Everything from life blending and business with the Tennessee to always relatable, always relevant, and always a good time. This is Duncan, Tennessee, and now your host, Yavonka.

This episode is brought to you by the Landis Team, your go-to real estate family in East Tennessee. If you are looking to buy or sell, we are the ones you should call. Give us a call at 865-660-1186 or check out our website at yavonka salesrealestate.com. That's yavonka y v-o-n-n-c-a salesrealestate.com.

Welcome back to Talking Tennessee with Yavonka. I am your host, and I am here with a dear friend that is going to wow the whole show. Her name is Phyllis Nichols. Welcome to Talking Tennessee. Thank you, Yovanka, for inviting me to be with you.

You've got you've got a beautiful track record of talking uh with some very important people on some very important topics.

Thank you so much. Well, let me just say this to you viewers. I have admired this person from afar for so many years. I met her some years ago, but we were at a gala. And so, you know, when you're at a gala and you're and you're all dressed up and you're meeting people and all that kind of thing, you never get to really stop and talk to the person as long. So I had to have this person on. I've been wanting it for two years, I will say that. But I just needed God to tell me when to go because I knew that this was going to be a powerful, uh, uplifting interview conversation that everybody needs to hear, but it needed to be the right time. So I thank you for coming. Oh, I'm pleased to be here. Very honor. Please tell me who Phyllis Nichols is.

I think if you'd asked me that question two or three or five years ago, my answer would have been uh a little different. But in retrospect, now, at my where I am in my life now, being retired for two years, I've had time to reflect and understand who I really am. So I would say that first of all, I define myself as a Christian. I am a wife, I am a mother, I am a grandmother, I am a sister and an auntie to a bunch of a bunch of adults.

Okay.

And so what I've said there is, you know, uh in my relationship with Christ, that is the the center of who I am and how I try to live, the most important thing of who I am is my family.

Yes.

It is it is my family. You know, uh uh what I do and how I interact and how I go about the world now all focuses on faith and family. But I'm also uh uh in addition to that, okay, um, I'm a community advocate. The work that I did for 40 years has not gone away. I tend to approach it in a different way. I tend to allocate my time. I am a civil rights advocate. I am a public school advocate. I am a women's rights advocate. I'm a human rights advocate. And so those things were uh were a part of what I did in my professional career, but and and it helped to mold the personality that I have and the commitment that I have. I just go about engaging and supporting those things in a different way now.

Well, let me just say this. There are so many women in the world that in 40s and 50s and above that sit and think, okay, who am I? And I tell women all the time, you find out who you are multiple times. Oh, you change.

You change.

You change the woman I was in my 20s, I'm in my 50s now. I'm a totally different woman. You know, so I can relate to what you're saying. There are so many different layers to you. You know, and I can even understand, you know, even retiring. Let me first say, how long did you serve as the CEO of the Urban League?

Almost 30 years. But I had a I had a career in education and and and private business before then. And, you know, long story is that I I learned so many things which helped me to be successful uh uh as the CEO of the Urban League. But uh I I spent and was committed nearly 30 years of my life to the Natural Area Urban League and the Urban League movement.

What made you want to go to work at the Urban League?

Uh at the time, and this was like in 1994, and so people can figure out my age or whatever. I'm old. She doesn't look no, she's not. But but at that time, I was part of a uh program with the College of Social Work at UT who helped the Urban League to develop a program. And under that time, it was called Wellfire Work, which I hate that that name, but that's uh was in during the Clinton administration, and that's what they called it. And the the premise of the program uh was to help women who were out of the workforce get into the workforce and become self-sufficient. Well, that sounds really nice, doesn't it? Right. But if you've never had a job and you've got small kids at home and you lack transportation and health care and you lack the necessities to be able to go to work, how do you do it? And you don't have marketable skills. So that program was to help women transition. The Urban League uh was doing the workforce development programs, uh, administrative assistance, CNAs, doing all things to get people in, but also to show you a career path. But if you were going back to work as a small, as a mother with small kids, uh how and you were taking care of them at home, one of the things that the program did was help develop collaboration so that you would know who would be the child care provider and help you connect to that. Also, if you don't have transportation, how are you gonna get to the job? Uh if you have never ridden the bus, and this was 94, how how do you access that? And uh also um most jobs back in the day, you had to have a chest x-ray, you had to you had to have a tuberculosis test, you had to things that you had a lot of things before you went to work. Um uh and so the Urban League helped help to coordinate all that. What made me change my mind about it is that one day a young lady walked in and, you know, I was there, had my manila folder and all stuff because you know we were going to do her intake and sign her up. And she got up after saying some few choice words to me, she got up and left. And so the person that was assigned as my assistant to help do all the paperwork, she went running down the hall and she says, You can't say that to Miss Nichols. You can't say that. She said, I don't know who that lady is, and she doesn't know who I am. I can say whatever I want. Okay. It was a reckoning for me. I bet it was. Because I didn't know her. You didn't? Her name was Evelyn. I didn't know Evelyn. I just saw her as the way that so many times we treat people is we see them as a file and a number. And it transformed me because I saw this woman who uh really wanted to improve her situation, but I hadn't given her the dignity that she deserved. Long story short.

Let me say this. Most people would never admit that. Oh, that's commendable for you to admit. You know, I I didn't treat her in in a certain way. Right, right. Keep going.

So so one of the things that um we did is long story short, we brought Evelyn back. Evelyn, Evelyn was like a teacher to me because I learned a whole lot of stuff about riding the bus and doing the things that I never knew. But I and and Evelyn was a difficult placement. She took me through the storm and the fire and the everything. But I told her, I said, Evelyn, one one day you're gonna get a job and girlfriend, you're gonna buy my lunch and you're gonna give me that first dollar, because I bought many of lunches for her. Okay. And so she came in and that happened. But what I did, and you say what people wouldn't um admit to that story, that story has been my guidepost. I hung Evelyn's pay stub and her her dollar, which she was supposed to buy me a hot dog. I said I'd rather have the dollar. And I hung that in my office, not not as a show piece, but to remind me who I was and why I was there. But also the people who worked for me, the people who worked with us, the people in the collaboration. Evelyn was the story of why we were there and why we worked so hard to help people because we had taken her from this one end of the spectrum to another. Evelyn, Evelyn did well, and for three or four years, she would always drop drop in and let me know. But every person that we would help at the Urban League, I learned a lesson from them. People would say, why do you do it? Because nobody is more excited when they got a job than me. Because I knew what the future would mean for them, uh both for their self-esteem and for their family and for the the future. I totally agree. Uh uh we we did um a lot of work with preparing people to be uh a homeowner. Well, there's a lot of work when you're starting with somebody from ground zero to prepare them to be credit worthy, mortgage ready, all that. And to celebrate when they close on their first home, it feels like I'm moving in. Yes. I settled in. But we also celebrated when people became business owners because you know, people would come in with a dream of wanting to own a restaurant. And so we'd have to give them the hard lesson of just because you can cook doesn't mean you can own restaurants. These are the things that, in addition to a skill, you have to you have to know.

You have to know how to run a business.

But I believe that everything that we did started with education. So understanding that education was the basis for being able to move people forward, uh, we focused more uh on going into schools and and helping folks. Let's try to prepare people for a lifetime of of self-sufficiency, not and success. And success. Whatever that looks like to them. Absolutely. But also being able to understand that dreams can come true, not because you wish it to be, but because you plan and work for it to be. And what we quickly understood is that uh uh folks want to be successful. Yes. They just don't know how. And it is incumbent on those who have made it and have struggled to understand the struggle and to help others to to achieve their their goals and dreams as well.

I think that's how I got there. I think if you become successful, um I think that it's your duty to to share. Because it may you just sharing your story could give them the fight to see, okay, if they accomplish that, I may can accomplish my success. Right. It may not look the same, but I can, you know, make my family proud, make my kids proud, make my spouse have proud, make myself proud. But I think a lot of times that people forget that part. And I think you've done a great job in showing with your walk of really devoting your time to your community, um, letting people talk to you and ask you questions and say, How do you do this? I think when you humble yourself and allow yourself to see other people's situations and not measure them up and just see the person for who they are and just try to help someone, it makes a huge difference in someone's life. And I think that that God wants us to be able to help the body of Christ, that be a vessel for him, you know, pour into people. And I think you've done a great job in that. Um, how has your faith shaped the person you are today in the way you lead?

Oh, my faith has uh helped me to get through some really hard times. You know, people have the tendency to look at someone where they are presently and they think, oh, they had it, they had it easy or or this or you know, how how could they know? Uh because we don't all talk about our struggles. When when when I inherited, I called it the big seek at the Urban League. The Urban League had had no money, you know, very few, very few staff people. But what I was privileged to know because I traveled the country and saw what a successful, thriving, contributing Urban League affiliate does, I knew we could do that in Knoxville. And uh I used that as my inspiration. Was it easy? Absolutely not. There were days that, you know, I would go home and I would just cry. I thought, what am I doing? I feel like I'm accepted. Well, you know, I thought, well, I knew I knew why I was there. I knew that I was led to be there because, you know, uh I had been a public school teacher. Uh if I wanted to go back to teaching, I still had a certificate and I could have done that, but I chose not to take that. I I had a I had another calling, which some days I understood fully. And I no, let me let me say this. I always understood it. I always knew that I had to ask for help. I had to ask for divine help, but I had to ask for brotherly and sisterly help. I had to know that I was not put there to do it by myself. And some people think that they need to do to be successful, it's all about me. It's never, it's never all about you. You'll never be uh uh successful on your own. You can do, you can have you can have some measurement of a success doing doing some things. But you have to connect. But you but you have to connect. But you also need to understand is I think why we why we are commissioned to serve is that we build community by serving together.

Yes, I agree.

And and and we achieve more serving together. And asking for help is uh is a um a sign that you are uh confident to ask. It is not a sign of weakness. We used to uh say that a lot. We had a program at the Urban League where we taught soft skills. Soft skills mean you show up to work on time, you do this, you do that, everything. But also, soft skills does more to get you to believe in yourself. You can do this. Yeah, it's gonna be hard, but nothing's easy. Nothing is easy.

You make it look like it's if it's worth having, you gotta know it's gonna be working there. And I think that people don't open up enough to say, you know, when I was paying my dues and whatever that was, it wasn't easy, you know. And and I agree with you when you say, you know, some people will look at you now and they're like, oh wow, she's accomplished so many things. They haven't realized there was time you took away from your family. Absolutely. There was time that you took away from yourself, you know, but you wanted to do for the greater good, so you did that sacrifice. And I try to keep in my mind two is better than one. And if you keep that in your mind, two is better than one, then you don't fall in that it's all about me. It's what I want. You know, two is better than one. If you have somebody, if you build off a two, you can go to three, you can go to four, that type thing. And I'll say this: one of the people that recommended you for my podcast, y'all have something I like. Y'all are connectors. Tammy White and you are connectors. Y'all connect people and you enjoy it. You enjoy every person that I want you to know, several people said, we want to hear her on your podcast. Okay. And so, but every person that said that, that was one of the biggest things that they talked about. It's how you connected people and how you have allowed people to grow and you've shown them how to grow. You've uh you you've given them the tools to grow, that type thing.

So my next question is I want to finish the question to ask because you said how has uh has your faith influenced you? Okay. This is this is one of my guideposts. The Lord didn't give me the opportunity or open a door for me to go in and close it behind me. He gave me the opportunity to be in that room so that I can see how I can bring others into the room, how I can make sure that the door stays open. And so that has been one of the things. Every time I was in a new situation, and many times I would be the only female and most certainly the only African American in the room. My thought was how do I put more seats at the table, even if we got to bring our own chairs? Yes. How do I bring more people into this? And so I I would go to meetings, leaving as part of my strategy, who am I gonna bring with me next? But I would also say to them, okay, Ivanka, I'm bringing you over here, and and your your payback is to bring somebody else.

But let me ask you this. I'm glad you're bringing that up. Of your opinion, why do you think some people think that is it is it an insecurity in anybody that they feel like they can't bring someone in? You know, that type thing. Because I'm like you, okay. I heard a gentleman say this one day, and I and I said to him, I said, I don't agree. He said, I want to own the table. That's what he said to me. And I said, You what does that mean? You want to own the table. I want to own the whole table. And I said, So then you want it all your way, correct? And he was like, I just want to show my people that. And I said, but wouldn't you like to bring people in and show how you helped form that table of leaders? That those leaders band together and they collaborate together to for the greater good. He said, Well, I didn't think about it that way. I said, it's not about owning the table, it's about helping people sit at the table. And so I'm asking you that question. What is it? Is it insecurity that some people think that they don't want to bring someone to the table? Because of what when I researched you, you brought a lot of people to the table. Uh thank you.

Thank you. Uh that then then I accomplished something that that I was intentional about is to to open up the doors for other. I think that it is not as simplistic as saying somebody's insecure. Okay. I think that historically, depending on where people are, we've only had one seat at the table.

That's true.

So am I gonna give up my seat for you? Okay. That's a good point. Uh uh. Uh and s insecurity does have, you know, I finally got in. I've gotta, I've gotta make sure that I stay. I never I never thought about it in that way. Um So what would you tell people of today? That that that um how to handle that insecurity and still What really happens is this when you bring others into the room, the others recognize that you brought others into the room. So they see you as more as a collaborator, and everybody wants to enlarge their tent. Everybody wants to enlarge their territory. I agree. Okay, and you quickly know who the person is in the room that's the connector. Or you know, uh I agree. When when I'm in a committee and we start talking about who's gonna do what, the person that goes, Well, I know Joe, I know Joanne, I know, that's the person that I'm going to focus with because they have a network that is going to move our agenda forward. But the person who sits there, and they'll say, Well, I can do that. You can only do so much, but you've already said Joe and Joanne and you. That's a good thing. That's four. There's four that you have already identified that could help us. Yes, I want you to help. But but so expanding your territory, expanding your network, that's beneficial for for all. And that was that was my thing to bring bring folks in. So, yes, people are insecure. But I think that the more that you're going to collaborate. Right. But it's really the more that you serve, the more you want to serve.

I agree. I agree. My next question to you is you know, with living each day, you were you said you live each day with attitude of uh gratitude. Please explain to the viewers what do you mean by that.

So very quickly, I grew up um in Kingsford. Both of my parents were small town, small house. Okay. Uh uh there were eight of us in a three-bedroom, one-bath home. Really? We were very privileged to have because you know, there was redlining, there was all these kinds of things. We're talking in the early 60s, and for my family to be able to buy a home was was quite the privilege. Now, we were we were very happy, but but it was crowded. And so my parents taught us that, you know, the girls do this, the da-da-da. So it was very, very regimented. Okay. But I knew that my parents worked hard for us to have all that we needed. Not all that we wanted, all that we needed. And um, I was I was blessed with with family, and when I say that, my my relatives, my uncles, my aunts, and all those, everybody was supportive of the kids for education. Education.

That's how I grew up.

But also I knew this. I knew even as a child that we had opportunities that a lot of my friends didn't have. You know, we had a we had a car, and we could go and visit our grandparents on the weekend. Or, and this was something, you know, some things happen in your life. You never, you never forget. My mother would drive to the grocery store, and our job was to be standing at the door helping her carry those in and put the things away. One of my friends that I grew up with, her mother would walk to town, go to the grocery store, and take a cab back to the projects where she lived. I remember that, but I also remember my mother calling the woman's name and says, you know, uh, because she was at the store, she would take her home with her groceries. So she went there. As a kid, I knew that we had something that not everybody had. But when we were in school, her daughter was one of my best friends. I mean, we would when we got to school, we were thick as thieves. Yes. So I knew that our existence was different. Uh uh, so I knew that I had opportun I grew up with some people who wanted to get a job at Tennessee Eastman or at the press or whatever, and my dad said, you'll get an education. You know, there's that if you if you do that, you know, that's because you made a choice too after you got an education about what else you can do. And so I saw people who graduated from high school two weeks later went and worked at the plant, but they had a they made a good living. So I'm not making that, but they didn't know what else was was what else life could have offered them. Right. Because they only saw what they what they said.

Going to the plant.

And so um what I knew is that I saw opportunities that a lot of people who were just like me, who grew up like me, uh didn't know that opportunities existed. They didn't know it was possible for them to do that. I grew up in a community where there were absolutely no black doctors, no black dentists, no black attorneys. So our role models were teachers and preachers and and and nurses. So didn't it exist in in when I was growing up in the in the in the 50s and 60s that I could be any of those? Yes, because our dad made us read books about people who did that, but not everybody had that opportunity. Yes. So so I knew early on that education, access, and opportunity held a key for people. And so it has been a guidepost for me throughout my life, uh, knowing that people need to have those things.

My grandfather always told us uh education is key. Oh, absolutely. It's something that you that no one can take away from you. And my where I was saying you were speaking to me is that I don't remember a time in my childhood that if I wanted to go to my grandmother's house, my mother would put us in the car and we'd go to my grandmother's house. You know, that type thing. Did we do a lot of walking, you know, as kids? Yes, in the community we did that, but that was more recreational. That wasn't because we had to. You know what I'm saying? So that's why I say you speak it up because it made me just think about, you know, I never had to worry about if I want to go to my grandmother's house, okay, where we're going. That type of thing. And I think a lot of people don't think about that. Um, we had everything that we needed. We didn't have everything we wanted. Um, I can say that my mom and dad worked really hard because my mother, when I was born, my mother uh was living in the projects, and my mother always told us that this is our start, but it's not our end. And my mother said, I will get you out of here, and my mother did. And so uh even now I I ride by that that unit once a year, you know, just to remember. The good times because we we didn't know any different. It was just home to us, you know, that type thing. But my mother, she worked in a factory at the time, and my mother said, I'm gonna get a better job, and she did, and they were her and my dad both worked out at the plant, you know, and uh worked 30, 40 years out there and did great. But there was a lot of kids in my neighborhood that I can honestly say the same thing you're saying is that was less fortunate, you know, and my mother always made sure that we were all fed. If you came to my house, it didn't matter what my mother made everybody, you know, her kid. Yeah, but you know, that type thing. And so gratitude, you have to remember that is showing gratitude of even things that you didn't have to go through. You know, I don't think people stop and think about that. You know, uh, and I see that in your life, you have got to see kindness. You want it, and so you want it to instill kindness in people. Can you speak about the world seems so divided right now for whatever reason? Okay, for whatever reason. And can you speak on just being kind and how that you have put that in your professional life and your private life?

So, so uh growing up uh uh in King Sport, we did two things. We went to school when we went to church. Okay, we went to school and we went to church. So uh we we learned a lot of how to live from and and our social activities were at church as well. And so we didn't just just hear about sharing. We taught we would talk sharing. We didn't just hear if you don't have something good to say, don't say anything. They uh we had we had people who demonstrated us to say the kind things. And also we had people who said to us, be kind to those that don't have, because they may be angels unaware. Somebody said that to me in Sunday school when I was maybe five years old, and I was always looking for the angels. They said, You you must be kind to everyone because they're it may be angels unaware. So I took that as literal. And I would look at growing up, I would look and I'd go, I know that that person is an angel because they smiled at people. They did that. So I I know it sounds a little polyannish, but I would say this growing up, my um uh growing up was um not easy. And uh in a community where you had maybe six to eight percent African American people. So a lot of mean things were said to us as kids. Um uh our parents says, but you don't respond because somebody else will take care of that for you. And so uh we we would smile. Now, I'm not saying I was Miss Goody Two Shoes because you know, when I went through the teenage years, I was the fighter in our family. You said something to my little sisters, it's gonna be a problem. It's gonna be a problem. And so that fight has always been in me. Have I learned to control it? Yeah, the fact that I'm older and tired, you know, uh uh helps you, but the fighter in me helped me to direct my care for the least of these. Uh, I I think that we are at the heart of me, I think that I am I was put on this this earth to serve. What I was blessed to be able to do was to learn how. Learn how through, you know, giving people tools, making introductions, opening doors or whatever. But the heart of me is I am still, you know, a servant. Now they've dressed it up into being a servant leader. That that means I have to, I have to open the door for somebody else and show them, you know, how to open the door for somebody else or be kind to somebody, demonstrate how to be kind. You know, my parents were kind when they didn't have it to be kind. Like you say, uh people would come by or whatever in a small community. My mother always had you don't eat the last you don't eat the last piece of bread because somebody might come on. Yeah. And people would We grew up a lot alike. Yes, we did. And and we've we've lost that for a lot of reasons, which we don't have to we could we can lose some of the actions, but we don't have to lose the intent, you know, and so we still need to feed the poor.

You still need to need to house the homeless. I mean I miss that part of our childhood because like at our house, we feed everybody. Okay. I I raised my kids, me and my husband built a family around the same way we were brought up, and we feed everybody, you know, uh, and we feed everybody the same. Okay. I'm not gonna eat a steak in front of everybody and let everybody else eat hot dogs. Right. Yamaka's not doing that, okay? Uh my grandfather always said, you know, when you feed somebody, be eating the same thing they eat. You know, that type thing. And so, and it that's one way to keep yourself humble. That's one way to realize that you're not better than anybody. And I was also raised as, you know what, someone's pants may cost more than yours, but they're still pants. You know, that type thing. And so that's what keeps me humble, and that keeps me to be, you know, as you said, is dressed up now as servant leader. But a lot of things we like we learned in the church, you know, because you know, my grandmother was on the Usher committee and she was she made sure that we knew how to behave in church. And that fire that you're talking about, I was the spitfire just like you was. And but I think that fire really helped us in our professional world because it made us fight for people that did not have a voice and people that or didn't have the strength to speak up for themselves, you know, because Urban League alone, you've done so many things in your career, but Urban League alone, you know, you have made um rooms for people to come in and just really learn how to be better in their self. You wasn't what's the word for it? You were not getting anything out of it besides saying, I helped that next person. Viewers, I truly, truly think that we need to go in a two-part uh conversation with Miss Phyllis because she's dropping so many nuggets that I think that everyone needs to hear them, even me. You know, um she's blessed me already, and I want to keep blessing you. So tune in next week.

Thanks for listening to Talk In Tennessee with Yavonka. Watch out for our weekly episodes from the first family of real estate. And check us out on the web www.yavanka style real estate.com. See our videos on Yavanka's YouTube channel, or find us on the Facebook Yavanka Lendin Twitter.