0:00:01 - (Deanna Russo): I crashed into LinkedIn in 2018. Oh, my God, Kevin. That's it. 1998, Karen was killed. 2008, my accident into my lung cancer. 2018 was when I came to LinkedIn. Something crazy is gonna happen in 2028. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

0:00:32 - (Kevin Lowe): What's up, my friend? And welcome to grit. Gracelet inspiration. I am your host, Kevin Lowe. 20 years ago, I awoke from a life saving surgery only to find that I was left completely blind. And since that day, I've learned a lot about life, a lot about living, and a lot about myself. And here on this podcast, I want to share those insights with you. Because, friend, if you are still searching for your purpose, still trying to understand why, or still left searching for that next right path to take, we'll consider this to be your stepping stone to get you from where you are to where you want to be.

0:01:11 - (Kevin Lowe): What's up, my friend? Welcome back to the podcast. How are you today? If this happens to be your first time here, welcome. I am glad to have you. If you're an old timer, well, friend, welcome back. This is my little corner of the podcasting universe, where I get to do my very best effort at spreading a little bit of positivity in the world. Today, it's no exception, because today I have an interview with a woman named Deanna Russo.

0:01:43 - (Kevin Lowe): Deanna's interview is a pure example that work and life, they can be intermixed, because today we are talking about two totally different topics, but they are all related to our guest. We're going to talk about her personal life. We're going to talk about some serious topics, like the loss of her sister from a drunk driving accident. We're also going to hear about her own horrific car accident ten years after that.

0:02:15 - (Kevin Lowe): And then we switch gears quite abruptly, as we did get into what Deanna is doing today and how she can help you, and that is by utilizing the power of LinkedIn. LinkedIn, I feel, is a platform that has been totally underrated. We've all thought about it. Maybe you even have a LinkedIn profile that you created and then you did nothing with because you think to yourself, well, that's only for people who are out looking for work.

0:02:48 - (Kevin Lowe): Well, the fact is true that LinkedIn baby totally underutilized. It has got power beyond power. And for somebody like me who has a love hate relationship with social media, I've actually come to find LinkedIn pretty awesome because it's not really like your typical social media platform at all. So you're going to get to hear all about the power of LinkedIn thanks to today's guest. So if you're ready for a heartwarming story, if you're ready for some insights on an underutilized social media platform, this is the episode for you.

0:03:30 - (Kevin Lowe): Now, in the style of today's episode, I want to invite you to follow me on LinkedIn at Kevin Low Official. I produce a weekly newsletter on LinkedIn called Grit, Grace and Inspiration. You get the theme that helps you to get to dive deeper into the stories of the guests that I have on the show, dive deeper into some of my solo episodes as I dive deep with a LinkedIn article. So follow me on LinkedIn at Kevin Low, official I will be sure that my link is inside of today's show notes, as well as all of the links and information for today's amazing guest.

0:04:15 - (Kevin Lowe): With that said, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to episode number 231. Here is my interview with Deanna Russo.

0:04:27 - (Deanna Russo): It was March 698. My younger sister Karen was home on spring break. We lived in Buffalo, New York, and she was visiting us and was set to go back to school that following Sunday. So she was just trying to catch up with as many friends as she could in the last weekend home before she went back to campus. And so she had called all over. And back in 1998, Kevin, you'll remember that there wasn't cell phones and there wasn't text.

0:05:04 - (Deanna Russo): She was using the landline, so she called and left messages all over. So when I called my parents house to ask my mother something, she was waiting for her friends to call, and she picked up the phone and you could hear it in her voice. She's like, hello. And I'm like, hi. Can I talk to mom? And she's like, oh, it's just you. Because it was the first time that she was obviously waiting from other people.

0:05:35 - (Deanna Russo): I had seen her the night before. So it was like I was just the sister. I was just the big sister. But what happened was eventually her phone did ring and her friend did call, but that oh, it's just you was my last conversation with her. That was the last time that I heard her speak. That was the last time. So if I would have known that that was the last time, I would have told her how much I'll love her, how much I will think about her every single day, and how a second will go by where I won't think about her. But the thing is, I wasn't given that choice.

0:06:19 - (Deanna Russo): Someone made the choice to drink and drive and then play games with other people's lives on the road. And what happened was Karen had gone out with her friend Katie. So the phone did ring and the two girls had a great time laughing and catching up. And they were at Katie's house. They went to the mall first, and at the mall they bumped into my parents, who were headed to a movie. And my dad is very authoritative.

0:06:54 - (Deanna Russo): That's the best way to say it, but very authoritative. So when he reminded Karen that she has a curfew, she rolled her eyes. I mean, she's 18, Kevin. So she rolled her eyes and she's like, okay, whatever you say. Pretty much I'll be home. But instead of coming home from that movie to find her talking on the phone, listening to music, watching TV, whatever it is, they came home to a blinking light on their answering machine.

0:07:27 - (Deanna Russo): And even all these years later, my parents still have an old fashioned answering machine. And every time that I call them and I get the machine, I have to say, it's me, it's not an emergency. Because it was a nurse from the hospital. And all they said was that it was emergency and that was it. They knew that she had been into an accident, but they didn't know anything else. So my phone rang at 1222 in the morning and I got to the hospital first, but we'll back up for a second. So she was with her friend Katie, and they went to the mall, they went to Katie's house and then they went to Katie's mom asked them to pick up Katie's grandma, who lived just a short distance away. It wasn't far at they said, the girls said that the plan was to get grandma and then afterwards they would go get milkshakes. It was one of Karen's favorite treats, like she just enamored by the sweets.

0:08:32 - (Deanna Russo): But they never made it to get milkshakes because on the way to pick up Katie's grandma, they were driving down a two lane road. It was 30 mph in each direction, two parked cars, the two lanes of traffic, and then there was parked cars on either side and they were driving. And then another car was speeding toward them, crossed over the double yellow line to pass someone and crashed head on into Katie's car. And Karen was sitting in that front and passenger seat.

0:09:05 - (Deanna Russo): And it was almost instant. They got her heart started three times from the crash scene to the hospital. And that was our way of saying that she was fighting up until the very second, but the impact was just too it was too much. So my phone rang at 1222. My mom told me to go to the hospital and my then boyfriend, now husband, we walked in and I identified myself at the front desk. And then I didn't even have maybe five minutes to sit down in the chair in the waiting room before they took me to another waiting room.

0:09:45 - (Deanna Russo): And on the way to the waiting room, Kevin, I passed so many police officers, so many, but I didn't think twice about it at the time. But now I know that all of them were there for Karen. But I didn't put the two and two together at the time. So we're in the waiting room, the smaller waiting room, and they said, wait here until your parents get here. Which boggled my mind because I'm 21, almost 22 years old, and I don't understand why I can't see my little sister.

0:10:18 - (Deanna Russo): So I started getting nervous and frantic. And then they walked in and a police investigator walked in and said that there was an accident and Karen didn't make it. That's how they told Karen, didn't make.

0:10:37 - (Kevin Lowe): Wow. Wow.

0:10:39 - (Deanna Russo): Now, the kicker of the story I always call it the kicker because it's really the part that just boggles people's minds. Earlier that day, the individual who was driving the car had stopped to get his car serviced and get his tires serviced and the worker had seen he had been drinking. He looked at him, did a once over, and he called police because he's like, you shouldn't be driving. So the town police not actually if you actually saw where the crash happened and where that service station was, you'd be like, oh my God.

0:11:19 - (Deanna Russo): So it really wasn't far at all. And the police came as he was pulling out of that service station and they gave him all of the tests. He blew a zero four at that time, which wasn't legally drunk in 1998, isn't legally drunk now, but he was driving without license, without registration. The car wasn't even insured under his name. And they held him on an $80 fine because he had two priors that we know of, two prior DWIs.

0:11:53 - (Deanna Russo): So within 5 hours, Kevin, he got bonded out of jail, got his keys, got his car, stopped at a bar to drink more, came speeding down that street and slammed into the car that they were riding. And police said he was going about 55 in a 30 and he had a BAC afterwards of zero point 14.

0:12:20 - (Kevin Lowe): Wow. Now, did Karen's friend, did she what was katie survived?

0:12:27 - (Deanna Russo): Katie survived the crash, the physical pains, she can't stand for long periods of time, and she's a teacher, which makes that a little challenging. So she'll have to sit down in the middle of her class and kind of give her knee a break. She had surgery on her nose almost on the ten year anniversary, so she can smell better than she did for nine years leading up to that. But the emotional scars of having to sit there and watch your best friend die, that's going to stay with her forever. That'll stay with her forever.

0:13:03 - (Kevin Lowe): Oh, 100%. Now, just painting the picture. Had they picked up the grandmother?

0:13:10 - (Deanna Russo): No, they had never picked her up. They were going to get mean. You're right. You know what, Kevin, in all the years I've been telling this story, I never thought about the fact that they never picked up Grandma and she could have been in that car too.

0:13:25 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah. Now, talk to me a little bit about more about your sister. What was your age difference? What was life like for the two of you growing up?

0:13:37 - (Deanna Russo): We were four years apart and it was just the two of us. So there were so many stupid squabbles. There was so many, I don't know too many people who have a brother and sister who have not fought at one time or another. We would have the stupidest arguments, but we actually from 1997 to 98, something changed. Like everything had changed because I graduated college, she graduated high school, she moved off the dorms.

0:14:11 - (Deanna Russo): And it was like all of a sudden we became adults just in that time. So we were just starting to really understand how much the sister relationship can really evolve and how much we meant to each other. And then this whole thing happened. So that's what's really crazy. But she was like a friend. She was the kindest person. And just a few weeks before it had happened, she'd been named as trainer to the college's softball team.

0:14:46 - (Deanna Russo): And she thought that was the biggest deal. She thought she was just so excited because she didn't go to the campus on a softball scholarship, but she played for twelve years leading up to school. So to be named as trainer to your favorite sport that you spent all of those summers playing, that was pretty cool. She was just like really excited for the opportunity.

0:15:15 - (Kevin Lowe): Wow. Oh my goodness. Now, how about for you, specifically, after the accident, in the days after the years after, what was the process like for you and still is, of overcoming that loss?

0:15:34 - (Deanna Russo): I think about her all the time. I think about her all the time. The days after we had to go through all the court stuff. So he survived the crash. He pled guilty in court. He was sentenced five to 15 years. I wanted to, and I did, I did get a chance to speak at the sentencing, but when all the court stuff was wrapped up, I said, well, how can I keep telling her story to keep the memory alive? And within two months of the sentencing, I was speaking at the very first victim impact panel that I was given that opportunity.

0:16:13 - (Deanna Russo): And I've been telling her story ever since.

0:16:16 - (Kevin Lowe): Ever since.

0:16:18 - (Deanna Russo): Because I feel like even though she's not here, she was still a person who needs to be remembered. She was still a person who touched so many lives for 18 years. We were given such a wonderful person, and because of someone's carelessness, that was all ripped away from us. So my grief and my frustration and my anger has now been fueled and funneled into telling her story.

0:16:51 - (Kevin Lowe): Wow.

0:16:52 - (Deanna Russo): Yeah. And wherever I go kevin wherever I go So I've lived in western New York. I've lived in South Carolina. I have been in Ohio now for six years. Wherever I go, I find opportunities to tell what type of person she was. And the only time that I get really emotional as I'm telling her story is when I start to talk about my kids, because that is a relationship they will never get to know the person that I grew up with. They'll never get to be spoiled. As an aunt should, I think the anniversary of the crash is actually harder hitting for me than her actual birthday because I just think about all of the things that won't be because of the crash.

0:17:49 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, of course. I totally understand. Why do you feel like you took that direction? A lot of people, maybe when we lose somebody, we just move on with life. It's easier to overcome it by, quote, unquote, forgetting about it. Why do you feel like for yourself it has been better for you to constantly keep talking about her?

0:18:16 - (Deanna Russo): Because I feel that there's opportunities to change mindsets. That if someone hears something in my story that they can relate to and that they can say, oh, my goodness, I know somebody exactly like that. Or that's so funny. About the answer machine or if there's anything that they can remember. And then the next time they're at a party or the next time they see someone, the one who's just had a bit too much that they can then take and remember.

0:18:53 - (Deanna Russo): Karen. And then that's why I feel like I can change. And I know that every single person who hears a story is not going to change their mind. And my goal is one every single person that I can tell, if I tell a group of 500 people, if one person changes their mind because they hear her story, then I've accomplished it. I've gotten it.

0:19:25 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, I agree. And I think that's so powerful now on kind of this timeline of life. Ten years after her accident, you were involved in a horrible accident of your own.

0:19:40 - (Deanna Russo): I was, which is really interesting to me how a series of car crashes can just change things. So in 2008, I was involved in a car accident, and I wasn't seriously hurt, but I was experiencing back pain for, like, months after the car accident. And it happened in April. And then by September of that year, the doctor said, I think you need to have an MRI done, because we need to rule out other things that might be going on right now.

0:20:19 - (Deanna Russo): Because I had had physical therapy, and they could not figure out why I was having these back pains. So I had the MRI, and the doctor comes in and says, well, everything looks good on your back, but something's going on with your lung. And I'm like my lung. I had never smoked. I had not been having any problems breathing. And that MRI found nodules that were cancer. It was a carcinoid tumor in my right lung.

0:20:59 - (Deanna Russo): And even all this time later, I have people saying to me, thank God that you were in that car accident. I said, I know, because otherwise I'd be living with this for who knows how long, and it would be growing and growing and growing. So, yes, even though the car was totaled, I found out I had cancer because of it. So they did a biopsy and I went in for surgery, and my right lung, the bottom half of the right lower lung, was all removed they got all the cancer out in surgery for months afterwards.

0:21:38 - (Deanna Russo): I had to just figure out how to get the lungs functioning properly again. But the good thing is, I didn't have chemo, I didn't have radiation. But the anxiety of having to go for checkups after that was ridiculous. It was just like I would instantly go back into, well, what if they find something else? And I had to get these CT scans a year ago, I was finally given the all clear, so I don't have to go back for any other checkups, luckily.

0:22:11 - (Kevin Lowe): Oh, wow.

0:22:12 - (Deanna Russo): Yeah.

0:22:12 - (Kevin Lowe): Wow. Well, that is an amazing feeling when they say that.

0:22:17 - (Deanna Russo): I literally skipped out of the hospital. I was so excited. I was like, yay. Celebration.

0:22:26 - (Kevin Lowe): Yes. Absolutely. No, that is amazing. Now it was cancer in the lungs, and now is it the same type that they would see from somebody who smoked?

0:22:38 - (Deanna Russo): It was what's called a carcinoid tumor. So there's different types of lung cancer. There's small cell and there's, like, different so this wouldn't have been from smoking. But the doctors think even today I was part of a research paper from my doctor because he had never worked on someone my age. I was 33 at the time. He had never worked with someone my age for that. Usually the patients that he saw for carcinoid tumors were 60, 70 years old.

0:23:11 - (Kevin Lowe): Oh, wow.

0:23:12 - (Deanna Russo): Yeah. So even though they do not know exactly what caused it, they think it was environmental, something in the environment, whether when I was growing up as an adult, whatever it was, I breathed it in.

0:23:30 - (Kevin Lowe): Yes. Wow. That is just crazy. And you are right, though I often say sometimes I hesitate to say it because in the situation of your sister, that is when I hesitate to say it. The incident of your car accident is why I say it, is that in my life, I've come to realize that everything is working out, that everything is happening for a reason. Now, as I said, I hesitate to say that because in 98, your sister died.

0:24:10 - (Kevin Lowe): I don't understand why. I hate to even think that I could come up with a reason. I'm sure you would be the only person but then, like I said, ten years after that, you had this car accident, which was horrible, but it let you figure out, oh, my gosh, I have lung cancer, and you caught it before it turned into something.

0:24:31 - (Deanna Russo): Right, right. I have people that have suggested that the thing happened with Karen not to take her away from me, but to give me a mission and to give me and it's if that would not have happened. I was part of Sad Students Against Drunk Driving in High school. Karen was too. And it was always something that other people talked about. It was never anything that impacted my family. So, yeah, I have people that suggested that maybe that was the reason.

0:25:07 - (Deanna Russo): Maybe that was even though it's so tragic that she was ripped from your life, that you have a story to tell and you have a mission to spread awareness.

0:25:22 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah. Well, I think the bottom line is that kind of goes back to something else I say is that, you know what? We can't always control what happens in this life, but we can control how we react to it.

0:25:37 - (Deanna Russo): Yes.

0:25:37 - (Kevin Lowe): And the way in which you have reacted to the loss of your own sister is absolutely amazing.

0:25:47 - (Deanna Russo): Thank you.

0:25:48 - (Kevin Lowe): And the fact that not only just keeping her memory alive, but using her memory for good to be an impact to just one other person, I think speaks so highly of you, and I applaud you for that.

0:26:05 - (Deanna Russo): Thank you.

0:26:06 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah. Now, I have no idea along this timeline of events, when this entered your life. We're totally shifting gears from accidents and lung cancer to LinkedIn. I don't really know how to segue into, I guess deanna, how did you crash into LinkedIn?

0:26:33 - (Deanna Russo): That's good. So I crashed into LinkedIn in 2018. Oh, my God, kevin, that's it. 1998, Karen was killed. 2008, my accident into my lung cancer. 2018 was when I came to LinkedIn. Something crazy is going to happen in 2028. Oh, my God.

0:27:05 - (Kevin Lowe): I am already booking you for 2029.

0:27:10 - (Deanna Russo): Oh, my God. Something really weird. Wow. Every ten years, something, like, really groundbreaking happens.

0:27:21 - (Kevin Lowe): Yes.

0:27:22 - (Deanna Russo): Okay, so crazy. 2008, I was in a sales job, and that company wanted me to use LinkedIn in order to connect with prospects. It's a sales job, so I was selling, and they said, that's the way we want you to grow the business. And I said, okay. So I had already had a LinkedIn profile for years leading up to that, but like a lot of people, I treated like an online resume. I thought like this, you put up your picture, you put up the jobs, and then you just set it and forget it.

0:28:03 - (Deanna Russo): And I treated it wrong for all that time. But in 2018 is when that sales job brought me there. The company wanted me to cold call, message people, like, reach out and just say, hi, you don't know me, but please buy from me. And I did it for a while, and then I felt yucky and spammy and icky and gross, and I'm like, no, there's got to be a better way. There's got to be a better way. I'm like, I'm going to figure it out. I'm going to figure this out. There's got to be a better way. And so I just started spending a little bit more time on it, and I started having conversations on LinkedIn, off LinkedIn.

0:28:43 - (Deanna Russo): I started creating content. And Kevin, I grew without realizing it. It took me a year and a half to even realize because I was so concentrated on the content and the job, that I wasn't paying attention to my numbers. It was 18 months or so after I started that, I looked back and I said, oh my God. I grew from 400 to 11,000 in 18 months. And then when I left that sales job, there was even more followers, and I left it because they wanted me to transition into more of administrative role. And I'm like, it just doesn't feel like the reason why I was hired.

0:29:29 - (Deanna Russo): So I had everyone telling me that I had been networking with, you need to create a business because you figured out something that not a lot of people can do. And so leverage up began. So I did all the paperwork for leverage up, and I created the strategy that worked for me and how I want to work with my clients. Then a global pandemic wipes out all face to face networking in March of 2020. And while it wasn't the most ideal time to start a business, it was a pretty good time to start a LinkedIn centered business.

0:30:16 - (Kevin Lowe): Wow. So what happened at that point for the business? Did it just explode?

0:30:21 - (Deanna Russo): Well, I wish, but I think it was easier to attract people given my timing. I mean, if I look back, clients started coming in almost within a matter of weeks of me announcing that I started my business, and I had already grown on the visibility side, and I had already gotten my feet wet. So when I launched my business, it was more natural than starting it from scratch.

0:30:53 - (Kevin Lowe): Amazing. Now for you when we're talking about these social media platforms, which I personally hate to even group LinkedIn with the term social media because I feel as though it's a different feel. But for somebody who is like LinkedIn, how old school boring is that? Talk to me a little bit about what separates LinkedIn from Facebook, Instagram, all the other craziness.

0:31:27 - (Deanna Russo): Okay, so I love LinkedIn the most because it seems to have, and more cases than not, the sanest of people, the crazy people don't seem to hang out as much on LinkedIn as Facebook and Instagram and even Twitter. Oh, it was known as Twitter. Now it's X. Now we're just going like it's a symbol. It's going to be like Prince.

0:31:54 - (Kevin Lowe): The social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

0:32:02 - (Deanna Russo): So you can tell stories on LinkedIn. I did a post recently about how I quit coffee. I stopped drinking coffee and I just as a test, Kevin, I posted it on all of my socials just to see how it resonated on LinkedIn, on Facebook and Instagram. And you know what? The majority of the people that could relate and that interacted and had really good conversation with this topic was on LinkedIn.

0:32:38 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah. That's incredible. That is incredible. Yeah. Why do you think the platform is different?

0:32:47 - (Deanna Russo): Different than other social medias or different.

0:32:50 - (Kevin Lowe): Than it was different than other social medias and expand on different than it was? Because I'm curious to understand that as well.

0:32:59 - (Deanna Russo): Yeah, so it's different than other socials because I think that the people on it, it's a professional networking platform. But that being said, professional is defined in different words to different people. So it's not just a whole bunch of CEOs and suits and there's a bigger b to b presence on LinkedIn than maybe Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, but there's just really amazing people that have actually given up on some of the other platforms and say, this is the only place I'm hanging out.

0:33:38 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, I love it. I love it. Now, you talked about compared to what it used to be? Yes. What does that mean?

0:33:45 - (Deanna Russo): It used to be when Microsoft started LinkedIn, 2005. And actually it wasn't even Microsoft at the beginning. Microsoft didn't buy LinkedIn until years later. But when it was originally started, LinkedIn was started as a job seeker platform. And there's still lots of people who are looking for work on LinkedIn. But that's not the only people that are playing on LinkedIn. There are people that own businesses, there are people that work full time jobs, there are people, like I said, looking for work.

0:34:20 - (Deanna Russo): You name it, those people are hanging out on LinkedIn. So a post like coffee and giving up coffee just produced so much conversation because I ended the post with, do you drink coffee? Why or why not? And it was everyone that said, I do and you can't take it away from me. People that are like, oh, I'm such a tea drinker, I love tea. And then I found some people that just their go to is hot chocolate in the mornings. I'm like, cool.

0:34:53 - (Deanna Russo): That's cool. I've only had hot chocolate on snowy days. But.

0:34:59 - (Kevin Lowe): Is that is the coolest. Well, I'll tell you my personal favorite thing about LinkedIn and what drew me to the platform and is honestly what even I had had a LinkedIn profile, but never touched it a day in my life until I learned all about the power of doing your own newsletter on LinkedIn. And so that's what really got me excited and diving into it and realizing the immense potential of this. So I love it. And I've been trying to do a LinkedIn newsletter every week and I just think it's awesome.

0:35:37 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, nice.

0:35:38 - (Deanna Russo): Well, I'm going to have to make sure I'm subscribed. I've been doing a newsletter now for a year and a half, a little bit over in January, it'll be two years. And what I found is that it gets people away from their feed. So it notifies everyone you're connected to that you have posted a newsletter and I'm only doing it once a month, but the amount of subscribers that I have gotten, it's huge. And I'm trying to do something different with my newsletter than I do with my other pieces of content.

0:36:18 - (Deanna Russo): So the only time that you'll see me use gifts is in my newsletter because I like to have some fun with it. But. It's not in the exact same. I've recently gone through all the newsletters that I was subscribed to and I've turned off subscriptions to some of them because they haven't been updated in months. So I'm like, you're missing a potential opportunity here if you just concentrate on creating content.

0:36:47 - (Deanna Russo): And this is another avenue to go down.

0:36:50 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, absolutely. Well, listen, for somebody interested in LinkedIn, interested in what you have to offer, where is the best place for them to go to?

0:37:01 - (Deanna Russo): The best place is LinkedIn, because if you search Deanna Russo on LinkedIn, I will be probably the first person who pops up in the search results. There is another Deanna Russo who's an actress. Kevin and if you do searches, I am now taking over the Google search.

0:37:25 - (Kevin Lowe): That is too funny.

0:37:27 - (Deanna Russo): I love yep. And there's a website, leverage up has a website. It's leverageupllc.com. Leverageupllc.com? And that's where you can see what it looks like to work together. But I work one on one with people. I work with teams. I have speaking gigs that I've been booking, and it's just really interesting to follow, too. One of my nicknames is Purple Squirrel Magnet, and it's actually a nickname I got when I was creating videos for the sales job because I actually did a video about what is a purple squirrel? And in case your listeners are wondering, a purple squirrel is actually a niche position that you could say you're a website developer, however, but if you're a Java web developer or if you work on certain types of platforms, then you're a purple know, you never know what you're going to get by tuning in.

0:38:31 - (Kevin Lowe): That's right. Oh, my goodness. We get it all with you. We get it all. I love it. Yeah. Deanna, thank you so much for being here today, for sharing your story, your sister's story, and what of course you're doing on LinkedIn. Truly amazing. And for you listening, please know that all of Deanna's information, all of those links are available inside of today's show notes for easy access. Deanna, thank you.

0:39:00 - (Deanna Russo): Thank you, Kevin.

0:39:01 - (Kevin Lowe): Amazing for you listening today. I hope you have enjoyed today's episode. I hope that you've gotten something out of it that can truly leave an impact on your life. And if you think of somebody that you're like, man, so and so would really love this, or I really think so and so needs to hear this, please be sure to share today's episode with them. That is how we grow the podcast and expand the reach of who is hearing all this goodness.

0:39:30 - (Kevin Lowe): Until next time, my name is Kevin Lowe. Get out there and take on the day!