00:13 SYDNEY JOHNSON, HOST:
Welcome back to Responsible Disruption, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of innovation, entrepreneurship, and the occasional mishap. I'm your host, Sydney Johnson, head of design at J5. Today, we have two incredible guests joining us: Shahr(zad) Savizi-Smed and Amanda Ovaici, the duo behind Fuckup Nights YYC. Shahr is a dynamic professional with a wealth of experience in philanthropy, community engagement, and entrepreneurship. Previously the Director of Development at the University of Calgary's Cumming School of Medicine, she spearheaded initiatives to expand healthcare services in Calgary. With an Executive MBA from the Haskins School of Business, Shahr empowers startups to thrive and grow through her role as a venture capital analyst at Plug and Play Tech Center. She also co-founded two marketing consulting firms, emphasizing the importance of learning from failure and fostering creative solutions. Amanda, an associate lawyer at Osuji and Smith, combines legal acumen with a diverse background in philosophy, business, and entrepreneurship. Beyond her legal work, Amanda is deeply engaged in Calgary's community, volunteering with charities and destigmatizing failure. As a first-generation Calgarian with strong ties to the Arab and Portuguese communities, Amanda is committed to empowering entrepreneurs and embracing failure as a pathway to growth. Buckle up; we are destigmatizing the "F" word: failure. Shahr and Amanda, welcome to the podcast!
01:27 SHAHR SAVIZI-SMED, GUEST 1:
Thank you. Glad to be here.
01:28 AMANDA OVAICI, GUEST 2:
Thank you for having us.
01:29 SYDNEY: So let's just start at the beginning. Tell me how Fuckup nights got started.
01:35 SHAHR: Do you want me to take this one.
01:37 AMANDA: Yeah, I'll let you take the rule on that. This one here, I think there's nobody better that puts it more eloquently than you for sure.
01:43 SHAHR: Thank you. Well, Amanda and I have known each other since our first days at the University of Calgary when we were completing our bachelor’s degrees. When she came back from London, having finished her law degree, we kind of got back in touch and started talking about wanting to do something together—something creative. We both love animals. At first, we were thinking of maybe doing a fundraiser for animals. Then we came across this global movement called Fuckup Nights. We got to learn more about it and learned that it's a movement that was started about ten years ago in Mexico City by a bunch of college students who were sick and tired of hearing about success stories. So they created this kind of movement called Fuckup Nights and invited speakers to talk about their business failures. We quickly went online, saw that there was no event like this in Calgary, and got in touch with the corporates in Mexico to talk to them, tell them about our backgrounds, and how we could really customize the event here in Calgary to make it very much a Calgary essence, entrepreneurial kind of event. It was a really good suggestion for us to explore just because we’re not very vanilla either. So the name really attracted us, but also the whole aspect of talking about entrepreneurship, especially with Amanda coming from such a strong entrepreneurial background. I love hosting events, so we thought this would be great. Then we started the first one in 2019, and it was a little bit of a hard sell in the conservative ecosystem of Calgary to say, “Hey, trust us and give us, like, oh, F—okay, we want you to speak at it.” But we had some incredible champions due to our career backgrounds who were familiar with our work ethic and trusted us, and they said yes to becoming our speakers, and it just kind of took off from there.
03:37 SYDNEY: Amazing. And what about in your regular lives? Do you find **** ** nights or running this organization or series of events has changed the way that you approach your work or approach other areas of your life?
03:50 AMANDA: Oh, undoubtedly, for sure. Especially since I operate in the legal industry, where failure is definitely a taboo. You're not allowed to fail in the legal industry. I think sometimes with how I manage and approach our team at Osuji and Smith and the people I work directly with, when they make an error of some sort, it's significantly more forgiving. I obviously convert it into a learning experience. I'm also one of the co-founders of Cafe Alchemist, and our team has embraced this significantly. I really want to emphasize that failures are incredibly valuable because there are so many important lessons that can be learned from them. I can't possibly explain how many times a failure has converted into something really positive. For example, I always encourage our teams to reflect on their failures and see what positive outcomes we can take from them. A perfect example at Cafe Alchemist is that we've literally converted mistakes into new, very viable products that attract consumers. We wouldn't have that component if we weren't forced to reflect on the failure and learn from it. I think that this is a really essential component that we've implemented in our day-to-day lives, and it has changed the way we do business and how we approach every little instance of a failure.
05:26 SHAHR: Yeah, I was going to say for me this question just took me back because I hadn't started my Executive MBA when we first launched Fuckup Nights. I think I started studying for the GMAT and I failed the first GMAT while we were doing this. I remember actually being in a kitchen crying. Man, do you remember this?
05:44 AMANDA: I do, yes.
05:45 SHAHR: Yeah, so we were fully into this event, talking about the importance of failure, and I remember I broke down. I was like, I had never failed something, and it was such an important thing for me to get in. I had failed my first GMAT, and I was just crying about it. Amanda's like, we're literally talking about the importance of failure; this is where you gotta rise up to this situation. Yeah, walk the walk. Yeah, walk the walk. She really made me pull up my girl panties there and was a huge source of support for me, but also a really good reminder of, like, hey, we're doing this in public, and this is what we're preaching essentially. You're here crying because you failed, but it's OK because, you know, we're also talking about the emotional side of failure and how, you know, our speakers do talk about that and the vulnerability side of it. I remember I was going through a very personal failure during it. Then I passed and went through my MBA, which was great. But yeah, it took me a while to also wrap my head around it. It’s still tough when you fail.
06:51 SYDNEY: Yeah, of course. I mean, that's why you have to have this kind of movement or this conscious idea of reframing it, right? I'm wondering, did you have any failures when you were getting this up and running? Anything that you failed at when it came to **** ** nights?
07:11 AMANDA: When it comes specifically to Fuckup Nights, I actually finally confessed at our last event. Don't get me wrong, we've had multiple flukes, both of us. They're small to large, and every single event, they're not avoidable. On the day of the event, we're like, "Did you get the regular license?" "No, I got the recurrent." Or, "Should I have forgotten to get the drift tickets?" And we're 20 minutes out from the event. But we did do one really unique event during COVID. We saw an opportunity and started to brainstorm. We put together these really great COVID boxes that showcased local businesses in Calgary. It was phenomenal, especially getting the opportunity to get to know all of the amazing products that come out of Calgary. I think a lot of people are significantly naive about some of the incredible ideas that are birthed in our city. As part of that component of putting together these boxes, everybody that purchased a ticket would get a box, and we delivered the box the day before the actual event itself, which was going live online and showcasing some of our top speakers. I'll let you take it from here; I always wondered why it took me eight hours to deliver, I think, 15 boxes.
08:40 SHAHR: You know, I actually didn't trigger why it took us so long until recently. So, God, it's—I honestly have PTSD over this event. This was an idea; she never lets us rest. It was COVID. She was like, "No, we gotta keep the event going, so we're going to do this Zoom event, and these boxes are going to be everyone's ticket to kind of all open at the same time." So it gets that personal engagement going. I thought, "OK, great, let's do it." So we did the boxes. Our husbands helped us pack the boxes. We had a whole crew, and we came to the day of the delivery. We had 200 boxes, and I said, "I'm going to organize who delivers what to what address." I organized the addresses and whatnot, and I think this was Amanda's mistake for allowing me to do this because she knows I'm not good at giving directions. This is a known fact: I can't find my way around. Yeah, I'm horrible at directions. So she's like, "OK, you take over." I used this app and input all the addresses. We had ten volunteers, so I thought, "Hey, you know, 20 boxes per volunteer." We started from a centralized location, which was Cafe Alchemist, and then we delivered these boxes. But you know how you go from A to Z, but you also have to come back to A? I didn't put back to A, so the app didn't understand how it needed to make a circular route. It just made the longest route for every single person in the city.
To send everyone out to without considering doubling or shortening the route to come back to the cafe, it took me 8 1/2 hours of driving to do 20 boxes. Halfway through, I hit a curb. I was exhausted. I pulled over, got into my car, and called my husband. I said, "I'm lost. I don't know what to do. This is the worst idea." And by the way, I didn't know about any of this beforehand. I just thought it was a little unusual that it took me 8 hours, but I was like, "It's OK, it's cool," until...
10:48 SYDNEY: That's how the how the houses were.
10:54 SHAHR: So, three years later, I'm doing VC, so I'm meeting a lot of startups. We were in a meeting, and this trucking company was talking about their new app and their startup of how, you know, trucks go deliver and then they come back. And that's when it hit me—just a couple of months ago—it was like, oh my God, people come back!
11:20 SYDNEY: That explains now.
11:23 AMANDA: And she finally confessed me. She finally confessed me. One night, she's like I need to tell you something and I was like, you didn't.
11:31 SHAHR: But all this time mentally was blaming Amanda. I was Like *******, she always makes us work so hard. Why is she always? Having to come like this, why do you have to do that during COVID? It was all. This is like my stupidity. You would not understanding the logic in my direction.
11:50 AMANDA: I was going to say this actually makes for a really good story about how, actually—sorry, Amanda and I first met not in our undergraduate degree, but we met through our husbands, who come from a similar cultural background. So it just naturally kind of progressed into a really good friendship. But we see this in the very beginning stages of our friendship as well. Amanda mentioned earlier that she has an entrepreneurial background, and my family is heavily in the entrepreneurial world. When I was younger, they tasked me with this great opportunity to create my own hair care line and launch it in the American and Canadian markets. I remember I worked so hard while doing my undergraduate degree and working nights on it every single night. I couldn't wait to receive my first sample, and when I did, I raced over to Shahr's house to give her the sample, super excited. The poor Shahr—I've abused her over the years. I'm so sorry!
12:49 SYDNEY: It's all coming out.
12:50 AMANDA: Yeah, this is going to become a very emotional podcast! I remember running to Shahr's house, like, “Oh my God, I finally got the bottle! You need to try it!” And she said, “Of course, I’ll try it.” So I gave it to her, and then one day goes by, two days go by, three days go by, and I dropped her a message, like, “Shahr, I need your feedback! What do you think?” Her response was two words: “It’s heavy.” I thought, “Heavy? I’ve been working on this for three years, and that’s the only feedback you can give me?” So I looked at my one extra bottle left, and I jumped in the shower. It wasn't heavy; it was glue! I ended up gluing my hair together. I messaged her and was like, “Oh my God, I am so sorry! Did I glue your hair together?”
13:50 SHAHR: I remember being excited to try it. I was like, oh, free product. It's all branded. I get to try it. I was like ohh my God, it's barely coming out of the bottle.
14:02 SYDNEY: And what was going through your head after you tried it? Like, how am I gonna tell her?
14:06 SHAHR: I hope she has other friends telling her, like, “I don’t like this.” I mean, I hope someone else has already broken the news!
14:20 AMANDA: You know, I discovered, by the way, it took me about a month to get it out of my hair because I've long curly hair.
14:24 SHAHR: She had branded the bottle Ovaici and that's when she was dating her husband. So her husband's last name is Ovaici. And so that was the sweetest thing that you know, so cute and romantic. All the bottles were labeled the Ovaici.
14:38 AMANDA: Well, that's when. They finally came to market. For sure, but they don't discover that because of our different climate in in Calgary, during the transport, the chemical composition of it Altered with a cooler weather climate. So I had to go back to the drawing table. Eventually we got it launched and so I went back to Shari's comment about Ovaici I love the I love the last name so much, but at the time also my Dad didn't know. That I was in a relationship with him. So it had to be. Very hidden for several years. It was a pretty entertaining, you know,
15:12 SYDNEY: He's like when, where did this name come from?
15:15 AMANDA: You loved the name until you realized what it was related to is like. How dare you? So there's history.
15:24 SYDNEY: Yeah. And how did that like that that surely that story also impacted your decision to get into **** ** nights together. Like you can imagine, like, part of it.
15:33 SHAHR: Oh yeah, we shared that story for, I think, the first two years. It just took us back to that day and also to the entrepreneurial side of it and how much time Amanda had put into it. We had a lot of speakers who also had products on the market, and many of their stories involved distribution or Amanda's experience, so we got to share that with everyone, which was cool.
16:00 SYDNEY: Yeah, that's awesome. So those are like some product failures. What other kind of failures do you hear about in the speaker sessions?
16:08 AMANDA: Oh my God, one of my favorites to this day is Icky from Tundra Process Solutions, which, apologies, he's no longer at Tundra Process Solutions; he sold it to Wajax. But his story was phenomenal. It was all about developing a weather system for the oil and gas industry, and it was about trusting these engineers to construct something that was originally formatted for the oil and gas in Fort Mac. But there's also, apparently, applicability to high-rise buildings. So without any significant modifications, they installed it on the inside of downtown Calgary's high-rise buildings. He even brought the element, by the way. It was so surreal, but it was a component of the boiler system. Because of the pressure from a high-rise building versus a differently formatted factory or whatever that would normally take place, it ended up popping a little hole, and he showed us the hole. It was very small. He brought the actual equipment to his bucket, and it leaked diesel all over downtown Calgary.
17:21 SYDNEY: Ohh no, that's terrible.
17:22 AMANDA: Now this is blend and this is when oil and gas was booming. and this has been 100 process solution was probably estimated value of maybe 3 to 5 million. So then they get slapped with a $3,000,000 lawsuit from the City of Calgary. Because they had to bring in haphazard, they had to shut down pretty much.
17:45 SHAHR: All their clients started dropping them; their reputation got muddied. Yeah, so it was a big ***. But how they came out of it is that he said they just survived. And, you know, the 2008 recession happened, so companies kept shutting down, and they were the ones who held on for dear life until they came out of it. He ended up selling the company for like $909 million recently, so wow.
18:15 AMANDA: Yeah, I also really need to emphasize there's a component with our speakers that I find rather consistent, and that is they're very humble, which is surreal considering the level of success and magnitude that some of them have reached. When it comes to sharing one of the most vulnerable moments in their lives, they have to take into consideration so many people. It's not just about them at all. As far as I'm concerned, I consider this to be some of the most selfless people I think I've ever met because their only primary objective is staying afloat and maintaining their business. They employ so many people, and it's all about their employees—safeguarding them, protecting them, and making sure that this business remains a success because they're responsible for all these individuals' lives. So, the fact that they come to the stage and are willing to share these vulnerable moments takes so much tenacity and strength. Obviously, they've overcome significant challenges in their current positions, but I really need to say Iggy is probably one of the most humble, down-to-earth people I've ever met in my life. Having the opportunity to have him take one of our stages and share that story was honestly a real honor because Sean and I have the opportunity to learn from these individuals as well. They're truly inspiring.
19:46 SHAHR: Yeah, I have to say there's been a theme that comes out when we interview these serial entrepreneurs and these types of people. First, they say, "OK, we want to talk about a failure." And then once it clicks, they all say, "Oh, I have so many! Which one? There's so many!" I wonder, you know, which one I should talk about. And then they all come out of it excited to share. For our speakers, it’s also therapeutic for them because, you know, once you get over one failure, you're on to the next, right? So you don't really take time to analyze it. This has become kind of therapeutic for them as well. It gives them a sense of pride after they speak about it. They're like, "Yeah, I did come through that. That was not an easy thing to go through." But I think when you're an entrepreneur, it's just so up and down, and it's kind of the name of the game, right? These speaking opportunities have allowed our speakers to reflect. It gives them a little pat on the shoulder as well because they don’t really do that; no one does that for them. It's a lonely journey, being an entrepreneur and leading a company, right?
20:59 SYDNEY: Yeah, I mean, that was going to be the next thing I was going to ask about—the kind of cathartic release that probably comes with just having that moment to share. Have any of your speakers talked about how it impacted their journey moving forward, just having that moment to reflect?
21:14 SHAHR: I I'll let Amanda talk about the audience, but one thing I’ll say before it is that Amanda and I, before the speakers take the stage, meet with them quite frequently to talk about their stories. So there's a lot that comes out prior to getting on stage, and we're very fortunate to be part of those conversations and build these relationships with our speakers. We go through that kind of cathartic emotional rollercoaster with them, so we get to see that a lot behind closed doors before they go on stage. But Amanda, I'll let you kind of take it because you've heard a lot of good stories about how people have changed their businesses because of this.
21:48 AMANDA: And I would, I do actually kind of go back to overall for **** ** nights as well. That night is, for the most part, about at least the global process—they like to just focus on failure in Calgary and share, and I kind of made it more entrepreneurial. We focus on entrepreneurial failures. A lot of the other chapters that take place, but I also think it's one of the reasons why Calgary's ecosystem is extremely successful. After the downward turn in the economy within the oil and gas industry, a lot of individuals left and started their own businesses. We had a huge entrepreneurial boom and an opening of new ventures in Calgary. The objective is obviously to bring out this little ecosystem together so that they are willing to show their vulnerabilities and be able to help one another with their current obstacles. That is one thing that I do notice within the audience itself is that when people come, they come with their guard down. I don't know if it's maybe because of the profanity in the name, where they think that they can just be a little bit more transparent and honest. But when people come to the event, I mean, I attend a ton of events, and people feel like, to a certain degree, they have to maintain a certain facade. They don't when they come to **** ** nights; they're willing to be a little bit more vulnerable and transparent with one another. I love it because there are so many times in which somebody has come to the event and said, "I made this connection because I shared one of the obstacles that I recently encountered," and four or five other people suddenly came and heard the story and are willing to help me overcome it because either they have a contact.
Or resources and are willing to facilitate them. Being able to sit back and watch these connections formulate during the actual event is still rewarding, and it's so great to see how this community is willing to help one another. With respect to our speakers, I love helping them curate their stories. It's one of my favorite things to do because I get to sit down with them, and when they're sharing, I think they haven't had a lot of time to reflect because entrepreneurs are very solution-oriented people. Sometimes, when we have our meetings, they say, "I haven't failed," and I start to laugh. I'm like, "There's no way you can be operating a business for this many years, and you've never failed." The difference is...
24:14 SHAHR: Because they don't look at it as failure. Right. And that's, one of the lessons
24:20 AMANDA: They don't. Because the mindset has gradually engineered and changed in a different direction, where it's like, "Oh, this is happening again" or "Something else is happening." OK, I don't want to focus on the issue; I want to focus on the solution. So they become so solution-oriented that the fact that it became an obstacle of failure becomes so diluted they don't even think of failures or obstacles anymore. They just say, "This is what's happening. How do we move forward on it?" So when you start to sit down with our actual speakers and they begin to tell us some of their stories, because they haven't had the time necessarily to reflect on it, you start to make all these interesting connections within their stories to other historical events that have taken place in their lives. It's honestly so amazing to see everything unravel. And then there’s one actual speaker that just recently, Jason, who owns a basketball team in Calgary, made the comment that having this opportunity allowed him to make certain connections as to why he wanted to open a league in Calgary. He didn't realize...
25:29 SHAHR: The surge basketball.
25:29 AMANDA: How much it was connected through previous failure and so being able to make those connections and work within our speakers and in reflecting on that is honestly a real joy.
25:41 SHAHR: Yeah, Amanda, you just said a quotes . I'm going to steal it for our next one, he said. Their mindset has engineered a change. With your quotes there.
25:50 SYDNEY: Yeah. Love it too. There's something really poignant in that, as well as that. Having that entrepreneurial lens that you've put on the Calgary chapter is also insight into a way that all these entrepreneurs have framed failure for their survival in many ways, right? So, like, that's how they've gotten through it: through that reframe.
26:12 SHAHR: Amanda touched on this: we don't have to facilitate any sort of networking. It's always so natural. It's almost like a catalyst. When people come and they've bought a ticket to something called **** ** night, your guards are obviously down, and so people aren't trying to impress each other. Everyone's just talking and networking. We do surveys after every event, and it's become known as one of Calgary's greatest networking events. So not just, you know, we hand-select our speakers; we make sure we deliver on that, and we put a lot of work into it as well. But there's something else that happens in the community of people that come. Yeah, it's really light-hearted, it's open, it's fun, and there's just something natural that happens there.
26:56 SYDNEY: Yeah. I’m wondering about that audience connection and that networking too. Do you have any stories of unexpected wins that have come from those connections or partnerships that have been created—people that have gone on to do something else because of your events?
27:16 AMANDA: So we do have one individual that I know of that spoke at one of our events—Milk, the owner and founder of Milk Jar Candles. She shared her story, and so many people became really excited and wanted to onboard her product in their own personal businesses. They reached out to her and brought their product in for retail purposes. And then I remember there was one gentleman who came up to me; I guess he was doing tours of the beer community in Calgary. I just remember him telling me, "Thank you so much for this, because honestly, I've faced a lot of obstacles this year with opening this new business, and it's just nice to see that I'm not alone—that these obstacles are normal." So I think when you first start your business and start encountering these obstacles—let's emphasize earlier—entrepreneurship is very lonely. That's something that I notice. There are all these subgroups and little networks or clubs, but if you can afford to join them and whatnot, and you're in the early stages, it can be really overwhelming and daunting. As an entrepreneur, you're the marketing, you're the accountant, you are the operations, the product development—you're wearing so many hats, and it's hard sometimes to navigate through it. So to hear him look at me and say, "Thank you so much. I didn't realize that everybody goes through this and that I'm not the only one," is kind of humbling and also unifying. It shows that failure is a great unifier for Calgary and for entrepreneurs, because it's something that everybody can relate to.
28:57 SHAHR: I've had people come to me and say they've dissolved a partnership or let go of people because a lot of our speakers have focused on not following their gut, or not firing as fast as they should, or holding on to a partnership for a long time. I've found a few people come up to me and say that this has made them go in a different direction. There’s been lots of feedback from our audience as well, and the relationships that happen among them are awesome to see.
29:23 SYDNEY: Yeah, that must be so rewarding. What do you think the bottom line saying that, you would say of why is it important to embrace failure as an entrepreneur? What would you say to that?
29:35 SHAHR: I think it gives people hope. It shows people that failure is not the end because when you are in that state of failure, everything seems hopeless, and your brain is just in a panic attack, right? You're feeling like crap about yourself, and you're feeling down. But I think what this event has done is shown people that if you train your brain to see solutions, there will always be a solution. There's always another door you can open, and it has done that for me. Now it actually has become part of my life that when I hit an obstacle, I'm like, OK, where is the opportunity? Where can this go? What is the silver lining? Right? So it gives you that optimistic kind of perspective.
30:21 AMANDA: I just wanted to say failure is inevitable in anything that's worthwhile pursuing, especially when it's outside the scope of the norm. You're going to face obstacles no matter what the situation is. There is this false narrative on social media that really aggravates me because it promotes the notion that you can open your own business and become a millionaire in a year. I laugh so hard every time I see it. I'm like, that's not how entrepreneurship works. Entrepreneurship is not about working a few hours a day and making millions. And actually, that just reminds me of one of our other speakers, Adam. He opened a business...
31:02 SHAHR: Friday song. Yeah, I love that story.
31:07 AMANDA: Because he thought that he was going to be working 9:00 to 5:00 every day and not having to deal with late nights. He said he experienced a very rude awakening, and that philosophy even influenced the decision on the naming of his business—that every day was going to be a Friday. He told the audience what a rude awakening it was because there were times he was awake until 3:00 in the morning, and then had to wake up at 6:00 in the morning and get right back to work. He talked about following deliveries, especially from different countries, managing customs, and starting to realize how many hats he had to wear. There were some pivotal moments during that time where he had to decide: Do I go back as an employee, do I walk away from this business, or do I stick it out and keep moving forward?
31:55 SHAHR: Yeah, during this time, he said he should have called his company "Monday" because every day felt like a Monday—100%. So that was his aha moment.
32:09 AMANDA: When you start to reflect on failure, anyone who wants to go into entrepreneurship needs to know that they need to be prepared and mentally strong for some of the big obstacles and failures they're going to face. But knowing that not only are they inevitable, but there's going to be a solution behind every single one of them. And by the way, that solution might not be pretty. I mean, we had speakers who came where the solution was there, but the elements in the lessons they took out of pursuing that, experiencing bankruptcy, and creating this large company, gave them the education and knowledge to open up something so much bigger and larger than they could have ever imagined. One of them just recently started that marijuana company.
32:56 SHAHR: Ohh Spirit Leafs.
32:58 AMANDA: Spirit Leaf's owner, Darren, left his previous company, which was a watch company, and had to put that company through bankruptcy. However, the lessons he learned during that entire process resulted in him opening Spirit Leaf, which he later sold for more than a million dollars. The company has since become a franchise all across Canada. It's truly inspirational, and he has since opened up another business and even IPO'd recently.
33:28 SYDNEY: Oh my gosh.
33:29 SHAHR: Yeah, it's a journey, right? I think that was one of the things that Amanda and I wanted to get across, and we both were getting so frustrated. I learned this from my MBA: entrepreneurship takes at least seven years to achieve a decent level of success and sustainability. But it's a lifelong lifestyle. It's lonely, it's tiring, and it's not for everyone. You can be entrepreneurial, but that doesn't mean you have to go and be an entrepreneur.
33:58 SYDNEY: That's a big commitment in a different way. How do you think that you've talked about how in your community, obviously through the name and just the vibes in general that people can be themselves, they can be really real and they can be really vulnerable? Obviously, your speakers are embracing vulnerability in a huge way. How do you feel that helps build the support system in the community that you've created?
34:25 AMANDA: Yeah. So I think going back to some of our previous comments, when people come to the event, they come with their guard down, and so they're willing to be vulnerable, either before our speakers take the stage or after. By our speakers willingly coming to the stage and sharing the horrible and most vulnerable moments of their lives, it opens up the dialogue for people to not only share their own personal failures after the event, because we maintain it open after the speakers. We have live music and continue with food and drinks, and so people continue the conversation. They become more inclined to want to share their own failures and their own recent obstacles. Having that conversation usually ends up helping us facilitate and create that little entrepreneurial ecosystem that the group wants to nourish. It allows them to not only share their failures, but also for others to jump in and help with any contacts they might have to assist that individual in overcoming their challenges. Seeing that take place is the objective; it's to bring the entrepreneurial community together because, as you emphasized quite heavily, entrepreneurship is extremely lonely, but it doesn't have to be. That’s one of the objectives of the event: to bring us all together in order to help one another.
35:48 SHAHR: I also want to say that it's become a badge of honor for our participants and our speakers. When people buy their tickets, it's like going to **** ** nights, and we call our audience **** uppers, or "I'm a **** upper." Our speakers say, "I'm a ****** person." It's become a badge of honor for our community as well. For us, it's really, really rewarding to see. We're constantly learning through this as well, so it's important for us. We're part of the audience, and we're listening to the stories of our speakers. They're the main highlights of the event, and it's their courage and vulnerability in sharing their stories that inspire us. Amanda and I have learned so much throughout all of this as well.
36:33 SYDNEY: Yeah, that's amazing. You've both done so much to create this wonderful movement. I think it's such a boon to Calgary. Thank you for everything you do and for sharing your stories with me today. Can you give us a sneak peek into any upcoming events or anything you want to share about what **** ** nights is up to?
36:54 SHAHR: Yeah, absolutely! We never slow down, and that's kind of a curse and a blessing. We're always thinking of new ideas and we might scale this to another level, hopefully next year. In the meantime, we run these events four times a year, and people can purchase their tickets through Showpass and follow us on Instagram at fuckupnightsYYC. We always tell people that we've done this for five years, hosting four events per year, and we sell out months in advance. So if you’d like to join us, please get your tickets now! If you can’t attend, let us know—that’s okay. But we encourage you to get your tickets early because we always have a great, diverse range of speakers at these events.
37:38 SYDNEY: That's so awesome. Big, big thanks to you both for joining me today on Responsible Disruption. I feel like this was cathartic for me just to listen to this. So I can't imagine how amazing it is to go to an event.
37:52 SHAHR: Thank you so much for having us and highlighting ****** nights.
37:55 AMANDA: Yes, this is great. Thank you.
37:57 SYDNEY: Yeah. Thank you. And also thanks to our listeners for tuning in once again until next time keep designing a better world.
[Outro music]
That's all for today's episode of Responsible Disruption. Thank you for tuning in and we hope you found the conversation valuable. If you did, don't forget to follow, rate, and share wherever you get your podcasts. To stay up to date on future episodes and show notes, visit our website at thesocialimpactlab.com or follow us on social media. And until next time, keep on designing a better world.
