Podcasts about amanda you

On today's episode of the G Word, our guests will be discussing the CanGene-CanVar programme. Funded by Cancer Research UK, the 5-year programme aims to create an interface between NHS clinical care and research that will expand genetic testing access for those with inherited cancers. Our host Amanda Pichini, Clinical Lead for Genetic Counselling at Genomics England, is joined by Dr Helen Hanson, Consultant in cancer genetics at the Peninsular Regional Genetic Service, Kelly Kohut, Lead Genetic Counsellor at the South West Thames Centre for Genomics, and Rochelle Gold, Patient Representative on the CanGene-Canvar research programme and co-founder of BRCA Journey.   "There is also the possibility of finding out genetic information that's familial or inherited, which could mean that the information is not only important for the person who is being treated for cancer at the current time but also as a next step informing relatives that they might have a higher chance of getting cancers in the future due to a genetic variant..."     You can read the transcript below or download it here: How-are-genetic-tests-transforming-cancer-prevention.docx   Amanda: Hello and welcome to The G Word.  My name is Amanda Pichini and I'm the Clinical Lead for Genetic Counselling at Genomics England.  We know that cancer is a very common disease.  About one in two people will develop cancer at some point in their lifetime.  Cancer is a disease of the genome involving many changes to a person's genome over time as well as other factors.  Only a small proportion of all cancers are inherited, but this can have a significant impact for those families who have a much higher risk of cancer and options to reduce their risk.    Today I'm delighted to be joined by Dr Helen Hanson, Consultant Clinical Geneticist; Kelly Kohut, Consultant Genetic Counsellor; and Rochelle Gold, Patient Representative and co-founder of BRCA Journey.  We'll be discussing the CanGene-CanVar programme which aims to link NHS clinical care and research to expand access to genetic testing and care for people with inherited cancers.  Welcome, Rochelle, Helen and Kelly to The G Word.  Thank you for joining me today.  Let's start with some introductions.  Rochelle, over to you?  Rochelle: Hi, everyone.  I'm Rochelle and I'm one of the Patient Reps on the CanGene-CanVar research programme.  I also co-founded an organisation called BRCA Journey that helps to raise awareness of the BRCA genetic mutation amongst both clinicians and the community, and also supports people who might be at risk of the mutation or who are thinking about testing, all the way through to maybe having preventative treatment or preventative surgery.  We support those with that decisions.  We're not genetic counsellors but we do basically talk to people about our experience and knowledge that we have of what it's like as a patient to be someone living with the mutation.    Amanda: Thank you.  Could you briefly tell us what BRCA is and how you came to be a patient?  Rochelle: BRCA is a genetic mutation that puts people at greater risk of breast and ovarian cancer.  My mum had the mutation, in fact she had two of the mutations which is apparently quite rare.  She passed away from breast cancer and just before she passed away I found out that I had the genetic mutation as well.  I personally have had preventative surgery and reconstruction to prevent myself from getting breast and ovarian cancer.  I got involved in being a patient rep so that I can advocate for people who may have the mutation, but also make sure that as many people as possible can be tested and be aware that they have the mutation and have that power to have the knowledge to be able to do something about it should they so wish.  Amanda: Thank you so much for sharing that with us.  Kelly, over to you?  Kelly: Hello, everyone.  I'm Kelly Kohut, I'm the Lead Consultant Genetic Counsellor at the South West Thames Centre for Genomics, which is based at St George's Hospital in London.  For many years I've been working in clinical practice in genetic counselling, seeing patients and their families regarding personal or family history of cancer, offering genetic testing where that's available, and then giving the results and helping to refer people on for surveillance programmes and to discuss risk reducing options, and also help a lot with communication within families, sharing the information from the genetic test results.    For the past few years, I've also been doing my own research as part of the CanGene-CanVar programme, funded by the charity Cancer Research UK.  This has involved partnering directly with patients and other expert stakeholders to co-design a patient website to support decision-making around the genetic chances of getting cancer in families.     Amanda: Thank you.  And Helen?  Helen: Hi, everyone.  I'm Helen Hanson, I'm a Consultant in Cancer Genetics.  I'm based at the Peninsular Regional Genetic Service which is in Exeter.  In my clinical practice I see patients who either have a cancer diagnosis to consider whether they may have an inherited susceptibility or people who maybe have a family history of cancer to try and determine if they are at risk due to their family history.  Like Kelly and Rochelle I've also been involved in the CanGene-CanVar programme for the last four years.  I've been involved in work package three of the programme which is developing clinical guidelines with the patients who have an inherited predisposition to cancer.  I was also fortunate enough to be given some funding to carry on with this work beyond the programme in the new NIHR Exeter Biomedical Research Centre.    Also, I'm currently chair of the UK Cancer Genetics Group, who has an aim of improving the management of patients who have an inherited predisposition to cancer.  It's been really great to work on all these different things and try and bring things together to try and improve care for patients who do have rare inherited genetic conditions predisposing to cancer.   Amanda: Fantastic.  Thanks, everyone.  Kelly, I wondered if you could start us off by just explaining a little bit more about how genetics and genomics is relevant to cancer.  Especially inherited cancers, why is this an important thing to talk about?  Kelly: The availability of genetic testing has been increasing steadily over the years.  Currently from pretty much anyone who's been diagnosed with cancer there should be some awareness around the possible benefit of knowing the genetics behind the development of that cancer and whether any genetic or genomic testing might help to choose more personalised treatments or surgical options for that cancer that's been diagnosed.  There is also the possibility of finding out genetic information that's familial or inherited, which could mean that the information is not only important for the person who is being treated for cancer at the current time but also as a next step informing relatives that they might have a higher chance of getting cancers in the future due to a genetic variant and that they could ask their GP for referral to genetics to be offered genetic testing and to find out about their chances of getting cancer and the choices for how to manage that.    Amanda: Thank you.  There are clearly some important things that someone would do differently when they know they have an inherited cancer.  Helen, how can we make sure that clinicians and patients and families know what do to in these situations?  Helen: Following on from Kelly explaining the amount of genetic testing we can offer has really increased over the last five to ten years and we're not in a position to offer many more patients genetic testing, it's important that we also consider what to do with that information when we discover somebody does have a pathogenic variant or a mutation in a cancer predisposition gene.  There are over 100 different cancer predisposition genes described and actually having a variant in one these genes is rare.  It's difficult and like other conditions in medicine due to their rarity to really understand how best to manage these patients.  But what's very important is that we try to understand how best we can help patients manage their cancer risk based on the lifetime risk of cancer and the particular cancers that they can develop and ensure that patients across the country are all being given the same advice, the same information about their cancer risks.    Through the CanGene-CanVar programme we've had a whole work package which is devoted to clinical guideline development where we've looked at a number of these genes and looked at the evidence that is available in terms of cancer risks, the utility of surveillance or early detection of cancers in that condition, and also whether risk-reducing surgery could be offered.  Really try to bring together groups of experts to discuss the evidence because for some genes it really is quite limited due to the rarity of the condition.  The overarching aim is really to develop guidance that is relevant and can be offered in our current clinical practice and is consistent to all patients who have a variant in one of these genes.  Amanda: You mentioned that many of these inherited cancer conditions are very rare. Is there a need to look internationally or collaborate internationally?  How do you pull some of these things together when there's so little information?    Helen: We definitely have found it really helpful to have international collaborations.  Some of these conditions there may be very few patients in the UK who have this condition, so each individual clinician who works in cancer genetics may have only seen one or two patients with the condition than themselves and, therefore, collaborating with international colleagues has been very helpful and we have recently published some guidance for a condition BAP1 tumour predisposition syndrome which increases an individual's lifetime risk of developing mesothelioma, which is a type of lung cancer, renal cancer and melanomas of the skin and eye.  This is a rare condition, but we worked with European colleagues to develop a set of guidelines advising what surveillance the patient should have, so looking to melanomas, looking for early detection of kidney cancers, so having that international collaboration has been really very helpful because in the UK there are so few cases per centre of individuals who have that condition.     Amanda: That sounds really helpful.  Rochelle, we know that shared decision-making is so important in healthcare.  How can we make sure that the voices of patients are reflected within these guidelines that were developing and that it's clear to them what needs to happen for their healthcare?     Rochelle: I think it's really important that patients are involved in the development of the guidelines, first of all, and actually within those guidelines there is stuff that talks about that, being about shared decision-making.  A lot of these guidelines are in a language that are quite a clinical language that is not necessarily accessible to patients themselves.  It's really important that they're part of the creation of them but also that there are things out there that enable people to understand what are these guidelines about, what do these guidelines actually mean in practice.  When you find out that you have a particular genetic mutation, of course, the first place you probably go is Google.  You find a hell of a lot of information and you find all sorts from different countries and different people and different organisations.  You're like which is the thing I need to look at, which is the thing that actually tells me what's going on, which is the thing that really helps me to understand what this actually means for me and what should happen to me?  What is the pathway for me, etc.    I think we also need to recognise that people have different levels of health literacy as well.  I am someone who can probably navigate my way around a very complex system, which is the NHS, maybe better than other people.  But there are plenty of people out there who this is new people, this is a completely new thing that's happened to them, a completely new thing to understand.  If you're not used to being part of health systems and navigating your way around it, it can be quite scary.  What does mutation mean?  What does it mean for me?  What does it mean to my future?  What does it mean for my family?  All this information.  There needs to be something somewhere that talks about this, some sort of lay way and helps people to understand what this means for them and helps them to engage with it.  To some extent, that's where my organisation was born from, that thing about having somebody who can just talk about it in normal words, in normal terms and normal views of what these guidelines actually do mean.  The fact is they are just guidelines, they don't tell you this is what you do.  You're this person, you're in this circumstance, you do this, it doesn't.  There's some ambiguity there that needs to be navigated by the patient and they need support in order to do that.  Amanda: That's a great point.  Having previously worked as a genetic counsellor, also seeing patients with inherited cancer conditions, it really strikes you how individual each person's journey and decisions are.  They're thinking about all kinds of factors in their life or in their family's life.  Navigating through that and understanding do I have surgery or do I have screening and how do I make decisions about this is based on my previous experiences and so many other factors.  Having access to different sources of support to help people navigate through that feels incredibly important.    We've been talking a bit about inherited cancers in general, but you're all here because you're involved in the CanGene-CanVar programme.  Kelly, could you tell us a bit more about what that is and what he programme is aiming to achieve?  Kelly: The CanGene-CanVar programme is a five year grant funded by Cancer Research UK.  It involves six different work packages, so lots of experts all around the UK have been allowed to have some dedicated time to work on specific areas where there hasn't been enough resource put in in the past which has resulted in a real gap between the research and the current findings and actually using that information to benefit patients by bridging the gap and putting those research findings into clinical care.    My programme is in work package four which is co-designing patient resources which are decision support interventions.  Basically, it's a website and it can be printed as a booklet and it's interactive and it's up to date and it's personalised to help convey the complicated information about genetic cancer conditions in a way that's meaningful and patients can understand, and it helps them with their personalised shared decision-making.  The CanGene-CanVar programme is underpinned by the patient reference panel and they've been involved, including Rochelle and others, from the conception of the idea of the programme and all the way through with various different activities helping to look at documents as they're developed, before their finalised, and giving input in focus groups and one-on-one and email conversations.  They're called upon frequently to share their lived experience and say what's important to them when they make decisions and that's really helped to drive the direction of the research and inform the results before they're published.     Amanda: That sounds like a really helpful approach to developing something in a way that's really working very closely with patients and participants.  Rochelle, it sounded like you were involved in that.  Can you tell us a bit about what that was like from your perspective?  Rochelle: It's really rewarding, it's really motivating to be actually one of the patient reps in relation to this.  I don't want to make my colleagues from the team blush, but it's just such an inclusive environment where as a patient is really welcomed, really heard, it's very much a partnership and that's been really, really important and it makes you feel valued as a patient and actually the importance of the lived experience the patient view has really been prominent in this.  I would say that's why it's helped develop such a useful tool, the fact as a patient people are really valuing and taking into account our lived experience, our views, our understanding.  It's been quite fun in some of the sessions.  There have been some good debates between us and some of the clinicians and it's been really good and really useful.  I think some of the people who maybe haven't encountered a patient panel before and engaged with patient's lived experience have probably learn a lot from it because we are pretty empowered to use our voice in this.  It's been a really great experience.   Amanda: I'd love to dig into those debates a bit more.  Kelly, were there things that you changed in the decision aid as a result of some of those discussions or as a result of that input that maybe surprised you?   Kelly: We have made changes based directly on what we've learned from the patients presenting their lived experiences.  They've been very open and honest with us.  Like Rochelle, I felt so privileged to be part of this real partnership with the patients.  As a genetic counsellor who had many years of experience in clinical practice before moving into this research role, I've been really surprised but also gratified by how much I've been able to learn from the patients in a different way because I am sort of taking a step back, I'm there as a researcher and not directly as a clinician looking after someone one-on-one in clinic and just thinking about their specific needs at that time.  But because I'm hearing from people from all different situations, different parts of the UK and other countries and maybe it's 10/20 years since they had their genetic diagnosis are actually getting a bigger picture of their care needs that we might not have heard about as the clinicians on the ground because they might not be coming back to tell us.  If we haven't opened the door to that conversation about their personal situation or who's influencing them or what's important to them when they make decisions, we just might not have learned about the thing they're grappling with and they've gone off and maybe Googled, they've found a patient support group or something else to support them.    In my research and in my interviews and the focus groups, all of the activities I've been learning about the gaps in care, what might be needed to address that.  The decision aid has not been yet ruled into clinical practice but we're very keen to get it out there and everyone wants it and wants to use it.  We want to make sure that we've developed it in a robust patient-centred way as much as we can for us before we put it out.  It will always be updated and go through refinements, but hopefully in the New Year we will be able to let people start using it in the real world situation.  Amanda: That's great, I'm sure you're looking forward to that.  Helen: I was just going to add to that in terms of the guideline development we've had a number of consensus meetings where we've made decisions about guidelines, for example, genes that can be predisposed to ovarian cancer and we've included patients from the patient reference panel and from other patient groups in those consensus meetings.  Again, as Kelly said, that's been so helpful because it's really brought something to those discussions and it is a different perspective than when we see patients in clinic because often we're seeing them at the point of genetic testing or maybe for their results, but actually that doesn't give us that overview of the whole patient journey and the whole patient experience.  I think that has been really one of the benefits of this programme and Kelly has been really pioneering the co-design of patient information leaflets, decision aids with patients.  Rather than clinicians designing things for patients that we think that they will understand, it's actually working with patients from the start to get things right the first time.  It's been a really great part of this programme.  Amanda: Rochelle, did you want to add something further here?   Rochelle: Yes.  I think one of the sessions that we had as a patient and clinician and researcher session that really stood out for me was when we started looking at how do people make decisions. We had academics and researchers who've looked at how do people make decisions, talk about the knowledge base and the research base that we have about it.  As a larger group of patients we got together to discuss about how have we made decisions.  It was really interesting because I don't think I've ever reflected on how I made the decision and what came from that in terms of what I did about having my mutation.  Hearing about how other people did as well, that session really does stick in my mind and actually I learnt a lot as a person about decision-making theory but also about myself and reflecting on how I make decisions.  So as a patient involved in this, it's not always about what I bring to this but actually as a patient rep you get a lot from it, too.  I've learnt a lot from the colleagues that I've worked with.  Amanda: That's fantastic.  It's really great to hear the careful thought that's gone into this, a real excellent example that hopefully others can look to.  I think, Kelly, hasn't your work won an award recently as well?  Kelly: We as a whole team won an award from the academic health science network and the NHS Confederation, it's called the Innovate Awards 2023.  This was for excellence in patient and public involvement in transformation and innovation.  Yes, it was a chance to showcase the really positive experience that we've had.  I think on all sides we've learnt a lot from each other and just to hope to inspire other researchers and clinicians to take this co-design approach with patients because we all benefit from it so much.  We think that the resources, the guidelines, everything that we develop will be better from the start if we work together throughout the project.    We're really hoping to encourage others to consider from the beginning of their idea about a research programme or clinical development to bring the patients in right at the start, because they can really help to guide where things go next and then throughout.  Even through to publications being on, committees, being co-chairs, presenting together at conferences, that can all help to really share the experience and the benefits that we get from the partnership.  Amanda: That's great, congratulations.  Coming back now to some of the aims of CanGene-CanVar and trying to bridge that gap, as you said, between research and clinical care, I guess that means there are some needs that still aren't being met that are falling through that gap at the moment.  Helen, from your perspective what are some of those unmet needs that we currently have or areas that are still needing improvement?    Helen: I think there's still lots that we have to learn, particularly about individual risks for patients.  We might have patients who all have a pathogenic variant in a certain gene but their risks might be slightly different due to factors that can modify their risk.  Trying to understand some of those risks better so that we can really have much better informed discussions with patients about their lifetime cancer risks I think would be really helpful.  Work package one of the programme is really focussing on that and looking at some of the information we have through national registries and trying to understand risks for specific genes better, which will help our discussions with patients, and then we still need to understand, which is more outside the programme, more how surveillance, so early cancer detection through screenings such as mammograms or ultrasounds for different cancers can help detect cancers early. There's still lots of information that we need to learn.    I think Kelly's decision aid which has been focussed on Lynch Syndrome, I think that can be translated across lots of other genetic conditions, because for each gene there is a different set of decisions.  For some of the genes that we developed clinical guidelines for we might be recommending slightly different management or for some of the genes we've recommended maybe a minimum and an extended level of surveillance, particularly for a gene called DICER1 where we've offered different options in childhood.  Decision aids would potentially help in some of those other genes building on the work that's already been developed as part of the programme.  Although the programme is coming to an end in the next year, I think there's still lots of work to be done in this area.   Amanda: It really sounds like you've all been collectively improving how much this work is worthwhile, so that's great to hear.  Rochelle, how about for you, are there areas that you would see as unmet needs or areas where we or research can improve to help patients and families with inherited cancers.  Rochelle: Similar to some of the stuff that Helen was saying, knowing more about what happens when people have different types of treatment, different types of surveillance and monitoring and stuff like that, I think there are things that are evolving all the time.  I think in the end when you think about gaps, there's nothing that's going to be written down on paper that says if you have this, do this.  In the end, every single patient is an individual with individual circumstances.  I think until we actually know that if you do this, this happens and this happens, this is going to be your chances of survival if you go through this route.  Even then when you've got the chance of survival, that's literally just a probability, it's not a binary this will happen or that will happen.  There's always going to be a need for discussion, there's always going to be a need for these brilliant genetic counsellors that we have to talk us through some of those complex decisions that we have to make.  I think, yes, we'll get more information, we'll get more evidence, we'll get more understanding of treatments that work best for different people, and we'll get it out there and we absolutely do need to do that.    Even when you have all the information you need, even if you made a solid decision, I mean, when I found out I had the mutation immediately I was like, right, that's it, I'll have preventative surgery after what happened to my mum.  It was an absolute no-brainer for me.  For other people it might not have been if they were at a different life stage.  I'd had my kids, I didn't need my ovaries, I didn't need my womb, it was pretty clear cut.  Even then when I was thinking about the different treatment and when to have that surgery, I got most of my information from bumping into somebody in the ladies' toilets who has been through it before.  I think there's always going to be a need in terms of being able to have those conversations to take in all the information you do that and make some sort of informed decision.  What came out of that decision-making workshop and all the other things that we did about probabilities, it's all just a model.  It's a model of what might happen.  The thing is, all of these models, they're all wrong, they just help you maybe make a discussion or a decision that might be right.  You just never know.  I still don't know if the decisions I made were the right decisions either.  There needs to be that space for people to consider their options, you're never going to get the definitive answer.    Amanda: An important message there.  We talk a lot about using digital tools to be able to do things better at scale, better ways to give information, but I think what you're saying is we can't replace certain elements of human connection, we can't underestimate the value of that.  You made a really good point earlier as well about how so many of these decisions have uncertainty and it can be really difficult to navigate the complexities of a health system.  Perhaps even more challenging if you have struggles with health literacy or if you are an underserved group in some way or another.     Kelly, I think you mentioned that some of your research has also touched on developing information for underserved groups.  Can you tell us a bit more about that?  Kelly: We recognised that there are many underserved groups that are not represented in research, in literature, and applied for additional funding to do some specific targeted projects in the community.  There were a couple of examples I can mention.  One was inspired by colleagues at the Royal Marsden who made some videos about prostate screening and the had black men and their family members talking about this in a relaxed barber's shop setting.  Through reaching out into the community I was connected with Lee Townsend from Macmillan who's been making these barbershop videos around London for the last seven years.  He's focussed on a number of topics like mental health, vaccination and cancer.  We connected and it was really about making that connection in the community, him as a trusted leader, and having formed partnerships with some of the barbers who opened up their barbershops for filming these sessions and went way beyond that.    One of them has actually trained as a counsellor himself because he said men are coming for a haircut and actually they have a bald head, they don't need the haircut, they're coming actually for the chat.  Because it's benefitting their mental health and they felt able to open up about topics that they wouldn't talk about even at home with their family members or with their friends, such as symptoms of cancer, going for cancer screening or presenting for treatment if they were symptomatic.  It's really powerful.  We've actually filmed six videos with black and minority ethnicity patients, talking about their cancer experience and they've really both helped others by setting an example that it's okay to talk about these things.  Also, through the process an added benefit was helping themselves, so it was peer support.  When they came to the barbershop to film their stories, they didn't need to stay for the whole time but they did stay for the three hours.  They said afterwards how helpful it was just to hear others in a similar situation sharing their stories.  One of them told me he's got up on stage and shared his cancer journey and he's been going to these patient groups and talking when he didn't feel able to do that in the past.  It's been a great project and we're going to be adding the videos to the CanGene-CanVar patient decision aid website soon.  Another thing that we've done in the diet and lifestyle section of the website where it talks about things that people might do to lower their chances of getting cancer have partnered with Professor Ranjit Manchanda who had some colleagues in India and made some infographics that specifically depict patients of a South Asian heritage and the types of foods that they might be choosing to give examples of how they might for example try to get more fibre in their diet to lower the chances of getting bowel cancer or trying to eat more fruits and vegetables or drink less alcohol.  It shows images of Indian patients.  What people have told me in my research, my interviews, focus groups, is they tend to go and try to search for something that means something to them, so they're looking for someone like me.  One of the patients I filmed she said that she had breast cancer as a young black woman and she was only middle-aged women on the websites.  She thought why is this, do black women not get breast cancer or young women like me?  For her to share her story was very brave but also has the potential to help a lot of other people in the community.   Amanda: That's really powerful, so understanding those nuances in different cultures or communities or groups is just so crucial to really being able to also develop information or messages or provide care that's going to really reach those people where they are, I guess.  This has been a really fantastic conversation.  If we could end with a final question, it would be great to hear from your perspective just one thing that you'd like to see in the next five to ten years when it comes to care for inherited cancer susceptibility conditions.  Helen, let's start with you?  Helen: I think that in developing the guidelines one of the things that we've had to struggle or grapple with is a lack of evidence and the lack of the data that's available for some of these conditions.  I'm really hoping that over the next five to ten years that we will see much more data on cancer risks and outcomes of surveillance progress for people who have an inherited predisposition.  Then we can utilise that information to be able to share with patients to enable them to make best decisions about their care.  There's a number of initiatives that are currently underway thinking about how we might better collect data on patients with inherited cancer predisposition in the UK, through registries, so I am really hoping that we manage to get some useful data that we can then use in our discussions with patients going forward.  Amanda: Thank you.  Kelly?  Kelly: I think that over the next five to ten years as awareness and availability of genetic testing continues to increase, we know that there will be more and more families identified who have a higher genetic risk of getting certain cancers.  We can't replace that personalised counselling that takes place, face-to-face or sometimes telephone and video appointments with a healthcare profession.  So there are more resources needed for the NHS to deliver this.  To compliment that, the patient website decision aid that we have co-designed is one way to help.  What patients tell us they would like, access to a central trusted source of information that's up to date.  Importantly in genetics it's very fastmoving, there's a lot of research, guidelines are changing, and it's very crucial to have information that's correct and relevant for people, and also meaningful.  We can only do that by partnering together with patients and co-designing things rather than designing them and asking them afterwards if they're useful.  It's a partnership all the way through that we all benefit from.    As I said earlier, it's not a one-size-fits-all, decision-making is so personal and shared decision-making is recommended but we don't always have enough time in clinic to really address all of the issues that the patient might not have even thought about themselves.  Having something like a patient-facing resource website booklet that they can look at in their own time, prepare for their questions that they really want to focus on in clinic, it might help give them the confidence to bring something up that they might not have otherwise.  It's about a number of different ways of helping to support people.  We've identified that there are gaps in care that we could try to help address if we have more resource in future.  Those are my aspirations.  Thank you, Amanda.   Amanda: Thank you.  And Rochelle, to you?  Rochelle: I think for me I would like to have as many people as possible to understand or know about their genetic mutation status.  We know people don't even know about the fact that they may have a genetic mutation that may make them more susceptible to cancers, and we know that even then if you do can you get access to testing to know whether you've got it or not.  That is the most important thing.  My mum, if she'd known that some of this was related, if she'd had that awareness that breast and ovarian cancer in your family was related to potential genetic risk, maybe she would have pushed harder to get testing and maybe she wouldn't have been tested when it's too late.  In the end, all this knowledge and empowering people with knowledge, whether that be about empowering people with the knowledge that they may have a genetic mutation, there's a possibility of the genetic mutation, that these things are related and empowering people through the knowledge of knowing their genetic mutation status, all that is something that saves lives.  From my view, it undoubtedly probably has saved my life and so my hope for the future is that we can empower more people like me and we can save more lives.   Amanda: Thank you for our guests today Dr Helen Hansen, Rochelle Gold and Kelly Kohut.  If you enjoyed today's episode, we'd love your support.  Please subscribe to The G Word on your favourite podcast app and like, share and rate us wherever you listen.  I've been your host, Amanda Pichini.  This podcast was edited by Mark Kendrick at Ventoux Digital and produced by Naimah Callachand.  Thanks for listening.     

Joël is joined by Amanda Beiner, a Senior Software Engineer at GitHub, who is known for her legendary well-organized notes. They talk about various types of notes: debugging, todos, mental stack, Zetelkasten/evergreen notes, notetaking apps and systems, and visual note-taking and diagramming too! @amandabeiner (https://twitter.com/amandabeiner) Mermaid.live (https://mermaid.live) Monodraw (https://monodraw.helftone.com/) Zettlekasten (https://zettelkasten.de/introduction/) Evergreen Notes (https://notes.andymatuschak.org/Evergreen_notes) Notion (https://www.notion.so/) Obsidian (https://obsidian.md/) Transcript: JOËL: Hello and welcome to another episode of The Bike Shed, a weekly podcast from your friends at thoughtbot about developing great software. I'm Joël Quenneville. And today, I'm joined by Amanda Beiner, a Senior Software Engineer at GitHub. AMANDA: Hey, Joël. Great to see you. JOËL: And together, we're here to share a little bit of what we've learned along the way. So, Amanda, what is new in your world? AMANDA: Well, one thing I'm really excited about is that my team at GitHub is experimenting with how we're going to incorporate learning and sharing what we've learned with each other in new ways, and I'm really excited to see where people take that. So, one of the things that we're thinking of is that we all get really busy, and we all have exciting projects that we're working on in the day-to-day, and sometimes it can be really hard to pull yourself away from them to do some learning that would be something that will probably help you in the long run. But every time we do do projects like that, people are really excited about it, and people like to collaborate. So we're just trying to figure out how we can make that a more regular thing because it's great for our whole team. JOËL: I love that. Do you have a project or something that you've been getting into recently to learn? AMANDA: Yeah. One of the things that I have been working on is that this is the first backend-focused role that I've had in my entire career. So I feel like I just kind of keep pulling back layers on how different forms of magic work. And I'm just trying to get closer to the metal of what is powering our databases. And that's something that I've been really excited to learn some more about. JOËL: So it's digging into a lot of, like, Postgres and just general database theory. AMANDA: Yeah. So for me, I've spent a lot of time at the Active Record layer as I have been settling into my role and figuring out what our domain models are that we care about. And I'm trying to get a little bit more into the questions of why did these tables end up looking the way that they do? Why are they normalized or denormalized where they are? And trying to get a better idea of the theory behind those decisions. JOËL: And this is a new team that you've joined. AMANDA: This is an existing team that I've joined a year ago now. JOËL: So it sounds like you're dealing with a somewhat unfamiliar codebase. You're looking at a bunch of existing models and database tables. That can be a lot to process and understand when you first join a team. Do you have an approach that you like to use when you're looking at unknown code for the first time? AMANDA: Yeah. I usually like to dive right in as much as I can, even if it's with a very small bug fix or something like that, something that allows me to just get my hands dirty from the beginning and poke around what models I'm dealing with, and maybe some of the adjacent ones that I don't need to know about now but might want to come back to later. JOËL: One thing that I find is really helpful for me are diagramming and note-taking. So if it's something like a database table or ActiveRecord models that I'm not familiar with, if it's more than maybe two or three, which is probably the most I can keep in my head, I have to start drawing some kind of like an entity-relationship diagram or maybe even just a bulleted list somewhere where it's like here are the things and how they connect to each other. Otherwise, I'm like, I don't know, I don't have enough RAM in my brain for that. AMANDA: That sounds like a really helpful approach. How do you approach creating these diagrams? JOËL: Occasionally, I will just draw it out by hand with pen and paper. But more recently, I've been using tools like Mermaid.js and specifically the website mermaid.live that allows you to just put in some names and arrows, and it will build out a diagram for you. And that's been really helpful to explore and understand what is going on with different entities that relate to each other. AMANDA: I've used Mermaid.js recently, and I really enjoyed it as well. I found that writing something that lets me write words or something somewhat like words and takes care of the drawing for me is probably best for everyone involved. JOËL: Yeah, that's a good point. It's kind of like Markdown, the ability to just write a little bit of text and move on and not worry about the size of boxes or the shape of the arrows or whatever. It helps you to really stay in that flow and keep moving. AMANDA: I definitely agree. I feel like I can't have been the only person that somehow ended up very deep into the Figma documentation because I didn't quite know how to do what I was supposed to do, and I forgot what I was trying to draw in the first place. JOËL: Right. It's really easy to put your designer hat on and want to make something like a beautiful diagram when this is really more of a capturing your state of mind. It's a rough note, not something you're necessarily going to publish. So, in addition to visuals, do you find yourself taking a lot of notes when you're exploring code or debugging code? AMANDA: Yeah. I feel like I tend to jot a lot of things down, maybe class names, maybe some links to PRs or issues, or anywhere that might have context about what I'm looking at and how it got in that way. At this point in the process, it feels my notes usually feel like a bit of a bullet point list that doesn't quite make sense to me yet but maybe will get some shaping later. JOËL: What kind of things do you tend to record in those notes? AMANDA: I think one of the things that I'm usually trying to get out of those notes is just a snapshot of what I'm trying to accomplish at the time that I'm creating them. What's the bug that I'm trying to solve, and how did I get into this rabbit hole? So that if it ends up being the wrong one, I can follow my breadcrumbs back out and start a different way. JOËL: Oh, that is really powerful. I love the imagery you used there of following breadcrumbs. And I feel like that's sometimes something I wish I had when I'm either exploring a particular code path or trying to find a bug. And at some point, I've gone a pretty long path, and I need to back up. And I don't remember exactly where I was or how I got to this point, especially if I've gone down a path, backtracked a little bit, gone down a different path, backtracked, gone further down a third path. And so having breadcrumbs, I think, is a really valuable thing that I wish I did more when I was debugging. AMANDA: Yeah. And one of the most helpful breadcrumbs that I found is just a list of questions. What was the question that I was trying to answer when I opened this file or looked at this method, and did it help me solve that question or answer that question? And if the answer is no, then I can refer back to what the question was and try to think about what else might help me solve that question. JOËL: I also love that. It's really easy to get sidetracked by other questions or other ideas when exploring or debugging. And sometimes I find that half hour later, I haven't answered the original question I came here to answer, and I kind of haven't even tried. And so, maybe writing down my questions before I go down a path would help me stay more focused during a debugging session rather than just trying to keep it all in my head. AMANDA: I very much relate to getting nerd sniped by something that looks interesting but ultimately doesn't solve the original problem that you were trying to. JOËL: This even happens to me when I'm pair programming. And so we'll say out loud the question we're trying to answer is this; let's open this file. And then you go into it, and you're like, oh, now that is an unusual line of code right there. AMANDA: [laughs] JOËL: I wonder why they're doing that. Let me check the git blame on this line. Oh, it's from 2015? AMANDA: [laughs] JOËL: I wonder what was happening there. Was that part of a Rails upgrade? And then, at some point, the other person has to interject and be like, "That's all fascinating, but I think the question we're actually trying to answer is..." and we get back on track. AMANDA: I feel like that's a really good opportunity, maybe for a different kind of note of just interesting curiosities in a given codebase. I find that one of the skills that I'm trying to get better at is, rather than building a repository of information or answers to questions, just building a mental map of where the information I'm trying to find lives so that when someone asks me a question or when I have to solve something I don't necessarily know the answer, but I just know the resource to find that will point me in the direction of that answer. And I feel like those kinds of explorations are really helpful for building out that mental model, even if it may be at the time seems like an unrelated rabbit hole. JOËL: So this kind of note is a bit more permanent than a bread crumb style note would be. AMANDA: Yeah, maybe. And I guess maybe it's less of a note, and it feels kind of like an index. JOËL: Hmmm. AMANDA: Like something that's connecting other pieces of information. JOËL: That's really interesting. It's got me thinking about the fact that note-taking can be very different in different situations and for different purposes. So we've talked a little bit about debugging. I think we've mixed debugging and exploration. Maybe those two are not the same, and you treat notes differently. Actually, do you treat those two as different, or do you have different approaches to note-taking when you're exploring a new codebase versus debugging a particular problem? AMANDA: I think that those kinds of notes could probably be a little bit different because I think when I'm onboarding onto a new codebase, I'm trying to cast a pretty wide net and give some overall information about what these things do that by the time I'm very deep in debugging, it might be information that I already know very well. So I feel like maybe debugging notes are a little bit more procedural. They are a little bit more I did X, and I did Y, and I did Z, and these were the questions. And the introductory notes to a new codebase might be more along the lines of this is what this model does, and stuff that will eventually become second nature and might be useful to pass off to someone else who's onboarding but which I might myself not refer back to after a certain amount of time. JOËL: I see. That's an interesting point because not only might the type of notes you take be different in different scenarios, but even their lifespan could be different. The value of a debugging note, that sort of breadcrumbs, might really only be that useful for a few hours or a couple of days. I can imagine notes you're taking while you're exploring a codebase those might be helpful for a much longer period and, as you said, maybe in passing them on to someone else when they're joining a team. AMANDA: So that makes me think of whether the debugging notes should be as short-lived as I'm making them sound because I feel like there are times where you know you've debugged something previously, but you didn't keep the notes. Maybe they were just on a scrap of paper, and now they're gone. And I feel like I'd like to do a better job of digesting those notes a little bit better and eventually turning them into something that can be a little bit longer-lived. JOËL: That's fair. I find that, especially for debugging, I like to capture a lot of what was in my notes in the eventual commit message for the fix. Of course, my random breadcrumbs probably don't make sense in the commit message, but a lot of what I have learned along the way often is helpful. AMANDA: That's a really good point. I hadn't thought of commit messages as notes, but you're right; they totally are. JOËL: One thing I've done is I've sort of taken this idea to the extreme. I was debugging some weird database table ActiveRecord model interactions, and the modeling was just a little bit unusual. There were multiple sources of truth in the relationships. And there were enough models that I struggled to really understand what was going on. And so I drew an entity-relationship diagram. And I felt that that was important to understand for people reviewing the code but also anybody looking back at the commit later on. So I used a tool called Monodraw, which allows you to draw simple diagrams as ASCII art. And so, I have a little ASCII art ERD in my commit message. AMANDA: That's incredible. I feel like if I were a developer git logging and I saw that commit message, I would be both thrilled and terrified of what exactly I was diving into in the git blame. [laughs] JOËL: Definitely both, definitely both. But I have referred back maybe a few months later. Like you said, I had to refer back to that commit because a similar bug had cropped up somewhere else. And I knew that that commit had information that I had gathered that would make the debugging experience easier. AMANDA: I guess the commit message is a really good example of having a note that's very closely tied to its context. Like, it's in the context of like a commit, which is a set of changes at a point in time, and it's really well situated in there. What do you think about the trade-offs of having that as part of a commit message versus something like some other sort of documentation where something like that could live? JOËL: I guess it depends on how you think you're going to use it in the future. Again, for debugging things, it feels like you don't often need to refer back to them, so I don't think you would want to just dump that on a wiki somewhere. It probably makes sense to have that either in just a collection of debugging notes that you have or that you could then dig into if you needed or in a commit message, something like that. But maybe some of the things that you learned along the way could be pulled out and turned into something that lives somewhere else that's maybe less of a note at that point and more of a publication. AMANDA: That sounds like a fine line between note and publication. JOËL: Perhaps it's an artificial line that I'm making. AMANDA: [laughs] JOËL: But yeah, I guess the idea is that sometimes I will look at my own debugging notes and try to turn them into something like either a wiki page for a particular codebase or potentially even a blog post on the thoughtbot blog, something that I've been able to synthesize out of the notes there. But now you've kind of gone a few steps beyond the underlying raw notes. AMANDA: I'm interested in your thoughts on that synthesis of notes into how does something go from a commit message into a blog? What does that process look like for you? JOËL: I have a personal note-taking system that's loosely inspired by a system called Zettelkasten and also another similar system called evergreen notes. The idea is that when you learn things, you capture small atomic notes, so they are an idea in your note-taking application, and then you connect them. You create links between notes. And the idea is that there's a lot of value in making connections between notes that's almost as much part of the knowledge-creating experience as capturing single notes on their own. And as you capture a bunch of these little, tiny notes over time and they become very interconnected, then you can start seeing, oh, this note from this one experience, this note from this conference talk, and this note from this book all connect together. And they maybe even make connections I hadn't seen, or I hadn't thought of individually in those moments. But now I see that they all kind of come together with a theme. And I might then combine those together to make a blog post or to use as the foundation for a conference talk. AMANDA: That's really interesting. I like the concept of being able to capture bits of information at the time that they felt relevant without having to have an entire thesis in this note. Or that idea doesn't have to be fully fleshed out; it can become fleshed out later when you connect the dots. JOËL: That's a really powerful concept. One of the big ideas that I picked up through this was that there are always byproducts of knowledge creation. So if I'm writing a blog post, there are always some things that I cut that didn't make it into the blog post because I'm trying to keep it focused. But those are still things that I learned, things that are valuable, that could be used for something else. And so anytime I'm writing a blog post, preparing for a conference talk, learning some things in a debugging session by reading a book, there are always some things that I don't use necessarily immediately. But I can capture those little chunks, and eventually, I have enough of them that I can combine them together to make some kind of other work. AMANDA: I'm really curious about your process of creating those notes. If you're reading a blog post, say, to learn a new topic and you're taking notes on that, how do you go from this concept that you're learning in the blog post to these really focused notes that can be combined in other ways? JOËL: So the Zettelkasten approach suggests that you have two forms of notes, one it calls literature notes which are just sort of ideas you jot down as you are reading some work. You're reading a book or a blog post or watching a talk, and then, later on, you go and turn those into those atomic-separated, linked notes together, what Zettelkasten calls permanent notes. And so I'll often do that is just focus on the work itself and jot down some notes and then convert those later on into these smaller atomic chunks. AMANDA: That concept of taking a larger theme and then actually spending the energy to distill that into a different kind of artifact that might be helpful later on is really interesting. And I don't do Zettelkasten note-taking, but I've also found that to be useful in other contexts as well. JOËL: One thing that I sort of hold myself to is when I am writing those atomic notes is, I don't write them as bullet points. They're always written in prose and complete sentences. The title is usually a sort of thesis statement, a thing that I think is true or at least a thing that posits that could be true, and then a short paragraph expanding on that idea which I think helps cement a lot of information in my mind but also helps to give me little chunks of things that I can more or less copy-paste into an article and already have almost a rough draft of something I want to say. Do you find that when you synthesize ideas into notes that you do something similar, or do you stick mostly to bullet points? AMANDA: I think I might do a mixture of the two. I think procedurally, I use bullet points a lot, but I think those bullet points tend to be full sentences or several sentences together. I've definitely run up against some of the drawbacks of terseness, where they're less helpful when you refer back to it later. But I do like the visual cues that come with things like bullet points, or numbered lists, or even emoji and note-taking to be a visual cue of what I was thinking of or where I can find this later on. JOËL: I love emoji; emoji is great. AMANDA: I guess actually I've started using emoji as bullet points. That's something that I've found even to be helpful just with remembering or with grouping things thematically in my mind. And when I'm going back through my notes, I find it easier to find the information that I was looking for because it had a list, or an emoji, or an image, or something like that. JOËL: Yeah, that makes it really easy to scan and pick out the things that you're looking for. It's almost like adding metadata to your notes. AMANDA: Totally. JOËL: That's a great tip. I should do that. AMANDA: You can definitely run into the Figma problem of you then spend so much time finding the right emoji to be the bullet point that you forgot what you were doing, [laughs] but that's a problem for a different day. JOËL: So this sort of Zettelkasten evergreen notes approach is a system that I use specifically to help me capture long-term thoughts about software that could eventually turn into content. So this is very much not a debugging note. It's not an exploratory note. It has a very particular purpose, which is why I write it in this particular way. I'm curious; I know you have a lot of different systems that you use for your notes, Amanda. Is there one that you'd like to share with the audience? Maybe tell us a little bit about what the system is and why it's a good fit for the type of scenario that you'd like to use it in. AMANDA: Sure. One situation that I found myself in recently is I have started taking classes on things that I'm interested in, development-related and non-development-related. And that's a formal structure that requires some note-taking that I haven't really done since I was in school. And the tools were very different back then as to what we had available to us for note-taking. It was basically Microsoft Word or bust. So I have found myself having to develop a new note system for that kind of content delivery method, basically of watching a video and taking notes and having something that then makes sense outside of the context of sitting down and watching a video. So that has been a little bit of a process journey that I've been on the last couple of months. JOËL: And what does your note-taking system look like? AMANDA: So it's been a mix of things, actually. I started out just kind of brain-dumping as I went along with the instructor talking trying to type and keep up. And I found that very not scannable to look back on. I was looking for some more visual cues, and I didn't really have time to insert those visual cues as I was trying to keep up with a lecture essentially. I then transitioned back to old school pen and paper, like, got myself a notebook and started writing in it. And obviously, that has some benefits of the free-formness, like, I'm not constrained by the offerings of any specific tool. But the trade-off for that is always that you have different notebooks for everything. And it's like, where's my X class notebook? And so I've been trying to bring those two methods together into something that makes a little bit more sense for me and also bring in some of that synthesis process that you were talking about with your note-taking method of doing the full literature notes and then synthesizing them down into something a little bit more well-scoped for the particular piece of information. JOËL: So you have like a two-step process then. AMANDA: It did end up being a two-step process because one of the things that I found was the grouping of ideas that make sense when you're first learning a concept and the grouping of ideas that make sense when I'm revisiting that concept, later on, aren't necessarily the same. And so, keeping it in the original context doesn't necessarily help me recall the information when I'm referring back to my notes. JOËL: That's really interesting. When you're writing it, it's going to be different than when you're reading it. So we've been talking a lot about the purpose of different notes along the way, and you mentioned the word recall here. Do you use these notes mostly as a way to recall things that you would look back at them and try to remember, or are they more of a way to digest the material as you're going through it? AMANDA: I think at the time that I'm writing them, they definitely served the purpose of helping me digest the information. But at some point, I probably want to be able to look back at them and remember the things that I learned and see if maybe they have new salience now that I have sat on them for a little bit. JOËL: Hmmm, that's good. So it's valuable for both in different contexts. AMANDA: Yeah, definitely. And one of the more surprising things that I've learned through that process has been that when I'm learning something, I really like a chronological kind of step-by-step through that process and building blocks of complexity that basically go one on top of the other. But then, once I've kind of made it to the end when I look back on it, I look back on those notes, and they're usually pretty thorough. They probably have a lot of details that aren't going to be top-level priority at the end. But I didn't really have that concept of priority when I was first learning it. I was kind of grasping onto each bit of information, saying, "I'm going to scroll this away in case I need it later." And then when you get a better understanding of the full picture, you realize, okay, I'm glad that I know that, but it's not necessarily something that I'd want to look back on. So I really like having systems that then allow me to regroup that information once I have built out a fuller picture of what it is I'm trying to learn. JOËL: Interesting. So the sort of digesting step that happens afterwards or the synthesis step, a lot of the value that you're adding there is by putting structure on a lot of the information you captured. AMANDA: Yeah, I think putting structure and changing the structure, and not being afraid to change that structure to fit my new understanding in how I see this concept now instead of just how this concept was explained to me. JOËL: So you mentioned that you'd initially used notebooks and paper and that that felt a little bit constraining in terms of organization. Is there any kind of software or apps that you like to use to organize your notes, and how do they fit in with your approach to note-taking? AMANDA: I've been using Notion for the last few years. I found that that application works well with my visual preferences for note-taking. I think there's a lot of opportunity for visual cues that help me recall things, such as emoji and bullet points. And I like that I can do all of that by writing Markdown without then also having to read Markdown. JOËL: Yeah, I definitely agree that a little visual change there where you can actually see the rendered Markdown is a nice quality-of-life improvement. AMANDA: Absolutely. And I also think that the way that it turns Markdown into blocks that then you can rearrange has served me really well for that synthesis process of maybe this bullet point makes sense, and I want to keep it as is. But I want to rearrange it into these new themes that I'm seeing as I'm reviewing these things that I've learned. JOËL: That's fascinating. So it has some really good tools for evolving your notes and reorganizing them, it sounds like. AMANDA: I like that I can group my notes by concept, and notes can be subsets or sub-notes of other notes. And you can kind of move the individual notes in between those blocks pretty easily, which helps me rearrange things when I see different themes evolving. JOËL: I've heard really good things about Notion, but I've not tried it myself. My app of choice so far has been Obsidian, which I really appreciate its focus on linking between notes. It doesn't have this concept of blocks where you can embed parts of notes as notes into other notes and things like that. But that has been okay for me because I keep my notes very small and atomic. But the focus on hyperlinking between notes has been really useful for me because, in my approach, it's all about the connections. AMANDA: So, what does that process look like when you are referring back to all of these notes that are hyperlinked together? JOËL: That's actually really important because the recall aspect is a big part of how you would use a note-taking system. For me, it's sort of like walking the graph. So I'll use search, or maybe I know a note that's in the general theme of what I care about, and then I'll just follow the links to other related articles or notes that talk about things that are related to it. And I might walk that graph three, four steps out in a few different directions. It's kind of like surfing Wikipedia. You find some entry point, and then you just follow the links until you have the material that you're interested in. AMANDA: It sounds like creating a Wikipedia wormhole of your own. JOËL: It kind of is. I guess, in a way, it's kind of like a little mini personal wiki where the articles are very, very condensed because I have that limitation that everything must be atomic. Wow. So this has been a really fascinating conversation. I feel like one of the big takeaways that I have is that types of notes matter. Note-taking can take very different forms in different contexts. And the way you organize them would be vastly different; how long you care about them is also going to be different. So going into a particular situation, knowing what sort of situation is this that I'm using notes and what is their purpose is going to be really helpful to think in terms of how I want to do my note-keeping. Whereas I think previously, I probably was just like, yeah, notes. You open a document, and you put in some bullet points. AMANDA: I am definitely guilty of doing that as well. And I like the idea of having a purpose for your notes. You mentioned your purpose was ultimately to build a map that would produce content. And I really like how you have found a system that works really well for that purpose. And I'm going to keep thinking about how to be more intentional in what is the purpose of the notes that I'm taking in the future. JOËL: Well, thank you so much for joining the conversation today. Where can people find you on the web? AMANDA: Thanks so much for having me, Joël. You can find me @amandabeiner on Twitter. JOËL: And we'll link to that in the show notes. And with that, let's wrap up. The show notes for this episode can be found at bikeshed.fm. This show is produced and edited by Mandy Moore. If you enjoyed listening, one really easy way to support the show is to leave us a quick rating or even a review in iTunes. It really helps other folks find the show. If you have any feedback, you can reach us at @_bikeshed, or reach me at @joelquen on Twitter, or at hosts@bikeshed.fm via email. Thank you so much for listening to The Bike Shed, and we'll see you next week. Byeeeeeeee!!!!!!! ANNOUNCER: This podcast was brought to you by thoughtbot. thoughtbot is your expert design and development partner. Let's make your product and team a success.

Follow us @Saberswith, @‪binabess_(B) , @blerdgirljedi (maria), @Porscheirielle (Porsche), @JennaBellaJ (Raven) @Mjrjt (Rhole), @theroyalmilktea (Gee) @Olivegelato (Oliva), @thehauntedmanda (Amanda) You can Support Cookie @CookieLady1977 on instagram. @benistheworst on Twitter. The dyad is back! https://gofund.me/79a0701d Support a Sista --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/sistaswithsabers/message

Follow us @Saberswith, @‪binabess_(B) , @blerdgirljedi (maria), @Porscheirielle (Porsche), @JennaBellaJ (Raven) @Mjrjt (Rhole), @theroyalmilktea (Gee) @Olivegelato (Oliva), @thehauntedmanda (Amanda) You can Support Cookie @CookieLady1977 on instagram. https://gofund.me/79a0701d Support a Sista --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/sistaswithsabers/message

Today we have a NEW sista COOKIE joins us tonight She will share her perspective! Follow us @Saberswith, @‪binabess_(B) , @blerdgirljedi (maria), @Porscheirielle (Porsche), @JennaBellaJ (Raven) @Mjrjt (Rhole), @theroyalmilktea (Gee) @Olivegelato (Oliva), @thehauntedmanda (Amanda) You can Support Cookie @CookieLady1977 on instagram. View the vouge cover here: https://www.vogue.co.uk/fashion/article/african-models-british-vogue-february-2022  Our Support a Sista this week is: Love Vera for your sexy someone https://www.lovevera.com/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/sistaswithsabers/message

In this episode, I'm talking with Amanda Watson, author of The Juggling Mother.  Amanda provides her expertise as a Lecturer of Sociology and Anthropology at Simon Fraser University and from her extensive research examining media representation of work, reproduction, and care. Her book, The Juggling Mother: Coming Undone in the Age of Anxiety makes a controversial case that mothers who appear to be frantically juggling paid and unpaid work perpetuate established social inequities of race, gender, class, and ability—even as they take on stigma and an unfair share of the load. ⁠It is my hope, that my conversation with Amanda offers a sense of relief and common understanding on how we can begin to dismantle the term ‘The Juggling Mother' or perhaps embrace it and create new strategies to gain more support and understanding – especially as we move through the second year of the pandemic.SHOW NOTES In this episode of The Motherhood Redefined Podcast, you will learn: Who is The Juggling Mother? How the pandemic has elevated even more anxiety, burnout and exhaustion for the Juggling Mother.What is the ‘invisible load' and what are some strategies to ease feelings of overwhelm within our own household and with our partners.What are the social inequalities of race, gender, class and ability — how can we as a community and “The Juggling Mother” give back?   _____About Amanda WatsonDr. Amanda D. Watson is a Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Simon Fraser University. Her research examines media representation of work, reproduction, and care. Dr. Watson's latest book, The Juggling Mother: Coming Undone in the Age of Anxiety, makes the controversial case that mothers who appear to be frantically juggling paid and unpaid work perpetuate established social inequities of race, gender, class, and ability—even as they take on stigma and an unfair share of the load. Dr. Watson lives in East Vancouver with her partner, two kids, and two pups. _____Where to find Amanda:You can find her book at ubcpress.ca and join her conversation at #thejugglingmother or @spindrwatson.

As you may or may not know, in addition to my live Q+A sessions every Friday in The Killer B Hive Facebook group, I do a BONUS Q+A on the last Wednesday of the month over on my YouTube channel. You’re always welcome

On this episode of the podcast I share the answers to the questions asked on the Friday Live in my Facebook group Braden's Besties This episode is brought to you by my FREE Tax Challenge. Taxes suck but we all have to file them. I'll walk you through the 5 steps you need to get your tax documents organized and ready to file. Sign up for this free challenge. Today on the podcast I'm mixing it up. Instead of our usual Tuesday podcast where I answer only one question from my Facebook group, I'm going to be sharing an audio version of my Friday Facebook Live where I answer several questions from Facebook group members like you on anything from specific contract questions to questions about my programs. Here are this week's questions: If my business was formed as an S Corp but I want to change it to an LLC, what do I need to do? - submitted by Jenny You will need to send in a statement of revocation and also an entity classification election form (IRS form 8832). I wanted to add a clause to my contract about Notification and was going to use this: NOTICE All notices, requests, claims, demands and other communications between the parties shall be in writing. All notices shall be given (a) by delivery in person, (b) by a nationally recognized next day courier service, or (c) by first class, registered or certified mail, postage prepaid, to the address of the party specified in this Agreement or such other address as either party may specify in writing. Such notice shall be effective upon (a) the receipt by the party to which notice is given, or (b) on the third day following mailing, whichever occurs first. Notice may also be given by electronic mail. Such notices shall be effective upon receipt of a written acknowledgement by the party to which notice is given. My concern is the last part about the email notification & the fact that it's only effective if the person acknowledges with a written reply, which folks don't always do. Is there a way around this or better wording? Can I just say that it's effective a day after sending it to an address specified in writing? - submitted by Nikeva This is a pretty wordy clause. Typically in a contract we say there are certain things that require written notice - you want to cancel the contract, amend the services, etc. It's okay to tighten the wording. Check out unfuckyourcontracts.com for additional help with setting up contracts and wording. Tax question - I started my LLC in December. I didn't acquire a client until January. So, for taxes this year...(I'm sorry to say this but I'm using TurboTax at the moment) but I only had expenses in December. Should I hold them or put them in because of the loss? Because I can't claim income for last year for the LLC. - submitted by Amanda You still want to file a Schedule C. When TurboTax asks other forms of income you will say you have a business and list your expenses. You still want to report your expenses even if your business did not make profit. Check out my free Tax Challenge for more info on how to prepare to file your taxes. As a florist would I count the flowers I have purchased in 2020 as inventory on the schedule c form? - submitted by Gaby Check out Episode 125 of the podcast where Keila Hill-Trawick and I discuss the difference between cost of goods and expenses. Purchased number of wedding items in 2020 but I used only 2 of the 5 I purchased. To report on my business taxes, do I report all 5 items I purchased or only report the 2 I've used and wait until I use the remaining 3 and report them on my 2021 taxes? - submitted by Hebah Check out my podcast next week where I talk to my friend Amy who is an expert on use tax. Does an instructor need to form an LLC if they plan to have only one online course? - submitted by CE It has more to do with the type of business you have and not how many course offerings you have. An LLC is never a bad idea for extra layers of protection. Check out my free training I have to file my first estimates and this is my question. When using the EFTPS(electronic fed payment) do I set up to pay as the biz/LLC entity or an individual? I have the EIN so thought I set up biz to pay estimated taxes/quarterly reports but then froze. Same with state estimated taxes. Thanks-just have to work these kinks out. (My last biz was CCorp/SCorp and I was all set right with Quickbooks and the structure of paychecks and direct pays on this stuff). Don't want to mess this up and have the IRS knocking! - submitted by Keri You can go through the individual payments, not EFTPS. You can pay through your social security number. More here on how and when to pay quarterly taxes. Join the Braden's Bestie's Facebook group to have your questions answered on the podcast.

On this episode of the podcast I share the answers to the questions asked on the Friday Live in my Facebook group Braden's Besties   This episode is brought to you by my FREE Tax Challenge. Taxes suck but we all have to file them. I'll walk you through the 5 steps you need to get your tax documents organized and ready to file. Sign up for this free challenge.   Today on the podcast I'm mixing it up. Instead of our usual Tuesday podcast where I answer only one question from my Facebook group, I'm going to be sharing an audio version of my Friday Facebook Live where I answer several questions from Facebook group members like you on anything from specific contract questions to questions about my programs.   Here are this week's questions:   If my business was formed as an S Corp but I want to change it to an LLC, what do I need to do? - submitted by Jenny You will need to send in a statement of revocation and also an entity classification election form (IRS form 8832). I wanted to add a clause to my contract about Notification and was going to use this: NOTICE All notices, requests, claims, demands and other communications between the parties shall be in writing. All notices shall be given (a) by delivery in person, (b) by a nationally recognized next day courier service, or (c) by first class, registered or certified mail, postage prepaid, to the address of the party specified in this Agreement or such other address as either party may specify in writing. Such notice shall be effective upon (a) the receipt by the party to which notice is given, or (b) on the third day following mailing, whichever occurs first. Notice may also be given by electronic mail. Such notices shall be effective upon receipt of a written acknowledgement by the party to which notice is given. My concern is the last part about the email notification & the fact that it's only effective if the person acknowledges with a written reply, which folks don't always do. Is there a way around this or better wording? Can I just say that it's effective a day after sending it to an address specified in writing? - submitted by Nikeva This is a pretty wordy clause. Typically in a contract we say there are certain things that require written notice - you want to cancel the contract, amend the services, etc. It's okay to tighten the wording. Check out unfuckyourcontracts.com for additional help with setting up contracts and wording. Tax question - I started my LLC in December. I didn’t acquire a client until January. So, for taxes this year...(I’m sorry to say this but I’m using TurboTax at the moment) but I only had expenses in December. Should I hold them or put them in because of the loss? Because I can’t claim income for last year for the LLC. - submitted by Amanda You still want to file a Schedule C. When TurboTax asks other forms of income you will say you have a business and list your expenses. You still want to report your expenses even if your business did not make profit. Check out my free Tax Challenge for more info on how to prepare to file your taxes. As a florist would I count the flowers I have purchased in 2020 as inventory on the schedule c form? - submitted by Gaby Check out Episode 125 of the podcast where Keila Hill-Trawick and I discuss the difference between cost of goods and expenses. Purchased number of wedding items in 2020 but I used only 2 of the 5 I purchased. To report on my business taxes, do I report all 5 items I purchased or only report the 2 I’ve used and wait until I use the remaining 3 and report them on my 2021 taxes? - submitted by Hebah Check out my podcast next week where I talk to my friend Amy who is an expert on use tax. Does an instructor need to form an LLC if they plan to have only one online course? - submitted by CE It has more to do with the type of business you have and not how many course offerings you have. An LLC is never a bad idea for extra layers of protection. Check out my free training I have to file my first estimates and this is my question. When using the EFTPS(electronic fed payment) do I set up to pay as the biz/LLC entity or an individual? I have the EIN so thought I set up biz to pay estimated taxes/quarterly reports but then froze. Same with state estimated taxes. Thanks-just have to work these kinks out. (My last biz was CCorp/SCorp and I was all set right with Quickbooks and the structure of paychecks and direct pays on this stuff). Don't want to mess this up and have the IRS knocking! - submitted by Keri You can go through the individual payments, not EFTPS. You can pay through your social security number. More here on how and when to pay quarterly taxes.   Join the Braden's Bestie's Facebook group to have your questions answered on the podcast.

On today's episode of the Dynamic Leaders Podcast, Colin is joined by Amanda Clements. Amanda is the owner and operator of Beyond the Game. She is a Mental Performance Coach who has worked with clients in the NFL, women's football, and college sports. Amanda is also a former Division-1 gymnast and competed in the sport overall for seventeen years. Topics include: how she was able to be so competitive at such a young age while in gymnastics, why she struggled with her transition into life after college and how that led to her playing women's football(!), then we break down pillars to her performance coaching -- especially when it comes to managing anxiety,  and why "winning" or "the outcome" shouldn't be the focus of performance. Follow Amanda: Website: https://www.btgcoach.com/ Some of the best quotes from Amanda: You don't just want comfort because it feels good, you want it because it aligns with who you are. We have very little control over it [the outcome] directly. Leaders need to know -- coaches and bosses need to know -- that they too are performing. ------- Take the Podcast Listener Survey and help us continue to improve the show! https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeF4lX1H6S4g2ar4zwrPBiX7U7XgPTSUEuX5t356PVtfx913Q/viewform?usp=sf_link ------- Music by HookSounds: https://www.hooksounds.com/ ------- **MAILBAG** Shoot your questions over to colin@talent409.com ------- At the Talent 409 Leadership Academy, we guide women in sports to discover their Talent Altitude and increase their opportunities to be in positions of influence. Find more information: www.talent409.com Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn: @talent409 Twitter: @DynamicLeadPod Instagram: @dynamicleaders_409 ------- The show is sponsored by Sweat with Stodds. Sweat with Stodds offers a number of different options to get you on a path to improve your fitness future; everything from fitness, nutrition, and simple healthy habits. Head over to sweatwithstodds.com right now, and if you buy a program, enter the code DYNAMIC at checkout to receive a discount for being a loyal podcast listener.

In this bonus episode, Zach chats with Amanda Edwards, a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, about her journey in electoral politics and the importance of voting ahead of Super Tuesday.Connect with Amanda on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, and check out her website by clicking here.Visit our website.TRANSCRIPTZach: What's up, y'all? Look, it's Zach with Living Corporate, and yes, I know. It's a Monday. You're like, "Whoa, why are you dropping content on a Monday? The world is shifting! Why is reality as I know it splitting in half?!" No, you're probably not doing any of that. You're probably just like, "Yo, okay. Another podcast, okay." And that's what it is. It's, like, a bonus pod. Look, y'all. Remember when we had Royce West a couple--you know, it was, like, a week or two ago? A little bit ago. The point is, we had Senator Royce West on, Texas State Senator Royce West--what's up, respect to the man--to talk a little bit about voting and the importance of voting. Today is the day before Super Tuesday, right? Like, Tuesday, that's the day you vote for the person that you want to continue forward in the respective race, whether it be presidential or senatorial, and we have Amanda Edwards on. Amanda Edwards is someone who is running for U.S. Senate. She is a native Texan and former Houston City Council member who represented 2.3 million constituents, and she actually left that position to run for U.S. Senate. A pretty crowded race. We're talking a little bit about just her background and the importance of voting as well as really why we should vote. And you'll hear me say it in the podcast, y'all. Like, Living Corporate is about amplifying and centering black and brown experiences at work. I believe a way--not the only way, but a way to do that for yourself civically is by voting. And I recognize there are different positions, like going full dissident. We had Howard Bryant on the show, and he talked about the idea of Colin Kaepernick not voting, because he's like, "Look, if I believe that the system is inherently broken and I can't vote my way out of oppression, then why should I vote?" But, you know, there are different points of opinion on that. I do believe we have the right to vote. People are actively looking to take away our ability to vote, questioning our very right to be here. I believe a great way to just say that we matter is by voting. So make sure y'all check out this episode. Nothing changes for the rest of the week. We've got more content for your head top starting tomorrow and then Thursday and then Saturday, and then the marathon continues. 'Til next time, y'all. Peace.Zach: Amanda Edwards, welcome to the show. How are you doing?Amanda: I'm great. Thank you so much for having me on this morning.Zach: It's not a problem. Now, look, just to start, many people are saying that, you know, Texas is really truly the battleground state. So goes Texas, so goes the nation regarding tilting red or blue. So there have been, you know, accelerated attempts to speed that up. We've had Beto and Wendy's campaigns being notable in that regard. So with that let me ask you, do you think Texas is ready? And if so, what makes you the right choice to get us there?Amanda: Absolutely I believe Texas is in fact ready in 2020, and the question remains is will the Democrats put up the right candidate who will be able to unseat John Cornyn. It is not a far-gone conclusion that it will inevitably happen. It will happen if we put forward the correct candidate, and that is someone who can build upon the strengths of Beto's election. So when we looked at Beto's 2018 run, in a time where nobody thought it would be possible to flip the state of Texas, Beto came within 215,000 votes of doing so, and he did so in large part based on the strength of getting persuadable voters out to vote for him. In other words, people who were independent voters or people who were in suburbs or people who were in non-traditional markets, like smaller markets that typically don't vote heavily Democratically, those are areas and spaces and places in which he had tremendous success in terms of getting the vote out. Where there were still some opportunities left on the table happened to be--when you look closely at the numbers, you saw that communities of color, they registered in high numbers, but they didn't turn back out and vote in high numbers. There were less than 50% of the registered numbers. People under the age of 35 likewise had high levels of registration but did not turn out to vote in those same high levels. They were under 50% of their registered numbers. So what if you had a candidate who could, by virtue of her politics, allow her to galvanize those persuadable voters yet again, but in addition to that be able to build upon Beto's run and actually also bring in those communities of color that had registered but did not actually vote, bring them into the fold as well as those under the age of 35 who had this similar situation arise with registration versus actual turnout. If you can build all three of those coalitions, you will actually the votes necessary in order not just to come close but to actually beat John Cornyn and to make history in Texas, and that is what we're planning to do after getting out of this Democratic primary, which is in fact a very crowded field, but I think a very important testament to the significance of the time that we're living in. 'Cause it used to be the case where you couldn't get anybody to run in these primary elections because of how difficult the feat was considered to be. Now of course, people have internalized that Texas is in fact winnable now, and in fact, that's why a number of us are running in this race. I for one left my city council at-large state--I was representing about 2.3 million Texans--to pursue this because I know how significant and important it is that we not just come close but that we actually can win, and the only way to do that is by galvanizing those coalitions that I mentioned to you.Zach: So what have been some of the greatest, you know, advantages and biggest challenges in not only being young and being black and being a woman, but being a young black woman in this race?Amanada: Well, the first thing you always have to do is your homework, right? And we know that this is a change election, meaning there's gonna be a lot of non-traditional voters turning out to vote, and so you can as a result--I mean, just to [?] small statistic, since 2016 for example--and there's been well over 2.6 newly registered voters in Texas. Of that number, over 1.6 million of them are people of color and/or under the age of 25 years old. And so if you look at that or you think about that statistic, the electorate is changing. So someone who's younger, someone who is a person of color, is actually consistent with the wave of change that we're seeing in Texas as we speak. So these are not, you know, things that many people from the outside looking in might view to be challenges that I face or obstacles I see as strengths. And so we have a huge opportunity in our hands, putting in a candidate that looks and sounds and is about change. Also a candidate who has a track record for such. I think it's important when you have someone--when you talk to some of these communities that stayed at home last election cycle. Let's take some of the communities of color, for example. Back in '17 when Harvey struck my community, there was 51 inches of rainfall that fell across our community. Billions of dollars in damage, loss of life, loss of property, you name it. Devastation across a broad spectrum, and I got a phone call to go check on some of my low-income seniors. I said, "No problem," and I went, and I just went to their houses impromptu, and I learned they weren't removing the walls from their homes. And of course they had been soiled by the flood water, and that will result in mold setting in if you don't remove those walls. So I mobilized hundreds of volunteers. We went out and started going door to door. Well, the first question I was asked by many homes was "Oh, are you up for re-election?" And they asked it very innocently, but the question is an illustration of a much broader systemic problem in which people are only accustomed to seeing their elected officials when it's time for us to get a vote, and we've got to make it more than just about electoral politics and voting. We've got to make it about depositing in people's lives, and I think that's how you bridge that disconnect with a lot of these communities of color who are used to being exploited around election time only to see that the promises are never delivered, and we've got to have a messenger, which would be me, who can demonstrate when they ask "Well, why should I believe you that it will be different? Because I've heard this before," I can say it's been different for the communities that I've represented, and that's gonna be huge in bridging the disconnect. So again, another strength out of what some could perceive to be a disadvantage. I see it as a strength.Zach: I love it. So, you know, it's easy I think--and let's talk a little bit about, like, the presidential race as well, because it's Monday, the day before Super Tuesday, y'all. Y'all get out there and let's get to voting. Let's go. Let's move. But it's easy, right, for black and brown folks, I think, to look at the current slate of candidates and see that the Democratic Party does not really prioritize the voice and representation, like, of us, and with that in mind, I'm curious, why do you think it's important for that same group to vote in 2020 if the alternative could be just another candidate that will ultimately ignore them?Amanda: I think that's what my campaign is all about, not just electing--well, first I need you to elect me. [laughs] But that's just one step. The second is something that I've embarked upon as a local elected official, which has been about empowering people and to also hold their leadership accountable for the things that come out of [our?] mouth. So it's not good enough to see me in the campaign cycle and let me go away and not come back until the next campaign cycle, because how do you get what you deserve in your community unless you hold me accountable? We have to have an open line of communication. This open line can be state-wide. It relates to not just being responsive to constituent requests but being present in communities, hosting a town hall. When I come to you, you should be having the report card out. "Well, where are you with this? We talked about this. What's the timing on this?" Or not even a report card. I should just proactively share with you where we are with that. That's being effective as a leader in delivering results. Before I got into politics, I will tell you, I was a [?] lawyer. I was a municipal finance lawyer. You don't get paid [?] 'til the deal gets closed. So in my mind I'm hard-wired to think in terms of deliverables, right? And so you have to close the deal before you get paid for it. In the world of politics, people just give speeches all the time and not see progress. In some kind of way that's doing your job, and I just don't think that the bar is high enough. I think doing your job is bringing home the things, the change you discussed on the campaign trail and not pointing fingers. What if the premium was [?]? And this also turns to the electorate, okay? Constituents have to raise the bar for themselves. It cannot be that you say "I want to send a boxer to go perform surgery." If you're asking somebody to bring home deliverables like policy changes, it's not about me beating somebody else in the public arena, in public. It's not about me getting some cable news, you know, applause for some Tweet I made. It's about going and getting those bills passed, and that's what we have to begin to focus our attention on. So often it's the case that we focus on the fight versus focus on the result, and I think there's a role to be played by the electorate to understand that. You've got to be focused on who do we think is a mover in that place and get something done there. That's what we should be rewarding, not so much who can be mean like Donald Trump or who can, you know, fight him. I mean, that's part of the equation, but that's not the exclusive element that we should be focused on. You know, and I think that gets lost, and that's a huge detail. I mean, part of the dysfunction we have in Washington, the polarization, is because we elect people to go in and be polarizing.Zach: So, you know, you mentioned Donald Trump, and it's interesting because the next thing I was gonna ask you was about millennials and Gen Z black and brown voters in this cycle keep getting told that we have to make compromises in order to beat Trump, which often means accepting candidates that have troubling racial records, right? And I don't even know why I'm saying troubling racial records. People got records out here that's showing that they're mad racist and/or--this is my show, I'ma stop trying to use all this little political language. I ain't playing with y'all. You know what I'm saying, they got some crazy stuff happening in their past, but we're challenged to vote for them anyway. So, like, should we make that trade-off? And if so, why?Amanda: I think you vote for what you want to see. I mean, some people try to--because ultimately that's what change is about. So if you see a candidate that espouses the change you want to see and enough people see it, I mean, whether you are in agreement with Bernie Sanders or not, you know, he was seemingly a long-shot early on, right? And now of course you see him gaining momentum, and it's not because people say "Oh, he's gonna be the easy one to win early on." They got behind him. They wanted to see what he was talking about. Same thing with a litany of other candidates that we've seen. Obama, you know? Obama was not the likely candidate to emerge.Zach: I remember that in high school, yeah.Amanda: He was the unlikely candidate, and people just wanted to see that change that he described so they got behind him. And we've done it for good and for bad. I mean, Donald Trump is another example. You know, my good example is Barack Obama, President Obama. My bad example is Donald Trump. But people wanted to see somebody mess up the system, you know? They wanted to see the establishment just turned on its head, and I don't know if they're all pleased with the way it was turned on its head or not, but he's had a critical mass of supporters stick with him, and you just--you know, in both Obama's example and Trump's example, neither of those were considered the likeliest candidate. So it's about seeing what you want to see. So you support who you believe can deliver the change you're looking for, and if the candidate that you see--you know, the candidate that you're being told to vote for isn't that person, then don't vote for him, 'cause you're the one who's gonna be holding the bag with the policies they promote. Zach: That's a fact though. No, that's true, and I think the reality is--I saw this somewhere on Twitter, 'cause you know, Twitter has all the quotables, but it said something like "The person who's electable is the person you vote for." Right? Like, just vote for 'em.Amanda: That's right. I love that.Zach: Okay. So in this country and in this state, public or private, the quality of your education has more to do with the value of your home and your zip code than your work ethic. So when you're in the Senate and you're asked to confirm the next secretary of education, what would you ask them to change?Amanda: Well, #1 I need a secretary of education that actually believes in public education. Can we just start there?Zach: Man. Yo, what is up with her, man?Amanda: I hate to start--Zach: Nah, let's let these shots off. No, let's go. Come on. [ratatata sfx]Amanda: It's such a fundamental [?]. If you don't believe that public education should even be there, that's probably not the person to have over the department of ed, #1. #2, I would make sure that we have strategies in place for our students to be successful no matter where they're in school. One of the things that is just--you know, you've heard about the phrase "The silent bigotry of low to no expectations," right? And for us to not have those expectations of our students and put systems in place for success, pathways for success, and not just success today. I'm talking about leading the next generation of jobs. You know, why--I do a lot of work on tech and innovation, and people always--you know, and I do a lot of work in minority communities as well, and they don't see those things as being harmonious, and I'm saying this should be something that's in all of our classrooms. We should be introducing our young people to the concept of entrepreneurship and, you know, just all of the things. We should be making those introductions. We shouldn't just be teaching for tests, okay? Because kids, that's not preparing them for life. I'm not saying you can't have a test, but we've gone crazy with it. We cannot just be there for tests and that's the measure for success. We have to do better, and we have to have a well-rounded education where people have multiple pathways for success, including vocational, but also including four-year institutions no matter where you live and how much money you make. In Texas we have seen the course challenged time and time and time and time again, our full financing structure, and that requires us to say education is a right, which we have not gone as far to say. So you're not going to see the reforms that you truly need to see, which is--you know, the connection between where you live and the quality of your education doesn't make any sense. Education is our great equalizer, yet we're perpetuating how unequal it actually is by virtue of tying it to your income--I mean, of tying it to your property tax value. This is not something that makes any sense, but we continue to perpetuate the systems because, you know, we have people in office who don't believe that public education has value. I am a product of public high school, and I will tell you, you know, it is so important that we are investing more than what we have in the past, because there's so many other challenges and conflating variables our students face. So I'm a proponent of making sure that all of our students, no matter where they go to school, can be successful. They need to see that. I like to go back to my alma mater and, you know, model the behavior. You should have expectations of going to school, and they've got to see it. They're not necessarily going to see that at home all the time, so we've got to supplement that with the support they're getting in school, but truthfully speaking, a lot of the support that I recall being in school when I was a student are no longer there 'cause they got cut. We balance our state budgets on the backs of our students all of the time, and consequently our students have fewer resources to succeed, like wrap around services, and just--I could go on and on and on and on about what needs to happen with our education system, but I think first and foremost we need somebody innovative coming to the table, bring some new ideas to the table, and I would be highly eager to see, once we get our new president in office, that we bring somebody in who can be serious about educating our youth so we'll have a prepared workforce for tomorrow.Zach: So that sets me up well for my last question before we let you go. So irrespective of who wins the election in November, the Democratic primary race has shown that there is a more progressive, ethnically diverse voting population that is [?], so what do you believe the Democratic Party at large can do to ensure that they capitalize on this ever-growing reality?Amanda: In terms of electoral politics?Zach: Yes.Amanda: I think we've got to make sure that we're putting up candidates that are receptive to the issues that these communities face, and too often I'm asked, "Oh, [?]?" And I say, "Well, I think it's additive to be honest with you." I think, you know, the black community cares about health care access and education just like anybody else would, but they also have other issues in addition that they care about. But what [?] me is when people try to reduce it down to one issue, and that's the only issue that we face. The truth is we have additional issues that we have to contend with, and we have to have a broad spectrum of answers that are responsive to the broad spectrum of media. And so we've got to have to figure out how to do that. I'd like for us to be serious about elections, more serious about how we treat our elections in general with a national holiday for Election Day. I mean, I just think it's crazy that we don't have that in our country. Obviously we know why that is not the case, but it should be, and just--you know, we have holidays for all kinds of things that don't make a lot of sense, but we don't do that for Election Day? And that's the primary part of how our democracy works? I think that's problematic. So yeah, I think we've got to really start to not view the diverse candidates that do come forward as being candidates that have challenges because they're diverse. I think they're candidates that are stronger because of being diverse candidates, 'cause that's the direction the country is headed, and we should support our candidates and support diversity within that representation, but also provide for more ways to provide clear sources of information that are truthful, you know? Like, some people pick up the League of Women Voters guide and things like that, but a lot of people don't even know where to start with this stuff.Zach: Right, you're absolutely right.Amanda: You know, and it's very overwhelming as someone who's been in government and in electoral politics. It's overwhelming for people the kind of questions I get. "How do I register? When do I register?" Why isn't there one clear depository for all the information for these things where you could just information for candidates, information for--you know, just things like that. There should be some kind of clarity provided for people to make it easier to participate.Zach: From an accessibility perspective, right?Amanda: Yeah. You're kind of on your own out there, and I just think that's not the way to make it accessible to the masses.Zach: Amanda, this has been a great interview, a great conversation. Thank you so much for having us. Y'all, it's Monday, the day before Super Tuesday. Making sure we bring y'all the stuff to make sure that y'all continue to have your voice amplified and centered, and you can't do that if--well, look, for the sake of this podcast and this conversation, I'ma say you voting is a critical way to amplify and center your voice. Let's make sure you get out there and you vote, and we'll catch y'all next time. Peace, y'all.

On this week's episode I am excited to bring you my conversation with Amanda Howard of Native Pilates.  Native Pilates is located in the Mount Juliet area of Nashville.  We discuss the beginnings of her career and how she came to be a Pilates studio owner.  Amanda certainly has a passion for helping women through Pilates and I think you will get a good sense of this after listening to my interview with her. Topics discussed with Amanda: Amanda's early career in dance and how it led her down the path of owning a Pilates studio What is the earliest Amanda will work with someone post-par-tum Working with Amanda during pregnancy up until the day before giving birth Is there a certain client Amanda will not work with and why Amanda's defining of the differences and similarities of yoga vs Pilates A breakdown of a typical session with Amanda "You don't have to be in shape to start Pilates" Reach out to Amanda: via website: www.nativepilates.com via e-mail: amanda@nativepilates.com via Instagram: @nativepilates

 Amanda Louder is a Certified Life Coach who helps women from conservative Christian backgrounds love their sex life. She helps women embrace their sexuality to help them strengthen their relationship with themselves, their spouse, and their Heavenly Parents. As a first step to helping women embrace their sexuality, she has provided a FREE guide to help women understand how they personally experience pleasure. You can get this guide by going to www.amandalouder.com/improvingintimacyIn addition to being a coach, Amanda is also a wife, mom to 3 and step-mom to 2.  In her spare time, she enjoys reading, watching her kids play sports, fishing, and camping.To hear more from Amanda, you can find her on Instagram @AmandaLouderCoaching or her podcast "Live From Love" where she talks about all things sex and marriage.[music]00:02 Voice Over: Welcome to Improving Intimacy, a podcast to help single and married Latter Day Saints strengthen their family connections and marriages. Daniel A. Burgess is the host of Improving Intimacy. Daniel's a marriage and family therapist, father, husband, and author. Here's Daniel on this episode of Improving Intimacy.00:20 Daniel: Welcome to another episode of Improving Intimacy. Today, we have life coach Amanda Louder with us, and I'm excited to explore her journey. I've been through her podcast and her website, and she's a member of the Intimacy Group. And I really enjoy her comments a lot, so I'm excited, and hopefully you are excited, to explore her journey to healthy sexuality here. So, let's jump right into it. Welcome. Tell us a little bit about yourself, Amanda.00:47 Amanda: Thanks so much, Daniel, I'm excited to be here. My name is Amanda Louder. I am a certified life coach. I coach women, primarily from conservative Christian backgrounds, help them embrace their sexuality, learn to love their sex life. I'm married. I'm currently on my second marriage, don't plan to have any more. [chuckle]01:08 DANIEL: Oh, wow.01:09 AMANDA: And together we have five kids, ranging from 11 to almost 20.01:14 DANIEL: That's exciting. So, what took you on this journey? I'm assuming that you weren't always a life coach.01:18 AMANDA: No. [chuckle]01:20 DANIEL: So, what brought you here?01:22 AMANDA: So, when I went through my divorce about eight years ago, it was really a time of discovery for me and discovering myself. And I actually have a great relationship with my ex-husband now, and we co-parent really well. And I'm remarried. I actually got remarried fairly quickly. I met my husband just six weeks after my divorce was final, and we married about nine months later, and we've been very happily married for seven years now. And so, people started reaching out to me for divorce advice, because they could see that, I guess as far as divorce goes, it was pretty successful. [chuckle] And so, I was getting calls like three or four times a month from people either asking for themselves or for a close friend or family member. And I really started thinking about going back to school to become a therapist so that I could help more women who had been in my situation. And I looked into it, and it would have taken me a lot of years and a lot of time that I wasn't willing to sacrifice with my family. I had five children at that point, and I'm very busy with them. And so, it wasn't something that I was willing to pursue. But then I found coaching a few years ago, and immediately, it felt like the right choice. It felt like what I was meant to do.02:44 AMANDA: So, I started coaching, and then I went through a certification program. I started originally just coaching women who were struggling in their marriage and contemplating divorce, helping them come to that decision for themselves with confidence and peace. And as I coached more and more, I found more and more women were struggling with healthy sexuality within their marriage and within themselves. And I was actually just on a trip this summer with a bunch of other girlfriends who are also coaches, and we're sitting around our condo, as girls do, and sex comes up. And so, I started imparting of my knowledge of the subject. And by the end of our trip, all of my friends were like, "Amanda, you have to do this. You have to change your niche. This is what you were truly meant to do. We have learned more from you in a weekend than we have in 15 years of marriage." And I was very hesitant at first. Sex can be a very scary topic for some people. I come from a background... A very private background. My parents are very private people.03:48 DANIEL: Very.03:49 AMANDA: I've never been that way. I'm always been an open book. But respecting where I came from and stuff, I understand that it can be a very scary subject for a lot of people to talk about. But it is something that I am very comfortable talking about. I feel very comfortable in that space and really want to help women love their sex life and embrace that so that they can not only enjoy their marriage more, but truly embrace who they are as a person. And I think it helps them come closer to themselves, to their spouse, and to their heavenly parents.04:20 DANIEL: I think it's impressive as I listen to your podcast. It's one thing to be a coach or even a therapist and work with people with sexual health issues, another have this ability to talk about the very sensitive, private, taboo topics in a way that's very comfortable. And that's one thing I immediately appreciate listening to your podcast. You could say things like vagina, clitoris, masturbation. The one episode I was listening to, I think it was orgasms. And the way you presented the information, you even talked about how using masturbation is a healthy part of discovering yourself. The way you presented it was very impressive. It's very difficult within our culture to even use the word masturbation. You pointed out it's a dirty word, and it triggers a lot of people.05:04 AMANDA: Well, I have to attribute a lot of that to you, Daniel. I listened to a podcast you were on, I think it was maybe the Mormon Marriages podcast, and mainly...05:11 DANIEL: Oh, with Nate Bagley and his wife?05:13 AMANDA: Yes. And it really opened up my eyes to a different way of looking at things. And then, I really started doing a lot of my own research and thoughts and prayer about it to be a lot more open-minded about it.05:26 DANIEL: Thank you. It's been quite a journey, but today's podcast is not about me. I relate to you a lot, just I didn't realize you had this background with your divorce. It sounds almost parallel to my experience. I'm assuming you probably already know. But it sounds like we were even divorced at probably about the same time. And I met my wife shortly before my divorce, and we knew we were gonna get married within months after my divorce was finalized. And so, in my journey, I made the stupid decision of jumping back into school and getting into therapy, and that was... It's difficult. And I knew it was gonna be hard, but I value and appreciate the weight of that journey, and I've been very open and vocal about life coaching and the concerns I have around it. You have something that most coaches don't have, is an actual certificate. You're a certified professional life coach. And I think that's important because one of the things of working with people, especially with this type of subject, is you really gotta understand your boundaries, professionally, ethically, and what the client's responsibility is and your responsibility is. And I think that adds an additional level of safety in the relationship.06:37 DANIEL: And so, very good for you. I admire you for doing that, because you're right. I can't tell you how many people I've seen in our position, try to go back into, or at least pursue therapy as a career, and they have to stop after four or five years because it's gotten too expensive, and the barrier to entry is just ridiculous. And that's why I don't say life coaching is not an option. I think it is definitely an option. In fact, I hire life coaches, and I worked as a life coach for a while. But back to what you do, I love this. So, you're presenting a message of safety to these women and you're giving an example that they haven't seen before. When you say you did a divorce right, I totally understand what you mean by that. No divorce is easy, by any means. But they were pursuing you. What did you notice? What was maybe a common theme or pattern that you saw in the people who were seeking your advice? Kind of a big question there, but what would you sum it up, or did you see any patterns, or was it kind of all over the place?07:33 AMANDA: It's really all over the place. Everybody comes to the table with different issues. Their spouse comes to the table with different issues. And it's just really helping them see how they're interpreting the situation, the story that they're telling themselves, and how that's giving them the results that they're getting in their marriage. I worked with women who were really struggling with their sexuality, I worked with women whose husbands had issues with pornography, I was working with women who have had issues with infidelity in their marriage. And some, they were just unhappy because their husbands weren't living up to what they thought husbands should be, what they thought their spouse was supposed to be, the needs that their spouse was supposed to be meeting in them, and just teaching them how to meet those needs for themselves and just letting their partner be them and choosing to love them anyway.08:22 DANIEL: That's a big one, and one that I don't think even a lot of therapists embrace. Maybe that's not a fair statement. Maybe don't value or understand a lot. We get couples into the therapy room, and we focus on better communication. And those things are important. But I like what you're saying here. And I wanna inquire a little bit more about that, and focusing on the individual and their needs. And I've heard that in a few of your podcasts, the need to turn to yourself and understand what your needs are. Tell me a little bit more about your journey there and how you came to that conclusion.08:54 AMANDA: Well, we all have issues, we all come to the table with baggage. And really, being able to look at yourself and see what you're bringing to the table and how you're contributing to your relationship. Are you being needy? Are you being demanding? Are you being... And they stem from all sorts of issues from your background, but you're showing up in a way that's creating the relationship that you don't want. And so, really taking a look at how your thinking is creating that result for you, creating that relationship for you, and what you can do differently even if your spouse never changes. And sometimes that means making hard decisions. Sometimes, that means setting boundaries, walking away, whatever that is for you. But looking at yourself first, not, "How do I change him?" It's, "How do I change me? How do I get comfortable with myself in this situation, no matter how my partner shows up?"09:54 DANIEL: That's a huge concept. [chuckle]09:56 AMANDA: Yeah, it is.09:56 DANIEL: Big. And I'm curious if you get any push back on that?10:00 AMANDA: For sure.10:00 DANIEL: How do you deal with that? Let's get a little bit more specific here. I think there's this danger, and you pointed out in one of your podcasts is, "Are you blaming me for my spouse's behaviors then?" And that's usually how that phrase is taken. It's like, "Focus on yourself. See what you're doing to contribute to the problem or the issue." How do you navigate that?10:19 AMANDA: Well, it's individual. It really just depends on how they're thinking about it. What I say to all of my clients is, every problem is a thought problem. It's just how you're choosing to think about it. Or, you're believing what your brain is offering to you without questioning it. If you wanna believe something, believe it with intention, not just because that's what's offered to you. One I hear a lot is, like, "My spouse plays way too many video games. I'm sick and tired of him neglecting me, neglecting the house, neglecting the kids, because he's busy playing video games." And this could be a variety of things. It could be watching sports or looking at pornography, or whatever it is. It's his behavior. Well, how are you choosing to think about it? How are you contributing to that situation? One, you can choose to think that it's not a problem. That's totally up to you. But you can also choose to think it is a problem, and then what are the results of that? And are you okay with that? Is that serving you? If it's serving you, go ahead and keep thinking about it. But if it's not, then you can look at what you want to purposely think instead that might change that dynamic.11:25 AMANDA: Try to look at it from his point of view. Maybe he's had a long day at work, and this is how he knows how to unwind. Maybe he's doing that too much and you just need to have a conversation about it. But are you having that conversation in a blaming way, like, "You shouldn't do this," or you're saying, "This is what I see, and this is how it's affecting me. This is how I feel"? And be confident enough in yourself to be able to say those things.11:49 DANIEL: I really appreciate that. I use this example and I appreciate it as an example because we focus on the wrong problem a lot. And when I work with clients and they say, let's go with this example of, "He's gaming all the time. And he won't listen to me, he won't get off. He's absorbed with it." And what the discussion starts to evolve around is, how much he's gaming. But that's not really what we want. We want his attention. And so, I will often say, "Tell you what, let's try this experiment. Why don't you stop talking about the... Don't ever bring up the gaming anymore. And you walk into the house after getting the kids or coming home from work, and you see him gaming with his headphones on or whatever he's doing, and tell you what, why don't you do something a little bit different and go up to him, hug him in a way that's not distracting him but letting him know that you're there, and say, 'I would really love to spend a few minutes with you. I miss you'? And watch how that changes." Now, often, people will... They'll come back and they'll say, "He didn't listen to me."12:55 AMANDA: Keep doing it.12:56 DANIEL: No, keep doing it, day after day. Create a new sense of predictability. I think a lot of couples, depending... Especially if they've been in this rut for so long, it's like, "I'm not trusting that behavior. Where is that coming from?" It becomes a little bit suspicious. "You're actually focusing on me and not the games. Are you just trying to manipulate me?" But we give the gaming, or whatever that problem is or that distraction, all the attention. And it no longer becomes about each other. It's about ending this. As though taking that behavior away will then create a healthy behavior.13:28 AMANDA: Well, so I talk a lot about, like, "Who do you want to be in this situation? Do you wanna be the nagging, controlling wife? Or do you want to be the wife who's loving and compassionate and trying to create that connection with your spouse?" Because really, that's what's happening. You're not getting that connection that you want. He's getting the connection through gaming, or whatever. He's getting what he thinks he needs, but he probably rather get it from you, if you're offering it in the right way.13:55 DANIEL: It's interesting, as I listen to you speak, you're definitely using language, I think you have an advantage as a woman working with female clients. I don't know if I could ever get away with saying, "nagging." "Stop nagging your husband."14:05 AMANDA: [chuckle] Yeah. Women nag, I can say that. We nag. Yeah.14:09 DANIEL: [chuckle] Yeah, that's very good, that's very difficult to do, and be able to focus on the positive behavior. I always call it, "What's the desired outcome?" And they'll say, "Stop the game." No, that's not the desired outcome. The desired outcome is, "I wanna feel closer. I wanna feel connected." Then, let's make that...14:29 AMANDA: Let's make that the goal.14:30 DANIEL: Not the ending. 'Cause really, if your husband... And let's exaggerate a little here, for example's sake. If he's gaming 12 hours a day, but he's providing a living and you feel totally connected to him, is the gaming really a problem? "No, I feel totally connected to him." So, it's not really the gaming. I realize it's an exaggerated example, but usually, is the case. So, excellent, I love that approach. So, tell me a little bit more about how you work with the sexual topic. I know when I first did this, it was... And I appreciate the compliment that you got it from me, but when I first did this, and I've shared this story before. My first blog post was a couple, maybe three years ago, about masturbation, my infamous, seven series blog posts. I remember when I clicked post, I was shaking. I was afraid of how people would perceive me and just the whole cultural phenomenon around that. And so, it took me quite a few years to get to that point where it was even comfortable to say out loud, even with clients. Masturbation. I'm constantly managing that sensitivity around that issue. How do you feel like you've taken that journey and getting comfortable with engaging in those topics with people?15:48 AMANDA: It's just kind of who I am. I'm...15:51 DANIEL: Oh, really?15:51 AMANDA: I think it's become more and more comfortable, but it's never been something that I've really had a problem talking about, body parts and saying vulva and vagina and clitoris and penis. That's never been an issue for me. But that's not how I was raised, so...16:10 DANIEL: Yeah, you were saying you were raised in a very private home.16:13 AMANDA: Yes, very. Very private. So, it's just something that I feel like... I almost feel like it's a gift that I've been given. And that's part of the reason... When I started coaching a year-and-a-half ago, I don't know that I would have been ready at that point to discuss these sexual topics in the nature that I do now and become a sex coach. [chuckle] But now, I'm stepping into my own, that is who I am, and I can see that very, very clearly. And I feel very prompted. I bring prayer and the Spirit very much into every podcast that I do and all of my coaching sessions. I pray about what I'm supposed to be podcasting about that week, and I feel very prompted onto what those topics are supposed to be. And so many times, when I listen to those promptings, the words just flow. And so, I just learned to recognize that this is who I am, this is who I was made to be, and I'm just really stepping into that, and as I do so, my Heavenly Father is blessing me more and more.17:26 DANIEL: I appreciate hearing that. I think one of the collateral damage of work in my type of profession is being hyper-sensitive to people's concerns and not wanting to offend or come across as unempathetic. And I think sometimes that's a detrimental in the sense that I forget my personality in that because I'm so focused. And it's interesting because it's almost like a marriage in a sense, because if I lose myself in that work and that other person, I forget the gifts that I bring. So, that's a really good reminder to me, I appreciate hearing that. And being myself, I think, I've talked about this, written about this, is, I'm gonna say dumb things and I'm gonna say things that are incorrect.18:12 AMANDA: Totally.18:13 DANIEL: I'm dyslexic in my communication, as you probably already can tell, but if I focus more on a fear on not being truthful to myself and offending somebody else, I lose that power in that message. And so, that's a great reminder.18:28 AMANDA: We can't control what other people are thinking, so no matter what we say, people could be offended. [chuckle] So, I would rather just be true to myself and true to who I know I'm supposed to be, and let them worry about them.18:40 DANIEL: We call that differentiation in therapy, and that's a powerful concept and very difficult for a lot of people to embrace. I've discovered, as I've tried to bring that to the table, and I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this is, as you teach clients how to differentiate and to be an individual, is that scary for them? What's their experience like?19:01 AMANDA: Yeah, I always tell clients it's gonna get worse before it gets better.19:05 DANIEL: What do you mean by that? I think I know what you mean.19:07 AMANDA: Yeah, so when we start showing up differently, the dance changes. We've been doing this dance with our partner, with ourselves, even, for a very long time, and when we start showing up differently, the people around us, and not just our spouse, but our parents, our children, our friends, are like, "Woah, what's happening here? This is not normal." And they're like, "I don't know how to do this dance, I don't know how to respond." But eventually, most the time, they get the hang of it. If we just...19:35 AMANDA: You create a new normal...19:36 AMANDA: You create a new normal. So, I have a client who... She was definitely... Well, she says, "Being controlled," by her spouse. Really, she was letting herself be controlled. We know that it's not... They're not controlling, you're letting yourself be controlled. So, once she learned to step into her own, her spouse was like, "No, this is not happening. I run... This is what I do." And she was like, "Sorry, this isn't the way it's happening." And now, they've figured out this new dance and things are so good, so good. They've learned to give and take more, and she's willing to really say what she's thinking and not be afraid of his response. And he wasn't abusive or mean, or anything, it was just like, "I'm the man. This is the way it's gonna be". And she...20:26 DANIEL: It was his role.20:28 AMANDA: It was his role. And she's like, "Sorry, that's just not gonna work anymore". And it was really rough for a long time, but then he's like, "Okay, this is the new normal. Okay, I can see how this is actually beneficial for both of us. Okay, this is working. Yeah, okay, let's keep doing this, let's do it, let's do this dance now." And it's so much better.20:48 DANIEL: That is so wonderful to hear from you because I think there's a concern when we... When we look at these relationships, we have a difficult time in general. I'm not just talking about life coaches or therapists, is someone has to be bad and somebody has to be good. And so, when we look at these situations I think we have to be very, very careful. And you demonstrated that right now, is where we have... Let's go with this example of the wife coming in, saying, "I'm being controlled." And then, you reframe it to, "You're allowing yourself to be controlled," which is a big concept and a little scary, as you see. But then, the husband's response in this is, "No, this isn't gonna happen." We tend to stereotypically identify that as a manipulative person. But you had this insight is, "Well maybe this is just his training." He's not trying to be a bad person, as you clarify. He wasn't abusive, but his behavior, the way he was raised as an individual, this is his communication style and he doesn't know how to get out of it, so we need to help him out of it. It's not because he's a bad person. But he just doesn't know how to do it.22:00 AMANDA: But he didn't come to coaching, he didn't go to therapy. It was only her. But by her changing the dynamic and changing the way that she was showing up in the relationship, changed the relationship.22:12 DANIEL: Yes, and that's huge. Good clarification there. And you were able to create that change through her.22:18 AMANDA: And it wasn't me creating the change through her, it was her creating the change through her.22:22 DANIEL: But even in that situation... In fact, it could be even more risky, because we could look at this, we don't know the husband, we don't know his behavior, it could become an easy out and say, "He is abusive. You need to get away from him."22:33 AMANDA: Well, you can, but we talk about that and we talk about healthy boundaries, what those look like. When he starts exhibiting more control, maybe using some language that violates one of those boundaries, then you say, "Hey, that's not okay with me. If you wanna keep using that language, that's totally fine, but I'm gonna go, I'm gonna leave the room. I'm gonna leave the house for a couple of hours. I'll come back when you're ready to talk about it again in a better manner," I guess.23:00 DANIEL: I notice on your website, and it sounds like you work exclusively with women, but do you ever work as a couple?23:06 AMANDA: Yeah, I've worked with couples, I've worked with just men.23:08 DANIEL: Okay, so it's not just women.23:10 AMANDA: No.23:11 DANIEL: But that's your primary audience.23:13 AMANDA: Yes.23:13 DANIEL: So, along this line of thinking, you extend this idea of, "You need to take responsibility in your relationship for your own behavior and how you perceive things and create a new healthy or a new normal." You push this idea into intimacy. And I think it was that same podcast I was listening to is, "When sex is requested, say yes."23:36 AMANDA: It's the Nike approach. Just do it.23:38 DANIEL: Just do it.23:38 AMANDA: Say yes to the sex. That's what I say.23:40 DANIEL: And you addressed the concerns around that in the podcast, but tell me a little bit more because there is a risk there. How do you create healthy boundaries in an environment where you're saying yes to sex whenever requested?23:52 AMANDA: Yeah, so of course there's gonna be abuses taken, but what I'm talking about is more just in a good healthy relationship, where a lot of women are just not in the mood, so they're not... They don't wanna do it whenever their husband wants. And I'm really encouraging them to cultivate that connection and that desire within themselves, so that when their husband approaches them, they're ready, they want it too. And the more that they cultivate that within themselves, the more they start to crave it themselves.24:28 DANIEL: Is there ever a time to say no?24:29 AMANDA: Yeah, I've had women who, like, "Well, what if my husband is wanting sex as I go out the door and I need to be somewhere?" I'm like, "Okay, that's not gonna work. But you don't say, 'No, we're not having sex right now,' you say, 'Hold that thought. Let's do it later. I gotta run here.'" So, you're not saying no, you're saying yes, but let's do it later, when it's a little bit more convenient.24:51 DANIEL: You're focusing on the desired outcome. I love it.24:54 AMANDA: Yeah. Another one was like... And this is... Sorry, maybe too much for you, but women are like, "Well, can I say no when I'm on my period?" I'm like, "Well, that's a boundary... "25:03 DANIEL: Not too much here at all.25:05 AMANDA: "That's the boundary you can set for yourself." "Yes, I will say yes to you when I'm not on my period." But I will push you a little bit further and say, "It is totally fine for you to have sex while you're on your period, you just have to make some adjustments. Get a towel. It might be a little messier. Use a menstrual disk so that you can... " There are options. It's just, what are you willing to do for that?25:28 DANIEL: As I said at the beginning, we're gonna meander here. I love having just casual conversation. Let's explore that a little bit more there. I've actually, and maybe it's just being a man, I'm seeing a different perspective here, but I'm curious what you're seeing. Usually, I hear the man doesn't wanna have sex while the wife is on her period. Are you seeing it the other way around, where usually it's the women or is it...25:50 AMANDA: I see both. In my, "say yes to the sex challenge", if the man is saying, "I wanna have sex and I know you're on your period," then what is your hold up? What barriers are you putting into play? Just like, "Oh, I can't do it because I'm on my period," or like, "Is there really a problem?"26:09 DANIEL: Excellent, excellent insight there. I love it. So fascinating. So, what is the maybe biggest obstacles to intimacy that you're seeing for women?26:22 AMANDA: Guilt. Shame. Not knowing their body.26:25 DANIEL: Guilt and shame around what?26:28 AMANDA: I think the cultural dialogues that they've had in their youth, that their sexuality is something that needs to be repressed and is evil and is going to take them to hell, and then all of the sudden expecting that to be different when they're married. And not understanding that we should not be repressing sexuality as teenagers. We should be learning to manage it. And so, now that you're an adult, you've gotta figure out how to manage it as an adult. And that means not continuing to suppress it, and that means doesn't going crazy but learning how to manage it as an adult manages things.27:06 DANIEL: Wow. How does one go about eliminating that guilt? That's...27:11 AMANDA: Figuring out where it comes from, what the thoughts are, and just retraining the brain on... A lot of what I get is women saying, "I feel dirty. I feel un-virtuous. I feel like Heavenly Father is going to be mad at me."27:28 DANIEL: Wait, wait, wait. Are you talking about about when they're having sex with their spouse?27:30 AMANDA: Yes, when they're having sex with their spouse, that it creates all of this guilt and shame that somehow their Heavenly Father is looking down on them for not using sex only for procreation. For a lot of them, it's okay to procreate, but for fun and enjoyment and being closer to their spouse, not okay.27:48 DANIEL: This is actually something that I've discovered more and more. I think I knew it before, but I didn't realize how deep it ran. I knew it did with me, but for maybe other reasons. But this concept, if you noticed in the group and maybe you saw are common, with the new interview, temple-recommended interview questions came out. And the questions around the law of chastity where you're striving to have morally clean thoughts. And some... And this is not to point out anybody or criticize or shame in any way, but a few people were actually saying, "How do I answer that question when I'm desiring sex with my husband?" Or something to that effect. And so, they equated this idea that sex, even with your eternal companion, is dirty and can't be experienced emotionally or mentally.28:35 AMANDA: Or having thoughts about having sex with your spouse is dirty. And yeah, I just... I'm like, "No." And I tried to tell this as much as I can and try to help women understand, like, "This is what's supposed to be happening. This is what your Heavenly Father wants for you. He gave you an entire organ just for your pleasure. It's not... He wants you to be having fun. He created your brain to need novelty and newness and dare we say dirty thoughts to get aroused with your spouse." Now, sometimes minds wander, and that's fine too. But if you're not turning away from your spouse to do that, if you're turning towards your spouse, even if your mind is going a different direction, good on you. That's what's supposed to be happening. This is how your brain was created. This is what your Heavenly Father wants for you. Just changing that dialogue, I think, is so needed, and that's what one of my main messages is. It's like, let's just change this dialogue a little bit. All of these things that you've heard or you heard as youth or you're reinforcing to yourself now, you're interpreting, there's a different way to think about things, and I just want you to open up your mind to that possibility.29:47 DANIEL: Yeah. What a wonderful idea there. That concept of guilt runs so deep and we start to bring so many different perspectives into the bedroom. And...29:58 AMANDA: Oh, for sure.29:58 DANIEL: We gotta get the Bishop out of the bedroom, we've gotta get our culture out of the bedroom. And how do we do that? 'Cause it crushes sex. Do you see... When a client of yours is able to embrace that idea and start to re-map their brain in how they think about this, what do you see happen to their sexual arousal or desire?30:19 AMANDA: It goes way up.[chuckle]30:22 DANIEL: It seems like I led right into that...30:23 AMANDA: Way up, yeah. This has happened with quite a few clients, but I usually see them creating, cultivating that more within themselves. And it just... It makes everything better. I have a little theory here that the anxiety that so many women have is really just that they're sexually frustrated. And I would love to do some sort of study on this. I gotta try and figure it out. But I really think that they don't understand their body well enough to know that they're actually craving it, and they need it. And if they would just let their body do what it was made to do, quit putting on the brakes all the time and just let it run, it would be so much better for every aspect of their life. They would be a better wife, they would be a better mother, they would be a better friend, they would be a better worker. Every single aspect of their life would be better. And I have seen that for myself. I've seen it in my clients. It happens almost every time. Unless there's some sort of sexual trauma, abuse or something that needs to be worked through, and that's not something I do. I turn that over to the professionals. I can work with a therapist when it comes to that, but that's not something that I personally work on, that's out of my scope. But unless there's that there, it's just women putting on the brakes when they don't need to put on the brakes.31:50 DANIEL: Yeah. Have you ever seen... And I appreciate the clarification around the trauma, and I think that's very important to... And thankful that you refer out for that stuff. And I think that it's important to understand too, it's not for everyone to approach it this way. I'm curious if you've ever seen where somebody is working on their guilt and they start to experience their desires in a way that they've never done before. Have you noticed any of them actually get scared of that desire?32:17 AMANDA: Yeah.32:18 DANIEL: Tell me a little bit about that.32:19 AMANDA: Their brain is doing this, like, "I want it, but I can't." And they're just fighting it constantly, and so, it's causing all this friction that they don't understand.32:28 DANIEL: They can't what? They can't have it or... Oh, because it's bad.32:31 AMANDA: It's bad. They shouldn't. But helping them retrain their thinking so that, like, "No, this is a good thing. This is what I was created for. If I can embrace this, my Heavenly Father can give me even more of His Spirit and His blessings. He can bless my relationship, my marriage, even more when I can open myself up to everything that I was created to be."33:00 DANIEL: I've even heard female clients say... I wanna represent it correctly. I think it was, "I don't... " As they're starting to feel this arousal and this orgasm come on, I've heard a handful of them say, "I don't deserve this." It's very self-shaming language. I'm not exactly sure what they're experiencing as a female, and that... 'Cause I know for a lot of men is like, "Yes, we're creating that experience." So, what is this dynamic they're feeling?33:32 AMANDA: I talked about it a little bit in my last podcast, that we...33:37 DANIEL: Was that 77 or... Which podcast was that?33:39 AMANDA: 78, I think. We're told in the proclamation of the family that we're nurturers. We are responsible to nurture our husbands and our children, and we've turned that into, "We need to be self-sacrificing."33:52 DANIEL: That's the language they use. "It feels selfish to have an orgasm." [33:55] ____, yes.33:57 AMANDA: Yes. Yes. And so, they don't feel like they can have that for themselves, because if they do, then they aren't fulfilling their eternal role as a nurturer. And what I say is, "You need to nurture yourself first." Sex isn't about the culmination of a man having an orgasm. That is not what sex is about. And when it comes to sex, yes, you want to take care and nurture your spouse, but you need to make sure that you are taken care of and nurtured for yourself as well. You and your arousal and your feelings and your primary responsibility. It is not your spouse's responsibility to give you an orgasm, it is your responsibility to get yourself in a place where that can happen.34:40 DANIEL: Wonderfully said. And I'm gonna link the listeners to the specific podcast that I'm referencing, we're referencing, in this podcast. But tell me a little bit more about that. I think it was in the orgasm podcast, again, that learning yourself, even through masturbation, it's not just about stimulating your clitoris. Tell me, do you recall what I'm talking about? Tell the audience more about self-exploration, what's involved with that?35:06 AMANDA: Yeah. So many people think that orgasm is the end goal. And really, it's about connection, but it's also about pleasure. So really, understanding how you personally experience pleasure, that can probably get you to orgasm, but understanding your body... We have erogenous zones all over our body. I love that Friends episode. [chuckle] I don't know if you remember that, but I'm sure some of your listeners probably do. The seven erogenous zones. We have so many places on our body that can experience pleasure. And so, if we tune into our body and really understand how we personally experience pleasure, then we are much more able to have that experience and cultivate that within ourselves. Whether that's, we are understanding how we can touch ourselves, or how we can guide a partner to touch us. It doesn't have to be masturbation. You don't have to pleasure yourself to the point of orgasm. It's just understanding what feels good to you, and then, being able to replicate that, either with a partner or on your own.36:17 DANIEL: We refer to this as sensate focus therapy. Touching and even dragging your fingers across your skin, and just becoming present with yourself. And I really valued how you approached this topic in that podcast, and that you're even sharing with the audience. Consider things you haven't considered before, like anal stimulation. And that may seem dirty, but even that concept of it feeling dirty or not even considering is self-shaming and not really considering what your body can or should do or would like to do. You're silencing your body and not actually paying attention to it. And so, in this senate experience, touching yourself all over, your nipples, your anus, your vagina, your arms, everything.37:04 AMANDA: Everything.37:05 DANIEL: Discover what you like and how it resonates with your sexual self.37:10 AMANDA: Yeah, and so, I actually... And I couldn't offer this, and I'll give you a link to put in your show notes. I offer a free worksheet, a download, where it guides a woman through different body parts and how those body parts like to be touched. And it's just... I call it the roadmap to personal pleasure. Really figuring out what pleasure feels like for you. It can be done alone, it can be done with a partner, both, either. You can do whatever you want with it. It's just a guide to get you thinking and get you started.37:47 DANIEL: Amanda, I gotta have you back on, 'cause I would love to continue to poke and prod your knowledge, and I could go on for hours like this. Anything that you would like to... I think you shared a lot here, but anything you'd like to leave the audience with, before we wrap up?38:03 AMANDA: I would love for you guys to follow me on Instagram @amandaloudercoaching. My podcast is called Live From Love. That's what I believe this life should be, that if we live from a place of love, we're not only honoring ourself, but we're honoring everybody else around us, and that's the best place to be.38:20 DANIEL: Amanda, thank you, thank you so much for your time.38:23 AMANDA: You're so welcome, Daniel, thanks for having me.

Amanda Laird is a Registered Holistic Nutritionist™ and host of The Heavy Flow Podcast – a weekly podcast dedicated to periods, reproductive health and other taboo health and wellness topics, and Amanda is the author of Heavy Flow: Breaking the Curse of Menstruation. Today’s episode is sponsored by The Fifth Vital Sign: Master Your Cycles & Optimize Your Fertility. The Fifth Vital Sign is available for purchase on Amazon, and you can head over to thefifthvitalsignbook.com to download the first chapter for free. Topics discussed in today's episode: Embracing your menstrual cycle and escaping the wrath of period negativity Why are women's bodies being ignored in capitalist structures? Does your period interrupt your productivity? Balancing work and motherhood Why is it important to talk to the next generation about menstruation? Connect with Amanda: You can connect with Amanda on her Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and on her website.   Resources mentioned Heavy Flow: Breaking the Curse of Menstruation Amanda Laird | Website The Heavy Flow Podcast The Fifth Vital Sign: Master Your Cycles & Optimize Your Fertility (Book) | Lisa Hendrickson-Jack Get The First chapter of The Fifth Vital Sign for FREE | thefifthvitalsignbook.com Related podcasts & blog posts: FFP 239 | 6 Ways to Improve Your Menstrual Cycle in 2019 | Lisa | Fertility Friday On-Air Client Session] FFP 220 | Managing Intense Period Pain | Maria & Lisa FFP 202 | Vaginal Steaming for Period Problems | Steamy Chick | Keli Garza FFP 198 | The Balance Plan for Healthy Cycles | Angelique Panagos FFP 180 | Managing Painful Periods | Dysmenorrhea | Endometriosis | Dr. Lara Briden, ND Join the community! Find us in the Fertility Friday Facebook Group. Subscribe to the Fertility Friday Podcast in Apple Podcasts! Music Credit: Intro/Outro music Produced by J-Gantic A Special Thank You to Our Show Sponsor: The Fifth Vital Sign: Master Your Cycles & Optimize Your Fertility This episode is sponsored by my new book The Fifth Vital Sign: Master Your Cycles & Optimize Your Fertility. Click here to buy now.

Playing the long game and having patience doesn’t sound very sexy, but as I sit down to speak to Amanda Bond, it’s apparent that she owes a lot of her success to patience and hard work. I’ve spent a lot of time stalking Amanda on the internet and reading through the emails I receive from her each week, and having her on the show is amazing! Amanda is brilliant when it comes to extraordinary Facebook Ads. So much so that she’s scaling her ads to earn multi seven figures in revenue and heading in the direction of eight! She was one of the first people who stood out to me online, and having her here to share her six-figure success story makes my day! She’s done the direct mail thing, she’s had an agency and decided it wasn’t right for her business, she’s learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t! We’re also thinking of starting a club for people who drink wine and say things on the internet. Serious inquiries only.   In This Episode Dropping out of university and landing a sweet job that began a whirlwind marketing experience Workings with other people and getting the inside scoop on online business Being the best kept secret and stepping into the spotlight Will Smith is building an empire, and he’s in it for the long run Lamborghini’s and sitting on thrones made of cash How do sales processes change and how do you market to someone who has been burned before? Put the foundations in place before chasing the big money. Take your time and do it right!   “You overestimate what you can accomplish in a year but you underestimate what you can accomplish in five” - Amanda “I could rapidly accelerate our results because I had the insider view” - Amanda “I invested six figures into the achievement of my goals” - Amanda “We all start from this place of ‘I’m going to really focus on helping other people. I’m going to get them great results” - Jess “I’m the best kept secret, people are coming to me but they’re coming to me last” - Jess “I’m a big believer in having extreme long term patience when it comes to business” - Amanda “You are here to serve people at the highest level” - Amanda “We’re only in it for the value that we can provide to others” - Jess “You can’t put your reps in with one client” - Jess “It is time to slow it down when it comes to creating your funnels” - Amanda   More Amanda! www.theadstrategist.com/sell   More Jess!http://bit.ly/SLSGroup https://jessicalorimer.com/supersize-your-sales https://jessicalorimer.com/list-building-legend Content DisclaimerThe information contained above is provided for information purposes only. The contents of this article, video or audio are not intended to amount to advice and you should not rely on any of the contents of this article, video or audio. Professional advice should be obtained before taking or refraining from taking any action as a result of the contents of this article, video or audio. Jessica Lorimer disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on any of the contents of this article, video or audio.Disclaimer: Some of these links are for products and services offered by the podcast creator

Angie Firmalino holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Metal smithing from Syracuse University, an Associate’s in Psychology from Syracuse University, and an Associate’s in Jewelry Design from the FIT.  She also studied abroad in Florence, Italy. She then worked as a bench jeweler in New York City, a goldsmith for Steven Kretchmer, and then became a freelance wax model maker after her first child was born in 1998.  Due to continuing health problems, she no longer is able to work as a jeweler.  Mrs. Firmalino founded an advocacy group against Essure in 2011, called Essure Problems.  She continues to run that group and founded ASHES nonprofit in 2015. She is also involved with Medical Device Problems, a website launched in July of 2018.  She and her family live in the Catskill Mountains of New York. Amanda Rusmisell is a wife and mother of two boys in Charlotte, North Carolina. She holds her Bachelors of Science from Appalachian State University and her Masters of Counseling from the University of North Carolina Charlotte. Currently, she works in the nonprofit sector. Amanda has always been an active volunteer and advocate in her community. After being harmed from a medical device and having major surgery, she joined the Essure Problems Facebook Group. She was shocked to see the harm caused to so many women and was compelled to help. Amanda is the Legislative Liaison for the Essure Problems Group. She has spoken before the FDA, organized and participated in numerous advocacy meetings in Washington DC and collaborated with other nonprofits to bring awareness to the issues surrounding Essure and medical devices. In today’s episode, we talk about the issues with Essure, a highly problematic form of permanent birth control that has affected tens of thousands of women worldwide, the recent Netflix documentary The Bleeding Edge, and the issue with the medical device industry. Today's episode is sponsored by my free FAM 101 video series? Click here for access. Today’s episode is also sponsored by my Fertility Awareness Programs. My Fertility Awareness Programs are designed to help you to master Fertility Awareness and take a deep dive into your cycles. Gain confidence charting your cycles, and gain deep insights into the connection between your health, your fertility, and your cycles. Click here for more information! Topics discussed in today's episode: What is Essure and why was an entire Netflix documentary created to address the issues with it? The tendency of many medical professionals to minimize the experiences of women (i.e. medical "gas-lighting") Pain with insertion and immediate side effects associated with Essure in some women The curious history of Essure as it was first created as a fertility device The role of the Essure Problems group in helping to get the Essure device discontinued in the United States (as of the end of 2018) The issues with the medical device approval process in the United States The various presentations of Essure side effects, and why many women don't experience side effects right away How Essure passed clinical trials even though many of the women in the initial clinical trials experienced serious side effects What side effects are associated with the Essure device Issues with insertion and removal and why the Essure Problems group have developed a special removal protocol to follow to minimize removal issues Broader implications of this situation as it relates to the status of women The importance of body literacy for all women The collective power of women when we join together Your right to advocate for the care you need Connect with Angie and Amanda: You can connect with Angie and Amanda on Facebook, Twitter and on her website. Resources mentioned: The Bleeding Edge | Netflix Documentary Essure Problems Website Essure Problems Facebook Group Ashes Non-profit Organization Medical Device Safety Act | Ashes Non-profit Fertility Awareness 101 FREE Video Series Fertility Friday Facebook Group Related podcasts & blog posts: The Pill Reality Series | The Truth About Hormonal Birth Control FFP 143 | Choosing the Right Practitioner | How To Find A Functional Practitioner Who Will Really Help You | Lisa | Fertility Friday Join the community! Find us in the Fertility Friday Facebook Group. Subscribe to the Fertility Friday Podcast in Apple Podcasts! Music Credit: Intro/Outro music Produced by J-Gantic A Special Thank You to Our Show Sponsor: Fertility Friday | Fertility Awareness Programs This episode is sponsored by my Fertility Awareness Programs! Master Fertility Awareness and take a deep dive into your cycles and how they relate to your overall health! Click here for more information!

1:40 introducing Amanda 3:30 What made Amanda stay in the military even though she never anticipated making it a career4:40 Amanda’s first overseas deployment 7:00 A life defining moment in Amanda’s life 10:00 Asking WHY? Turning self pity around by focusing on some goals to find peace. 11:30 Amanda’s 4 goals.12:50 What Amanda took away from accomplishing her 4 goals and what it set her up for. 13:45 Seizing the moment. “Today is the last day before tomorrow”“Why put off for tomorrow what you could do today”15:00 How life rewarded Amanda “You can’t control what opportunities you will be afforded”17:30 What Amanda attributes to working through her grief19:00 Ultra Running“The power of positive thought” “You’re going to go through highs and lows, and you have to receive those lows and say I recognize you and your there, and let it go”21:20 Getting through the “lows” — dealing with the chatter in your mind. If you find yourself having a pity party — recognize it and find a way to let it go. There is always a high on the other end. 24:20 PTSD — everyone has different thresholds for stress. “It’s not my job to judge whether one of my soldier has PTSD.” Surrounded herself with other strong people who live a similar high intensity lifestyle. 26:20 Surround yourself with people who can serve as a voice of reason. 27:20 Being a dual military couple and her perspective on that30:00 Trying to plan a family as a dual military couple and a female in the military32:30 If Amanda could do anything….33:45 What Amanda is obsessed withRodan + Fields — REVERSE, LashBoost (Ask Leah for more details on her website!)Trekking poles (running poles)Support the show (https://www.shinestrong.co/podcast)

Guests: Amanda Hickman: @amandabee | GitHub Amberley Romo: @amberleyjohanna | GitHub | Blog In this episode, Amanda Hickman and Amberley Romo talk about how they paired up to get the safety pin, spool of thread, and the knitting yarn and needles emojis approved by the Unicode Committee so that now they are available for use worldwide. They also talk about how their two path crossed, how you can pitch and get involved in making your own emojis, and detail their quest to get a regular sewing needle approved as well. Resources: Unicode Technical Committee Draft Emoji Candidates The Unicode Consortium Members Sewing-Emoji Repo Proposal for Sewing NEEDLE AND THREAD Emoji This show was produced by Mandy Moore, aka @therubyrep of DevReps, LLC. Transcript: ROBERT: Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 112 of The Frontside Podcast. I'm Robert DeLuca, a software developer here at the Frontside and I'll be your episode host. With me as co-host is Charles Lowell. Hey, Charles. CHARLES: Hello, Robert. Good morning. ROBERT: Good morning. This is an exciting podcast. Today, we're going to be discussing writing a proposal to the Unicode Committee, getting it accepted and rejected. This is basically making emojis which I think is really awesome. We have two guests today who have an amazing story, Amanda Hickman and Amberley Romo. Thank you both for joining us. You two have an amazing story that I would really love to dive into and we're going to do that today. It's about basically creating your own emoji and getting that accepted so everybody can use that and I think that's super, super cool, something that I've always kind of wanted to do as a joke and it seems like that's kind of where your stories began, so you two want to jump in and start telling? I think Amanda has a great beginning to this. AMANDA: Sure. I mean, hi and thanks for having me. I don't know where to begin and really for me, this starts with learning to sew my own clothes which is an incredibly exasperating and frustrating process that involves a lot of ripping stitches back out and starting over and Instagram was a really big part of me finding patterns and finding other people who are sewing their own clothes and learning from the process. I wanted to be able to post stuff on Instagram and it started to drive me absolutely crazy, that there's emojis for wrenches and nuts and hammers and there are no textile emoji. The best I could find was scissors which is great because cutting patterns is a place where I spend a lot of time procrastinating but that was it. I knew a woman, Jennifer 8 Lee or Jenny who had led a campaign to get the dumpling emoji into the Unicode character set. I knew she'd succeeded in that but I didn't really know much more about how that had worked. I started thinking I'm going write a sewing emoji. I can do this. I can lead this campaign. I started researching it and actually reached out to Jenny and I discovered that she has created an entire organization called... What was that called? She's created an entire organization called Emojination, where she supports people who want to develop emoji proposals. CHARLES: Before you actually found the support system, you actually made the decision that you were going to do this and you found it. You know, from my perspective, I kind of see emoji is this thing that is static, it's there, it's something that we use but the idea that I, as an individual, could actually contribute to that. I probably, having come to that fork in the road would have said, "Nah, it's just it is what it is and I can't change it." What was the process in your mind to actually say, "You know what? I'm actually going to see if I can have some effect over this process?" AMANDA: It definitely started with a lot of anger and being just consistently frustrated but I knew that someone else had already done this. It was sort of on my radar that it was actually possible to change the emoji character set. I think that if I didn't know Jenny's story and it turned out I didn't know Jenny story at all but I thought I knew Jenny story but if I didn't know that basic thing that that somebody I knew who was a mere mortal like me had gone to the Emoji Subcommittee of the Unicode Consortium and petition them to add a dumpling emoji, I am sure that I wouldn't bother. But I knew from talking to her that there was basically a process and that there were a format that they want proposal in and it's possible to write them a proposal. I knew that much just because I knew Jenny. I think at that point, when I started thinking about this, the Emoji 9 -- I should be more of an expert on that actually, on emoji releases but a new release of emoji had come out. There were a bunch of things in that release and it got a little bit of traction on Twitter. I knew that the Unicode Consortium had just announced a whole new slate of emoji, so I also was generally aware that there was some kind of process by which emoji were getting released and expanded and updated. ROBERT: That's interesting. Do you know when that started? Because it seems like Apple started to add more emojis around like iOS 7 or something but it was pretty static for a while right? Or am I wrong? AMANDA: I actually am tempted to look this up but the other piece that is not irrelevant here is that at the time, I was working at a news organization called BuzzFeed that you may have heard of -- ROBERT: Maybe, I don't know. It sounds kind of familiar. AMANDA: I do feel like people kind of know who they are. I was surrounded by emoji all the time: in BuzzFeed, in internet native of the highest order and we had to use emoji all the time and I had to figure out how to get emoji into blog post which I didn't really know how to do before that. I can put them on my phone but that was it. I was immersed in emoji already. I knew that there was a project called Emojipedia, that was a whole kind of encyclopedia of emoji. One of my colleagues at BuzzFeed, a woman named Nicole Nguyen had written a really great article about the variation in the dance emoji. If you look at the dance emoji, one of the icons that some devices use is this kind of woman with her skirt flipping out behind her that looks like she's probably dancing a tango and then one of the icons that other character sets use and other devices use is a sort of round, yellow lumping figure with a rose in its mouth that you sort of want to hug but it's definitely not to impress you with its tango skill. She had written this whole article about how funny it was that you might send someone this very cute dumpling man with [inaudible] and what they would see was sexy tango woman. I think there was some discussion, it was around that time also that Apple replaced the gun emoji with a water gun. There was some discussion of the direction that the various emoji's face. One of the things that I learned around that time was that every device manufacturer produces their own character set that's native to their devices and they look very different. That means that there's a really big difference between putting a kind of like frustrated face with a gun pointing at it, which I don't really think of it as very funny but that sort of like, "I'm going to shoot myself" is very different from pointing the gun the other way which is very much like, "I'm shooting someone else," so these distinctions, what it means that the gun emoji can point two different ways when it gets used was also a conversation that was happening. None of that answers your question, though which is when did the kind of rapid expanse of emoji start to happen. ROBERT: I feel like the story is setting in the place there, though because it seems like there's a little bit of tension there that we're all kind of diverging here a little bit and it's sort of driving back towards maybe standardization. AMANDA: There's actually, as far as I know, no real move toward standardization but the Unicode Consortium has this committee that actually has representatives from definitely Apple and Microsoft and Google and I forget who else on the consortium. Jenny 8 Lee is now on the consortium and she's on the Emoji Subcommittee but they actually do get together and debate the merits of adding additional emoji, whether they're going to be representative. One of the criteria is longevity and I tend to think of this as the pager problem. There is indeed a pager emoji and I think that the Unicode Consortium wants to avoid approving a pager emoji because that was definitely a short-lived device. CHARLES: Right. I'm surprised that it actually made it. Emoji must be older than most people realize. AMANDA: My understanding is that very early Japanese computers had lots emoji. There's a lot of different Japanese holidays that are represented in emoji, a lot of Japanese food as well are represented in emoji, so if you look through the foods, there's a handful of things that haven't added recently but a lot of the original emoji definitely covered Japanese cuisine very well. ROBERT: I definitely remember when I got my first iPhone that could install iPhone OS 2, you would install an app from the App Store that then would allow you to go toggle on the emoji keyboard but you had to install an app to do it and that's kind of where the revolution started, for me at least. I remember everybody starting to sending these things around. AMANDA: But if you look at Emojipedia, which has a nice kind of rundown of historical versions of the Unicodes, back in 1999, they added what I think of as the interrobang, which is the exclamation/question mark together and a couple of different Syriac crosses. Over the years, the committee has added a whole series of wording icons and flags that all make sense but then, it is around, I would say 2014, 2015 that you start to get the zipper mouth and rolling your eyes and nerd face and all of the things that are used in conversation now -- the unicorn face. ROBERT: My regular emojis. AMANDA: Exactly. CHARLES: It certainly seems like the push to put more textile emoji ought to clear the hurdle for longevity, seeing there's kind of like, what? Several millennia of history there? And just kind of how tightly woven -- pun intended -- those things are into the human experience, right? AMANDA: Definitely. Although technically, there's still no weaving emojis. CHARLES: There's no loom? AMANDA: There's no loom and I think that a loom would be pretty hard to represent in a little 8-bit graphic but -- CHARLES: What are the constraints around? Because ultimately, we've already kind of touched on that the emoji themselves, their abstract representations and there are a couple of examples like the dancing one where the representation can vary quite widely. How do they put constraints around the representation versus the abstract concept? AMANDA: You don't have to provide a graphic but it definitely kind of smooths the path if you do and it has to be something that's representable in that little bitty square that you get. It has to be something representable in a letter-size square. If it's not something that you can clearly see at that size, it's not going to be approved. If it's not something you can clearly illustrate at that size in a way that's clearly distinct from any other emoji and also that's clearly distinct from anything else of that image could be, it's not going to be approved. Being able to actually represented in that little bitty size and I don't know... One of sort of sad fact of having ultimately worked with Emojination on the approval process is that we were assigned an illustrator and she did some illustrations for us and I never had to look at what the constraints were for the illustration because it wasn't my problem. ROBERT: Sometimes, that's really nice. AMANDA: Yes, it's very nice. I ended up doing a lot of research. What made me really sad and I don't want to jump too far ahead but one of things that made me really sad is we proposed the slate and the one thing that didn't get approved was the sewing needle and it also didn't get rejected, so it's in the sort of strange nether space. That's kind of stuck in purgatory right now. I did all this research and learned that the oldest known sewing needle is a Neanderthal needle so it predates Homo sapiens and it's 50,000 years old. CHARLES: Yeah. Not having a sewing needle just seem absurd. AMANDA: Yeah. We have been sewing with needles since before we were actually human being. ROBERT: That's a strong case. AMANDA: Yes, that's what I thought. If I sort go back to my narrative arc, I wanted to do a sewing needle and started researching it a little bit -- CHARLES: Sorry to keep you interrupting but that's literally the one that started this whole journey. AMANDA: Yes, I wanted a sewing needle and I really wanted a sewing needle. I did a little research and then I reach out to Jenny and to ask her if she had any advice. She said, "You should join my Slack," and I was like, "Oh, okay. That's the kind of advice." She and I talked about it and she said that she thought that it made more sense to propose a kind of bundle of textile emoji and I decided to do that. She and I talked it through and I think the original was probably something closer to knitting than yarn but we said knitting, a safety pin, thread and needle were the ones that kind of made the most sense. I set about writing these four proposals and one of the things that they asked for was frequently requested. One other thing that I will say about the proposal format is that they have this outline structure that is grammatically very wonky. They ask you to assert the images distinctiveness and they also ask you to demonstrate that it is frequently requested. I found a couple of really interesting resources. One, Emojipedia which is this sort of encyclopedia of emoji images and history maintains a list of the top emoji requests. I actually don't know how they generate that list or who's requesting that and where but I think it's things that they get emailed about and things people request in other contexts and sewing and knitting, I've done on that list and I started compiling it in 2016. ROBERT: To be a part of the proposal process, to show that it is requested, without that resource, you just start scouring Facebook and Twitter and history and shouting to people like, "I really want this emoji. Why it didn't exist?" That seems pretty hard. AMANDA: Actually our proposals all have Twitter screen shots of people grousing about the absence of knitting emoji and yarn emoji and sewing emoji. I know that Emojipedia, they do a bunch of research so they go out and look at based what people are grousing about on Twitter. They look at places where people are publicly saying like, "It's crazy that there's no X emoji," and that's part of their process for deciding what kinds of emojis people are asking for. Their research was one resource but we took screenshots of people saying that they needed a safety pin emoji and that was part of making the case. One of the things that I found as I was doing that research was that, I guess at this point it was almost two years ago, when the character set that included the dumpling emoji came out, there was a bunch of grousing from people saying, "Why is there not a yarn emoji?" There was a writing campaign that I think Lion Brand had adopted. Lion Brand yarn had put in this tweet saying like, "Everyone should complain. We needed a yarn emoji," but it doesn't matter how much you yell on Twitter. If you don't actually write a proposal, you're not going to get anywhere. I had been told that the Emoji Subcommittee, they're really disinclined to accept proposals that had a corporate sponsor, so they weren't going to create a yarn emoji because Lion Brand yarns wanted them to create a yarn emoji. ROBERT: Right, so it was like counter-peer proposal. AMANDA: Right. But as I was digging around the other thing I found was this woman in... I actually don't know if you're in Dallas or Austin but I found Amberley, who also put a post on Twitter and had started a petition, asking people to sign her petition for a yarn emoji proposal or a knitting emoji. I don't remember if it was a yarn emoji or a knitting emoji but I found her petition and reached out to her to ask if she was interested in co-authoring the proposal with me because she had clearly done the work. She actually had figured out how the system worked at that point. I think she knew who she was petitioning, at least. I reached out to Amberley and we worked together to refine our proposal and figure out what exactly we wanted to request. I think there were a bunch of things that were on the original list like knitting needles, yarn and needles. I think crocheting would have been on the original list. We were sort of trying to figure out what was the right set of requests that actually made sense. ROBERT: So then, this is where Amberley stories comes in and it is interesting too because she has entirely different angle for this. Maybe not entirely different but different than outright. This kind of ties back to the word software podcast mostly. It kind of ties back to the software aspect, right? AMBERLEY: Yeah. I think, really they're kind of separate stories on parallel tracks. My motivation was also two-fold like Amanda's was, where I started knitting in 2013 and I had a really good group of nerd friends with a little yarn shop up in DC, like a stitch and ditch group -- ROBERT: I love it. AMBERLEY: It was a constant sort of like, where's the insert emoji here, like where's the yarn emoji? Where's the knitting emoji? And we would sort of sarcastically use the spaghetti emoji because it was the most visually similar but that was something that was in the back of my mind but it teaches you a lot about yourself too because I was like, "Oh, this is like fiber art, not really an emoji. It's kind of technical, like on a tech space," and I didn't really connect that it was relevant or that I might have any power to change it. It just didn't occur to me at the time. ROBERT: Interesting. I feel like a lot of people are in that similar situation or maybe not situation, even though you can make change on this. AMBERLEY: Right, so my brain didn't even make it like, "Why isn't this a thing? let me look at how to make the thing." When that happened for me, Amanda mentioned using emoji and everything in the BuzzFeed space. I love how you explained BuzzFeed a while ago, it's my favorite description of BuzzFeed I ever heard. Something similar that happened for me was I was a software developer and in 2016, the Yarn package manager was released and that kind of turned something on in my head. That was like I'm seeing all these software engineers now be like, "Where's the yarn emoji?" and I'm like, "Welcome to the club." ROBERT: "Do you want to join our Slack? We can complain together." AMBERLEY: Right. It has been like a pretty decent amount of time, I'm semi-seriously ranting and complaining to my coworkers who were primarily male software engineers. I remember I went to [inaudible] in the Frost Bank Tower after work and was just like, "I'm going to figure out how this happens," and I spent a couple hours at the coffee shop. I found the Unicode site and I found their proposal process and their structure for the proposal and everything and I just started doing the research and drafting up a proposal specifically for yarn. Maybe it was a bit naive of me but to me it was like, "Okay, here's the process. I follow the process. Cool." I mean, you have to make a case and it has to be compelling and has to be well-written and it has to be supported and all that and that to me it was like, "Okay, there's a process. At the same time, I did read about the dumpling emoji but I didn't connect it to Emojination and they had started the Kickstarter. We should talk about this later but I think the sort of idea the issue of representation on the committee and who gets to define language is really interesting but I saw that they had done the Kickstarter and there was a campaign aspect to it, so I ended up just building up this simple site so that if anyone Google, they would find yarn emoji. It's still up at YarnEmoji.com and that was how Amanda found me. I got this random email, I sort of like had this burst of energy and I did all the research and I wrote the draft, sort of piecemeal, filling out the different sections of the way they have it outlined on the Unicode site and then I feel like a month or two went by and I had kind of not looked at it for a bit and then, I get this random email from this website that I almost forgot about. It was like, "Hey, I'm working on this series of proposals. If you're working on knitting or yarn or whatever, maybe we could work together," and I was like, "Well, that's sweet." Then she opened up this whole world to me. There's this whole Emojination organization, sort of 100% devoted to democratizing the process of language formation through creating emojis and so then, I got really into that. My primary motivator was yarn. CHARLES: So what's the status of the yarn spool, those emoji right now? AMBERLEY: The yarn, the spool of thread and the safety pin, they're all approved emoji for the 2018 released. Amanda and I are actually at the end. Amanda, a couple of months ago when I saw someone used the spool thread emoji for a Twitter thread -- you know how people will be like all caps thread and have a thread of tweets -- I saw someone do that just out of the blue. I was like, "Oh, my God. Is it out?" and the thing about these individual vendors, it sort of gets released piecemeal, so at the time Twitter have I think released their versions of this series of new emoji but others hadn't. CHARLES: How does that work? Because you think the Twitter would be kind of device depending on what browser you're using, like if you're on a Windows or a Mac or a Linux Box, right? ROBERT: -- Emoji set, right? I know Facebook does this too. AMBERLEY: I'm painfully aware that Facebook does it because I can't use the crossed finger emoji on Facebook because it actually gives me nightmares. ROBERT: I have to go look at this now. AMBERLEY: Because it's so creepy-looking. CHARLES: Okay. Also like Slack, for example is another. It's like a software-provided emoji set. AMANDA: Right. AMBERLEY: I'm not totally sure that Slack actually adheres to the standard Unicode set. I think it's kind of its own thing but I might be wrong about that. AMANDA: Sorry, Slack definitely supports the full Unicode set. They also have a bunch of emoji that they've added that aren't part of the set. AMBERLEY: Slack emojis? AMANDA: Yes. CHARLES: Yeah and then every Slack also has its kind of local Slack emoji. AMBERLEY: Right. CHARLES: But how does that work with --? ROBERT: Okay, this crossed-finger Facebook emoji is... yes, I agree with you, Amberley. AMBERLEY: Thank you. I had yet to find someone who disagrees with me about that. AMANDA: I have never seen it before and I'm now like, "What is going on?" CHARLES: Yeah, so how does it work if a vendor like Twitter is using a different emoji set? How does that work with cut and paste, like if I want to copy the content of one tweet into something else? Are they using an image there? AMANDA: They're using an image. I think it's doesn't happen as much anymore but for a long time, I would often get texts from people and the text message would have that little box with a little code point in it and you were like -- AMBERLEY: More like an alien thing? AMANDA: Yeah. Definitely, if you don't have the emoji character set that includes the glyph that you're looking at, you're going to get that little box that has a description of the code point and I think what's happening is that Twitter is using JavaScript or generally programming. There were air quotes but you can't see. Twitter is using their software to sub in their emoji glyph whenever someone enters that code point. Even if you don't have the most up to date Unicode on your computer, you can still see those in Twitter. If I copy and paste it into a text editor on my computer, what I'm going to see is my little box that says '01F9F5' in it but if I get it into Twitter, it shows up. I can see them on Twitter but I can't see them anywhere else. AMBERLEY: Damn, you really have the code point memorized? AMANDA: No, I -- CHARLES: Oh, man. I was really hoping -- AMBERLEY: Oh, man. ROBERT: You live and breathe it. AMANDA: No, I'm not that compulsive. AMBERLEY: We definitely have our emojis on our Twitter bios, though. AMANDA: Absolutely. ROBERT: If you see Amanda's bio, it's pretty great. AMANDA: They started showing up on Twitter and I think that somebody in Emojination probably told me they were out and that was when I first started using them. Amberley might have actually seen it. It sounds like you just saw it in the wild, which is kind of amazing. AMBERLEY: I saw it in the wild with this tweet thread and yeah, it's just [inaudible]. I was like, "Amanda, is it out?" CHARLES: Yeah, I feel like I saw that same usage too, although I obviously did not connect any dots. AMANDA: This last week, October 2nd -- I'm also looking things up. I'm just going to come to the fact that I am on a computer looking things up so I can fact check myself -- after they actually released their emoji glyph set, so by now any updated iOS device should have the full 2018 emoji, which in addition to a kind of amazing chunky yarn and safety pin, there's also a bunch of stuff. There's a broom and a laundry basket. There's a bunch of really basic, kind of household stuff that certainly belongs in the character set alongside wrenches and hammers. AMBERLEY: I think one of the big ones too for this year was the hijab? AMANDA: No, the hijab actually came out with a dumpling. Hijab has been available -- AMBERLEY: It's been up, okay. ROBERT: So did it come with iOS 12 or 12.1? I don't know for sure. I just know -- AMANDA: I'm looking at it and it's 12.1. I really feel that I should be ashamed that I have used the internet and search for this. AMBERLEY: I would say, I have no idea what their release numbers are. AMANDA: [inaudible] as it appeared for the first time in iOS for 2018 with today's release of the iOS 12.1, Beta 2 for developers. ROBERT: That is amazing. Do you get some kind of satisfaction -- like you have to, right? -- from people using the emoji and it's starting to make its way out there? AMANDA: So much. Oh, my God, yeah. AMBERLEY: I didn't really expect it, like saying that random tweet using this spool of thread for a tweet thread. I just thought and I just got so psyched. For me, I'm a knitter. I have knitter friends and it started with yarn and then really, Amanda and through Amanda, Jenny really sort of broadened my idea of what it all really meant. To think someone using it in the wild for a totally different application than I had ever thought of was like, "That's legit." AMANDA: I definitely have a sewing emoji search in my tweet deck and sometimes, when I'm feeling I need a little self-validation, I'll go look over there and find people who are saying things like, "Why is there no sewing emoji?" and I'll just reply with all the sewing emoji, like it is part of my work in this life to make sure that not only do they exist but people know about them. ROBERT: That is awesome. I would do the same thing, though to be honest. You'll be proud of that. AMANDA: Totally. ROBERT: Were there any hitches in the proposal process? I know we're kind of alluded to it but the thing that you started off one thing, Amanda didn't make it. Right? AMANDA: I know. ROBERT: So how did that process happen from you two meet each other and then going through the actual committee and the review process and then being accepted. What would that mean? AMANDA: The process is actually incredibly opaque. We wrote this whole proposal, a bunch of people edited it, which is one of the other nice things about collaborating with Emojination. There was a bunch of people who are just really excited about emoji and the kind of language making that Amberley was talking about. There's a whole bunch of people who just jumped in and gave us copy edits and feedback, which was super helpful and then, there was a deadline and we submitted it to the committee and it actually shows up in the Unicode register which is also a very official kind of document register. I was a little excited about that too but then they have their meeting. They first have a meeting and there's like a rough pass and the Emoji Subcommittee makes formal recommendations to the Unicode Consortium and then the consortium votes to accept or reject the Emoji Subcommittee's recommendations. It's a very long process but unless you're going and checking the document file and meeting minutes from the Unicode Consortium meetings, you'll never going to know that it happen. AMBERLEY: -- You know someone connected through there because one of the things in our first pass, it wasn't that it was rejected. It was that we needed to modify something. We do have art for knitting needles with yarn because at one point, I think we weren't totally sure that a ball of yarn would be visually distinct enough in this emoji size to look like yarn and so, we had put it with sort of knit piece on knitting needles. AMANDA: Oh, that's right. There was a tease of a little bit of knitted fabric. AMBERLEY: Right and I think that, probably through Jenny or the people actually in the room, the feedback I remember is that there is a crocheter in the room who was like, "Yeah, why isn't there a yarn emoji but knitting needle?" so there was a little bit of like that was how I think we ended up from knitting needles with a fiber piece to ball of yarn, maybe. AMANDA: I think that sounds right. I'm actually sure of that. It's just all coincide with my recollection. There were some things that they had questions about and that happened really fast because I feel like we had a couple of days and they have stuck to our guns and said, "No, we're only interested in knitted bit of fabric." Also, we worked with an illustrator and went back and forth with her because the initial piece that she had illustrated, I feel like the knitting needles were crossing in a way. That was not how knitting works and so, there was a little bit of back and forth around that as well. But then once they decided that the they like the thread, yarn and safety pin, we're going to move to the next stage. I actually had to go back and look at the minutes to find out that the two reasons that they didn't move the sewing needle on to the next stage is when they thought it was adequately represented by the thread, which I wholeheartedly disagree with and they thought it wasn't visually distinctive. That's so much harder because a sewing needle, which is really just a very fine piece of metal with an eye at the end, you get down to a really small size and it is maybe a little hard to know what you're looking at. But I think there's such a big difference between the static object which is the spool or the thread which represents a lot of things and is important and the needle, which is the active tool that you use to do the making, to do the mending, to do the cobbling. CHARLES: Yeah. I'm surprised that it almost isn't reversed when certainly in my mind, which I think is more culturally important in terms of the number of places which it appears, it's definitely the needle as being kind of... Yeah. AMANDA: Yeah and I think that the thread and yarn, they're important and I think that the decision to have a ball of yarn rather than a bit of knitting makes sense because there's a lot of things that you can use a ball of yarn that aren't just knitting and they think that -- AMBERLEY: And it's the first step too that doesn't exclude anyone in the fiber art community. AMANDA: But there's so many things like in sutures and closing wounds, you're not using a little spool of cotton thread for that or polyester thread and stuff like embroidery and beadwork, you might be using thread or fiber of some sort that started on a spool but you might not. Embroidery floss was not sold in a spool and there's all these places where we use needles and all kinds of different size and you don't always use thread. Sometimes, you're using yarn. Sometimes, you're using leather cord. Sometimes, you're using new bits of, I would say Yucca. You're using plant fibers to do baskets and in all of these different practices, that process of hooking it through the eye and sewing it is how it's actually made. It still sort of mystifies me why they haven't accepted it but they also didn't reject it, which is really interesting. I don't know how many other emoji are sort of sitting in this weird nether space because sometimes they just reject them outright. I think there was a proposal for a coin that they just said no. ROBERT: They were a like, "A coin?" That would be [inaudible]. AMANDA: Oh, God. ROBERT: They have to add one for every -- AMANDA: [inaudible]. CHARLES: Literally, the pager of 2017. AMANDA: Exactly. CHARLES: So what recourse is now available to you all and to us, by extension, to get the sewing needle? AMANDA: I'm actually working on a revised proposal and I've been trying to figure out what are all the arguments that I'm missing for why sewing and the needle are not adequately represented by the thread and yarn. A bunch of things that a friend of my named, Mari who's half-Japanese, half-American but lives in Guatemala and does all this kind of arts in textile work, pointed out that there's a whole holiday in Japan devoted to bringing your broken needles and thanking them for their service. I thought that was really cool. I've been trying to formulate what are all of the arguments for the necessity of both a needle and a spool. If anybody has interesting ways to phrase that, I would love for arguments. CHARLES: Yeah but it's hard to imagine the arguments is just anything being more compelling than the arguments the you just laid out that you named about seven context: shoemaking, medicine, different fibers where the needle operates completely and totally independent of the thread. It's looming so large in kind of our collective conscious like holidays, being dedicated to them, except I think the Cro-Magnon pager, which is made out of stone, I believe, the being the artifact that pre-dates... AMANDA: There's the idiom landscape as well. Things like finding a needle in a haystack, that has a very specific meaning -- ROBERT: And for puns. I've been resisting saying a pun this whole time. AMANDA: Oh, share your pun with us. AMBERLEY: Yeah, you have to say it. ROBERT: Well, you could say that trying to get this through the committee is like threading a needle. Butchered but -- AMANDA: There's a biblical quote about getting into heaven -- a camel through the eye of a needle. I forget actually how it... CHARLES: To thread a camel through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven. AMANDA: Exactly and there's this sort of do-re-mi, saw, a needle pulling thread. There are all these places where it's about the needle and somebody had -- CHARLES: It's primarily ancient. AMANDA: I know. CHARLES: It is the prime actor. Maybe, this is a good segue into kind of talking about the makeup of the committee and the decision making process and these kind of what seem like very clear arguments might not be received as such. AMANDA: I certainly don't want to say anything bad about anybody on the committee. CHARLES: No, no, I don't think that there's anything bad. I think that being receptive to things which are familiar to us versus with things that aren't is a very natural human thing and it can be interesting to see that at work and at play. AMANDA: The Unicode Consortium is also evaluating all of these requests for whole language glyphs sets. Lots of languages and lots of character sets that are kind of obvious, like there has to be a sort of like character set like there has to be an Arabic character set but there are a lot of languages that have been left out of that because they're very small minority languages or they are historical languages, where the actual writing is no longer written the same way but there's historical reasons to be able to represent those characters. One of the reasons why the Emoji Subcommittee cares about what gets into the formal character set is that everybody has to accommodate it and there's already been, I think some grousing. People start to moan and groan about how there's too many emoji, then it's too hard to find things. CHARLES: And there's no take backs. AMANDA: There's no take backs. You can't undo it. The committee is made up of representatives from a lot of tech companies primarily, although there's a couple of other kind of odd additional folks on there. I do try to find the committee list and I can find it right now. AMBERLEY: I have it from Emojination. I don't know if it's up to date but Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, Adobe, Apple, Google, Facebook, Shopify and Netflix. The other voting members -- ROBERT: Shopify? AMBERLEY: Yeah, right? The others being the German software company, SAP and the Chinese telecom company, Huawei and the Government of Oman. AMANDA: Yeah, the Government of Oman is a fascinating one. I don't think they're the ones that are biting us on this. Especially for those tech companies, every time the emoji character set adds 10 or 12 emoji, they don't have to accommodate it on their devices. They have to put illustrators on it, they have to deal with everyone saying that the crossed fingers emoji in Facebook looks like I-don't-even-know-what. AMBERLEY: Hey, Amanda. AMANDA: It's all your fault. There's a whole process and there's non-trivial work associated with every single new emoji, so wanting to put the brakes on a little bit and be intentional about where and when they apply that work, it doesn't seem crazy to me. I just want them to approve the thing that I want. AMBERLEY: I like the way that Emojination captures it. I looked at their website earlier and actually, they take it down but their goal quote "Emojination wants to make emoji approval an inclusive representative process." There has to be a process. There's overhead involved but looking at the makeup of the decision makers are not a trivial question. CHARLES: Right. This is a great example like [inaudible] metaphor but these little artifacts, these emojis are literally being woven to the fabric of a global culture and certainly, everybody uses them and they become part of the collective subconscious. It does seem like very important to be democratic in some way. It sounds like there is a process but making sure that everyone has a stake. AMBERLEY: Yeah. ROBERT: What was the reason that they gave for not accepting the needle and thread? Was it like a soft no? You said it's like just hanging out, not really rejected but not accepted. We're going to drop a link in the show notes for the proposal and your GitHub and everything. I'm looking at the PDF that was put together and it seems like it was all a package deal like we talked about. How do they just draw or they just take like a lawyer would, just like draw or cross it out like, "Well, no but we'll take the other ones." AMANDA: Yes, basically. What they did is they need to discuss and I don't know how long they've been meeting but they need to discuss all of the proposals that have been supplied by a particular deadline and -- ROBERT: That sounds painful. AMANDA: Yeah, I mean, it's -- ROBERT: Just imagine the power of thinking about emojis. AMANDA: One of the things that they rejected, I think because there's the smiling poo face. Somebody wanted a frowning poo face and they rejected that. There's a bunch of things that actually do get rejected. I don't know if they've been really care about a smiling poo face versus a frowning poo face. ROBERT: What about an angry one? AMANDA: We got all the feelings of poo. ROBERT: We got important work to do here. AMANDA: But they go through when they're trying to figure out. I think to some degree, you want to get them when they're not tired but I think the status that it's listed right now is committee pushback, so they've set it aside until we have some concerns. We're not going to reject it outright but we're not really sure why this isn't adequately represented. Then their most recent meeting, they just kind of passed on reconsidering it, which is fine because I think I was traveling and my proposal is not done. I really want to make sure that I have consolidated every imaginable argument in one place so -- ROBERT: And make it strong as possible. AMANDA: Yeah. If people want to help the other thing that would be amazing is any and all idioms that you can think of, especially ones that are not in English or European languages, idioms in Central European languages, idioms in Asian languages that refer to needles, either translations of the kind of classic, 'finding a needle in a haystack,' but also any idioms that are kind of unusual and specific to a culture outside of what I have experience with would be amazing for making the case, so this is an international need. ROBERT: Do they need any specific or actionable feedback or do they just say, "We're going to push back on this. We're just not quite sure?" AMANDA: The two things that we're in the minutes -- there are minutes and they publish the minutes to Unicode.org -- were it was not visually distinct, which is not totally crazy. We actually worked with an illustrator to get a different image. The first image was almost at 90 degrees. It was kind of straight up and down and it is a little hard to see and the second is -- ROBERT: Especially, because it's thin. AMANDA: The second image is actually a kind of stylized needle because it's fairly a little fatter and the eye is bigger but it's much more distinctively a needle. I'm hoping that that will also convince them but you have to be able to tell at a very small size that it's a needle. The other thing that they said was that sewing was already represented by the thread, that we didn't need thread and needle but it was literally one line in the minutes that referenced that and then it sort of like, "Did you have somebody in the room or not?" and so, if there is somebody on the committee who is willing to tell you really what their concerns were, then you have some sense of what they're looking for and why they're pushing back. When you can very much see in the earliest emoji character sets that I have a hammer and I have a wrench and I use them but there's these very conventionally male tools. We have all of the kind of office supplies but all of homemaking and housekeeping and textile production, none of them were there until very, very recently. I think it does reflect the gender of the people who've been making these tools, that sewing and knitting weren't important enough as human practices to be included in this glyph set. AMBERLEY: I guess, that's non-trivial to mention because that wasn't an argument that I made in my original yarn draft and Amanda and Jenny sort of pushing to open it up to this whole slate of craft emoji. I didn't realize until they brought that up. I took a stroll through pretty much the whole slate of emoji and you can count on almost one hand the number that represented the creative endeavors or sort of more traditionally known as creative things like camera or painting palette and stuff like that. It was extremely limited. AMANDA: I think they have stuff like that. I think there's a few different variations on the camera and then there's painting palette and that's it. AMBERLEY: Oh, there's the theater mask. AMANDA: Oh, that's right. There is the theater, the happy and sad -- AMBERLEY: And I don't know it exactly and I haven't read the minutes like Amanda has but I think and I hope that that was a particularly compelling piece of that argument. AMANDA: I think they definitely heard it. AMBERLEY: Yeah. CHARLES: Opening it up then, what else is coming in the way of craft? It sounds like this is historical but these pieces are being filled in not only with the work that you all are doing but by other emoji which you're appearing. AMANDA: Yes. CHARLES: And are you in contact with other people who are kind of associated with maybe craft and textiles and other kind of what you're labeling historically creative spaces? AMANDA: I don't think there are anymore with a possible exception. Someone's working on a vinyl record proposal which I think is great. CHARLES: Yeah, that's awesome. ROBERT: Antiquated, though. AMANDA: Maybe not, I don't know. AMBERLEY: Take a stroll through the Emojination Slack and people discussed that. AMANDA: Yeah. If you click at Emojination.org, the whole Airtable database is on there. There's not a lot of other creative ones. A friend of mine got really bent out of shape about the lack of alliums and wrote a whole slate proposal for leeks and scallions and garlic and onions. ROBERT: Oh, there is a garlic one, right? AMANDA: No. I mean, there is -- AMBERLEY: Actually, I'm looking at the Unicode page for current emoji candidates. They first get listed as... I forget the exact order. They become draft candidates and then provisional candidates or vice versa but I don't see any pending further creative ones but garlic and onion are on there. AMANDA: Yes. ROBERT: That makes my Italian a little happy. AMANDA: I think there's some prosthesis, the mechanical leg and the mechanical arm, a guide dog -- AMBERLEY: Ear with hearing aid, service dog. AMANDA: Yeah, there's a good chunk of interesting things that have been left out. I guess they've been approved by the subcommittee but are still waiting on final approval by the Unicode Consortium. ROBERT: Okay. What are the next steps that we can do to help push the thread and needle proposal through it. You mentioned a couple things like coming up with idioms that are in different languages and whatnot but how can we contact you and push this effort and help? AMANDA: That's such a good question. I don't even know. I mean, I am Amanda@velociraptor.info and you're totally welcome to email me if you want to help with this and I will -- ROBERT: That's a great domain, by the way. AMANDA: Unfortunately, there's no information about velociraptors anywhere on that site. ROBERT: That's the way it should be. AMANDA: But also, if you're excited about working on emoji proposals, Emojination is an incredibly great resource and folks there, including me actually will help you identify things that are on other people's wish lists that you could work on if you just want to work on something and we'll help you refine your proposal if you know what you want and we'll help you figure out whether it's worth putting the time in or not and how to make it compelling. You can definitely check out Emojination.org. I think there's a path to get on to the Slack from there. AMBERLEY: Oh, yeah. The Slack and the Airtable. AMANDA: Yeah. ROBERT: It sounds like there's a whole community that was born out of this, where everybody is trying to help each other and collaborate and get their shared ideas across. AMANDA: Definitely and there's a woman, Melissa Thermidor who is fantastic, who actually is a social media coordinator. It's her actual title but she works for the National Health Service in the UK and was tasked with getting a whole series of health-related emoji passed. There's a bunch of things that she's -- AMBERLEY: Is she's the one doing blood. AMANDA: She's doing blood. AMBERLEY: That's a good one. AMANDA: Because there's a lot of really important health reasons why you need to be able to talk about blood and getting blood and blood borne illnesses and -- AMBERLEY: That one was listed on the emoji candidate page or blood donation medicine administration. AMANDA: Yeah. ROBERT: That's really interesting, so she works for the government, right? and that was part of her job to do that? AMANDA: Yes. ROBERT: That's awesome, actually. I love that. AMANDA: Yeah, I think the drop of blood, the bandage and the stethoscope are the three that are in the current iteration, which is interesting because the existing medical emoji were the pill and that gruesome syringe with a little drops of fluid flying off of it, which do not do a lot to encourage people to go to the doctor. ROBERT: No, not at all. AMANDA: So a few more, we're welcoming medical emoji. ROBERT: You have a GitHub. Is that where you're still doing for the follow up and the prep work for the sewing emoji? AMANDA: Yeah, that's probably the best place. I do have a Google Docs somewhere but that's probably a better place to connect even than my ridiculous Velociraptor email. The GitHub -- ROBERT: But it's still awesome. AMANDA: It is awesome. I won't lie. I'm very proud of it. I am AmandaBee -- like the Bumble Bee -- on GitHub and the sewing emoji, the original proposals are there and I will make sure that there is information about how to plug into the revised needle proposal there as well. You guys are a tech podcast, so if people want to just submit suggestions as issues on that repository, that's awesome. We'll totally take suggestions that way. ROBERT: That would be pretty rad. Well, I appreciate you two being on the podcast. I love hearing your stories and how it ended up converging in parallel tracks but it end up achieving the same goal. Still unfinished, right? Let's see if we can help push this over the finish line and get it done because I would really like to see a needle. I could definitely use that in many of my conversations already now, making all kinds of puns. Thank you, Amanda for coming on and sharing your story. AMANDA: Thanks for having me. ROBERT: And thank you, Amberley for also coming on and sharing your story. This was super awesome. AMBERLEY: Yeah and thank you for connecting us to finally have a voice conversation. AMANDA: I know. It's great to actually talk to you, Amberley. CHARLES: Oh, wow, this is the first time that you actually talked in audio? AMANDA & AMBERLEY: Yeah. ROBERT: We're making things happen here. The next thing we have to do is get this proposal through and accepted. AMANDA: Yes. CHARLES: You've converted two new faithful sewing and needle partisans here and I'm in. AMANDA: Awesome. ROBERT: I know you've already gotten, what? Three through accepted? AMANDA: Yeah. ROBERT: We talked about that, it's got to be really awesome. I think I want to try and jump in and get that same satisfaction because a lot of people use emojis. AMANDA: Exactly. CHARLES: It definitely makes me think like you look at every single emoji and there's definitely a story. Especially for the ones that have been added more recently, there's a lot of work that goes into every single pixel. That represents a lot of human time, which I'm sure you all know, so thank you. AMANDA: Thanks for having us on. AMBERLEY: Yeah, thank you guys. ROBERT: Cool. That is the podcast. We are Frontside. We build UI that you can stick your future on. I really love this podcast because it wasn't necessarily technical but had a lot of interesting conversation about how to work with a proposal and probably make a bigger impact than any of us with software, just because the sheer reach that emojis have are insane and the fact that you can influence this process is new to me and really cool, so I hope a lot of other people learn from that too. If you have any feedback that you would like to give us on the podcast, we're always open to receive feedback. We have our doors and ears open, so if you like to send an email at Contact@Frontside.io or shoot us a tweet or DM us at @TheFrontside on Twitter. We'd love to hear it. Thank you, Mandy for producing the podcast. She always does an amazing job with it. You can follow her on Twitter at @TheRubyRep. Thanks and have a good one.

In the first of our LA interviews, we talk to improv actress and multi-disciplinary human being, Amanda Tate about her craft, lipstick, and childhood as an LA native. Extra special editing and composing is brought to you by Arlen Ginsburg. Welcome to the West Coast, we're so stupid happy to be here with you

In this episode, Devi chats with Amanda Maria about channeling messages from the masters and fine tuning your body, energy and spiritual practices as a Master Channel.  Amanda has been featured as a leading Spiritual Expert on TV for her Energy Work. Amanda is a Master Channel, Reiki Master, Theta Healing Practitioner, Transformation Coach and Mother of three who owns a Healing Private Practice. Amanda is a Master Channel who directly connects and trance channels the Angels, Ascended Masters, Spirit Guides, loved ones, and beings from the light to provide direct information about our World, The Universe, and life circumstances improving health, wealth, relationships, and love. She will profoundly shift YOU through healing, clearing, and activation on multiple levels mind, body, Spirit, by bringing in these higher energies to raise your frequency on a cellular level and conduct a DNA Reactivation. Amanda is an expert in Energy Work and Essential Oils and will teach you tools to bring Balance into your life and Relieve Stress. In this episode, we discuss: Amanda’s journey into being a master channel What is channeling How to prepare for a channeling session Being a divine bridge of light for whomever you are channeling for Encapsulating your energy when you are channeling The importance of grounding to keep the energy of channeling flowing Physical & energetic practices to help with preparing your body for channeling The power practices of Gratitude and Intention Setting Cleansing and Anti-inflammatory superfoods to help your body Speaking to your body and asking for the best assimilation of food Developing a love relationship with your body to support you in your life practices The magical healing properties of your body The importance of not ignoring our body signals Master Channeling A message channeled by Amanda from Dr Wayne Dyer The importance of managing your thoughts, which become your emotions and create your reality The impact of participating in the energy that we don’t want to forward The hours of a master channeler Writing a book with the masters Trance channeling Processes for allowing higher frequencies to come through and guide your steps as a Spiritual Entrepreneur Also Mentioned in this Episode: John Edward:  https://www.johnedward.net/  Sylvia Browne:  https://www.sylviabrowne.com/  Brian Weiss’ book “Many Lives Many Masters” Soulscape: http://www.soulscapeonline.com/  Lynn Kay: www.thespiritsconnect.com Yogi Brand “Perfect Energy” tea: http://yogitea.com/ Theta Healing: https://www.thetahealing.com/ Reiki: http://www.reiki.org/ Soul Coaching: http://www.soul-coaching.com/ Dr Wayne Dyer: http://www.drwaynedyer.com/ Lahiri Mahasaya Swamiji Yogananda The Council of Light Archangel Michael Automatic Writing Connect with Amanda: You can find Amanda's Daily Videos with Channeled Messages from the Ascended Masters on her YouTube Channel by typing in Amanda Marie Channeling or:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpEIl1pSRAknhDuG99UIK7A/. Facebook at her Business Page Highest Living @ www.facebook.com/amandamariechannelsthemasters Book an appointment with Amanda @ www.angel444energy.com To access the Amazing Spiritual Summit hosted by Amanda Marie and beginning on May 1st that features Devi Adea and 21 other Spiritual experts go to www.theartofspirituallivingmasterclass.com/o/devia Legal Disclaimer: The "Channeling of Dr Wayne Dyer" as a "guest" in this episode is for entertainment purposes only.

Amanda Shofner satisfies her need for adventure through the written word. She’s a self-published author who has written urban fantasy, non-fiction and romantic suspense. She’s a voracious reader, TV-watcher and Minneapolis native. We chatted with Amanda about her writing process, alpha readers, beta readers, pantsing, plotting and a little bit of everything in between. Here’s where to find Amanda Shofner: Website/blog: http://amandashofner.com/ My blog posts at Mill City Press/where my non-personal writing content is: https://www.millcitypress.net/blog/authors/amanda-shofner Published: http://published.com/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/amshofner Instagram: http://instagram.com/amshofner Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/amshofnerauthor/ Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/amshofner/ Writing Sprint Hashtags: #NaNoWriMo #AmWriting Mill City Press self-publishing services: https://www.millcitypress.net Here’s where to find Ashley: Website: www.BrooksEditorial.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/brookseditorial Instagram: http://instagram.com/brookseditorial Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/brookseditorial Here’s where to find Abbigail: Website: www.InkwellsandImages.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/abbigailekriebs Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/abbigailekriebs/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/inkwellsandimages/ Mini Book Club: The Emotion Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman & Becca Puglisi The Lunar Chronicle Series by Marissa Meyer Shadow & Bone by Leigh Bardugo Quotes: “Everything I have done in life has led me to where I am now.” -- Amanda “Writing is a priority and I had to figure out how to fit it in my life.” -- Amanda “I started writing 30 minutes every morning. A morning is not a morning without writing.” -- Amanda “Your self control stumbles over into other areas of your life when you choose to be really diligent about something.” -- Abbigail “You don’t need a lot of time to write.” -- Amanda “A lot of the things that I told myself about writing were wrong. Writing is what you make it.” - Amanda “If you commit to writing and if it is something you really want to do, you will be surprised in where you can find the time.” -- Amanda “[Netflix] is kind of an easy pit to fall into.” -- Ashley “It’s tough to find a balance: sometimes you do need those days where you don’t do anything.” -- Ashley “Sometimes just doing the work in your daily life takes a fair amount of creativity.” -- Ashley “The first draft can be terrible. I can hit delete later on in revision. But I need to write terrible now to get to the next point.” -- Amanda “Given the choice between something that I am really excited about and something that I want to never look at again, it was an easy choice.” -- Amanda “You need to be excited about the project that you are working on.” -- Ashley “You still run into problems, but writing can be enjoyable.” -- Amanda “Times are changing in self-publishing: it’s no longer a last resort.” -- Amanda “It’s probably smarter to focus on one thing at a time.” -- Ashley “That’s why I have a full-time job: I can write as much as I want and not have to worry about what is paying my bills.” -- Amanda “Having a full time job allows you to take a little more risk and fail a little more often.” -- Abbigail “The ability to fail is huge. You have to be able to fail in order to succeed. Failing means you are trying things.” -- Amanda “Creativity is more like a muscle: you have to train it to do what you want it to do.” -- Amanda “Writers struggle at finding other people to connect with. It is a very isolating experience.” -- Amanda “Writing sprints are how I am able to do as much as I do.” - Amanda

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Amanda Steinberg CEO and Co-founder, Daily Worth and Soapbxx Date: December 13, 2010 NCWIT Entrepreneurial Heroes [intro music] Lee Kennedy: Hi, this is Lee Kennedy. I'm a board member for the National Center for Women & Information Technology or NCWIT and I also started Bolder Search. And today, we are here to do yet another interview as part of series of interviews that we are having with just fabulous female entrepreneurs. And they're women who have started IT companies in a variety of sectors, all of whom just have fabulous stories to tell us. With me, here today, is Larry Nelson from w3w3. Hey, Larry. Larry Nelson: Hey, I'm happy to be here. This has been a wonderful series. We host all the interviews not only in the NCWIT.org website but also w3w3.com and we get very heavy traffic and that makes us feel good. Lee: Super. And also today, we are interviewing Amanda Steinberg, whose professional experience spans entrepreneurship, website and software development, business development, and online community development. So, Amanda is one busy gal and she's had two really interesting ventures going on now. She's CEO and co-founder of Soapbxx. Did I say that right, Amanda? Amanda Steinberg: Yes, you did. Lee: OK. Well, welcome Amanda. We are really excited to have you today. Just a little more about Soapbxx, and Amanda you can expound if I leave anything out, it's a Web 2.0 consultancy firm. Tell me a little more about it, because I'm probably just going to mess it all up. Amanda: No problem. So, yes, I run two companies and I have two children under the age of four. Larry: Wow. [laughter] Lee: Yeah, as parents of three and five kids here, we know what you're up against. Amanda: Yeah, definitely. It gets exhausting but I love every second of all of it. So, yes, I run two companies right now and I'll talk about the management structure of each and how I am able to run two companies in the limited work day that I do have. So, Soapbox is a website consultancy. We are most specifically focused on online fundraising and marketing strategies for nonprofit organizations. I was previously the Internet director for the American Civil Liberties Union and I was able to take that experience from back in 2004/2005 and bring it into a consulting environment. And we have been serving many other national nonprofits in the same capacity of what I did for the ACLU. Lee: Cool. Larry: Yeah, that's fantastic. Now, tell us about the other company. Amanda: DailyWorth.com is a long-time dream of mine coming to fruition. DailyWorth is very simple actually. It is a daily email, a free daily email, that teaches women about basic finance. We currently serve 50,000 members and it's growing quite rapidly. And having run Internet consultancies of one form or another for 10 years, I really was drawn to the "low overhead, high margin" nature of a daily email, daily newsletter company. Lee: Wow, I love it. Larry: Yeah, fantastic. Lee: I'm signing up. Larry: Yeah, my four daughters are, too. Amanda: Fantastic. Larry: Yeah. Lee: So Amanda, we just love to hear about how you really got into technology, and today, what are some of the coolest technologies you think are out there? Amanda: Well, I got into technology, funny enough -- my mother, back in college in 1964, majored in math and minored in computer science. The industry had just come to fruition. Lee: Trailblazer. Amanda: And I think she was the only woman in her class doing this. Lee: That is so cool. Amanda: And then when I was three or four years old, she got her MBA in Management Information Systems. So whereas most kids were doing arts and crafts, my mom plunked me down in front of the computer. And I think I really got into technology. You know, I actually was following a career path of politics, but through many convoluted means I got an administrative position in college where I graduated into doing BB scripting for databases. And despite my leanings -- my extroverted leanings towards politics -- I actually really fell in love with technology in college and realized, "Hey, my brain actually kind of works this way. I think I'm going to do this as a career." Lee: And that is such a cool story because how many of us had mothers that we learned from, at least the technology side. So it's very cool. Amanda: Yeah, it is very rare. It's a very rare situation, indeed. Lee: Yeah. Larry: So, what are some of the technologies that you think today are very cool? Amanda: I'm such an Apple geek these days. I mean, lately, I'm just amazed at how connected I feel to my iPhone, much to my husband's some sadness at times. My latest and favorite technology right now is -- I guess I'll talk about two things. The first is something called HeyTell, H-E-Y-T-E-L-L. It's an iPhone app that turns my phone into a walkie-talkie. So I'm able to have these kind of intermittent conversations with all sorts of people in my life -- anyone that I've convinced to download it. And it is much better than voicemail, but it's more personal than an instant message and I'm really encouraging everyone to try it out. The other thing, from a work context, is that I'm just getting into Skype Group Video Chat. I have probably 12 employees and contractors reporting to me now across two companies and no one is in a central location. So we all talk as a team throughout the day, and I really appreciate the group video technology that enables that. Lee: So glad that you brought that up because it is such a... Well, I should say "underused technology," but so many people are starting to use it and it is so cool. Larry: Yes. I use it from time to time, also. We have clients overseas and that really is handy then. Amanda: Really. Yeah, and the fact that we can all save time and money and a commute, and I can hire my director of marketing in Bozeman, and be coached by my mentor in LA, and I'm based out of Philadelphia. You know, it really just makes all of that so much more fluid. Larry: Yeah, that's fantastic. Lucy Sanders really likes us to ask this question. Why are you an entrepreneur today? Amanda: Oh! How could I not be an entrepreneur? I spent -- in the two years that I spent at the ALCU, which I loved, by 11:00 a.m. I was kind of banging my head against the table because I need to have my hands... I did not like being "siloed" in the IT department. I wanted to be involved in strategy, and I wanted to be involved in creative, and I wanted to... As much as I was in a leadership role there, it just felt segmented for me, and I know that would be the case for me in any corporate environment. And the reality is, is that I really thrived as an entrepreneur. I was the managing director of a website consultancy when I was 22, and I was the top-selling manager there. And I realized that because I'm able to generate business and because I do have certain leadership attributes that I have to be an entrepreneur, it's just not even a choice for me. Larry: Excellent. Well, then what is it about entrepreneurship that makes you tick? I know you hit a number of points, but is there anything else? Amanda: I just really enjoy setting big goals and working toward them, and building teams and building networks. Despite the fact that I'm a home-based mother entrepreneur, I'm highly extroverted and need to be constantly connecting and interacting with people. So, I'm not sure if that's entrepreneurship that's making me tick or if it is the way that I tick that feeds into the fact that I'm an entrepreneur. But it's kind of this... I love kind of wild chaos towards big goals and seeing things come to fruition. And especially with DailyWorth, as we've grown to 50,000 members and we've signed on sponsors including ING Direct and H&R Block, and we have a pipeline of advertising revenue that makes my heart sing. After two years of constant endless workdays into the wee hours of the morning, I'm really seeing it come to fruition, and it's just -- I can't imagine doing anything else. Lee: I think you've summed up being an entrepreneur. Larry: Yeah, you got it. Lee: It's wild, chaotic, and thriving on it. Amanda: Yes, for sure. Lee: So, you had mentioned earlier that your mom was a big influence that really opened your eyes to the whole IT world. Who would you say have been other role models or mentors? Amanda: I have so many. It's really impossible to summarize. I think everyone I've worked for and worked with, I've learned something in some way. But I guess I'll talk about two in particular that have really helped me as of late. The first is a gentleman by the name of David Ronick. He runs something called upstartbootcamp.com. When I had my idea for DailyWorth two years ago, he was the one who really said, "OK, you need a business model. You need to understand your inflection points. You need to understand the revenue and the funds that you have to raise." And he really helped me put this -- what seemed like a wildly complex business model, spreadsheet together at the time, that now is really the blueprint of how I'm growing the company. So, he's been critical. I recommend that everyone has an MBA to lean on. And then the second person who's really, really transformed my world is a woman by the name of Jen Boulden. She is based in LA. I talk to her... It was twice a day. I think now it's probably three times a week as I've matured. She built the company called Ideal Bite which she successfully sold to Disney two years ago, using a very similar email newsletter model that I'm using. So she, as I joked, she's actually not very nice to me -- she is very nice to me, but she's not there to be nice to me. She's there to hold me to very high standards and point out all of my shortcomings and I've grown so much as a result of having her. I owe so much to her. Larry: Yeah. Boy, that's fantastic. You have two young children. You have two companies that you are running. What is the toughest thing you've ever had to do in your career? Amanda: The toughest thing I had to do in my career, no doubt, was back in 2001, after 9/11. As I mentioned, I was the managing director of a different website consultancy and we had grown to about 20 people and the sales just were not there to support the office. We had really high overhead and it was extremely painful. And I was responsible for laying off five people in a single go at the same time. I know you hear stories about people being fired and how horrible that is and it is absolutely excruciating. It was definitely, probably one of the worst days of my life, when I had to deliver those words to a group of people at once. Lee: I have to say that's probably about 95 percent of the other gals that we've interviewed have said. It seems to be unanimous, almost. Larry: You bet. Lee: So, Amanda, one of the things we'd like to do is have you give your advice about being an entrepreneur. We have a lot of young people, and people that are just starting to think about being an entrepreneur, so what advice would you give them? Amanda: The advice I would give them is that I find a lot of entrepreneurs that are really interested in coming up with their idea, their big money idea. And what I found is that I'm not so particularly interested in entrepreneur's ideas. I'm more interested in their business models, and how those models make money. Because I have seen countless times, amazing ideas fall flat because there wasn't the revenue or the scale to support them. And at the same time, I've seen some businesses entering crowded markets that don't seem so innovative that are really successful because they're simply improving upon one or two things that the rest of the market isn't. So, I would say, look at the businesses that really interest you. What is it about the operations of that business that are really exciting? And then, figure out your idea. That's what I did, and I can't tell you how happy I am that I took that path. Lee: That's great because it's probably a little-known fact that most of the most successful businesses out there weren't started with the actual idea. It morphed and changed along the way to find something that was really successful and a niche in the market at that time. Larry: Yeah. Amanda: Absolutely. Both of my businesses look nothing like what they were when they started. Larry: [laughs] Amanda, what are the personal characteristics, I know you've hit on some as we've gone through this but, that has given you the advantage of being an entrepreneur? Amanda: The first thing is I think I'm a little bit crazy. I don't seek balance in my life. I love to work. Work is very much enmeshed in my life. I am very ambitious, and I think you really kind of need that manic optimism to be successful, because it can just be so hard, so hard on so many levels. So, I think that's been helpful, honestly. I've definitely met other entrepreneurs who I think mirror those traits, and we often kind of laugh about how crazy we feel and yet how instrumental that is in being successful as an entrepreneur. The second thing is just being highly extroverted. I love nothing more than being dropped in a room with a thousand people I don't know. So much of building a business is about building a team and building the people to support you, not necessarily about what you can do on your own. So, I collect people as a hobby. I love -- I'm just genuinely interested in other people, and I think that's absolutely critical to any business as well. Lee: That's cool. Well, you kind of put me in a conundrum here because our next question is how do you bring balance into your...? Amanda: I did that on purpose. [laughter] Lee: So, obviously, you don't bring balance. But how do you survive? Maybe that's the better question. Amanda: You know, it was 11:00 last night, and I was making my son's and my daughter's egg salad sandwich for their lunch, and I was thinking about this slide I needed to update for my investor presentation at 9:00 a.m. this morning, and I really was cross-eyed. I was thinking "Oh, my God! I am in the depths of darkness right now. I am so tired. All I want to do is go to sleep." But somehow, I am able to survive. This is not my long-term plan -- to be living like this -- but I think if you have a certain level of ambition, you have to match it with that energy, and you have to make some sacrifices. I'd say my day is 95 percent energizing and five percent exhausting when I reach the darkness of 11:00 and the lunches still aren't packed, and I still haven't done the laundry to get their socks ready for the next day. So, I'll take that 95 percent positive, five percent pain point for what I look forward to in the future. Larry: Wow. Well, Amanda, you've got two companies that you're working and running right now. You've had successes in the past. Amanda: I've had a lot of failures, too. I've had so many failures. Larry: Oh, I'm so happy to hear that, yes. My wife and I, we started 12 companies and some were learning experiences. Amanda: Yeah. I've started probably seven to date, so, yes. Larry: Wow. Well, what's next for you? Amanda: What's next for me? Well, DailyWorth is really interesting because it's about empowering women in the area of finance. We have 50,000 members, and I know that it's applicable to reach millions of members. So, what's next for me is I'm raising around about 750,000 in Angel capital which will enable me to take my amazing DailyWorth team full time, and work toward our goal -- which is to reach 300,000 by the end of next year, and then a million over the next four years. So, that's really what I'm focused on. Larry: Excellent, that is super. Boy, I want to say that I am so happy that we had this opportunity to interview you. This interview will be heard by many people, many managers, entrepreneurs, and a number of young people who are looking into technology and entrepreneurship, so thank you for all your ideas. Lee: Thanks so much, Amanda. Amanda: My pleasure, and if I could just invite everyone to check out DailyWorth.com. For all the women interested in finance, I invite you to sign up. For anyone in the nonprofit world, Soapbxx -- spelled S-O-A-P-B-X-X -- .com is a great solution provider in the nonprofit space. Thank you. [laughs] Larry: That's excellent, and yes, we will. We'll also put it on our website so that people can link right to it if they hadn't taken that down. They can listen to this 24/7 at w3w3.com and ncwit.org. Lee: Thanks so much, Amanda. Amanda: Thank you. [music] Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Amanda SteinbergInterview Summary: Like many women, Amanda Steinberg came to a tech career through a back door. But when she realized that it interested her and she was good at it, she used it to kick-start her career as an entrepreneur. Release Date: December 13, 2010Interview Subject: Amanda SteinbergInterviewer(s): Larry Nelson, Lee KennedyDuration: 16:13