In this episode, we explore Sue Nixon’s compelling journey from a career in radio to her role at Bloodworks Northwest. Sue shares profound personal experiences and the life-altering impact of her work in the nonprofit sector.
Key Takeaways:
- Importance of Collaboration: Understand how working together with a shared mission and purpose can lead to solving challenging problems.
- Value of Blood Donations: Discover the critical need for various blood products and the constant demand due to their short shelf life.
- Living Authentically: Learn how Sue’s near-death experience reshaped her perspective on life, emphasizing the importance of focusing on what truly matters.
Guest:
Sue Nixon, executive vice president of community and donor engagement for Bloodworks Northwest.
Resources Mentioned:
- Sue Nixon: LinkedIn and Facebook
- Organization: Bloodworks Northwest
Quotes:
-“Collaboration is key to solving the most challenging problems we face.” – Sue Nixon
-“It’s not about managing time, but about managing yourself and your energy.” – Mark Wright
Listener Challenge:
This week, consider donating blood or volunteering at your local blood bank and share your experience with us on social media using #BEATSWORKINGShow.
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Transcript
The following transcript is not certified. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. The information contained within this document is for general information purposes only.
[00:00:00] Mark Wright: Sue Nixon, welcome to the BEATS WORKING podcast. It’s so great to have you here.
[00:00:03] Mark Wright: I’ve been looking forward to this.
[00:00:05] Sue Nixon: Thank you, Mark Wright. I have been too. And we got a sunny day.
[00:00:09] Mark Wright: We do. You are on a houseboat,
[00:00:12] Sue Nixon: I am. I am. So we might be joined by some of the ambience around here, which includes Float Plains and geese.
[00:00:21] Mark Wright: and who knows, Tom Hanks might walk in.
[00:00:23] Sue Nixon: Hey, it’s, it’s happened. Not to me, but.
[00:00:28] Mark Wright: Well, Sue, you are Executive Vice President of Community and Donor Engagement for Bloodworks Northwest. Um, I want to start there, and for people who don’t know what Bloodworks is, tell us first about that and then what your role is there.
[00:00:43] Sue Nixon: Yes. Okay. So Bloodworks is our, basically our community blood bank. And so we’ve got, the part of the organization that collects blood from generous people and then manufactures that blood and delivers it to our hospitals. [00:01:00] And then we’ve got a portion of blood works that does research on blood, the blood works research institute.
[00:01:06] Sue Nixon: And that is just down the street from me, actually, and they study the properties of blood and help with diagnosis and cures and. all sorts of amazing things. And then we have Bloodworks Bio, which is custom blood products. So they’re creating custom products that are used by biopharma and also by research. And it’s basically using blood as a ingredient to accelerate discoveries, and all of that, and then labs. So we do the testing and make sure that the blood that we prepare for transfusion is ready and matching the patient. And. It’s that’s just scratching the surface. I’ve been here eight years and I daily learn more.
[00:01:48] Sue Nixon: I think we do that too.
[00:01:50] Sue Nixon: So
[00:01:51] Mark Wright: I’ve been connected with Bloodworks for a long time, had the honor of helping emcee some fundraisers, and when I really got a chance to see behind the scenes, [00:02:00] I had no idea of the depth of the scientific research that’s going on, because, we need to know a lot about things like how do we store blood?
[00:02:09] Mark Wright: How does that impact how the quality of the blood is, but there are so many other things, you know, blood, blood compatibility, and all the research that goes on behind that., and then also just. I think that almost everyone listening in the Seattle area, we have had. A family member who’s needed blood, in my dad’s case, when he was dealing with cancer near the end of his life, he had to have a bunch of blood transfusions, and, and, you’ve had the need for, for blood.
[00:02:38] Mark Wright: And I think, it’s sort of the unsung hero of our community that without blood works, we would really be in a bad way because hospitals and EMTs, and, you know, they wouldn’t have enough blood to be able to save the lives that they do.
[00:02:51] Sue Nixon: And, add a little complexity to that., if Bloodworks wasn’t doing the work it’s doing, and if a thousand individuals weren’t [00:03:00] donating their blood every single day, and that’s like every single day, which blew my mind when I first started working with Bloodworks. I was like, what? I never thought I would need it, nor did I think that it was that the demand was that high. That there wasn’t an, alternative to humans, basically being generous with one another and to your point about, there’s whole blood and then cancer treatments require platelets, which are a different blood product also donated from one human to another and platelets only last 7 days. So, between 5 and 7 days,
[00:03:39] Sue Nixon: so to your point about. Yeah. So to your point about just the shelf life of a product, that means we have to constantly replenish and various platelets are used both for cancer treatments also for trauma and they help basically they help your, blood clot as well. And so [00:04:00] it’s just. It’s just extraordinary what the need is.
[00:04:03] Sue Nixon: And you’re right. Few of us even know it’s a thing until you know, it’s a thing. And it has to be on the shelf ready for you and, or a family member when, they need
[00:04:12] Mark Wright: Yeah, and Bloodworks is a nonprofit., one of the reasons I wanted to talk with you, Sue, is that I think a lot of us have thought about going into the nonprofit world just because it feels like it’s a more pure form of helping human beings. Then I’m not saying for profit is bad, but I’m just saying that you don’t have to satisfy shareholders and Wall Street expectations when you’re running a nonprofit.
[00:04:37] Mark Wright: I, I think your journey to this point is super interesting and I’d love to explore that a little deeper. You spent a lot of years in marketing and branding in the early part of your career, and I’d love to learn, from you what that time was like. Uh, it sounded like a pretty intense, time take me back to how you got into that world and how you got so good at it.
[00:04:59] Sue Nixon:, [00:05:00] it’s super interesting to flashback. We realize how many years we’ve been on the planet when we get questions like that. So I’ve been. I believe I was about 35 when I started in the marketing field. And I basically graduated from school. Wasn’t quite ready to grow up yet. Did admissions for a while, for Seattle university, worked for Cairo news radio for a couple of years and then in development., and I ended up because I do creative things like music outside of work. And I’ve always been intrigued with. How businesses run. I discovered this field of branding and marketing, which I found really interesting. So it takes this creativity and brings, it basically applies it to the business world. So I got intrigued with that and a friend of mine I knew through music actually introduced me to the, design firm that he worked with called Lenhart Group. And I ended up. Going to work for them as their marketing director. [00:06:00] And it was really fascinating to just work with all different clients, private and public sector, helping them tell their story, helping them translate, their benefit to clients, that kind of thing. So I loved the melding of creativity and business and all that. And it should, I keep fast forwarding to,
[00:06:19] Mark Wright: No, I, I,
[00:06:20] Sue Nixon: it was a bit of a rocket that happened in the midst of
[00:06:23] Mark Wright: I didn’t know you worked at Cairo radio. What was your role there?
[00:06:29] Sue Nixon: this makes me laugh, Mark. I began as a receptionist. So I would answer this is my first job out of school. And this is just a side note because it entertains me. I interviewed for right out of college. I interviewed for the director of corporate sales job. At Cairo, which I thought I was fully qualified for with my bachelor’s degree. And so I sat down proudly with the HR person and interviewed, and she’s, she was so gracious with me. She said, well, you might need a few more years [00:07:00] of experience for that job, but we have a receptionist job open in Cairo news radio. Would you be interested in that? And I was sure. Yeah, that sounds great. So, So, I ended up doing that and then I, I worked in, sales for, as a sales assistant for a year or so before I shifted into higher ed.
[00:07:19] Sue Nixon: It was fun. It was a lot of
[00:07:21] Mark Wright: Was that during the glory days of like, uh, Wayne Cody and all those legendary
[00:07:26] Sue Nixon: yes. Oh yes, it was. Yeah. That was probably the most fun was just seeing all these different folks who are so talented in action who could just, whether it’s. you know, interviewing somebody like you do so masterfully or, just calling a game with all these details. And just there was, there was tremendous talent at third Avenue productions was doing all, the filming.
[00:07:53] Sue Nixon: And I still run into people that, that I worked with way back when.
[00:07:57] Mark Wright: That’s cool. In the marketing branding [00:08:00] world. What, Was the biggest lesson that you learned during your time there?
[00:08:03] Sue Nixon: Oh, that’s a really good question. So I worked in marketing and then our, actually our small firm was purchased and, the Ted and Carolyn who founded the firm ended up moving to London and working for the parent company. And I ended up stepping into the CEO role with two of my colleagues. One was, The CFO and chief creative officer.
[00:08:28] Sue Nixon: And so the three of us ended up running the firm through three additional buyouts and just a whole bunch of transition. I think it was about. It was shortly after September 11th, or shortly before September 11th, that all of that change happened. So managing the firm through really turbulent times and basically learning how to be a leader. I was so dependent on surrounding myself with really smart people and I [00:09:00] just had to learn. Learn, learn every single day, but it, taught me through that. It taught me so much humility around being authentic, doing the best you can, and then ask for help sincerely and do your best to be that person also for those around you. And when you get clever people in a room together, you can solve most things.
[00:09:25] Mark Wright: You decided to go out on your own at some point., but I think you told me when we spoke last that the mergers and acquisitions essentially led you to a place where you saw that that system, that corporate system was fundamentally flawed and you couldn’t protect your people, your good people from. I would love, I mean, one of the key goals of this podcast is to show business leaders, a better way of doing business.
[00:09:54] Mark Wright: And part of the inherent problem is the. The flaw, the flaw structures of the [00:10:00] corporate system. I mean, it’s really good for what it does. And it’s supposed to make shareholders money. And it really does that in a good way. I mean, in a way that it’s very successful, but sometimes there’s, there are a lot of, casualties in the process to the extent that you’re comfortable.
[00:10:15] Mark Wright: I’d love for you, to talk about that as the impetus for, getting out of corporate.
[00:10:20] Sue Nixon: Yes. So with I will say, it depends on who buys you and how that all happens. I mean, every situation is different. And I think what’s challenging in an organization like we were creative. Company, and it was run by founders who cared desperately about the product. And so we’d make choices to care for the people and the product.
[00:10:47] Sue Nixon: And the product is really basically professional services., so we had,, we had a smaller private organization by the first time and not a lot of things changed because they were very like minded. The, the, [00:11:00] There was a roll up then after that, where things started to change. And it was the third time we were purchased. It was a public company that was aggregating a lot of creative firms and large agencies all over the world. And what my experience was. Is that because you’re one of many and because it’s numbers driven, even though our small firm was operating really well from a business perspective with 30 plus percent margins, which for a professional services firm, it means you’re running very efficiently. The requirement is to do better and to keep making changes. So, basically throw off more profit. And the only thing you can squeeze in a professional services creative business are the people and or the clients by charging more or just cramming more work through basically the creative engine and what what I saw happening [00:12:00] is. The more pressure we would put on, the more joy was stripped of the work and the more tension was created between clients. It was just like a pressure chamber for everything that was happening. And I love the fact that People do their best work when they’re joyful and when they’re purposed. And when they feel like they can honor their best work, it, nothing’s more painful than to watch that start to suffer. And I found myself, I kind of have this picture of myself. I found myself trying to guard our work and guard our people. And it was a, dear friend and mentor of mine who said one day, Sue, you are exhausted and you’re not going to win. They own the company. This is how they run the company. The only person who will survive will be somebody who can be okay with that. And I just, wow, it really. Made me pause. And [00:13:00] at that point, I decided I’m going to do my best to get this as healthy as I can and to leave a good leadership team. And then I’m going to take some time off. So I basically planned a 6 month sabbatical, really hard decision to step away. And, I am so grateful.
[00:13:20] Sue Nixon: I did it
[00:13:21] Mark Wright: Yeah. You know, we’ve seen that trend over and over and we continue to see that trend. You know, the doctor’s office that I go to just the entire chain of offices just got sold to a much larger company. And, you know, when I was in TV and radio, You know, when radio was deregulated, we saw a huge, amalgamation of stations because, the, as you know, the business strategy is that if you can grow by adding offices and adding capacity, then you can cut some of the infrastructure, like the accounting and HR and sales teams and whatever.
[00:13:57] Mark Wright: You can start to consolidate that [00:14:00] infrastructure. And then that just goes to the bottom line. So you can see from a money standpoint, why that’s an attractive thing. But as you said. In businesses and, television is a great example of this. You know, the cameras in the building are just, they’re secondary to what the value is.
[00:14:18] Mark Wright: And that’s in people. And when, that industry is contracting massively. And like you said, there’s only one place to cut.
[00:14:25] Sue Nixon: right.
[00:14:25] Mark Wright: you have to have a building, you have to have cameras, but, you can force wages down and save money that way. Yeah.
[00:14:33] Sue Nixon: down or you force productivity. So, that means you’re just cramming more things through. And I don’t know if you saw this, but, what I started to see is really brilliant talent opt out., they just didn’t want to do it and I didn’t blame them. So it’s not to say it’s not a good fit, for others. And some, but. But at least if they chose it for one [00:15:00] reason and those reasons change, you often see a lot of attrition and then a different set of skills would maybe opt in going forward and that, yeah, that I’m, I’m editing a little bit because I want to be respectful and it doesn’t beget the hottest. Brightest twinkly bits of creativity when you’re squeezing things out of people who are feeling depleted.
[00:15:32] Mark Wright: Yeah. I was able to read between the lines there. I get you. So you take a sabbatical. What was that like? What, was that like from a mindset standpoint? Oh
[00:15:44] Sue Nixon:, I had to go through a process. First of all, I was. It makes me emotional just thinking back on this. Like of all things, I was a grown adult and I, I knew how proud it made my dad that I was the [00:16:00] CEO of a little design firm that was a part of a global network. And just telling him I was quitting, it was like, holy buckets.
[00:16:08] Sue Nixon: That just, really was humbling for me. And then even more so when he said, honey, I don’t care what you do. You just, do what you do that brings you joy. And You’ll be great at it and whatever’s next will be clear. And you know, the, it’s like we create these perceptions in our own minds. I think when we’re, uh, ambitious or driven, I don’t, I don’t necessarily think of myself as ambitious, but I do think of myself as driven.
[00:16:33] Sue Nixon: When I get something in my sights, I really, my heart really. pours into it. And, and I, I want to win. I want to make it work. I want to fix it. So I was humbled by the fact that I couldn’t fix it. And yet I needed to accept that maybe the vision of what I had wasn’t what that was meant to be. And that I needed to clear space and, pursue basically what the next thing would be for me. [00:17:00] And I knew I couldn’t do it while I was in that role. I was just too depleted. I had during that time, I was managing the Seattle office. And then I also took on the San Francisco office for a time, which sounded really cool at first until I was going back and forth each week. And
[00:17:18] Sue Nixon: I was pretty tired.
[00:17:19] Mark Wright: Yeah. Those moments though, don’t they Sue? They make us examine, who are we doing this for?
[00:17:26] Sue Nixon: yeah, yes. Yes.
[00:17:31] Mark Wright: Energized from having lots to do and lots of challenges and lots of moving parts. You thrived in that environment. When I left television a couple of years ago, it took me about 4 months to decompress and what I realized was what I thought was a normal level of stress was an exorbitant amount of stress.
[00:17:53] Mark Wright: those daily multiple dozens of deadlines, the pressure to perform and to never have a bad day. [00:18:00] There were just so many things that I thought were normal that when I got out of it, I realized, Oh my gosh, I’m not stressed out and I actually feel really good and I really enjoyed my time in television.
[00:18:11] Mark Wright: I loved it. But I think we forget sometimes that sometimes the level of stress that we think is normal really isn’t. Did you have any moments like that? During that sabbatical.
[00:18:25] Sue Nixon: as you were talking, it’s like, oh, that’s deja vu, you know, you’re exactly right. Mark. I was similarly, it took me, I think it took me 3 or 4 months to really just have your, just, your general countenance. sort of relax. And I hadn’t realized how much I was pushing me as much as the pressures of the role.
[00:18:46] Sue Nixon: I think we also get in a habit of pushing ourselves and what you were saying about just the get up every morning and run the marathon. You really don’t realize what that’s doing to your [00:19:00] heart and mind and body. I also was way humbled by the fact that I thought I was protecting these people, many of whom decided to leave. And are thriving., so was I re you know, was, did I really need to take that on that protecting them part, that was a good lesson for me where of course taking care of one another is really honoring and very important, but that notion of protecting one another, that’s not so much what we’re meant to be doing.
[00:19:34] Sue Nixon: That robs each other of our classroom. I, it wasn’t my job and everybody is doing just fine. So I actually ended up doing a music project too. And just getting that experience of opening my own creativity and just letting my self sort of experience a flow of a day that wasn’t programmed. Was just [00:20:00] it was mind blowing.
[00:20:01] Sue Nixon: Really.
[00:20:02] Mark Wright: Yeah. At what point did you start Ardent Sage, your consulting firm? Was that shortly after that?
[00:20:08] Sue Nixon: It was so., my colleague, who was the creative chief creative officer at at. Lenhart Group became Lenhart Fitch and then Fitch. And, he and I decided to just, let’s just do this together and, try something on our own and basically assemble creative teams per project that, we would win.
[00:20:26] Sue Nixon: And Port of Seattle ended up being our first big one. And that’s, we had so much fun., it was really, really cool to do. And it was, wasn’t very long ago. before founding it and starting everything, that out of the blue, I had a cardiac arrest. So it was a bit of a shock, and I would not have anticipated that after resting, I would end up having such a serious health issue. But in some ways, I think My body got the care it [00:21:00] needed because I had rested and I am pretty humble to think and uncomfortable to think about had I not quit and had the same thing happened, I would have been a lot worse. Pretty unhealthy, likely on a plane somewhere. I it’s a good chance. I wouldn’t have made it.
[00:21:18] Mark Wright: Wow. Well, take me back. If you’re comfortable Sue to that day in 2007, when you literally died. Right.
[00:21:26] Sue Nixon: So I was in my little houseboat and I was on the phone and was rushing out the door before a rotary meeting. I was on my way to our noon rotary meeting, ran out the door, hopped in my car, was driving up the road and. Just before I got on the highway at that intersection, I had a cardiac arrest completely out of the blue.
[00:21:48] Sue Nixon: I had no idea I had any heart issues and essentially what happens is an electrical current goes wonky. In my heart and caused my heart to [00:22:00] just tremble and it stops beating essentially. So had no one intervened, I would have died right there. So I caused a car accident and there were about 3 or 4 cars involved and a bunch of people standing around because it was car accident.
[00:22:15] Sue Nixon: They were really hesitant to do anything. A nurse who happened to have the day off, it was a surprise day off for her. She was just on her way to get a cup of coffee at Starbucks down the street. She saw what was going on, pulled over, and she was the one that got out of her car, saw that I wasn’t breathing, found I didn’t have a pulse, and just started railing everybody. She’s dead. We got to get her out of here and start doing CPR. Pulled me from the car and she’s on the ground with me, giving me CPR. She and a postman who also was there, who also knew CPR, they traded off for eight minutes, keeping me alive until the medics came.
[00:22:56] Mark Wright: Oh,
[00:22:58] Sue Nixon: Yeah.
[00:22:58] Mark Wright: do you have any memory of that [00:23:00] day?
[00:23:00] Sue Nixon: I have. No memory of that day, but every time I talk about it and every time I, think about it, I get chills and I don’t think that will ever stop. It is. So there’s something in my being that, that has a recollection of how profound it was, but I think our, minds protect us and strip our memories of the actual day.
[00:23:28] Sue Nixon: I have memories the day before, and I have memories. of the time after, but I was unconscious for about 36 hours in a coma and then woke thankfully with the My neurological, mostly intact, I think.
[00:23:44] Sue Nixon: They were pretty sure I was brain dead when I came in.
[00:23:48] Mark Wright: Oh my gosh.
[00:23:49] Sue Nixon: I know.
[00:23:51] Mark Wright: You know, Sue, a lot of us go through much less traumatic events that cause us to reevaluate life. [00:24:00] And I’m just curious when you have something as profound as that happen to you, what the result was in terms of how you look at life and, how you think just on a daily basis.
[00:24:12] Sue Nixon: It makes me cry, Mark.
[00:24:13] Mark Wright: Oh,
[00:24:14] Sue Nixon: Like happy tears. It’s, I think that the most profound things make us cry. Like even you asking that question, I just think I would never give up what I went through. I wouldn’t wish it on anybody and yet I wouldn’t give it up because it’s. It’s a threshold that it shakes out everything in your life and anything that doesn’t matter is gone and everything that does matter glows.
[00:24:43] Sue Nixon: And you know, some days I, forget and get swept up into things, but most days the things that matter glow and I I get wrapped around the axle around something. It doesn’t take very long to get back and say, wow, why would I [00:25:00] worry about this when I’ve had this experience of how humans care for one another and I couldn’t have planned anything about that day. And yet when I sit down and count the things that came together for me, it is extraordinary. And I don’t think it was special because it was me. It was special because. of everything around me that came together as provision. So it’s, yes, it’s pretty powerful and I keep learning from it.
[00:25:32] Mark Wright: yeah, it seems like I’ve known you mostly after that incident, I think., But I have to tell you, Sue, that one thing that I, just love about you is that you do show up with this vibrance and this energy that is palpable, that you, it’s like when, whenever we run into you, your friends, it’s like, we ask ourselves, doesn’t she ever have a bad [00:26:00] day because you just are so present and that energy is so, clear in how it radiates through you.
[00:26:09] Mark Wright: And I just, I appreciate you, sharing that Sue, but I, I think that. That lesson of letting the crap go and appreciating the real stuff in our lives that gives us meaning, and that, we care about that. That’s I don’t think that lesson can be said, too many times.
[00:26:28] Sue Nixon: Thank you, Mark.
[00:26:29] Mark Wright: Yeah. Oh, my gosh.
[00:26:31] Mark Wright: I want to talk a little bit about your music because,
[00:26:34] Sue Nixon: Yeah.
[00:26:34] Mark Wright: You mentioned it earlier. And for those of you who don’t know, Sue is an amazing jazz singer. How did, were you a little kid that ran around the house singing or how did that come about, Sue?
[00:26:46] Sue Nixon: That is funny. You just drew up a whole bunch of memories. I loved music and I Had so much fun as a kid mimicking artists and I didn’t just mimic artists that like Karen Carpenter was one [00:27:00] of them because our range is
[00:27:01] Sue Nixon: exactly the same. So that was super fun, but I mimicked Kenny Rogers and John Denver and, Helen Reddy. I mean all of these, and I learned basically how to appreciate music by admiring musicians, basically. And, I met my match trying to mimic Aretha Franklin.
[00:27:24] Sue Nixon: I was like, dang, she’s something else. So it just kind of planted a seed in me. And yet I never did it publicly until I was a senior in high school and I just wanted to try things.
[00:27:40] Sue Nixon: So I tried sports. I hadn’t tried. I tried just all sorts of different things and I tried out for a musical and I thought, you know, I’ll just do it. Who knows? I ended up getting one of the parts where I had three solos and I thought I was going to throw up. I was so freaked out because [00:28:00] I had never sung in public and it was fun.
[00:28:03] Sue Nixon: It wasn’t awesome. And my sister still has the VHS. tape and threatens me with it.
[00:28:11] Mark Wright: that’s
[00:28:11] Sue Nixon: like, I’m going to play that for your friends if you’re not nice to me. But I ended up in college doing some studying of music and then shortly after college started performing with a little jazz trio and have loved it ever since.
[00:28:25] Mark Wright: Well, you’re so good. I’m maybe we can insert a little clip of your music, to wrap up the show. We’ll work on that, uh, in a little bit, I
[00:28:35] Sue Nixon: Though ideally we would start our own band because the listeners don’t realize you’re a drummer
[00:28:41] Sue Nixon: and a good one.
[00:28:42] Mark Wright: love drumming. Yeah. I maybe we can collaborate sometime.
[00:28:45] Sue Nixon: We need to.
[00:28:46] Mark Wright: That would be fun. Um, I think that, I think music can teach us a lot about life if we pay attention to it. And it was, I was so touched when recently you connected me with your voice teacher and you actually [00:29:00] paid for my first lesson with her.
[00:29:02] Mark Wright: And what I realized is that your breath supports everything and that all you have is that moment, which kind of goes back to the overarching theme of this. And I’d love to know., as a jazz performer and you perform at all the big venues in Seattle, what are the, what things translate, from being a jazz performer to just showing up in life and doing well in life?
[00:29:30] Mark Wright:, what are some of the parallels that you’ve discovered?
[00:29:33] Sue Nixon: Oh, we could go on for hours on that one. So first of all, I will say, uh, Wilda has been just such a mentor and friend to me over all so many years. And she knew me before my cardiac arrest and after, and she visited me in the hospital after the cardiac arrest and everybody else who had come was like, Oh, Sue, I’m so sorry. I mean, how are you doing? Very gentle. She walked in [00:30:00] and she’s. She’s 80 now. So I can’t remember. Anyway, she’s, this gorgeous Puerto Rican woman who was an opera singer all across the world. She’s, she came into the room. She said, Sue, I am so excited for you. This is this opening of your heart is going to be exactly what you need to just share so generously with the world, everything you’ve got to give.
[00:30:25] Sue Nixon: We are going to have so much fun. And she turned around and walked out, and I just smiled and thought, Oh, she’s so special. And she’s right. It was, I think for so long I had guarded and I was careful and I was rushed. I was always rushed, and that compresses everything. And if you think of music and If you’re rushing, who wants to listen to that?
[00:30:54] Sue Nixon:, if you’re just spitting out words and you haven’t taken the time to connect with them, [00:31:00] who’s going to be moved by that?
[00:31:02] Sue Nixon: If you are entering into a performance and you haven’t done your work and you’re asking the audience to bear with you. They’re going to be annoyed. But if you’ve done your work, you show up, you pour everything out and you make a mistake, they are so gracious. So it’s, these really, I’ll give you an example. I’ve actually come to my lessons with her and I’ve said, I have to sing them. I’ve seen the National Anthem at a, I think it was at a hockey game. 1 of the Thunderbirds game or something. I’m seeing the National Anthem and I’ve just had a hard time connecting with it., And she smiled and she said, okay, cause it’s not a very moving song. And I said, I don’t know why I just, she said, maybe you just haven’t taken some time with the words. And I’m like, okay, well maybe. So she, she said, let’s, will you just say the words to me? Just say them right now. So I started, I said, Oh, [00:32:00] say, can you see, literally couldn’t get past it.
[00:32:03] Sue Nixon: I burst into tears
[00:32:05] Sue Nixon: and I’m like, Oh, say, can you see by the dawn’s early light? And I was like every plan, every person in the universe who had ever sung or stated that song or lived the life that it spoke about. connected with me in that moment. And I sobbed and I thought, and she said, that’s why you were having a hard time connecting because you were afraid of the intensity of your own emotions around the song.
[00:32:33] Sue Nixon: And I was like, wow.
[00:32:34] Mark Wright: Wow.
[00:32:35] Sue Nixon: So little, little things that are huge like that have taught me more about how to be present and take the time to be still enough that you can connect authentically with things and people and concepts and words. It is the way to live generously in this world. And you come out of that, that, stillness with gratitude. [00:33:00] And that’s the spirit that connects us. I think
[00:33:03] Mark Wright: I wasn’t expecting such. A full answer that, wow, you hit on so many things, being prepared, connecting with the content of what you’re saying, connecting with people, taking time, being deliberate. I mean, there’s just so many takeaways., you know that I may have told you, I went to a drum camp in Germany last September
[00:33:25] Sue Nixon: I love that.
[00:33:26] Mark Wright: favorite drummers is Benny Grab and he’s an amazing drummer and just tours all over the world.
[00:33:31] Mark Wright: So here we are in a 300 year old monastery in Bavaria. In September, and, Steve Smith from Journey Fame, who’s a jazz aficionado, was co leading the camp with him. So we’re out in the courtyard clapping, 50 guys from all over the world. And we’re clapping in these really intricate patterns, and we’re marching and clapping and we’re, vocalizing as well.
[00:33:54] Mark Wright: So we have all parts of our body and brain are going at one time. And [00:34:00] we’re clearly, we’re messing up over and over. And Benny says, stop, stop, stop, stop. He said, when you guys mess up, I don’t want you to go and slump your shoulders. I want you to keep your shoulders back and turn your head to the sideways and say, Hmm, that’s interesting.
[00:34:18] Mark Wright: And figure out why you messed up and what was challenging about messing up. And then later in the camp, they said, the worst thing that you can do as a musician is to judge what you’re doing while you’re doing it.
[00:34:32] Sue Nixon: Oh my gosh.
[00:34:34] Sue Nixon: That is so profound.
[00:34:35] Mark Wright: I mean, who wants to go to a musical performance and see someone who’s super uptight and nervous about what they’re doing and having a scowl on their face if they make a mistake?, the joy happens when you just be. And perform and connect with the music.
[00:34:54] Mark Wright: And we see the greatest performers in the world sometimes mess up. And when [00:35:00] they do, it’s like, wow, they’re human. And then they laugh and then they pick it back up. And it’s just so cool. But I, that, the, that lesson really taught me a lot just about life. And that is if we stand in judgment of ourselves, as we’re trying to do something with other people, it’s going to short circuit that process.
[00:35:20] Sue Nixon: that
[00:35:21] Sue Nixon: is,
[00:35:21] Mark Wright: crazy.
[00:35:22] Sue Nixon: that is such a cool, profound learning. Mark, you’re exactly right. Nothing can kill a creativity faster and nothing can sever connection faster because you think about, you know, When you choose even to speak and then you amplify that with music, you’re really connecting.
[00:35:42] Sue Nixon: Even if it’s, even if it’s just you alone in a room, you’re connecting with energy in the universe that has so much power. And if you go in your head, it’s like it just clips its wings and it can’t travel.
[00:35:57] Sue Nixon: I wish I just had a little [00:36:00] snapshot of you in that. Monastery. Oh my gosh. That sounds amazing.
[00:36:04] Mark Wright:, it was magical., but that’s what I’ve learned. The higher I go on the food chain in terms of instruction, the more I realize it’s all mental. It’s all mental.
[00:36:14] Sue Nixon: Yes. Our, I think our minds are not meant to be, how do I say this? Our hearts know truth. Our minds should be in service of our hearts and when they’re put on a mission, when our minds are put on a mission that is. Generous and good, they can do so much. It can be such a supportive, powerful asset. When our minds are living in fear, when our brains are starting to do anything out of anything other than generosity and love, we are so mean to ourselves, to other people, that judge, judgey part of ourselves is not generative, [00:37:00] not helpful.
[00:37:01] Mark Wright: Our team at WorkP2P went on a field trip. A couple of weeks ago to cost tailored. It’s a manufacturing company in Mukilteo. They make airplane seats and couches for Nordstrom. It’s 1 of the most enlightened businesses I’ve ever seen. Jeff costs its founder started studying the Toyota production method in the 90s and really.
[00:37:20] Mark Wright: Says that the company is about developing human beings, and we got to sit in on a session. Jeff had a group of people from a tech startup who are working on fusion as an energy source. These are super smart, high level people. And. We’re listening to the exchange between Jeff and these really bright people.
[00:37:41] Mark Wright: And, one person raised their hand and just asked about, what’s your philosophy on business? And just wanted to drill a little bit deeper on that. He went up to the board, the whiteboard, and he drew a shape and it was a heart.
[00:37:55] Sue Nixon: Hmm.
[00:37:56] Mark Wright: if your business doesn’t have this.
[00:37:58] Mark Wright: You might as well not even do [00:38:00] it.
[00:38:00] Sue Nixon: Wow.
[00:38:01] Mark Wright: And, and they were, I could tell that it was like, really,
[00:38:05] Sue Nixon: Yeah.
[00:38:06] Mark Wright: because who does that? Who in business draws a heart on the whiteboard and said, Hey, everybody, this is who we are. This is what we do.
[00:38:15] Sue Nixon: Wow.
[00:38:16] Mark Wright: That’s a pretty profound lesson.,
[00:38:18] Sue Nixon: Oh my gosh.
[00:38:20] Mark Wright: I want to talk a little bit more about.
[00:38:23] Mark Wright: Your heart, you had, I’m guessing pacemaker or defibrillator, internal defibrillator, attached.
[00:38:30] Sue Nixon: I did. So they never found out for sure what caused the cardiac arrest. It’s electrical. And so when I, before I left the hospital, that first in 2007, that first, incident, they put a pacemaker in my chest, which basically was at the ready whenever I needed it. And I did need it because my heart kept beating.
[00:38:50] Sue Nixon: Kept doing its thing, but it would shock me and I would, it would bring me back to consciousness. And, you know, it’s 1 of those things where I didn’t want it at 1st, but the minute it [00:39:00] had to do it, it’s job. I was like. I like this now. I think I’m going to keep it. So, three or four times it saved my life again.
[00:39:10] Mark Wright: So the defibrillator worked a number of times over the years.
[00:39:14] Sue Nixon: Yes.
[00:39:15] Mark Wright:, and then you came to a point where it was a crisis, right? In terms of its ability to keep working or what happened? Mm
[00:39:23] Sue Nixon: Yeah. So, so how defibrillators work is a lead goes from the device into your heart and monitors basically the heart rhythm so that when my heart would go into that crazy fast rhythm, it would shock me. And so on. Well, Both of the leads went bad, so it just happened that it, while it still had battery, the lead stopped working.
[00:39:45] Sue Nixon: So they rushed me in the hospital and replaced the battery, I’m sorry, I’ll start over. So, both of the leads went bad. Which meant they had to replace the device and they replaced it with an alternative [00:40:00] device that was new on the market, which is actually on the side of my chest, and the wires go along the edge of my heart. So when they were putting the new device in, they were able to see my heart valve, and they determined right on the spot that my mitral heart valve was failing and was really, really bad. So when I got out of surgery, they said, surgery went well, you’ve got a new device. It’s working great. And we need you in for open heart surgery really soon.
[00:40:32] Sue Nixon: We need to replace your mitral valve. So a little scary, but another huge provision that they were in there and they saw it, cause I didn’t feel it. I had, I knew my, valve had issues, but I had no idea it was a problem. So bad.
[00:40:49] Mark Wright: And did you actually get blood from Bloodworks during that surgery? Is that, did I get that part? Correct?
[00:40:55] Sue Nixon:, so when I got the device,
[00:40:57] Mark Wright: look old enough to have stories like this.[00:41:00]
[00:41:01] Sue Nixon: It’s hard to keep track myself, I tell you. So when I got this, the new defibrillator put in, it was super strange that I ended up being bruised from my shoulders to my, the middle of my thighs. I was a big, great purple. It was so crazy. And so I went to see the surgeon and I said, That surgery was kind of a big deal didn’t I recovered pretty quickly, but he said you should not be bruised that way You need to go see a hematologist So I thought well, I work at Bloodworks.
[00:41:34] Sue Nixon: I can find one of those So I went to see one of my colleagues who is a hematologist and it turns out Because my mitral valve when a normal valve goes like this it stops It lets blood through and then it stops the backflow and a prolapse means your valve starts to go both ways.
[00:41:56] Sue Nixon: And so it basically gets floppy. And [00:42:00] so because it was going back and forth that way, the platelets were getting sheared off. And so I inherited, or I acquired, Von Willebrand’s disease. I would never have known that was a thing, but the researchers at Bloodworks discovered it and knew about it, so I had acquired that. So when I went in for my open heart surgery, they had blood products at the ready because they knew I wouldn’t be able to clot. If I were in that surgery, trying to, you know,
[00:42:33] Mark Wright: I’d love to bring us back kind of full circle. Sue, when you, I think you started doing consulting work for Bloodworks and then that turned into a full time thing. Take me through that transition, to explain how that happened.
[00:42:46] Sue Nixon: yes. So I went in 2014, I was hired by blood works with my agency to help them with their name change because they had gone from, they were [00:43:00] Puget Sound blood center and they were starting serving hospitals in Oregon. So the Puget Sound part of their name was limiting as they were expanding their territory and their regions that they served. So it was a wonderful process working with them, changing the name from Puget Sound Blood Center to Bloodworks. And part of that process was interviewing all of the executive team and getting to know their clients. Customer base and really just getting to know them and trying to find a name that would honor what they, who they are and what they do. So that was a really fun project. And then the CEO approached me after that project to help them look at how do we continue to evolve how we recruit donors, because for so long, we’ve had people who are regular donors, a lot of the baby boomer generation who were a part of. wartime who grew up learning that was a part of what they wanted [00:44:00] to do to care for their community. It was a habit. So we never had shortages, but as our baby boomer generation is aging out of being able, to donate blood, there’s a whole education process that we need to do with our young folks who frankly are healthy and, Just haven’t lived as many years on the planet to see that it’s a thing that you a need to give blood and be you Might need it someday or somebody in your family might so I really joined them as a consultant to figure out What’s the best way to tackle this challenge? And then I ended up feeling like wow this is really important work and If I’m going to apply the experiences that I’ve, so far in life had to any mission worth trying to solve, this is a goodie. So ended up going to work for them full time in 2016, end of [00:45:00] 2016, 2017.
[00:45:01] Sue Nixon: I kind of went 20%, 40%, 80%, and then thought I might as well just join.
[00:45:08] Mark Wright: Do you feel like Sue, this is a natural progression. Do you feel like, you were sort of called to be where you are today?
[00:45:15] Sue Nixon: I would answer that. Yes. Now. I don’t know that I would have out of the You know, in the beginning, answer it, yes, as much as I thought this was, this is meaningful work and I’m going to do this, for a bit. And, As I’ve been there, the deeper I get into it and the more I learn and the more I realize I don’t know and yet nobody else does either.
[00:45:39] Sue Nixon: So we’re figuring it out together. It has brought every facet of my career, every facet of my personal life, every facet of my music. It has drawn on every cell in my body and every learning I’ve ever had and more, including just [00:46:00] How to team with other humans, because if we’re solving something that is very tricky and so important and beautifully profound. So it’s, it, I would say now, yes, it absolutely is.
[00:46:17] Mark Wright: And tell me about the work environment at Bloodworks and what management does to try to create that human centric environment that honors people, whether you’re the CEO or maybe somebody just working in the, blood unit.
[00:46:34] Sue Nixon: That is a really good question. And I will say, we’ve been working really hard on the culture. I think healthcare and the sciences, because it’s a highly regulated industry, it can be tricky to bring that soft skills into our work. Because You have so many things that you need to adhere to from a [00:47:00] standard operating procedures standpoint to keep things safe, to keep people safe, to keep the product pure., there’s a lot of rigor and constraints. And so finding ways to bring the humanness. And to temper the sort of fear base that can come from that sort of environment and that constant scarcity, it’s an ongoing challenge., and we’ve been doing a lot of work on how to team and how to basically try new things, fail fast, don’t judge, 1 of the really simple, but profound things that we have changed in the last few years is to start meetings with. Celebration and to end meetings with appreciation so that we notice and appreciate at the beginning and [00:48:00] notice and appreciate at the end.
[00:48:01] Sue Nixon: And typically the celebrations tend to be more about the business or problem solved or successes and the appreciation at the end of the meetings tends to be for one another. For our colleagues for a beautifully handled difficult situation. And just that simple shift has been really, really powerful for our culture.
[00:48:24] Mark Wright: Well, as we wrap things up, Sue, this has been such a rich conversation with you. When you think about the work that you’ve done in your life, it involves music. It involves, all kinds of different industries, marketing, branding. Now you’re in the nonprofit world doing just some amazing work.
[00:48:43] Mark Wright: I kind of laughed because my wife works at a middle school and one of her sayings is we’re not saving lives here, but it’s, it’s getting a lot more challenging by the day., I think a lot of professions are here. You are, in an [00:49:00] organization that literally is saving lives every day. The work is that important.
[00:49:04] Mark Wright: Um, and I’d love just some perspective on what work has meant to you as a Development and appreciation for life.
[00:49:14] Sue Nixon: One of the most honoring aspects of my time at Bloodworks is I began in marketing. I began as a consultant, I moved into marketing, and then expanded into community engagement, which kind of touched on all the facets of our external reach into the community. And then just over the last year, I’ve taken on collections as well, so that all of those things are working together. So from the first point of contact to the actual drawing of blood. All of those teams are working together, and it has taught me just that the power of intertwining ourselves with one another with a shared [00:50:00] mission and a shared purpose, and how. Even though we might not know, I didn’t come from blood operations, but I’m working with colleagues who are brilliant at it and my appreciation for what they do and their appreciation for what I do and coming together to solve this problem. Challenging problems in a spirit of, of that appreciation is so much fun. And yet coming together to solve those problems, if you’re fearful and not working together as a team, it’s so frustrating and everybody’s exhausted at the end and you’re not successful.
[00:50:39] Mark Wright: Yeah,
[00:50:40] Sue Nixon: I don’t know that I answered your question.
[00:50:42] Mark Wright: I think you did.
[00:50:43] Sue Nixon: did. I
[00:50:44] Mark Wright: you did. Yeah. Yeah. Sue, I, I really appreciate your time and, I just adore our friendship and just the way that you’ve shown up in the world and wow. So many great takeaways. I think sometimes the most challenging things. In our life [00:51:00] have the most profound impact on the quality of human being that we become.
[00:51:04] Mark Wright: And I think as I look at you, you’re such a great example of, of taking some really challenging things that happened to you in your life and turn them into, to positives.
[00:51:14] Sue Nixon: Thank you, Mark. Right. It is so mutual. I just loved our time.
[00:51:18] Mark Wright: thanks to keep in touch.