Love Maine Radio #309: Clayton Rose + Alaina Marie Harris

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Lisa Belisle and you are listening to Love Maine radio show number 309, airing for the first time on Sunday, August 20, 2017. Today's guests are Dr. Clayton Rose, the 15th President of Bowdoin College in Brunswick, and nationally known entrepreneur Elena Marie Harris, creator of Elena Marie, a collection of bait bag inspired clutches. Thank you for joining us.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

President of Bowdoin College. After a highly successful career in finance, he earned his PhD in Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and later served as a faculty member at Harvard Business School, where he taught and wrote about the responsibilities of leadership, managerial values and ethics and the role of business in society. Thanks for coming in today.

Clayton Rose:

Thank you for having me, Lisa.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I think the thing I'm most interested in, and what I'd like to start with, is this interesting pivot shift in your career you were doing. And actually more than one, you were doing something, you were very good at it. And then you said, oh, I think I want to do something different now. And that required really a significant mindset change for you and a lot of work. So tell me about that.

Clayton Rose:

Well, the first thing I would say is I've been incredibly fortunate to be able to have done different things and I've had some amazing chapters to my career. I've had some very cool jobs and as I tell anyone that's willing to listen, I now have the coolest job I'll ever have as president of Bowdoin. It's really quite a remarkable thing for me. But the idea of going through different chapters in life isn't one that I planned. It wasn't, you know, when I graduated from college. This is my plan. You can always look back on a career like yours and kind of create a linear narrative, but it is much more uncertain than that. But I came to various decision points, profound decision points, a couple of times, and decided to take different paths at each of those points. I very much enjoyed my first career in finance. It was a different kind of business than it is today at a different time and place in the nature of business and in our society. But I worked at a firm where the values were terrific, the people were terrific, the culture was great. We did business in a particular way for our clients and really focused on serving their needs. And then the firm that I worked at decided to merge. And I was part of that decision process, but quickly concluded that the new firm was just not a place that I was comfortable and the business itself was changing. And so I left. I left on good terms, but I decided simply to leave and kind of repot myself. And I left. I remember walking out of the building on a Thursday night after 21 years and not having any idea what I was going to do next. I went to have dinner with my wife and kind of begin a new chapter. And I took a year to think about what I was going to do and did some things there in the interim. I began to teach at Columbia and NYU as an adjunct professor. But I had always had, in my mind, as a function of a great liberal arts education that I received, the idea of going back and getting a PhD something very personal for me, there wasn't a grand plan associated with it, but it was the idea of having spent many years in my prior chapter thinking about issues kind of a mile wide and an inch deep. I wanted to see if I had the intellectual flexibility to flip that and go a mile deep on an issue that I cared a lot about. And so after a year and a lot of advice and ultimately my wife saying to me, if you don't do it now, you're never going to do it because you're going to get involved in something else and then you're going to be too old and so forth. I applied to several PhD programs in sociology that work constrained by where we lived. My kids were in high school, so we needed to stay there. And I was fortunate enough to get into a couple and very fortunate that the University of Pennsylvania admitted me. And I had a really remarkable experience there. I could never say enough great things about the faculty and my fellow students and the institution. And to take a risk on an older guy who was going through this transition was something that was quite special about how they. About their students and what they were able to provide for me. I studied issues of race in America. I was very Interested in this. I had run the global diversity effort in the firm that I worked at. In my first chapter in business. I had some personal interest in the question of why we can't get over ourselves in 21st century America, around issues of race and identity, and decided I wanted to see if I could really understand it by looking at all of the literature and studying it and developing some of my own research. And so that was what I did. By the time I had finished that program at Penn and I also then had been teaching for a number of years at Columbia, at NYU and also at Penn, I concluded I really loved being in the academy. I thought I would, but I found that I did. And so I sought a full time role as a member of a faculty and was again deeply fortunate to be asked to join the faculty at the Harvard Business School where I taught for eight years before coming to Bowdoin. And that was another chapter.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Why was sociology so interesting to you?

Clayton Rose:

So interestingly, it wasn't sociology as a discipline that was the first decision. The first decision for me was what is the issue that I wanted to study? And the issue that I wanted to study was the issue of race, race in America. And this kind of simple but profound question of why we can't get over ourselves. What's driving the notion that race remains a profound issue and dividing line in our society. Sociology then becomes, I think, the natural home for that question. And so that's what led me to the discipline. And I'm someone who had never taken a sociology course in my life before I began. My program at Pennsylvania was just not part of the array of courses that I'd taken as an undergraduate or as an MBA student.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So why can't we get over ourselves?

Clayton Rose:

Well, this is so one of the things that I think my colleagues on the faculty would, and graduate students around the world would agree with me on is that the more you know about something, the more questions it raises and the fewer answers you really have. So I don't have an answer to that question. It remains, as we see in society today, perhaps more than we have in a number of years, how profoundly important the issue of race is. The issue of difference, the issue of identity, is in our culture and our society today. But why that creates areas of division and not the notion of celebrating difference, understanding each other, getting the most from the different perspectives that we bring remains an open question for me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You mentioned your children being in high school when you made this decision, and I would imagine that would have been, well, let's use the word Interesting for them to have a parent who had been so long in one particular career doing one particular thing and then deciding, I'm going to do this differently now. Did you get feedback from them along the way on this?

Clayton Rose:

Yeah, sure. I have two boys, two sons who are both off in life now. And it was interesting. I think the decision that I made was not a decision that was. What's the best way to describe it? It was somehow at odds with how they saw me as a human being and as their father. And I say that because while they were growing up, the business that I was in and the firm that I was at were all that they knew. I didn't define myself as a human being, as a father, as a person, by my job, first and foremost, I defined it around my family and my marriage and my kids. And that has and is and will always be my first priority. And so while I love my work, my work itself doesn't define me as a human being. There's something deeper for ourselves. It's critically important to me. I spend enormous amounts of time and energy on it, but it isn't who I am. And so the pivot that I began from the first chapter into the second chapter, as I talked to them about what I was interested in, and they knew my intellectual interests and my kind of naive desire to be engaged in intellectual ideas throughout my life, this kind of fit very well with how they saw me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Has it now become interesting for you to be working with an age group that is clearly focused on developing identity? I mean, you've been. You taught at Harvard Business School, so slightly older students, but now you're with kids, well, young adults who are 17 to 22. And identity is something that's very much in development during that time of life. Drawing on your own experience, what is it that you have to offer to this age group?

Clayton Rose:

Well, I think. I think about that question in two parts. How do I think about my role as a teacher, which is the thing I. I think I love most, and my role as president of a liberal arts college? Those are two distinct kind of roles. With respect to the first, and it does very much bleed into the second, we have just amazing students. They're the interactions I have with our students. The ability to get to know them, to spend time with them, and to teach, and I did teach this last fall is the jet fuel that just keeps me going through all the other aspects of my job, many of which are interesting, some of which are not as interesting, and there's some challenging moments and so forth. In any job like this. But working with our students has just been a remarkable joy and privilege. They are amazing and how thoughtful, interesting, engaged, different, and interested in one another. And one of the things that I've said to almost anyone who will listen is that when we think about what makes Bowdoin's student unique and special, they are, they're super smart. But there are other places where there are lots of super smart students. They come to Bowdoin to do their best work and to be their best selves. And that starts to differentiate them in some cases from other places a little bit. But the thing that's really different about our students is that they come being super smart and to do their best work and to be their best selves, but to engage with one another and to collaborate, not to compete with one another. They do not see their work together at Bowdoin as being a zero sum game where I only do better if you do worse, but rather where there's a collective interest in learning and in helping one another. And I've seen this in lots of different perspectives around the life on campus and in dealing with our alums who share that kind of culture and set of values. But I saw it play out in just stark detail When I taught this last fall, I taught a first year seminar. I had a group of 16 first year students and from the first day they were focused on helping each other, challenging, pushing and so forth, but ultimately helping each other to get better and better. And no one saw their ability to do well or to learn somehow being a competitive exercise with somebody else.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Given that this generation has been occasionally maligned as being the me generation, although I would say that many generations are so called. Were you surprised to find how collaborative this group of students was?

Clayton Rose:

No, I think I understood the Bowdoin culture very well when I arrived. I'm now in my third year and having had an opportunity to teach undergraduates and graduate students for the last, you know, 15 years, and then having raised two sons who are now in their very early 30s, you know, I have some sense of the generation and I certainly agree with the notion of kind of maligned and misguided view of what this generation is all about, they are quite remarkable. And as we look around at the world and see some of the challenges that are out there and the, and the problems that we have, and there are certainly moments where it can be easy to get down and depressed, I am enormously optimistic about where we're going and the opportunities we have as a society and as a world. Because of our students and what I see in them. And I hope and believe that that's been true of kind of every generation as we look to the future. But I can tell you that whatever the caricatures are of young people today, they're certainly not representative of students at Bowdoin. And I think more generally of this generation.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

My children are 23, 21 and 16. So they're squarely in this generation. And I have to agree with you, my interactions with them, I don't think, are any different than my interactions with their friends. And there is something that is hopeful and willing to work hard and persevere. One of the things that has come up in the last year has been the change in our political climate. And what I saw with my middle child who was on campus when this happened was fear. A fear that I had never seen from her before. She called me up. She felt almost as if the world had kind of caved in on her. She was so surprised by the. The way that the election turned out. Did you get that sense from students on your campus?

Clayton Rose:

Sure. I think that for a couple of observations, I guess. One is that for many of our students and other students in this generation, the results of the election were, in a sense, the first major failure that they had experienced. Right. These are students that are used to doing incredibly well and used to working hard and persevering and pushing through and ultimately realizing the objectives that they had in mind. And I think the vast majority of students certainly went home from dinner on election night believing that the outcome would be different. And that's true whether you happen to be a student, student who voted one way or another way. I think the whole group of them. And so for those students who were supporters of Hillary Clinton, it was a really momentous moment for a number of them. I happened to have been teaching my class the Wednesday morning after I had an 8:30 class. It was the first class of the day on the morning after and my students came in and many of them had been up all night and they were, I think, deeply confused about what had just occurred. So we put the syllabus aside for a while and had a conversation about what had happened and how could this happen, why did it happen and so forth. And, you know, in some ways, and we can spend some time, Lisa, talking about this. It relates a little bit to the bubbles that we all exist in, in talking only to those folks that reinforce our own views. And so you get a sense that that's the world when the, the world is a Much bigger place than that. And one of the interesting things that happened in this conversation in class is that I have a young man, a student who's from the Midwest, and people were going around and kind of trying to isolate a little bit about what happened and why and what they'd missed. And he said, let me tell you that I voted for Secretary Clinton, but I'm from rural Wisconsin. My friends didn't vote for her, and my parents friends didn't vote for her and they didn't vote for her. And he went through the reasons about rural versus urban and a sense of dislocation and, you know, many of the things that we've now been able, I think, over the last few months to kind of understand better and tease out as to what the reasons are that the election turned out the way it did. And it was really a remarkable thing to watch a number of the students in class for the first time hearing from a peer about a rationale. They may not agree with it, they may have different ways of articulating why those reasons may exist, but they heard a very cogent, peer driven rationale for why the outcome was the outcome. And that led to another discussion about how we think differently about things in this bubble that we may exist in and so forth. So it was a really, I thought, profound moment for that began us down another path to think about what has happened here.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I would agree with you that we've come to now understand that perhaps we were, each of us was existing within some sort of cultural socioeconomic bubble per se, maybe an educational bubble, and then was surprised, and then surprised even as a country. So now that we know that that existed and that we were somewhat unable to connect with people outside of our bubble, how do we connect with people outside of our bubble? How do we create conversations so that we understand where people are coming from without trying to shut them down because they aren't agreeing with our point of view.

Clayton Rose:

It's a great question and I think in a central part of the mission of a great educational institution like Bowdoin. So I've been actually talking about this issue since I arrived on campus two years ago. I talked about it in my inaugural address that one of our deep responsibilities and opportunities is to engage with ideas that that make us uncomfortable and at times will offend us to be able to understand how good people, and frankly not good people, think about the world, understand the world, and may be driving decisions and policies in the world. And the only way I believe that we can have effect on the world in a meaningful way is to understand how others think about the world or why their arguments may carry weight and where they may not hold water, and to be able to confront those arguments and those issues and those points of view from a position of confidence, strength, data analysis, reason rather than fear, engagement with those issues and those arguments. And so one of the things that we've been working on at Bowdoin for the last couple of years is how we do this better, how we develop the skill and the sensibility among our students to engage in discourse and debate about the hardest, most challenging issues of our time. And knowing that you come to college in part to engage with ideas and issues that are going to make you uncomfortable and that may even offend you, but are going to push you deeply outside of your comfort zone. And that has at least two deep values. The first is the one that I just discussed, which is that it creates the skills and the ability in an individual to be able to have effect in the world, to make a difference once you get out there, because you have thought about the pushback on your issue, the pushback on how you're advocating for something, you understand the data, you know where it's real, you know where it's not, and you're able to analyze it in a foreign, thoughtful way, and you've thought about those arguments. But the other is that it gives you respect and a thoughtful approach to both ideas that are different than your own. And God forbid, from time to time, we ought to be able to change our minds if we hear an argument that's compelling and to have respect for individuals with whom you can disagree, but who are, at their core, good, good human beings who care about the world in the same way that you do. There are a handful of bad human beings out there in any category of life. Those aren't really the people that we should be caring about. We're in a place now where we won't have an honest, thoughtful conversation with good people in areas where we disagree. In the baccalaureate address that I gave in May to our graduating seniors and their families, I talked about one of my closest friends, a guy that I've known since the first day of college who, and I just returned from a week of fishing with him. I fish with him every year. He and his wife and Julianne and I, and he and I are very different in a number of ways. He's a Midwesterner, a Republican. He's a staunch support of the nra. None of those things describe me, but he is one of my dearest friends and we go and we spend time talking about the world and issues that we disagree about and so forth. And we do it in an agreeable way and trying to understand each other and figure out where the kind of essence of our differences lies. And I encouraged our students as they are leaving Bowdoin, when I talked about this, to go find their version of my friend's name is Mike to go find their version of Mike in life, whether they may already have. And in fact, I had a graduating senior grab me just after the commencement ceremony the next day and said, I just want you to know that I already found my mic here and it was really cool for me at least that some of the students kind of just resonated with them in a way. So long winded answer. But that's.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Do you think that a liberal arts education can be helpful in developing these skills that you're talking about? I think that there's a lot that's been thrown about with return on investment in education and the cost of education, which continues to climb. So then some people would question, why are we educating students on broad based topics? Why are we not just putting them through whatever set of skills they need to get a job on the other side? Is there a value in liberal arts given what you've just described?

Clayton Rose:

Yes, profound value. And so let me describe that in kind of two broad ways. One is some categories of value. And then I want to tell a bit of a story, but there are at least three profoundly important reasons why a liberal arts education adds deep value. The first is, and maybe for me it's the most important, but I think they're all equally important, is that it allows us as human beings to live richer, fuller, deeper lives, to understand the world that we're in, to understand our place in it, and to be able to engage in lifelong learning about all kinds of issues, whether they're humanistic, social science, scientific policy, economics, so forth, and to be able to get a sense for why we are here and the ability that we have to give back to something that's bigger than ourselves. So that's the first point. There's something just deeply profound as human beings to this kind of education. The second is that it develops the skills and the ability to engage thoughtfully in civic life and in the broadest sense, political life in our country. And at a time where our political system seems deeply broken, we need as many young people who are educated in a thoughtful way and have an ability to engage with one another and intuitive engage these issues to help us get better and to Pull us out of this morass. And this goes back to some of the things that we were just talking about. So the engagement in civic life is the second. And the third is that the skills of a liberal arts education, of critical thinking, of analysis, of how to use data, of the ability to communicate well and ability to learn quickly are all skills that help our students and help liberal arts graduates enjoy great professional success. And so this notion that somehow a liberal arts education is divorced from career success is just a myth. There is some power to the myth out there, and it's something that I have a responsibility and other college presidents have a responsibility to deal with in a stronger way. But the data are crystal clear. You get a great liberal arts education and you can have a great career, and you can major in art history and go into finance. You can major in biology and go to Google. You can major in economics and become a doctor. You can spend your time during your college years pursuing your intellectual passions. And the data are crystal clear. You can go off and have any kind of career you want. And so deep satisfaction in life and as a human, civic engagement and career success are three profound values that come from a liberal arts education. Now, let me just put a little human face on that. We have a thing at Bowdoin called the Bowdoin Breakfast. You probably know it well, but we'll have somebody back, an alum back, to talk to both students and folks in the community a couple of times a year. These things usually get four or five hundred people coming. Some of it's about the Bowdoin food, but. But mostly it's about the speaker. And in the spring, we had a couple graduates from the early 90s. She was an English major, he was an anthropology major. They left Bowdoin, graduated and went off in the early 90s to go work for a little firm in Silicon Valley called Facebook. And they were early there and worked there for a while and went off and did a few other things, as people do. She is now at Pinterest and he is now at Airbnb. And I was talking to them before they gave their talk, and I said, how do you think about the role of the humanities and the social sciences in Silicon Valley today? And they said, the demand for folks that have the training and sensibility of humanists and social scientists has never been greater because the issue of Silicon Valley and the tech community is zero about coding. It's pivoted now from being less about engineering and much more about dealing with the human problems that technology has created. And all you have to do is read the paper every day to think about what Facebook is facing and Google is facing. Those are the human problems that are created by the technology. And that's where a profound liberal arts education comes in. And we have a huge number of graduates now that are out in Silicon Valley and in other kinds of places like that in the new economy that are having a really powerful impact on the world who have had nothing to do with the engineering side of things. We have some that are coders and engineers and engaged in that work. And that is wonderful work. But it takes all kinds.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I recently interviewed Joan Benoit Samuelson, obviously Bowdoin graduate and also winner of the first Women's Olympic marathon. And also Jean Hoffman, who was the founder of Putney, who just sold her business a few years ago for quite a lot of money. She was an Asian studies major at Bowdoin. And obviously I went to Bowdoin and I have. I think that you're right. I think that what you're describing, this need for helping create interface, this understanding of how to communicate with other people, maybe it's not solely the property of a liberal arts education, but there certainly is a great benefit to offering that to students. It's been really a pleasure to have this conversation with you. I appreciate your taking time out of your very busy schedule. I've been speaking with Dr. Clayton Rose, who is the 15th president of Bowdoin College.

Clayton Rose:

Thank you, Lisa.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Thank you, love.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Today I have with me Alaina Marie Harris, who is the creator of Alaina Marie, a collection of bait bag inspired clutches. Alaina also recently partnered with Keds to create two nautical themed sneakers for the brand's Ladies for Ladies collection, a series that highlights female makers. Thanks for coming in.

Alaina Marie Harris:

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It's exciting.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, it's exciting for me, too. You're doing some really interesting things with your creative self.

Alaina Marie Harris:

Yes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

How did you get involved in being a designer?

Alaina Marie Harris:

Well, from a young age, I have always loved art. I spent my college years constantly concentrating in drawing. I went to school for art and entrepreneurship, so I always had an art kind of background. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it, but over time it kind of evolved and morphed into my love for design. So, yeah, I. I went to school determined to make a career doing something that I love to do. And I can proudly say that I am living that dream today.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You're from South Portland originally?

Alaina Marie Harris:

Yes, born and raised in South Portland. So I'm a Mainer at heart forever.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Where did you go away to school?

Alaina Marie Harris:

I actually went locally, usm. So didn't go very far. Yeah, I love Maine. I really think it's. It's a great state and has a lot to offer. It's got so much going on. You've got the Four Seasons. You've got Portland, which is such a great city, especially for an artist and designer like me there. It's such a welcoming place for me to, to do what I want to do.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Tell me about art and entrepreneurship. It's an interesting combination. Yeah, we often think about these starving artists.

Alaina Marie Harris:

Yep, exactly. So it actually worked out. It's all in the timing. I went to school. School actually started my, my career as a nursing major because like you just said, I was afraid that I would be a starving artist. I was like, I can't live my life doing art or design, especially in Maine. And I wasn't really interested in like, like going high fashion, like going to New York City or Boston. I really like, my heart is here. So I knew that about myself. So yeah, I went to school for nursing. Figured that was a practical career. I knew I could make money doing that, but very quickly realized it was not for me. First semester even, I didn't even last a full year. And I was like, I gotta change my major. So I switched to art as a backup, thinking that I'll just finish my first year doing art until I decide what I really want to do. But four years later I graduated with art and entrepreneurship. So. So my sophomore year is when USM offered this new program which was art and entrepreneurship. So I was like, maybe if I did that, then I could have some business background and figure out how to market on my skill, my craft, my trade and make a living doing it. And so it was kind of a risk, but I was like, I don't know what else to do. So let's just do that. And. And yeah, it's worked out really well. So it's just kind of a testament to, like, if you just stick to your passion, do what you love, the rest will kind of unfold itself for you. I truly believe that.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What types of business things did you learn when you were going through.

Alaina Marie Harris:

So the program was set up, basically, it's like an art major with a concentration and a business minor. So just the basics, really. And I had no idea what I was doing. I mean, you know, it's something when you're in a classroom setting learning about business and how to run a business and how to market yourself and all these things, for me, at least, it was hard to conceptualize, like, what it would actually look like because they didn't have a business. So it's just kind of like skills, just basic skills that I learned, but didn't really know how to input them until years later when I decided to start my business, which kind of happened accidentally too. I feel like I've gone into this whole thing kind of blindfolded. Don't really. Didn't have a business plan. Still don't really have a business plan. I'm just kind of living my life on this journey in doing what feels right, you know?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, there must have been some, I guess, place of happy accident.

Alaina Marie Harris:

If there. Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

If there's another word for it, I'm not sure, but where somehow what you were doing met up with what people were looking for.

Alaina Marie Harris:

Right. So once I graduated, my kind of plan was to sell T shirts. I wanted to have a T shirt business and put my artwork onto T shirts. I taught myself how to screen print so I could do that, do them myself. I really love the process. I love the design process. I love making things with my hands. I think there's a special element to that. So that was kind of my plan to do. Do the T shirt thing. And one day I saw this bait bag. I had no idea what a bait bag was. I don't know any lobstermen didn't grow up lobstering. But I discovered this cute little carrier is how it kind of translated to me. And the colors they come in are so bright and fun that it just caught my attention. So I had this bait bag and I'm like, this is really cute. How can I use this for stuff? I can put my stuff in it. I can put my. My makeup in or my, you know, use it for the beach or whatever. Just like accessories. So I pulled on, put on my creative hat and like I said, I was screen printing at the time. So I went to a marine store and I got a bunch of other, like, marine materials that fishermen and lobstermen use for bait and fishing and stuff. And I took all this stuff apart and kind of redesigned it into my first clutch. And it's again, something that I just kind of took off doing. It was like a weekend project and I made this really cool handbag and that was it. I figured, okay, this was a one time deal. Like, it's just something I wanted to do. Let's keep doing the T shirt thing. But I was using my handmade bag and got a lot of attention on it, a lot more than my T shirts. So I was like, okay, maybe I can make, make a couple more, like perfect them a little bit. So I spent the next, like month or two working on this bag and figuring out how to produce them. And honestly, the rest is history. I put my first collection, if you will, up on Etsy. And when I made my first sale, I knew that I was like, onto something. I just, that feeling was indescribable. It was such a compliment and it was exciting and it really gave me so much motivation to make this work. So, yeah, that was three and a half years ago.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

How did you move from beat bags to Ked sneakers?

Alaina Marie Harris:

So that's the cool part about my job. I love what I do because I never know what to expect in a day. Every day is completely different. So I have a store on fourth street, and at the time, that's where we were also producing all the bags, making them there and selling them there so you could see the whole process. And so two summers ago, the creative director of Keds walked into my store, Holly Curtis, and she was, was asking for me. And so she introduced herself and I, I was like, wait, so you work for Keds, like the sneaker company? And she was like, yeah. We're based out of Massachusetts and I actually live in Portsmouth. And a couple of the girls and myself, we have your handbags. And we would love to talk to you about pairing up and doing a collection of sneakers. We love your story, we love your concept and the look of your bags. And yeah, we want to work with you. So that was like, amazing. And you know, two years ago, I was only a year and a half into my business. Like, still, you know, I'm still figuring things out today. So to have such a big company come to me and ask to do a huge project, like sneakers, like, I'm not a sneaker designer, but I, I Got to design shoes. And I never. That. That's why I don't have a business plan because, like, that wasn't part of the plan, but it just happened. And such an amazing opportunity. Yeah. So it's cool.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Do you think that it helped you to not be into lobstering or fishing when you first looked at the bait bag and said, oh, that could be something else?

Alaina Marie Harris:

Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Because you didn't know what it was exactly.

Alaina Marie Harris:

I do. I think it's kind of everything because I feel like when you know a lot about something, it's very easy to get tunnel vision and just to, you know, think of that one thing in a specific way. So me as an outsider coming in and just not even knowing what this product was. I just liked the look of it, the materials, the feel, the texture, the color. So that's, as a designer, saw the potential there. And yeah, I was like, this could be a great bag. But if I were a lobsterman or, you know, grew up baiting bags, you know, every summer, I probably would be maybe even repulsed by it. And just like, I never want to see a vape bag again. So, yeah, I was able to come into the situation as an unbiased, you know, point of view and. And, yeah, let my creativity go.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Did you work in retail ever?

Alaina Marie Harris:

Yes. So I worked in restaurants for a while through college, and then after college I worked in retail for. For not very long. Restaurants is primarily my background. I did that for like 10 years, like, bus. Worked my way from busing tables up to waiting to bartending. And then when I was trying to start my T shirt business, got a part time job at J. Crew, because I love that store. So, yeah, that was my stint in retail. So I got a taste of it, but never thought I would have my own store someday, let alone my own business.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So that's an interesting. That's also interesting because there are many people who are doing stuff online through Etsy the way that you started out, but a lot of people don't translate that into a storefront which has its own set of unique challenges.

Alaina Marie Harris:

Yeah. So I love having a store because it is a physical place for me to present myself to my customers. They can come. It's kind of like a home base. They can meet me, they can feel the product, see the product. It's. I don't know, it's just. I love being local too. I love the fact that we're handmade, man made local. So I think it's important for me to have a store again. It wasn't part of the business plan. I just figured I would just make some bags, maybe just sell them online. It would maybe be just a part time thing. But things grew so quickly that yeah, I really wanted to have a store and I think working in retail and in the restaurant industry, which is huge customer service line of work, really set me up well to be able to run a store because I've got those skills. Like, I love dealing with customers and helping them out and it's just, it's kind of natural to me. I started bussing tables when I was 15, so it's been that long. Yeah, I just love it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What are some of the things that you've learned from having a store? Because a store, when you have a storefront, you're also managing people.

Alaina Marie Harris:

Exactly.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Because you want to have the highest level of customer service.

Alaina Marie Harris:

Yeah, it's definitely a big responsibility. It's not, you know, I was just, just like, oh yeah, let's open a store. It's. Which it is that it's fun, but it's a lot of work. I feel like I almost have like three jobs. Like I'm a designer, I run the production side of things. We have a separate facility in Scarborough. We just moved into this beginning of the year because we've grown so big. We weren't able to make the bags in the store anymore because it's too small. So I have a store, I've got the production facility and yeah, so I have to run that. Manage six different people now. That's, that's. We've grown a lot since last year and yeah, so I'm just juggling every day, juggling. I go into work and like I said earlier, never know what to expect in a day. But I love it. It's kind of, you know, it helps my add, you know, I never get bored, ever. I don't even know what that feels like anymore. So yeah, it's a huge responsibility, but it's fun.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

How do you keep your creative self going?

Alaina Marie Harris:

It definitely comes and goes. I mean, as a creative person, it's something you can't force. I can't force myself to be creative. I try to every day, if not every day, at least once a week, do something for myself that lets me be creative to keep it going. You know, whether it's doing a sketch or browsing on Pinterest or. I love. I have this wall in my office that's just like full of swatches and inspiration. So things like that. I also love having my production studio because I'm very hands on I love taking raw materials and creating something out of it. So oftentimes when my staff leaves for the day, that's my time to be creative. And I'll get these, like, ideas in my head. And I have so many sample bags that I haven't launched yet. But, you know, it's just fun for me. That's my creative process. So, yeah, that's how I keep going in that department.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So it's. You're kind of making sure that you have protected time.

Alaina Marie Harris:

Absolutely. I think it's crucial because with everything going on, running a store and running a staff and, you know, keeping up with the accounting and all the business side of things, it can. I feel like there's. There's a fine line. It can be almost dangerous to creative mind because it can be overwhelming. And naturally, the creative side of things is where I'm most comfortable. The business side of things is where I'm still learning things every day. So, yeah, it's important for me to stick to my roots and keep the creative side going because to me, that's the roots of the business. If there was no creativity or no product, no designing happening, then we wouldn't even have a business. So. Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Did you do art when you were in high school or younger?

Alaina Marie Harris:

Yes. I've got portfolio after portfolio of just collections of things from. From when I was growing up all the way through college. Yeah, I think it's funny to look back. I could have picked an easier major because I was always the student who had canvases and portfolios and pads of paper and paint everywhere and easels and so much stuff in the dorm room or wherever I could fit it. And then when I started screen printing my roommates after college, I probably wanted to kill me because I would screen print in the kitchen and have all this. All these things and inks everywhere. But that's me. That's. I love. I love that. I love having. I've always had a craft bin and yeah, from very, very young, I. Drawing was my thing. I love to draw things and painting and that kind of. It's like classic art to me. You know, it's like, yeah, I just grew up doing it. So, yeah, I still have that. That instinct.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So with all of that and now knowing where you've come, how is it that at any point you said, oh, I should be a nurse?

Alaina Marie Harris:

That was definitely fear. That was. It was because I was afraid that or not even that it was. I didn't think that I could do something for, quote, work that I really like to do. I thought work had to be something that, you know, was work. And my work now doesn't ever feel like work. I mean, it's a lot of work, but there, you know, there's a difference. My days fly by because I love what I do versus, you know, if I were a nurse. It's just not in my nature. Some people are so good at it, and those people are amazing, but for me, just not my thing. So, yeah, I thought I had to go to school for something like that because I knew it was a guaranteed career, like a guaranteed job going to school for art. There's no real guaranteed artist job or. And if there is, there are far and few between. So I thought that a nursing degree would be a good security to all my life, kinda. And yeah, quickly discovered that I just can't force it. I'm just gonna do something I like and figure out the rest later. That's kind of how I work. I work backwards. I'm not a great planner at all, ironically.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So.

Alaina Marie Harris:

Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Do you have people in your family who are in practical careers like nursing?

Alaina Marie Harris:

No, actually, my father is an entrepreneur. He has his own own business. So I grew up with that mindset and living that lifestyle. And actually my fiance now is an entrepreneur. So it's very helpful for me to be around those people. They're, you know, both of them are very inspiring to me and every day, you know, push me to be better. Like, they have their own very different businesses, but. But I can still see, like, how a business is run and how they do things and they deal with their customers and, you know, it's all the same kind of background, you know. Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So that's still really interesting that you. Nobody else told you that you needed to do something practical. I mean, your father's an entrepreneur and you hung around with entrepreneurs and yet something inside of you, whatever it was. Yeah. I don't know, was it like people around you were all being practical or.

Alaina Marie Harris:

Back at the time, Yeah. I mean, a lot of my friends going off to school were going to be teachers or nurses or, you know, going for science or those, you know, classic things. And I'm just like, well, I guess I should go on that boat too. And at that time in my life, I was so much of a follower. I really was. I wasn't very confident in myself and I just felt like I had to follow the crowd. At that age, if you had told me I would start my own business and have a store and be in charge of people, I would have never believed you. I would have laughed. Like, I can't do that, you know? But, yeah, going through college, kind of when I got tired of, you know, I'm like, nursing is painful. I can't do it. So, like, all right, let's just go back to basics here. What do I love to do? And like I said, I'll just figure it out later. And, yeah, here we are.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, and I think you've already said it, that there are some people for whom nursing or practical careers of any sort of are very well suited. They're very good at them. It's in their nature. It just kind of makes sense. But there are actually a fair number of people that I believe go into things that are, quote, practical, especially in this day and age where we have student loan debt. That's exactly incredible. So everybody's saying, well, get the most out of your education in order to do that, then take this straight path.

Alaina Marie Harris:

Exactly.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And I wonder how much unhappiness that that creates in some people. Not everybody.

Alaina Marie Harris:

Right.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

But some people maybe who are more like you, who have other things that they'd like to do, but they're not really sure what that looks like yet.

Alaina Marie Harris:

Right. Like, going to school for nursing, I would have paid the same as I paid for my art degree, but there's a better, I guess, on paper, a better chance that I would have gotten a job and been able to pay for it than going to school for art. You know, like, there's. It's tough. It's. It's a lot riskier to graduate and be able to find something. There's no guarantee that, you know, okay, I'm going to go to school for art and open my own business someday selling my art. There's no guarantee that that's going to work. Going to school, being a nurse, getting a degree in nursing, there's definitely a need for that. So there's something to be said about that. So, yeah, it's. It was risky, but I had my. I kind of in the back of my head was like, well, I can always, you know, bartend. I always had that in my back pocket. But I didn't want to do that for the rest of my life either. So, you know, graduating from college and even going into college, there's so much stimulation. You know, it's this whole new phase of your life. There's so many choices to be made. And, yeah, it's just like, what path do I choose? So there's a lot of pressure, and I definitely felt that pressure, but, yeah, worked through it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You said you're not really a planner, but I would guess you'd have to have some planning skills in order to have kept all of this going.

Alaina Marie Harris:

I've become a lot better at planning and organization. I still am not the best planner, but there are certain things, like I have certain standards. Like, like, I don't know, there's like, I have a business to run. So. Yeah, like, there's got to be some element of planning in there. You know, I'm employing people and we've. We've got customers, we've got orders to get out the door every day. So there are deadlines. So I guess I've become one. Kind of been forced into it. I'm a procrastinator by nature, but I've learned to overcome that. And I'm still learning it. It's still, you know, something I'm learning, but. Yeah,

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

well, it's something that I think about a lot because we all believe that, or many people believe that they're gonna go get their education, come out and be 100% trained to do whatever it is they're gonna do for the rest of the their lives. But there's no way that you could have known A, what you were going to be doing and B, what you would have needed to know.

Alaina Marie Harris:

Right.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So most of us are going to continue on learning.

Alaina Marie Harris:

Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And kind of teaching ourselves.

Alaina Marie Harris:

Yeah, exactly. There's no handbook for life. You can learn all the basics in a classroom. But kind of like what I said earlier, I didn't think or know how to apply those business skills. I was learning to something because I didn't have a business. Now that I have a business, I can see so much further into it and I'm learning a lot more. I mean, school, like going to school is great for learning the basics. It taught me how to teach myself how to do stuff, so it definitely set me up for those skills. But yeah, I've learned so much more now after school. Just being out in the real world, there's nothing like, you know, real world experience. And that's why I think internships are so great. They were kind of. When I was in school, I was. I was required to do one internship, but that. It wasn't really a thing. And now I feel like you have to have like three of them to graduate, which I think is awesome. Get that real world experience. We have an intern now working at Elena Marie, so it's great, it's cool. And she's been got to see all sides of the business. The retail, the production, the online, the shit like shipping, design, everything. So. Yeah. And now she can go back to school maybe thinking of that kind of model in the back of her head while she's sitting in her business operations class. You know, stuff like that. So. Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Is there also a creativity to the business side?

Alaina Marie Harris:

Yeah, it's definitely an art in itself. You. Not everybody can run a business. And some days I'm like, I don't even know if I can do it. It's hard. It's really hard. It's not cut out for everybody. I like to say it's a lifestyle because I am married to my business. I do it all day, every day. It's always on my mind. I never clock out. But you have. You have to love what you do. That's a big reason why. Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I encourage people to go down to your store also to look you up online.

Alaina Marie Harris:

Yep.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Hopefully they will be inspired to get an entire Elena Marie line to proudly wear out into the world.

Alaina Marie Harris:

Love it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Speaking with Elena Marie Harris, who is the creator of Elena Marie, a collection of bait bag inspired clutches, she also recently partnered with Keds to create two nautical themed sneakers for the brand's Ladies for Ladies collection, a series that highlights female makers. I wish you all the best and I am really glad that you decided to go with what made you happy.

Alaina Marie Harris:

Yes, same here. Me too. I'm living my best life right now, so thanks for having me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You have been listening to Love Maine radio show number 309. Our guests have included Dr. Clayton Rose and Elena Marie Harris. Follow me on Twitter as Drle Lisa and see our photos on the Love Maine Radio Instagram. We'd love to hear from you. So please let us know what you think of Love Maine Radio. We welcome your suggestions for future shows. Also let our sponsors know that you have heard about them here. We are privileged that they enable us to bring Love Maine Radio to you each week. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your day and may you have a bountiful life.