Career Growth Advice from Iris Harrison, Radio Host Leader | Career Tips for Women in Radio Host

2B Bolder Podcast – Episode 28
Featuring Iris Harrison

Episode Title: #28 Career Podcast Featuring Iris Harrison, a Portland Radio Legend : Women In Business

Host: Mary Killelea
Guest: Iris Harrison



Mary Killelea (Host): Hi there. My name is Mary Killelea. Welcome to the To Be Bolder podcast, providing career insights for the next generation of women in business and tech. To Be Bolder was created out of my love for technology and marketing, my desire to bring together like-minded women, and my hope to be a great role model and source of inspiration for my two girls and other young women like you. Encouraging you guys to show up and to be bolder and to know that anything you guys dream of, it's totally possible. So, sit back, relax and enjoy the conversation.

Hi there. Thanks for joining me. Today is going to be a fantastic show, especially if you love radio like I do. We're joined by Iris Harrison, a woman who inspired me early on in my radio career days. She's a wonderful mentor to me and many other women in the business. She is a Portland radio legend, was inducted into the Oregon Music Hall of Fame in 2012, and recently retired after having a successful 45-year career in radio. Iris has stories to tell and a career many only can dream of. I am thrilled she's here to share her journey with us. Iris, thank you so much for being on the show. It's wonderful to have you here and I can't wait to hear all your stories.

Iris Harrison (Guest): Oh, Mary, thank you for having me. That's so wonderful. It just kind of like melted my heart there for a minute. Just thinking that I had anything to do with you because you were ready to go. It was just that we met at the right time. You were already amazing.

Mary Killelea: So many great memories. Okay, so 45 years in the radio business. That is just incredible.

Iris Harrison: 42, almost 43 at KGON alone. But I started in Eugene and then went to K-Van. And so I just had a couple of jumps there and then moved to KGON, got hired and was there from there on out.

Mary Killelea So you went to U of O knowing that you wanted to do a career in radio. Is that right? Or did you just kind of discover that when you were young and looked on campus to figure out what was available? Or did you really truly know that was your calling?

Iris Harrison: Well, it's kind of weird. Okay, here's the thing. When I was a child, I lived in Monterey, California. And I loved going and watching the disc jockeys. I was at my dance classes, and I'd walk down to Cannery Row where there was a little radio station there, KMBY. And you could look through the glass at the disc jockey. And I always thought that is the coolest job. That is just the coolest job. But it was always guys. So, I never thought about it being a woman's career. And then moved on with my life. I wanted to be a teacher. I wanted to do all these other things. And then when my parents moved, I also went to a bunch of colleges. I thought college could be a career. But it didn't pay. I had to pay them.

So anyway, if I had known about a radio possibility when I was at the University of California Santa Barbara, that would have been an amazing thing because they had an absolutely wonderful program. But I didn't know that. I was still trying to figure it out. And that's how I landed at University of Oregon with the same mindset. I kind of know what I like to do, but I don't know how to put it all together. And I was in the theater department. And they required that you take a class that was something a little bit different than just straight theater. I mean, I had done everything from building sets to, of course, being on stage, lighting design, sound. I mean, I had done all this stuff, including the technical. And I took a class called radio TV workshop. And I thought, oh, easy A, that'll be fun. Literally what I thought. It didn't think about a career path or anything. I got in there and it was like falling head over heels in love with something. You know it when you know it is all I can say. I just I came home, and I looked at my mom and I said, I think I can do this. I think this is something that I could do. And from there on out, it was a full steam ahead.

And I actually left to the University of Oregon and went to Lane Community College because after talking to people I discovered that they had a radio station. KWAX was fine at the University of Oregon, but it was classical. And at least they had a jazz station at LCC. And also, I discovered they had a really, really good program, hands on program. And it was led by Jeff Young, who to this day is a dear, dear friend of mine. And thank God I talked my way into that program because he'd already he was already in the second term. But I went and man, I pled my case and I said, let me in. I won't let you down. And there from there on out, it was a pretty short ride to being on the air, at least part time doing radio shows. So, filling in, I do everything to be there. And so that's how I found it. I found it at the U of O. I pursued it much heavier when I got to LCC.

Mary Killelea: How did you end up at KGON? Were there a few steps in between?

Iris Harrison: Oh, yeah. Actually, it was great. Jeff Young, the man I was talking to you about there, he had a big connection to radio because his father owned a radio station in Eugene. And it was kind of the family business. Everybody worked there. All the kids at some point worked there. Some resentfully. I'm thinking, hey, kids are kids. And his wife worked in the front office and was the one who always gave us our paychecks. And it was a little family business, a little radio station, KFMY. And it was up where all the towers were on Blanton Heights, right next to KVAL. So, two wonderful things about going there is I got an interview based on the fact that the program director at the time, Gary Torazzani, came to talk to our class at Lane Community College. And me not being one to be shy about an opportunity, I went up and talked to him and said, how do I get there? How do I do this? And he said, well, come see me and we'll talk. And so I got an internship. The internship of days of old were the best things ever because it taught you a whole lot about the place and the career that you wanted to have. The good, the bad, and the ugly. But he was wonderful, a wonderful mentor to me at the time. And Jeff was kind of my way in because he was teaching me, and Gary knew that Jeff wouldn't recommend anybody that wasn't serious. And so, I got there and man, I did everything. I did everything they wanted me to, short of cleaning the bathroom and I would have done that too.

Mary Killelea: The old internships were literally, you could be asked to clean the bathroom and you would still say yes because you were so happy to be there.

Iris Harrison: Absolutely. Yes, it was fantastic. And so, I worked my way, I started doing an internship my first term being at LCC. I thought, okay, great. I'm on a path. I'm on a path. And just really dove in. And I was also taking my other classes at LCC and it was great. And I loved literature and public speaking and all these other things that I took. So, once I got there and really took advantage of the internship program, one day I came into work and the program director looks at me and says, hey, we're going to have a meeting. You want to go on the air? That was like the best thing I'd ever heard in my life. You want to go on the air? Yes. Yes, I do. So, my first shift was in June of 1975, and it was terrifying and wonderful all at the same time. Absolutely. The most scared, and I'd been in a lot of plays. I'd been on stage many times. I'd had public speaking in front of thousands of people. It wasn't something that was real strange to me. This was different to me. It's like I told you about falling in love. It was that. It was that huge to me.

Mary Killelea: It meant so much to you.

Iris Harrison: Yeah. So I worked at KFMY and left there in 1976 to come work up at KVAN in Vancouver. Actually it was licensed to Vancouver, but it was in a little tiny building on Columbia. Was it Columbia? Anyway, it was next to the river, and it was in North Portland. I've tried to find it since, and I can't for the life of me find it. Everything up there has changed so much. But Bob Ancetta hired me there and it was a freeform station. Oh, that's the other thing is that the station that was in Eugene was freeform. So I mean they had a wall of records and they just said, okay, put them together.

Mary Killelea: How magical is that?

Iris Harrison: Right? So it was magical. And also that was part of my fear is I thought, I don't know as much as all these other people know about music. I mean, I knew what I liked, but then the discovery of every artist and everybody that was at the station really helped me broaden my musical horizons in a big way, which was fantastic because I loved it. And that was probably part of the love and why I fell in love with radio so much is the music. I loved music, always did love musicians, all of it. So then I get to KVAN and Bob Ancetta hires me there and it was also freeform, but it was heavier. And I really liked that. It was a whole new kind of music that I could play. It was a little more folky and that kind of thing in Eugene, but music was changing and it was more like that was where I really got to know Rush. And I got to know a lot of the artists that went on for the rest of my career through KGON. And then I went and interviewed at KGON with Bob Brooks, who hired me. And he was the first program director of KGON. They went on the air in 1974.

Mary Killelea: I don't think I realized that.

Iris Harrison: Yeah, they went on the air. And then he hired me and then he left not too long after that to go program another station. But that's part of the career jumps that you learn about. People do that and they enhance their paycheck.

Mary Killelea: But I felt though, once you penetrated the Portland market in radio, it was like you were there if you wanted to stay. It was like you were part of a network or a family.

Iris Harrison: Yeah, Portland definitely was like that. And I love it for that. I mean, the feeling was incredible. And part of it was when I first got to Portland, I mean, Barney Keepe was on the air. He was eating a biscuit burner. Craig Walker was a legend. And all these people, and they stuck around. I mean, that's so interesting about Portland is so many people really did stick around for their careers. And it was great. I'm so glad that it happened to me. I always laughed when I first got into business. I thought, well, every city in America has a radio station. I don't care how tiny they are, they've got a radio station. And if you took long road trips in those days, which I love to do still, you could hear everything and everybody that was on the air in every little town. And I thought, well, if nothing else, I can bounce around and become a gypsy, a radio gypsy. But I stayed right here.

Mary Killelea: So was KGON, what was the format when you joined? Has it always been rock?

Iris Harrison: Yes, it was rock. It was formatted. So instead of having free form, but it was, how do I say it, loosely formatted. They had not yet gone to Burkhardt Abrams Superstars format, or believe that maybe that was when it was coming in. But Burkhardt Abrams was a consulting group that basically, and it was easy for me to figure it out because my first program director, Gary Torazzani, kind of ran the radio station that way. His idea was, you can get out there, but always bring it back. Just like with a song, bring the refrain back, bring it back. You can get out there, but bring it back. So when they instituted the format, it was easy because it was like, okay, you play something that's really well known, something maybe new, then something else that's well known, then a nugget, something that would really shake people and go, wow, and oh, wow. And it was a really wonderful format and part of the reason that KGON became so very successful. Because it was something where I didn't realize when I was doing the free form, if I hadn't had some training like that from my mentors early on, I would have never understood Burkhardt Abrams, but that was easy to do. It was easy for me to do. And I loved it because we could fudge a little bit and it was all right back then before computers.

Mary Killelea: When you joined KGON, were there any other women?

Iris Harrison: That's the neat thing. I was brought in and mentored, although she would have, God rest her soul, Gloria Johnson. She was such a good friend. And I put that, I think, before mentor or anything else. But Gloria had been in the business for a while. She was at KNAC in Los Angeles. She was at KLOS. She had actually, how she got into it, she had a boyfriend in the business who was one of the first MTV VJs, JJ Jackson.

Mary Killelea: Oh my gosh, I didn't know that.

Iris Harrison: Yeah, that was Gloria's boyfriend. So she was around radio and she kept thinking, I can do this. I can do this. And so she got some people at KLOS, some engineers to help her out with a tape and got herself on the air. And she was at KVAN. We were at KVAN together and really just had a great friendship there. And then so when she moved over to KGON, she called me when there was an opening. She goes, hey, I'm going to night's and there's an opening for part-time. So come over and give Bob your tape and see if you can get in. She goes, I'll put in a good word for you. So, it was so nice to have a woman kind of helping me. It was great. And that's how women should be with each other, help each other out.

Mary Killelea: Absolutely. So, while you were at KGON and you were part-time and then you got on full time, talk about some of the roles and responsibilities that you had. What was like a typical day?

Iris Harrison: Well, for many years it was getting up at the crack of before dawn. I got up in the dark for so many years. I started in Eugene. I was on mornings and also at KVAN I was on mornings. So I was real used to it. When I got hired to do full time at KGON, Jim Robinson, who was the program director at the time, called me and said, hey, you did mornings at those other stations, didn't you? And I said, yeah. And he goes, were you reliable? What? Yeah, very. So, he said, great. You're on tomorrow morning. And that was how that started. So, I would get up very early, come in, prep the show. And being in a morning show is always great because I had other people to bounce ideas off of. And KGON in the days of Clackamas, we were with a news station. KYXI was a full service news station. So, it was always great because they had been ripping copy all night and getting ready for the morning show themselves. So, you could just wander into there, check out what they knew, bounce ideas off of each other. It was a really great collaborative kind of thing.

So, then the show started at six, went to 10 o'clock. And it was in the early days really, really fun just because we didn't really, we just let it happen, I guess. We lived a life, we knew where we were going musically and the rest was just whatever happened with the listeners or with the day's events, what kind of news it would bring up ideas of what can we do with this? How can we involve the listener? How can we make it more fun? So, I do the show, then afterwards a bit of wind down and figure out what, to get some things prepared for the next day. Because even though we were kind of flying by the seat of our pants, we still had an idea of where we were going. That's, I think, very important to know. A lot of people completely scripted out their shows and I was not one of those people. I don't know how I could have ever done it. But so I did that and also production. We had to do production. I had so many responsibilities at the station from time to time. We made an album, a homegrown album of local artists and their original tunes and we pressed it on vinyl and put together a cover and everything. And I serviced the albums from the radio station and sent them out daily to the record stores. So that was something that I did as well. It's crazy. I just learned how to do kind of everything because I loved the business. I loved everything about radio.

Mary Killelea: What I remember of walking into that place and seeing the collaboration and the family feeling of everyone working together. There wasn't any like pushing someone out of the way to get higher on the food chain. It was just like, how can we make this better together?

Iris Harrison: And it's funny because the only fights I ever saw were about music, which is like the most delightful thing in the world to have a discussion over. It was never anybody pushing anybody under the bus. It was always like, I've got your back. How do we make things better? It was always that way. And that's not true of every station. I've heard stories, but fortunately it was for KGON and it was part of the reason I think that the station succeeded so well in the late 70s and up to the mid 80s is that it became a force of nature because it had a really cohesive bunch of people working for the same thing, the same goal, the same success.

Mary Killelea: Do you remember when Jerry Garcia died in Dick's Sheets? The rally that happened within minutes was incredible. Talk about that experience.

Iris Harrison: That was incredible and that was one of the saddest days ever. Having to announce somebody's death on the air is just a hero like Jerry Garcia or Stevie Ray Vaughan or any of those. That in itself is torturous, but in a way it's an honor. It's an honor that you are the one that gets to talk about this with people that loved that artist as much as you did. So, I had to announce it. I played a Grateful Dead album. We talked about Let's All Get Together at the Coliseum and celebrate his life. It was huge. It was huge. There were memorials, people burning candles, people singing songs. I mean, I was in the Coliseum and just this amazing beautiful little thing happened from this very sad event. The stories that I heard from listeners, their times of seeing the dead and experiencing the music, what they loved about it. Of course the dead are a different thing altogether. People traveled for that one.

Mary Killelea: That's definitely a cult following there.

Iris Harrison: It was amazing. It was also amazing to see what radio could do in an instant. Yes. Not only that, but like one, this is a happy one. One time we decided, hey, you know, it's going to be a gorgeous weekend. I think it's going to be 92 degrees. Hey, let's invite everybody to float down the Clackamas River. Thousands of people showed up and did it. We didn't realize you had to have like permits or anything like that. We just said it, went down there and oh my goodness, you know, I'm not sure who it was that had to have the talking situation with the police, but it wasn't me. I was just enjoying myself, but it was really something to see that you just suggest something and everybody showed up. It was unbelievable. But that's what tied us together. The music, the times, it was a lifestyle. It was a wonderful, wonderful thing.

Mary Killelea: As I mentioned early on, you were my mentor, you were many other mentors, so you were a pioneer in many regards. Did you ever feel the weight of that or know that you were inspiring so many young women who wanted to go to radio?

Iris Harrison: I really didn't. I guess because I had a woman, I had Gloria who helped me. And so I just, I did realize though, like I said, you know, mostly guys were on the air, but you know what? It's still that way. There's mostly guys on the air still to this day. I thought we would have evolved a little bit more here, but apparently not. So, but I did realize that, you know, I was somewhat of a, how do I say this? A guy's girl. I loved hanging out. I had a lot of guy friends. It's not that I didn't love women because I did. And I had great women friends, dear, dear women friends. But I also was one of the guys and I enjoyed that relationship with guys growing up and through the different things that I'd done clubs and activities. And so, when I got to radio, it was like, oh, this is a boys club. This is what I know how to do this. It's easy. I got this. And so it didn't really hang over me like as a burden. In fact, I kind of was little sister and I think to the men, I think that I was, I was guided so much by them and given such great advice that it was, it was never something that was an obstacle I had to overcome. It was very much, and maybe because I was such an excited learner, I don't know, but they were always, I was never put into a role of, oh, well that she's just a girl kind of thing. It never happened to me. And I'm lucky.

Mary Killelea: What you just said, like you were such an avid learner, passionate learner. I think people who feel passion and a thirst for knowledge will make the time, will take the time, will take the time, will help you no matter what their hierarchy is or whatever. I mean, people love to see other people passionate and to feel like they could be a part of that. It helps them kind of energize their career. It helps seeing the spark of someone younger. It's magical.

Iris Harrison: It is. I'm reading Ruth Bader Ginsburg's biography right now. And so, yeah, I'm reading her biography right now. Yeah, it's exactly that. She had to overcome a lot more and a lot earlier in a completely different world, but her passion is what drove her through. And I love that. I just love that. I'm attracted to that. I think most people are.

Mary Killelea: So, okay, you've got to do so many cool things, tons of concerts, meet amazing rock stars over the years. Do you have any favorites that come to mind?

Iris Harrison: Yeah, I do. One of them, just because it was early in his career, and it was seeing Bruce Springsteen in 1975 at the Paramount here in Portland. I drove from Eugene with some friends and we had tickets through the radio station. So, we were like, yeah, he's really good. We ought to go check him out. There's this buzz about him. And so, the week that he was on Time and Newsweek in the same week, he was on the cover of both of those publications. We went up and saw him in Portland and just, it was life changing. Because again, you're seeing somebody that's so passionate about what they're doing and you can tell. You can absolutely tell. So that was a huge one for me. There's so many of them though. I mean, seeing people that you have loved for years, it took me forever to see Earth, Wind and Fire and boy, I love those people. And seeing them finally after so many years, it was everything I wanted and more. They were amazing.

I have a really broad spectrum of love for rock and roll and all the different artists. I love the folk stuff. I love the metal stuff. I love soul. I love all of it. And it's just, it's so wonderful to see artists that you know are up there and absolutely giving it their all with every ounce of what they have to give that night. It's wonderful. But Springsteen stands out. Earth, Wind and Fire stands out. So many of them do. Jackson Brown, different kind of thing but you could tell the passion. Lyle Lovett, again different thing but man you could see the, what a band. What an amazing band. Oh my God. There's just so many and I'm so lucky that I have a book of ticket stubs. Now I don't have every one of them because back in the day, you'd just be on a list backstage and that's how you got in and you didn't have a ticket. It was like first come first serve as far as seating went.

Mary Killelea: I have a book too. It's so funny. I'll pull it out to try to impress my kids. But now they're like.

Iris Harrison: Yeah, okay. Whatever. Yeah, your kids are younger. Alec was raised in radio, my son. Yeah, tell me about that. He's very reverent of it. I mean he's already said you cannot get rid of any more vinyl. All this is mine. He's claimed it. It's like mine, mine, mine. And since I only have one, it's fine. But it is kind of funny because it's something that he really treasures. And I hear the stories through my daughter-in-law now because he tells her more of those. She'll tell me, oh, he really loved it when he went to the first blues festival and got to play under the stage and things like that. And I just go, oh, good. I always thought I was kind of like making him do something he didn't want to do, but it turns out he loved it as well.

Mary Killelea: Yeah, isn't that fun to hear how the impact not only to the strangers that you had, but just as moms, I think we never think we're doing the best job because we're trying to have a career and raise a family. And you feel like you're kind of doing half ass on both, but knowing that you were successful in both means like the world.

Iris Harrison: Absolutely. Yeah.

Mary Killelea: So did you ever have a bad day? And if you did, how did you overcome it and like pull yourself together in the moment?

Iris Harrison: Oh, Mary, so many bad days. I mean, it's human. You're human. You're going to have really bad days sometimes. But part of it was that I loved what I did so much that going in, it always helped me. It was like having a therapy session without getting all maudlin on the air or anything like that. Definitely not. I found that if I put on a happy face, put a smile on my face so that people could hear it and started the day that way, that it got better. Certainly, there were big, the times that it would be embarrassing or weird is if something technically happened on the air. But you know what? I found that through all the years, the things that people remember are the real moments like that, real moments. If I was sad and my voice trembled when I had to tell them about somebody's death, I when I laughed my butt off because something was so hysterically funny, if I stumbled on words and made a big mistake or put the wrong song on or whatever, they remembered those because it was real. That was something that listeners would come back to me with instead of we work so hard and I know you, we all felt this. It's like, oh, we worked so hard to make a perfect show. Those were not the ones that were remembered. Maybe I would remember it a little bit, but it was the mistakes and the reality that really, really touched people because it was that real moment. And that was just incredible.

Mary Killelea: How would you describe the evolution of radio as a business? Where it was, where it is today?

Iris Harrison: Kind of breaks my heart. To be honest with you, I hate to be the old person saying, oh, it was so much better back in the day. But a couple of things happened along the way that I think made it what it became. One of them was the fairness doctrine getting thrown out. So, people didn't have to, before what that meant is if you presented a news story or a story with a slant, you had to give the other side equal time to present that. I think that was getting rid of that gave way for a lot of very opinionated political talk entertainment, not necessarily information, but entertainment. And they didn't have to present both sides of the story. I think that was one thing that changed radio as we know it.

The other thing was the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which allowed owners to own more than the properties that they had had before. Used to be you could have an AM and an FM and a TV station and that was kind of it. KGW had all three. They had KGW-TV, KGW-AM and they had Kink on the FM. And that was all you could own in a market. And the Telecommunications Act of 1996 changed that so that you had great big companies owning six, seven radio stations. And they were all radio stations in a market. And there were, I gotta say though, in the beginning, we knew it was going to eliminate some jobs because it just was. There wasn't going to be six general managers or seven general managers. It would be broken up and be a little bit different. But the thing that I loved about that time was that there were so many people from really creative, from their promotions to the on-air people, to the managers and sales that shared so much knowledge. I loved having a country station down the hall and a Top 40 and a sports station. I loved having all of these creative kind of people together. But eventually it took its toll. There was downsizing and then they never seemed to upsize, and they'd always say, oh, we're doing this during the crisis. And you'd say, okay, well, crisis is over. Can we bring the people back now? And then of course automation became so seamless that people could do a show from another city. And that's kind of where we are now.

Mary Killelea: Okay. So a couple more questions for someone younger who's looking to get into radio career and is unsure of all the options. So just from a high level, you've got sales, you've got traffic. Talk about the different jobs within radio that someone could pursue besides just being on air.

Iris Harrison: So many, so many, so many, so many. Of course on air, that's a wonderful place to start. Other people start in sales though. I mean, they come from the business end of it and they do very well. It's something I actually considered at one point in time shifting to because there was a lot of noise made about, well, people getting on in the business and I kept saying, when am I supposed to get on in the business? So, I did investigate it. I actually took one of our salespeople out for lunch and just said, talk to me about sales. And she looked at me and she said, unless you love it, unless you're passionate about it, don't do it. It's like anything. She goes, if you're doing it just to make some money, don't do it. She goes, but I'm passionate about radio. I'm passionate about the format and that's what I go and sell. And so on that, I loved her even more than I ever had and appreciated her view of it.

There's programming, which a lot of people come into if they're on air people and I gave it a whirl. I was the program director at KGO and for two years, hardest two years of my life. It was, it was tough because I found out so much about myself in that one. I do not like to fire people. It is something that just gives me a headache thinking about I, because it affects somebody's life. I know some people sadly that think it's fun. I don't, I don't, I don't get it. Um, but it, it is a job that encompasses so many things. You have to keep track of all this stuff going on. Not only the music, not only your personalities, your budgets. How do you interact with sales? What kind of promotions do you want to do? What kind of logo things do you want to do? What events do you want to, I mean, it's just this whole big world. And I found that I really, my passion was to be on the air. And so I learned a lot about myself by doing that, which is great. Hey, and I just, you know, hope I didn't cause anybody any grief for my two year experiment. But I was given the opportunity and actually, uh, I resigned. I was not fired. I resigned and went back to being a morning person, which I loved so much more.

General manager, a lot of people come into general manager from sales and because that's basically what your manager does is have to figure out the budget, figure out what you need to do, what you got to cut, what you got to increase. And then sales managers, just elevated from sales again, they're, but it's a business. As much as everybody loves to think of it. And for me, especially, uh, as a fun thing, it's a business, you know? And so you have to keep your eye on all those things. But as somebody getting into it now, it's so different because there's, there's less on air positions, but the neat thing is just like with this podcast, people that are very creative can come into it from a podcast. I know people that have, you know, TV shows that started out as a, as a YouTube channel thing. So it kind of is the same thing with radio right now. I'm finding the more creative ways of getting into it. They don't come in from internships like they used to. They come into it from a different place and that's fine. I think it's great wherever creativity comes from is fantastic. Just dedicate yourself to it and do it and, um, seek out people that you, that are doing things that you want to be doing, ask them, pick their brain and do it yourself in your own way. And it'll be successful.

Mary Killelea: I love it. Do you miss anything after retirement radio or are you enjoying, I mean, retirement?

Iris Harrison: Well, I'm enjoying, I'm enjoying retirement. I can't lie and boy talk about picking a great time right before COVID-19 hit, right? So I didn't have to figure out and maneuver, um, how I was going to be on the air and all that. I was done and this thing came along and it was like, well, guess what? You have to just hang out at home. Oh, bummer. I was planning on doing that anyway. So for me it was, it was a good time to do it. I do miss the camaraderie. I miss the collaboration. I miss seeing those coworkers that I loved so dearly every day. I do miss that, but I would have missed it anyway because everybody's working from home, it seems like, and have home studios and so forth. Um, I miss the listeners and events, but again, this year really hasn't given us much of that either. And at some point, I think when we all start getting out again and music happens again, I'm going to see all my buddies that I want to see and I'm going to be there and dancing away just like everybody else is. So, um, and I have also, my son has four children and the last one was born in September, a little boy. So I've got the girl gang of three plus one. Oh, that's so wonderful. I have all this time to do those kinds of things, which you brought it up before. Sometimes when you're raising children and you're trying to be successful in business, you think you're doing both of them half-assed and so now I get to really grandmother in a, in a great way. I

Mary Killelea: That’s so true. I mean, I don't know if that's just the way the journey is supposed to go or not, but yep.

Iris Harrison: Yep. Yep. It is. And I'm glad to be there. I'm glad to be helpful. I want to be helpful in that way. I miss being on the air. I miss my four hour show. I miss that very much, but it was time. It was time for me to do something else in my life.

Mary Killelea: When I say to be bolder, what does that mean to you?

Iris Harrison: Oh, you can't be anything if you aren't bold. To be bolder is to accept the challenge and forge on. And especially with careers and life and life changing experiences, I mean, be bold, go out there to be bolder. I love that, that you've titled your podcast this, because it is what you absolutely have to do to pursue what you love. Whether it's how you see your family, a place that you want to live or a career, you must be bold and grab it and go. And I think that it's great that you named your podcast this.

Mary Killelea: Thank you. So in closing, what's next for Iris Harrison? Do you think you'll ever write a book or maybe start your own podcast?

Iris Harrison: I think I'm more of the bookie kind. I'm going to need some help. I've taken writing, I was in a writing workshop class for many years and so I've got to put it all together. I've got to figure it out and I may engage some help in that with some friends that I know that have written books and one of them, especially is really, really quite good at organizing your thoughts, which is where I need help. Because if you look at the vast landscape of your life, there's a lot going on there. So, to focus it down and have it mean something in a way that people will want to engage with, that's what I want to do. So yes, that is my dream. I hope to do that.

Mary Killelea: Well, I'll be the first to buy it. I can promise you that. Thank you so much.

Iris Harrison: Oh, Mary, it's been a pleasure. Oh my God. I just, I'm, I'm so proud of you too. And, and everything you've done and your beautiful girls and, oh, I just, I'm very proud of you.

Mary Killelea: It means the world to me to talk to you and have you on. Thanks for listening to the episode today. It was really fun chatting with my guests. If you liked our show, please like it and share it with your friends. If you want to learn what we're up to, please go check out our website at 2bbolder.com. That's the number two little bbolder.com.