’t sure if you were ready for. That was a powerful time for us coming together, of me taking a leap that was very scary.

You having a transition in your career and it coming together at the same time, timing sometimes is everything. And it was a powerful coming together synergy between you and I to say, all right, like the universe is telling us something. Let’s, it’s time. Let’s go. And so, I think that was actually pretty incredible.

And so for me, a follow up question to all that is how did that feel for you? Like taking the leap together and how does our partnership and coming together in this company, how has that been for you?

Marty Anderson: Yeah, I feel like I was born for this stuff. This isn’t my first rodeo. I’ve run businesses in the past and I’d always been excited about wanting to try to run our own business. And I was 100% on board. I knew that we had the potential to be able to do some great things and, it did put us a little bit into the frying pan , but we were lucky to be successful in our businesses enough to have some cushion to be able to take that chance. And so I remember that we had even taken advantage of a refi and put a little bit more away just because we thought, hey, and that was all a part of the planning process.

We began this journey saying, okay, look, we have a six month run. Let’s see what we can do with that. And, so now we’re looking at five years. So we’ve pushed that envelope, we’ve pushed that six month run, and we’ve continued to grow. The beauty of it is we’ve moved beyond just self-employed and now we’re beginning to employ people. And so the beauty of, learning all of the skills involved with now. We’ve mastered how to work ourselves, and now how do we find out how we can tailor employees and bring to the experience all of the things from our own careers that we learned, what it’s like to work for a boss and now to be a boss.

Alycia Anderson: Yeah, that mentorship piece that’s come along with this hand in hand, it really has been the most beautiful piece, whether it’s our employees, which we’re so excited that we’ve got a team now, and it’s not just you and I but we have created this beautiful mentorship that we’re able to, help teach others.

Maybe how to do some of the things that we had to figure out along the way. And that’s been really rewarding as well. And it’s a hustle, working the process and making sure that we’re meeting our goals is entrepreneurship is an up and down, uh, scenario. Sometimes it feels great and sometimes it feels like you’re almost gonna, fail.

But I think that’s part of the process. And we’ve sold almost a million dollars in speeches alone. I mean, that is of The Heart of Inclusion. Almost all of those are The Heart. Huge percentage of it is The Heart of Inclusion, and that is such a massive accomplishment. I am so proud of us.

We have produced products that are standing the test of time, just like we were dreaming of five years ago. And from The Heart of Inclusion to, a library full of keynotes and workshops and mastery courses that are about to launch this has been just really incredible to create. And, the message to our community that’s listening and wondering how, to make this happen is it’s one wheel in front of the next and it’s working really, really hard every day to continue to build and grow. And Marty, you’ve just been such a massive partner and, we’ve created a really great partnership together to make this successful. And it’s just been a beautiful, amazing experience on top of being able to see, literally see the world together.

The last five years has been absolutely a dream. It’s been dreamy. It’s been amazing.

Marty Anderson: Thank you for that. And yes, it has been. It’s been a dream. It’s been us chasing our dream of living our lives to the fullest and wanting to push our capabilities as far as we can go. And, when I say that, there’s a lot of layers to it. It’s obvious. Everybody wants to go as far as they can and see as much as they can in this world.

And then when you add on all the layers of the challenges of disability on top of that, and, the challenges of self-employment and all of the other ripples in there. Yeah, it’s been amazing and it’s still, exciting every single day when we wake up. It’s a brand new experiment still.

It’s trying to figure out the next project, the next offering that we can get out there the next opportunity and all the, things that come along with that. What do you think about self-employment so far? Are you enjoying the opportunity or explain to our listeners what it feels like from your point of view.

Alycia Anderson: It’s been the most challenging and the most beautiful thing that I’ve ever tried to accomplish in my life. And I think at this point, I feel like a boss in it. I feel like we’ve done a really good job in leading and being successful. And I think the challenge of seeing where else we can grow scale and who else we can impact and what other organizations we can help lead disability forward initiatives and things like that is what keeps me motivated. But there’s no looking back, there’s something really incredible, especially from a disability standpoint. Like you said, even with the difficulties of our disabilities, we’ve been able to figure this out and it’s because of the difficulties of our disabilities. We’ve been able to grow into our business.

Once we decided to embrace all of the difficulties of our disability and try to make that better, that’s when the business really started to open up. So it’s been a beautiful coming of age for me of acceptance of who I am as a woman and as a disabled leader.

And, I feel like I know who I am more than ever. We started this company, I’m wearing a shirt that says, see me. And this statement right here is we started this company with us saying we just wanna be seen more in the workplace. We wanna have more opportunities. We want the bias to go away about, from what our abilities are.

We want the world to see our talents and our abilities. What we can bring to the world. And so I think we’re doing that. I think we’ve done that and I think we continue to do it. It’s been really powerful. It’s been really great and I can’t wait to see where we go with the business.

Marty Anderson: Yeah. We have a lot of exciting things happening. We are building a new community called the Own IT Collective, Own IT Mastery Collective, and as Alycia said, we’ll be highlighting a lot of the exciting things that are to come with that. And we are constantly working.

We also not only have The Alycia Anderson Company, but we’ve started our own other small business, Jam Pro Web Design, and we’re beginning to take on clientele for that. And, also running our nonprofit organization, Adaptive Athletics Association, which is super exciting. The ability to eventually move off and work for ourselves has transformed our opportunities in all those realms to fruition.

And it’s beautiful to see where we’ll take it. But at the bottom of all of it is the fact that it’s up to us where we’re going with those things. And it’s up to us how much work we put in. And it’s up to us how far we go. Because when we put in the work and we try and we do it, that’s where the magic happens.

That’s where we meet the new people. We find new clients, we learn new things, we discover new areas. We get to travel. We, enjoy new technologies and learn about all the new things in this world that are out there. It’s so awesome to be a part of this spreading of the wings of the disabled community and in all realms of business and economy, and bringing the questions to the forefront for how much is still needed in our world for people living with disabilities. The one point over 1.5 billion and one in four, one in five in, in the world. And I can’t wait to just keep tapping into all the potential that’s out there because it’s like the wild west. There’s so much potential that you could a business doing this, turn around and find yourself, oh man, this needs to be done too. And now that can be a another edge and this can be a different thing. And there’s literally so much potential out there, and i t’s awesome to see all the other people that are out there doing things too.

And all of us together are really making a movement.

Alycia Anderson: And I guess to answer your question, we love entrepreneurship. If we have three businesses going. Can’t get enough.

Marty Anderson: Yeah, that’s.

Alycia Anderson: Can we talk about The Heart of Inclusion for a minute?

Marty Anderson: Sure. What would you like to talk about?

Alycia Anderson: It’s NDEAM. We have been on the road for the last three or four weeks. NDEAM, meaning National Disability Employment Awareness Month. It’s, shows up in October and we get a lot of bookings to work with organizations during this month specifically, and The Heart of Inclusion has really been showing up and it’s always received, but it’s been, it feels like extra received.

The last several, four or five events that we’ve had multiple standing ovations. And the message is very much about coming together as a community to find paths forward for everybody. And, no matter what side of the political aisle you’re on, or I would assume most of us are somewhat in the middle somewhere, The Heart of Inclusion has been landing in places where it’s been.

Uh, it’s just been really beautiful to see that it’s been a piece of content that’s been a coming together. I think it’s been showing us that audiences are missing, us coming together as a community and in humanity rather than being divisive and, and separating, each other apart or whatever.

Um, and so I thought since we were talking about The Heart of Inclusion, that it might be interesting to just review, talk about that comparison that we’ve seen over the last few weeks. What do you think?

Marty Anderson: Sure. I like to consider The Heart of Inclusion, like one of your favorite songs that you could hear it on the radio and no matter how many times you hear it, you love hearing it again. The beauty of it is, yeah, people are resonating in the message that we have laid out in The Heart of Inclusion. And The Heart of Inclusion is really just the story of you. And a lot of it is your progression through life and your ability to change and grow and become resilient through all of the adversity that you’ve faced. And, so at the end of the day, it’s a beautiful message, and that’s why so many of the audiences connect with it. And just in the past month you’ve given it out in Shreveport, Louisiana. You’ve given it in Portland, Oregon. There’s touches on it in WAWABILITY.

Alycia Anderson: Can you Marty though, talk about, I really wanna talk about the comparison there. I think that’s one of the most interesting pieces of The Heart of Inclusion story that has come to fruition this year for me, which is us speaking in Shreveport, Louisiana, where, that’s a very conservative state.

Shreveport is where the speaker of the house is from. Versus the next week we went and spoke in Portland, Oregon, and we gave the exact same speech to a very liberal audience and when we were in Shreveport, I didn’t realize that there was gonna be so many political people in the room from representation for the speaker of the house, and to mayors and Congress people. And there was a bunch of political people in the room from a conservative standpoint. And I didn’t know how these things would land.

Marty Anderson: Yeah.

Alycia Anderson: And this has been a tricky year for us in the business that we’re in. To, meet the audiences where they’re at, depending on where we are in the country and give our message and hopefully help bring, workplaces and communities together. And it was so powerful how on both of those events, it was standing ovations and loud cheers throughout the speech over and over and over again, and we, you wrote a beautiful blog post. We’ll leave the, link in the show notes if anybody wants to read about it. But we wrote a, Marty wrote a blog about the coming together of communities and that we’re living in this divisive time right now where the media and politics is intentionally trying to divide us. But when we come together with The Heart of Inclusion in a message that translates literally to everybody.

There’s rounds of applause, and I think it was a beautiful opportunity to see that we have more things in common than we don’t, and that humanity wants to come together to commune, and it feels good to find a space in topics that we can meet in the middle and agree on and advocate for. And I know like I’m leaving, NDEAM going, wow.

Well, the world needs The Heart of Inclusion, the world needs the coming together meeting in the middle having conversations that might be from different views, but still being open to communication and trying to find a middle point. So for me, this has just been such a beautiful celebration, honestly, of The Heart of Inclusion, five year anniversary of our business to show the beautiful work that we’re doing for humanity, for love, for community, for inclusion, for disabled people, for their allies, for people who have never heard of the topics that we’re speaking of and leave going I’m forever changed, and for us to start five years ago in this letter to say, I hope I can one day write something that we can write something together that will affect and help the world. And then we had this moment over the last few weeks, it’s been.

It’s been so incredibly beautiful for me, and I’m so ready for next year now because of it. It’s taken a year of a lot of pivoting and a lot of figuring out messaging and how are we gonna keep pushing forward to keep this business going, to ending the year in NDEAM with a beautiful coming together. So that’s what I was trying to get to, ’cause I know that you know that we just had some really beautiful moments.

Marty Anderson: Yeah, and those are just a couple of them. We just spoke in Los Angeles at the Herald Examiner Building for the California Department of Insurance’s Diversity Summit and Heart of Inclusion was given there. And again, the standing ovation. Again a room full of delegates representing insurance companies and all kinds of dignitaries from the LA area, and it’s just a testament to like you’re saying this coming together. And the beauty of the story in The Heart of Inclusion is it was a coming together of a family that was not willing to leave out a member of their family with a disability. In respect to The Heart of Inclusion a uniting message in our country and being accepted by all sides. Somewhat another message of not leave each other out. Republican, Democrat, Independent, let’s not leave each one of us out of this picture. We need to figure out how we can work together. We need to figure out how we move forward together. And, I love that, over the past month, it’s, seemed like more of that messaging is coming through in our media.

It’s, we’re Americans, we’re not just Republicans or just Democrats or whatever. re all the same, we’re all Americans, we’re all united. I don’t wanna leave our international audience out either on that. We’re all a part of this world together. We all have a responsibility together. Um, This is our one resource, our world, and we need to respect and love it and do what we can to help everybody have an equal opportunity in it.

Alycia Anderson: Yeah.

Marty Anderson: So that’s, all things that come, through, in the messaging from The Heart of Inclusion. And it’s a simple story just a, a 45 to an hour minute speech. But, it’s delivered by one of the most beautiful ladies in our world, my wife. And she has a unique way of bringing that message through with just such grace and humility. So a lot of it is due to you sweetheart.

Alycia Anderson: Oh, well, I could not do that without having you be right there by my side. So I know that you’re cheering me on every step of the way. We’re doing this together and we need to get you up on stage again more often as well, and you start taking some of the stage time and I’ll sit back and chill in the audience.

Marty Anderson: I dunno. We’ll see.

Alycia Anderson: Just congratulations, Marty. I’m so proud of us. I can’t believe that it’s been five years since we signed on that dotted line to start this business not knowing what the heck we were gonna do or how we were gonna do it. But we were gonna try and it’s the trying, it’s the trying that gets you to where I think your path is supposed to lead you to.

And that’s what we’ve been seeing and it’s just been such a, what, a beautiful gift that we’ve been given over the last several years and more to come. But happy anniversary, happy five year anniversary of our company.

Marty Anderson: Awesome. Awesome. Really it’s something to celebrate for sure. Let’s push for another 5, 10, 20, 25, 30. Let’s just keep going. And I’m excited. All the other speeches that we’ve developed too throughout this process and the trainings and, the, disability inclusive leadership stuff and the podcast of course, which we’re just excelling with. All of these things are gonna be awesome continuing to grow. Adding on the Own It Collective where we can have an opportunity to collaborate and bring some mentorship and guidance to people that are looking to learn how to do this on their own and get out there and try and be a part of the movement and to, build their own lives opportunities.

That’s what it’s all about. We wanna help those people get into the game. Figure it out, build the confidence, get their feet wet, and have some help along the way. Just through learned knowledge that has passed along and I know that there’s a lot to discuss, just gonna create more content. All for those people out there that are looking and seeking for it.

Alycia Anderson: So anybody that’s listening that is interested to learn more about the Own IT Mastery program definitely tune in. And if I could just plug us too, since it’s National Disability Employment Awareness Month, for any companies that are out there listening to this, we are booking out the end of the year and into next year.

I wanna fill up my calendar early. So, please go to my website, put in a booking request, and let’s have a conversation. I would love to bring The Heart of Inclusion or Own It to your organization. And Marty, we gotta wrap.

Marty Anderson: Yeah, so I’m not sure maybe I can pose to you apushing forward moment. That you might wanna inspire our audiences with in regards to celebrate NDEAM.

Alycia Anderson: When I started this company, we created this logo. It’s a green heart that says, see me in it. And I challenge everybody out there to really push all of the insecurities or things that you think might be difficult or that you might not be able to accomplish, or the adversity that you think is in front of you, and really try to push through that fear to go after your dreams to be seen in any which way that you are dreaming of if we can make our dreams happen, because we have.

If we can do it, you can do it. And we’re here to support you in that. So we are just so grateful for our community, for showing up the way that you do. And most of all, today I am really, really grateful for my husband.

We have really created something magical together and I love you so much.

Marty Anderson: I love you too, and if I can just add on a little bit to the pushing forward moment. Anybody out there listening? And who’s looking for something in this world to keep them going? Find that purpose to, just get somewhere in their life. Think about what you love to do. Think about the things that really get you passionate in this world, and then think about how you turn that into something that can help others. And really build on that. Think about it, work on it. Turn it into something that you can do to help anyone in this world with whatever you’re really passionate about. And then explore it, look into it and see what opportunities may lie. Work with other people that are interested in it. Talk about it, get motivated, and then you never know where it’ll take you.

There’s the old adage in this world if you do what you love for work, then it’s hardly work at all. Truly that’s the case for us. And I love you too, sweetheart. I love every moment of every day of all the things that we’re doing here.

And even though there may be some strenuous tough moments and hard decisions and all kinds of risks and rewards that we have to navigate through the landmines of this whole thing. Every step with you has been a pleasure. So I love you.

Alycia Anderson: I love you too. All right. Why don’t you take us out, Marty, and don’t forget to ask everybody to subscribe, like, and review the show so we can continue to grow, please.

Marty Anderson: A hundred percent. Get out there on your favorite format of listening to the show, whether it’s Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart or any of the others. Get out there and share and subscribe.

To our audience, thank you for coming back once again. You make this all happen and we’re so excited to be bringing this message to you and happy NDEAM.

This has been Pushing Forward with Alycia and Marty, and that is how we roll.

Alycia Anderson: We will see you next time.

Marty Anderson: See you next time.