Podcast appearances and mentions of alisha ramos

We are so excited to chat with photo director/visual cultural commentator/incredible Instagram follow Emily Keegin about her Thingies! Also: some thoughts on where to get your gift guides this year, should you not be overwhelmed with them already. Thank you for respecting our decision not to do 2024 gift guides! If you want past installments, we have five year's worth here. For the freshest stuff, check out Helen Rosner's for the New Yorker, Goop (the modern Neiman Marcus catalog?), Caroline Moss of Gee Thanks!, Alisha Ramos of Downtime, T mag, The Strategist's searchable Gift Scout, and a roundup of Substack gift guides from last year (that'll point you toward this year's too, certainly).  Emily's Thingies include Thomas Tallis polychoral music from the 1500s (Fifty Shades–coded?), spraying perfume or hand sanitizer on your armpits and vodka on your clothes, passionfruit, Madness, Rack, and Honey by Mary Ruefle, and scrolling through someone else's Instagram feed. What are your Thingies lately? Please share with us at podcast@athingortwohq.com, @athingortwohq, our Geneva, or our Substack comments! Hire with Indeed and get a $75 sponsored job credit when you use our link. Learn from the best with MasterClass and get up to 50% off when you use our link. YAY.  

  Summer is pretty much here, so we're gathering bookish friends to talk about the books they're excited to read this season!   Olivia's books I Shouldn't Be Telling You This by Chelsea Devantez. (June 4) Youthjuice by EK Sathue (June 4)    Becca's Books Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors (September 3) When the World Tips Over by Jandy Nelsonv (September 24)   Lyndsay Rush's books Sandwich by Catherine Newman (Out June 18) Should We Go Extinct? By Todd May (Out August 6) Her poetry collection, A Bit Much, is out September 17   Alisha Ramos's books Margo's Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe (June 11) The God of the Woods by Liz Moore (Out July 2)   Grace Atwood's books One-Star Romance by Laura Hankin (Out June 18) The Next Mrs. Parrish by Liv Constantine (Out June 18)   Caroline Chambers' books Summer Romance by Annabel Monaghan Big Fan by Alexandra Romanoff Her book, What to Cook When You Don't Feel Like Cooking, is out August 13   Tembe Denton-Hurst's books Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde by Alexis Pauline Gumbs Godwin by Joseph O'Neill Housemates by Emma Copley Eisenberg Her book Homebodies is out now!   Obsessions Becca: Hamptons Hotel Lobby Candle + Tiny Tates Olivia: Jocie B ASMR   What we read this week Becca: The Age of Magical Overthinking by Amanda Montell and The Paris Novel by Ruth Reichl   This Month's Book Club Pick - Such a Bad Influence by Olivia Muenter (have thoughts about this book you want to share? Call in at 843-405-3157 or email us a voice memo at badonpaperpodcast@gmail.com)   Sponsors Earth Breeze - go to earthbreeze.com/bop to cut out single-use plastic in your laundry room and claim forty percent off your subscription.   Join our Facebook group for amazing book recs & more!  Buy our Merch! Join our Geneva! Order Olivia's Book, Such a Bad Influence and see her on her book tour! Find dates and details here. Subscribe to Olivia's Newsletter! Order Becca's Book, The Christmas Orphans Club! Subscribe to Becca's Newsletter!  Follow us on Instagram @badonpaperpodcast. Follow Olivia on Instagram @oliviamuenter and Becca @beccamfreeman.  

In this episode, Funmi shares her thoughts on a recent article by Alisha Ramos, founder of @girlsnightinclub. She shares how disruption has been an unexpected blessing by allowing her to reflect on different things attached to her self-worth.Funmi also shares insight from her coach about attachment styles and how things like work become more than just that.This episode tackles the dark side of climbing the corporate ladder: selfish networking and clamoring for visibility at work. Read the article by Alisha Ramos: Who Am I Without My Ambition?An honest look at how I got through a mild career panic this year. Plus: Three lessons I've learnedhttps://downtime.substack.com/p/who-am-i-without-my-ambition?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=emailFollow  Funmi on Instagram @UpswingWomen theupswingwomen.comConnect with Funmi on Instagram @upswingwomen

Need less FOMO and more JOMO (joy of missing out)? Girls' Night In founder Alisha Ramos is here to pep you up for staying put—and not feeling bad about it. So toss off your bra, grab a face mask and get ready for some expert self-care coaching. Unladylike: A Field Guide to Smashing the Patriarchy and Claiming Your Space is available now, wherever books and audiobooks are sold. Signed copies are available at podswag.com/unladylike. Follow Unladylike on social @unladylikemedia. Subscribe to our newsletter at unladylike.co/newsletter.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We’ve been following the career of Alisha Ramos since she was in college—so, um before she technically had a career. If you haven’t spotted her two businesses Girls’ Night In, a newsletter ‘n community for women who love to stay in, and Whiled, a line of cheery, artsy puzzles, everywhere you turn recently, then your pandemic experience has been very different from ours. But before we get into it all with her: Let us discuss how dumplings (the sweatpants of food?) became such a vibe.   DUMPLINGS. In handbag form from Simon Miller, Elleme, and Emily Levine. In cartoon form thanks to Wonton in a Million. As sculpture in porcelain by Stephanie H. Shih and felt by Dumpling Mart. As a light, an ornament, and, hey, a potsticker pipe.   Alisha Ramos is up to so very much—she’s the founder of Girls’ Night In and Whiled, and she’s a very committed Swiftie and gardener on IG.   Speaking of Swifties: a conspiracy rabbithole for you—feel free to search Swiftgron on Tumblr.   The still-very-relevant Stay Home, Take Care resource the GNI team put together at the beginning of quarantine.    For some TikTok ~curation~, follow Aminatou Sow and Zara Rahim...on Instagram.   “Our Shared Unsharing” by Stella Bugbee for The Cut.    A few of Alisha’s head-clearing recs: Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, Floret, Monty Don, and The Gardens of Bunny Mellon. Plus one gardening-related one from Erica: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver.   All of our inboxes are open! Contact us at 833-632-5463, podcast@athingortwohq.com, and/or @athingortwohq.    For more of everything, get that Secret Menu—subscribe (or even give a gift).   Visit www.Hilma.co/ATHINGORWO to get the starter set with both a free gift, a beautiful tote bag designed by an amazing female artist, AND 20% off.   Slip into our new favorite workout gear, the Sweaty Betty Power Legging, for 20% off with the code ATHINGORTWO. YAY.   Produced by Dear Media

Her weekly newsletter champions self-care and mental health, while being the heart of a thriving tech company. Alisha talks about how investing $20,000 in herself led to building a massive online community that brings people together in real life. If you loved this episode, listen to How Aimee Garcia Took Charge of Her Hollywood Career and Why Pioneering Journalist Maria Hinojosa Put Herself in the Story. Show your love and become a Latina to Latina Patreon supporter!

On this episode, Indie sits down with Girls' Night In Founder Alisha Ramos, chatting about finding your calling, how timing is everything, and why work life boundaries are so much better than work life balance. Links:Girls' Night In: https://www.girlsnightin.co/Alisha's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alisharamos/GNI Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/girlsnightinclub/The Lounge: https://lounge.girlsnightin.co/Stay Home Take Care: https://www.stayhometakecare.com/

You know her and love her, it’s Alisha Ramos of Girls Night In! Alisha is here to talk all things Selling Sunset, The Babysitters Club, and rice cookers. Oh yeah, she brought a long list of recs, so you will want to visit geethanksjustboughtit.com to find out more of what we couldn’t get to on today’s episode. Phew! Alisha, we love you!(Follow Gee Thanks! on Insta: www.instagram.com/geethanksjustboughtitpod! I wanna see you there! And on Facebook! https://www.facebook.com/groups/geethanks)Mentioned On This Episode!Girls Night In: https://www.girlsnightin.co/Salux Washcloth: https://amzn.to/2E4fAYZ (also recommended by Aminatou Sow)Bluetooth Sleep Headband: https://amzn.to/3kSxWxkCuckoo Rice Cooker: https://amzn.to/31MKcXiZojirushi Rice Cooker: https://amzn.to/2CpVOXHRice Paddle: https://amzn.to/33XtpDKMPOW Headphones: https://amzn.to/30V3qLmPluto TV: https://fave.co/30UJ056 Visit www.geethanksjustboughtit.com for even more recs and shop the Gee Thanks! Store: https://www.amazon.com/shop/geethanksjustboughtitAs always, reach me at Caroline@geethanksjustboughtit.com, @geethanksjustboughtitpod on Instagram, or leave me a message at 424-245-0736. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In today’s Stepping Stone episode Ingrid and Cristina share their ins and outs for this week and reflect on Ingrid’s conversation with Alisha Ramos of Girls’ Night In. Here’s what comes up: refuge for night owls, a surprising trip to church, the dark ages of entrepreneurship, being underestimated as a professional woman, and quieting that cruel inner dialogue. Make sure you listen to Episode 7: Be Your Own Boss to hear Ingrid's interview with Alisha Ramos. https://apple.co/2RpetHb FOLLOW FOR MORE Follow One Step on Instagram @onesteppodcast Follow Ingrid on Instagram @ingridnilsen YouTube Ingrid Nilsen https://bit.ly/2J51PJE Twitter @ingridnilsen CREDITS Producer Cristina Cleveland @cristinacleveland Sound Engineer Teng Chen @tengfoodpanda

This week Ingrid talks to Alisha Ramos, founder and CEO of Girls' Night In about her journey from quitting her full-time job to pursuing her dream and starting her own business. Get ready for: breaking the mold as an entrepreneur in every way, why the internet is an incredible tool for introverted business leaders, taking risks as a risk averse person, why getting clear on your core values is essential, a tangent on exclamation points, and how to take the first step on a non-traditional career path. Stay Home Take Care stayhometakecare.com Girls' Night In: girlsnightin.co and @girlsnightinclub Alisha Ramos: @alisharamos FOLLOW FOR MORE Follow One Step on Instagram @onesteppodcast Follow Ingrid on Instagram @ingridnilsen YouTube Ingrid Nilsen Twitter @ingridnilsen CREDITS Producer Cristina Cleveland @cristinacleveland Sound Engineer Teng Chen @tengfoodpanda

Alisha Ramos, Founder and CEO of Girls Night In, and self proclaimed indoor kid/introvert,  joins us to share her journey to create her company and the ways her business has changed as it grows. We talk about starting and scaling a business, work/life balance, and its challenges as a female founder. We dish on our self care pet peeves (we all have them!), our definitions of self care, and what is next for GNI. We also talk of our love of a good newsletter and Alisha’s idea of the perfect night in.   Favorite Newsletters: Girls’ Night In A Thing or Two from Claire & Erica What To Cook This Week from The New York Times Internet Brunch Mollie Chen’s newsletter The Broadsheet The Ann Friedman Weekly Mary Laura Phillpott’s newsletter Jasmine Guillory’s newsletter The Stripe Newsletter (Subscribe at bottom) Five Smart Reads newsletter from Hitha Palepu Chips + Dips Newsletter   Obsessions: Alison Roman Dining In: Sour Cream Flatbread recipe Plush Knit Joggers for women from Old Navy   Instagram:  @marysummershafner // @laviestylehouse @romcompods   Books: He Started It by Samantha Downing The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel Beach Read by Emily Henry Untamed by Glennon Doyle If I Never Met You by Mhairi McFarlane   March Book Club Book: I’ll Give You The Sun by Jandy Nelson   Podcast: Subscribe to : Otherppl Podcast with Brad Listi (@otherppl on Twitter)   Sponsors: Book of the Month: Go to bookofthemonth.com and sign up using code BOP10 and get any book for $10! LOLA: Take 30% off your first month subscription - mylola.com and enter code BOP30 at checkout. Join our FB group for amazing book recs & more! Follow us on Instagram @badonpaperpodcast. Follow Grace on Instagram @graceatwood and her blog TheStripe.com and Becca @beccamfreeman.

Girls' Night In started as a simple but remarkable newsletter to 300 of Alisha Ramos' friends and family in 2017. It took off immediately. Now, there are more than 150,000 subscribers. As the Girls' Night In audience has grown, it’s transformed into more than just a media company. As more passionate readers came into Alisha’s world, she activated them, turning women into local book club leaders, employees and contributors. Alisha is swinging big to bring her mission of making wellness, and social wellness, available to more and more people. She quit her tech job to focus on Girls' Night In full time, and even raised venture funding. How did Alisha get “GNI” off the ground? What made the early newsletter so popular? How has she transformed the media company into a community, and how does she think about the business side? Tune in to find out. Grab your copy of  GET TOGETHER—our handbook on community-building

Alisha Ramos has risen to prominence as the Founder and CEO of Girls’ Night In—a newsletter and event series championing the ever-pressing self-care movement that is changing the way modern women approach (and make space for) wellness today. The weekly newsletter has become a digital oasis for over 150k women who’d rather stay in tonight. Furthermore, the brand’s candid and approachable voice has also provided Alisha with a platform to share her voice as a female founder who is establishing transparency and honest conversations around what it takes to build a brand today. This episode also opens with a story contributed by Erin Allweiss of No. 29 Communications.

I have a few things that I wholeheartedly recommend to anyone who will listen to me: the fancy Medjool dates from Trader Joe's, my acupressure mat, the book Station Eleven. And for the past few months, I've added Girls' Night In to that list. Girls' Night In (GNI) is an email newsletter that goes out every Friday, and it's dedicated to all things self-care and the joy of staying in. Expect to get a blend of product recommendations, buzzworthy conversation topics, and a few #longreads to kill those last few hours at your desk. It's no secret around here that I love the written word, and I have a special fascination with email newsletters in particular (in no small part because I have occasionally tried to force my friends to read my own recaps of The Bachelor by spamming their inboxes with my long-winded musings). The feeling of writing a long, thought-out email and then sending it into the internet is a special kind of vulnerability—will anyone respond? Is someone going to get that obscure Drake lyric? Did I misspell occasionally? But GNI has taken a traditionally one-way communication—the email—and brought it into a real life community. That feat is exactly why I decided I wanted to interview Olivia Rogine for our feature on community. Olivia is the Community and Experiences Lead at Girls' Night In, meaning she's responsible for bringing GNI experiences to life and create a community where members can build meaningful connections (not unlike a #Sweatworking event). Ironically, Olivia's own self-care suffered when she first began to get involved with GNI. After cold-emailing GNI founder Alisha Ramos (a move I personally identified with, since that's how I connected with Jeana way back when), Olivia began working part-time as a GNI Book Club host. But as her passion and involvement with GNI ramped up, so did her full-time work life, leading to Olivia burning the candle at both ends and neglecting her self-care priorities. Now that she's full-time at GNI, Olivia is dedicated to building an inclusive, diverse community of GNI readers. "The most important thing in building a community is building that common ground with inclusivity and empathy," she explained to me, when I asked . "Making those introductions, finding people that have commonalities, and introducing community members to one another"—those all go a long way in turning Internet strangers into real-life buddies. And as far as Olivia's own goals that she's working towards? This year, she's all about taking control over her personal finance—a form of what we referred to as "boring self-care." That goal led us to talking about how self-care is often viewed as a privileged activity; after all, the people who can take part in the most Insta-friendly self-care routines (you know EXACTLY which face mask and bubble bath posts I'm talking about) have the free time and the budget to do that performative self-care. But, Olivia pointed out, some of the most important self-care we do is free and wouldn't be that interesting to post about. Olivia, for example, loves meal planning and taking her time writing her grocery list, cooking, and knowing that she's nourishing her body for the week ahead—a ritual she developed as a child growing up in an agricultural community. I could go on and on about the intersection of self-care and community, but I think it'll be easier for you to listen to the episode yourself. You can listen to the podcast here, on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere you get your podcasts. Like us? Let us know! Leave us a rating or a review; it'd mean the world to us. And if you're obsessed with self-care and staying in on a Friday night, a) we were meant to be friends, and b) you can sign up for the Girls' Night In newsletter right here (don't be surprised if you find yourself forwarding the newsletters to your besties every single week), and fall instantly in love with their Instagram @girlsnightinclub.

Alisha Ramos had it all — a cushy, six-figure tech job, a great work/life balance, the time and money to spend at the hottest restaurants in the city. But she left all that to start her own business, Girls Night In, and ended up taking a major pay cut because of it, sometimes making enough to just cover rent. Here, she talks about how much people don’t tell you about being your own boss.Co-Hosts: Lindsey Stanberry, @lestanberry and Paco de Leon, @thehellyeahgroup Guest: Alisha Ramos (Girls Night In, @girlsnightinclub) See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The On She Goes team chats with Alisha Ramos of "Girls Night In," all about satisfying your wanderlust but keeping your personal peace! Like most people, the On She Goes team loves to get out and see the world, but also REALLY enjoys staying home and relaxing. You want to see the Mona Lisa but you hate large crowds. You love the idea of taking a road trip through the South of France but can't stand the notion of forced car games. You really want to support your besties big bachelorette party in Vegas, but you also can't stand the idea of forcing yourself to be social with a crew of drunk girls. We will discuss, how to maintain your peace and self-care while traveling for non-extroverts. FOLLOW Girls Night In: instagram.com/girlsnightinclub FOLLOW Alisha Ramos: instagram.com/alisharamos

Sonia delivers a weekend debrief on ALPFA’s fundraising gala. We hear from Female Founder School Co-Founders Katie Doherty and Brittney Riley about their work to empower early stage founders with the skills and community to build successful companies. Colleen interviews Alisha Ramos, the Founder and CEO of Girls’ Night In, a community of women who’d rather stay in tonight. Our hosts wrap up with a conversation about Michelle Obama’s book tour comments on the strategy of leaning in.

That’s it: it’s our season finale—and our last episode of No You Go, ever. Really. But don’t worry, we’re not quitting the podcast game. We’re coming back January 10—with a new name that, well, we’re really feelin’. In this episode: we ask each other tough questions about our first year as podcasters—like what was great (spending time together! Learning new skills!), what was hard (uhhhhh long answer), and what we’d suggest to anyone looking to start a new jam. The highlights: How to celebrate a milestone while in the middle of some major burnout What to do when you end an interview and realize there’s no audio Why we wish we’d made friends with other podcasters a lot sooner (and what you can learn from our mistakes) Plus, we reveal our brand-new name: Strong Feelings—and talk about why we decided to rebrand the show. There’s so much great stuff we want to dig into next season on Strong Feelings, like unfucking your work life, trading #selfcare for true self love, facing our own bullshit so that we can be better feminists and activists, and what the power of female friendship can really do. OH! And we want to hear from you, too! If you have strong feelings about something, we set up a hotline for you to share them. Leave us a voicemail at (267) 225–5923. > Strength and emotions are often seen as being at odds with each other, and something that I really think we do on the show—and that I want to do on the show—is demonstrate that having feelings and talking about those feelings is strong. That’s a strong thing to do. > —Sara Thanks for listening to NYG this year, and we hope you’ll join us next year for Strong Feelings. New episodes start January 10! If you’re already subscribed to the show, no sweat—NYG will simply become Strong Feelings in your podcast app in a few days. We’ll also be moving our site over to strongfeelings.co later this week, and updating all our social, too. And while you wait for new episodes, definitely sign up for I Love That, our biweekly newsletter—next edition comes this Friday! Sponsors This episode of NYG is brought to you by: Harvest, makers of awesome software to help you track your time, manage your projects, and get paid. Try it free, then  use code NOYOUGO to get 50% off  your first paid month. Shopify, a leading global commerce platform that’s building a world-class team to define the future of entrepreneurship. Visit shopify.com/careers for more. Transcript Sara Wachter-Boettcher Shout out to Harvest, our awesome sponsor once again. Harvest makes time tracking and project planning software for freelancers, tiny teams, huge corporations, and everyone in between—even me! Check them out at getharvest.com, and when you upgrade to a paid account, use code “noyougo” to get 50 percent off your first month. That’s getharvest.com, code “no you go.” [intro music plays for 12 seconds] Katel LeDû Hey everyone. I’m Katel. SWB And I’m Sara! KL And you’re listening to the season finale of No, You Go— SWB —the show about building satisfying careers and businesses, KL —getting free of toxic bullshit, SWB —and living your best feminist life at work! And speaking of best lives, Katel, welcome to our last 2018 show! How are you feeling? KL So, I seriously cannot believe that it’s been a year and I’m really excited about next season and next year…but…I have not been doing super great—just in the last week or so—and I’m feeling a lot of feelings about that. SWB Okay, so before we celebrate, [laughs] I think we have to talk about that. [KL laughs] KL Yeah, so I was really kind of struggling last week and trying to keep on top of everything and just feeling like I wasn’t doing a great job at anything. I wasn’t doing anything well or right and I was also beating myself up over it, which felt even worse. And over the weekend, I pretty much spent all day Sunday crying. SWB Oh, no! [KL laughs] I’m so sorry, Katel! [KL sighs] KL So, I mean it felt good because I’m a person who likes to cry and that actually feels good because it’s a big release for me. SWB Ughh same. I totally love to cry. [KL laughs] I do cry a lot. I definitely cry a few times a week. KL Yeah, totally. But it also felt terrible because I kept thinking about how excited I should be and how ready I should feel about wrapping up this season and heading into everything we’re doing next and next year. And honestly, I sat down to write some notes for today’s show and all I wrote was that I feel burned out and I don’t know what to do about it. And then I just was like, “okay, what is my plan here?” I do know what to do next in these moments, but I have to take those steps. So, I’ve gotta talk to my people. I got to talk to my partner and my therapist and you. And I knew I just needed to say some of those words out loud. SWB And I’m so glad that you did because I really want to know how you are and it’s A) because I care about you and I care about how you feel—I want you to feel good. And B) if things aren’t working for the show, then we have to pause and talk about it, even when that’s weird or hard. If we don’t talk about it, how are we going to have the show be meaningful and relatable and real? It’s going to start feeling fake— [2:46] KL Yeah. SWB —and obviously we don’t want that. KL No. SWB And also, something I think about a lot is that it takes a lot to put together this show—we spent a lot of time on it. And so, it’s way too much time, [KL laughs] if it’s not going to be real, right? KL Right. SWB It feels like we need to get through that kind of stuff honestly, otherwise it’s not worth it to invest this time—and obviously, I want it to be worth it. So, I’m really glad you told me. KL Yeah, and I think that is part of my plan is just connecting with people—letting people know that I’m struggling. I know that if I tell Jon, my partner, he will block for me. And I know that if I tell you, you’re going to block for me too in whatever way that is most helpful. And I know that if I go and talk to my therapist, she’s going to be there for me. She’s going to say, “that sucks” and she’s also going to give me some tools to help me get through whatever I’m dealing with. And she knows pretty much everything that’s happening with me, so she asks me to think about my optimal self. When I think about who that person is, what does she need? And to think about what that person needs and what am I missing right now? So, that really helped me just kind of think about what I’m missing and what I need to prioritize and one of those things is space and downtime. SWB Yes, I think that we all need down time, obviously, but it’s always hard to actually consistently do for yourself. And then the other thing that I was thinking about as you were talking about feeling burned out and you weren’t doing great at everything…I think something that’s been extra stressful for me the last few weeks at least—and I suspect maybe for you too—is that we have been working on all of this kind of side planning for what we want to do next year. We’re going to have a big reveal later in the show. And so I feel like I’ve been kind of carrying around a lot of that with me, both the extra work of planning for it, as well as just kind of not talking about it. And so I’m hoping that when we talk about on this show, that means we won’t have to hold on to it anymore. KL Yeah, I feel exactly the same way. It’s been very exciting [KL laughs] and very stressful. So, I can’t wait to just talk about it. SWB Before we get to that though, first we want to talk a little bit more about the year that is about to end, so things we learned—which was a lot of things personally that I learned—and also what that means for what we want to do next and where we want to grow. So, is there something that you just can’t stop thinking about that you heard a guest say this year? [5:06] KL Yeah. When I sort of started to think about this, I thought back to one of our very early episodes with Eileen Webb when she said why should only work get my best brain? And that has been stuck in my brain ever since that episode. And I think we talked about it a little bit on the show—we kind of recapped it—and I think it’s something that has come up a lot and we’ve sort of come back to a bunch of times. So, I love that something so early on has kind of carried its way through. SWB Yeah, I don’t think we’ve explicitly brought it back up, but I feel like it’s been lurking there in the back of my head. And you’re totally right, and it’s such a good concept, so thank you, Eileen. [KL laughs] KL Yeah. Alright so, Sara, what was harder than you thought it would be? SWB Oh my gosh. [KL laughs] You know what was really hard for me? Feeling like an amateur. [KL sighs] KL Yeah, I get that. SWB I don’t think I had done something that made me feel so out of my depth for a while. And that’s probably good for me! Like when I took that pottery class a couple of years ago, [KL laughs] and I was really bad at it. I think that was good for me to be bad at it and to just enjoy doing it anyway—enjoy doing it without feeling successful at it. I think that was good. But the difference is that like in this particular circumstance, I am doing something that I came in with no experience in and I’m doing it really publicly. And so it’s not like my pottery class where I’m like, “okay, I made some shitty pottery [KL laughs] and I can keep that to myself.” [SWB laughs] KL [laughing] Yeah. SWB It’s like I made some shitty pottery and now I’m going to, what? Sell it to the world at this art fair? KL Yeah. I’m going to publish it. SWB Right? And so I don’t think our podcast is shitty, don’t get me wrong. But I do think that we’re doing something that we hadn’t done before and that was tough. And I feel like over and over again, I was reminded of how I was an amateur. If you remember very early on we were interviewing Alisha Ramos, the founder of Girls Night In? KL Mhm. SWB Okay, so we hadn’t quite figured out at that time that in order to do that interview, we had multiple people signed into our recording service Zencastr that does separate tracks for each party. And that if you do that, you can’t all be in the same room because you will get your voice coming in over the airwaves, as well as the voice in the room, and it’s so disorienting. KL Yeah. SWB So, remember that Jenn was leading the interview, so we left her [KL laughs] in the office space [KL laughs] where she was recording and we moved to a couch on a different floor and huddled over a laptop— [7:38] KL Yeah. SWB —and I remember just feeling so out of it. KL Yeah, and then even you and I on that couch were sharing headphones. [laughs] So, it was just super awkward and we were like “is this right?” [laughs] SWB And so, okay, that was when we weren’t consistently figuring out where we were going to record and how we are going to record. And I remember thinking, “well, I won’t make that mistake again,” [KL laughs] which is great—okay, fine, we learned something. KL Yeah. SWB However, I felt like very week we were making new mistakes. [laughs] KL [laughing] Yes. SWB Every week we’d stumbled upon something we hadn’t done before and that was hard. And I had a hard time balancing the idea that on the one hand, you got to learn somehow and you can’t learn unless you do it, with the idea that we wanted to make something that was good enough that people would want to subscribe to it and that it would be important to people and valuable to people. KL Mhm. SWB And so how do we make something that’s as good as a podcast we love without the experience [laughing] of the podcasters we love? KL [laughing] Yeah. SWB I feel like finding that balance and finding a place where I was both putting in enough time and energy to get better at it and try to make sure that the product was good, but without beating myself up that it was not perfect—which it wasn’t, sorry everyone. KL [laughing] Yeah. SWB Okay, Katel, I have one for you. KL Okay. SWB Is there anything that you learned from a guest this year that you feel like changed the way you look at your work or the way you look at running the show? KL You know, when we talked to—just recently—the authors of New Erotica for Feminists, I really loved hearing how they collaborate and how they support each other and have each other’s backs. And we heard that they can legit break down in front of each other and they know that that’s not going to change anything. If anything, they’re going to just rally around each other and figure out how to make it work. I think when we asked them about how they work together—when you asked that question, you kind of expect them to be like, “oh, we have these stumbling blocks, we have these challenges”—and I’m sure that they did—but they were like, no, we work really well together and that’s why this is fun. And that’s why we made something we really love and we’re really proud of. So, I loved hearing such a positive story about that and I think it just made me think about and reflect on our relationship and how well we work together. And that’s made things feel good and easy, even in the face of [laughs] some of the things we didn’t feel like we were so good at. [10:01] SWB Yeah, and I think hearing from them, I really heard the trust that they had for each other. And I think that that’s valued in comedy writing that if you’re going to work with comedy writing partners, you have to be able to give each other hard feedback if the comedy is not working. And that if you’re going to collaborate on jokes, then there’s a lot of riffing off each others ideas until you figure out something good. And that bringing that spirit into their work meant that they had that collaboration because they trusted that if somebody was like, “hey, I wasn’t really meaning to go there“— like, ”eeegh, I don’t think this is working”—that that’s okay and right to say and that’s not mean or tearing other people down. It is all in the spirit of making it better. And so I like to think about that trust that they had for each other and think about, you know, the kind of trust that we need to bring to our relationship and the kind of trust that I’ve had in the best working relationships I’ve ever had. KL Okay, so I’ve got a question for you. What’s something that you think went horribly wrong? SWB Uhhh! [KL laughs] I don’t think talk about all the negative stuff, but I will. [KL laughs] Okay, so related actually to feeling amateurish—when we had recording issues, that was really tough for me. KL Yeah. SWB And we had a little bit of a spate of them this summer and fall. And what was especially tough about that is that I felt like we had hit our stride and I was like, “I thought we were past this!” [KL laughs] And then a few things happened where I was just like, “oh, no.” One of them was the time we were trying to record with Cindy Gallop. So, Cindy is a pro. She has done a lot of interviews and she’s so sure of her messages, right? And when we got her on the line to record, we were having some trouble with Zencastr. And it’s a little bit like a Google Hangout—everybody gets onto this line, but everybody is also on their own separate line for the recording. It’s pretty cool. Except that the VoIP—so like the internet connection—screwed up like three different times and we had to stop the recording and restart it, which I felt so silly about, and then eventually we actually switched to using my conference line to record, [KL laughs] which was like a whole, “okay, now we’re going to need you to do this instead.” And, of course, that has some other issues with it like you can’t record on separate tracks, so voices get on top of each other. Anyway, through all of this, Cindy was a pro, but I remember just feeling like, “she must think we are a mess.” [KL laughs] It was kind of traumatic! [12:17] KL I know. It felt very dire in the moment [laughs] because we were just like, “oh my gosh, are we gonna get through this?” [laughs] SWB I know. And I felt so out of control— KL Yeah. SWB And that’s one of the the things that’s hard about when you have a technical issue is that it makes you feel out of control and I of course hate that. KL And it eats up time, which just feels like it adds to that pressure. SWB Yeah! And especially because I really value the time that our guests give us— KL Yeah. SWB —and I don’t want to go over the amount of time we’ve blocked. We try to be careful about blocking enough time. I think we learned a little bit about that early on. But I feel nervous as soon as we start having problems that are making us eat into that hour that they’ve given to spend with us. KL Yeah. SWB And then remember after? Okay after Cindy— KL Ughh. Yeah. SWB —then, if you remember, we had Keah Brown on the show, who was completely wonderful— KL Amazing. SWB —but what you don’t know if you weren’t here for the recording, [both laughs] is that when we first tried to record with her, she was having all of these mic connection issues or Zencastr wasn’t identifying her mic or whatever. It went round and round, we spent a long time on it, and she was so great through all of it. But finally it seemed like we got it worked out, Zencastr was like, “yep, we hear the mic.” When we started recording, it was showing little sound waves for her voice. And then we listen to the recording later… KL Ughhhh SWB It was nothing but static! [KL makes a horrified noise] 45 minutes of static. KL That is—that still makes me cringe. [laughs] SWB Thankfully, Keah is amazing and she was like, “let’s redo the interview.” KL Yeah… SWB And so we just redid it and, of course, she was awesome again. She might have been even better the second time. KL I know. SWB So I try not to think about what little gems she happened to say the first time that we are missing now because the interview is great and she’s great. But those things are a really good way to erode your confidence. And I started looking into more of this, the deeper we got in. The only real way to a 100 percent prevent this stuff it seems is if you’re booking studio space and everybody’s going into a studio. And sadly we’re not quite there yet. And also you need to have guests who are willing to take that extra time to go into a studio— KL Yeah. [14:18] SWB —which is also, you know, kind of a lot of burden for them. And so we’ve talked to a few people about what they do and there’s lots of different things that people have suggested. We’ve heard from people who actually mail their guests high-quality mics and then expect them to mail them back and hopefully they usually do. We’ve talked people who use other kinds of services. But the biggest thing we heard was that we’re not alone in having these kinds of issues and that sometimes sound quality sucks. And sometimes you have flubs and it’s hard to get rid of and, you know, we’re not on a mega budget—we’re not Serial—[KL laughs] we’re doing what we can here I think something that I’ve realized is that when you have a tech issue with a guest, it can kind of go one of two ways. Either it can be really alienating for the guest where they’re like, “what’s going on” or it feels like they’re having their time wasted, or it can be a way to kind of take the wall down and be like, “oh, we’re all in this together,” you know? KL Yeah, exactly. You can kind of build up a little bit of a rapport because you’re like “uhhh this is terrible but we’re gonna we’re gonna figure it out.” SWB Yeah. And so, you know, some of that depends on the guest, but I’m thinking about what can I do when there is a tech issue to create more of that space for it to be something that we get through together and not something that makes them feel alienated. So, I’m hopefully going to get better at that and not feel so fucking awkward [both laughs] whenever there’s a tech issue. KL [laughing] Yeah. SWB So, Katel, I do have another question for you. KL All right, hit me. SWB What’s something that was really surprising to you about doing the show? KL Well, I think back to the very first few episodes that we did when we were still figuring out how we were going to have the show produced. And we decided okay, we’re going to we’re going to work with someone to do that and also get transcriptions done. But you and I spent some time doing the transcriptions at first. SWB Super fun. [KL laughs] KL Super, super fun! SWB Much love to people who do transcription regularly. KL Absolutely. And I just remember thinking this is really uncomfortable for me to listen to my own voice this much and I thought like, “this is either going to make me feel really anxious about moving forward and kind of getting over some of my own hang ups I have about listening to my own voice or it’s going to be really good.” And what I found is that it didn’t take me very long to get used to hearing my own voice and I feel really good about that. Now I think just something about knowing that I was going to have to listen to my voice made me think, “this is my voice and that’s what it sounds like and all I can do—and all I want to do—is get better at telling stories and articulating the things I want to say.” And, I mean, the other hard part of that was how hard it is to articulate some of the things that I want to say and some of the stories that I want to tell. So, I think just having it recorded added a little bit of pressure there. So, it was surprising. [17:14] SWB Listening to your own voice is tough— KL [laughing] Yeah. SWB —but I like your voice. KL Well, I like yours. [laughs] SWB Thank you. I feel totally numb to it now because I’ve listened to it so much. KL Yeah. SWB So I’m just like, “literally whatever.” KL Yeah. SWB Watching myself on video, I still find more challenging. KL [laughing] Yeah. SWB I’ve done it. I recommend it for anybody who wants to get over some of their self shame issues. Once you can make yourself numb-er to that [KL laughs] I feel like a lot of stuff gets better, but it’s not easy. KL Yeah. Alright. So, even though we didn’t always feel like pros along the way, we did learn a lot of stuff. What advice would you give to someone trying to start a podcast? SWB Find a community. KL Mhmm. SWB That is something that I don’t think we thought enough about or did enough for until later in the game than I want to admit. I think we got pretty heads down working on the show. And also, you know, I definitely felt like I had a strong community in some of the other parts of my professional life. I had all these women that I would turn to who worked in my field, but it didn’t occur to me that I didn’t really have other people to turn to who did podcasting and who wanted to talk about that. It wasn’t until we went to Werk It that I felt like I sort of saw what I was missing, [laughs] which was this community of women podcasters who were sharing ideas and sharing stories and experiences and were really generous with each other. And [laughing] that was 11 months in. KL [laughing] Yeah. Well. [SWB laughs] SWB So, we’re still building on that whole community thing. So, if you are starting to think about doing something—a podcast or any kind of side thing—I would say definitely find some of that community earlier than we did because I really think that that kind of support would have been really valuable to us. And it’s going to be valuable now. I know that we are following up on so many conversations from people we met there and already it feels really different. KL Mhm. SWB And I think particularly because podcasting is pretty male-dominated still. KL Yeah. SWB And so, I mean I listen to podcasts I have men on them. [laughs] I enjoy certain men in my life, but I feel like being a woman in podcasting, some of the stakes are different, some of my interests are different, and there’s also just not enough of us, and so finding that community I think has been hugely valuable. So, whatever it is that you want to do—it doesn’t matter if it’s podcasting or not—I think don’t skimp on finding community is definitely advice that I will be taking in the future and you may like to. [19:34] KL Yeah. I think that’s great advice. SWB What about you? Do you have any advice? KL I think give yourself a little room to stumble and know that that happens and it’s okay and you might have to [laughs] redo something here and there. Also just tapping into your networks and not forgetting that those folks are there and that the people who support you are going to support you in this new thing. You don’t get support unless you ask for it and tell people what you’re doing. SWB Yes, definitely. I think talking more with people about what we’re doing is so important and it’s definitely what I was really getting out of that whole community thing too. KL Yeah. SWB Okay, so last question. What do you most want to improve next year? KL So, I definitely want to develop the way that I tell stories and just how I share the things that I want to share. And I want to chip away at my fear of public speaking and this has been like such a huge step in that direction. And I know that I’m not in front of a crowd, but you know what I’m saying. And you have certainly helped me to do that. I think I loved doing our live event, so I would love to do more of that, and just do this a little bit more in front of people and just develop—develop the show a little bit more. SWB So, I think that really dovetails with what I want to improve next year— KL Yeah? SWB —because I also want to do more joining of groups and attending events and doing live shows. And I think part of it for me is even evolving how I think about the show and sort of where it sits in my life. So, when we started this I kind of thought it would be like, “oh it’s a side thing, it’s going to take me a few hours a week.” And I mean, maybe I thought it was going to be more than a few hours a week, but I very much thought of it as something that was kind of a smaller thing over here. What I’ve realized over the course of this year is a couple things. One is that it takes a lot of time to do a good job. It takes a lot of time to grow and evolve. It takes a lot of time to work on the stuff that’s hard like marketing and promoting it or finding sponsors. All of that stuff is time consuming. And I’ve also really love doing the show. KL Yeah. SWB And so I think I need to be honest about like, “okay, this is going to be a substantial part of my life and this is not some little side gig, but it is actually a meaningful place in my professional world and it deserves care and feeding and nurturing.” Also though, it maybe needs to make more money, so I can get more time. [both laugh] [21:52] KL I was gonna say, “aww, I love that, that’s so…thats so beautiful”— [laughs] SWB [laughing] It was so beautiful until I said it needs to make more money? [laughs] KL No, no. That is also beautiful, I agree! [laughs] SWB Well, I am so hyped to be getting into next year and I cannot wait to tell everybody what next year is going to look like! [music fades in, plays for five seconds, and fades out] Career Talk with Shopify SWB Hey, it’s Sara ducking in for a quick break to talk about careers with our friends at Shopify. This week, they want us to tell you all about a couple job they’re super excited about. So, the first one is being the UX Lead for their payments and balanced team. Okay, so what that means is that you would be leading a team of researchers, designers, front-end developers, and content strategists. And what you would be doing is trying to help make financial information simpler and more understandable for Shopify’s customers, so that entrepreneurs around the world aren’t bowled over by confusing jargon and they can actually, you know, understand how their money looks. Oh, and it’s based in Montreal, which is just lovely. And then the other job Shopify is really, really hoping to find some amazing candidates for is based in Ottawa, which I actually got to visit a year or two ago for the first time and it’s so pretty there. I even took a run around some river paths and ended up crossing from Ontario into Quebec on my jog, which is something you could do everyday if you live there. But about the job, okay. So, this is another UX Lead position and this time it’s for Shopify Home, which is the most prominent artificial intelligence product at Shopify. And so in this role, you’d be responsible for actually redesigning that, which seems like a pretty big deal. But you wouldn’t be doing it alone. You’d be working with peers in product management, engineering, and data science and you’d be working together to figure out strategy. And then you’d be leading a team. That team would have product designers, content strategists, and researchers on it to help bring that all to life. So, that’s it! Two amazing new roles open right now at Shopify. Get all the details on these and over a hundred other open positions at shopify.com/careers. That’s shopify.com/careers. [music fades in, plays for five seconds, and fades out] [23:49] Welcome to… Strong Feelings! SWB So, it is time! It’s time for the big news part of the show. This is not just the season finale of No, You Go. This is the last No, You Go show ever. KL Nooo! SWB Okay, don’t freak out because you actually know what’s happening. [both laugh] Okay, we are coming back in January, we are just switching things up a little bit when we do. So, as we talked about last week in our episode, our third co-host, Jenn, decided to leave the show. And after that happened, me and Katel were really unsure what we were going to do. And then we happened to be on this long weird car trip one day—if you read the newsletter, you may remember this. Katel had to be in court to support someone who was filing a protective order. And so the court date was 9am, two states away and I’d literally had knee surgery [KL laughs] four days before…this is a terrible math problem! KL [laughing] Yeah. SWB 9am, two states away, four days of knee surgery. [both laugh] So, I was like, Katel, you cannot drive this five hour round trip drive to go do this horrible task alone. [KL laughs] You just cannot do that. KL Yeah. Oh my gosh, we had to leave so early, I couldn’t even pick us up fancy coffee—I had to make it and bring it. But you were such a goddamn trooper and you coming with me made that really long day just so much more bearable. And something I think a lot about is that you are someone in my life who shows up. SWB I do try to be somebody who shows up. [KL laughs] That’s definitely something that’s important to me and I think a lot about how powerful it is to show up for someone else when they really need it. And sometimes when they’re not even asking for it and then they realize later that it really helped them. And so I’m really glad that I did because I will say that on the way back from that trip—we’d gone to court and this whole thing and there was just so much emotional exhaustion in the car on the way back. KL Yeah. SWB And there was just so much going on. And I was really glad I was there because we could kind of decompress and you could process stuff out loud. We could talk about it. But also it was like the eighth hour [KL laughs] of the stressful fucking day that started at 5:30 in the morning. And so one of the things that came out of that totally exhausted state was, maybe we should change the name of the show and let No, You Go be something we did with Jenn and sort of have a fresh start with just us. KL Yeah, totally. I remember sort of starting that conversation by asking, “okay, what if we change the name? What what could it be? What direction would we even go in?” SWB Yeah, that was really helpful for me because at first I was actually a little nervous about changing the name because it felt like, “oh my god, that’s so much work,” or are we just creating more problems for ourselves? KL [laughing] Right. SWB But when you were like, “well, what if?” it allowed me to think about ideas without feeling like this was something we had to do or feeling like there was pressure. KL Right, exactly. And I definitely hadn’t considered it that much until then and then when we were in the car together, we thought, okay, let’s spend some some of this ride home brainstorming and if we come up with something that we love, we’ll figure out what to do next with it. SWB So, we did come up with something that we love, but before we tell you what that is, Katel, do you remember any of the names that we came up with that we did not go with? [26:54] KL Oh my gosh, I don’t! SWB Well, you were driving. KL [laughing] Yeah exactly! SWB Its okay, I have some notes. Let me let me share some notes with you. KL [laughing] Oh gosh, oh gosh. SWB So, the first one. Definitely a pass…which was, “In It Together.” [KL laughs] I mean…yeah! KL I mean yes, accurate! SWB But it’s a little too on the nose. KL [laughing] Yes. SWB I have no actual recollection of talking about this, [KL laughs] I was a little surprised to see this in my notes. KL [laughing] Oh gosh. SWB It must have been one of those things we wrote down going like, “this is bad.” KL Yeah. SWB “Talk It Out.” KL Oh hmm. Yeah, that’s like, you know, Saved by the Bell era. [laughs] SWB It’s a Saved by the Bell era local daytime TV show— KL [laughing] Yes. SWB —where your local celebrities get on to “Talk It Out” about the issues of the day. KL Or it’s like the Saved by the Bell school radio show. [both laugh] SWB Okay, pass! [both laugh] Okay, another one I don’t remember at all…“Sure Thing.” [KL laughs] KL Oh my god. SWB I don’t know! KL That sounds…problematic, I think. [both laugh] SWB Okay, there was some better stuff too. Okay, so here’s one. It wasn’t quite right, but I really loved the idea and I still love the idea because I think it’s definitely us: “Make Trouble.” KL Mmm! Yeah, I do remember that now that you say it and I liked it too. SWB Okay, and that one led to one that I actually still do kind of love. I would listen to a podcast that was named this—“Big Trouble.” KL Ooh, yeah. I like that too. SWB I mean, “Big Trouble”! I’d listen to a show called “Big Trouble.” KL Yeah, absolutely. SWB But that’s not what we’re calling the show because at some point we were in the car, we were kind of bouncing things back and forth and I said something like, “I have strong feelings about this.” And I remember just sort of pausing and being like, “wait… ‘Strong Feelings?’ [KL laughs]—is that…is that a name?” [KL laughs] KL Yes, and I think we even said it out loud over and over like a dozen times just to kind of, you know, get a feel for it. And then I feel like it clicked and I love that there was this very literal duality in the words. Like, “strong” and “feelings,” but also we have strong feelings about a lot of things. [29:02] SWB Yeah, I do. [KL laughs] I think that strength and emotions are often seen as being at odds with each other and something that I really think we do on the show—and that I want to do on the show, is demonstrate that having feelings and talking about those feelings is strong. That’s a strong thing to do. And so I feel like it was a big moment to have that click into place. And if you remember, we were still in the car and I actually pulled out my laptop—again, Katel was driving—I pulled out my laptop and I started making the shittiest little mockup of a show tile that had our faces on it and “Strong Feelings” in big, bold type and it was not at all right. It was not at all the cover art that we are going to release later this week. KL No. SWB But I remember looking at it and being like, “oh my God.” And you were like, “yes!” And so we sat on this name for a few days and we ran it by some friends and people that we trusted and we just sort of thought through how much work is it really going to be to change things. Spoiler: kind of a lot. [KL laughs] But we were so hyped about it still that here we are! Katel, we are “Strong Feelings”! KL Ahh I’m so excited. It’s so exciting to just share this with all of you. And yeah, this is awesome. And it feels like a lot is changing—or maybe that’s just us—but I’m really excited that even though we have a new name and a new look, were not changing too much about the show, it’s just evolving, like we are! And we’re still going to interview an amazing guest on each episode, we’re still fired up by our Fuck Yeahs—and mostly we’re going to be just digging in deeper on things like unfucking our work lives. And we get a lot of mail about this—even just in our listener survey we launched last week—we’ve had people ask us about how to be ambitious without beating yourself up all the time. And that is definitely part of unfucking your work life and your career, for sure. And just finding the stuff that you want, and finding joy in pursuing it, and not buying into all the really toxic bullshit out there that just gets in our way. And I think actually our January season premiere guest will get into some of that. SWB Yes! And then I also want to talk about some work stuff that’s often not in conversations for quote unquote professional women. Like, for example, sex work. You know, we had Cindy Gallop on talking about sex tech and that was great. But specifically here what I mean is talking about sex work itself, like as a job people do to earn money. I think a lot about how activists in that space are always reiterating that sex work is work, which is very simple and it’s like, “sure it’s right there in the name.” But what that means, which is: sex work is labor. People deserve to be paid for their labor. They deserve to have a safe space. They deserve not to be exploited. And that we have so much in our culture that marginalizes sex workers and that is all about sort of indicting them on a personal level, as opposed to changing the systems that make so much of that work exploitive. And so if we’re going to have a conversation about work, and we’re going to try to have a feminist conversation about work, that we definitely need to make sure that our topics include sex work. So, I want to dig into some touchy subjects like that, some things that people maybe haven’t thought enough about, and that I hope that I can learn more about. [32:10] KL Yeah, absolutely, that we haven’t thought about. Another thing that I’m really excited to dig into more, are issues for parents and families. We have someone coming up to talk about family leave policy and we definitely want to hear more from moms and parents in general about what it’s like for them since we are not…parents or families. SWB Yes. Oh, and another thing I definitely want to do—I really want to keep talking about what it means to take care of ourselves, like take care of our fragile little brains and bodies. You know, what do we do when we’re burned out? What do we do when we cry all day on Sunday? KL [laughing Yeah. SWB I feel like 2018 was a year where the kind of hashtag self-care reached a fever pitch. Self-care was getting sold to me in almost every single place I turned. KL Ughh, yeah. SWB And it was like a zillion bath bombs and face masks. And don’t get me wrong, bath bombs and face masks are fine. KL Yes. SWB They’re pleasant. Look, I’m not shaming you for enjoying a bath. Take all the baths you want. But I do think that there’s been so much emphasis on sort of productizing self-care instead of talking about, how do you actually nurture and protect and nourish yourself in a world that is constantly trying to drag you down, or tell you that you’re not enough, or that your face or your body are bad and shameful in all of the different ways? And that’s also trying to tell you that you don’t deserve safety, or you don’t deserve rights, that we’re going to put a fucking sexual assaulter on the Supreme Court? KL [sighs] Yeah. SWB You know, how do we actually take care of ourselves in the face of that? And so I want to keep talking about, what do you do to find joy and to believe that you deserve to have that joy, in this world that is so often so fucked up? That’s what I want to talk about. KL Yeah. I think that’s so important because self care should be whatever you need it to be and it shouldn’t be like, “now you’re fucking up self-care” [both laugh] because it’s being sold to you. So, okay, we have a lot we’re thinking about, but we want to hear more. So, if you have strong feelings about something we actually set up a hotline for you to share them. Leave us a voicemail at (267) 225–5923. SWB Yes, please leave us voicemails—and we’ll put it in the recording too, but if you want to have your voicemail potentially shared on the show, you can let us know. If you want it to be anonymous and never shared, that’s totally fine. But we really want to hear from you, so we hope that that will be one other avenue that you can do that. And also look for our new look out later this week. So, we’ll have a new URL—that’s strongfeelings.co. We will try to make sure all of our redirects work correctly though, so if you forget, no worries. And if you’re already subscribed to No, You Go, don’t worry about that either because the name of the show is just going to update in your listening app. So, it’ll go to “Strong Feelings” and you don’t have to do anything to make sure you keep on getting the show. But it’s going to move to “Strong Feelings,” we’re going to change everything over. And it’s pretty exciting because me and Katel did a photoshoot [KL laughs] we got a new logo and maybe that’s only exciting to us, but I think we look pretty cute. [35:10] KL Yeah, we do. SWB So, welcome to “Strong Feelings,” and thank you so much for listening this year! [music fades in, plays for five seconds, and fades out] Fuck Yeah of the Week KL All right, so something that is absolutely still sticking around is our Fuck Yeah of the Week. And I think this time we’re going to talk about what are we most proud of from this year? SWB Oh, fuck yeah. [KL laughs] All right. I want to give a fuck yeah to something that might sound a little bit mundane at first. I want to give a fuck yeah to consistency. [KL laughs] KL I love it, tell me more. SWB Okay, it sounds boring. But given that we’ve never done anything like this before, given that it’s a lot of work, given that there was a lot of churn with what’s happening in our professional lives like travel and like I had this knee surgery, given that Jenn decided to leave the show during the year—there was just a lot going on. Given all of that, we got this show out weekly, pretty consistently on the schedule we had planned to from the beginning. We are going to end the year with 38 episodes of the show. KL Wow. SWB Yeah, and that’s pretty good. We started kind of late in January and we’re only going to mid-December. So, it’s like 11 months—38 episodes. That’s— KL That’s a lot. SWB Yeah, and I’m so proud of that. I’m super proud of that. And I’m also proud of just sort of feeling like we’re starting to hit a groove. We felt that at different points and then— KL Sure. SWB —got a little destabilized here and there. But nevertheless, I feel really proud of that work, I feel really proud of the consistency, and I feel like it’s really easy to start something with a lot of enthusiasm and then to sort of peter out as you go. But I keep finding new reasons to love what we’re doing and to get excited about what we’re doing and consistently finding new ways to improve and learn and grow. [KL laughs] There’s a lot of stuff I want to keep getting better at. So, I am so proud of that! I’m proud of sticking with it and I am proud that I feel like we have lined up a 2019 that’s going to be fucking great. KL Yeah, me too. I’m very excited about sharing all of that. That makes me think of what I’m proud of, and that is how well we work together. And I know we talked about that a lot, but it’s such a huge part of why we love doing the show and why we want to make it as good as we can. And I think just like finding an even deeper friendship through this other thing that we do together has been so cool because I think there is just always a lot of opportunities to get tripped up on little things in something like this and just lose sight of what’s important. And I’m just proud of how much I’ve grown through this, and how much I’ve learned, and how much our friendship has grown. [37:48] SWB I can’t lose sight of what’s important because I can literally see from here. [KL laughs] KL I mean, we can see each other’s eyeballs, that’s pretty much it. SWB Well, fuck yeah! What a year! What an accomplishment. And fuck yeah to everybody who’s been listening— KL Yeah. SWB —honestly, you all are so rad. We sent out a listener survey last week like we talked about earlier and we’ve been getting such amazing feedback. There are definitely some places we want to improve— KL Yeah. SWB —but we’ve also been hearing so many stories of people who have found what we’ve been doing helpful and valuable to them. So, thank you, thank you, thank you for listening. KL Thank you so much. SWB Thank you for letting us know. Thank you for sharing with your friends and hopefully thank you for sticking around for Strong Feelings! KL Yeah, definitely. Well, that’s it for this very last episode of No, You Go. NYG is recorded in our home city of Philadelphia and produced by Steph from EDITAUDIO. Our theme music is by The Diaphone. We’re taking a little holiday break, but we’ll be back as Strong Feelings starting January 10th. So, definitely keep listening and you will love what we have in store. In the meantime, make sure to sign up for our newsletter, I love that. It’s an every-other-Friday treat! See you again next year! [laughs] SWB Bye! KL [laughing] Bye! [music fades in, plays alone for 32 seconds, and fades out]

This week, Doree discusses the pessimism she's feeling about the IVF process and Kate shares how she set up an altar in her bedroom. Then they reveal their 6-month intentions to each other, which include career goals, spirituality, and "live, laugh, love." Seriously. Later, Kate and Doree speak to Alisha Ramos, nationally recognized leader in tech and founder of the popular newsletter Girls' Night In. She talks about quitting a high profile job to pursue her passion project, how to find a mentor, and why ditching her phone is her form of self-care. You can follow her at @alishalisha on Twitter and subscribe to the amazing Girls’ Night In.This episode is sponsored by:Simple Contacts – Visit SimpleContacts.com/Forever or enter promo code Forever at check to get $20 off your first order.Third Love – Get 15% off your first order when you visit ThirdLove.com/Forever.Hungry Root – Get $25 off your first 2 orders when you go to HungryRoot.com and enter the code Forever35 at checkout.Care/Of – For 20% off your first subscription visit Takecareof.com and use promo code Forever35.Theme music by Riot. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Founder and CEO Alisha Ramos discusses her journey building and and growing Girls’ Night In, a lifestyle brand and community for women who’d rather stay in tonight. Alisha shares how her perspective on her mixed race identity has evolved over time, and how she stays connected with different cultures. She also talks about the importance of strong friendships and prioritizing self-care and mental health. On Hella Asian, Alisha endorses the kimchi at the Whole Foods salad bar.

HI FRANDS. We’re all BFFs now, right?…Right? In this episode, we talk about how we make new friends as busy adults, how we sustain relationships beyond grabbing lunch or drinks, and how we build the kinds of communities that give us LIFE. We’re also joined by Girls’ Night In founder Alisha Ramos, who tells us how she built a company around a simple concept: connecting and celebrating women who’d rather stay in. > Book clubs are just magical, first of all, because books are amazing. But, second of all, it creates a really interesting common ground for everyone… You’re all showing up because you read the same thing, and you are starting off with that common thing and you end up picking up little pieces of the other person’s life as she’s describing how she read the book and interpreted it, and then it kind of like takes the pressure off. > > —Alisha Ramos, founder of Girls’ Night In Here’s what we covered (and as always, you can find the full transcript below). Show notes Did you know that Sara and Katel first bonded over crab fries? That a full 50 percent of the city of Philadelphia knows each other through Jenn? Well, now you will. We also talk about: How great friends are also generous with their friends Why you have to get over the fear of rejection when trying to keep adult friendships alive Why loneliness is bad for your health Then, we catch up with Alisha Ramos, who tells us how she quit her job last year to start Girls’ Night in, a newsletter for ladies who’d rather skip the party, thanks. Now GNI boasts more than 30,000 members. We bond over: The magic of book clubs—especially when your new book BFFs also invite you to a potluck Celeste Ng’s excellent second novel, Little Fires Everywhere Relaxing, relaxing, and more relaxing—Alisha recommends watching The Crown and re-watching I, Tonya (and if you hate Tonya Harding, read this first). Also in this episode: Thanks to a reader recommendation, Katel’s back in the fiction game with Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan. Did you know that Tinder for moms is a thing? (It’s called Peanut.) It’s reboot time in Hollywood! Still! Apparently! First up: get your blazers pressed: Murphy Brown is back, baby! Let’s hope Dan Quayle doesn’t show up to shame her again. An Overboard reboot is also coming, which we’re not feeling great about, given that the plot centers around tricking a woman with amnesia into being your wife—as a comedy! What the world really needs is some of that patented Sugarbaker Sass. Sponsors This episode of NYG is brought to you by: Shopify, a leading global commerce platform that’s building a diverse, intelligent, and motivated team—and they  want to apply to you. Visit shopify.com/careers to see what they’re talking about. _WordPress—the place to build your personal blog, business site, or anything else you want on the web. WordPress helps others find you, remember you, and connect with you. _ Transcript Sara Wachter-Boettcher Like you, Shopify isn’t a fan of long, boring ads. So they’ll keep it simple. They’re hiring great people. Their mission: to make commerce better for everyone. Shopify is the leading global commerce platform for entrepreneurs and they want to apply to you. Join a diverse, intelligent, and motivated team where you’ll get shit done. Visit shopify.com/careers to see what they’re talking about. [Music fades in] Jenn Lukas Hi! Welcome to No, You Go, [music fades out] the show about being ambitious—and sticking together. I’m Jenn Lukas. Katel LeDû I’m Katel LeDû. SWB And I’m Sara Wachter-Boettcher. JL On today’s show we’re talking about developing relationships and going beyond the quick work lunch or happy hour type of friendship. How do we create deeper connections with people we know and that we want in our lives now that we’re adults, professionals, mothers, activists, multi-taskers—you get the idea. How do we seek out these deeper types of friendships? We’ll also talk with Girls’ Night In founder, Alisha Ramos, about building a community of women, and how she makes space for meaningful relationships in her life. But first on the agenda: hey, Katel, will you be my friend? KL I would love to be your friend. You know, I remember the first time we really hung out and met. We were both at Converge. We started sort of following each other around to the different things people were doing and I had seen you speak and I was like—I really wanted to hang out with you and it was cool that I met you at a conference because it’s always good to have a conference buddy. And I also remember the first time Sara and I really hung out, it involved crab fries, which is very important to the Philadelphia region. She missed a pottery class, I think? Just to keep talking with me, which I felt super special for, and then I think that just was a natural progression into taking over the world. SWB Totally! I remember meeting Jenn through conferences and stuff like that but then, one day right after I moved to Philadelphia, I thought, “You know? I’m going to email Jenn Lukas. I don’t know her very well but she seems very cool, maybe she’ll hang out with me.” [Laughter] And I emailed her and, lo and behold, Jenn lived two blocks from where we had just moved in. Like literally two blocks away. And so immediately, you know, we made plans to get together, and I will say that being new to a place, Jenn and Sutter, her husband, were like—you guys were, honestly, so welcoming, and it was so wonderful because I feel like through you we met so many other people. You were very generous with sharing those friendships that you had with us— KL Aw. SWB —at a time when I think we really needed that. We’d spent a couple of years, you know, moving around and not sure where we were going to land long-term after my husband finished graduate school. And so it was not just that we really connected, but it was also that generosity that I think was so valuable to me. And I really hope that I paid that forward by the time Katel moved to Philly [laughter] and we were sharing crab fries, because I remember sitting there and just being like, OK, we’re not just having professional drinks. We’re hanging out now. It’s on. This is—you know—we’re going to be here for a while.” JL It’s so nice. Wow. I’m having all the feels, ladies [background “aws”]. It’s so nice and I think the other thing is, you know, we make friends through conferences, we make friends through meetups, we make friends through these activities, and lots of times I think we meet people and then we’re like, “Ah man, I really dug hanging out with them,” but then it doesn’t happen again. Maybe you live someplace else. But I think one of the things that was really awesome with both of you is that we maintained a level of correspondence that when you both happened to move to Philadelphia I was like, “Yes!” SWB No, but I think it’s important to put that kind of, I don’t know, a little bit more work in, I guess you would say, because we’re not in college anymore. We’re, um, a couple of years outside of college, and one of the things that happens is everybody gets busy with their own lives. You have a partner, maybe, or you have children, and your career gets demanding, and I travel for work a lot. And so it gets harder to match up schedules, it’s harder to find time to consistently see people, and you have to prioritize that, and I’m really glad that I have friends who do prioritize that also because I feel like we always make the time. And we always—you know, we don’t make a big deal out of hanging out, right? Like we make it a consistent thing that we do without having to make it super formal and it doesn’t have to be like, “Oh I’m throwing a dinner party.” KL Because of our proximity we can kind of do things on the fly which is really cool. And, I mean, it wass so important for me moving from DC to Philly. I knew I knew some people sort of and I had no idea whether I’d be able to be rebuild a network and it happened, I think, so much faster because of exactly what you said, Jenn. [5:00] And also I feel like as you get older you sort of know you’re going to be friends with people. The people you know you’re like, “OK, these are just going to be acquaintances or not as close relationships.” You’re a little quicker to be like, “All right [chuckles], I know the camps now.” You know? JL I think it also helps to never take a scheduling mishap as something that means that we can’t hang out. So I think lots of times with schedules, you’ll ask someone to hang out and they’ll be like, “I can’t,” and then you don’t follow-up. And I think that we all have very busy schedules but we’re never like, “Oh, that must mean that Katel doesn’t want to hang out with me because she’s not available.” And getting over this like — you get these flashbacks from high school of like trying to be friends with people, right? [Laughter] And you’re just like, “No! It’s not that.” And I think that I’m so much more quick to get over that now because I can imagine myself being in the space where I’ve wanted to hang out with people but I couldn’t make it work and it wasn’t that I was avoiding them or doing these things that I feel like we still get self conscious about, sometimes, with building friendships. You know you have to put in that time. SWB Right. It’s not like, “Oh, I invited Jenn to do something twice and she turned me down both times, so now I won’t say anything again. I have to sit here on my hands and wait for her to call me.” You know? I definitely don’t feel that way. I’m like, “Ok, Jenn’s got a lot going on and—” KL I’m just going to ask her a third time. SWB Yeah [laughter]! Third time’s a charm. You know but I’m really glad that we’re all kind of on the same page about this and also able to talk about it because I’ve read all of those studies about how people report that their loneliness levels are really high and particularly as people move into middle-age and that there’s a lot of studies that show that things like the more socially isolated you are, the more likely you are to have health problems, and the more likely you are to actually die prematurely. It’s kind of morbid, but it’s true that loneliness is this really big factor in people’s health that is not that well understood. And the other thing that happens with loneliness is apparently it’s something that’s really common with men. Like men are much less likely to sustain the kinds of relationships that we’re talking about into their middle-age and later and as a result you’ve got these generations of lonely middle-aged who are super isolated. And it’s causing them all kinds of issues and I think that even though that’s more prevalent in men, I mean that’s not something we can ignore for ourselves either because we’re all, like I said, ambitious and busy and have a lot going on in our professional lives that it would be easy to not make time to do that deep friendship stuff. It’d be easy to have that happen and not realize it’s happened until you have been doing it for years and you’re really fucking lonely. JL Yeah. KL Right. This is why it’s important that we make some early plans for the friend compound that we’ve talking about. JL Oh my god! Yes! KL And we can invite our husbands, obviously, if, you know— SWB Meh. JL It’s going to be some kind of farm, right? KL Uh, absolutely. Yes. With a vineyard of some kind. SWB So the friendship compound is like—it’s pretty much what it sounds like — it’s a large facility, homestead, not sure, where we can all bring all of our besties down and form a new, totally not cult-like [laughter] society. KL I think we found a new direction for the show. I don’t know [laughter]. JL Oh no, we’ve tricked people into something they were not expecting here. SWB I said it wasn’t cult-like! It’s fine. KL OK. All right [laughs]. SWB This whole conversation about friendships and sort of like the way that we form connections and keep those connections strong, I think, is a really good way to introduce our guest for today, because I think she’s going to have a lot to say about that, too, and I am so excited to hear it [music fades in]. Thanks to our sponsors JL [Music fades out] No, You Go is proud to be sponsored by wordpress.com. Whether you’d like to build a personal blog, a business site, or both, creating a website on wordpress.com helps others find you, remember you, and connect with you. In fact, we use WordPress here for NYG. You don’t even need experience setting up a website. WordPress guides you through the process from start to finish, and takes care of the technical side. They also have great customer support available 24 hours a day. Plans start at just four dollars a month, and you can always get a custom domain for the life of the plan. Go to wordpress.com/noyougo to get 15 percent off your website today. That’s wordpress.com/noyougo [music fades in]. Interview: Alisha Ramos KL [Music fades out] our guest today is Alisha Ramos, the founder of Girls’ Night In, which started as a newsletter for women who’d rather stay in tonight, something I think we’re all drawn to in many ways, and has turned into so much more. Alisha, we can’t wait to hear about. Welcome to No, You Go! Alisha Ramos Thanks so much for having me! KL We’re so excited to talk all about this. Can we kick off by having you tell us a little bit more about Girls’ Night In and just how it came to be. [10:00] AR So Girls’ Night In, as you mentioned, started off as a newsletter for women who’d rather stay in tonight, and now it’s become more of a community of women now. What we do is we send a Friday morning newsletter every week to over, I think we’re now at 30,000 subscribers, mostly millennial women across the US and across the globe, and we kind of share smart reads for you to read during your night in or things like recommendations for you to do, whether it’s watching a TV show that we love or a podcast that we’re loving. So that’s kind of how it started and now we’ve gotten this amazing community of women around it from all corners of the globe. We have readers in Charleston, South Carolina, to Barcelona to London and, you know, our mission at Girls’ Night In is to help women relax, recharge, and cultivate more meaningful community in a world that’s increasingly stressful and lonely [KL laughs]. So one really cool thing that kind of sprung up very organically is our book club. So we do a monthly book club meetup in seven cities now. And that’s been a really amazing way for our community to gather and really live out the mission of Girls’ Night In. This kind of community of women that want to create better connections with one another. KL That’s amazing! I feel like that’s seems like such a beautiful and natural progression of things. What was it about fostering deeper connections than, say, going to drinks or having a quick coffee that you made you decide to kick this into gear? AR I was looking at how we live our lives today. Like I’m in my later twenties and the idea of going out no longer really appeals to me [laughing][KL laughs] for various reasons. I have a hard bedtime now of like 9:30pm I need to be in bed. But I think our relationships are changing so quickly; society is changing; mental health issues are on the rise; rates of loneliness are increasing in our society that’s always on. Like we are so entangled with technology now that we’re kind of burnt out from all of that. And looking at my habits of how I want to spend my time with my friends, I found myself hosting more gatherings that are intimate and cozy in my home versus wanting to go out. So I think Girls’ Night In encapsulates this whole movement of women who would rather spend the time taking care of themselves and developing better relationships, not just with themselves, but with other women, like their friends. And it’s very timely. When Girls’ Night In started the presidential inauguration had just occurred. There was this kind of overwhelming sense of stress and anxiety among my friends, and I’m sure just like the world in general. So, especially with the news cycle being completely unrelenting, people were searching for a break from all of that and I think Girls’ Night In became the answer for a lot of people. Like they’ll write in and say, “I didn’t know that I needed this, but I definitely needed Girls’ Night In in my life because it helps me remind myself that it’s OK to take care of myself and take a break from everything else that’s going on in the world.” KL That’s—yeah. That’s amazing. It sounds like you’ve had some questions that were kind of cycling around in your head that made you, you know, look into that a little bit more— AR Yeah. KL —and one of them was about disconnecting from tech. I personally find that so challenging. In what ways would you like to explore that with this community? AR Our February theme is going to be techno self-care. So, you know, technology—we never want to pit technology as the enemy because it can be used for good, it can be used for bad. I think overall we’re all very overwhelmed with technology and media and the news right now and it can be unhealthy. KL Yeah. AR In terms of how to disconnect from technology, the one thing that we are doing as a community is encouraging people to get offline and meet each other [laughing] in real life, especially, you know, for women in their twenties. It’s such an awkward time where—especially where I’m from, in DC, it’s a very transient city. There’s people coming in and out and I feel like we’ve forgotten how to meet new friends and make new connections. KL [Exhales sharply] right. AR Yeah, I really don’t know what I would do to make new friends besides go to a [laughing] networking event. It feels kind of awkward. [15:00] So one way we encourage our community members to disconnect is to join us at our monthly book club meetings and that’s— KL Sure. AR You’re getting away from your screen, it kind of feels like you’re doing something for yourself, and it’s a way to, not escape reality—but sometimes! It depends on what you read. It can be an escapist type of ritual. So that in and of itself is a really great self-care tool. But then when you add on top of that the act of gathering around a common book that you’ve read and really enjoyed, you get to create these really cool conversations and connections with each other and that’s the kind of feature that I would hope to build with Girls’ Night In where, you know right now we’re always on Instagram, we’re liking each other photos, but what does being social even mean anymore in this age of social media? I don’t like the future that I see in five to 10 years. We’re really just trying to recreate a more intimate sense of community. JL Hey Alisha, what kind of books do read at the book club? AR Our general guidelines are that we read books that are authored by women from diverse backgrounds and we read both fiction and non-fiction. So most recently we read Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng which was my favorite book. SWB I’m in the middle of it right now! AR Oh my god! It’s such a treat! SWB It’s so good! AR It’s so good, yeah. I just savored every word. It was so good. So, yeah, we try to focus on stories that are authored by women who can bring something interesting, something unique that we can discuss as a community. We’ve also read a couple of non-fiction. Like Too Loud, Too Fat, Too Slutty— KL Wow. AR —by Anne Helen Petersen. That one was a little polarizing actually [laughs] in our community. Some people loved it, some people hated it, but that’s kind of what the beauty of the book club is: we want books that spark conversation. KL Yeah. I feel like now—I just joined a book club. So maybe I just need to join Girls’ Night In and find one [laughing]—find one to meet up [laughs]. JL Have you found that people that have come to the book club will make plans together afterwards? Like are you seeing that a lot of people are forging friendships from the book club? AR Yes, definitely. We, at every book club, we basically have to force people out the door [laughing] because they want to continue having conversations and that’s really, really the coolest thing that I’ve seen. So we have private Facebook groups for everyone who has attended a book club for each city. And our New York community—there’s one woman who was like, “Hey, I’m relatively new to the city. I really enjoyed meeting all of you at book club. Would you want to start a potluck dinner thing?” And I think she was—she asked this and I think she was expecting maybe like five people to respond but, I kid you not, like 40 people signed up for this thing [chuckles], and she was like, “OK, woah. I think we’re going to have to now split up into five different friend groups—” JL That’s amazing. AR “—to do like a potluck rotation.” So it’s been really cool to see friendships like that and conversations like that start. KL Yeah. SWB Something I really love about that story is that it speaks to the way that like once you kind of tear off the bandaid of making friends, like once you go, “Ok! I’m going to go the book club,” once you’ve done that, then the doors open a little bit and then suddenly it’s a little easier to invite— AR Yeah! SWB —a bunch of women you’ve never met before out to do something. I think sometimes that’s hard when we’re, you know, we’re all busy, everybody has a lot going on, scheduling is the worst. And to try to forge that deeper connection with somebody while juggling all the other things that we seem to do because we’re ambitious and whatnot. It can feel like too much of a barrier. So I love the idea of sort of lowering that barrier for people. AR Absolutely! Definitely! And like book clubs are just magical, first of all, because books are amazing. But, second of all, it creates a really interesting common ground for everyone. Like you’re going in and it’s not like a scary networking event where like, “Oh my gosh! What am I going to say? What am I going to ask people?” You’re all showing up because you read the same thing and you are starting off with that common thing and you end up picking up little pieces of the other person’s life as she’s describing how she read the book and interpreted it and then it kind of like takes the pressure off a little bit—of trying to make small talk, which I personally really dislike. [20:00] I’m a very highly introverted person and I think as a result I would rather have those deeper conversations with people and skip the like, “Oh yeah, where are you from?” “How’s the weather?” “The weather’s really cold.” So I think having that commonality and as a discussion starter has been really, really cool. KL Yeah I really want to know how have you kept Girls’ Night In on even keel as it’s grown so quickly? How are you leaning on your friends and other Girls’ Night In-ers to help with that? AR I mean Girls’ Night In is very new in my mind. I quit seven months ago, in June. So it still feels like it’s in its very early, early stages. So as a result like I basically don’t sleep or I—well there was a good period of time where I was not getting a [laughing] lot of sleep, essentially. But now I’m getting definitely better at delegating, finding people who are way better at doing things than I am — which has been probably the key part of keeping this thing going. I do work with a lot of really talented individuals who help me with editorial, the community side of things, we have amazing book club hosts in all of our cities, partnerships, like technology, everything. So it’s been really cool to grow Girls’ Night In from just me to this team of really awesome people who help out. KL Yeah, absolutely. So speaking of making that move from what you were doing before Girls’ Night In, it’s funny: I’ve read you describe yourself as a Type A person needing to have a plan for everything and [AR laughs] to me that’s like, I raise my hand and I’m like, “Hey, hello! That’s me.” Do you remember the moment you decided to jump into that and start something new even if it meant you might not know exactly what that was going to look like? AR I didn’t have that one day or like a-ha moment where I knew that I wanted to do this. So Girls’ Night In—I had the luxury of the fact that I started it as a side project while I had a full-time job. So that kind of gave me a cushion of like, “OK, I can do this and see if it becomes a thing and then I might make the decision, but if it doesn’t, then I’m OK. Like I can keep my job.” So I launched it in January and then kept it a side project for six months or so and it kept growing and growing and eventually—I don’t know if you’ve ever done like a full-time job with like a side hustle or something, but eventually you get to a point where you’re just like [laughing], I’m really tired of doing my full-time job. I get off at 6, and then you go into like your second shift of doing the other thing from 6pm to god knows when, like midnight or 1am. And that’s really unsustainable, like physically or it was for me at least. KL Yeah for sure. AR The second thing that helped me understand that like, “Oh, maybe I should take the leap,” is that I started to get really amazing feedback from people and I would hear from my friends who live in California or New York that they were having a conversation with a random stranger, somebody that they just met, and they would say, “Oh, have you heard about this newsletter called Girls’ Night In? I just signed up,” and I think that really helped me understand, “Oh, this could become a really big thing if somebody I’ve never met in California is talking about it— 23:40 KL That is so cool. AR “—and actively sharing it with their friends.” KL That’s yeah — that’s amazing. Cool. Can you give us a little sneak peek at what’s next for Girls’ Night In? AR Our newsletter is our main product right now. So I’m focusing on building out the right team for that, more solidifying our editorial strategy around that, and just growing our audience and growing our brand I think will be a key focus for the next couple of months. You know everything we do ladders back—or should ladder back to our broader mission of helping women relax, recharge, and cultivate community. So we did do a little experiment with launching our own products and, you know, my background is as a web designer. So designing physical products was actually really, really fun for me. So I think you can expect to see some more things along those lines and then the third piece is I personally have gotten so much out of our community in real life through the book clubs and that has been just so fun to grow and watching the reaction to the book club has been amazing. [25:00] We’re now at the point where people get frustrated if they can’t get a ticket to one of our book clubs because they sell out pretty quickly [chuckles]. So we definitely want to make sure that we can expand the book clubs in cities where maybe the demand is really high and look at how else we grow that side of things. KL Well I have one final question for you, and it’s how are you going to relax and recharge this week? AR I recently watched the movie I, Tonya and I loved it so much that I might go back and watch it again [laughs]. I also have been binge watching The Crown on Netflix— KL Yes. AR —and I really love historical dramas so that’s been—it’s just such a good show to binge watch and just chill out. And I’m also kind of revamping my skincare routine right now. I’m a huge beauty junky. So I’m doing a lot of research in trying to find the perfect moisturizer for the winter. So yeah lots of skincare and lots of The Crown. KL That sounds excellent. SWB I can’t wait to hear about that best skincare for the winter because I tell you what [AR laughs]: it has been dry and cold and— KL Yeah. We’re all struggling here. AR Yeah. [KL laughs] we’ll write something up. KL We will definitely read that. Thank you so much for talking with us today. AR Thank you. KL It was really great to hear a little bit more about what you’re up to and, yeah, thank you so much! [Music fades in.] AR Yeah, of course! Thanks so much for having me. JL [Music fades out] I kept thinking when Alisha was talking about the book club that would help what we were talking about in the bonus episode where you were finding a lack of books to read, right Katel? KL Yeah. That was so fun. I was thinking about it the other day because thanks, listeners, for listening to that because I got some really nice recommendations for books to read and it has actually really inspired me to really do this. So I am buying those books, I even found the crumby charger to my Kindle. I’m going to really do it for real. So I’m very excited and it was really nice to hear these recommendations from different friends who have very different, I think, interests and likes. SWB Yeah, if you didn’t listen to our bonus episode: one of the things that came up is that Katel admitted she hadn’t read a book except for the ones that she’s physically publishing for a little while and she was feeling a little bit bummed about that. So I’m excited to see what you read. Do you have a book that you want to pick up first? KL I think I’m going to pick up Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan because I’ve just liked her work, and I didn’t really realize that there was something new from her. So that was really cool. SWB Yeah, yeah, I mean oftentimes I’ll read a book by an author and I’ll be like, “Ooh! That was pretty good,” and then their next book is the one that really gets me. That’s something I really found with Celeste Ng, the author of the book Little Fires Everywhere that we talked about in Alisha’s interview. I read her first book and I thought it was pretty good, but the second book has been just amazing. And so hopefully you’ll find the same with Jennifer Egan. JL I love the conversations that people have around books. I mean just looking at the two of you right now: you’re getting really excited when you’re talking about it and so that’s what I think is so neat about things like book clubs is it gives you — it’s an instant conversation starter. And I think it’s interesting to think about is the way that we could build friendships. It’s weird I’ve heard this but I never realized it before: becoming a mom is like an instant conversation starter, which is weird and it doesn’t like—I thought it would’ve felt forced, because people have told me that before, but it’s not. Whenever you have a passion about a book or like a complaint about a diaper, there’s just something to talk about with someone. And I love these ideas of not being scared of that. That you’re like—happen to just be in the same sort of population, but being like, “This is a way for me to start talking to someone.” You know, trying to find those groups. Someone just was telling me—my friend Beth was just saying that there’s now a Tinder for moms [yup mm hmm]. But you know it’s hard if you’re in areas where you’re finding it hard to meet other moms, or finding it hard to just meet other women, or finding it hard to meet people that also love the same books that you do. How do you do it? Right? So as much as like, I’m like, “Wow, that’s crazy they made that.” I mean if it’s a way for you to connect with people, then I think it’s really cool. SWB Yeah I think that that’s something that Alisha was definitely talking a lot about was this difficulty of making and sustaining friendships as an adult. I think something like a book club is a great way to do that, but other ways that I’ve definitely found is getting involved in something local or something political. I know that that can be a great way to get to know people. But it’s also, you know, it takes a little bit to get comfortable with getting out there and getting beyond that initial spark of conversation where it’s like, “OK, we support the same candidate.” Or “We both have a kid.” [30:00] Or “We both like the same book.” But going from that to being like, “OK, we need to get into that substantive conversation where we really connect,” is not always easy. But the more that I try to open up a little bit and allow it to happen, I feel like I get better at it. It’s a habit you can learn or a skill you can learn. JL Yeah, when my son was born I was feeling very much like I had a lot of friends with kids, luckily, who I can ask their advice but no one was exactly at the same age as my son. I’m on a message board, it’s a Google mailing list for local moms or local parents in the area and sometimes people will start mom groups or parent that you can meet up and they’ll be like, you know, “Winter Moms,” “Spring Moms,” stuff like that. And there hadn’t been one when Cooper was born. But, so, a few other people expressed interest and I was like, “Well I guess I’m starting this.” And I remember thinking like, “Oh good, I won’t have to start something,” but then when it wasn’t there, I was like, “Ok, I’m going to start it.” And I mean it was just a meetup at a coffee shop nearby, once a week. But you know you just put it on the board, you say, “Here’s where we’re meeting.” And you start a mailing list and you know once you get over the fact that you have to just make that initial effort, you can do it pretty fast, and then show up, and meet people, and from there I’ve kept in touch with a few people but stayed like really close with two moms. And like that of course didn’t happen magically but one of the things I loved leaving there one day Rachel, my friend, was like, “Do you want to just meet up and take a walk someday?” And I was like, “Yes, I would love to walk with you someday.” [Laughter] And I just thought it was so cool that she asked. And that’s the whole thing is just getting over that fear — SWB It’s weird, right? To feel like you risk rejection in the same way that you wouldn’t want to tell somebody you were interested in dating that you like them. It kind of feels the same. Where’s it’s like, “Do they actually want to be my friend?” KL Right, yeah. JL Go for it! KL Yeah, go for it. SWB What the hell else are we doing with our lives? Well I think it’s about time to move into what is, I don’t know, maybe my favorite segment? Which is of course The Fuck Yeah of the Week. Fuck Yeah of the Week So I have a Fuck Yeah for the week that I hope you all are excited about. My Fuck Yeah is the upcoming reboot of Murphy Brown [yes!][oh my gosh!] starring Candice Bergen. I don’t know how many of you listening were Murphy Brown fans back in the day. I, as a child, in the nineties, was definitely a Murphy Brown fan. I liked her kind of tough-as-nails persona. She was a news anchor, and she wasn’t taking shit from anybody. But there was a huge hubbub over Murphy Brown when the character on the show was going to have a baby out of wedlock. And Dan Quayle got real upset about that, and there was a whole discussion about sort of the morality of single motherhood and choosing single motherhood as being something that was somehow inherently evil. And it was quite something. I’m super hyped to see what this reboot does with that entire concept because one hopes we are a lot further along now in terms of how we conceive of parents and what makes a family and what’s OK for a family to be than we were in the nineties. Although, at the same time, I think about all of the kind of sexist shit that that show was really tattling and I’m like, “Man, we’re still kind of right in it, though!” KL Yeah, we totally are. I remember watching that show and thinking that was one of the first times I had seen a character like that—that I could actually have seen myself becoming. And I know that I mean it was sort of in like a dreamscape kind of thing [laughs]. SWB No, no, no! Whenever we say Murphy Brown I do picture you [laughter]. KL It’s just—you kind of were like, “She’s smart. She has her shit together. And she’s also going to have a family. And why not? Why couldn’t I do that?” I hope that that was a lot of people who felt that way. It’s so fucking awesome that it’s coming back. SWB I mean I’m not always necessarily a fan of these reboot series, you know? I tried to watch the Will & Grace reboot on the plane the other day. I mean I was curious. I didn’t really expect it to be great. So I turned it on on the plane and then about 30 seconds I was like, I don’t think I can handle this because the [sighs]—the representations of gay people did not feel like they had evolved at all in the intervening years, and I think that that’s what really hit me. That this way of talking about, you know, queerness 10 years ago or whatever—or 15 years ago—that maybe seemed progressive then, or seemed new to be able to talk about it at all, felt very dated and felt very out of sync with the realities of all of the queer people’s lives that I know. [35:00] And so I was like, “This is just uncomfortable and also just not funny.” So I’m not necessarily somebody who thinks everything needs to be rebooted and I hope that the Murphy Brown reboot goes well. But I’m just excited for a new generation of people to learn about Murphy Brown and to look up to somebody who is so badass. JL What other shows would you want to see rebooted? SWB OK, so I want to see a Designing Women reboot, and that’s another one where—you know we watched an old episode of Designing Women recently and it had some amazing stuff in it, the premise of that particular episode is that the ladies were considering taking on a client to redecorate their— JL Brothel. SWB Brothel, yeah. So, um, there was a lot going on. There were some differing opinions about whether or not prostitution was good or bad, or OK for women or not Ok for women. And I think at the time that show was seen as being pretty progressive and really pushing the envelope on a lot of women’s issues, and similarly to Will & Grace you would find if you listened to a lot of those episodes that there would be some attitudes that feel pretty out of sync now. But the idea of there being this sassy group of women who come from really different backgrounds and have some pretty different perspectives and who are also pursuing their professional lives together—the idea of that being an ensemble cast, I think, makes a lot of sense. JL It’s interesting to think about these shows that have reboots. It’s like they almost want a reboot as a chance to redeem themselves. If they look back and cringe at some of the stuff now and I find myself thinking about this a lot. Like, what am I saying now that in 20 years I’m going to be like, “I can’t believe I said that.” SWB Shit! I think about that all the time: about stuff I’m saying I’m going to regret in like 20 minutes [laughter]. JL That’s also true. But like thinking about things that they’re redoing now. Like they’re remaking the movie Overboard. And I don’t know if you remember the movie Overboard— KL [Gasps] what?!? JL Right? Because at first when I thought about this I was like, “Oh I loved the movie Overboard,” but then when you get back into it, it’s essentially like a two-hour movie about like roofie-ing someone. It’s awful. Basically Goldie Hawn gets a concussion, loses her memory, and Kurt Russell convinces her that she’s his wife to take care of the children! SWB There’s a lot of like real normalization of very rapey ideology that goes on in a lot of these movies and that’s—it’s both reflecting what was accepted in the culture at the time and also kind of driving that. That reinforces such outdated, but also just plain abusive, attitudes. And I hope that we get more and more honest about some of those problems. Like it’s not to say that you can never watch some eighties movie again, but I think that that when we do we need to be like, “Wait a second.“ You know one thing I’m really thankful for is the continued education I get to have from people with different backgrounds, different perspectives than I have who are allowing me to see how much I didn’t used to see, right? How much media I would just kind of passively consume without realizing what was at play. And so the more that we have these kinds of conversations and we talk about what’s going wrong, the more effectively we can both critically analyze the media of the past, and then also push for better representation in the future. KL Amen. JL Fuck yeah Murphy Brown! KL Fuck yeah. SWB Fuck yeah Murphy Brown! I’m going to get myself like a blazer with some shoulder pads to celebrate [yes!][fade out]. Outro SWB That’s it for this week’s episode of No, You Go, the show about being ambitious and sticking together. If you like what you’ve been hearing, please go ahead and give us a rating or even a review on iTunes. No, You Go is recorded in our home city of Philadelphia, and our theme music is by The Diaphone. Our producer is Steph Colbourn and you can find us online at noyougoshow.com or on Twitter @noyougoshow. Thanks to Alisha Ramos for being our guest today. We’ll be back [music fades in] next week with another new episode [music ramps up to end].

If there's one word that characterises the feeling since the 2016 presidential election, particularly amongst women, it's anxiety, and with that has come a long overdue cultural conversation about wellness and self-care. It sparked Alisha Ramos to take, Girls' Night In, which was then a self-funded side project, and turn it into a fully-fledged business. One that's building a community among women who want to take care of themselves and each other while having a good time and cultivating meaningful relationships. To do so, she walked away from an impressive job in tech, after working her way up to become Vox Media's product design director. Alisha talks candidly about the fact that, as an entrepreneur, you never quite know whether you've made the right decision in leaving the comfortability of a stable career but also the reassurance that comes with seeing her community grow week on week. We talk about how she's diversifying her revenue streams, evolving from content to events, a membership program and now physical products and what that means for her team and the way she allocates her time. With so much growth in just one year of business, she also sheds light on trying to find a healthy middle ground between ambition and grace. Join the Community · For more content, head to www.thelifestyleedit.comand click here to join thousands of female creatives in our newsletter community: http://bit.ly/2rVZVzo Work with Naomi: · Sign up for a complimentary discovery call: http://bit.ly/2wttos2 · Ready to raise your rates and double your income? Get the free guide: http://bit.ly/2W7hehh Resources Girls' Night In Scaling Up by Verne Harnish The E-Myth by Michael Gerber Shine Theory: Why Powerful Women Make The Greatest Friends by Ann Friedman

The founder and CEO of the local lifestyle brand and community blog Girls Night In wanted to help "boss women to celebrate staying in instead of going out."

What's Working in Washington - July 17, 2017 Full show

Kate and Yoko talk with super badass boss lady Alisha Ramos about “secret” languages, being mixed-race, and Asian beauty standards. Plus, a really gross/amazing Would You Rather courtesy of our very own Kate Matsumoto. Apologies for the audio hiccup! Thanks for bearing with us. We love you!