20240928

My high school got in touch, and asked for something like this. :) 👋

Transcript

Hi. Thank you for being here. My name is Isaac Bowen. I am an RHS graduate from 2007, and I'm the CEO and founder and owner of a company called Lightward. I don't even know what to say about that. Lightward is a 15 year old experiment, the premise being if we just get really clear on whatever direction feels like it's got more light coming from it, whatever that means to you, if we just keep doing that every day, does it keep working? And 15 years later, it's working. We do some software things, we do some media things. We just hit 100,000 followers on a YouTube kids show called Recess with Guncle Abe starring my husband, Abe. Gosh, it's good. lightward.com for the rest of what we're up to. Please come say hi.

Like I said, I'm an RHS grad. I grew up outside of Rhinelander on a potato farm. School was hard for me. Undiagnosed autism, unrevealed queerness. It was just hard, not for lack of kindness from students around me and also teachers, faculty. I am really grateful for the people that I grew up around, but it was just hard. I almost failed out of college. And yeah, I did a year and a half of trying to learn software engineering at IIT here in Chicago, and that didn't work so I withdrew and transferred up to University of Wisconsin-Superior, finished a computer science degree there and went from there.

I worked at a couple places in Chicago. I was a software engineer at Apple for a while. And Lightward Inc. started from a very small thing 15 years ago that I was doing while doing other things. I think I actually started it while I was still in college, maybe. I didn't start Lightward, I just built a very small, very useful thing. I had very little bandwidth because I was just living in emotional dysregulation the whole time. But I built one tiny thing, and I took good care of it, and I put it somewhere where other people could find it. And I didn't promote it because that's not compatible with my personality. And I just made sure it was discoverable, and I took care of it. And one person showed up to use it also, and then two, and then five, and then 15,000, and here we are. We have a team of 12 between the US and Canada and Australia. Our stuff has touched millions of people. Or maybe I should say millions of people have touched our stuff as they get off to wherever they're going. Everyone's telling their own story, and I am telling mine. And I'm relieved and grateful that I get to tell you these things like this.

Gosh, yeah, I'm so grateful. I'm autistic, like I said, and I can't do things that don't make sense to me. And so much about the nature of work and one's value to a marketplace, what does that even mean? So many of these things are so due to be rewritten, and I am not waiting for someone else to rewrite them. Lightward Inc. is an experiment to say if we just prioritize being healthy at the individual level first, whatever that means to the person, and then if we empower the individual to take care of their health and after that to pay attention to the health of the space between them and the team, and after that's in good order, then and only then do we pay attention to the health between the company and the rest of the world. And if we just do that, does it keep working? And it does. The cost is that you have no idea what's going to happen next. I didn't expect to be running an educational/just good for you kid show on YouTube. Who knows these things? Not me. But it's fun and it's good. And I'm grateful to be sharing that with you here. lightward.com. Please come say hi.

There's a thing that I want to say. Hodag pride worldwide. Go Hodags. See ya.

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I forgot something. [pans around kitching/dining/living area in a high-rise condo] We don't have an office. This is where Abe, my husband and business partner, and I live. This is our home here in Chicago. We're in the Gold Coast district. And gosh, I just love living here. Yeah, this is where I do what I do.