On this episode of the Seller Community Podcast from List Perfectly and Listing Party, we welcome Diane Lassonde and her daughter Jen to the show. We get a health update from Diane, learn about The FearLESS Living Foundation, living FearLESSly, and talk to Diane about how she wants to be remembered by us all.
The Seller Community Podcast from List Perfectly is the e-commerce resource for the seller community across all platforms and a hub for information on growing your business. Find out more at thesellercommunitypodcast.com, leave a message, or ask a question at anchor.fm/sellercommunitypodcast, or email us at podcast@listperfectly.com.
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Seller Community Podcast on Anchor
Doug Smith (snoop.dougie) linktree
Trish Glenn (Super Sale Trish) Instagram
Episode Links
Diane and Jen Lassonde and Living FearLESSly
Trish: So today we’re back with a part two, so to speak. We interviewed my BFF a couple of weeks ago Diane Lassonde and we really talked about anything and everything that didn’t have to do with what’s the biggest thing that’s going on in her life and in most of our lives at the moment is Diane’s cancer diagnosis.
And so we just decided that we would talk about everything but that. And so today. We’re going to talk about that and not much else. So we’re going to talk about that and we’re going to talk about the foundation she started and how it all ties into reselling. And Diane and her lovely daughter, Jen, who I also consider my friend.
So Diane and Jen Lassonde, it’s great to have you both here. I wish it was under different circumstances, to be quite honest, but it is what it is. And I’m glad you guys are here.
Diane and Jen: Thank you.
Trish: Jen, you introduce Diane. And then Di you introduce Jen.
Jen: Sure. So this is my beautiful mother, Diane Lassonde, who probably most of you guys know because she is a reseller extraordinaire. She’s been in all the places on all the podcasts. So probably, you know her but if you don’t, she’s been an entrepreneur pretty much my whole life and has always been a businesswoman. Just, taking lists and however, that saying goes. But yeah, she’s wonderful. And the fact that she’s had cancer since 2021 hasn’t really stopped her very much. So she still has a wealth of knowledge to share on that side of things. But today we’re also going to talk a little bit about The FearLESS living foundation that she started after she got cancer. So that’ll be an exciting thing for us to delve into today.
Diane: And this is my beautiful daughter, Boston Jen. I’m Boston Jen’s mom. She might’ve forgotten to say that.
Trish: Those are on socials. So if anybody wants to go find them, that’s on Instagram. Cause we should note that Jen is a little bit of a celebrity in her own right. While Diane is famous in the reseller eBay world, Jen is famous in the knitting world. And I gotta be honest. Who the hell knew there was a knitting world till I met Jen? Really, I didn’t but Jen has a podcast Down Cellar Studio.
Jen: You got it.
Diane: She is amazing. And especially since my cancer diagnosis, she’s stepped up to the plate way more than anyone should have to. And she does minutes of a meeting. And we’re not even on the highway to come home and she’s got it all done out and we know what’s happening. So she’s been incredible. She also like you said, she’s in the knitting community. And she just did a fundraiser for my birthday and raised almost $7,000 from the knitting community.
She’s just, amazing. And that’s all I can say.
Trish: Thanks. I agree. Jen’s amazing. We all want to be Jen when we grow up.
Doug: So do you want to start with the latest health update and then we’ll go from there?
Diane: Sure. If you don’t know what I had, I was first diagnosed with non-small cell lung cancer that was caused by a genetic mutation. These people are so smart. We are lucky to be living in this day and age. I’ll just tell you that if I had been diagnosed a year before, one year before, I would have already been dead because they didn’t have the pill, the chemo pill that I take every night. So I am missing my Exon 19 in my DNA. Didn’t know I had one, didn’t know I needed one, but it’s missing.
And so the pill that I take every night that wasn’t available a year before has kept me here. It tricks my DNA into thinking that’s there. So the tumors that were there were smaller. Everything was going along great until it didn’t. And it mutated into small-cell lung cancer, which is very aggressive.
I have chemo that’s three days and then three weeks off and then three days and three weeks off. The last one was the fourth round. My tumors all grew. So I have 10 tumors in my brain that are measurable. Those all grew. I have two that are in my lungs. that grew and then all of my lymph nodes grew.
So that was bad and that one kind of took the air out of my lungs. It just, I couldn’t really talk about it. It happened right when I got home from our beautiful St. Martin trip that my cousins planned. It hasn’t been a good couple of weeks because now the thing that I dreaded the most, I worked in radiation oncology and I worked for the doctor, Dr. Henning Willers. I am probably going to have whole brain radiation, which I did not want. And I knew what it was like, but when I was there in 2006, it was not good, But now they have something that helps protect the vital parts of your brain, so you don’t lose the ability to walk, think, all your stuffs up there.
And I said to him, It’s a good thing he likes me because he’d fry my brain. But that’s the health update. So we don’t know if we’re going to get the next chemo, because I’m going to be scanned on the 15th. And so they’ll decide then whether I’m going to get the whole brain radiation…
Jen: Or do one more round of chemo that was originally scheduled. They may nix that and go right to the radiation, depending on how the scans look.
Diane: And the reason that I would have to have the whole brain radiation is because This chemo isn’t working. So in order to get on a clinical trial, you have to have brain health. And so with 10 measurable tumors, that’s not brain health. So that’s why they need to do the radiation to get me a maybe a little longer with another clinical trial. So it’s all like a chess game.
Like she said to us the clinical trial that she may want me on that’s perfect may be full. And maybe she’ll give me some other chemo just to get me to, if they have an opening or then there’s another clinical trial that comes out in the meantime that may be better. It’s one of those game-time decisions. It’s not something you can like plan now that in June I’m going to have that. It’s just a, like wait and see what happens.
Doug: Oh, thank you for sharing all of that.
Trish: I was in ASD the week that all of this happened. And I’d spoken to Diane before I left. And, then I didn’t hear from her. And I knew that it was bad. There were enough that you didn’t call me. So I knew it was bad. And so on Friday, she said to me, when are you coming home?
And I said, tomorrow or whatever. And then she says, okay. And I said I’ll be over in the morning. And she says, good. And that was the whole discussion. Cause I already knew I already knew that it was bad. And., I think for the last couple of years, we’ve been really lucky, and we’ve done a lot of great things as a group. We’ve gone to Nashville; we’ve gone to Florida. Diane has gone to Florida multiple times, and gone to the Caribbean. We of course did a lot of things in the selling community. We went to Chicago; we went to Las Vegas. We went to Vikki and Katy’s wedding in Vegas. We did a lot of things and Jen came to a lot of them and reselling or not. They came to Camp. They went to Arizona, Ohio.
So we did a lot of things with each other, and then we did a lot of things in the reselling community, and I don’t know how Jen feels, but I felt, and I know Diane felt like this. That we were always just waiting for the other shoe to drop, right? We were just like, we’re just gonna keep going and doing shit until we can’t do the crap anymore, right?
We’re just gonna keep going and doing it until the other shoe drops. And unfortunately, I think the other shoe dropped. And It’s like a gut blow when it happens, even though you know something’s going to happen, it’s still like almost shocking that it happened.
Jen: Especially after so many experiences where it was good news. There have been setbacks along the way, and we always knew this is not something they have a cure for, there’s no remission, like that’s not how this works, really. But you build up hope after things are going well and things are going well and until they’re not. So thankfully there are still options, right? So all silver lining, but we’ll take any treatment options we can get at this point.
Trish: Absolutely. And so tell us when you got diagnosed, how you went from being diagnosed to deciding you were going to do something. How you decided you wanted to do something.
Diane: We were at the BOSS Reseller Remix in 2021. We had just left our family vacation in Disney with Trish and her daughter and my family, and we had a wonderful time. And then we flew to Vegas for the BOSS Reseller Remix, and it’s held in the Blind Center of Nevada. And I just love the place and I didn’t get to go on the tour the year before. And I had said to Ryan, I really need to get on that tour. And he’s I’ll give you a private tour. Anyone who knows me, there were 20 people on my private tour.
Trish: Tell them who Ryan is in case they don’t know.
Diane: So Ryan Wilson is the manager of the eBay store at the Blind Center. And he’s also now, I think, the manager of the warehouse part, as well.
Jen: I think so, yeah, he’s taken on a new role, too.
Diane: He has two new roles, so I’m not sure his exact title. But he is also a reseller, and he gave tours to every one of the eBay portions of their building. And so I went on that tour with 19 of my closest friends. And I will never complain again about listing. Because when you see Blind people doing all the stuff from taking pictures to putting it on the cart to putting it into the computer. It’s phenomenal. And then we went out in the back to the warehouse and saw Again, blind people in every station doing their job, talking, having fun, getting all their stuff done. And it was just, it hit my heart. And so we came home, and Trish got COVID, and I thought I had COVID. I kept testing negative. And finally, I’m like, I’m so sick. I’m just going to the Minute Clinic CVS. I go. And she says I’ll give you medicine for a sinus infection, but if you’re not better, you need to go to your doctor in a week.
I wasn’t better, so I went to my doctor on December 1st, and she’s I think you have COVID pneumonia. And she sent me for a chest x-ray. And before I was on the highway, she called me and said, and I thought she was going to say, you have COVID pneumonia, you come back to the hospital, but that was not what she said.
And it was, I found I and she was stuttering. And I go, Listen, just tell me, read it off the paper. If you can’t say it, just read it. And so she read it, and it said that I had all these tumors, and between that Wednesday and that Monday, I had a PET scan, I had a brain MRI, I had a CAT scan, I had all kinds of stuff done, and Yeah, that was when I got diagnosed.
Trish: What’s interesting about that is, Diane and I had been there, and I came back ridiculously sick, and she didn’t feel good either, and so we just assumed we both had the same thing. And we met in the drive-thru of the CVS. In this drive-thru at the CVS, because at the time it was during real heightened COVID, right?
And you, they, you’re not allowed, you didn’t have at-home tests yet. Pull up to the drive thru and they would do it. They would give it to you, do it in the drive-thru thru and then you would give it to them back. So it’s me and then Di, right? I’m behind you. I’m here, she’s behind me. I finish, I pull over, she finishes, she pulls over, and then we roll down the window and talk in the parking lot for an hour, like crazy people. We’re talking about how sick we are, and we’re going on and on. And afterward, she said to me, if you and I hadn’t gone there, I may not have known. How long after, right? Because We went and I didn’t feel good, and she didn’t feel good. So she just assumed we all had COVID, right? Because of everything that happened. And I do think you had COVID also.
Diane: Yeah. Yeah. Probably did too.
Jen: Yeah. But without that chest x-ray, who knows what you would have found out?
Trish: And if you’re not having trouble breathing, they don’t give you the chest x-ray automatically. No. For Di some of it was, and some of it was luck that she found out when she was able to start the treatment as fast as she did.
Diane: Yeah, because she could have just sent me home with some type of prescription to, but she just said, I think it’s COVID pneumonia, we’re going to go for an x-ray and then…
Trish: so then you get diagnosed, you would have these nice experiences at the Blind Center. So what made you like put the two together?
Diane: So my diagnosis right from the beginning wasn’t good. Like I said, if I had been diagnosed a year before, I would have already been dead. I didn’t have much hope of this either. The projected long-term was like 19 months or something. And so everyone was saying what do you want to do on your bucket list? What do you want to do something like, honestly, I feel like I’ve been so blessed in my life. And I know you say you’ve got this; how can you feel that way? But I didn’t do anything to get this. My body just hasn’t been a very good host for me. I felt like first of all, I thought I didn’t want anything.
And then I said but I don’t know what you’re going to miss later about me or something that we didn’t do that you wanted to do. And so I said, I know what I’m going to do. You can all have my bucket list items. Anyone who wants one can have it. And so we’ve had such fun things happen.
I went horseback riding in the snow with Millie. We had an all-girls sleepover with games and crazy fun. We went to Nantucket for an ice cream. We went to Block Island with Katy and Vikki. And there is a video, a once-in-a-lifetime video of Tipsy, Diane.
Trish: So we’re on Block Island, me, Diane, Rick, Katy and Vikki, and Jason. Vicki’s like best friend from home from Rhode Island, Jason. So we’re all on Block Island, which is an island off the coast of Rhode Island, just so everybody knows the little place, one of those like summer places that people go, you can only get there by ferry, there’s not many cars on the island, blah blah blah. So we take the ferry over, we walk around.
I do a live on YouTube with Clara and the wind is going. These people are downstairs yelling at me to hurry up. I’m on a live on YouTube. It was horrendous, but Diane, man, Diane had fun that day. She started drinking and everywhere we went, she kept drinking.
Diane: Day drinking is not good.
Trish: Day drinking for Diane’s the best. So she’s, blah, blah, blah, right? So then we have to leave. She’s I paid 15 bucks for this drink. She takes the drink and puts it in her pocketbook. She is now walking around with a pocketbook.
Let’s just pretend this is the pocketbook, right? Like this. Like this. This is what Diane’s doing. Okay. And then she goes Trish, you want some pocketbook drink?
Diane: I shared my drink.
Trish: Oh yeah, you did. And then I was drinking the pocketbook drink. It was hysterical. And then we get on the boat to go back, and Diane is still drinking and still carrying on and I’m filming. It was funny, but how did you decide you didn’t tell us you skipped it? How did you decide to start the FearLESS Living Fund? Where did that come from?
Diane: Because again, when I went on that tour, I felt so sad that here are these people. Most of them are homeless. A lot of them are homeless and they’re blind and they have so many more problems than I do. And I wanted to leave something that would help.
Jen can probably tell it better, but we did like a word every year.
Jen: Yeah. Like we’d pick a word of the year to be our theme and guide us for the year. And then in 2021, her word was FearLESS and not like FearLESS, let’s go bungee jumping. But fear less. We know COVID was still in full swing. People were starting to get back out into the world, but it was still scary, especially with her other autoimmune things going on.
It was dangerous for her to get sick. And so that was the guiding word for the year. And obviously didn’t know that the year was going to end. with that cancer diagnosis. But after she got diagnosed, she knew she wanted to leave some kind of legacy behind that would live on beyond her. And she was thinking about the Blind Center, and she was thinking about the word FearLESS and how FearLESS the people were working at the Blind Center. You’ve got people running a convention center basically, chopping things in the kitchen and doing all of these things and going outside their comfort zone. And so that all just came together for you, I think.
Diane: And how fearful it must be for their lives. Like everything, you don’t know where anything is when you’re walking. It’s just like incredible to me that there Able to learn their phone. They’re able to learn their computer all over again because some of them are blind because they didn’t have good nutrition and ended up with diabetes and then didn’t take care of that and then became blind. And so they went from seeing to not seeing.
And it’s just I can’t imagine how scary that is, and then to be living on the streets. And so the Blind Center at the time that we were there is building 100 housing units behind the building that Is the Blind Center activity center. They’re not guaranteed housing, but they have to open it up because Nevada is giving them a grant for each room.
They have to open it up to other people. But it’s going to be mostly for blind people, and it’s going to be accessible for them to walk to the activity center so they can work, they can still get to their job safely and their apartments will be ready for them. However, they need to set it up for blind people.
So when that thought came in, I thought, how about we set up a fund, my granddaughter Riley named it. But how about we set up a fund to help someone pay the rent? Because the city of Nevada is going to give $600 for each room. And I don’t want to take away from that, but like the balance, maybe we could help pay somebody’s rent, or maybe we could pay for cell phones. Being blind and living on the street is your lifeline.
Then we just kept kicking it around and then December came, and it was Katy and Vikki’s wedding. And so I said to Trish, we’re going to go, I’m taking my whole family. We’re going to the Blind Center.
Trish: We had been invited to the wedding. And both of us are like, We probably won’t go. We had just been in there in October. We’re probably not going to go. We’ll come and see you in the summer or something. And then she called me and said, I think I want to take Rick and Jen and Jeff to the Blind Center. We’re going to go to the wedding. And I’m like if you’re going to the wedding, I have to go to the wedding. There are rules here, Doug, rules. And the rules are if Diane goes, I go, that’s the rule. I said if you’re going, so then my husband goes if everyone’s going, I’m going. So even Thayer came, which is a really big deal. And then List Perfectly was really nice when they found out they helped, and they brought us to dinner at this wonderful restaurant and we went to the Blind Center, and we had a tour.
Diane: I’m sorry, we had an, extended tour. When we went the first time, we stayed within eBay, that type of area. But this time he brought us into like where the music room is with a, like all the pianos and there’s two different rooms, one for the guitars and one for the pianos and that type of thing. And then Jen, we opened the door to one room and Jen almost lost her mind.
Jen: They had weaving and all sorts of fiber crafts, which is right up my alley. And also pottery, which I don’t do, but I would love to do it cause I’m obsessed with pottery. But like all of these different services are available. to the clients there to keep them busy, and help them learn new skills. And then some of the things that the Blind Center can sell to raise money for the organization. So like they get access to all of these different things that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to do for free it’s incredible.
Diane: And then COVID actually helped them. When COVID came, they got a doctor because everyone who came in had to test so they tested, the doctor brought two nurses and after COVID, they stayed because They just found it was wonderful, the same thing as us.
I think once you go, you can’t leave. Like it’s just something that when you see it, you know. And so he started another program because they have this whole big exercise room, and he got in contact with someone from the University of Nevada. And they wrote a grant and they got someone who advised that the doctor passes them to clear them for exercise.
And then they set up an exercise program for them medically. And then the two students that they got come and help them make sure they’re doing them all right. So all that came from a bad thing, right? COVID was horrible, and it was horrible for their population, but because of it, all of this good came.
So sometimes when you look at things, you have to just wait a minute and see what happens and spin it around because it’s not always just bad.
Trish: Jen and I can attest. It’s all bad. I’m going to just speak for me and Jen. It’s all bad. And if it meant Diane didn’t have cancer, we would give all the money back to the people.
Jen: Yeah, but we don’t get to pick, so we are, here we are. And these people are in so much need, like mom said, most of the people that, Our clients at the Blind Center of Nevada are living well below the poverty line.
So some of them have medical conditions because they’ve never had access to proper health care or nutritious food and things like that. And the Blind Center does all of the amazing things we’ve already said. It provides jobs for many of them and outlets and activities and food and yeah, counseling, all sorts of different services that they provide.
But when mom was thinking about her legacy, we were thinking there’s still only so much that the Blind Center of Nevada can do. And many of these people still struggle with basic housing needs and cell phones and things like that. And that’s where we thought this is where we can give back.
Diane: And our fund, we don’t, it’s not specified like this much money has to go to rent or this much money has to go to cell phones. It’s whatever the Blind Center, they may have someone come in tomorrow that needs $500 to get a certain test or something. And then they can just ask us, and we’ll decide and give out whatever they think is reasonable.
Trish: So I would just like to stress that the Blind Center of Nevada is funded by eBay, so to speak, like their main funding source is their own eBay business and they themselves called The Blind Center, the building that eBay built, right? They are very big advocates of eBay.
They have a huge business huge, seven-figure business on eBay. And then other reselling things happen there, there was a reselling conference there during the 2018 or 2019 eBay Open. eBay went there themselves in 2018 and did a walkthrough and had videos and did a whole lot of stuff there themselves.
Vikki, Katy and Theresa have the BOSS Reseller Remix there. List Perfectly had an event at the Blind Center of Nevada. So the Blind Center is very much meshed in our community. So I think that on the surface, you think, how the hell did a woman from Boston, Massachusetts who is dying of cancer, decide that she wanted her legacy to be the Blind Center of Nevada? I wanted to just throw it out there for people who maybe don’t understand that they’re really enmeshed in this world also, the Blind Center is. So it’s a good fit.
Jen: Yeah. And maybe a good time to bring up too. Because of that connection, if you all do sell on eBay, there is an option called eBay for Charity, right? Where you can select from a list of approved charities and the Blind Center of Nevada is in there. And if you choose that option, you can donate a portion of your sales for a period of time or ongoing or whatever it is. And all of that money will come to the FearLESS living fund. So you don’t have to go out and do a separate fundraiser if you don’t want to, but you can just donate directly through a percentage of your sales, which is really great. And it’s wonderful that eBay makes that option available to sellers.
Diane: They actually gave that to us. I wanted to see this fund in my lifetime. And if we had started it ourselves and had to go through all the rigmarole and paperwork to get our own charity, it would have taken a couple of years. Looking back, we didn’t have a crystal ball.
The Blind Center said that we could just do it under them. So they set up a separate account. Everything goes right to them. They keep track. My husband is able to keep track of our end. And they did all of that for us. And I was like, so touched that they would do that.
Jen: All of the money, all of our FearLESS Living funds sit in bank accounts with the Blind Center of Nevada. And so all of your donations are tax deductible and all of that good stuff, which is wonderful. And there’s no overhead at all. So what, if we mail you a sticker, we mail you a hat or whatever it is, we’re paying for all of those things because we really want this money to really just benefit the clients who need it. And so it’s been a really great partnership between the Blind Center and us.
Diane: And so because of us not having our own account, Our own number for eBay for charity, we needed to have our own 503 C. We didn’t have it. And so they wouldn’t let us have our own eBay for charity. And so we had a call right after we gave out the money from the first FearLESS living scholarships. We gave it out in October.
But we had a call with the Blind Center eBay and Brian Burke. And they, all of a sudden, they muted their mics. at the Blind Center and we’re like, what the heck is happening? Oh my goodness, did we say something wrong? I don’t know. And so then they put their mics back on and they said, we looked at what we’ve done with the charity. And it’s nothing. We know that you’re going to do a much better job at pushing it forward than we are. And so we’re going to give it to you. I was like, oh, my goodness. That took my breath away because that’s what people wanted when we went to Phoenix everyone was saying in the audience, do you have this? Cause then you don’t miss the money, right? If you put one of your items up and you give part of it to the charity, you don’t miss it. Like you just keep on selling and you’re like, but yet you did a good thing. So now we can do it. And they gave us the Blind Center. So it was great.
Doug: That is amazing. And it’s a. It’s a great place, an amazing organization for what they do, and your charity, the charity’s great, I love it, all the different things. FearLESS Living Foundation though, so I’m curious, though, you picked the word of the year, you picked FearLESS, so to each of you, what does living FearLESSly mean?
Diane: I think anything that challenges you on a daily basis, Because I think we fear a lot every day, and I think that fear keeps some people in their house. I think that fear keeps people from saying the things that they need to say. So there’s a lot of things that people are very fearful about.
And I think once you start to speak that truth, you can overcome those little fears. And you’re able because I think once you verbalize it, it’s not as fearful anymore. Like it, It becomes less fearful. But people tend to keep everything inside and don’t speak about it. And then it ruminates and then it gets bigger and bigger.
And then it’s so big that. You don’t, you cripple yourself. So that’s what I think of. I was in the house for two years when COVID was because I had autoimmune diseases that they didn’t want me to go out. I was so afraid to go out. After and I didn’t know how to behave like it was a new culture
Anyway, but I would be like, because I hadn’t been out in people’s spaces and Jen’s mom, you can’t go over there. I’m like, why? Oh yeah, I gotta move. Like I just didn’t get it. It was just hard. So yeah, that’s it for me.
Jen: Yeah. I, and I feel like anything that brings you outside your comfort zone and really, I, like mom said, just to encourage people to look for those things. Like sometimes things drop into your lap, like a cancer diagnosis or a family member’s cancer diagnosis. And you just, You have to learn to live more FearLESSly or you’re never going to do anything. But, in everyday life, just looking for things that are new, whether it’s learning opportunities or new groups of people, or, coming to your event just like you guys didn’t know the whole fiber knitting community exists, I didn’t know there was a whole community of resellers and it’s been so much fun to go to your events and learn about the different things that you’re doing.
And you’ll find that community overlap, even with people that you would think on the surface, this has no entry into my life. And of course, it can, but you have to put yourself out there in those situations. And that can definitely, especially for an introvert like me, be very scary, but it’s always fruitful. Like even if you don’t love every minute of it if you can put yourself out there and try new things, you’ll always take away something good from it.
Diane: I think before too, when we were able to go to the eBay events in person And you’re this number seller. So you sold $20,000 last year, but you want to be up here at $50,000 this year, right? So how do I do that? Should I go up to that person over there who’s done $100,000 and talk to them?
What we found, Trish and I, was that everyone’s the same. When you go there, like every one is willing to talk to you. Everyone is willing to share their story. And if you don’t be FearLESS and go pick their brain, then you’re really going to miss out.
Jen: And you’ll probably teach them something too. Even if they’re the 50 or $60,000 seller, there’s something that, you know, that they don’t know. And you just got to be willing to talk.
Trish: Suzie Eads comes to Mastermind every morning. Suzie Eads probably makes, quadruple everyone in that room together makes, she’s a really big seller with two really big businesses and she shows up every morning at Mastermind and always has something to add, but always is Oh, I didn’t know that. Diane’s. And Jen, they’re both really correct. You talking to other people and learning things, you never know what that one little nugget of information or one little nugget of inspiration that somebody will say, and then it changes everything.
Jen: Yeah, for sure.
Diane: Trish and I run a meetup group and we wanted to have a meeting. We could never figure out how to do it because it was like the meeting was What you know that someone else doesn’t but how do you know what that is?
Jen: We assume like this little tidbit is so like everyone knows that and then you start talking to people and of course Not everybody does, and Trish said that could be the difference for you.
Doug: And so since we’re talking about the seller community, Diane, obviously Trish called you a couple of weeks ago, the grand dame of eBay. And so legend in the seller community, very well known, before any of this, the health stuff happened. So since then, the support for you is amazing. People like last week on Facebook, prayers for Diane, and just all the support and all the love. What does that mean to you?
Diane: It’s amazing. And I said to Jen and my husband, I don’t know what I did to deserve this. And for me, it seems like I’m just being me and I don’t know that I’ve done anything special, and I feel like having 900…
Trish: she does do something special. Sorry. I’m all of a sudden a mess.
Jen: And that’s what I said to her, just being you being the kind person that you are. That’s more than some people get all day, all week, all month.
I was told by Molly Consignment Chats I just need to accept the love and not analyze it.
Trish: It’s probably a smart thing, Diane.
Jen: Let it all in.
Diane: But when you’re sitting there and your phone is blowing up, it’s like…
Trish: And I personally, not that this has anything to do with me, I find it very hard. I’ve not been on Facebook in a week because I find it. She and I talk, she and I can joke, she and I are cool, right? But the other stuff makes me like, oh, lordy lord. I don’t know if it’s too real, I don’t know. Jen, do you find it difficult?
Jen: That’s what I was gonna say. No, I don’t find it hard to read. But I can totally see why it would because it does make it real. It’s easy to be like, oh, I’m sitting next to my mom, everything’s fine. Oh, wait, she has stage four lung cancer, right? So it can be easy to forget that at least every once in a while. And seeing messages like that obviously makes it real.
So it’s, yeah, it’s not easy, but it is really heartening, like to feel that support from everybody, and it comes at us from lots of different directions. And yeah, sometimes it’s hard, but mostly it just feels wonderful. Everyone likes to know that someone’s thinking of them and wishing them well and feel that multiplied by thousands. It’s incredible.
Diane: And I think most of the time you don’t get to know what people actually think about you. Thank God, they like me. I am a bit pushy, but I think you’re doing it wrong. I’m going to tell you, it’s only for your benefit, not mine. Molly said to me that she was so grateful for me because she made a friendship with Tiffany TiffyPie. And it was all because of me and I had no idea, like I had no idea that, you didn’t push them together at a conference, the other one, I didn’t do that this time, but most of the time you don’t get to know that.
And I think the good part about having cancer for me is that I’ve seen the love I’ve seen everybody’s feelings and it’s amazing to me and it’s, I’m so grateful and I just, I love everybody there and it’s just wonderful.
Trish: One of the bucket list items that she gave away, she gave it to List Perfectly and we went to a baseball game. Clara and Amanda’s dad, one of his friends Diane, her husband, Jeff and Jennifer, both, her children, and then my daughter and her friend, and we all went.
And we went to a game, and we had List Perfectly get her this wonderful place and there was food and drinks, and an ice cream cart came, and we all carry on the Red Sox lost terribly.
Diane: It didn’t rain, though.
Trish: It didn’t rain, though. It was a beautiful day. Oh, Theresa was there. Theresa Cox was there.
Jen: Clara’s first baseball game.
Trish: Clara’s first baseball game. Which, she was, like a little kid.
Diane: Oh, my God. It was so much fun.
Trish: It was craziness, it was a crazy game, it was crazy being there, we had a really good time and the things that have come out of this have been truly wonderful.
Dianne: Yeah. I wanted people to have, I don’t know what you’re going to miss about me, right? It could be bad stuff, but thankfully there’s been a lot of, my tipsy Black Island, that was fun. My Red Sox game memory like that, we took pictures there and it looked like someone painted the sky behind us and it was the actual sky behind us.
And I think it was just, a miracle that looked the way it did in all of the pictures that we took. Can’t explain it. Maybe Trish can post one of the pictures, but it was the most beautiful thing that you would never forget. And that’s what I wanted. When I gave them away, I wanted you to get that memory that you can keep after I’m gone.
Trish: I’ll post some pictures, but it’s been a, it’s been a wonderful thing. And I don’t know, I think it takes a certain kind of person to be able to do this. Cause there are a lot of people who wouldn’t do this. You would just be, you’d get a diagnosis and you’d be like, okay that’s it. And I’m gonna stay home and wait to die and Diane decided that ain’t happened. I’m going to go out and do every single thing I can. And that’s been lovely. That really has been great.
Diane: And I know people see a different thing on Facebook or here they think that I’m okay and, I say to everyone, if you live with me for three days, you’ll know it’s not okay. I can put up a good front and I’m going to go and I’m going to go to my grandson’s hockey game, his playoff game, and freeze my butt off because I need to do that for him.
Jen: Yeah, you want to do as many things as you can while you still can do it too. She literally just walked in, got diagnosed with an ear infection, sat down and now we’re recording that. There’s literally always something and it’s hard and it’s lousy.
Doug: A couple of things as we’ve been talking that popped into my head and first thing is, I think. You’re such a kind person. And again, the right word is grace. You’re just such an authentic, kind person. And I remember, I think when we first met showing up at the door of your house, these two ragamuffins, one Brian Burke, who you knew and you opened the door, I think Trish was there too. You open the door. And he introduced us and you’re like, okay, Brian. And then you like grab my hand and said, let me show you around my house.
I like the Patriots and you took me out back and downstairs and showed me everything and you just were always so nice and kind. And I remember this is funny, but I remember when I think it was the last BOSS Reseller Remix. Trish and I were talking about stuff and that you were going to be there. And then we were talking about the bucket list stuff. And I said to Trish, it’s we’re going to be in Vegas. The Punk Rock Museum is open. Nobody will go with me. I’m going to ask Diane and she says you can’t Diane to go to the Punk Rock Museum.
And I was like, okay, all we’ll do something else.
Trish: Cause if he said to you, it’s a bucket list item, you’d say, okay, I’ll go. And I was like, don’t do that to her.
Diane: Because we would have the best stories if that happened because I would be like, what the heck is this? How did they make money doing this? Why do you like them? Doug, this is awful. That would have been probably just the first one.
Doug: Next time we’re in Vegas, I’ll give you a personal tour.
So that’s what stands out to us you’re just always so you’re always so funny and positive. And so how do you still stay funny and find the humor in all this?
Diane: Cause the things that are happening are horrible, right? So if I just stayed in that zone, I don’t think I would be able to get out of bed. So to make light of it seems to help everybody else. People don’t know what to say to you when you have cancer, and they don’t want to talk to you anymore.
It’s cause they don’t want to say the wrong thing. They don’t want to do whatever it is. And I’m going to tell you, be FearLESS and talk to people who are sick. Be FearLESS and talk to people who have cancer. Ask them how they’re doing. Ask any of the questions that you want to ask. I just went to a funeral and one of the cousin’s kids came up to me and said, I didn’t know it was so bad. I’m sorry, you’ve been so nice to me my whole life.
Say the things you want to say to the people. That was so touching to me for him to say that. He’s 23 years old, he doesn’t need to come over to me and tell me that, but it was something that was on his head, on his heart. He needed to get it out.
So say the things that you need to say and don’t be so afraid to say them. And I think that is how I’ve, I’ve tried to pull it out of people and, when they, I can tell when they’re uncomfortable about it, but also there’s a line, Doug, people don’t really want to know that I’m going to die.
And so I try to say, oh, like I’m okay with it. I know what’s going to happen, but everyone else is not on that page. And so I’ll say, oh, my Wizard of Oz collection, is there anything you would like? And they totally shut down. No one wants to. No. So to me, I think it would be better to give you something that I know you really love.
And for me, that’s how I feel. But that’s not how everyone else feels. So you also have to take everything on that. on their level, right? I’m not going to push further about that.
Jen: And I think part of it too, is you need to have the times where you’re just crying or just feeling lousy and being at home and doing those things with the people that you’re comfortable doing it with. And then, I don’t know for us that it’s a choice, but we just deal with hard things with humor. That’s just what our family does. So I don’t know that’s something you can try if that’s just not who you are. But It works for us, and it helps. And it does relieve some of the tension when someone says something and they’re feeling awkward about it. Again, that just works for us, but that’s not 24, seven. Like we’re not just laughing around about stage four cancer all the time.
Diane: I said, last week I couldn’t even talk. So people would text me and I couldn’t even answer their texts and that’s okay too. So, all of the things have to be okay because it’s what we’re doing, right?
There’s no handbook that, oh, you got cancer on page 63, you need to blah, blah, blah. No, you need to just figure it out. And I don’t want to be sad. I am sad. I’m sad about going places and thinking it’s the last time. That I’m gonna ever be there. Like those things, when you come out of there, like I try to enjoy the whole time, but there are things every minute of the day, there’s a reminder, even on frickin TV, like the commercials, the TV, you’re watching a show and then the mother’s dying of cancer, the grandmother’s dying of cancer. This is, and it’s oh, for crying out loud, can we get through a one-hour show without that? So there’s always a reminder and you have to figure out how to let it not bother you. And that sometimes it’s difficult. And sometimes you just, I just go, really? Really? Really? Another I can’t watch this show. I’m done.
Doug: Yeah, and that, and, you just touched on this, but that’s the thing for me is I think I’m scared to talk about it because I love you and I don’t want to say something stupid, but the wrong thing, but. I have been excited over the past couple of years, each time that I got to see you again.
I’ll ask the tough question. So how do you want to be remembered?
Diane: Yeah, I think you all already know I. want to be remembered as the person who would do anything for you. I know people think that’s a bad thing and that you should just, not always care what other people think or want.
I don’t really care what you think. I want you all to be happy and to be a better person. And so that, if that makes me kind, if that makes me loving I also give you all the other things, like being mean to you, yelling at you, like I give you all the things and you can most like assuredly remember me for all of those times that I’ve yelled at you and told you what to do because I do it for you to become a better person and so I don’t want people to forget that, that they can also be mini-mes out there and just if that’s what they like in me then they should do the same.
Trish: For me it’s tough, I don’t know about you Jen, but for me, it’s tough because there’s two halves of me. One half is like part of the reseller community. And Diane and I are in that and like how we move, move through that ourselves together. Mostly up until, especially up until I got the job at List Perfectly Diane and I were like a unit in the reselling community. And then when I got this job, I was a little bit separated, but not in my head. In my head, it was still Diane and Trish doing crap together. And Diane has been very good to me since I got this job. She would come to things when we had them. Ohio, Arizona, she would come, Florida, she would come with me to these things.
Jen: You’re going to have to settle for me.
Trish: Okay, deal. But the other half of me Has nothing to do with reselling, and that Jen’s losing her mother and I’m losing, my, part is very difficult. That part is. Yeah.
Diane: I’m the lucky one because I’m leaving, and I don’t have to deal with any of that. I’m taking, I’m going, so you guys have to figure it out, but figuring it out together. And in the community and with each other, you’ll all become stronger. I think that when you deal with someone’s death, it comes in different ways. And so I tell the story about when my dad died, it was in November and we had Christmas and then we had my birthday and then we had Father’s Day and then I drove by a 7-Eleven that I drove by every single day, every day when I went to work, drove by the 7 Eleven.
That day I totally fell apart. I start crying my eyes out. I’m heaving. I called Rick and he said did you have an accident? Are you okay? Do I need to come get you? And I go, No, I just drove by 7-Eleven when my dad blew out both of his tires. I cried for two days.
And it was because I don’t know why that day. What happened to me that day? But it has to come out and you have to deal with it. And then you can do those things that I want you to remember me for. Then you can start saying, Oh, Diane would have loved this or, and be happy and enjoy it for me because that’s how I would have done it.
And so I know you’re all going to have that time and maybe a whole bunch of them, but talking together is what’s going to help you to get past that and get to the memories and get to doing the things that I want you all to do and being a better person and being helpful to others. This world right now is not like that.
And I think we need to have more of it. And so if I can have my FearLESS army out there living the rest of my life because it is too short,
that would be the greatest gift.
Doug: No, but we love you both. Thank you for doing this. We appreciate it. And hopefully, we get to go to the Punk Rock Museum altogether in Vegas.
Jen: There’s something to live for.
Trish: Please tell us where they can find you at FearLESS Living.
Jen: Yeah. So we have a website, FearLESSlivingfund.org and links to all of our social stuff is on there. We do have a FearLESS Living Fund Facebook page and Instagram under the same name.
Doug: If you don’t know Diane, she’s very inspiring. Obviously, this has been inspiring, but yeah, it’s like fear less, live more, be happy, have fun, laugh.
Tell people what you have to say. Diane doesn’t hold back. Don’t hold back. Let them know. I will say, I don’t think Diane has ever yelled at me yet.
Trish: It’s really not yelling, it’s just like stern talking. It’s not even yelling.
Jen: Your work on this earth is not done yet then. Wait for it, Doug.
Doug: There you go. Thank you so much, and thanks to Trish too.
Jen: Thank you, guys.
Diane: You’ll have to come to Lassonde pool pub, Doug. You haven’t been for a long time.
Doug: I know. I got to get out there.
Trish: You can come in the summer, and we could go swimming.
Diane: And that was another thing that Trish used to say, how are you inviting all these people to your house?
Trish: Anybody she met, she’d be like, do you want to come to Massachusetts? We have a Lassonde pool pub. I’m like, dude, you can’t invite everyone you meet to your house. Thanks guys. It was, I’d like to say it was awesome. It was difficult, but I love you both.
Diane and Jen: I love you too.
Diane: Thanks, Doug.
Jen: Thank you.
Outro
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