Welcome to Episode 002. I was privvy to to able to sit down with Chelsea Reed who is running for City Council in Palm Beach County. This is a cross pollination episode between Time To Shine Today and South Florida Real Estate Business and Lifestyle. Chelsea drops tons of Knowledge Nuggets not only in how to improve South Florida, but also how to level up yourself in general!  Enjoy! 

Key to being a great leader is being authentic and approachable.

-Chelsea Reed

Recommended Resources – hover and click

Chelsea’s Website: www.chelseareed.com

Facebook Fan Page for Chelsea: https://www.facebook.com/chelseareedcampaign

Chelsea’s Instagram: www.instagram.com/electchelseareed

www.AgentFerguson.com

Speech Transcription

Hey, this is Chelsea lean candidate for Public Garden City Council group three. And if you really want to learn how to level up your life, you should be listening to the time to shine today podcast is my friend, Scott Ferguson. Thank you.

Hey, hey, this is Scott Ferguson and I am doing a cross pollination episode between South Florida real estate, business and lifestyle and time to shine today. So you’re going to hear this on both of our platforms for my subscribers at time to shine today, you know, we’re all about leveling up our life in in taken to the next level in Chelsea Reed is you’re going to find out why I want her on here and she’s not just a local leader here in my version of Paradise in South Florida. But what she did and how she’s got to where she is you’ll understand why you’re listening in South Florida. March 17 is a huge day and if you live in the city of Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, you’re going to go out and vote vote for Chelsea read a little bit about Chelsea. She’s a Florida native raised in Palm Beach Gardens where she has remained with her two sons and husband, Michael of 25 years is awesome guy. She’s a longtime community activist who’s dedicated her life to public service starting at the age of five as a youngster at the local hospital. She’s an award winning community leader who serves as an appointed member of Palm Beach garden gardens planning zoning and appeals board as vice chair of the county citizen Advisory Committee to the Palm Beach transportation planning agency. She was recently honored as Volunteer of the Year by the Palm Beach North Chamber of Commerce. While that’s major kudos. She founded the environmental subcommittee at Palm Beach chamber North chaired rd grout recycling committee was just just last weekend, yeah, and as a member of their leadership Palm Beach class of 2020 women women’s and Business Council Government Affairs Committee Palm Beach County planning Congress League of Women Voters Palm Beach, Palm Beach County forum club benjamine School alumni board in her free time is a DOS Dasient at MacArthur Beach State Park Nature Center. Wow, that’s some serious credentials and welcome to the show Chelsea. And if you could please tell our listeners your favorite color and why.

Oh gosh, you know, it’s gonna be blue.

Love it. Why is it blue?

And I’m obsessed with water. You know? It’s kind of funny. Like I listened to you lifting my credentials, and I still think I’m a mermaid sometimes. So it’s

maybe a water kid.

I love it. And we live seriously. I mean, with full disclosure, we live driving distance from the water as the crow flies like 1.8 miles, but to get there, it’s like three or four miles to actually get to the water the ocean, I should say. There’s inlets everywhere here. So let’s start from the origin. Let’s tell me a little bit about I already gave it you’ve been volunteering since the age of five in the great city of Palm Beach Gardens where I reside people. Tell us a little bit about the origin how you got started with this go giver, mentality and lifestyle.

You know, I actually think it’s part of the culture here in Palm Beach County. We are so lucky to live in Paradise and have a lot of great advantages that it’s just built into living here. So many of the people I’ve grown up with all do the same thing. So I don’t feel all that exceptional. I get emails and text messages from people I’ve gone to high school with that mostly I’ve done since I was three or four years old. They all do really similar things. I think it’s just the fabric of our town.

I love it. And this town is made some huge strides just even in the six years that I’ve been here. Can you tell us about what has been progressing in that in what you are going to want to progress When you get elected,

great, no, my actual passion is mobility. I know, it’s probably not the sexiest thing to talk about roads and roadways. But when you look at how things really work on a daily basis, all of our daily experiences, almost everybody here gets into a car, whether there’s going a mile away, or they’re going to go pick up, you know, whatever’s on sale the street. And so we’re a real transportation issue at this moment because we are about to grow tremendously. We have about 56 50,000 residents here in Palm Beach Gardens. The census is coming up, I encourage everybody to take part in the census, of course, and then we’ll get a better idea of how many folks are here. But nonetheless, we just annex a tremendous amount of property west of here, and we are already having gridlock on our roads. So I think going forward, we need to keep an eye to mobility to ways of getting around that aren’t necessarily just in our cars.

layman terms. Tell me Tell us what annexin in

Oh, I love I could. So that’s the thing, just careful. I can talk about NFC and roads for days. So annexing is when an area that was previously unincorporated, so Palm Beach County, about 50% of our area is unincorporated decides that they want a city in this example gardens to come on in and they go under the auspices of that city. So it changes your taxes a little bit, but it also changes your access to first responders. We get probably started with firefighters, we have phenomenal response time we get there quickly. So annexin is a way for us to sort of conglomerate together.

Gotcha. eautiful and so what I’m going to love about it is I mean, luckily I live right behind the Palm Beach Gardens mall so I can walk to downtown at the gardens and me and my lady do all the time. It’s kind of our thing, but we would love to have access to something maybe even more on PGA Boulevard where we could walk over you know, it’s There are some kind of different transportation says that what you’re kind of talking about is

what you just said is exactly perfect. The key to Palm Beach Gardens growing in a beautiful way that allows all of our citizens to have ease of access to some of the great things we offer here is to be able to make it a walkable city to make it a connected urban environment. So we have a train coming through we have bright line coming through we’re hoping it decides to stop here. We have tried will hopefully making a really great train station here. And ironically, it’s going to be located at lumens Plaza area where my husband I opened our first office back in May.

Remember when we when we said

there are too many things in life like lumens Plaza seems to be like the zero spot where all this growth is going to be taking place here off of PGA Boulevard, our gorgeous corridor with alternative today. That’s going to be a tremendous locus of growth and economic prosperity. But then also outlet We’re like I said, we’ve annex all of this property off of the line, Beeline Highway in North boulevards about to become a bigger part of public gardens.

Just a little bit about the company that you and your husband Michael started.

I would love to. So my husband and I opened our first physical therapy office in 1984. It was called aquatic in orthopedic rehab, about 4500 square feet. And I don’t know, for all of our local residents, if you know lumens Plaza, we were able to build an in ground pool using a an excavator about the size of a small door. So we were we were driven, ready to go. And my husband, obviously I adore him tremendously. But he’s, he’s got a great mind for business. He just saw that we could provide really, really quality care to the folks here which we want to doing for 25 years.

I love that. I love that. So you, you have had your business and now you’re expanding into lack of better term politics, which you’ve always been had your finger on the pulse of everything going Palm Beach County under Palm Beach Gardens and into the county. Super connected individually you are but what did your family and really close knit squad of friends think about you throwing your hat in the ring and running for office?

Scott, that is a fabulous question that almost no one has asked me at and honest I’ve gone to what they call campaign school a couple of times or a lot of different resources to do that. The first thing they tell you to do is to sit your family down and see if they’re okay with this because it’s not just a full time job. It’s a 14 hour 16 hour day job once I decide to run for office, even at the small local level, because there’s a lot of influence at the local level. I am so lucky that I have you know they put on their pom poms and their pictures from me every day. My husband’s been great, really supportive and I won’t I’m not gonna lie there are days that are tougher than others, but so far with his support and my fabulous tribe of friends. I’m smiling every day.

Yes, you are. And let me ask you something. What do you think makes a great leader? And why do you think you’ll make a great leader?

I think the key to being a great leader is actually twofold. The first thing is, I think you have to be approachable, really approachable, which comes from a level of authenticity. I just, I don’t see that as much anymore. And that’s a big part of why I decided to run. Like having lived here my whole life. I this is me, and I’ve been this person since I was a kid. So everybody who supported me now they’ve known me for decades. And that’s because I’m staying authentic to what I know and love. If I don’t know something, I admit it and find the right person who can educate me. That authenticity, that ability to be vulnerable. The ability to know that you don’t know everything, I think is what’s really lacking in some of our politics these days. Because it’s that that transparency that’s kind of gone and when you have that transparency, people are going to gravitate to you and tell you their stories. That’s what I want to do is to be that voice.

That’s fantastic and the people that are listening, they’re in politics I’ve excuse me in politics. I have been a part of campaigns and I’ve been part of campaigns or people that I had to be a part of a campaign because of, you know, favors owed. And there was a lot of egotistical rigga morar in there well Chelsea you’re not getting any of that. What you’re seeing is what you get even while you’re having coffee with somebody or a one to one somebody and trust me, Chelsea doesn’t know this but I bet it her out through a few of other people and they’re like she’s the exact same person that she see you see on the campaign trail in a in a personable atmosphere. So that that’s that’s fantastic. Is there anything outside of mobility other other items and outside of mobility that you’re looking to level up here in Palm Beach Gardens.

I am absolutely looking to level up sustainability. So again, growing up here surrounded by water, you can’t not care about our earth and realize that everything we do, is affected on a daily basis. And it’s that is the one thing that I hope I can bring to the platform that I don’t see elsewhere. A lot of people get nervous when they see sustainability or a person who cares about the environment because they think it means more taxes or it means, you know, people can’t use straws if they need to, I don’t come from that place. The place I come from, is the idea of giving carrots not sticks for people who make smart, sustainable decisions. So I do firmly believe we can have growth and build buildings. But we have to do it with the earth in mind right now, public gardens, is it about 51% green space, and I would love to see it stay that way, while we grow while we grow our economy. And I think the way to do that is to reward the businesses that whether all they’re doing is changing. light bulbs and making them led or they’re making a whole LEED certified building. We just need to make sure that as we go forward we think about our footprint going 50 years out 100 years out.

Excellent. And do you think that Palm Beach Gardens is a great place for people to come and visit we have the Honda classic which is coming up next week. Oh yeah, my favorite events I’m at the veterans tent every day. But it’s it’s one of my favorite events and brings in hundreds of thousands of I don’t know that many but a ton of people. And but a lot of people when they start heading south into Florida, they stop in Disney and they don’t really come down what what could we do to make Palm Beach Gardens a place and attraction outside of our golf tournaments to maybe people come here and visit and stay for a little bit?

You know, that’s a really really great, great question. Right now if you look at the the Florida chamber the state of Florida is chamber just rated Palm Beach Gardens is the number one destination and locations live in the state. I think we’re on our way I think what we’re lacking actually goes back to the beginning of our conversation is mobility. When people come here to visit, especially if they’re coming from somewhere that’s that has public transportation that’s accessible. They’re used to jumping into a whatever a train a cab, an Uber or whatever to get wherever they need to go, right? You don’t have a lot of that here, right? If you want to come here, you need to plan on renting a car and waiting in traffic to get around. So I think if we can keep our roads clear, not only are our tourists going to be a lot happier, but our first responders are going to be able to get in and out faster and our businesses are going to succeed because folks can actually come and visit them without having to wait in line to

beautiful in. Have you Is there anything in played to. Okay, so there’s a great place a lot of people hear about a singer Island here and whatnot. And people have talked about even clients and people that here in South Florida know that I’m a real estate agent and then I have their issues are when they come down into singer Island. There’s a Have to drive to Palm Beach Gardens. Have you ever thought about cross strategizing with other cities to move that transportation in between Jupiter Palm Beach Gardens and singer island?

Oh, absolutely. So with my with the time I spent on the transportation planning agency, and I really encourage your listeners if they’re local to Palm Beach County to go on to the TPA, the transportation planning agency’s website because on it, you’re going to find everything you need to understand access to transportation down here in our hometown. And yes, we do need something and as a matter of fact, the city of Palm Beach Gardens has started something called a mobility study. They have a mobility plan and they’re meeting with the county over the next few months to try to integrate it so that we can all work together. Because you know, from growing up down here palmist Gardens into Jupiter into Juneau and the North palm it’s really fluid blood.

Yeah, I don’t know. You’re like women. Oh, that’s his Juno Beach. Absolutely. Oh, that’s fantastic. So let’s give our our listeners a little bit about Chelsea here. You’ve been your fantastic mom, fantastic wife, fantastic community leader. What would you go back and tell the 2324 year old Chelsea? If you had to write a letter yourself, what would you tell her?

Oh, goodness, Scott, that’s a great and listen, my favorite thing to do is spend time with young women and try to mentor them as well going through this. And I would say just to stay true. Every night when you go to bed, you need to go to bed and feel like you’ve done your best when you wake up in the morning. You need to know that you have been ethical, thoughtful, and that you’re doing nothing but building your character. And if you do that, if you stay true to yourself all the way through. Like now I’m 50 and I feel like I’ve done that like even in my campaign. I’ve had opportunities. I’ve learned things about my opponent that would would really be bad for him but I’m not going to go negative because I want to be able to go to bed at night. Wake up in the morning and feel good about myself. So I would encourage myself at that young age to, to emphasize that even more, I think I’ve always done that. But that seems to have been the key to always being surrounded by love and support.

So I’m going to kind of add on to that how Yeah, has your sense of right from wrong evolve then?

It’s actually I’ve always been like, I don’t want to say boy scout because I’m a girl and I’ve always been, I’m such a Boy Scout and I always had this sense of rightness, and wrongness. And you know, my mom would call it bossiness. I think it’s just that I guess the one thing I would have encouraged myself at a younger age is to not be afraid to leave. Okay, there’s, you can be a young leader and that’s what I’m seeing in a lot of these millennials. Millennials. Got a bad rap originally, but they’re really taking charge of becoming leaders now and I’m so impressed with that. So I would Courage, leadership.

I love that in. So you’re going to be running for office here in Palm Beach Gardens is that as big as you want to go?

Well, I also like to live in day tight compartments. So that’s where I am right now beautiful. If I had an opportunity to make a more impactful change at a state or national level, I would really welcome that. Because the thing is, I’ve spent these last, I think I’ve been running since July. So these last few months, knocking on doors and spending time with the folks who actually live here. I can’t tell you that just fuels me so much. So if I do have the opportunity to really be a voice for people who live here, and that could extend to perhaps statewide or national, I would be thrilled and honored. And I think, I think we need to if you’re a public servant, you need to really, really be a public servant. And so I know you haven’t asked me this question, but the thing I don’t see right now. Is that connectedness with with our community as much as I want it to be?

I appreciate you saying that. Yeah, I was kind of deviating away from it, but I wanted to hear it from you. So we got it out of you. That’s great. Yeah, let’s leave out your cell phone out of this equation. But what are the three things chelse read, cannot live without

tremendous amount of calories.

I eat so much and I think about food all the time. So it would be copious amounts of food as my campaign manager knows that when we’re knocking on doors. He’s got to have at least two or three cookies and a granola bar in his pocket if I’m going to get through for a couple hours, so I’m definitely calories. And then, without a doubt, obviously my husband is my best friend and I need him next to me for everything at all times. He is that the best thing that ever happened to me. And then goodness gracious, that’s so tough three things I’d have to say my children and my family and my closest friends. Yeah, just fantastic friends and family.

So Chelsea, what is your definition of a life well lived?

You know what? That’s a great question. Because when people see you on the outside, they assume something like, someone will probably look at me and have a really happy marriage, which my husband I’ve worked our asses off for, by the way, two great kids and it’s not always perfect. I think sometimes in the social media age, what you see on Facebook or Instagram is, it looks like a false reality. So I think a life well lived is when you’re in a life where you realize that it’s just the most basic things that make it wonderful. It’s, you know, everyone’s sitting at the table together once a week. I mean, just I miss my college, my college age son who’s in Boston right now. Just we’re longing for his company. So just having those around you that that you love that are close to you. And when you have Have those rare moments like, gosh, I can’t remember the last time we all sat at a table together that would blow my mind to just encapsulate the small things, the small

things that make it all work that’s strong. That’s strong. All right, so we’re gonna wind down here in a little bit, but I have a level up lightning round with everybody. So you and I could talk for 20 minutes on each one of these questions, but I’m going to limit you to 10 seconds and I got a buzzer here. I’m just kidding. I don’t but let’s just keep all right. Ready? Go. What’s the best leveling up advice you’ve ever received?

Can I think about it before I answer? Sure. Okay. 432 kidding. thing.

Okay, you ready? Sure.

Surround yourself with only good people.

Love it. share one of your personal habits that contributes to your success.

Intense type A organization.

Love it. What do you turn to? To an internet resource when you’re looking to better yourself or level up?

Jensen teros badass book and website. Oh, there you go.

That’s coming on. JOHN is coming on you hear me, john. You’re coming on

my table by the way for sure I

recommend other than Jensen Cheryl, recommend a book that your go to other than that, are you a badass book?

Your beautiful work in progress which was written by Marina Lario who is an ultra runner and a dear friend, and she talks about how doesn’t matter what you look like, how much you weigh, what you’re capable of tremendous things you need overcome it all.

I’m gonna put her in the show notes. People have got to see who she is because if you looked at her you would never think about her being an ultra runner and that’s just amazing. My favorite people favorite charity or organization that you love to support,

Habitat for Humanity.

Love it. Last question. The best decade of music 70s 80s or 90s

this is for Todd go off though, it’s gonna be the

best friend who he got a couple of Grammys along the way too. So he’s okay.

You and I are both a product of that area. So leave us with like a little parting shots of where you want. Usually I’ll say leave us with a Knowledge Nugget that you can that people can take with them. But I want you to speak to the city of Palm Beach Gardens and and leave them with a heartfelt message of what you want them to know.

Thank you. All right city of Palm Beach Gardens. So I am a life Local with tremendous love. I have a love affair with this city but I want to bring more than just my passion. I’m bringing you my depth of knowledge and zoning, transportation and my accessibility. If you look at all of my information, whether it’s my website chelsea.com, or any information we’ve left along the way, it’s got my phone number right at the very front. So I hope everyone in public gardens takes a second to give me a call and let me know what’s important to them.

So Chelsea is Chelsea, thank you so much for that, but I’ll see read.com the only website or do you have any other websites you can share and how people can find you.

That’s the best way to find me our Facebook we kind of plaster ourselves on Facebook daily.

I love that. All right people, the listeners, my audience, my squad, my tribe. We are always talking about leveling up our lives and surrounding ourselves with people that are high vibing humble hungry in our daily leveling up their health and leveling up their wealth and celsa. You are the epitome of that. You’re going to be a fantastic, fantastic when you get elected, you’re just gonna be fantastic. I just I can’t say it enough and I’m so privileged and grateful that you came on. And now you’re part of our squad and you’re going to have to just deal with that. So thank you so, so much.

I am honored to be a small part of something so wonderful. xcopy Awesome.

Thank you so much. Say Bye.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of South Florida real estate, business and lifestyle proudly brought to you by southern New Jersey real estate real estate excellence, who can be reached at 561-249-7266 and it www dot Southern nugent.com. If you’re a business owner professional would like to be interviewed on South Florida real estate, business and lifestyle. Please visit Agent ferguson.com slash guest. If you liked this episode, please subscribe on Apple podcast, Google podcast Stitcher, Spotify. I Heart Radio, wherever you get your podcasts there’s a link in the show notes to our website. Also there you will see our recommended resources. We hope you’ll help support our show by supporting them. If you like what you’ve been listening to be great if you just give us a five star rating and tell your friends how to subscribe while you’re at it. I’m your host, Scott Ferguson. Until next time, continue to level up in our little sliver of paradise.

Music Courtesy of: The lips of god by urmymuse (c) copyright 2019 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/urmymuse/60168 Ft: spinningmerkaba