When I meet someone new, I like to ask: “What can I learn from you?”

My first real job was working in the men’s department at a local JCPenney store. It was retail at its finest: Working the register, cleaning out fitting rooms, helping customers pick out the right pair of pants. But that experience has really stuck with me.

I’ve had a lot of jobs since then — manning a hotel front desk, reporting for a local newspaper, working as a community specialists for a venture capital firm — to where I sit today, working at a seed-stage startup. In each job, I learned valuable skills, from how to mitigate crazy customer demands to how to quickly relate to people from many different backgrounds.

I started to wonder: Of all the other interesting jobs out there, what else can we learn from other people’s experiences? Whose stories aren’t we hearing? That’s what Everyday Experts is all about.

This podcast is inspired by dozens of conversations with relative strangers that I’ve met at bars, restaurants, and cafes over the years. I noticed, whenever I meet someone new — particularly someone from outside my own field or industry — I’d always walk away with a surprising new perspective. And I wanted to capture some of these stories.

Thanks for joining me, and I hope you learn a thing or two from these Everyday Experts.

Bethany Crystal

hola@bethanycrystal.com