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Check my fitness designs on Amazon, eBay (search "fitgirl podcast"), Etsy, Teepublic and of course, the best prices and selections at the Motivation Store! Visit fitnessmakeover.com or fitgirlpodcast.com to get to the store.  You'll also find links and updates on the fitgirlusa facebook page (Facebook.com/fitgirlusa) Take the Covid survey! Click Here QuickFitClub Update: A new 4-week jump start series to begin soon! Be sure to get on our email list for first notice!  TRAININGShould you always train to failure? Yes, no, maybe!What is training to failure? It's when you hit total muscular fatigue. That point during exercise when your "neuromuscular system can no longer produce adequate force to overcome workload."  Why do we focus on training to failure? Because it activates the greatest number of motor units! Of course, there is mixed and inconclusive research on this topic and a few precautions to think about!  Always training to failure can lead to over training and overuse injuries. My opinion is that you don't have to go to failure all the time. Use it as a parameter like any other training protocol. How would you use it? You can alternate going to failure in exercises, sets, workouts or cycles. End an exercise regardless of the failure point if technique is about to be. compromised.   MOTIVATIONDo you know here to find the help and support you need to make your goals a reality? Make a list of the people, groups, websites, forums, apps or organizations whose help could be imperative to achieving your goals. Sometimes, a single person can give you an idea or inspiration to take the next step. Share in the comments or on the Facebook Page, what groups, forums, apps have helped you in your fitness goals.  NUTRITIONThere's plenty of reasons why low carb diets don't work for long term weight loss. Sure, in the beginning they work, just like most diets [aka- regimented eating plans].  There are a few little known or often overlooked reasons why low carb diets fail.  First of all you need carbs! Maybe not as many as you think, but you still need them. The amount of carbs you intake, the timing of carbs and the combining of carbs with other foods are three major things you must consider before severely restricting carbs.  Mistake #1: Not knowing your starting point of carbs and therefore going too low!  Simply cutting the average person's carb intake in half could be considered low-carb, but if you are overweight and your goal is fat loss, you most likely need to go a lot lower than 150 grams. BUT: This is where facts get twisted! A review in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition suggests the 50 to 150 g/day range is too high for losing body fat in overweight, sedentary populations. When The AJCN defines a low-carb diet as less than 50 grams a day that was for sedentary, overweight folks—a population that is likely to have a degree of insulin resistance, inflammation, and a poor metabolism. They are NOT referring to active people who are lifting weights and working out regularly. Being this active, you would benefit from a higher carb intake (compared to the 50 grams), or from toggling/cycling carbs. If you are lean (or looking to lose 5-20 pounds) and active and drop carbs too low, you risk two major affects to your metabolism. 1. Reduced thyroid hormone which reduces the amount of calories burned at rest 2. Higher cortisol levels-When carb intake is very low, cortisol is released and Having elevated cortisol all the time causes inflammation, adrenal fatigue, and eventually metabolic problems.  Mistake #2 Eating too much protein and too little fat. A lower carbohydrate diet is going to need to be higher in protein as well as fat. How much protein do you really need? Is it dangerous to eat as much protein as you want? The answer is yes! Why it could be dangerous to overeat protein1. If you are restricting carbs but eat more protein than the body needs, some of the amino acids in the protein will be turned into glucose. This provides an energy source that may reduce the body’s ability to burn fat, thus slowing or stopping fat loss. 2. When eating high quantities such as 200-250 grams of protein a day,Your body has a hard time eliminating the byproducts of protein metabolism such as ammonia, which is toxic for the body. 3. Studies suggest that people who consume lots of protein, particularly animal protein, had fewer beneficial gut flora which leads to the production of inflammatory compounds and poor gut health. This, in turn, may play a role in:  inflammation, obesity, diabetes, metabolic syndrome and liver health. There are plenty of other reasons why low carb is bad idea, but if you insist on doing it you need to know your starting point! There are plenty of apps to help you calculate and track nutrients. I like, and use, mynetdiary bc they track the time you eat and the protein grams. A lot of programs don't track those two. The biggest eye opener in analyzing any plateau such as lack of weight loss or an increase weight gained is logging your food! Drastic reduction of carbs is going to throw your body into a revolt and stagnate your weight loss, or worse, make you gain fat! Subscribe and get the full episode on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartMedia or download it below: Fit 252: Training to failure-Find support-Why low carb diets fail

You're going to need all weekend to listen to this marathon on belly fat reduction-myths and truths and how to get rid of it! This is a long episode! Training-Learn how to use the training methods discussed in the last few podcasts to create your own program! Motivation-The second question to ask yourself when setting goals and making a plan for success!Updates on the new apparel sites and now available on Etsy, Ebay and soon Amazon! PS It seems iTunes doesn't have the Fitness genre anymore? But this is now labeled as Podcast. Not sure what I missed.Subscribe and get the full episode on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartMedia or download it below: Fit 251 Workout Methods, Belly Fat and Success

Fitness wear at the Pro Shop!Take the covid survey at fitgirlpodcast.com or click here.Apparel at fitgirlpodcast.comEtsy store name: strongandpowerfulTrainingCombining training methods for better results!Do negatives using forced reps with a partner or "cheating" or focus on eccentric part of the exercise. How to use supersets and antagonistic training for faster, more effective workouts.Study showed greater metabolic activity and higher afterburn from supersets than traditional straight set resistance exercise.NutritionFats for fat loss! Eat the right amount of fat for a lean body!Part 1:  OmegasEat foods that contain omega-3 fats such as fish, pasture-raised beef, pork, and organic dairy. Use a variety of sources such as nuts, olive oil, avocado, seeds for Omega-6 fats.Omega-3s support body composition and a better metabolism by improving insulin signaling to the cells.  Plus they offer brain protection and lower inflammation. The omega-6 fat helps healthy tissue, nice skin, hair, and healthy joints.  Supplementation is a good way to get omegas.Part 2: Food combinationsEat fat with protein and plants (vegetables or fruit)and have less carbs. Steady blood sugar levels are key to fat loss, maintaining a good, high metabolism, and good energy levels.MotivationWrite your goals and assess four questions. This is the first of the four:What difficulties stand between you and your goal?Think about the difficulties or obstacles that may have stood ( or now stand) between you your goal. Do you know why you haven't achieved this goal already?  Is something holding you back? Is it your past, your mind, your experiences? What problems do you have to solve, what difficulties do you have to overcome, to achieve your goal?Write them all down. Collaborate with a friend, coach or mentor then create stepping stones to reaching that goal.More questions to help you clarify your goals in the next episode! Subscribe and get the full episode on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartMedia or download it below: Fit249: High Intensity Training and Metabolism, Low carb fat loss mistakes, Celebrate and forgive yourself

Subscribe and get the full episode on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartMedia, links below!NutritionDon’t Make These Fat Loss Mistakes When Going Low-CarbInadequate protein intakeWrong kinds of fats and not enough of the right onesMake use of caffeineTraining Method #3: Circuit High Intensity ExerciseGreater intensity and longer time under tension mean greater motor unit recruitment for a longer period of time. This metabolic stress causes great effects on muscle growth.MotivationCelebrate Every Achievement  and forgive yourself! Turn negative thoughts into supportive ones.  www.fitgirlpodcast.comSubscribe and get the full episode on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartMedia or download it below: Fit249: High Intensity Training and Metabolism, Low carb fat loss mistakes, Celebrate and forgive yourself

Sun, 07 Jun 2020 00:00:00 Z2020-06-07T00:00:00ZJosh Loughhttps://akron.thechapel.life/resources/akron/sermons/cultivating-closeness-with-god/cultivating-closeness-wit

This podcast deals with the 2020 pandemic, personal updates, the status of my other projects and some hints on how to make the covid-19 shut down possibly productive! Subscribe and get the full episode on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartMedia or download it below: Fit 248.5 Pandemic and UpdatesTake the Covid-19 Survey, click here.PeeWee the dog on YouTubeCheck out the new fitgirlpodcast.com site and the renovated FitnessMakeover.com site!

Work with me! Custom Programs!Training: Linear cycles for strength. Increased strength means an increase in muscle tissue. More muscle boosts the metabolism! An increase metabolism burns more calories all day long, which is the true key to permanent weight loss and sustained muscle tone.Example:Cycle 1-Weeks 1-3: Rep zones: 10-12 reps, 8-10 reps, 6-8 repsCycle 2-Week 4: High Volume Training Week; 12 RM for all exercisesCycle 3-Weeks 5-7 Rep zones: 8-10 reps, 6-8 reps, 4-6 repsCycle 4-Week 8: High Volume Training Week; 12 RM for all exercisesCycle 5-Weeks 9-11 Rep zones: 6-8 reps, 4-6 reps, 2-4 repsCycle 6-Week 12: High Volume Training Week; 12 RM for all exercisesNutrition: Breakfast Benefits Probably the #1 way most people screw up their metabolism and block themselves from burning fat is skipping breakfast. Yet breakfast is such an easy thing to do and reap benefits! Breakfast sparks your metabolism, improves brain function and helps weight control by preventing starvation mode.Breakfast doesn't have to be big. It could be as simple as a hard boiled egg, zone perfect bar, whey protein drink, muffin, fruit, cottage cheese, yogurt, or even toast with butter.Need ideas? Visit these sites (I am not affiliated with these)Fast, trendy, Fancy, healthy breakfast: https://greatist.com/health/healthy-fast-breakfast-recipes#grains Simpler, make ahead and grab on the go recipes: https://www.foodiecrush.com/easy-healthy-breakfast-recipes/ Motivation Priorities and Emotional Obstacles Get Your Priorities Straight! Start by having a plan and making "commitment appointments." Begin each day (or do the previous night) with a plan! Set your goal for the day. Plan ahead, or have a plan, for obstacles. Remind yourself that every change you make brings you one step closer to becoming a strong and confident person.Subscribe and get the full episode on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartMedia or download it below: Fit 248 Linear cycles for strength, Breakfast Benefits, Priorities and Emotional Obstacles

Money and BanksAustrian Economics OverviewMoney and BankingThe Cultural and Spiritual Legacy of Fiat InflationMAY 7, 2009Jörg Guido HülsmannChapter 13 in The Ethics of Money Production . From Part 2, "Inflation," pages 175-191. Narrated by Floy Lilley.Download audio fileREAD MORE

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript:  An Interview with Genevieve Thiers Founder, ContactKarma and SitterCity.com Date: May 7, 2012 [intro music] Lucy Sanders:     Hi, this is Lucy Sanders, the CEO of NCWIT, the National Center for Women in Information Technology. This is another in our series of interviews with women who have started tech companies and we've got a great serial entrepreneur to talk to you today. With me is Larry Nelson W3W3.com. Hi, Larry. Larry Nelson:     It's a pleasure to be here and I'm looking forward to this very, very much. Lucy:             Well, we've got with us today Genevieve Thiers who is a serial entrepreneur in many spaces. In preparing for this interview, I learned quite a bit about a couple of marketplaces. For example, the need for childcare services. It's an 18 billion dollar market and projected to grow 39 billion by 2015. Genevieve, who was the founder of Sitter City recognized the importance of this marketplace and perhaps she will tell us more about it in this interview when she really set out to tap into it. Long story short, Sitter City, very successful. She has moved on to start another company called Contact Karma, which is really a B to B, business to business matchmaker of sorts, which really uses a combination of deals and recommendations and trusted contacts to match business users with service providers. Genevieve has been recognized nationally. We are very happy to have you here today, Genevieve, to be talking to us. Welcome. Genevieve Thiers: Well, thanks for having me. Lucy:             So why don't you tell us just a little bit about what's going on at Contact Karma and if you want to throw any other stories about Sitter City, we'd love to hear them, too. Genevieve:    Sure. Well, one of the great things going on right now is that Chicago is undergoing a tech renaissance really. It's very exciting. I don't know if you guys have been keeping tabs on Chicago's tech entrepreneur scene but we have a number of groups here who have been very staunch advocates of the space. Particularly the CEC. It's just been really exciting. They've recently launched this wonderful new co-working space in Chicago called 1871. It's something like 300, 400 companies all in one spot. All tech companies, all in that early disruptive phase. So as you can imagine I'm in heaven.  I actually have a couple of things I'm co-founding right now, mostly with new, emergent women entrepreneurs. So, it's been a real unique thing to springboard into from my Sitter City experience. Lucy:             We've heard Chicago is quite the hotbed and we have had several interviews now with women tech entrepreneurs from Chicago. Genevieve, can you tell us a little bit about how you first got into technology. You are a serial entrepreneur. It sounds like that's continuing. How did you first get interested and what do you think are the particularly interesting technologies today? Genevieve:        Well, frankly, how I got involved in technology is a pretty funny story. It was a complete and total accident. I was an English and Music major in college and trained primarily most of my life in opera since the age of 11. I'm primarily a performer which is very interesting. I fell into tech. I was sitting in my college dorm room my senior year of college in the year 2000. I remember I saw this nine months pregnant mother climbing up 200 steps, posting fliers for babysitters. It was too early for me to go to opera school, my voice wasn't quite ready. Your voice usually matures around the age of 30 and I was in my early 20's. I thought, "Oh gosh, here is something else I could do. I could create a solution to this problem. Why isn't someone taking all the caregivers in the city or the nation and put them all in one place where you can easily find them? But more importantly, just quickly screen them?" So that is what sittercity.com became. It's America's first and largest network to connect parents with caregivers nationwide. We have millions of caregivers in five different divisions: child care, pet care, senior care, home care and tutoring. Lucy:             It's been quite the success and everybody has been checked out, credentials and so on and so forth. Genevieve:        We believe that if you are a mom bringing a caregiver into your home, you should be the one to screen them. That's a common sense thing I think a lot of people miss but I am the oldest of seven kids so I was a baby sitter and nanny my whole life. It's really quick to check a caregiver. There is a four step process. You quickly check their references. You do a quick interview. There is usually a background check process, and parents might leave a review. It's a very simple process. It doesn't have to be complicated. Sitter City is quite neat because it allows the sitters to actually run the background check on themselves and it gets posted in their profile for you to see. It's all right there. There's no waiting. There's no 24 hour turnaround time. It's instant access to what you need. Lucy:             OK. Cool. Larry:            Yeah, very cool. What technologies do you think are cool today? Genevieve:        Oh gosh, what technologies do I think are not cool? Basically, anything that has to do with women in tech. Personally, I like technologies that solve women's problems, particularly problems for moms. Four months ago, I had identical twins, Ari and Leo Ratner, with my husband, Dan Ratner, and they are just adorable. It's amazing how much my own product has just saved my life. I hired this absolutely amazing baby nurse through Sitter City, and she is [laughs] the reason that I'm standing. I'd be on the floor without her. I like solutions that women entrepreneurs tackle to solve issues for other women or other moms. Lucy:             Let's sing an NCWIT song. Larry:            Boy, I'll say. Lucy:             Absolutely. Genevieve, tell us why you're an entrepreneur. You gave us a little bit of the history of the story about how you first started to think about Sitter City. Why, in general, are you an entrepreneur? What do you like about being an entrepreneur? Genevieve:        First of all, there's nothing not to like. It's a crazy roller coaster ride. You're constantly challenging yourself to the utmost. Yeah, it's got real down moments, but it's got some absolutely amazing highs. I think I became an entrepreneur by accident, but then later I began to realize, really, it's the perfect role for me. Did you know that the root of the word entrepreneur actually used to mean an opera impresario? Lucy:             Is that right? Is that...  [crosstalk] Genevieve:        It used to refer to an opera producer. Lucy:             My goodness. Larry:            Why would you know that? [laughter] Genevieve:        I know that because I'm an opera singer. I just thought, initially, that I would create a company so that I'd have more money for singing, frankly. I didn't want to wait tables, that sort of thing. It turned out to be much, much bigger than that. I'm an accidental entrepreneur, really. I thought, hey, I'll just build this thing. It's just a solution to a problem, and it turned out to just be gigantic, because it was a solution to an enormous problem that women had all over the world. Yeah, it's been a fun ride. Larry:            That's fantastic. Now, along the way, who are some of the people who supported you, really helped you get on your way, and your role models or your mentors? Genevieve:        My main mentor has been my husband, Dan Ratner, who has created a number of companies before he even met me. It's a funny story, too, because I was actually online on match.com researching it, because Sitter City is very similar to the online dating service model. I needed to study the model, and that's where we met. [laughter] Genevieve:        He's so cute. He's had several other companies before he even met me. Then he joined forces with me in 2005 to run Sitter City, which was awesome. He was helping from the beginning. I had a very small site in the beginning that I paid a couple of college friends to build. It started breaking right away, and Dan was right there to fix it every time, so he's been there from the very beginning, working alongside me. That's been wonderful. There's so many organizations in Chicago that are immensely helpful. Like I mentioned, the CEC is just incredible, and I can't wait to be in 1871. I'm actually going to be there with a desk, alongside founding entrepreneurs and other established ones, like myself. Also, the Women's Business Development Center here is great, the I2A Fund. Sitter City just stumbled across these really wonderful organizations as we've moved along. Particularly, what I'm proud of, too, is that we have some wonderful investors, all of whom are dead, I might mention. [laughs] [laughter] Genevieve:        [inaudible 08:35] Capital, Latex Capital, New World, and Baird. You get venture partners, all very wonderful firms, and great, great guys. It's really good to have them on the board. Lucy:             Along the way, as you started Sitter City and also Contact Karma, you said there had been highs, and there had been lows. Tell us about one of the toughest things you've had to do in your career. Genevieve:        Mainly the toughest period I faced with Sitter City was that, in the beginning, I was launching it in the middle of the dot-com crash, and I was literally left out of rooms. I couldn't get the investors to understand it, because they'd never babysat, so I kept hearing, "My wife handles that." I kept thinking, "Gosh, get her in here." [laughs] "She'd understand." This is big. I just, at that point, kept going and built it myself because I was in the middle of the dot-com crash and not even really realizing. I just went ahead and built it myself because I realized that there was an incredible need. The moms I was talking loved it, it was just the investors I had the challenge with. It's funny, companies that built out of challenges, I find, Contact Karma, which is my latest company, is this really neat fusion of the Yelp business model, the review model, and a deal site. What we've done is, we've applied review the deals to the phase. If you're looking for a lawyer, or an accountant, or a bookkeeper, or any kind of vendor, you can go to the Contact Karma website, and you can put that in. We'll send you, within 24 hours, recommendations for our top three recommended vendors. It's not based on what we think, it's based on who else in the Chicago entrepreneurial field has used them and liked them. Then we'll give you a deal as well, so you're saving money, but you know you can trust the vendor. That company came out of an intense need to really just find vendors that weren't going to tank the business situation you're in. That came out of an intense need to basically make sure that vendors, that companies you're using when they're just getting started, don't essentially tank the company. Start-up costs for new companies are very high and we've been able to prove so far, you we can get those down to at least 70 percent of what they used to be, probably 60 percent, by the time we're done. That's exciting to me in addition to the fact that less start-ups will be having wipe-outs because they hired the wrong vendor, and blew a whole bunch of money and don't have any left to try again. Lucy:             That's a great point and I want to return a moment to the point about Sitter City being bootstrapped. I think it's, again, a good reminder that companies are started in all different ways, and bootstrap is a great alternative in some situations. Larry:            Yeah, in many situations. Lucy:             In many situations. Larry:            Yeah, you bet. Now, Genevieve, if you were, right now, sitting at a table, or a desk, and there was a young person who was looking into entrepreneurship, what advice would you give them? Genevieve:        I've got a number of things that I think are really important. The first, most important thing, that I would say to an entrepreneur just getting started is, "There are no problems. There are just sticky situations, waiting for resolutions." [laughter] Genevieve:        Problems can't exist for you if you're an entrepreneur, insurmountable ones. You have to see them as opportunities to solve something. It's just interesting. I see a lot of entrepreneurs who think, "I have to solve this problem." They go out and they get all fired up, and then two days later, they give up because somebody poked some holes in it. You can't see holes. You just have to keep rolling right over them and stay focused on your vision, because there's very little out there that people will actually pay for. Once you find something that they will pay for, and you've got a narrow enough niche that you are extrapolating that from, you really can't lose. I have a couple other things I'm always saying. "Keep it simple and stupid. Don't make it complicated at all. Do something that you're familiar with." Those are more traditional pieces of advice, however. Lucy:             Keeping it simple is important. People over-complicate things all the time. Genevieve:        Oh my goodness, all you have to do is make sure that it's OK and out the door. [laughter] Larry:            Yeah. Genevieve:        You don't need anything in a start-up to ever be perfect. Lucy:             Absolutely. Well, along the same lines as the previous question, what personal characteristics do you have that you think give you an advantage as an entrepreneur? Genevieve:        To be honest, you have to have blinders on. [laughs] You have to be that person who's willing to just go running into the field, charging with a flag above your head, with a battle cry. That's not usually the smartest person in the pack, I'll tell you that right now. [laughs] It's usually the dumbest, but, dumb but brave is a good thing. Not really thinking too much about stuff, just hurling yourself into it, is good. I think I had a particularly interesting situation, in that I've never taken a business class in my life. I came out in the middle of the worst dot-com crash, the worst recession really, since the latest one that we've had. I didn't even know we were in a recession. I didn't really know what a recession was. I was [inaudible 13:49] . [laughter] Genevieve:        It was funny. I was just an idiot savant. I [inaudible 13:56] and I just kept going off and building it, and it worked, but stress on the idiot part, because it was just something I thought I would do. It was a hobby. That's a good characteristic, the ability to just run with blinders on and not get knocked over by problems coming at you from every side. Also, in my case, I found that being a performer really helped. The more that you get in front of people and perform and evangelize, whether it be yourself, or a song you're singing, or a product, the better you get at it. It's kind of an art. You really do have a challenge when you create a new web tech company because I tend to create things that haven't been done before. Fusions that haven't been done. You have a real challenge getting people to actually do it. It's really hard. You've got to chase them down in supermarkets. [laughter] Genevieve:        You've got to do crazy guerilla tactics just to get their attention. I like that. I get a kick out of that, maybe because of the opera training. You can't be afraid to be in front of people and get right in front of them and tell them about what you're doing and talk them into doing it. Larry:            Yeah. Lucy:             That's interesting. The person who has the flag, running out ahead, charge. I think sometimes we call that courage. [laughter] Genevieve:        Well, yes. Larry:            It's been called other things, too. Genevieve:        Or stupidity. Lucy:             Yeah. I think it's really, really true. The thing you're talking about. You can't get the whole, you just have to keep going. Larry:            Yep, you betcha. Wow. Now with all of the things that you've been through, I think it's really interesting and neat that you're starting this other company and everything else. How do you bring balance into your personal and your professional lives? Genevieve:        One of the interesting things I'm finding, and this was not really deliberate, but it has definitely occurred and it's exciting, is that what I'm building is helping me save time in my life. If you talk to any new mom, the one thing she wants more than anything in the world is time. It's a pretty desperate commodity for most of us. Through Sitter City I found this amazing baby nurse and suddenly I have lots of time. So much time that I'm actually co-founding multiple companies now with new, emerging women tech entrepreneurs in Chicago. That's really exciting. Conjit Cuervo, which is one of the new companies I'm working on, also saves time. One of the things that we do is we have a top ten list of vendors for starting your business, for example. Across these top 10 vendors that we've found, in everything from website design to incorporation to logo creation to your opening document suite that you need for a new company, we've been able to bring the cost of creating a new company down to 70 percent of what it once was. We're also able to save you time. Imagine how much time it takes the average entrepreneur pounding the phones, talking to people. It can take them days or weeks to find a vendor and suddenly they go to event and stumble across a friend and that friend knows somebody, but it's pure serendipity. I like imposing order on those processes so that I can save time. [laughter] Genevieve:        More time means more time with my husband and my kids. Larry:            There you go. Lucy:             It's great that you can have businesses that integrate so nicely between your personal and your professional life. Genevieve:        Absolutely and the next two that I've got integrate as well. It's very exciting. There's a mentality I find, particularly among the women tech entrepreneurs that I work with, pure organization. That's really refreshed. It's the ability to not only run a company, but in some cases I've seen them running multiple departments, families, personal lives, artistic lives all alongside each other. It's neat. We're very good at organizing. We might as well try to put that into companies. It's a great skill. Lucy:             It reinforces something that we really believe at Nancy Witt, that women's creativity really does inform technology products and services. Genevieve:        Absolutely. Lucy:             I think that it's important to see that instantiated in what's out there. It's very, very inspiring. Genevieve, what's next for you? You've achieved so much and it sounds like you've got more tricks up your sleeve. Genevieve:        To be honest, I'm just playing. I really came straight out of college into what became Sitter City. Sitter City, today, is just amazing. Not only do we have our subscription service, but we have a corporate program, which is absolutely wonderful in companies like Avon and Mastercard and Monsurowide and the whole U.S. Department of Defense, for example, use Sitter City's corporate programs to, basically, connect their employees with care. That's been incredible. The next phase is international expansion. All of that is just amazing. I never really had a lot of downtime to play around and figure out who I was. I have sung opera professionally, or semi-professionally, in Chicago here and there and kept that up. I'm in this interesting spot where I'm just having a lot of fun. The twins are wonderful. [laughter] Genevieve:        That was just an amazing thing to meet them and go through that. Now I'm co-founding a couple of things that help promote new emerging women in tech and I'm auditioning and I'm singing in concerts. I'm just having a blast. Lucy:             [laughs] Sounds that way. Larry:            Yeah. Genevieve:        I love this time with my family and with myself. Lucy:             Well, that's just really awesome and very inspiring to talk to you. Larry:            It sure is. Lucy:             To know that you're there in Chicago, and elsewhere, and making such a big difference. Thank you so much, Genevieve. I want to remind listeners that they can find this interview at w3w3.com and also ncwit.org. Larry:            Yeah. Lucy:             Thank you, Larry. Larry:            Thank you, Genevieve. Genevieve:        Thank you. [outro music]     Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Genevieve Thiers Interview Summary: Genevieve created her first company, Sittercity.com, because she recognized a need for an online space where working mothers could go to find reliable caregivers for their children. A similar concept helped her to develop her newest company, Contact Karma, an online company that strives to match the consumer with a vendor that meets their specific needs. The advice that Genevieve has for aspiring entrepreneurs is that it is important to remember "There are no problems, there are just sticky situations waiting for solutions." Release Date: May 7, 2012Interview Subject: Genevieve ThiersInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry NelsonDuration: 19:17

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Bettina Hein Founder and CEO, Pixability Date: March 7, 2011 NCWIT Entrepreneurial Heroes: Interview with Bettina Hein [music] Kennedy: Hi, this is Lee Kennedy, board member for the National Center for Women in Information Technology, or NCWIT. I am also CEO of Bolder Search. This is part of a series of interviews that we are having with fabulous entrepreneurs, women who have started IT companies in a variety of sectors, all of whom just have terrific stories to tell us about being entrepreneurs. With me is Larry Nelson from w3w3.com. Hi Larry. Larry Nelson: Oh, hi. I am really excited to be here. Once again, this is going to be a fantastic interview with a number of high powered women who have really been examples of super entrepreneurship. Lee: Wonderful. You want to tell us just a little bit about w3w3. Larry: Well, we have been doing it for 12 years. We are an Internet‑based business radio show. We host everything and archive everything. We have over 17,000 pages on our website and they are all business interviews. We are excited about that. Lee: Wonderful. Well, today we are interviewing Bettina Hein who is the founder and CEO of Pixability. Pixability helps small and medium sized businesses increase sales by using video. Bettina is a repeat entrepreneur based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Prior to Pixability, Bettina cofounded Swiss based SVOX AG in 2001 and led the venture‑backed speech software company to profitability. Then in 1996, Patina was the initiator of START, an organization that advances entrepreneurship among college students. She is also the founder of SheEOs, and that's a network for female CEOs and founders of growth companies. So Bettina, welcome. Bettina Hein: Thank you very much for having me. Lee: Well, we'd love to hear a little bit about Pixability before we jump into some questions we have for you. Bettina: Well, you said it correctly. We help companies and non‑profits create and promote themselves via online video. We help you create a great video by for example sending you a flip camera and you shoot the video. We spruce it up and then we have software that publishes that video all over the Internet and search engine optimizes. We are really the experts for video marketing. Lee: Wonderful. Larry: Oh I love it. Lee: We are just going to jump into things here. We'd love to hear how you first got into technology. Bettina: I've been in tech all of my career. I guess it started a little bit earlier than that. I started with computers and programming in Logo when I was in fourth grade on an Apple IIe way back when I went to college for business administration and did finance. But I was always in love with technology and would spend lots of time with all the guys in the windowless rooms with the computers. When I got out of grad school, I had offers from investment banks and consultancies and all of that. But I really wanted to be in tech. I took my fourth grade book where I had written down these Logo programs, written them out, so I took them to talk with the founders of tech companies. I became involved in SVOX my first company which is a speech technology software company based in Zurich, Switzerland and became a cofounder there. I've been in tech and an entrepreneur all of my career, basically straight out of grad school. Lee: Well, and the other question I had is what today you think is really cool, what technologies do you just love to play with? Bettina: Well, you should really play with Google Translate because that has my SVOX [indecipherable 00:03:56] and the company SVOX's technology. There is a speech technology that is pretty cool. But apart from that, the obvious thing video. There is a lot of things happening around video and into active video and video on mobile phones. That ties in with all the things that are happening in the mobile space. I really think that there are lots of things happening that are relevant for businesses in mobile and that again ties in to the social web, social media. As a geek on the side I am also really interested in things like Amazon's Mechanical Turk, because that sort of shows the human computing interface. Probably you saw what was on Jeopardy last week was IBM's Watson. I am really fascinated on how humans and AI that interface there. But that's something that's a little bit further out for commercialization, actually. Larry: With your experiences now, what is it about entrepreneurship that makes you tick, and why did you become an entrepreneur. Bettina: I didn't know any better. All of my four grandparents are actually entrepreneurs. My grandmothers as well as my grandfathers were entrepreneurs in their own right, and my parents as well. They are professionals and nobody in my family ever had a nine‑to‑five job. I didn't really know what that meant. I heard that you have this career thing and you go to an office and you come back at night. But I never experienced that from home. I didn't really know what that meant. For me it didn't seem like a far reach to become an entrepreneur. Also, I love creating something from nothing. It's really so wonderful if you do it with an organization or if you do it with a company, that you have this idea in your head that you want to create something that helps fosters entrepreneurship in college students. What I did was START. Or you want to make speech technology an everyday then people use, and you have this idea and you work really, really hard. It's extremely hard, but it comes alive when you create all these jobs. My last company has over 120 people. My husband is also an entrepreneur. Together we have created over 500 jobs. I am really, really proud that I figured out by hard work how to take something and turn it into an entity that provides a livelihood for so many people. Lee: Boy, that's so cool. This question is a lead on to that. Who influenced you or supported you to take the career path you have? Do you have any role models or mentors? Bettina: Well, my family, definitely. My grandfather grew a company. He was a coal miner and when he was 15 he went into the coal mine and was under the earth. It was a really back breaking hard job. Over the years, he found ways to make money in other ways. He ended up having a wholesale Coop providing hundreds of millions of tons coal to the big energy producers, electricity producers. He was retired by then, but he would always tell me how he did that. How he used his knowledge, when he was 15, to do all of that. He would do math problems with me on this and tell me about how he negotiated across the table and that he always was really faster in his head. They couldn't pull out a calculator as fast as he could do the math, so we would work on that. Up to about five years ago, I had mostly male mentors because I haven't seen any women doing what I was doing. As a female entrepreneur in technology, in Europe there were hardly anybody to look up to. But then I moved from Zurich, Switzerland to here to Cambridge Massachusetts. I found that well there are these people I can look up to that can be a mentor. You interviewed Gail Goodman the founder of Constant Contact, or the founder of the Zipcar, Robin Chase. People like Beth Marcus who sold her fifth company. People have done this here before. I now feel like I am living in Disneyland in a way because I have so many people that support me. I am trying to give it back with SheEOs group that I created to foster more female entrepreneurship. Larry: That's terrific. By the way Lucy Sanders always likes us to ask this tough question. What is the toughest thing that you had to do in your career? Bettina: So I started my first company when I was 27. This was in 2001. So it was post dotcom boom. But there was still money around and a little bit of hype around. But that very quickly evaporated. But, we were able to raise money and we hired people and that was going pretty well. Then we just did not make any of our goals. It was terrible because I, the young person, had promised the world to all these people. We hired over 20 people. I had to fire half of them at a certain point, together with my co‑founders. That was really, really, really hard to do that. In Europe, it's also harder to fire people. You don't fire them and they leave that day. You have to keep them on for three months. You have to continue to paying their salaries so, that was really, really hard. It made me very prudent about over hiring and making sure I meet my goals before I promise people too much. Lee: Yeah, I think we've heard from a good majority of the people we have interviewed that having to lay off people or fire people is not easy. Larry: Yeah, Bettina, you're absolutely right about in Europe. My wife and I have owned a number of companies in Europe. We had some of those similar experiences. Bettina: Yeah, you have to look people in the eye for three months and say, "I failed you." Every single day they look at you while they're searching for new jobs, but they still work for you. I didn't feel so hot. Lee: If you were to think back of all the things you learned through growing businesses and having the networking, the CEO, what would you advise a young person about entrepreneurship if they were sitting with you there today? Bettina: That's one of the things I really love doing. I really love helping other people make their dreams come true. I typically tell them anybody can be an entrepreneur. I tell them that "You can do it." There are three things I tell them that they need. The first one is naivete. If you knew what was going to hit you during the course of building your company, you would not start. [laughter] Larry: You're right. Bettina: You should really, really start young and go at it. That doesn't mean to be unprepared, right? That means, you have to do your research. You have to look for a good market. But, if you knew too much, you would not be able to be an innovator. Naivete is the first thing. The second thing I tell them they need to have is chutzpah. Do you guys know what that means? Lee: Yes. Larry: Yeah, we do, but why don't you explain it to our listeners. [laughter] Bettina: Yeah. I always usually ask them. It means being audacious, putting yourself out there. You really have to own it and say, "Yes, I am convinced I can do this and I can solve your problem." Let me give you an example. When we started SVOX, we were a small company, but we had the chutzpah to go to Mercedes Benz and say, "We have the solution for your flagship product, the S Class and we want it." We didn't know at the time how we'd be able to deliver. I mean, we had a plan, but we couldn't the next day have delivered. But, they gave us an order for this, and that made the company. Chutzpah means putting yourself out there. It doesn't mean winging it. You have to do your homework and be prepared to deliver. But, you have to also say, "I know I can do this for you. Trust me on this." Then the third thing is perseverance. You have to have the willpower to see it through. Because It's hard. It's very hard and you're going to want to quit. Often. You have to see it through. But, that doesn't mean being stubborn. You do have to take cues from your environment and pivot and change your business model and evolve it. Just as I said my toughest experience was firing all those people. Well we didn't give up. We laid off all those people because we said, "OK, with the cash that we have and where we need to go, this is how we can get to growing the company." Since then, the company has grown more than 10X. But, we knew we had to see this through. If you have those three things, I think any young person can make it in an entrepreneurship. Larry: Wow. You have hit on a number of different things that you've done, and so on, but let me just see if we can narrow this down. What are personal characteristics that have given you the advantage of being an entrepreneur? Bettina: Well, first of all as I said before that not know any better, the family background, definitely. Also, if you statically look at it, what makes people more inclined to be entrepreneurs, is if they have role models in their family to do that. But, just personally, I have a dogged determination to succeed, to make things happen. I think that's really the most important thing that people say to me. I feel that motivates the people that I find to work for me most is that people can serve me all kinds of punches and I will get back up, get back on the horse and just continue on. Obviously, that's my strategy and learning from those punches, but I will do that. I think my team also [indecipherable 00:14:46] the energy through hard times to keep going. Lee: With all the startups and things that you've done, how do you bring balance into your life, between personal and professional? Bettina: It all melds into one, in a way. I just don't believe in this myth that you can completely separate your personal and your professional life. I think that's just not true. I do think that you have to have some little bit of distance. I try not to work on Saturdays. That's what I try not to do. I also advocate that people take time off and I do that myself. It's very hard to do that, but being from Europe, a lot of vacation there is mandated by law. What I always try to train everybody in the company to tag team it. We're experimenting this year with a vacation policy that says you get two weeks off a year, or you get four weeks off a year, if you take two weeks at a time. You have your pick. You can either get four weeks, or two weeks. But, of you want to take off time, don't piecemeal it a day here or a day here. You have to take two weeks off. The reason for that is, that I want people to do their jobs and document them so well that other people can take over their jobs for two weeks while they're gone and they don't have to worry. I try to do that with myself. I really try not to be a bottleneck for decisions or for things that are happening in the company. For me, I think, it's very hard to do. But, I am really working hard on it. Right now, I am getting ready to have my first baby so I am really working very hard in order to be able to take four weeks off of maternity leave and trying to get everybody transferring enough responsibility so I can go do that. It's a big challenge, but I absolutely believe if you fail at that, then your company will collapse like a house of cards if you leave. That means you didn't build a good organization. Larry: Bettina, you're right on. My wife and I, who are in business together, we have five kids, so we have some empathy for what you're talking about. Bettina: I'm glad, yes. It's going to be a challenge. I know that. Larry: Besides your new baby, you've already achieved a great deal. What's next for you? Bettina: Well, I think there's lots more out there. I think I am 10 years into my apprenticeship of being an entrepreneur. I think I'm constantly learning. I do have a dream of taking a company public one of these days, like Gail did with Constant Contact. Pixability we often sell ourselves to investors as, "What Constant Contact did for email marketing we're going do for video marketing." But, maybe being public these days isn't the most attractive thing anymore, but I do want to grow a company in a substantial way and into the thousands of employees. That's my dream that's still out there. Larry: I have a feeling you're going to do it too. Lee: That is a wonderful dream. Bettina: Thank you for that confidence. Lee: We thank you for interviewing with us today. For everybody out there listening, you can find these podcasts on W3W3.com and as well at ncwit.org. Please pass it along to a friend. Thank you Bettina. We've enjoyed having you today. Bettina: Thank you very much for inviting me. Larry: Thank you. [music] Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Bettina HeinInterview Summary: Bettina Hein believes there's a recipe for successful entrepreneurship, and in this interview she shares it. Ingredients include chutzpah and persverance. Release Date: March 7, 2011Interview Subject: Bettina HeinInterviewer(s): Larry Nelson, Lee KennedyDuration: 18:34

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Carol Realini CEO and Founder, Obopay Date: April 7, 2009 Carol Realini: Obopay [intro] Lucy Sanders: Hi, this is Lucy Sanders. I'm the CEO for the National Center for Women and Information Technology, or NCWIT, and this is one in a series of interviews with fantastic entrepreneurs, women who have started IT companies. With me is Larry Nelson, w3w3.com. Larry, how are you? Larry Nelson: Absolutely magnificent, kind of jittery a little bit. We just launched our Internet TV show, so things are going good. Lucy: And the name of the Internet TV show is... Larry: "Colorado Rising." Lucy: So everybody, be careful, he's after you for not just audio interviews now but live TV as well. Larry: You bet. Lucy: With us today we have Carol Realini. She's the founder and CEO of Obopay, and before that a very distinguished career in a number of high tech companies including Cordiant. Obopay is the first truly comprehensive mobile payment service in the United States, and it's really cool. You go on the website and you can basically send money to your kids. If you're kids, you can get money. I'm trying to figure out how to get my parents to do this for me even now. Larry: Yeah, I've got five kids. I appreciate that. Lucy: [laughs] And we're really happy to talk to Carol. Welcome, Carol. Carol Realini: Thank you. Happy to talk to you guys. Lucy: Oh, great. Why don't you tell us a bit about Obopay. It's a great company and it has a wonderful value proposition. Carol: Absolutely. First, I just want to say I assume you are all in Colorado today. And I'm a longtime San Francisco-born Californian, born and raised here. But I spent five years living outside of California and that was living in Colorado, and I love Colorado. Lucy: Well any time you want to come visit us. [laughter] Larry: That's a deal. Carol: Absolutely. Lucy: That's a deal. Carol: I love Colorado. So let me just give you a little background on myself, and then I'll talk about the founding of Obopay and what we do and a little bit about the company. I am a four-time entrepreneur, so this is my fourth company from the ground up. Lucy: Wow. Carol: First one, I wasn't the founder but I was a very early employee at Legato, which became a very large storage management software company which was bought by EMC. That company went public and then was bought. The next company, I was the founder of a consulting company that focused in the early '90s on helping people migrate to distributed computing. And this was when big companies around the world were trying to figure out how to leverage the client server and PC technology that was emerging. And then the next company was Cordiant Software, and I founded that and raised the venture capital for that company and was the CEO until just before the company went public. And it went public in 2000 and is still a public company. And then I retired from that and thought I wasn't ever going to work again. I'd had a fantastic career in technology, really started in the mid-'70s when it was really about mainframe. And I retired thinking I would never work again, and actually moved to Colorado and ended up getting involved in some nonprofits which were focused on fostering entrepreneurship in developing countries around the world. As a result of that, I was traveling in places I would have never normally traveled, places in rural Africa, rural Latin America, and was quite taken in 2002 with the number of mobile phones that I would see in very far away places where there was no electricity, no clean water. You would find that there was a growing number of people that had mobile phones. And this is the year 2002 when there was about a billion phones on the planet. And since my last three companies had really focused on financial service software primarily, and I had spent a lot of my time in the financial services industry building software from the biggest financial service companies in the world, I ended up starting to think about, well if there are mobile phones in all these places, maybe we could use those mobile phones to start delivering financial services to everybody with a mobile phone. It was a real simple idea, but it was exciting for me to think about the possibility that someday most people would have mobile phones, and those mobile phones could then bring convenience and access to banking like we've never seen before. So that idea got under my skin and by 2004, late 2004, early 2005, I funded some research where we went around the world and looked at some of the very early implementations of mobile payments and mobile banking. And once the research report was done, the way I think about it and this is the way it happened, when I started the research report, my career was behind me. When I finished the research report, my career was in front of me. Lucy: That's great. Larry: Yeah. Carol: Yeah. And I decided I just had to come back to work and use all my experience as an entrepreneur and technologist to build a company to deliver mobile payments and mobile banking to every mobile phone. So that was 2005, and I've worked almost every day since I made that decision. And I'm sitting in my office in Redwood City where I spend a lot of my time now. And the company is about 150 people now. And we are operating the service in the US and India, and we're in the planning stages to rolling it out in Africa and in Europe. And we get a call almost everyday from different parts of the world saying when can Obopay think about coming to this country or that country. Lucy: How did you choose the name for the company, Carol? Carol: The big idea is everybody with a mobile phone will get access to payment services and banking services through their mobile phone. And if you think about that, it's such a big idea because if you look at traditional banking, it serves let's say a billion and a half people on the planet, whereas already there are over four billion mobile phones. And so you can imagine that the people that have bank accounts and have mobile phones can benefit from it. But there are also a lot of people that don't get access to banking that will now have it because they have a mobile phone and there's a ways for these services to be offered to those people. In addition, people are still using a lot of cash, right, and sometimes checks. And my belief is that mobile payments and mobile banking will eliminate cash from use. And it's such a big idea if you think about it. About $7 trillion of transactions a year are done in cash still today. And I believe that in the future we won't be using cash, we'll be doing electronic transactions between mobile phones. For that reason, when we looked to name the company we said, wow do we relate to this big idea that someday this will replace cash? And we found that obol, O-B-O-L, is a greek coin that has been obsolete maybe a thousand years. And so we took an obsolete coin as a concept that we put in our company name. Lucy: That's fascinating, and the story of the company is interesting as well. And I would love to follow up with you because I think that the people here at the Atlas Institute at the University of Colorado - Boulder, they're starting an ITC4D program here. So they would probably be interested in having you speak. So that's really interesting. And you've been a technologist for a long time and our first question centers around that. How did you first get into technology? And as a technologist, what are the technologies you see as being especially interesting today? Carol: I first got into technology in the mid-'70s. I was a mathematician and I was teaching math at a local university, and found the computer science department and decided in my spare time to get a computer science advanced degree. It was a natural transition for me. I was doing math because I was good at it and I loved it but it wasn't my passion. But once I got involved in computers I got very passionate about computers and specifically software. So that's how I got into technology. And you know in the mid-'70s, Silicon Valley was a very small community, so a lot of my professors worked at IBM or Hewlett Packard. Once I started taking classes from these folks it was just very easy to understand what was going on in the industry and I very quickly opted in. And matter of fact, I ended up leaving my teaching position and starting work six months before I finished my degree. Larry: Oh, good. Well you've had a chance to work for others and the nonprofit experience you had, why are you an entrepreneur and what is it about entrepreneurship that makes you tick? Carol: I started my career as a typical software engineer and ended up starting to get into management. And I was quite successful in management positions. Something happened to me about six years into my career. I thought when I was working for this big company that my aspiration was to be an executive at a company like that, but I got involved in a project almost by accident. It was an entrepreneurial project within a big company, and it changed me. The company I worked for, which was a hardware company - it's called Amdol - decided they wanted to do a commercial product based on UNIX. Because UNIX was just an internal AT&T Bell Labs technology, and I negotiated the first commercial license for UNIX. And we ended up building the operating system and then providing it as a high-end version of UNIX out into the marketplace. And this all happened very quickly, it was very entrepreneurial, they were a handful of people in a big company and we built a whole business around this new operating system that we built. It was amazing. People would tell us "You'll never get this done," that nobody would ever buy it. And so I got involved in that and I saw about 15 people. We moved a mountain just by saying we we're going to do this. And I had that experience and I said, wow, I really love doing this and I'm good at it. I got a taste of it from that and then, once the project got mature and was mainstreamed, I decided that I couldn't go back into the mainstream, I had to go be an entrepreneur. I left and then I went to work at a company that was just about to go public, which was a database company - I think of that as my transition job. And then I got a phone call about 18 months after that, where somebody asked me to do a company from the ground. So that's how I got into it. I think that I had it in my blood, in my desire. I'm not sure if I would have been an entrepreneur if I hadn't had the early experience of how powerful it is. Also, I managed my career even before I left this big company, I had experience in marketing and sales. When you're an entrepreneur, you have to wear a lot of hats. You especially have to wear a sales hat. You have to go out and get the initial customers, you have to go out and get the initial founders or employees to work with you, you have to get the original investors. That is a sales job. And so somehow I've been able to over the years be quite successful at evangelizing new ideas and bringing on employees and customers and venture capital. And that's been something that I'm just good at and I love to do. Lucy: Well you know those are all UNIX projects. I'm from Bell Labs and we were probably one of your Amdol customers. [laughs] Those were fun times for sure, and it does sound like you have entrepreneurship in your blood. In terms of who influenced you, can you look back - you had an experience that influenced you at Amdol, and another experience at the database company - were there particular people or mentors along the way that influenced you? Carol: Yeah, I think there were. I was aware of what some other people were doing, so I think I was inspired by some of these early entrepreneurs. Famous ones, like Bill Gates and Judy Estrin. Or fhe less famous ones, just people I knew in Silicon Valley - I was inspired by those people. So I think, one thing that happened to me when I ended up becoming an entrepreneur -- if you had met me before I took my first CEO job, you would have said "Well, this woman..." Lone Ranger, I used to call myself. I would take on projects and I would do them, and I would have people working for me, but I didn't need any help. That was my attitude. When I started my first company that was venture-backed, for some reason I decided that I needed to change my style. I said, you know, I need help, because I've never done this before. And raising venture capital seems really hard, building a company from the ground up. I've kind of been involved in it in kind of different ways, but this seemed a really big task. So I decided to change my style and ask for help. I'd been around for a long time so I knew a lot of people, but I had actually never asked anyone for help, never in my entire career. And so when I wrote my first business plan for Cordiant, which is where I first raised venture capital, I sent the business plan to 50 people I knew, who had either raised venture capital or would know how to do it. And what was so interesting about that is that I've never asked for help before, and people were so honored that I had reached out to them for help, I got this wave of help from all these really great CEOs or venture capitalists. And that was the reason I'm here today. It was actually because I figured out that it wasn't just about me doing something. Being an entrepreneur and having a big idea, you need a lot of help. So when I reached out to these people, a lot of those folks became mentors to me and became advisers to me. And I remember, when I was raising my first round of funding, I said, look, if I'm successful at this -- and I thought this is the hardest thing I've ever done, If I'm successful, I'm going to help other people do this. You know, over the years, I've turned around and done the same thing for other folks and helped other people who were trying to raise venture capital or start companies. And something I really like to do is give back, because it was so important to me to have those experienced people help me. Larry: Wow. Carol, you know you have a number of happy, successful stories, but I'd like to ask another kind of question. If you were to pick the one, single time - I'm sure you had challenges along the way - but one, single toughest decision that you had to make in your career. Carol: Business decisions? Larry: Yeah, business-related. Carol: I'll tell you, there's a lot of tough decisions you make every day. I mean, when you're an entrepreneur, it's important to figure out what you can't do, or what you shouldn't do right now. I think one thing is, at big companies you might have the luxury to do most of the things you think are the right things to do. But in a small company, an emerging company, a new company, you have to choose every day what is it I have to do now, and what is it I can afford to do right now? And you have to make that decision every day, and people come to you and they lobby, or customers come to you. And you just have to be good at prioritizing and saying no. And that is a tough decision, but I can't point out one time I said no. It's just that every day, you have to learn to say no. Larry: OK. Carol: Hire this person, go after this opportunity. So that's sort of the tougher part, the tough decisions I make. Probably some of the more challenging business decisions were really around timing of expansion. Larry: Ah. Carol: So if you think about it, Cordiant wouldn't be where it is today if it hadn't made a decision to, very early on in the company's evolution, to expand into Europe. So they made a decision while they were in the US market for six months, they decided to go to Europe. And that was a tough decision to make because it was an expensive decision. But it turned out to be a very good decision. Hard to execute on, but a really important strategic move. Obopay has made that same decision. From the beginning, we decided that, to accomplish what we wanted to accomplish, which is deliver financial services to every mobile phone, we had to be willing to build a service that could work in places like the US, as well as India. And the only way to really know that is to build it from the beginning with that in mind, and then go to those markets and prove that it worked in both markets. That was a very tough decision to make because it's a very expensive decision, and it requires the ability to execute on two different markets. Lucy: You've given us a lot of pointers that would be helpful to people who are considering being entrepreneurs. For example, you said it became important to you to ask for help. I think you said, "Get to like sales," you know, and, "Learn how to prioritize and learn to say no." And I think the story about expansion into Europe is an indicator as well of taking educated risks and getting out there and really growing the company. What other advice would you give a young person who's considering being an entrepreneur? Carol: I think you can't learn to be an entrepreneur in a classroom. So I think you have to be willing to take jobs that help you build skills and experience so that you're able to be an entrepreneur and be good at it. You know, some people come out of school, like I was reading about the founder of Facebook, I mean, phenomenal story. He's 24 years old and he founded Facebook. I mean, that's incredible, but a lot of entrepreneurs don't get there that way. They end up having jobs that give them good skills and experience that prepare them to be an entrepreneur. So unless you're like the Facebook founder, I suggest you think about, "OK. What's the next job I could take in the company I'm at or in a different company that will help me get skills and experience I need to be an entrepreneur." So for example, let's say you're not good at strategic stuff, which is like what you need to be good at to raise venture capital, what you need to be good at to go out and get your first set of business partners in your business. If that's true and you're not good at it, you should get a job in an opportunity where you figure out how to be good at that, where you're tested, where you're trained, where you have to do it, because that's going to help you build the competency that you need and better prepare you to be an entrepreneur. I want to say one other thing about that. I knew in my heart I wanted to be an entrepreneur, and I remember one time I tried to get a sales job at a company. I won't mention which company, but I tried to get a job being a sales person, because I kind of knew I needed to be better at this. And I remember the person I went to who liked me a lot, said, "Oh, well, you're a girl. Nobody's going to buy a million dollar product from you." [laughter] Lucy: I'm sorry. Larry: Yeah. Carol: But, you know, at the time that was their point of view. But I remember thinking, "You know what, that is not going to stop me. That's this person." Lucy: Absolutely. Carol: And, you know, it may have been conventional wisdom that a girl couldn't do this job, but it didn't faze me at all, and I said, "Oh, OK. That's your opinion. I better go find my sales opportunity someplace else." And I think you have to have that in your DNA to be an entrepreneur. You have to be the kind of person that has the kind of vision and direction and drive that when some obstacle gets in front of you, it's not that it's not real, but you figure out how to manage beyond that obstacle. Lucy: Absolutely, being relentless. Larry: Relentless. Lucy: We've heard that a lot, relentless, persistent. Carol: Yeah. Larry: Yeah. Lucy: Yeah, resourceful. Carol: The other thing I was going to say about building the expertise to be an entrepreneur, I have two other things to say about that. You can never be everything. You can't be all things to all people. There's some things that maybe the perfect entrepreneur would do that I'm not good at. So you also need to understand where your limitations are and surround yourself with a team that collectively has the skills to pull off the business. So you're not going to ever be all things to all people. There are some things you have to be able to do, like raise venture capital, but there are some other things your team may be able to do for you, and you don't have to do it yourself. The other thing that I would say, and one thing I like to say to the people who want to be entrepreneurs and go out and raise money, especially raising money. I said, "If you think about being entrepreneurs, don't think about success being raising money." Because let's imagine you're going to be successful raising money. Success is when you get the money and you've got the company, that you're successful with the company. You have to think less about sort of the, "Oh, I can get a VC to fund me," and more, "I can get the capital I need to build the company I need to build, " and it's a different mindset. And you have to have the mindset of, I not only have to be able to raise the venture capital, I have to be the kind of leader that once I have it I can build the company. So you kind of raise the bar for yourself and what you think you have to be able to do to build the company. You have to raise capital, and you have to make that capital turn it into a successful business. Larry: Carol, with all the things that you're doing and you're at the office right now, how do you bring balance to your life, both personally and professionally? Carol: I don't think I have a balanced life. [laughter] Lucy: Yeah, we're heard that before too. Yeah. Carol: But I don't know, you know, I think about that I have three children, and I love them and they're all successful. They're grown. They're in their twenties. I love them. I don't see them as much as I want to, don't spend as much time with them as I would like. I have a husband who I've been married to for almost 30 years. I love the outdoors. I'm very athletic. But the fact is when I'm doing this I would say that I don't have the kind of balance that would be the perfect balance, and I just accept that. That's the job. The job is to have a little bit of struggle with balance, because the job is going to be really, really demanding, and I've accepted that. I had five years off, six years off where I was able to spend as much time as I wanted with my kids and my husband. And I biked and hiked and skied 60 days a year. That was fabulous too, but, you know, there's nothing like building a company from the ground up. Lucy: And that's the case, and we've heard that from some of our other interviewees as well, that it's more of an integrative thing. You know, that you have all these interests and you integrate them, but it's not like every day is balanced. Larry: Right. Lucy: That's really interesting. So, Carol, you've done so much. You're a global visionary. You give back. I wanted to mention to listeners as well that Carol was on the board at the Anita Borg Institute, which is one of the co-founding organizations of NCWIT, really focused on women and innovation and computing. And you mentioned earlier that it's important for you to give back. So across the board you've done some pretty phenomenal things. What's next for you? Carol: No, I am very passionate about entrepreneurship, so wherever possible I support entrepreneurs, either through my own time or through donating to organizations that support entrepreneurs. I'm passionate about education. There are places in the world where children don't get access to free education, places like Uganda or a lot of places I go in the world. And so my husband and I both donate a lot to programs that get the kids that are left out of the education system access to education. So we do that and that's something we do on an ongoing basis. You know, I'm kind of doing Obopay full-time. It's interesting. I was on boards when I started Obopay, and I got off all of them. And I did that because I just felt like for an early stage company I didn't have the luxury of having time to be a good board member for them, but I think for the next couple years, I'm pretty much full-time doing this. But I don't have a lot of bandwidth to do other things right now. When this period is over for me, I don't know what's next for me and I'm not worried about it, because I love so many things. I have so many hobbies, so many interests, I'm not worried about what comes next. I'm not a worrier anyway. I'm just dedicated to doing this now, and I know when I'm doing this that they'll be something else great for me to do. Larry: Well, I couldn't agree more, yeah. Carol: Oh, that's another word for entrepreneurship, fearless. Larry: There we go. Carol: There you go. Larry: Well, Carol, I want to thank you for joining us today. Carol: Oh, you're welcome. Larry: And we'll put your link up in the website. That's Obopay.com, but we'll put it up on NCWIT's website. That's ncwit.org, and also at w3w3.com. And by the way, I want to say this to the listeners. Pass this interview along to others that you know would learn from it and would enjoy an interview on this kind of a topic. Thank you much, Carol. Lucy: Thanks, Carol. Carol: Thanks, bye. Lucy: All right. Thanks everybody. [music] Transcription by CastingWords Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Carol RealiniInterview Summary: Carol Realini is an imaginative pioneer whose foresight and business acumen have changed the landscape of technology, and whose global vision is providing hope and a future for people in developing countries. Release Date: April 7, 2009Interview Subject: Carol RealiniInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry NelsonDuration: 24:49

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Anu Shukla Founder & CEO, Offerpal Media, Inc Date: February 7, 2009 Interview with Anu Shukla Lucy Sanders: Hi. This is Lucy Sanders, the CEO for the National Center for Women & Information Technology or NCWIT. This is part of a series of interviews we're doing with outstanding women entrepreneurs who have started IT companies. They have just so much wealth of experience and passion around entrepreneurship to share with us. With me is w3w3.com's own Larry Nelson. Larry Nelson: Oh yeah, well she's making fun of me right now. Lucy: Yeah, I know, I know. Larry: Yeah. We love what we do because working with the organization and the contacts you have is fabulous. Lucy: Well, we're very excited to work with w3w3 and today, we're really excited to be interviewing Anu Shukla who's the founder and CEO of Offerpal Media. Now, this is really a great, great Website. People need to go check this out. Anu, though, is a Serial Entrepreneur. This is just her latest endeavor but it's really interesting because it uses an innovative Engagement Marketing model. Users win points for filling out surveys and doing other things and at the same time, it matches it up to advertisers. So, it's a win win-win for everybody and really works towards monetizing the web even more through advertising. So, Anu, tell us a little bit about Offerpal Media and what Engagement Marketing models are? Anu Shukla: Yes, thank you so much, thank you. First of all, thank you so much for having me on the show and I am also very excited about Offerpal Media. And as you mentioned, I'm a Serial Entrepreneur but I have to say this is probably the most exciting venture I have been involved with. Offerpal Media, as you mentioned, is a Virtual Currency Modernization Service. So, what this means is and I'll just put it in plain English for everybody, is if you use FaceBook or MySpace or if you play games, any kind of online casual games or role-playing games or MMORPGs as they're known, you play for free, basically. At a certain point, you want to advance your level in the game or you want to move faster or you want to procure weapons or you want to unlock custom features for your Avatar or you want to send virtual gifts to people. That will require you to conduct a microtransaction with that particular game or Website and you can either, take out your credit card and pay for things or you can use a service like Offerpal. Offerpal really matches the consumers up with the right advertisers. If you take one of their advertising offers which are generally, let's put it in the category of good deals, then, you would not only get a good deal from the advertiser but you also get the virtual currency points. You can send a premium gift or card, virtual gift or card as well. What happens then is that it's win-win, win situation for everybody. You have the consumer, they got points on their favorite game so they can advance and engage further with the game. The advertiser got a qualified customer or lead and the publisher got some revenue so they can continue to enhance and make the game even more engaging for their consumers. Offerpal facilitates that service through our platform and we take a portion of the revenue for doing that. Sorry for the long-winded answer but at the end of it, it's all about benefits and I just wanted to end up with all the benefits that we provide. Lucy: Well, I thought, I thought it was really interesting. Larry: Yeah. Lucy: Some of the users around dating and poker and my son's a poker player so maybe he's used it. Anu: Yeah, most of the free to play poker games will give you a certain number of chips everyday but once you sit down at the table to play with five of your friends, all virtually. Let's say that you lose all your chips, you don't want to wait until the next day to play with them and so you are going to have to buy chips for a small amount of money or you can take one of these advertising offers and both of those scenarios are facilitated by Offerpal. In fact, all kinds of poker franchises use Offerpal and you'll see us showing up at the button in various games and Websites as earn bucks or earn poker chips or earn currency button. And, when you click on it where we come up with all the list of advertising offers and payment options. Lucy: Very cool. You know, Anu is a visionary and, in case you couldn't tell? Larry: Yeah. Lucy: In the area of Online Personalization and Marketing Automation and she, one of her former companies was Rubreck which was acquired by Broadbase so when we talk about her being a Serial Entrepreneur, it, quite a big deal. Larry: A big deal. Lucy: A big, big deal. So, Anu, you have a real track record with technology and so how did you first get into technology and obviously Engagement Marketing model is a petty cool technology. Do you see any other technologies today that you think are especially innovative? Anu: Sure, it was a bit, that was a series of questions so first of all how did I get into technology? I guess it was luck of the draw because I graduated with my MBA from Ohio and I happened to know somebody, which is lesson number, always remember to network. Just through my network, I knew somebody who had a small company here in California, in Silicon Valley and that was my first job out of, fresh MBA grad within a technology company and a start up. So, I've stuck with both of them ever since because it was personally, intellectually, and financially very, very rewarding. And it's something I really liked so that's how I ended up in technology. I really have an MBA. I have an undergraduate degree in history so it wasn't that I had none, done a lot of programming courses or even I was a competent hardware engineer or anything. But, I ended up in marketing job, this high-technology company starting with semi-conductors and moving on to databases and development tools for programmers, pretty technical in a B to B environment. So I worked for about six companies, all start ups, all of which were either acquired in a financially good, on good terms or they went public. So, after having done it about six times, I said, maybe I should do a start up myself rather than always working for other people's start ups. Because it was so rewarding, I think I've seen the process enough times, I'm comfortable. The area that I selected was Marketing Automation for a business to business environment because, guess what? I had been doing that for about 15 years. I had been a marketing executive in a business-to-business marketing environment for high technology companies. So I created some software for my peers, which is other marketing executives in the business to business environment that were selling technical products. That's how I started Rubreck which was a Marketing Automation software company that really pioneered the category of marketing automation. I had dealt with the problems of running a budget and using the Internet to communicate with my customers, all the nuances that come in to B-to-B marketing environment. And I've put that into software and made it into a company called Rubreck which was acquired about 19 months later by a publicly-traded company so it was a good financial exit for my investors and myself. That's how I set up a track record as an entrepreneur and was able to then get funding for my subsequent ventures including Offerpal. With Offerpal, what is so exciting about Offerpal and here's where we get to the technology opportunities that are emerging and remain. It was really that Offerpal was riding, the idea, the concept of Offerpal Media was really riding a few different and interesting waves. One of the big trends right now is social networking. A lot of people are spending time on FaceBook and on MySpace and on other social or community networking sites. Offerpal allows applications that work on social networks or social networks themselves to actually make money from all the visitors that they get. This we called Net Monetization and so that's an interesting and important problem. Everybody's spending time on social networks, how do you make money so that it's viable? We are an extremely important and viable option for making money on social networks, we're publishers. The second thing is the rise of the freemium model and so the freemium model is really, I don't know if you read the latest book called "Free." I think it's by the same author, I'm forgetting his name, went blank but it's all about how everything is free, but it's not really. Really, the model is all about getting a lot of consumers to engage with your product or service and that leads to up-selling and cross-selling. That's where you really make your money. The freemium model is really emerging in gaming, in online gaming so people are engaging, they will play, this has really expanded the universe of people who will play online games because they can actually engaged and try it for free. Offerpal is the center of monetization for the freemium model in online gaming and so that's an important trend that we're riding. And the third is the rise of virtual currency. Virtual currency is much more advanced in its usage and its popularity in Asian countries like Cyworld in Korea, which is a social network, all that income from virtual currency. Also in China with companies like Tencent and Xiao Nei which are all social networks that created billions of dollars of revenue from virtual currency. The virtual currency model is really being applied in European-based properties now and again, with it, the center of monetizing, virtual currency as well. Being that we're riding these three important waves, it's no surprise that we've seen some measure of success. And it also opens up lots of avenues for technology innovation in all these three areas. Larry: Mm-hmm, wow. I guess. Lucy: Pretty interesting virtual world. Larry: Is that ever but you and I are here right now. Lucy: Well, maybe. Larry: Yeah, maybe. Larry: I think it's pretty obvious why you became an entrepreneur but what is it about being an entrepreneur that makes you tick? Anu: Well, I think that entrepreneurs, I really feel that I'm on a mission every time I start a company. It's a really, a big problem that I'm trying to solve and I really love the people that I work with. Because of the nature of start-ups, the risks involved, the intensity and the tenacity that you have to have to be part of a start-up, you actually meet and work with like-minded people. So, essentially I like working with the people that work in my company but also with the industry at large, the kinds of people you meet are a reflection of what is important to you. I think, that's what really drives you, the process of creating something from nothing, the whole unknown that you are about to conquer and that along the way you're working with people that are like you that share the similar drive and passion and intensity. I think that's what makes an entrepreneur tick and once you officially hang out your board and say, "I'm in business, I'm a start-up. " Then it really becomes all about your responsibility to your, the things that you have to prove and the things that you have to do and the responsibility you take to the employees who leave their jobs and come and join you in your quest, you want them to be part of that success. Your investors, who believe in your idea and based on a business plan, plunk down millions of dollars. Then it's about proving to them or coming through for them. I think it's a combination of feeling a sense of pride and responsibility and also the creative process. Lucy: They're great answers. Being an entrepreneur is certainly all those things. You do have to have a good bit of intensity. For sure, to be an entrepreneur so, tell us about mentoring. You mentioned when we first started chatting with you that networking was important. We've heard over and over again that mentoring is important to an entrepreneur so tell us your take on mentoring. Anu: I think mentoring is very important and I'm coming from the perspective of somebody who hasn't really benefited from a lot of mentoring, official or structured mentoring. I think the reason I didn't benefit from it was because I wasn't very open to it and I've now realized that I could have benefited more, really been better in many ways had I actually been open to mentoring from other people. This is different, it's a different take that you will hear because a lot of people would say, I didn't find mentors or my mentors didn't have time for me. I didn't go looking for mentors and the ones that I did run into, I wasn't very open to their advice because I just felt that I knew it all. That's not actually correct so in hindsight, if there's one thing I've learned is that mentoring is really important. You have to actually find the right mentors that you can benefit from, and then you have to be open to listening to their advice and actually making behavior or strategy modification based on what you're learning. You always have to make up your own mind but if you're open, then you would listen to inputs from others and I'm getting a lot better with that now. Lucy: That's so interesting that you say that. I personally equate to that myself. It took me a while to get used to, in taking advice and not just taking advice but asking for it and then welcoming it. Anu: A lot of people, it is easier to approach mentors with a completely different expectation. I will have people approach me saying, "I really want you to mentor me," or "are you available to have lunch with me," or whatever. At the end of the day they're immediately looking for, can you help me find a job or can you give a career advice? It's very narrow, the scope. It's more about networking for referrals rather than mentorship. If you're really seeking a mentor, you should be prepared that they're not there to find you a job, they're not there to write you checks for your most recent venture although that maybe coming up sometimes. They're not just there to refer to other people so you can advance your business. They are there to understand what are your weakness and what are your challenges and give you specific advice on how to improve yourself and also as a sounding board for issues that you're facing. I think if you approach mentorship that way, your mentor will feel better and you will get a lot more than if you just get one referral to a business partner or a venture capitalist. Lucy: That's an excellent distinction between mentoring and networking and I'm sitting here thinking, if you were talking to a young person besides that particular piece of wonderful advice. What else would you tell them about entrepreneurship because I do think people make so many mistakes about mentoring and networking and all of those things, what other pearls do you have? Anu: Sure. I've come across two types of entrepreneurs. One is, the entrepreneurs who come across a business idea that they try out against all odds and they see certain signs of success. They just are so enamored and passionate about it, they can't wait to do it and they just jump headlong into doing it. Usually, they're right, actually, and they end up as young prodigies with huge business enterprises. That is one type of entrepreneur and what's really important in this is to have somebody who's smart enough to see an opportunity but also with blinding passion and drive to pursue it. Also, I keep in mind that not everybody will end up with a huge, an instinct that was completely correct, a great execution so they end up with a huge success at a very young age like the Google guys, right? Or the Yahoo guys, these were young people, students that found something and they said "oh this instinctively make so much sense. I love it" and then they went out and executed nearly perfectly for huge, huge gain-changing things. I'm just giving this as an example of a profile of an entrepreneur and how people come about it. So, it's important for young people listening in to see, am I that person? Am I a young person who has just come across this wonderful idea and I believe in it so strongly, I really want to pursue it and it's really, really important. The end result of this is really important. If you talk to the Google guys or entrepreneurs like the people who founded Google, yeah, they'll tell you that it was so compelling to create a better technology so people could find things more easily on the World Wide Web. It was such a huge idea that they had to pursue it and I was part of their academic curriculum but they saw the commercial viability and the benefit that could come about from it. If there are young people listening in that they have that, they should pursue it, they should, absolutely should pursue it. I don't think that good entrepreneurs are made when they just come out with, "I'll do anything, I just want to make money." I don't know, I think you have to be committed, really be passionate about the subject matter that you're pursuing or the idea you're pursuing. If it's a good idea and if you're really passionate about it, the money will come. That should not be your primary motive. Larry: Mm-hmm, very good. After getting your MBA, you went one company after another that all were successful. You've had successful companies but in this process, what is the toughest thing that you've had to do in your career? Lucy: The toughest thing that you do in your career, is to make two kinds of moves at the same time. The two kinds of moves are, you are moving away from your subject matter that you know and you're also moving away from the functional model that you know. And you're trying to get into another company or start an enterprise in a completely different area at the same time; you're not going to be the functions. Let's say, you want to move from marketing to sales and you want to move from semi-conductors into software or into, make a bigger, you want to move from retail sales into technology sales. My advice is, that's a tough thing to do and I've done it a couple of times and I was able to make it work but it was certainly difficult to do. I would say, if you try to make one move at a time, it's probably easier. If you move from retail to technology, you may want to stick in sales rather than try to change your function from marketing to engineering at the same time. Lucy: It is hard to do that, two things at one? Anu: Yeah but in all fairness, I want to go back to the question? Lucy: Sure. Anu: That's a tough thing to do and I had to do it a couple of times. The toughest thing that I had to do was, in one of the start-ups that I did, realize= a year into it that it was never going to be a big idea. Lucy: Yeah. Anu: So I needed to change it and I needed to change it radically. I needed to change it now in half the venture money that I had to do this, the enterprise in the first place because I had spent half of it on, essentially a wrong idea, for the wrong time. And so, I had to take my little company down from 30 people to five people, going to a room and reinvent it and reinvent it on the time calendar, on a clock. That's the toughest thing because innovation doesn't come on a timer. And in having to abandon what you are so passionate about and move into another. That is the toughest thing I've ever done. Lucy: We've heard that a number of times, that they're very consistent, downsizing, laying people off, leaving an idea behind that you felt passionate about. Anu: Yeah, really, it's hard to downsize of it but really, the worst part is abandoning the idea that you, you went out you had an idea. You were so passionate about it. You were able to sell people to put money into it and you have to sell people into joining your company and you have to sell the initial customers into buying it. Then, you have to turn around and say, it was not the right idea and we're going to abandon all of it and start over. That's really hard. Lucy: We like to ask people as part of this interview series, words that describe your personal characteristics that you believed gave you advantage as an entrepreneur. We hear things. I won't bias your answer. Larry: Yeah. Lucy: What characteristics do you think really you have that make you a successful entrepreneur? Anu: I think a high tolerance for risk is one. Lucy: Mm-hmm. Anu: The second is a good vision about where the market is now and where it's going so to be able to really apply the creative process towards the right things, moving in your idea. You have to have some vision about where you are now and where you could be and how markets would emerge. Being able to spot those trends, I think, early enough and being able to do something about it. I think those are things that help me create the right ideas or change it or polish it into the right ideas so being open to the idea that, that idea was good. It probably needs some polishing and then adaptability. Being able to adapt to change because change, ups and downs, do happen and they happen very, very frequently. Being able to adapt to that, I think, has also made me, this part of my entrepreneurial achievement or satisfaction with the process because I'm prepared to accept those changes. Larry: Wow, that's wonderful. It's easy to tell that you're a very busy executive. How do you bring about balance in your personal and your professional lives? Anu: Yes, that is something I don't think anybody has the perfect answer to and I suffered a lot especially after I had my children between the whole, horrible feeling of guilt. Why was I working and not spending more time with my children because certainly I didn't need to work. I could have spent all my time, 100 percent, 24 hours a day with my kids. So, why wasn't I doing that? And the reason is I just think I'm a better person when I don't. The reason is I think, I'm a better person when I'm engaged in entrepreneurial activity which I love and enjoy and have passions about, at the same time, I allow enough time and energy to raise my children and be with them. I determined for myself that I was not going to be able to do just one or the other, I had to do them both. So then it gets to the question of how do you balance the two? I think that with me, especially with this additional demands on my time, with the family situation, what I learned to do was to really hire and it became a necessity, it's something I wanted to do all along, but now, it just became completely, completely something that I couldn't live without which is to hire a great team and not micromanage them. I did focus a lot on surrounding myself with bright people and letting them, enabling them and empowering them to make independent decisions and not getting in their way, not micromanaging it so that's one thing. The second thing is, actually, it's more mental than anything else which is realizing that there are going to be times where you're going to be the best mother in the world and there are going to be times where you're going to be the best chief executive in the world. And those two don't necessarily happen on the same day. Lucy: That's amen, great. Anu: When you realize that, you said, OK there are some Parent-Teacher meetings and things I will just not miss, that's it, I'm going to be there. I don't care what great business opportunity I'm going to lose by doing that. I'm sorry, that's what I had to do. And there are times where my kids are just going to have to know that Mom is in New York for a conference and she'll be gone for two days so, I'm sorry, I won't be there. Those are the, you just have these tough choices and just live by them. Lucy: I'd say that was pretty close to perfect answer. It's wonderful. You did really achieve a lot in your career and you have, I'm sure, a bright future. Give us just a few words about what you see as next for you? Anu: I just think that, I realized a while ago because as you know, I've been fortunate enough to work with some great teams so that we will all have some measure of success. And so, I think that when do you feel you've had enough is a personal choice for everybody. This is my third start-up and I still don't feel I've had enough and so I just let my internal center guide me as to when is the time to call it quits to change and right now, that isn't the time. And I'm not trying to put this on a time calendar or a schedule as well. Right now, I just love what I'm doing so I look at what's next for me and I think what's next for me right now is to make Offerpal Media, to focus 100% on Offerpal and make it as big a success as possible. That's where my vision ends right now for that piece of it and of course, it does not end ever with my kids. It's all about, how can I do more things with them and how can I engage with them more, how can we do more things together, what's good for them and so on and so forth and how much I like to be with them and that never ends. I'm focused on that and then, when I do think beyond, after Offerpal reaches some kind of a successful conclusion for me personally, what do I do next? And I can't really think of what, if I'll do another start-up or not. I'm just not there yet. I do think that it would be fun to have, to do something completely different such as go to Washington, D.C. and serve in some capacity over there or my favorite of all times is to be a talk show host. Lucy: I love it. You can help us with these interviews. That would be awesome. Anu: I was thinking more television. Lucy: OK, all right. We may have to move it. Larry's been doing television lately and so there you go. Anu: Yeah. I see, that's, I've always thought that would be a lot of fun. I watch people like Charlie Rose and I think he has the best job in the world. He gets to engage with all these people and really get into the heart of things so that's what I think about it. Maybe some career in that talk show, host-type environment. Larry: We'll follow you. Lucy: We will. We'll be right there. We really do appreciate your time. These have just been very insightful answers and really appreciate it. I want to remind listeners where they can find the interviews. Larry: In w3w3.com. Lucy: W3w3.com. Larry: It's one place. Lucy: And also at the NCWIT Website, www.ncwit.org. So thank you very much. We really appreciated it. Anu: Thank you so much. Bye, bye. Lucy: Bye. Larry: Bye, bye. Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Anu ShuklaInterview Summary: Anu Shukla and her co-founder Mitch Liu brainstormed the idea for Offerpal in response to a good cause: helping friends donate to a favorite cause by participating in offers. They built an application to connect clicks with causes, made it vailable to a variety of other applications, and watched as the idea took off. Release Date: February 7, 2009Interview Subject: Anu ShuklaInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry NelsonDuration: 29:21

Owen read by Classic Poetry Aloud: http://www.classicpoetryaloud.com/ Giving voice to the poetry of the past. --------------------------------------------- Strange Meeting by Wilfred Owen (1893 – 1918) It seemed that out of the battle I escaped Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped Through granites which Titanic wars had groined. Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned, Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred. Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared With piteous recognition in fixed eyes, Lifting distressful hands as if to bless. And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall; With a thousand fears that vision's face was grained; Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground, And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan. "Strange, friend," I said, "Here is no cause to mourn." "None," said the other, "Save the undone years, The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours, Was my life also; I went hunting wild After the wildest beauty in the world, Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair, But mocks the steady running of the hour, And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here. For by my glee might many men have laughed, And of my weeping something has been left, Which must die now. I mean the truth untold, The pity of war, the pity war distilled. Now men will go content with what we spoiled. Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled. They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress, None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress. Courage was mine, and I had mystery; Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery; To miss the march of this retreating world Into vain citadels that are not walled. Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels I would go up and wash them from sweet wells, Even with truths that lie too deep for taint. I would have poured my spirit without stint But not through wounds; not on the cess of war. Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were. I am the enemy you killed, my friend. I knew you in this dark; for so you frowned Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed. I parried; but my hands were loath and cold. Let us sleep now..." For other readings of Wilfred Owen's work, visit: http://classicpoetryaloud.wordpress.com/category/Wilfred-Owen/ This was taken off Classic Poetry Aloud in November, after technical difficulties. Here are the other poems of War Poetry Week: The Soldier by Rupert Brooke http://classicpoetryaloud.podomatic.com/entry/2008-02-02T04_04_52-08_00 Band of Brother Speech by William Shakespeare http://classicpoetryaloud.podomatic.com/entry/2007-11-08T00_05_27-08_00 Ball's Bluff by Herman Melville http://classicpoetryaloud.podomatic.com/entry/2007-11-07T00_09_58-08_00 The Man with the Wooden Leg by Katherine Mansfield http://classicpoetryaloud.podomatic.com/entry/2007-11-05T23_57_21-08_00 Fears In Solitude by Samuel Taylor Coleridge http://classicpoetryaloud.podomatic.com/entry/2007-11-04T23_21_47-08_00

Brooke read by Classic Poetry Aloud: http://www.classicpoetryaloud.com/ Giving voice to the poetry of the past. --------------------------------------------- The Soldier by Rupert Brooke (1887 – 1915) If I should die, think only this of me: That there’s some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England. There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, A body of England’s, breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home. And think, this heart, all evil shed away, A pulse in the eternal mind, no less Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given; Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day; And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness, In hearts at peace, under an English heaven. This was taken off Classic Poetry Aloud in November, after technical difficulties. Here are the other poems of War Poetry Week: Band of Brother Speech by Shakespeare http://classicpoetryaloud.podomatic.com/entry/2007-11-08T00_05_27-08_00 Ball's Bluff by Melville http://classicpoetryaloud.podomatic.com/entry/2007-11-07T00_09_58-08_00 The Man with the Wooden Leg by Mansfield http://classicpoetryaloud.podomatic.com/entry/2007-11-05T23_57_21-08_00 Fears In Solitude by Coleridge http://classicpoetryaloud.podomatic.com/entry/2007-11-04T23_21_47-08_00

PodCast Show Notes In the Vol 1 No 2 I talk about the upcoming "4 to Fix" vote and play some appropriate music. I play some audio regarding the "City Council Reform" petition that is/was being spearheaded by Tulsans for Badder Gov't. I ask Mayor LaFortune his reasoning for forming a Citizens Commission to look at City Charter changes regarding the City Council at a Neighborhood Leaders meeting that took place on Tuesday. I close with some comments regarding the ACLU wanting to remove Christ from Christmas. If you like what you hear, get the word out about the Tulsa Topics Podcast! Here's the links where you can find the latest podcast: Vol 1 No 2 - Tulsa Topics Podcast 12/07/2005 Streaming Version Click on link to download the complete MP3 to your computer iTunes Tulsa Topics Podcast Page Comments can be made by sending an email at tulsatopics-AT-gmail.com (replace the -AT- with @).

http://www.ccbartlett.net/n/genesis_24-25.html A Marriage, a Home, and Two Trees Recorded 7/07/2019 by Pastor John Pillivant 2019-07-07T00:00:00-05:00 jarrodstueve@gmail.com (John Pillivant)noJohn PillivantCalvary,Chapel,Bartlett,Calvary,Chapel,Ba