Podcast appearances and mentions of amy okay

With her first birth, Amy hired a doula and planned to birth at a birth center. During labor, her baby kept having late heart decels which led to transferring to the hospital. At the hospital, Amy stalled at 9.5 centimeters. Baby was having a hard time descending and continued having decels. Amy chose to have a Cesarean and while she was at peace with the experience, she knew she wanted another chance at a vaginal birth. Amy proactively prepared for her VBAC by educating herself and working with her provider to find common ground. Her labor progressed well, Amy coped beautifully, and was able to push out her 10-pound baby! Amy talks about how recovering from birth can be difficult no matter what type of birth you have. Our VBAC Link Doula, Desiree, joins as Meagan's co-host and touches on the importance of breathwork. As a licensed therapist, Amy also talks about how she uses breathwork with her own clients. “Practice it before you are in labor because then it's easier to do while you're in labor.”Desiree's WebsiteHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode Details Meagan: Welcome, Women of Strength. It is an amazing day to listen to another VBAC story. We have our friend, Amy, from Massachusetts coming your way sharing her VBAC story with you. Then we have one of our VBAC Link doulas, Desiree, with us as well. Welcome, ladies. Desiree: Hi.Amy: Thank you. Meagan: Hello. Thank you so much for being with me today. We do have that Review of the Week so I'm going to actually turn the time over to Desiree and read that. Desiree: Yeah, so the Review of the Week this week is provided by Ashley on the VBAC Doula course which I am very familiar with. I am so excited to read this one. Ashley says, “TOLAC/VBACs should be treated just like any other birthing person but there is certain preparation and information that needs to be offered to them. Your course covered that. The value is held in your careful recognition of how to best support our clients who are doing a TOLAC. I cannot praise you two enough for the fear-release activity. Honestly, it is something I can apply to even myself before and after birth and even in life in general. Thank you for that. It has already helped three of my VBAC clients.” Meagan: Oh, that's amazing. That just gave me the chills. I love that. Fear release is so important. Women of Strength, if you are listening, we have that in our course because we truly believe in it. I think fear release in anything in life. We could just be scared to go in and take a test and fear release of that. But when it comes to birth specifically, I don't know if both of you would agree, but we've got to do some fear releases and let go and also process the past, right? Desiree: Absolutely. Yes. I would say it's good for everybody going into birth, but definitely, if you're a VBAC or going for a TOLAC because you take your previous birth experiences into the room with you and if you haven't done the work, then you are just setting yourself up for roadblocks. Meagan: It's so true. I will admit that I did fear releases and I did lots of processing and I still had little bits of bouts of roadblocks in my VBA2C birth. That was really hard, but I was so grateful for the knowledge of how to do that fear release and work through it in those moments in my labor and because I had already done so much beforehand, the little roadblocks that were there even though they were roadblocks, I was able to get through them so much faster and more efficiently. Okay, Ms. Amy. Thank you so much for joining us. Amy: Sure. Meagan: Yes. We would love to turn the time over to you. Amy: Okay. So I actually gave birth to my two kids and then I gave birth in two different states. My C-section story was from when I lived in Massachusetts then I moved back to Minnesota and had my son which was my VBAC and now we are back in Massachusetts. Yeah, so with my daughter, I hired a doula. I gave birth and wanted to give birth at a birthing center that was outside of the hospital but it was connected to the hospital system but it was run by midwives and more holistic, more of what I was aiming for. Just like with your first births, you have all of the plans and I think partly that is some anxiety mitigation of if I feel like I have a plan then maybe I know what to expect. I worked with a really amazing doula. We didn't take a birthing class through the hospital. She did that education and I was feeling relatively prepared as much as you can with a first birth. I had a week's worth of prodromal labor. I always am very cautious. I always call it prodromal labor because I feel like the term false labor is so demoralizing when you're in it like this isn't real labor and I'm like, No, it is. It just isn't progressing the way I want it to. Meagan: Well, but it's still your body working. I think that's what a lot of the time we forget. It's not progressing the way we want but our body is still very much working and making progress behind the scenes whether or not a number of centimeters or a number of effacement is reflecting. We are still doing work and making progress. Amy: Yes, exactly. But my prodromal labor liked to happen only at night so I was going off of probably three or four nights of really not sleeping through the night. Again, as a first-time mom, I didn't really know. I was up with adrenaline because I didn't really know 100% what I was experiencing. I did stop going to work. I was going to work up until labor and then I just stopped going to work the last couple of days because I was like, I'm not sleeping. I'm stressed and tired.I went into labor the night before my daughter's due date and felt the contractions getting a little bit stronger around 10:30. I went to bed. I woke up around 12:30 and told my husband, “Okay, I think this is really actually happening now.” We labored through the night. At 4:00 AM, I called my doula. We met up at the birth center. I was already 6 centimeters. I was obviously so thrilled about that. I was like, “We're going to have this baby by mid-morning. It's going to be great.” Then they started checking her heartbeat. From the beginning, she was having a lot of decels and they kept monitoring it, monitoring it, and monitoring it for 20 minutes which again, wasn't really the plan that I was going to be sitting in bed monitoring her heart rate the whole time. I wanted to be up and moving around but they just couldn't get her heart rate to stabilize at that point so they moved me over to the hospital then. It's a birth center but they are across the street from the hospital so they literally put me into a wheelchair and rolled me across the road. That's when all of the interventions started. From there, I progressed I think to about 8 centimeters but she was having those decels off and on the whole time. Then I think we ended up getting an epidural. I wasn't planning to but I got an epidural about that time. I don't know what time of day this was, maybe noon just because it had been a while now. I was tired and they were like, “Maybe if you rest a little bit, we can get her into a better position or something.” Really, what ended up happening was because of her decels, they wanted me to be on continuous monitoring which made it so I couldn't move around as much because the nurse didn't know how to apply the wireless ones. That happened so it was just one thing after another and my doula was great. She was really supportive. We did try a few different positions, but it was like every time I got in a position that felt good, they were like, “Oh no, we lost her heartbeat. We have to have you move again.” I think the process was frustrating. I did get the epidural. I got all the way to 9.5 centimeters dilated and then we just sort of stalled. And then of course probably around 5:00, this had been close to 20 hours of labor and they were like, “Yeah, I don't know. We could try a few more positions but I think this is just going to keep happening and now we are worried that she's going to get distressed.” So it wasn't really an emergency C-section at all. They were like, “Here's what we think. We'll give you a few minutes to talk about it with your husband and doula and see what you guys think.” It was definitely hard. I was discouraged and frustrated by that but at that point, I just wanted her out. Now that I've read, and when I was listening to The VBAC Link and listening to so many other stories where we probably could have given it more time and all of these other things, they did a C-section and they actually found that her umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck twice. She never really descended into the birth canal fully. She never really engaged in my pelvis. Part of me wonders if it was partly that where she had that umbilical cord and that was going to be tough for her through the birth canal. I don't really know. But she was healthy and everything was good. I honestly didn't feel super traumatized by that experience but obviously I wish it had gone a different way. That was my first birth and then about two years later, well, my daughter was 2.5 when I got pregnant with my son. I was the middle of the pandemic. It was 2020. Is that when I got pregnant? Yeah. It was the fall of 2020. I definitely started looking into VBAC and found your podcast and was like, I would like to really try for a vaginal birth this time around. I think what was challenging about that and as you are talking about going in with fear is that I felt like even though it was my second baby, I felt like I was going through the process like a first birth because I never pushed. I never got to that point with my daughter so I felt like I had that anxiety almost like I was going into my first birth again. That was hard for me, I think, mentally. But we had moved to Minnesota at that point so unfortunately, I didn't get to use the same doula that I had before. I found another doula and I think she had a lot of knowledge and I think she did a good job but I think overall, we just didn't connect as well emotionally. Honestly, I realized that was almost more important to me. Obviously, knowledgeable and certified is good but not feeling like we were always connected, I struggled with that at times. Meagan: Sorry, not to interrupt you but I was just going to say that can impact the way you are feeling and walking into any experience so that connection is really, really key. Amy: Yes. Yeah. I'm a therapist. That's my job and so obviously, I say that to my clients all the time about therapy too. I never got to the point where I was like, Oh, maybe I should look for somebody else, but I think looking back, sometimes I wish I had. But during the labor and stuff, I think she was great. Yeah. It was different than my first time. So yeah, I did a lot of research about Spinning Babies. My doula helped me with some of those exercises. It was stuff I was aware of before, but I didn't look into it as much. Then one of the things I was curious around because when I had my C-section, my OB was like, “Oh, well you have a flat pelvis so it is going to be hard for you to ever have a baby vaginally” is what she said to me. My doula was like, “Well, you know. Around pelvis shapes and stuff like that, that's a very gray area. Generally speaking, we don't subscribe to that because your pelvis is moving and it isn't a shape.” But I was curious about that so I looked into that through Spinning Babies and some of those other resources and about how babies engage in your pelvis and how does baby engage to progress labor.Meagan: Yeah, different stages. The baby can be in sometimes different– I mean, we all have different shapes of pelvises so the baby has to come in different positions and sometimes that even means posterior so sometimes we do all the things to avoid posterior babies, and then our babies still go in posterior but that's actually because of the way our pelvis is shaped or the way it was that day that our babies needed to get into the pelvis in that position. Sometimes they can kind of hang up until we find those positions that can help them navigate down. Amy: Yes. I mentioned that to my doula and we both did some research on it because I think that was part of the issue with my daughter. There wasn't a consistent engagement. Even though my labor progressed for the most part, I was sort of wondering about that. I also was– I can't remember when this exactly happened but I think around 32 weeks, I started measuring big. Of course, my OB who I would say was VBAC tolerant. I wouldn't say she was VBAC-supportive. I did like her quite a bit but she was like, “Okay, your baby is measuring big and because of your history–” she goes through the whole, “here's your percentage of having a successful VBAC.” I'm 5'9”. I'm larger. I'm not a petite person so even if I had been, I don't subscribe to that because of listening to VBAC podcasts and stuff, your body can birth a large baby, but also, I wasn't as worried about it because I know that sometimes those projections are completely off and so it was part of that process of learning to respectfully disagree with a medical professional who I did have respect for and did feel like they had some expertise but to say that we don't have to agree on everything for me to work with you. That was a huge turning point for me just in my life in general working with medical professionals of, I don't have to completely throw everything you say out the window but I also don't have to agree with everything that you say and we can respectfully disagree on that issue. So I was like, “Respectfully, I'm not going to schedule a C-section at that point.” She didn't pressure me at all. She was like, “I understand. Let's move forward with the plan.” That's what we did. I think that was empowering. As we moved closer to my due date, he was big. I was not sure at the time, but I was like, I'm going to go into labor early. That was a mental block for me. Then as it gets closer and closer and closer to my due date, I'm going out of my mind just losing patience. I'm not a good, patient-waiting person as it is so I'm having prodromal labor for the whole week before my due date and at that point, I actually did schedule a C-section for the following week because I needed mentally an out-date. That was what it was in my mind of, Okay. If this goes on for another week, I have an out, even though that's not what I wanted. I think honestly mentally, it took a weight off my shoulders which is counterintuitive to what you would think when everything in me was working toward this VBAC then I was like, No. A couple of days before he was born, I needed that second date in my mind somewhere. Meagan: Well– oh, sorry. Go ahead, Desiree. Desiree: I was going to say I think it actually makes a lot of sense. You say it's counterintuitive, but you're right. We spend so much time and energy thinking about achieving our VBACs and having our babies. Sometimes having– well, even if I don't do all the things, I can still have my baby and then relaxation happens. That's when we see labor starting to take off for a lot of people. Amy: Yep. Yeah, I definitely think that was a piece of the puzzle. Yeah, and I think it was helpful.So yeah, I'm trying to think of how this went. Yeah, so we were doing some Spinning Babies things. We did some side-lying releases all throughout the pregnancy and then on June 4th which was actually my son's due date, having prodromal labor all week and then I felt like there was a little bit more intensity in the contractions I was having that morning so I sent my daughter off to her grandparents' and was like, Okay. I'm just going to focus today. I'm going to focus on getting my body in gear. It wasn't that I was in this mindset of, I'm going to make myself go into labor today, it was just this intuition around I needed to be able to focus on what was going on. We had that plan that my daughter would go stay with her grandparents while I go into labor and I thought that maybe she was just going to go earlier than I thought she would because I wasn't in any kind of active labor. Then I had my doula come over at 10:00 AM and we did more different exercises. I can't remember all of the ones we did because what would happen was that I would have contractions 15 minutes apart, 15 minutes apart and then they would just stop and that would be the end of it and then the next day, the same thing. Or they would be 10 minutes, 12 minutes, 20 minutes– nothing consistent so what we found was if I laid on my left side in the flying cowgirl position, then my contractions were more intense and more consistent. It was again this think of, in my mind I was like, While I'm in active labor, I'm going to be walking around and trying all of these different positions and all of this different stuff, and what I ended up doing is honestly just laying in bed and watching TV in that position almost all day. So again, it was this thing of that's not what I've heard is helpful or whatever but I just think that was where he needed to be to engage in my pelvis at that stage. Then every hour or so I'd get up. I'd do curb walking. I would just get out, walk around, and be active but it was way more laying down than I ever planned to do. You hear that's not how you get your body engaged in labor, but that was what worked for me so that was an interesting, Release what you think is going to work for you and do what your body is telling you is working for you. But it was actually kind of nice. It was relaxing. My daughter wasn't there. It was the summer. We had the air conditioning on in that room. My husband brings me a bubble tea or whatever and I was like, This is actually not so bad. This is okay. Contractions were probably 15, 10 minutes apart that whole day then in the evening is when it ramped up. I turned toward active labor and we called my doula again at 8:00 PM and the contractions were very intense. I was leaning on an exercise ball. My husband was trying to do some counterpressure to get me through it and then she did– and again, this is something where my doula and I were not always on the same page, but I was explaining to her my contractions. “They are about a minute and half long. They were maybe 7-8 minutes apart,” and the first thing she said was, “Oh, well that contraction isn't long enough to progress you at all,” or something like that. She said something about my labor process and it was so discouraging because I felt like I had taken so long to get to that point that when she said that, I was like, Oh, so all of this was for nothing. I know that's not what she meant but I remember just feeling very discouraged by that comment. So that was tough. Then she did the abdominal lift and tuck. I do feel like that helped get my son into my pelvis and more engaged in my pelvis because from that point, contractions were two minutes apart. They were very intense. I ended up signaling. I was like, “I'm ready to go to the hospital.” We agreed to labor at home as long as possible, but I was like, “I think this is the time.” Again, my doula was like, “I think we should wait longer.” My contractions were two minutes apart at that point and I was like, “I don't think we should. I want to go.” I'm glad we did actually because that ended up being the right time. But I remember rolling into the hospital at 12:01 AM and I remember my husband saying, “Well, I guess we're not going to be having the baby on his due date,” because my daughter was born on her due date. I was in active labor on my son's due date and then we just missed it. I remember being like, “That's true. We're not going to make it but that's okay.” So yeah, we walk into the hospital and go through triage. My water breaks while we are in triage and of course, they bring out their little testing stick and they're like, “We're going to make sure this is actually your water breaking.” I was like, “Okay, but I've never wet myself during a pregnancy. This is what it is.” Then we go back in the labor and delivery room and the doctor who is on call is not my doctor. I find out later that this is the most anxious, not-nice-to-work-with OB in that practice. So that was tough. I could tell from the beginning she was just very brusk. She didn't have a great bedside manner at all. She was like, “I see that he's measuring big so we're going to make sure that–” she was really worried about shoulder dystocia. I was very glad again that I had read up on that and that I was not concerned about that. So she was like– they had big birthing tubs there but they don't let you birth in them. They just let you labor in them. I was in there and feeling like I wanted to push for a while and I remember I went to the bathroom and she comes in the room and she's like, “Well, let's get you on the table.” I'm like, “I'm just going to the bathroom.” I don't know if she thought that I was going to try to have the baby without her or something, I don't know. Her whole vibe was very anxious. That was hard. That was definitely discouraging. I think at that point, I actually had asked for an epidural. Both times, I asked for an epidural at transition and then once I'm through transition, I'm fine. They didn't come in time and they checked me and I was already at 10 centimeters so they were like, “Okay, it's time to push. We don't have time for the epidural.” I'm like, “Okay, this is what it is.” That was okay and then I pushed for about an hour on my back which was again, not my choice but the OB was like, “No, I need to be able to see what's going on. I don't want you in any other position,” because again, she was so worried about shoulder dystocia and him being big. Halfway through pushing, she was like, “Okay, you can try on all fours.” But at that point, I was so exhausted that I couldn't even imagine myself getting on all fours. I was like, “That ship has sailed.” That was tough because I had planned the whole time to try to push at least for a little while on all fours because again, knowing about big babies and how that can be a really good position for that, but I just didn't feel like I could advocate for myself. I don't know. In both of my births, when I get in labor, I go very inward. I think having a doula was great, but both times I don't think my doula was super outwardly advocating. But again, maybe they were looking for a signal from me and I was just in my own world. It was okay though. I pushed for an hour. He came out just fine. It was that euphoric moment of, Oh my gosh. That just happened. That was crazy. Having only pushed for an hour felt great with my first vaginal birth. They took him out and they weighed him and he was 10 pounds, 4 ounces. Meagan: Yeah!Amy: Yes. It was so funny because the nurses were trying to guess. They were like, “9 pounds. He's big.” Yes. I felt great and actually, it was funny. The next morning, my OB came in. She was on then. She comes in and she goes, “Well, he was big.” I was like, “And I did get him out, so we were both right.” We were able to laugh about that. Meagan: I love that you said that. Like, “Hey, I was right too.” Amy: Yes. Yes. Yeah, and I felt like it was a good ending. I felt like she was like, “Yep, you're right. You did.” I did tear. I had two second-degree tears which again was maybe not as bad as I expected with a baby that size, but it was no fun. I think that's the other thing that I talk about often is either way, with a C-section or with that kind of a birth, I felt like it took me about two weeks to be able to feel like I could even walk normally. I think the difference with the vaginal birth is that I do feel like I made improvements every day where I gradually got better whereas with the C-section, it was really hard for two full weeks and then it was like then I felt better. It was a different recovery but I would say– and I think other people have talked about this here before but either way, it can be a tough recovery. Meagan: For sure. For sure. Amy: It's hard because my sister had two vaginal births and her second one, she was up and walking. We walked a mile when she was two weeks postpartum and I'm like, gosh. I couldn't even walk down the block at two weeks postpartum after my son. I think obviously not to compare yourself one or the other but I had a big baby and there was some trauma down there and that takes time as well. But it was a great feeling and I think that obviously, it ended up really good. Yeah. That's my story. Meagan: I love it. Thank you for sharing it and congratulations. I think that it's so hard to sometimes have providers who will meet you in the middle. It sounds like you both met in the middle along the way and I think in a perfect world, I just wish that this would happen where providers would meet us a little bit more but there are so many providers who won't even come in. We talk about it all the time with finding the right provider and if the provider is not right for you and if they are not willing to budge at all and meet you in the middle or be a part of the conversations where you were saying things and she was like, “You know what? Okay. Okay. Let's go back to the original plan then.” She said her piece. She said her suggestions. You were like, “No. I don't feel comfortable with this. This is not what I want,” and she was willing to be like, “Okay. Okay. All right. Let's go back to that original plan.” Look what would have happened if you weren't able to advocate and stand up for yourself and be like, “Actually–”, it could have been a very different outcome. Amy: Yes. Yes. For sure. Meagan: Desiree, do you have anything to share on that just as a birth worker or anything to share as far as tips go when we've got situations like that where maybe it seems like it could get really combative but it doesn't have to be? Desiree: Yeah. I mean, I just want to commend you, Amy, for being able to voice your opinion in that way because I think that's really hard for a lot of us to stand up in spaces with doctors who we think are in a position of authority. Yes, they have experience, but no one lives in your body. No one has the lived experience of your body except you. That makes you an equal expert in what's happening. I think it's great that providers bring advice and recommendations and they have a plan for what they want to see, but I think a truly great provider does meet you at least halfway. Ideally, you're right Meagan, they're coming a little bit more than halfway, but I mean, it's nice to hear that your provider was willing to listen to you and follow your plan and probably have hers in her back pocket as the fallback. But that's just great that you were able to advocate for yourself in that way. It doesn't always have to be combative, right? It can be as simple as, “Thank you for your advice. I appreciate your expertise. This is what I'd like to try and if it doesn't work, then we can try something else.” Amy: Yeah. I think that I was feeling anxious about that too and this big realization of, I do. I like her. I trust her as a doctor. I feel like we're on the same page, but that doesn't mean that I have to agree with everything she says and it also doesn't mean I have to fire her and find a new provider. Again, there is a happy medium there. You're right. I was taught that doctors have this authority. They know. They go to years of schooling. Of course, they do. But also keeping in mind that their worldview and perspective might be very different and the lens that they are looking at this through is very different than mine and how do I keep this in mind that they have this medical perspective of what they've seen. They've seen the worst of the worst medical scenarios but also to keep in mind that there's this whole other worldview around that so that ws helpful for me. Meagan: Yeah. That was definitely something that stood out to me with your form. It was, “Disagreeing with a provider doesn't mean that you can't work with them.” You said it in your story too. That is so, so true. It doesn't mean we can't work with them and if it gets to a point where it's like, “Okay, there is no working with this,” and it is actually not working, then we can make a different choice. We can change things up, find a different provider, look at our VBAC Link provider list, and see if there is someone else. But if you can work with it and everything is feeling good and there are a couple of things but we are working together, that is so great. That is so great. Amy: Yeah. Meagan: Awesome. Well, I just wanted to let Desiree share a couple of tips. I love when we have our VBAC Link doulas come on because it's so fun to get different tips and different perspectives from other doulas around the world. Desiree is in California with Be_Earth_Mama. Is that right? Desiree: Yeah. My husband gives me a hard time about this all the time because I guess nobody gets it but it's Birth Mama. Meagan: Oh, I thought it was Be Earth Mama. Desiree: That's what he says. Meagan: That makes so much sense, so much sense. She is in California. Remind us exactly where in California because California is ginormous. Desiree: California is ginormous. I am in the San Francisco Bay Area so Northern California. Meagan: And you do birth and education. Desiree: I do birth and education primarily. Meagan: You do webinars and all the things, right? Desiree: I do webinars. I do online classes. I teach in-person classes. I'm getting ready to start a prenatal belly dance class that I think is going to be in-person for now but might go to virtual if there is an interest so all things birth preparation essentially. That's my niche. Meagan: Really, really cool. Awesome. I know there were a couple different topics that you were talking about and I was like, ooh. Breathing and active relaxing. Tell us all the things. Desiree: Yeah, it's one of my favorite topics and I feel like it's one that is on the list but it's low on the list because you think about breathing. Why do you need to practice breathing? You just naturally do it but if you've been in labor, you know that when that intensity starts to pick up, breathing is the first thing that goes out the window so having a strong breathing practice is the first step to staying really calm and grounded in labor. But even beyond that, I think having a practice is about the process and I think especially for me in my VBAC journey, it sounds like Amy was sort of like this where contractions start and they stop and they start and you are in this waiting game. Is your body going to do the thing or is it not going to do the thing? What's wrong? I feel like having the practice to fall back on gives you a way to stay grounded and centered in your body as you are waiting for labor. So it's two-fold. Keeping your body nice and relaxed while you're actually working through labor but giving yourself the time to be nourishing yourself in those last precious days and weeks leading up to labor I think is almost more important. Something that I work with all of my clients on is having an established breathing practice. It's not about the breathing technique because there are so many different ones out there. There is the up breathing. Up breathing is my favorite, breathe in for 4, exhale for 8. There is box breathing where you breathe in for 4, hold for 4, exhale for 4, and hold that for 4 counts. And for some people, it's just simply breathing as slow and controlled as possible. I think it's about finding something that feels natural and intuitive to you that you can lean into but it's about finding time and practicing really dropping into your body and dropping out of everything that's going on around you and playing into your senses with that. That's something I like to talk about to my clients is hacking your body. Building muscle memory because it's so hard to relax and stay calm when you're going through surges, the contractions are really building, and telling you to stay relaxed is not really going to work. Nobody wants to hear that. But if you have this practice and if you've built in sensory cues– I like recommending people to pick a birth scent either an essential oil or a candle or a lotion, picking a song or a sound, it could be even a meditation track and setting aside just 2-3 minutes every day to run through whatever your breathing technique is with your scent or your sound, maybe you have something to hold onto and practice just actively relaxing every single part of your body through the process of breathing when you get into labor, your body is going to remember that once you launch into this breathing routine and you put on your birth scent and you have your sound or your meditation track playing, your body is naturally going to relax because you've told it that that's what this time is for. I think it's a really special thing that we can do for ourselves to give ourselves this time and this practice where we are just nourishing the deepest parts of us. It's of course helpful for labor, but I think it's also a helpful practice to take into postpartum and into parenthood. I can say I've been doing this for 5 years. My oldest daughter is 5 years old and I still do it every day. I have to run through my breathing practices. Yeah. I think it's especially important for VBAC mamas to have this type of self-care routine. Meagan: Yes. Oh my gosh. I love that so much. Like you said, it just becomes intuitive if we can practice this so much and instill this into our lives, it just becomes intuitive in that labor journey. There are going to be times where we were talking about roadblocks and stuff earlier, but those might come in and breathing in itself is something that can get us through those things. When you talked about the box breathing, I've done that before and I have this weird thing when I do box breathing. My body moves and I'm creating a square. Desiree: I do too. We don't have our cameras up, but I have to do the square. Meagan: Same. I do a square. I literally draw a square with my whole body and my torso and everything looks like a tree swaying in the wind and I can just feel it. I literally, the relaxation from head to toe just comes in. Like she said, there's not any specific way. You don't have to choose one way. You can use them all. You can use anything, just really, really, really having active relaxation practices before you go into labor is so good. And I think it can help along the way. Even when we have a provider who comes at us with, “Hey, we're going to meet you in the middle,” it still can be in our head. We can be like, Okay, she said this. I said this. This is what we're going to do. You've just got that whole conversation and it's just that you're breathing through that and you're processing that and you're going to apply it later on in labor. I don't know. I just love breathing so much. Desiree: I do too. I think it's the most important tool that we have that everybody has. It's the most powerful tool that's available to us. Meagan: We have to do it to live. Desiree: Mhmm. Meagan: We just have to. It's intuitive. We have to do it and we talk about intuition here and tuning into our intuition. If we are really, really tuning into our intuition, that breathing is part of that. Then our minds and our bodies can respond. Amy, did you ever do any breathing or anything like that? Have you ever heard about any of the things we are talking about? Amy: Yeah, yeah definitely. It's something I use in my therapy practice a lot. Meagan: I was wondering if you did. Amy: I work with college students primarily so this is a lot of time for some of them that they are facing some of this but I love what you were saying Desiree about practicing ahead of time because that's what I'll say. They'll be like, “Oh my gosh. I had a panic attack. I practiced your breathing and it didn't work.” I was like, “Did you practice that ahead of time?” When you're in crisis, it's hard to do it then. But if you've practiced it before and cued your body to that place, that's where it is so useful. Ironically, it was something that I didn't use a ton during my labor process as far as intentional breathing practices. I think I wish I had because I think that would have been useful, but my doula would coach me about some forms of taking deep breaths and sort of how you are breathing through some of the surges and stuff. But yeah, I love that. I love the practice it before you are in labor because then it's easier to do while you're in labor. Meagan: Mhmm, absolutely. Such a powerful message. Okay, one more time, Desiree, tell everyone where they can find you. Desiree: Yeah. I'm on Instagram. You can find me at b_earth_mama pronounced “birth mama”. You can find me on my website which is www.b-earth-mama.com and that's primarily where I'm at. Meagan: Awesome. Well, go give her a follow everybody especially if you are in California and looking for a doula. And Amy, thank you from the bottom of my heart for joining us today and sharing your amazing stories. Amy: Awesome, thanks for having me. It was great. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan's bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

We have another follow-up story on the podcast this week! We love hearing from our previous guests and today, we get to follow up with our friend, Amy. Amy was on the podcast for episode 102 sharing her VBA2C story and now we get to hear her HBA2C story!Amy talks about her journey to embracing home birth with her fourth baby, how she found the right team, and how she worked through her fears. When labor began, Amy was steady and strong. She was ready and so was her team. Then everything completely stopped. Instead of giving in to discouragement, Amy trusted the process. Her team went home and she knew she needed rest. 10 hours later, labor kicked in HARD. Amy birthed her baby shortly after!Meagan and Amy discuss the pros and cons of cervical exams before and during labor. Women of Strength, you do not have to have a cervical exam if you do not want one!Additional LinksThe VBAC Link Episode 102: Amy's VBA2CICAN of Summit CountyThe Lactation NetworkHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode Details Meagan: Hello, hello you guys. We only have a couple of weeks left of 2023 and it is blowing my mind. I cannot believe how fast the year has gone and how much has happened. I hope that you have had an amazing year and are gearing up for the holidays. I definitely have had a good year and am not ready for the holidays. I'm never ready for the holidays. It is always a crazy hustle and bustle. But I am always ready for a new episode and story to share. Today we have a special episode. I feel like this is a fun one because we like follow-ups. It's really fun to sometimes have follow-ups. We have an HBAC after two Cesarean births to share with you today. I'm going to let our guest tell you more about her births and I'll give you a little bit of a preview, but Amy, is it 102 what you said? It's 102. Amy: Yes. It's 102. Meagan: So episode 102. If you want to go and hear more, she's got four babies you guys. If you want to hear more of the other babies' stories, definitely go check out episode 102. Review of the Week But of course, we have a Review of the Week so we want to get into that. This is by meganlindsayyy. It says, “The support that I needed.” It says, “After my C-section, I said I wouldn't even consider getting pregnant again unless I was guaranteed a VBAC. When we were surprised by our current pregnancy, I felt like I had already lost control and a say in the outcome. I immediately went back to my same OB and hoped for the best. Something happened when I was about 20 weeks pregnant. I wasn't able to sleep. I got up at 4:00 AM and I began researching how to have a successful VBAC. That was the morning I found Meagan and Julie on Facebook. I was listening to their podcast later that day. By the evening, I knew that I had to totally change my plans.” Ooh, that just gave me the chills right there. It says, “I was going to let my birth happen to me.” I was going to let my birth happen to me. That is so powerful right there. Women of Strength, you do not need to let birth happen to you. You can go and you can birth and you can be in control of a lot of things in your birth. It says, “Because of these women I realized that I have a voice in what happens to me. I switched my provider and hospital and am in the process of hiring a doula. I am creating a thought about our birth plan. It is because of these women that I feel confident to go for my VBAC.”Well, meganlindsayyy, I am so happy that you felt that you were able to find your voice again and find your power and take control of your birth and not let birth happen to you. This was back in 2022 and here we are at the end of 2023 so meganlindsayyy, if you are still listening, please let us know. How did things go? How did your birth go? I hope that it went really well and that you felt empowered no matter how it ended. You too, Women of Strength. If you are in a situation where you are not feeling that support and you're not feeling the love, know that it is okay. It is okay to do what's best for you. If that's leaving a provider or switching things up birth location-wise, that's okay. I know it seems daunting. It is. It is daunting. I did it myself at 24 weeks, but it is so worth it usually. Of course, if you haven't had a chance to leave a review in the 2024 year, we would love to bring in some new reviews. Go over to Apple Podcasts or Google Play or you Android users. I don't know. Google whatever or you can actually Google “The VBAC Link” and leave us a review there. Amy's Stories Meagan: Okay, cutie pie. I am so excited to have you back today. So, so excited. I'm so excited to get into this story, but I also want to talk about something that we are going to talk about at the end. I know that this kind of goes into your birth about cervical exams. I want to talk about cervical exams. What do they look for? What do they do? What do they tell us? Are they necessary? And all of those things. We are going to talk more about cervical exams at the end, but I would love to turn the time over to you and your cute little baby. You guys, if you hear the cute little baby noises, we've got a baby on the show today. Amy: We do. We've got a wide-awake 6-month-old. Don't mind the squawks. Well, thank you so much. Obviously, I'm incredibly excited to be back. I didn't think that was ever even going to happen. If anybody has listened to my first episode, at the end of the episode, Julie was cheering on our husband. She was cheering on us both to have a fourth baby. It was a joke between you and I and it was an ongoing thing in our home. My husband would call it nagging. I just called it persistence, but here we are. Honestly, I really didn't think I was going to have another baby so I just feel incredibly blessed, excited, and just really happy to share another story. I'm just really hoping that this story can help somebody else who maybe is feeling some fears about a VBAC or a home birth or any part of my story. I feel like there is a lot of different kind of factors that play into it, so thank you for having me. I'm super excited. But yeah. I guess I'll get started. We know that with every VBAC story, we start with our C-sections. Like you mentioned and I mentioned if you want to hear the full two Cesarean stories and my first VBAC after two C-sections story, check out episode 102 because there are some long, detailed stories. I'm not going to go through them all, but I do think they are important just to hear how I got to where I am today because each birth and pregnancy really builds upon the last. My knowledge, my passion, and just all of the information I learned played a role in my decisions for the next one. So just a real quick birth history. Gosh, it's been almost 10 years ago. My oldest is 9.5. I will go back to 2013. I really did plan the most natural delivery possible with a birth plan but I didn't have a doula. I was induced at 41.5 and on Pitocin for 30 hours. Two epidurals, every drain and tube and monitor coming out of me that could possibly come out of me even though I really wanted none of it and then after two hours of pushing, the covering OB came in and said, “We should have done a C-section hours ago.” I gave up. My body just– you know, the adrenaline kind of left my body and I said, “That's fine. Whatever.”She was 10 pounds and probably OP. I started planning my VBAC in the postpartum room. Let's fast forward a couple of years. I switched providers and thought she was VBAC-supportive. It was a little bit of a bait and switch and some scare tactics at the end. I ended somehow in a scheduled C-section at 40 weeks and day with no TOLAC. I didn't really realize it was insane until I met my next provider, but her C-section was straightforward. It was really nice to have a C-section without the labor and 30 hours of Pitocin, but I just didn't feel like honestly, that was even a chance at a VBAC. She had some big baby fears because she is VBAC-supportive with other people so that was hard to learn about after the fact. My second, Delaney, which is my Delaney. I know you have a Delaney. She's 7. My oldest is Adeline and she is 9.5. My second is Delaney and she is 7. She was my “scheduled” C-section, but I kind of look at her as a CBAC because I really, really did in my heart plan for a VBAC. She was 9 pounds and 3 ounces so also larger. Fast forward a couple more years. I switched to yet another doctor, kind of the VBAC king in the area. I did all of the research and all of the prep, the chiropractic care, and did all of the things, right? I got a doula and I did have my– which is when I was on the podcast– VBAC after two C-sections just riddled with a lot of interventions after getting to the hospital. The most significant one was him breaking my water at 4 centimeters when I got there for really no apparent reason. Baby turning OP, pushing for an hour, and then it was a forceps assist. I think while it was empowering and it was really life-changing, I think after the fact as I thought more about it, I did this big mental dump on my computer even though I assumed we would never have another baby. I did this big document of what I would do next time. It's really interesting to look back because I did it pretty quickly after the birth. Not necessarily regrets, but how I would do things differently even down to the first trimester. Meagan: I actually think that's really powerful. Amy: It was. It was helpful. Meagan: I really think that's great. Amy: I'm glad I did it because I did look back at it and it was interesting to look at. Although it was a VBAC, and I will say I still feel really blessed and I do think it paved the way physically and emotionally to have another baby vaginally, I didn't really have those healing moments that I was hoping for. That was really hard for me because the NICU team whisked him away. It was a boy and that was the first gender we didn't know. It was really special to have two girls and then a boy. He was our smallest baby. He was 8lbs, 12 oz and I think he was 41.4 but I didn't get to hold him after. I didn't get to do the golden hour. I didn't get to do immediate skin-to-skin. He did spend an hour in the NICU for observation which was hard. I was happy he was healthy but with a forceps assist and an OP baby, I could have had a lot more damage than I did and I only had a second-degree tear which I was very grateful for because it could have been a lot worse. But he was fine and we were healthy and I healed well. It was a really great postpartum period and the hormones were real and the birth high is real. That really solidified my passion for birth and what I wanted to do moving forward. I met another mom through my same OB because everybody flocked to this OB. She actually recorded a podcast episode around the same time as me, Tanya. I hope it's okay if I share her name. We actually ended up through meetings and through our VBACs starting an ICAN chapter in our community in November of 2020 amidst the pandemic. We went through the ICAN leadership training which was really exciting. We now have an ICAN chapter that's been going pretty strong now for about 3 years and we have just grown our passion even more and connected even more to the birth community. So yeah. Those are my three stories in a nutshell. Meagan: Tell everybody how to find that ICAN chapter in your area if they're listening.Amy: Okay, sure. I wasn't sure if I should share the details. ICAN of Summit County. I live in the greater Akron area. We serve the whole Summit County area. There is also a very active, large ICAN chapter in Cleveland which is one of the longest-standing ICAN chapters or the longest-standing which is really neat. That is the chapter we started going to and it really helped us. We love having our own chapter here. We're growing but juggling a lot of babies. I had to take some pauses at times, so that's been really exciting and has really just helped grow our passion and desire to keep doing this kind of work. Yeah. Through all of that, I still kept listening to podcasts and just devouring everything I could. I had plans to become a doula and just hadn't been able to pull the trigger yet, but have always had this hope that one day I will be able to help other women. As the years went by, I still didn't feel like our family was complete, but I do want to add that I know a lot of women deal with this so I want to speak to this because sometimes, I think that maybe women are not afraid or ashamed to talk about it, but I did struggle with the difference between if I really wanted another baby or child and do I really want another birth experience to do differently. I've heard other people talk about that. I'm glad I took quite a few years to trick my husband into having another baby, no, to get pregnant again because I wanted to make sure that I was doing it for the right reasons. But yeah. It was tugging at my soul and I think he was unofficially done. Around comes Mother's Day 2022 and I conceived baby number four and that was the best Mother's Day gift ever. That's where the story starts. I think always in the back of my head, I daydreamed and dreamt of this home birth plan. I said, “That's a dream of mine that will never happen because of my history and because we're not having any more kids and because my body probably can't do that. I've always needed an epidural. XYZ.” I had my birth team planned in my mind for years even. This is what I'm going to do if I get pregnant again, but I never thought I'd actually have to commit to that. Along comes this pregnancy and we're super excited about it. I started my OB care with the same doctor who is extremely supportive. I knew he did co-care for home births just from talking to other women. I went along with my pregnancy. It was textbook. I tried to stay as active as I could. I wasn't as sick this time, so I was just trying to really stay healthy and do all of the things right that I could because I know that I have big babies. I don't know if my weight gain plays into it, but I tend to gain a lot of weight every time no matter what I'm doing. With my son, he was the smallest and I had been running the whole pregnancy, so I thought, “I'm going to try to have another smaller baby.” I continued with OB care. I didn't do all of the VBAC things. We have the lists, right? The Spinning Babies and the red raspberry leaf tea and the dates and stuff. I had three kids and I was working. I didn't have time to do all of the things, but I really tried to prioritize what I thought was most important. I tried to start early by interviewing as many doulas as possible and really trying to find somebody who would really be the best support for me whether I was in the hospital or at home because I still hadn't committed even though I knew in my heart I really wanted to at least try for a home birth. I interviewed a lot of doulas. I found one who was spectacular. She wasn't necessarily the most experienced years-wise, but I was okay with that because of some great reviews from friends and we just really clicked. She was comfortable with the idea of home birth or hospital birth and I know not all doulas are. I think that is one important thing to take into consideration. I did start Webster's chiropractic care pretty early because I knew the only time my body ever went into labor on its own was with my third, my VBAC. For me, that was a really huge thing. It was a really huge deal to know that my body wasn't broken because it never went into labor with my first two. Thankfully, that wasn't really a fear of mine anymore because I knew it could be done and I knew it could happen. The other thing that I really did was I wanted to do some mental health work around some of my fears and anxieties to try to really figure out if I was nervous about a home birth because my intuition, like you talk about, had a fear that something was going to go wrong medically or if it was just anxiety. I worked a little bit with a mental health therapist and it was just nice to talk it out. I worked through those things and what my hesitations were and why and what my fears were and why. I really do think that helped a lot. Meagan: Do you have any tips for our listeners that your therapist gave you to help recognize fear versus intuition? Do you know what I mean? We talk about this a lot on the podcast. Amy: She probably gave me tools and I have an awful memory. There were some charts she wanted me to make, so I'll have to find those and send them to you, but it had to do with working through the root and then figuring out the why and not so much– I just had a weird fear of having a really catastrophic emergency. I don't know if that's just because I'm a nurse and that's where my mind goes or if because people tell me that it's so dangerous, so then I finally worked through that by looking at statistics and listening to all of the stories and realizing that it isn't an irrational fear but that we needed to come up with a plan. We had all of the different plans set in place for that. But yeah. I'll have to see. I'm sure she had some. I probably didn't do the homework, but she probably had some exercises for me. Meagan: I think you did. Amy: Yeah, I guess in a roundabout way. It helped to talk to someone who is not your partner and not your mom and not your coworker. So yeah. We did the prenatal co-care. He was on board with the home birth plans as much as an OB can. He was really great in that sense, but I was dragging my feet to make a decision and I think this is partly my procrastination and partly my not-commiting to the idea because then I wouldn't have to do it. I interviewed a lot of midwives and around 28 weeks, I hired a midwife and the medical professional in me decided to go with a CNM. In Ohio, laws are different everywhere, but certified nurse midwives are the nurses who have the nursing school and a master's degree in nursing. Most of those do not practice in the home birth setting in Ohio. Those are the midwives you would get in the hospital and we do not have any free-standing birth centers sadly, so we just have very few options here. But there are about four nurse-midwives now that do practice home births or come to the home. So I hired one and she was really wonderful. I kind of knew her a little bit personally through another friend. I had my first visit with her and I was feeling really excited. I had my doula hired. I had my photographer hired who was a home birth mama herself times two and I loved the idea that she also would just really understand the space and what I needed. She wasn't just a photographer. She was like another doula through my whole pregnancy and she was wonderful too. Unfortunately, after my first visit, we waited about four weeks to see each other again, and then the day of that visit, she let me go as a patient over the phone unfortunately due to some things she read in my records. It's frustrating because she really knew my history really well and I gave her this huge stack of records to be nice. In the op report, it talked about the uterine window which we all know is a little bogus. I understand why she was–Meagan: I had that too. Amy: Yeah. I wonder if she had never seen that, but who knows? I do feel that things worked out the way that they were supposed to but the only reason it was difficult was because I was now 31 weeks and you don't want to have to change providers that late. I respected her and I would rather have someone who was 110% comfortable anyway. The other CNMs in the area, I will say, wanted to do continuous fetal monitoring at home. One wanted to put in a hep lock at home. They are just a little bit more conservative because of, I think, the climate in Ohio and their license which I totally understand. It worked out for the best in the end. But I raced to interview a couple more midwives and thankfully, one that I had heard of but never talked to, we clicked instantly. My husband talked to her. He told some kind of joke about a uterus and she laughed then he hired her on the spot. We fell in love with her. She is just amazing and we just instantly clicked and I knew she was my person.  I continued my care with her. That was 33 weeks on and her office was an hour away. That was one of my hesitations originally with some people up north was the distance. I did some co-care with my OB and with her. Then at 37 weeks, my OB who our whole area just adores, and beyond. Women drove to him from other states. He was unfortunately let go from the hospital. I don't know the details. I hate to say the word fired, but yeah. Terminated. It left a lot of women. It was really devastating for the birthing community up here in northeast Ohio because a lot of women go to him for breech deliveries, twin, triplet vaginal birth. You know, the renegade of the hospital who is kind of operating on his own accord. He would go to home births and a lot of women would never have even been given an option to have a vaginal delivery without him. It was really heartbreaking. Meagan: One of the most supportive people at birth was let go for whatever reason. Amy: Yeah, unfortunately. There were a lot of tears shed by a lot of people who had delivered with him and who worked with him. Anyway, I don't want to get too caught up by that, but it was really upsetting for somebody whose hospital transfer plan was an amazing OB. I had all of these birth plans written out and now, my non-urgent hospital transfer– I didn't really have that option. To me, I'm like, “Well, there goes my home birth because what if I need pain relief or whatnot?” I did transfer to the local hospital midwife group in the hospital about 2 miles down the road in Akron. Thankfully, I delivered my first with them and they had records. They were really wonderful when I went in at 39 weeks saying, “Hey. I had co-care for a home birth.” Even this one OB walked in and I got so nervous because it was supposed to be a midwife. She was running behind and this OB walked in. I'm like, “Oh crap.” The OB just goes, “What do you need from me? I see you are planning a home birth.” I almost cried on the spot because it was wonderful to have this fresh out-of-school OB be okay with that. I'm like, “Thank you so much for that. I really needed that today,” because I am 39 weeks. The end of the pregnancy went fine. I did all of the things, some Miles circuits. I didn't go crazy with the dates or the tea or anything. I tried to stay active. I didn't have as many Braxton Hicks as I had in the past, but I definitely had the heavy pressure in the pelvis. I could hardly walk and everything. I felt really low this time and a lot of back pain and hip pressure and hip pain this time. I tried not to focus on the when. When is labor going to start? You can get really obsessive with that, especially when you are known to go over too. I tried to stay really present and be there for the kids and enjoy those last days. I did begin to lose my mucus plug at my midwife's office which was really funny at 39 weeks. I'm like, “What is this?” She was like, “It's your mucus plug.” I was giving a urine sample. I'm like, “Oh my gosh.” Things were starting to brew a little earlier which was really exciting. I started having some mild contractions and then I think I was– so let's see. I was due on February 2nd. The actual early labor contractions that were noticeable started on a Monday. I was 40 and 4. My parents were over for dinner and they were consistent enough. I was just getting irritable so I went up to my room. I excused myself from dinner. I'm like, “I'm going to go lay down.” That was my first day off work. That was a Monday. My last day of work was the previous Thursday. I had gotten a manicure. I'm like, “This is going to be a pampering day,” which was maybe helpful I think. I think a day of rest really did help my body switch into gear. I know that everyone says to rest and that it will happen when it's time and it did. So yeah. Contractions kind of started kicking up that night. Something of note with my first VBAC, so my third birth was that my contractions immediately went to 1-2 minutes apart and that's why I went to the hospital so early. I was like, “Don't call everybody in too soon. You know that this is how your body is in early labor.” I took a shower and I rested. I was just out in the sunroom which was my happy spot in our new house. I think I was watching The Bachelor which was ridiculous but I was like, “Okay. If I can still watch TV, it's still early labor.” It went on. I texted my team a little bit, but just said, “Hey, I think things are brewing. I had some bloody show around 8:00 PM, but I'm going to just keep doing what I'm doing and resting.” So I think it was around 11:00 PM that I could no longer watch TV or want to so I was like, “Okay. I'm going to keep everybody updated, but no reason to call in the troops yet. I'm going to let my husband sleep.” I think I did text everyone around midnight. Contractions were 2-3 minutes apart. They were definitely getting more painful. I was still breathing through them, but just getting nervous because my midwife was an hour away. I think my husband woke up around 1:00 AM and urged everybody to come over. Everybody got there around 2:00 AM. This was 2:00 AM on Tuesday morning, so February 7th. It was the day she was born. My doula got there first. She kind of just stayed by my side. She did hip squeezes and rubbed my back. She was just super wonderful and supportive. Everyone, as they came into the house, just let me be. What I love about home birth is that they don't disrupt you. They hold the space for you. They are quiet and respectful of your environment and just check on you when they need to. They take your vitals every so often, listen to the baby's heartbeat, and really, they just hung out in my living room until I needed them again. I just labored up in my bedroom for most of the night. I took a lot of showers. It was a lot of leaning over the bed and hip rolls on the ball. Nobody ever checked me, so talking about cervical exams. I never really thought about it and they never asked. It would have been interesting to know where I was through all of this, but yeah. I never got checked once during the whole birth. That was, I think, really cool in the end. Everybody filed in around 2:00 AM and stayed through most of the night. Then around 9:00 AM, I went downstairs to see my older kids. They stayed home from school because they were up throughout the night too coming in and out of the room. I really did want them there for the birth. They were really interested and I thought it would be really special. But when I went down to see them, everything stalled and fizzled out completely. I guess I just didn't think of this as an option. I was really in it, I felt. I was having painful contractions that were coming regularly. I was really having to work through them. Everything died down. I had some food. I said goodbye to them. My husband took them to my mother-in-law's for the day. We just thought I was going to rest. I went on a walk with my doula. We did some curb walking. I felt huge pressure to get things moving faster because my team had been there since 2:00 AM. I was doing the thing. We were here. I thought this was the real deal and then it fizzles. I finally had this talk with my midwife. I think I was naked or maybe in a robe after getting out my one of my million showers which I loved the shower. She was like, “Let's just regroup. Let's just have a chat. I think you need to–let's just reset. I think we need to get out of your space. Things are happening. You're doing the work. I don't doubt that, but I think you just need to rest.” I'm a people pleaser and I wanted them to go home and get some rest. The whole team stayed there for 12 hours. They have babies of their own and they were amazing. She said, “I think this will be good for you.” I had a big cry. That release, I felt so guilty that they had all been there. I felt like maybe this was a false alarm and I just had everybody come over for no reason, but in the end, it was good for us. We had a rest. We napped on and off and ate some food. He's smearing blueberries all over my shirt. We ate some food, took some showers, and just hunkered down just my husband and I. I think it was really good for us to just have some time. I was napping on and off and my husband decided to take some clothes to the kids at my mother-in-law's house which is about 20 minutes away. Around 7:00, my mom and dad came over. He planned this behind my back without bothering me. I was like, “Okay, whatever.” My mom had talked about being a deliveries in the past, but it just never felt like the right time. It never really felt right to have someone else in the room. I said, “Whatever. She can sit with me. That's great.” She was just sitting in the corner quietly of the room and I was resting and then all of a sudden, 7:00 hits. My husband is still gone and I am just like, all of a sudden, contractions come back out of the blue super strong and powerful. My husband Facetimes me with the kids a little after 7:00 and then all of a sudden, I had this giant contraction. I threw my phone out of the bed and yelled, “I can't talk.” I felt really bad. I just managed to text, “Come home now. Not doing well,” or something like that. I just didn't even know this could happen where you could labor, have this break, and then it could just shoot you right into active labor, transition. He comes home as fast as he can. My mom is in the room. God love her. She's a nurse by trade of 50 years. Never in OB and she was just like, “Okay. Do you want help? Do you not want help?” Finally, I'm like, “Rub my back or something.” I couldn't really talk at this point. It really went from 0 to 100. She was doing hip squeezes as best as she could. We're getting myself in and out of the tub a couple of times, having to keep putting new hot water in it. God love my mom with her bucket of water and we're doing it. It was just me and her here. I think I texted the group, “Can't do this much longer,” to the birth team but not much information got relayed to the team. No one's fault, it was just a lack of communication between me, my mom, and my husband who was the communicator. Things are getting pretty hard. I'm very vocal and my contractions are back-to-back. My back is just killing me. I think at this point, my husband is home. At 7:40 at night, he's home. He's moving cars to the neighbor's driveway. I'm in the water at this point and there was a pop in the water. I knew from past episodes of other birth stories that that's when your water breaks in the water, Amy. I didn't want to believe that was happening because my water has never broken on its own. It was broken for me. This never gets relayed to anybody. My mom was like, “I knew you were probably in transition, but I just didn't tell anyone.” I'm like, “Okay,” after the fact. Then I was vomiting too. That never got relayed to the team. They're asking my husband, “Are here contractions different? Has she tried an Epsom salt bath? Where are they located?” I'm looking back at the texts and he's like, “She's not answering. They're different. She wants to be checked now.” I feel like I was yelling but I was probably whispering. At that point, I was like, I need to be checked now because if I'm not very close, I can't do this anymore. A lot of things, I think I verbalized but they were probably in my head. I was like, “I need an epidural. This isn't going to happen soon. Get me to the hospital.” I was just–Meagan: Well, that's what happens in the end. We have this sense of, “I can't. I don't want to. I'm done,” but that's the end. Amy: Yep. Yep. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. It was pure misery and it felt like my bones were breaking but I was trying. I was relaxing my body as much as I could because I knew I needed to. I was in the tub for most of that portion. So I was definitely in transition and nobody knew. I think my husband called my doula and just recently, she said, “I heard you in the background and I grabbed my keys and ran,” because I think I was doing the low, birthy moaning but no one else. I just never thought to call my midwives because in those moments, I couldn't have even thought straight. I wasn't thinking to text or call anyone because I was just trying to survive in that primal birth state. She was like, “I sped so fast.” God love my doula. She walks in the door first. I think it was 8:45 at this point, so 7:00 PM was when everything kicked up fast. She walks in and she was really just doing all of the comfort measures she could. I was in the water. I think all the other birth team started heading over. My midwife had an hour drive and she got stuck behind a train. The midwife assistant, who was hired because she lived more in my area which is great, happened to be nearby at a basketball game for her son so she headed over to “check” me. It's important to note that when they were there the first time, they had all of their equipment, but they packed it all back up and took it home. So when she comes upstairs to check me, she has a flashlight and a doppler, maybe a pair of gloves in her pocket. I never get checked so that's the end of that. That story ends, but she heads in and our photographer gets there at 9:45. One of the heartbreaking parts of my VBAC was that my photographer left the hospital during my epidural and never came back. I was very heartbroken that I didn't have photos. God love my photographer. She made it just in the nick of time. She shows up and she also had an hour drive and a baby of her own at home. She gets there at 9:45 and at this point, I think I'm just up to the bathroom a lot. I couldn't stop going to the bathroom. TMI, but pooping. I just remember the midwife was dragging me off the toilet. She is very direct and I didn't know her that well. She is a midwife in training also thankfully, so she is very close to the end of her midwifery training thank God, but she was like, “We need to go. Come on, honey. It's okay if you keep pooping. Come on. Get off the toilet now.” I was bearing down. I didn't know it, but I was definitely having fetal ejection reflex at that point. I think I was still in denial that it was the baby. I was doing these grunts and moans. I just think I was still like, “Oh, I'm probably 6 centimeters.” I didn't want to let myself down. I still had so many fears of, “Am I going to end up in the hospital for pain relief? Am I going to get to 10 centimeters? Is the baby going to be OP again?” and all of these things. I get back in the tub and it's all very blurry and fuzzy at this point. But piecing together from what people told me in texts, I know she said to reach down and see what you feel. I said, “It burns.” I was like, “Oh my gosh, it burns.” She was like, “Well, what do you feel?” I was like, “I don't know what that is. It's fleshy.” In that moment, I thought it was a butt. I thought, “Oh my gosh. This baby is coming out breech. My midwife isn't here yet and I'm at home.” I think it was the head. I don't know. I really didn't know what I was feeling. I was kind of afraid to touch it. Meagan: Probably cap it or– Amy: I was like, “What is this?” I guess we knew it was close. She's trying to look with a flashlight. I really did think I wanted a waterbirth, but I guess I wasn't in a position that the midwife assistant liked because I kept liking kneeling where I was giving no room for the baby to come out. She kept going, “You have to lean forward or sit back. You can't kneel like that because the baby can't come out if you're sitting on your leg.” You know, whatever. We decided to get out of the tub which was very hard to get up over that edge of the tub. For anyone who has seen my birth video because I had posted it to the group, they helped me out of the tub. It was very difficult and very miserable. I made my way to the side of the bed. At that point, I think my body is pushing and I don't even realize it. I don't remember if there was pain. It's all kind of a blur. It was just all very intense. I know that from photos, I was squatting next to my bed with my arms around my husband's neck. He's holding up all of my weight. They said that I was pulling him over. He is 6'1”, 250. I'm 5'5”. I was a maniac, pulling on him with all of my strength. I birthed her head next to the bed and I honestly don't remember feeling it. I do not remember any crazy pain or anything. I think I was just so in birthland. Her head comes out and I just remember my body shuts down. No urge to push. No contractions. I've heard other people say this, I think, on your podcast so it felt very validating to hear this. Everybody was like, “You've got to keep pushing.” I really didn't want coached pushing. From the hospital, you get yelled at to push, push, push. But she was like, “You've got to push. The head's out.” I just remember it being very– not scary, but just very urgent and very matter-of-fact. “We need you to push.” Meagan: “You've got to do this.” Amy: Yeah. “You've got to do this.” By my husband, there's a small spot next to the bed. You always birth in small spots. My husband is behind me. My doula is next to me. My mom is somewhere in there. The photographer is across the room. I just instinctively rolled onto the bed. You have to remember, there are no chucks pads down. We are not having a baby on a bed right now. We aren't planning for it, so I had a mattress protector down, thank God, but no chucks pads. I rolled onto my side. My leg was up in the air, and at that point, it gets a little intense because the midwife assistant was by herself and they do like to have two people there. The resuscitation equipment is not in the house. There is nothing to help me or baby if anything goes wrong. There was some intensity in the moment and she did tell my mom to put a timer on the clock and that after 60 seconds, we were going to call EMS. When I heard that, when I heard her say– So 60 seconds does go by and thank God, my mom is a nurse but nobody knows she's a nurse. The funny part is that nobody knows that she was an RN of 50 years and on the other side of the house, my dad, I didn't know he was there. He is a physician by trade, retired. Nobody knows any of that so it was funny after the fact. Funny, but not funny. Comical, after the fact. She's like, “Put 60 seconds on the clock.” I think it is a conservative amount. I know the head can be out for longer, but I think coloring and other things factor in. So as soon as I heard my midwife very calmly– and everything was very calm I have to say. It was the most beautifully handled situation. I never felt scared. I didn't feel traumatized after, but she very calmly said, “Please call 9-1-1,” to my mom which has to be hard for a grandma who was supportive of home birth– I know my mom and dad were supportive and I know my dad especially was concerned from his background. I know they had a lot of questions and they trusted me and my research. I live really close to two huge, big hospitals, but that had to be really scary. When she did it, she did great. She went downstairs to open the doors for EMS and she missed the baby being born because when I heard, “Call 9-1-1,” I gave the most roaring push my doula called it. I scream pushed and my midwife did go in and released her arm. Meagan: She had shoulder dystocia, right? Amy: She did have shoulder dystocia, yeah. I guess technically it was a dystocia if I don't know. I felt like I needed to know and I've done a lot of research of was it really? Could I have changed positions or was it rushed? In the end, I think we'll call it dystocia because she went in and she helped, but she popped right out with a little bit of assistance. By the time my mom got upstairs from opening up the door, baby was born. It's all such a blur. I think she needed a little stimulation. Her coloring wasn't perfect coming out, but I don't think there were any concerns. Her APGARs were fine. We just stimulated her a little bit. She started crying. Everybody had this huge sigh of relief because we didn't have the equipment. My midwife still wasn't there yet. She did a beautiful job and I'm just forever grateful for her skill set and the fact that she knew how to handle it. I love that my story can show people that situations can arise. I don't want to say emergencies, but tough situations can arise where these skills are needed and these midwives are wonderfully trained. EMS walks in and they see this baby that is crying and pinked up. We're all laughing and happy and riding the birth high. They're just like, “Okay, you're good here?” We're like, “Yep, we're good.” They're like, “Congratulations.” They left. They did not. They said, “We would rather deal with a gunshot wound than deliver a baby.” They had a cord clamp. They were like, “Do you need a cord clamp?” We're like, “No, thanks though.” That was all they brought with them. It was cute. There was apparently a line of men down my steps, nine EMS, two squads, three guys–Meagan: They didn't need anything. Amy: No. I'm glad they responded. It's not that I wanted that to be a part of my story necessarily but it was what needed to happen and she felt that she took the steps she needed to feel comfortable delivering on her own. It all ended up wonderfully. Things can go wrong with shoulder dystocia, so I was very blessed that she came out as well as she did. I didn't have a tear. I had maybe a first-degree tear which was great. She was 9.5 pounds so not my smallest either, my second biggest. We found out she was a girl and yeah. The rest is just the beautiful postpartum bliss. My midwife shows up, I don't know. She was born at 10:10 PM. The midwife shows up at 10:25 totally bummed because you don't want to miss it. I loved her and we had such a great bond. I'm so glad she was there with me a lot of the day. She was just, there was just so much joy in the room. They did all of the postpartum stuff you do at a home birth. They weighed her and measured her. We latched. My placenta– I'll go back. My placenta, I love that they don't rush it in home birth. I stood up. They were like, “Maybe gravity will help.” I had cramps. I wanted to get up and take a shower. We just crack up because I walked a few steps across the room and my midwife, God love her, had this chucks pad under me because I'm sure I was bleeding and dripping. I gave this little cough push and midway walking through my room, the placenta just plops out like rapid speed. It drops the chucks pad down to the ground. It lands on it. We all start cracking up. We might have named it my plopcenta. Meagan: Plopcenta. Amy: To this day, my daughter still calls it that. But it was hilarious. It was kind of fun. So that happened. I took my shower. She was here. I still couldn't believe it went down that way and that my mom was there for the birth even though she never was really planning on it. Yeah. I'm sure there are so many details in there I missed, but I've been talked forever. Literally, it was just going from thinking you have this scarlet letter of big babies and C-sections and OP babies to– I don't know. It was really fast. From 7:00 PM to 10:00, it all happened really fast. Meagan: Yeah. Amy: With hardly a push, maybe two coached pushes at the end there with a little bit of help from a midwife, but yeah. It's wild how each delivery is different. I'm just really grateful that I had the team I had and trusted myself and body and the process and yeah. We're just really grateful. In the end, it was beautiful. Meagan: I am so happy for you. So happy. And look how beautiful. I know everybody right now can't see her, but she's so beautiful and so darling. With having EMS and stuff like that involved, that a lot of the time can have trauma involved with that too or maybe for future kids, maybe some people will say, “Oh, well this had to happen last time,” and maybe question you doing home birth. Do you have any tips for anyone? Like you said, “It's not necessarily what I would have loved to have happen, but it happened and it was fine.” Amy: I think I had to debrief a lot because I'm the type that wants to know why. So kind of what happened with my first VBAC, I felt really victorious, then as I started nitpicking the birth and all of the interventions, I kind of had a huge dip in my mood and got really upset about it. I have to work through it and go through all of the details. With this, I remember saying it out loud. I really didn't feel like it was traumatic. I really had to think about the why and why they were called. I felt like it was–Meagan: Extra precaution, yeah. Amy: I said to my midwife after the fact– she's been catching babies for 10 years. I said, “Would you have called at 60 seconds?” I just don't know if she can answer that without having been there because I think you do have to look at baby's coloring. I think they can tell by the cardinal movements as they are coming out. I don't think she was turning as she was supposed to. She wasn't turtling in, but she wasn't doing the cardinal movements that she was supposed to. I don't know had there been two sets of hands if they would have been called that soon. Maybe we would have gotten baby out before, but I'm actually just really grateful they called and I have to reframe it that way. Maybe working with a therapist if you felt like some of the things that happened weren't necessarily healing or what you wanted. Yes, you love blowing raspberries. I just thought of it as, “Hey.” Some of my medical friends that I work with or colleagues who thought home birth was so dangerous, look how proactive they were. There are some midwives who think they can do it but they don't help at the right time or they don't transfer quickly enough. My midwife always said, “I will never second-guess your intuition. If you say that you need to go to the hospital, I'm going to follow your guidance. We're never going to risk anything and we're never going to cut things close.” That's why I felt so comfortable with this team. I had an emergency transfer plan and I had a non-urgent transfer plan. Everything was spelled out very nicely. I knew they weren't going to push the limit. Meagan: Yes. Amy: I just had to tell myself that she didn't have resuscitation equipment. She needed extra hands. When I went through the postpartum follow-ups, they were so wonderful. They come at one day. They come at three days. A lot of that was very therapeutic for me to talk about the why. I didn't even realize at that time that she was born that it was one of the reasons. She really didn't have anything with her. A lot of it was in her trunk because we weren't planning to have the baby that quickly. I think I had this long, drawn-out early labor phase and that's just how my body was in the past. In my first two other labor, I went from 4-10 with an epidural in an hour. I think my body does this pause until I relax and then I go real quick. That's just how it has been with the other two. So yeah. I think if you have some parts that might– and it's okay for parts to be traumatic. It can still be a beautiful birth if there are parts that don't go perfectly as planned. I think that's one of the things I had to work through a lot, but it was just still very healing. I just had to look at the why. That's how I got through that part. I didn't love sharing that part at first because I didn't want people to say, “I told you so,” from some of my more medically-minded friends and colleagues. I think shoulder dystocia is scary, but I think after hearing some other birth stories, I feel like, some doctors aren't even as skilled at handling dystocias as the midwives are or they jump to way more intense interventions because they can and midwives have to have the skills. Meagan: I just love that you did. I love that you did share that because it's not your traditional– it's what people fear when they have home birth of having to transfer and EMS. That's what I noticed is that I love that you were like, “I had to break it down to the why and not let that make it be traumatizing.” She really had nothing, so she was only being the smartest midwife she could be in case this little baby needed help. She knew that this other midwife wasn't close and couldn't make it to her in time, so she got the help. I love that you pointed that out because really, most emergencies can be handled within an appropriate time. I know that there are always nuances, but I love that you are like, they got there and were like, “Are you good? Okay, bye.” Amy: I know. I mean, yeah. I always had a little fear of hemorrhaging even though I never had. I had a little fear of, I don't know, other major things like a dystocia or malposition where I'm not going to be able to push baby out because in my past, I had it and I think it's important to know that having an assisted delivery for my third, for my first VBAC, really cut my confidence down. Meagan: I'm sure. Amy: It really made me not believe in my body and I kept going, “Well, I really didn't push the baby out myself last time,” because he really did jump to interventions really quickly for whatever reason. He pushed the time clock. So I kept going to my midwife like, “But I don't really have the ‘proven pelvis' because I really didn't push that baby out myself. They helped him out.” I don't know where I was going with that, but I think–Meagan: Well, it placed some doubt. Amy: Yeah, it did place doubt. Meagan: It placed some doubt and that's hard and then you went and totally– the proven pelvis thing, it's like, no. You did. You're amazing. Amy: We did it. Yeah. She came out really, really without too much effort. You could see the midwife assistant helped her arm out, but really, we got her out. Meagan: You did it. Amy: I want to say too that for anybody who is nervous about midwifery and their skills, it was her 7th or 8th catch ever by herself and her first dystocia. I asked her just last night, “Were you internally freaking out? Because you were very calm and confident.” She was like, “No, but you know. It was definitely my first dystocia.” I'm like, “Well, I'm almost glad you did it on your own because I hoped it built your confidence as a midwife.” Meagan: Exactly. Amy: If she had that situation. Again, I don't want the whole story to be focused on that one moment and that one instance and be labeled with this shoulder dystocia, but I do think that it's important for poeple who have a history of large babies to know that it doesn't have to keep you from having a low-intervention birth or an out-of-hospital birth. You just have to trust yourself and do what you're most comfortable with. It came down to me. This is where I felt safest and I knew that if I went to the hospital, in the past, one intervention always led to just another intervention that led to a more difficult delivery than it had to be and I just knew that walking into the hospital, I was just not going to have the opportunity to probably have no interventions unless I showed up crowning. I felt safest at home. I hired a team I felt safest with. If I could give any advice, it would be to just think about that and where you're going to feel most comfortable and in control, safest, and hire a team that you feel 100% comfortable with. Meagan: Yes. Thank you for sharing. Thank you. Thank you. I do love all of it. I love every single detail. I love that you shared the ups and the downs. I noticed you were alone for a minute and then that's what your body needed and then you kicked right back into gear. That is just amazing. I want to talk a little bit before we get going on cervical exams. Okay. So let's talk about cervical exams. In the hospital, they are way more likely to perform them. Then out of the hospital, they don't. I don't want to make it sound like we are saying that out of the hospital is better than in the hospital at all. That's just the way the system kind of goes in the hospitals. We have standard cervical exams. So cervical exams before labor, let's talk a little bit about that. Are they necessary? That's a big question. Do we have to start having cervical exams before we're even in labor? Because we have so many providers and even out-of-hospital providers that will say, “Oh, let's just check your cervix and see where it's at,” or they'll say, “Well, we're getting to that 39-week mark. We'd better check your cervix and see if you're going to be capable of having a VBAC.”The question is are they necessary? No. They are not necessary. It does not tell us anything. It really doesn't. All it does is help your curiosity and tell someone where you are on that day in that moment. That is not going to necessarily change anything to predict the future. It's not going to predict the future. If you are 1 centimeter dilated and 40% effaced or something like that at your 39-week visit, that does not mean that your body is not going to do it and you're not going to be able to have a VBAC. What does it help? Nothing, really. Maybe your curiosity. What does it hurt? Well, they can be uncomfortable. It can cause some prodromal labor if they are in there and they are too aggressive and it is stimulating things. It can hurt us emotionally because if we are getting this number and we are being told things at 39, 40, or 38 weeks even. We've had some people. That's really, really hard to hear because then you start doubting yourself. It hurts us emotionally and places doubt. Are you needing a cervical exam before labor? No. Women of Strength, no. If you do not feel like you want one, you do not have to have one. Say no. Say, “Maybe next time.” And maybe next time you want one. Maybe next time, you are still like, “Maybe next time.” So that's before labor. Now let's talk about cervical exams in labor. You know, there are actually no real deep studies demonstrating that there are actually clinical benefits in routine exams before labor, but then in labor, they are doing it all of the time too and there's not a ton of solid evidence that even tells us that it's going to tell us anything but, again, what it is in that very moment. What can cervical exams in labor tell us? Well, it can tell us what we are in that very moment. It can give us an idea. It can appease our curiosity. It can tell a provider a station, a station of the baby whether how high or how low a baby is. It can help– and this is help, not tell exactly– a provider see where a baby is position-wise. But even then, you really have to be dilated enough. Your baby has to be low enough. Sometimes, the water, they can't even tell through the bag of water if there is a bag of water and things like that. So yeas. It can help with the position, but it's not going to always be sure exactly. Okay, so let's see what else it can help with. Induction– if we are going in for an induction, it can help us know a base and a starting point and what method of induction may be appropriate at that time. Okay, so if there's a medical reason or a desired reason for an induction, you may want to get a cervical exam to see what you're going to do because they may want to place a Foley or you may be dilated enough and they may just start Pitocin. Or sometimes, from the mom's standpoint, a cervical exam can sometimes be unofficial– again, it goes back to curiosity, but on their debate on an epidural. Maybe they are like, “I'm really, really tired, but if I'm past a 6, then I'll keep going. If I'm a 3, I need a break.” Again, it's a mental thing. But when would we maybe not? This is another thing. We have a lot of providers standardly every two hours, every two hours, putting their fingers in vaginas. Every two hours. Amy: No, thank you. Meagan: We are introducing things that we don't need to be introducing like bacteria and the risk of infection. So when would you want to say, “Heck to the no?” When do we want to say, “Hell no”? I'm just going to say it. When do we want to say it? Well, we just kind of mentioned it. Maybe if your water has been broken for a long time or just broken at all. Maybe we don't want to introduce that. Maybe we've been told in a previous exam that we've had a bulging bag because we can have an accidental rupture of membranes with a cervical exam. Not too much has changed. In your story, if you were to have gotten an exam further before they left, they would have been like, “Okay, well not much has changed, but let's still check your cervix anyway.” But instead, they were like, “Not much has changed right now. It's kind of slowed down. Why don't we just take a break? We'll leave. You hang.” Versus, “Well, let's do a cervical exam.” If not much has changed, probably not much has changed. They don't feel good, so if you've had a previous cervical exam that didn't feel very good and not much has changed and it's only been two hours, it's probably still not going to feel super good. This is another thing. If one nurse came in two hours ago and now we have another nurse coming in, we probably don't want to do that because guess what, you guys? They are subjective. Is that the right word? I don't even know if that's the right word. They're not always accurate. My hand and your hand are different sizes. My fingers are different lengths and everything and everyone's perspective is a little different. You may get a, “Oh, you're at 5 centimeters,” and then you may get a, “Oh, you're 3 centimeters.” Or, “Oh, you're baby's at 0 station,” or “Oh, you're baby's at +2 station.” It's never a full-on guarantee. A big question is, “Can I say no to a cervical exam in labor?” Again, the answer is yes. You can say no. Never feel like you have to have a cervical exam. That doesn't mean– maybe it's changing from you don't want one now and then maybe you want one later, but you do not have to have a cervical exam and there's really not a ton that it really tells us what we're going to be in three hours. It's just not. It's just not. So anyway, I'm going to get off my rant about cervical exams, but I don't love them. I also didn't have many. I did have some at my birth, but I didn't have many. You know, I've been to births just like yours where we've never known how dilated. We fixate on this dilation number so hard and we don't need to.So, Women of Strength, your cervix does not need to be checked. It does not need to tell anybody any information. If you want the information, get it but just know that even when you get that information, that doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to be 5, 6, 7, 10 centimeters in the next hour or three hours. Look at Amy. She went from 4 to 10 or whatever. We don't even know in this situation with this last birth, really. She went from chill labor to intense active labor to a baby out. We have no idea where she was and that's okay. But do you want to know what I can tell you? She's got a beautiful baby in her arms right now. Amy: I do think that you have to know yourself. I know people love to know the information, but I think I would have been really discouraged had I known maybe I was 4-5 when my team left after the first 12 hours, and then I think it would have been a huge mental block. Then your body can shut down. Who knows if labor would have started back up or kept going? Part of me goes, “Man, I'd love to know where I was just so I could piece it together and tell the story with the centimeters and just maybe help someone else,” but I'm also like, “I dilated to a 10 and we knew it was time to push because my body pushed.” I think the surrendering was what I needed personally and I think that route was the best for me. For some people, that would stress them out to not know, but I think for us it was helpful. Meagan: Yeah. Amy: I do love that there are options and I do think you need to advocate for that in the hospital because you do get pressured a lot to get checked. I will say that. Meagan: Yes, you do. Amy: For sure. We know that. Meagan: All right. We will let you guys go. I will get off my cervical exam rant and we will catch you next week. Amy: Thank you for having Juniper and I. We are so, so happy to share our story so thank you so much. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan's bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Molly: We haven't done anything. We haven't broken any rules. Amy: Okay, we've broken a lot of rules. One: We have fake IDs. Molly: Fake college IDs, so we can get into their 24-hour library. Amy: Name one person whose life was so much better because they broke a couple of rules. Molly: Picasso. Amy: He broke art rules. Name a person who broke a real rule. Molly: Rosa Parks. Amy: Name another one. Molly: Susan B. Anthony. Amy: God dammit.

In this episode of The Antidote, Amy and Grace connect with standup comedian, writer and actor Jordan Carlos in a live conversation from this year's New York Comedy Festival. Jordan joins Amy and Grace in a new segment called The Wellness Shot, where we give advice to our audience and listeners to help solve their real-life issues. Amy and Grace also share their bummer news of the week –  Odell Beckham Jr. was recently removed from an American Airlines flight, and an antibiotic shortage. They also share their antidotes: Broadway and a “hot girl walk.”  Do you have a favorite antidote, or need an antidote suggestion? A question for Grace and Amy, or something you loved that Amy, Grace or one of their guests has said on the podcast? Share a message with The Antidote team: https://mpr.tfaforms.net/111 or tag us on Instagram with the hashtag #ThatsMyAntidote, or leave us a message on our hotline at 833-684-3683. FULL TRANSCRIPT Amy The world is a dumpster fire. I'm Amy. Grace And I'm Grace. Amy And we want to f---ing help. Grace We're comedy writers in Los Angeles. And as a reflex to the madness on the news, we're keeping a positive but opinionated. Amy We talk about cultural moments we love. Grace Talk to people we adore.  Amy Crushes we have. Grace And self-care we stan. Amy During these trying times, we all need a show that focuses on joy. Grace This is The Antidote. Amy Pow, pow, pow. Grace Hi, everybody. Welcome, welcome, welcome. We are back. I'm a little crazy today. We finished shooting last night at 1 a.m. and here I am in the morning and I feel good. I still haven't seen my friend. Hi, amy Amy Yay hi. And also congratulations to my friend for finishing her shoot. Like, literally, I feel like you've lived in New York for nine years. Grace I know I do too. I feel like it's been 20,000 years. I was young when I left. I'm old now. Amy But at the end of it you have a beautiful, magnificent, funny and hilarious show to show the world and hopefully we will be seeing it soon. Grace Yeah, one that my wonderful friend Amy directed two episodes of. So, so, you know, stay tuned for the Amy and Grace collabo with Michelle Buteau and other wonderful people. Amy Yes, that's right. Grace Girl, girl, did you hear about this Good Morning America thing? Amy The Good Morning America scandal is all over my timeline. My thing about the Twitter feed this past week is that I had to come in contact with two people who I did not know who they were. And now I know everything about them. And I'm talking about T.J. Holmes. Yeah. And Amy Robach. Yeah. I'm like, who are y'all? Grace Yeah, I had no idea who they were either. I mean, the T.J. Holmes guy looked a little bit more familiar to me, but I was like, oh, I've maybe seen that before. But that woman, she she looks like a copy of so many other women I've seen on tv. Amy You know, so crazy to me because both of them are married in other relationships. T.J. Holmes, a man I didn't know existed, you know, posted like a tribute to his wife, man, a year ago, like less than a year ago, posted a tribute to his wife about how I tried to make her leave and she won't leave because she's got a black superwoman energy, whatever the f---. And then literally he's out here touching a white woman's ass. And I'm like, I have to say grace. So the there's this woman on Twitter. I don't know her personally, but her handle is batty, ma'am. So that's B.A. YMCA lady. And she has, like, just a little mini thread called Men Will Embarrass You. And this week's Men Men Will Embarrass You is this man, T.J. Holmes, given this tribute to his f---ing wife? And I got to say, lady, I don't know you, but it's time to leave. Grace You got to. Amy Do you need me to show up, need me- to the window? Just lift it up. Help you down. You can Rapunzel throw out your hair and I'll just drag you. Right? Like, I don't know how we. Grace No. Amy Make you leave, but you got to go, girl. Grace It is so embarrassing. And the thing is that they weren't even trying to hide it. They were not being discreet. Nice. And they know they're on TV. I don't know what they thought. That they could just blend in like that. They were just in a bar on the street, grabbing ass, walking through there, walking through the park hand-in-hand. Like at least have the respect for your spouses that have you off again, because I guess they're both separated, right? Amy I don't know if they were. I mean, that feels like new information was like something that was like we were separated. Like, it doesn't I'm like where they. Like, we'll never know. Grace But even like you still have a marital contract, at least don't like be out in the open, go in the hotel room or whatever. You know, don't be just out in the open grabbing booties and stuff, you know. Amy And also grabbing groceries. They were like doing like daily routine things. Like they're a couple when people on TV back to normal, I'm like, y'all, you have faces. People recognize you're in like a million or so homes across America. Every morning y'all are on TV. You can't just be out here acting like you're f---ing Tam and Pam. But you know Pam, like, I don't know, like in Milwaukee who nobody's paying attention to. Like you, literally. I don't know if I would call them famous, but they are you know, they're known. Grace And that's the thing. Like you get the privilege of having millions of dollars and being famous and getting free sh-- because you are on GMA. So you have to accept what comes with that privilege, which is that people know who you are and you can't cheat out in the open. Yeah, probably any Tom, Dick and Harry or whatever. You could go to one city over and you could be acting like y'all married each other. But ya'll can. Amy Also the audacity to cheat in the morning, because that's the other thing. They're Good Morning America. And then they were out in the open in the morning and I'm like, it just was me. I was like, How do we doing out in the morning doing chores? But anyway, I do think that it reminds me of a conversation we had with Jordan. We had a lot of questions about relationships, about being far our guest that's coming up this episode, Jordan Carlos, who did our live show from Brooklyn, New York, which was a part of the New York Comedy Festival on November. BR Well, we had a few questions about relationships, so stick around to hear that in a new segment we created called The Wellness Shop. And if you're in a relationship now, hug your partner, set them free. But don't be doing this sh--. Grace Don't be embarrassed and ask the men or women. Anyway, we wouldn't need the antidote if we didn't have the bummer news. Amy Starting now, top of the hour. Bummer. News of the week. Our first topic is that athlete and you know, hottie with the body. Odell Beckham Jr has been removed from an American Airlines flight recently over, quote unquote, concerns for his health while sleeping with a blanket over his face. Those who don't know Odell Beckham Jr is a very well known wide receiver in the NFL. He catches ball. He's a free agent right now. Yes. He catches balls for a living. Well done. Great for for sports. But he's like a free agent right now, like people trying to court him because, like, you know, he's good at it. Yeah, he's very good. And it's not just because of his looks. Why am I like, oh, I don't know. Well, Beckham, Junior, what a hottie. But anyway, I only know about him because a a few comedians a few years back said some weird sh-- about him. And then part B, there used to be a billboard of him in an underwear ad on La Cienega, and I'd pass it every time I was going to work, and I was like, Who's that? So I learned about sports that day. But anyway, Odell Beckham has a tradition of draping a blanket over his face during long flights so he can sleep, according to his attorney. And this time, while asleep, the flight returned to the gate and Beckham was asked to leave the flight as he had not buckled his seatbelt at the time due to being asleep. Even after offering to buckle his seatbelt, the flight attendant said it's too late now to exit or the entire aircraft would be deplaned in the airports. Report, they claim, quote, he appeared to be coming in and out of consciousness, end quote. And we're concerned he was, quote, seriously ill, end quote, leading to the plane, returning to the gate after the aircraft was deplaned. Beckham left the plane without incident because, you know, he ig but he did tweet that quote, Never in my life have I experienced what just happened to me. I've seen it all. Grace This seems weird to me. I don't know this. I don't know how this happened. Like he was sleepy and ask somebody with a very sleepy friend, Amy, and she's talking about me. She can sleep anywhere. And there have been times where I'm like, Wake up, Amy, wake up. You got to go like, Oh, and it's not like it's sometimes it just doesn't happen. Some people sleep hard and it doesn't feel like a flight attendant would have never seen that before. And then once he said he would buckle a seatbelt, like, you're going to have to deplane everybody. He was nice because I'd be like, literally, you woke me up to buckle my seatbelt and I'm doing it. So like, why can't I go see a Black man? Amy He had to be nice. Like, that's the thing that makes me upset and that's what it's like. He couldn't be like, what? For too long? It's like he's a famous black man and knows it, and he's like, I got to get off this plane. Like, you can't raise a stink. Grace Yeah, it's weird. I have this story. Something seems off. I and I feel bad because I'm sure that was so embarrassing, you know? And then it becomes a whole news story. And, yes, he should have buckled the seatbelt. Yes. But when he offers to buckle it, they should have just let the plane go without incident. Like what was getting him off the flight? Like it wasn't going to delay it more or less. Like you could have just let him stay. So. Boo American Airlines once again. Amy Oh, my God. They're the same airline that f---ed up my luggage and wouldn't replace it. So, American Airlines, you're on notice. I know that's not the only bit of bummer news this week. The other thing that I read about is that RSV, you know, that respiratory syncytial virus. I don't even know how to say that middle word. That's why we abbreviating it. RSV, a virus particularly common among children, is on the rise and may be resulting in an antibiotics shortage. So I read that amoxicillin, one of the most common antibiotics for children, is facing a shortage because despite RSV being a viral infection, amoxicillin is often prescribed as secondary protection for underlying bacterial infections that arise during having RSV. So a doctor in USA Today said quote, For example, in addition to RSV, a child may also have developed an ear infection or pneumonia which could be treated with amoxicillin. And in most people, RSV just causes mild cold like symptoms. But in children, the elderly, in immunocompromised it can be very severe. So now that we're back into a flu season, now that we're back into a COVID surge, our issues are back to being near capacity and we are having a problem with this. So for me, I'm like, the reason this is a bummer to me is like of all the COVID shortages, we had toilet paper that was out, we had restaurant menus, they digital now. We didn't have hand sanitizer. This one really matters. Like, can we figure out how to get the kids their drugs?   Grace I really hope that Congress, useless congress tries to step in and do something.   Amy I feel you because it reminds you of the baby formula shortage that we talked about a few months back on another episode where it was just kind of like, Wait, we really out here? Just be like, babies, y'all good? Like we have to. The future of the country.   Grace I like that. Some say they're more important than the rest of us. You know, first of all, we already ruined the planet for them. We've already like we don't have a good planet to give them the you know, we flooded their schools with guns, so they now have to to go to school and be like father like I make at home today. So at the very least, can we just get the baby some antibiotics, whatever they need to do? Because, you know, there's nothing fatter than like a sick baby, you know?   Amy Yeah, well, I don't know how science works, but I'm thinking about these babies.   Grace Okay, let's get into this antidote, though.   Amy So this is a segment where we tell you about the culture we consumed and things we did this week that made us feel better about the bummer news. What was your antidote this week, Grace?   Grace Broadway, baby.   Amy Oh, hello. Yes. Hello, my darlin. Hello, my baby. Hello. my honey.   Grace Child, so in my previous life, I was a theater actor. So there is just something uniquely beautiful about going to see live theater. And I just I've been in L.A. for a while, and I'm sure there's great productions in Los Angeles as well. People keep telling me, but when you've had Broadway, you know, it's really hard to even imagine going to see live theater anywhere else. So I lived in New York for a very, very long time, and I actually was supposed to go to Mexico over the Thanksgiving holiday. I don't know what I was thinking, like thinking that I, in the middle of production would go to Mexico. Wait, why? Yeah, I was going to go there for the long weekend, so I decided to cancel that trip, and instead I decided to go see two Broadway shows because I've been so busy at work that I haven't gotten a chance to see a lot of Broadway. So I saw Death of a Salesman.   Amy Oh, nice.   Grace Which is like Black Death of a Salesman. Which is like it should be black because it's such a black story. And Wendell Pierce, he was in like, oh, right above. Like, you know, there is a little bit of a little hiccup, Eddie. And it was so fun because they were smoking on stage. And then the fire alarm went off and they stopped and that it was just like, ooh, peek behind the fourth wall. And there's just like had to get off stage of the they it took about 15 minutes to resolve and then they came back wow. And they started the scene all over again like f---ing pros that they are. But yeah.   Amy They started the scene all over. That's great. And then they just weren't smoking.   Grace Yeah. Yeah. And so it was him. It was Sharon Clark who was also incredible, who played his wife. Then there's a guy named Chris Davis who played Biff and McKinley Belcher as happy. And I cannot forget Andre de Shields was in it as well, who is just a magician? Yes.   Amy And he was The Wiz in The Wiz. Holy sh--.   Grace He was the Wiz in the Wiz.    Amy Oh, I knew. I knew that face.   Grace It was incredible. And like, I wept because I thought about all the black men that were alive back then and the lack of opportunity that they had. So it really hit different when you see a black man going to like this white guy to like beg for a job and that he just couldn't make it work with his family. And I know Arthur Miller wrote it, but it was just it just really hit when you think about our ancestors and what they'd been through. Come on. And so and it was just like such a cathartic weeping. And I was just like, thank you for your sacrifice so that this generation could have what they have. So that was the Friday after Thanksgiving and then the Saturday after Thanksgiving, I saw a show called Six.   Amy Oh, my gosh. Tell me about six.   Grace So Six is about Henry the eighth's six different wives.   Amy Oh, that's cool.   Grace So it's like a concert almost. Mm hmm. So basically, the premise of the show is they're just like, who had it worse? Like a six women. So.   Amy Girl, girl, girl. You all had it pretty sh---y.   Grace Yeah, you all had a pretty sh---y cause that guy was that great. So they each get their own song, and all of them just had incredible voices, but in different ways, and they were just singing down.   Amy It's coming to L.A. just so you know. Six is coming to L.A..   Grace I mean, I would see it again. It was so fun. And then it was also short. It was like 80 minutes, no intermission.   Amy Oh, cute. I like it quick.   Grace Yeah, I like it quick. I'm a half hours high, bitch, you know what I'm saying? And they were just so good. Like, you know, you sometimes you got to go to Broadway to hear real ass voices, you know, like there are singers like Beyonce, say, Adele and like Jasmine Sullivan. You know, we have yes, we have girls that can sing them down. Yeah, but.   Amy Broadway is a different type of vocality.   Grace Yeah. Yeah. But it's genuinely great to see it and to know that it was live and they were just incredible. So that was my antidote. Broadway, baby. So what was your antidote this week, Amy?   Amy Well, you know, a few weeks back, we had a guest on a show named Ashley Blaine Feathers and Jenkins. And I literally have been thinking about the fact that she said you should go on a hot girl, walk for weeks. And I love to walk. I love to walk around my neighborhood. I love to take a stroll. I love to take an urban hike. Urban hike means you're walking through the city.   Grace Yes. She doesn't like a regular hike.   Amy And that's my sh--. I don't like a real hike. Grace knows this. I will do a hike, but I won't repeat a hike. And so this week, like, I've been traveling so much, I'm so tired, I'm still jetlagged from going to India. And so I decided that I was going to walk every day for exercise. And that fell apart real quick because I said, haha you thought and it started raining every morning and so I couldn't walk. But before the day it rains I went for a hiker walk. And the reason why this walk was a hardcore walk to me is because I made a point to walk with a smile on my face, which is really silly. But I was like, I've like really I've been so stressed. And I was like, the corners of my mouth are hurting. Like there was a day where I was like, What's wrong with the corner of my mouth? And I realized I'm actually frowning and I'm like, Oh, f--- this. This is how you get wrinkles. And B, I just think it's stress. It's just like exhaustion and stress and travel and all the things. So I went on this walk and I was like, I'm going to take this walking, I'm gonna smile. And I was listening to this woo woo book while I was walking and just smiling while I'm on my on my little stroll. And I walked all the way up to my viewpoint. There was like a beautiful view above my neighborhood where you can just see, like, west l.a. Like, spread out before your eyes. And I walked all the way up there, and there were some men up there who were, like, just, like, chillin, like, because there's also, like, a sports area. So maybe they're about to play some sports. BELL But at any rate, I stopped up there and I was like, I happen to be a hetero female who's attracted to men. So I saw these men and they were good looking and I was like, Here I am with my little smile on my face up here being a hot girl. And I was like, I didn't interact with them. I was like, they could be, you know, terrible. So I was like, I'm not going to interact with them, but I at least got to just, like, be cute and walk past them like athletic men and then continue on the walk. And I was like, this was a hot girl walk. So I started my day. That day feels so good. And I did the silliest thing. I sent like a video of one of my friends being like, I'm going to walk every day this week. I felt so good. And then the next morning it rains. And I think on video being like, I am walking today, bitch.   Grace How come you didn't send me that video? Who's this bitch? Just sell it. Send a video. That's what I'm saying. Just cause I'm gone. Just because I'm in New York City. This is the reason why I got to get back to L.A.. All my friends are forgetting me that.   Amy I'm like, I can't-   Grace My phone still works. So why.   Amy I can't bother Grace, she's on set. I can't just send her this video of me being like, I love walks. She would have been like bitch I've been up since 3 a.m.   Grace Yes, I would love to get that video. Brighten my day for you that I'd be an antidote. So that's what you did.   Amy Yes. Well, if you guys tried any of our antidotes at home, share them with us using the hashtag. That's my antidote. Or leave us a voicemail at 8336, 8436, eight three. Stay tuned. You'll hear more from our live show right after this break.   Grace Our guest today ain't new to this comedy. You know, he is a stand up comedian and actor who just finished costarring and writing on the first season of Freeform's. Everything's Trash with Phoebe Robinson. He co-hosts WNYC Adulting podcast with our friend in Queens, Michelle Buteau. He has also written for HBO Divorce, written and performed for Comedy Central's The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore and Recipes First Wives Club. Please welcome the amazing Jordan Carlos.   Jordan Carlos Good knees, good knees. That's what it's all about. And I feel sorry for the people standing in the back.   Amy No, don't apologize.   Jordan Carlos All right. How's it going? Brooklyn. How we doing? Yeah, I'd like to. I'd like to applaud the people that came early over here. Look at this man. It's modest, but so smug. So smug. Got the good seats. Got the good. Good. Hello, love. Gosh, it's just so good to be here. Surrounded by this black excellence on stage.   Grace I hope you're including yourself upon that number that.   Amy She worked with Jordan this week. He's being very humble. He is an amazing actor and so, so funny. And I got to direct him this week. And I got to tell you, I was a tyrant and he handled it well.   Jordan Carlos Yeah, yeah. What have you. What if I said you were she was in one of those, like, elevated seats, right? Like with a crane. But you were you.   Grace She does like to beat people.   Jordan Carlos She was in this really like, official jumpsuit. You are the official ass jump director. She's like, is she directing Apocalypse Now? Like what?   Amy That is right. I need people to know that I came to work.   Jordan Carlos Work it, but you were great. And I was like, there was one little small scene. Hey, everybody, welcome. You know, if you don't know anything about Hollywood, this is how it works. This is how it works. So you have to be an actor has to be directed, right, to do what they're supposed to do, my dumb ass. I didn't get out of the way. Right? I was like, you're like talking. You say your line and you walk the f--- off. Got it. But I just stayed in the studio, you know?   Amy I can see you. That was. That was my fault. That was my.   Jordan Carlos You know what? It's no one's fault.   Amy You're right. It's Hollywood. It's Hollywood.   Jordan Carlos It's Hollywood. Yeah, well, I had to be here.   Amy Yeah. Thank you so much for coming. It means so much to us. And we're both jointly obsessed with you, as are a lot of people in this audience.   Jordan Carlos So that's very sweet.   Amy Yes. You are the co-host of WNYC, his podcast Adulting, where you provide real life advice. And the quote reads with a heaping portion of hilarity topped with a dollop of truth.   Jordan Carlos Who wrote that.   Amy Yes. I mean, I assume it was you.   Jordan Carlos I swear to God I did not write that.   Amy Okay. Well, Michelle,.   Jordan Carlos In a showing of earnestness. And just like a missed. Misting of your heart.   Amy Yeah, well, as the audience entered tonight, we asked them to write down some questions that the three of us will give real life advice to help solve.   Grace Yeah.   Jordan Carlos I am not an expert. I do love how this guy's arms crossed when you're in the front row and non-verbal. F--- you to start the whole thing. And don't blame me. Don't say it's cold.   Amy No, we read the energy.   Jordan Carlos I do. This guy has Roman emperor energy.   Amy We got to work harder to win your love. don't worry.   Jordan Carlos Come and just relax. So everybody just open up your butthole. We're going to.   Amy Everyone release the anus, and let's just answer a couple of what we got. So first up, first up, and if you some people ask these questions, it might be out getting a drink. But if you are here and this is your question, just give us a little cheer. This first one is I was just offered my dream job in L.A., but my partner doesn't want to leave Brooklyn. Oh. How do you find balance between sacrificing and settling?   Grace Leave him.   Jordan Carlos Wow.   Amy Settling.   Grace Leave him. Drop him off leave him.   Jordan Carlos If you have your dream job. I don't know how how long you've been going out with this person, but if you have your dream job, you will work it out with that person. If relationships are all about like, you know, I've been married for 15 years and if you're married 15. Yeah, I know. Impressive. Impressive.   Amy Wow. Wow, it is 15. Yeah.    Grace Came out the womb married.   Jordan Carlos Came out, in some cultures, that's what we do. Yeah. I think what it is all about, what it's all about is, like, just kind of like figuring out that you want to be in it and you want to be in it every day and not leaving it to chance. Then you will remain in it. If this person like lets you go, not lets you go, go do your thing. Yeah. And see where the chips fall. But make sure that you keep a line and a tethered to that person and make sure that they're a part of it and make sure that you're honest with them about what's going on. You if you like it, if you don't, if you regret it, if not, if you want to stay in it. If you don't, you know what I'm saying? Like you might go out there and figure out that your dream job wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Oh, it's time to come back. Oh, no. But you know who will be in your corner every step of the way? Brooklyn boy. Also, you didn't talk about the dark side of the f---ing person that.   Grace That is something that you do need to know.   Amy She did say settling. So it makes me think that the D is medium to small.   Jordan Carlos Is it is it shmedium? Is it like a short medium?   Grace I'm sorry, I, I mean, my resting advice is I was like, leave you. Yeah. No, but I mean, I do think it's like, first of all, you do need to know, like, how long, like, they've been together and like how deep you are in. And there are some bitches that are career bitches like myself, and there are some girls that, you know, prioritize love and relationships. And you just have to be honest about which type of girl you are, you know.   Jordan Carlos Truly truly.   Amy Yeah, that's really good advice.   Jordan Carlos I know what kind of girl I am and.   Grace I'd like to hear it.   Jordan Carlos It's like we're going to. I'm like, if I can make it happen and split myself in half, I will do it because it's worth it. Yeah. Because I feel like it's just Jordan. Cause I'm just saying. I'm just saying you. You may be remembered on this planet for the things that you do and and and make your mark artistically, creatively, in business. But if you have a love that that respect, you hold on to God.   Amy Did you write From scratch on Netflix? That is beautiful.   Grace Convict me, Jordan.   Amy That is beautiful. Wait, I got to move on to the next question. You want the next question? Yes. So question and again, give a little woo. If it's your question, I want to expand my circle and become one of those people who can get dropped into a party and befriend anyone. But it's not really in my nature. Hashtag introvert. What should I do?   Grace Oh.   Jordan Carlos The extroverted introvert?   Amy That's me. You. I'm an introvert.   Jordan Carlos You're an introvert?   Amy I'm. I'm such people would never guess because I'm like, loud and talkative. But when I get home types, how we're off. Yeah, like, I get home and I just like, right. I literally am a secret introvert. I'm such an introvert. When the pandemic, when everything shut down, I was like, This is nice. I don't have to go anywhere. I was fine. I was like, I like it in here.   Grace I was just.   Jordan Carlos Like, if that is your if that's your jam, you need to host more parties.   Amy Yeah. Oh, you're the middle of the party. If it's your party.   Jordan Carlos To be the host or, you know, better be The Great Gatsby. Have the party. Don't show up.   Grace You will be remembered forever. Very, very good advice.   Amy Yes. Okay. Next question. I'm going to do four because these are good. This one I love the most. Give a little woot if it's yours. I need money, but I don't like working.   Grace Gets you somebody rich to marry one.   Jordan Carlos That's the end of it. I need money, but they don't like their wellness shot.   Amy What's the thing that makes them feel better?   Jordan Carlos I need money, but I don't like working. That's. That sounds like the beginning of a beautiful traps to focus on, like working and.   Grace Get some rich, rich rich.   Amy Do you agree with Grace? Just get someone rich. Is that the answer.   Jordan Carlos I would say get someone rich or understand how to manipulate the market.   Grace Or be like a Fyre Festival person.   Amy Oh yes.   Grace Start a scam. Scam somebody.   Amy But scamming is work.   Grace It is work it.   Amy That guy who started we work. What a scam. But he was working. Yeah. He had to take meetings and get investors. Scamming is work.   Grace It means you have to send out like lots of emails about being a price or something.   Jordan Carlos Mostly it's just like the laws that keep scammers back. Same, whatever. Right.   Grace Yeah. So it feels like just get a rich boo.   Amy I think that might be the answer. If you like money and don't like working, get a rich bill. Yeah.   Jordan Carlos I can't. I really can't help you there because this face, I got to work, you know?   Grace No. And a very handsome face.   Amy Everyone is someone's cup of tea. You just haven't found the rich woman.   Jordan Carlos You sound like my mom. Like the African proverb. There is a lid for every pot.   Amy The lion. The lion cares for the antelope. Okay. All right. Last question for you guys. Okay. Oh, this. Oh. How do you deal with the loneliness that comes with your friends all being in relationships? Oh, wow. These are deep guys. I love these questions.   Jordan Carlos Damn. Damn. How do you deal with the loneliness that comes from your friends all being in relationships? Good question. Great question.   Amy Oh, my God.   Jordan Carlos On a long enough timeline, those relationships will end. And.   Amy Rooting for the failure.   Jordan Carlos No, I'm just. I'm.   Grace Well, 50% of marriages do end in divorce.   Jordan Carlos The other 50 percent end in death. Now. I think this like, you know, those rom coms where it's like somebody tries to stop a wedding, like they're like, I got to stop this. It's like trying to stop a bus with your face. Like, don't do it. Don't stop Americans. Marriage will stop by itself. Okay? I've seen it happen way too many times. I've seen it happen way too many times. Right? Yes. I feel like this like like do not become discouraged by that. You know, let your friends live their life. Yeah. They're going they're out doing what they're doing. You should be doing what you're like, what you're doing. Do the things that they can't.   Amy Oh, make them jel, jel.   Jordan Carlos Make them jealous. Go to a bar, you know, go to a rock climbing thing in like five in the afternoon.   Amy Yeah. I'm saying you're like, I took a nap in the middle of the day because I don't have kids.   Jordan Carlos Mean we see everything on Netflix like you're in a relationship, you have to like. Check with the person that yeah.   Jordan Carlos I watch the show so now. White Lotus was supposed to be ours and.   Amy Relish the fact that you're single. It's better out there.   Jordan Carlos Enjoy it.   Grace Well, I would say that I think that it's not.   Jordan Carlos It's all, it's all. You know what I feel like it's grass is greener on the other side. It's all about what you know. It is hard to be single. Of course.   Amy Of course. Of course. Yeah, I.   Jordan Carlos Sharing all you know, sharing everything. Sharing all the coffee, sharing all the coffee.   Amy Sharing the toilet.   Jordan Carlos Sharing the toilet, sharing the goddamn toothpaste. You know, all that and. All. This other. What's wrong with sharing toothpaste?   Amy I thought you said toothpicks. I'm so sorry. I was.   Grace That would be f---ing nasty.   Jordan Carlos Well, who has toothpicks in their house? What in the Tony Soprano's, it's. It's got to be stuff in the house.   Amy No grass is always greener.   Jordan Carlos But grass is always greener. But you know what? If you like to. If you like. Yeah. And you enjoy your own company. Yeah. As you said, Amy, I enjoy my own company. Lord, when my kids and my wife are out the house, I'm like, I'm single. I'm like Tom Cruise in that movie, like gang, gang, gang, gang. Oh, my God. My hips are so good. All right, so.   Grace The hips don't lie.   Jordan Carlos The hips don't lie. That's a lot of yoga you want to talk about your. And it. My antidote. My antidote is yoga. Wow. Yes, that's right. My wife doing it so much, I was like, I want to live a long time, too. So I got to open. Gentleman.   Amy Men die sooner.   Jordan Carlos Your hips are not open, sir.   Amy Open them up.   Jordan Carlos This guy is forward, like he;s taking a sh--.   Amy Right there.   Jordan Carlos You were totally dragged here, weren't you? Well, whose. Whose idea was it? It was her idea. Na na na na. Yeah, that's right. Know. He's like, if I endure this, maybe they will be sexy.   Amy There will be, there will be. There will be. Yeah, there will be. Guys, guys.   Jordan Carlos I know too much.   Amy This this has been an amazing wellness session from Jordan Carlos. The one. The only the me champagne.   Grace Yeah. Thank you so much, Jordan.   Jordan Carlos Amazing. Goodbye.   Amy Bye, Jordan. Thank you.   Grace Thanks for listening to The Antidote. We hope this injected a little bit of joy into your week. I know it did mine. How about you, Amy?   Amy I feel good, girl. We should do this again sometime. Oh, we'll be here next week.   Grace And in the meantime, if you'd like to follow us on social, follow me. Grace. At Gracyact. That's G-R-A-C-Y-A-C-T.    Amy And follow me. Amy at AmyAniobi. That's A-M-Y-A-N-I-O-B-I and follow the show at theeantidotepod.   Grace That's thee with two E's.   Amy If you like feeling good about yourself, please subscribe at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.   Grace Goodbye.   Amy And when in doubt, do it live. The Antidote is hosted by us Amy Aniobi and Grace Edwards. The show's production team includes senior producer Se'era Spragley Ricks and associate producer Jess Penzetta.   Grace Our executive producer is Erica Kraus and our editor is Erika Janik. Sound Mixing by Alex Simpson.   Amy Digital Production by Mijoe Sahiouni. Talent Booking by Marianne Ways. Our theme music was composed and produced by TT The Artist and Cosmo the true.   Grace APM Studio executives in charge are Chandra Kavati, Alex Schaffert and Joanne Griffith. Concept created by Amy Aniobi and Grace Edwards.   Amy Send us your antidotes at Antidoteshow.org, and remember to follow us on social media at theeantidotepod.   Grace The Antidote is the production of American Public Media.   Amy Woot woot.

In this episode of The Antidote, Amy and Grace connect with comedian, writer, and actor Dulcé Sloan. In a live conversation from this year's New York Comedy Festival, Dulcé shares her favorite murder mysteries, the joys of crafting, and savoring hobbies. Amy and Grace share their bummer news of the week –  owl attacks are becoming more common, and how Stacy Abrams' loss felt like a gut punch for Black women. They also share their antidotes: a new Netflix show and waffles.  Do you have a favorite antidote, or need an antidote suggestion? A question for Grace and Amy, or something you loved that Amy, Grace or one of their guests has said on the podcast? Share a message with The Antidote team: https://mpr.tfaforms.net/111 or tag us on Instagram with the hashtag #ThatsMyAntidote, or leave us a message on our hotline at 833-684-3683. FULL TRANSCRIPT Amy The world is a dumpster fire. I'm Amy. Grace And I'm Grace. Amy And we want to f---in help. Grace We're comedy writers in Los Angeles, and we like to take the bad sh-- we hear and work through it together. Amy We talk about cultural moments we love. Grace Talk to people we adore. Amy Crushes we have. Grace And self-care we stan. Amy During these trying times, we all need a show that focuses on joy. Grace This is The Antidote. Live. Amy That's right. That's motherf---ing right. Friends, we are very happy to share with you all our first ever live show from Brooklyn, New York, which was a part of the New York Comedy Festival on November 12. Grace We're joined by our friends Dulce Sloan and Jordan Carlos. Amy Not only were they the funniest and most awesome guests ever, that live energy really just gotten to all of us. It was so much fun. Grace This is part one of the antidote live with Dulce Sloan motherf---ing Brooklyn. Thank you all for coming to our first live show. We're so excited to be here with you. Amy We're super excited. And, you know, like for you guys who know the podcast, we always talk about our antidotes and our bummer news. But I do want to say that this live show is coming at the end of a month of New York with my best friend, Grace. Yeah. And there have been some real highlights to be in New York with you. Like our fancy dinner, we had to scarf it up. Grace Literally bought, like everything on the menu and they're like, Can you eat all this f---ing food? I was like, Yeah. Amy Yeah, yeah, watch me, watch it. Also also, we saw Top Dog Underdog on Broadway. Grace We did. And let me tell you about. Yeah, yeah. Amy Yeah, Ya-Ya can get it. He can get it. I don't know what the play was about because in my head the play was about his thighs. I don't know what I saw. Grace But it was really good. Like I would recommend everybody see it. First of all, like Corey Hawkins, such a great actor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A great actor as well. Didn't really focus on his acting because like I said. Amy Once again, the thighs. Once again the thighs. And we also did other fancy things, like we had a little nightcap at Dumbo house one night. I saw how the other half lives, the other half being my friend Grace. Um, it was really, really fancy. But I'm really glad we had these moments together because it's a distraction from how sh---y the world is. Yeah. Yeah. So starting now, top with our bummer news of the week. Grace The bummer news. Amy So guys, first up is an owl attack. I don't know if anyone has seen this news, but apparently owls have been attacking people. Okay, so so this is a live show and you guys are seeing the visuals. I love that you're enjoying the visuals to our guests who are just tuning in through their ear holes. It's an owl. Attacking a man on screen literally keeps happening. Apparently in Washington, there is a woman who's been attacked by the same owl twice. Grace Twice. Amy Her name is Kristen Matheson, and she was walking in the woods near her house when she got attacked. And she said, quote, It felt like getting punched in the back of the head by someone wearing rings. And apparently people are saying barred owls are aggressive owls and they're highly territorial. So maybe she thought they were her woods, but they were the owls. Grace No. Well, first of all, we still got to worry about COVID, right? We got to worry about Nazis. Right. And we got to worry about owl attacks. First of all, I want to know what she did to that owl, because that's what attacked twice. Like, did you steal that owls, man? Did you like did you, like, talk about his mom and dad? She caught that beak twice. Amy The thing to me is like nature is clearly trying to take us out, and it just keeps happening. Like, I'm literally like Mortal Kombat. It's like, finish him because the owl is trying. And I really just think it's time for us to go. Grace Yeah. Amy Nature wants us out of here. Grace It might be a wrap for the human race. 2022 is wildin. Owl attacks? Amy Yeah, but that's not the only bit of bummer news or something else. So you guys have been following the midterm elections, obviously. Stacey Abrams lost. Yeah, Georgia. Exactly. I heard a note backstage by someone you're going to meet later, one of our guests. And honestly, for Black women, this felt like a punch in the gut. It felt like an owl attack on our hearts. Grace Our attack on our democracy. Amy Exactly. Yeah. Abrams lost her rematch bid in Georgia's gubernatorial race on Tuesday night, and some black women and activists have called it a devastating blow. In an opinion piece with The Daily Beast, contributing editor Goldie Taylor said that Abrams didn't look like a governor. Which makes me wonder what the f--- a governor look like. This woman, she had a blazer. She had a cold chain on. Grace She got a gap in her tooth. She got a fabulous lip. What a bad bitch. That's all I'm thinking about. Amy So to me, I got to be honest, I decide to because I hate to lose. But you know what? I hate more being insulted every day. Every day she's in the spotlight. She gets insulted. And I'm tired of that, honestly. Stacey, so good for the race. Grace I mean, honestly, she saved democracy. I mean, like, I remember, like, in Georgia f---ing blue. I know she turned Georgia blue. She has done so much to, like, register voters. And the only reason that these new school wild ass Republicans are not, like, fully in control of everything is due to this queen. And what does she get lost to? Brian Kemp. Y'all want Brian Kemp again? Again? Yeah. That was so f---ing sad outside that day. Amy Yeah. So how do you feel after discussing this bummer news, Grace? Grace Not good. I mean, I'm looking for owls. I don't want to catch nobody's speak. And Stacey Abrams is not the governor of Georgia. What she should be. Amy Yeah, I agree. I agree. Grace So you know what? Let's get into this antidote. Amy Yes, it is. So for people who are new to this but about to be true to this, this is the segment where we tell you about the culture we consumed and things we did this week that made us feel better about the bummer news. So, Grace, I'd love to know what was your antidote? Grace Okay, well, it was it was a rough week this week because like there I was stressed about these midterm elections because everybody's like, yeah, it's going to be a red wave. And I'm like, okay, are they going to bring slavery back? I don't know. Like, I keep getting worse, right? Like, you know what I'm saying? I was so, like, scared this week, so I wanted to, like, flush my brain out with something good. So I saw on Netflix there was a show called From Scratch. Oh, my God. Tell them about them that scratched my itch. It's basically starring Zoe Saldana, created by Attica Locke and Tenby Locke, who are sisters. Isn't that f---ing cute? They, like, created a show together based on Tempe's book of the same name about a true story about her, like falling in love with this chef in Italy and making spaghetti king. I know. Amy And you better twirl that linguini. Grace He made her spaghetti. He did make her some other making spaghetti and he did other things, too. So it was so delightful because, like, it was just so sweet. It was like, beautifully written. It was well-shot. It just gave me what I needed. I love comedy. Obviously, the only thing that I love more than comedy is people falling up. I love. So it was really just a delight to see. And I mean, there was so much yummy food. I went to Italy for the first time with this bitch last year. Amy Yes, she did. Yeah, that's right. We're gross. We travel together and we do everything together. Grace And I don't know, it just really was beautiful escapism. And I know that there's cancer later, but. Amy Spoil. I haven't seen it. What! Grace I didn't get to the cancer part yet. So I got to the only the happy. Amy Who dies? Who? Grace Maybe nobody dies. I don't know. Amy Who dies? Not the Black woman. Grace No, no, no. So, I don't know. It was just really fine. I was drinking some wine. I cried. Happy tears. Amy Very Italian of you. Grace Yeah, very like. So that was definitely my antidote this week of just crying, watching. So leave it. Still to fall in love with an Italian man.  Amy That was lovely. Loved it. Yeah. Italians love Black women. That's like a thing. Oh, they made a show about it. It's called, like, from Italy with Love. And it's just like women being like, I'm looking for my Italian king and a lot of Italian men being like, I love your lips are a little problematic get and where you fit in. Okay I will imports. Grace Well, no, but I didn't I didn't get any Italian love when I was there. Amy So we got to go back. We got to go back. We got to go back. Grace Got to go back and say from scratch, you heard of it? I want it. So what was your antidote this week? Amy So last night I had like a real New York night and, you know, I came here for work, so and I'm very if you all know me, I'm a double Virgo. Like, I'm all about my work. I'm like, I want to prep. I want to do a good job. I want to be working. And so I hadn't gone out, out like we've had our fancy dinner or whatever the f---, but we haven't like gone out in New York. And last night I went out with a friend and that's not even the antidote part. And she's here in the audience and she's going to hear the story. And she didn't know that this happened, but that's her. Give me I'm about to tell you a story. Basically, we went out for a very early like grandma dinner, like we were trying to be responsible, have dinner at like 5 p.m. and then it rolled into another spot and then we're doing an orange wine and then we stumble. I got this. I don't know where it entered my head. I think we're sitting in front of a grocery store and there's an ad for waffles in the window. And I was like, I want a waffle. And then my friend looked up a waffle spot, pies and dice, and we walked over to pies and pies and they were out of waffles. And I was there in my class. Grace I mean, you had one job, pies and thighs. Amy My slightly drunk splendor. Like you have pies and you have thighs, but you don't have waffles. And they were like, It'll be about 20 minutes. Like we're making them. And I was like, Well, I can't wait. So my friend. And I said, goodnight. I waved goodnight. I got in my little car and I drove home. And guess how long that car ride was? Well, it was about 20 minutes. So I got home and I just thought to myself, Well, what if I went on DoorDash and looked to see if the waffles were ready? Jimmy The waffles were ready. Apart from pies and thighs, and it wasn't enough to complete an order. So I also ordered a single catfish in a single biscuit and a full. And then I had a meal. And so they delivered it. And I ate this waffle and fell asleep on my couch eating this waffle.  Grace Oh, my God. Amy And that was my antidote. Sometimes you need to doordash happiness to your. That was my answer. So stay tuned. You'll hear more from our live show right after this break. Our guest is a hilarious and dope ass comedian, writer and actor. She's a correspondent on Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. Rolling Stone recently hailed her as one of the top ten comedians you need to know, declaring, quote, She speaks and they simply fall in line behind you.   Grace Yes, Queen.   Amy Please welcome one of the stars of the Fox series, The Great North and costar of my co-host movie Jodi out next year. Dulce f---ing Sloan. It's nighttime here in Brooklyn, and we're here to learn about your antidote.   Dulce Sloan So I have a craft room in my house. And, uh, recently I was like, because I enjoy the crafting and I was looking on the TikTok and part of it I saw like this thing called a knitting machine.   Grace And knitting is like, it does it for you.   Dulce Sloan Yeah. Because like I had I not a knit, I know how to crochet, but I also can't dedicate six years of my life to making one scarf. No, no.   Amy You're too busy for that. Like you said, you won't see your son truly.   Dulce Sloan So I don't know who lives a lifestyle where they can make a scarf in less than four years. But I am not that person. So basically it's this machine, just like 48 hooks on it and it's just a knob that you turn. It was like some 40, 60 bucks. I won pansies and so I made like a knitted cap in like 20 minutes was.   Amy That should take 20 weeks, right?   Dulce Sloan Yeah, it does. Like a hundred rows of knitting. That's so cool. And like 20 minutes.   Amy What were the colors?   Dulce Sloan When I started with. Because I bought like, this really pretty like a teal kind of yarn, the.   Grace Ahhh.   Dulce Sloan Go to. And then I just make like this really long, long, long scarf. But I bought like a lot of these little, like, poofs. So I was like, F---, I got a little clothes that you put on.   Amy Pom pom pom.   Dulce Sloan Pom pom thing, but like the little fauz fur ones.   Amy Yeah.   Dulce Sloan I got those. And then one of my friends was like, ah, like, I'll make you a hat. She's like, I got to have it. The silk glasses, though.   Grace So you worried about the pearls?   Dulce Sloan I hear you. I hear you. So I got some of those really, like, long, like, bonnets. Yeah. So now I have to figure out how to sew, though. I mean, I could, so. So I got to just figure out how with the yarn and everything, I'm going to get like this. So I guess apparently when I start making satin lined knit can.   Amy Wait a second. No, that's really dope.   Dulce Sloan Because of life. But yeah, there is that then a very silly thing. So I enjoy murder mysteries. Okay, but I don't like the true crime ones.   Amy You like the fake one?   Dulce Sloan I don't want to know that somebody died. I want to know somebody like that. Like, oh, this person's dead. And somebody went.   Amy Cut, and then they went and got lunch.   Grace And they were not dead. They just had.   Dulce Sloan They were not dead. But I don't like the really intense emotional.   Amy I can't do that.   Dulce Sloan I can't do it too much. So I was trying to find a New Yorker, like I started watching Murder. She wrote Homicide was f---ed up. Poppycock, Peacock. I won't watch a murder she wrote for the past year, right?   Amy Yeah.   Dulce Sloan And Ms. lansbury. Yes. R.I.P. Met the Lord. Yes, she did. All of a sudden, now all a murder. She rose behind a paywall. No.   Amy Peacock what.   Dulce Sloan I'm in like the seventh show is like 15 f---ing seasons. So it was really for like 1987 to like 22. I had no f---ing clue. Right. It was on for most of my life.   Amy Yes. And so I watched it as a child.   Dulce Sloan Right. And saw that because I remember when I was like, I want another show to watch because I watched like the little like British shows or whatever. But I'm going to British shows get too intense. So I'm just like, first of all, turn the volume up on this f---ing show.   Amy First of all.   Dulce Sloan Am I  the only person watch the British shows like because they're very quiet. They're very.   Grace Very quickly and very quietly.   Dulce Sloan It's very quiet, very darkly lit. I'm like, I even know the race of this person who's speaking. There's all this bitches blond. With all the information that I.   Grace Spicy white, you don't know.   Dulce Sloan Right, listen. And also, can we retire spicy white? Because I guess because spicy whites are just white people trying to disassociate themselves from the bad white. Oh, I.   Amy Think about it that way. For me, it's any time I see someone who's got a little olive tone.   Dulce Sloan Naw, it's a set up. The Italians also colonized? Yeah.   Amy No, that's true. That's true.   Dulce Sloan You ever heard of Ethiopia? Yeah. The Mali guy. Yeah. Yeah, the Portuguese. Brazil.   Amy Yeah, yeah, yeah. I had a Jewish friend from Ethiopia and everyone was like, How are you Jewish? And she was like, Bitch, we're the originals. Colonialism.   Dulce Sloan It was like, That's how we got Ethiopian Jews. It's like the Ethiopian Jews was like the 12 tribes, man. They were right there. They were like, Oh, Israel's nice. But what, what is happening in Africa, from what I hear from Ethiopian Jews are like not we're from the first like the first 12 dudes. Yeah, that was us murder mysteries.   Amy Then what are the ones?   Dulce Sloan So I found a very silly one. So I have now added the Hallmark mystery movies. Zero. So my.   Amy Wait. So those are religious?   Grace So you have to like pay for that. It's like a hallmark plus.   Dulce Sloan It's like six bucks. I have six dolalrs.   Amy There are so many pluses.   Dulce Sloan So you have to say to yourself, Should I add this show? You're like, bitch, you have six times. You will always have $6 if you spend more than that at a sandwich at your local corner store. Yeah, you have $6, bitch. And so they have all these they have all these murder mysteries, but it's the same f---ing formula, cause it's so it's a woman. They're usually white. I found one with Holly Robinson Peete on it, and I was.   Amy Like, Well.   Dulce Sloan You know, where she is? So they all have, like, a professional job.   Grace And they're jogging.   Dulce Sloan No, no, no. These bitches don't jog. They're running businesses. They don't have time to jog. And so it's the same formula I, I've watched like the garage sale mysteries where. Lori Loughlin. Yeah.   Amy Lori Loughlin is bad.   Dulce Sloan Oh, her and her friend. We hate her. Mark, I have no qualms about this woman. Wasn't my kid, so no qualms. This lady couldn't give a sh--. Her and her friend owned an antique store. It's called the Garage Sale Mysteries because you would go to garage sales and get like, sh--, the governor antique store. And then she would find something like, Oh my God, I've got this antique camera. There's a picture of a murder on here. That murder just happened. I got to solve it. So it's.   Grace A picture of a murder.   Dulce Sloan So now her husband. And then the first of all, the kids keep changing the actor. So the actor, the player. Yeah. So they.   Dulce Sloan The actors that play the kids keep getting progressively worse or if I'm watching the show out. Of order or all those like they're. All an hour and a half long. So it's basically like a f---ing movie. So to like this isn't it's either I can binge watch. I would in my mind since it's a TV show, it's not like a movie. So like watching a movie seems like a dedication to time, but like watching an hour long TV show. I just. David So I watch those shows, those like garage sale, mystery murder. She Bakes is based on the bakery.   Grace Did the murder happen at the office?   Dulce Sloan No but a rival baker did die in the kitchen after she helped this guy and then there's murder. She bakes. And then there's the chick that has, like, a flower shop whose work I think is Brooke Shields. Yeah. Yeah. So it's it's like Alison Sweeney. Brooke Shields. Holly Robinson Peete is like a cook on. She has like a cooking segment on a TV show, but they also in a restaurant, there's that sh--. And then I'm like, Right, there's that. And then Korean dramas is the other thing that I watch.   Amy Wait, but I love this. First of all, I love TV that works on a formula like I'm Nigerian and Nigerian films. Like for the longest time before, like Nollywood really blew up. They all had a formula. It was always like a man gets possessed by a witch and then he cheats on his wife. And the while we used to.   Dulce Sloan Like when we moved back to Atlana, we lived with Nigerians. And I remember like I don't speak Yoruba, so I know what the f--- is going on, but there was, but like, I know like, oh we don't like this later.   Amy Yeah.   Dulce Sloan That I couldn't figure out. Also I don't know how they were all in a village and it was an all white and it it's f---ing spotless. I was watching this woman. She walked out. I'm seeing a woman walk out of a hut. And they're in the village because they're going to visit family or some sh--. Yeah, everyone's in white. It's immaculate.   Amy It doesn't make any sense. The wind is blowing. There's a lot of dust.   Dulce Sloan There are no floors. And these bitches are in the cleaners. I'm like, God bless.   Amy Nollywood mansion.   Dulce Sloan Bring your skills over to the great USA. Very because I have a washing machine and my weight ain't never been that sharp that you can feel the crystal air. But yeah, that in Korean dramas and I've been watching Korean dramas since I was in high school.   Amy I'm obsessed with both of these antidotes. The fact that you are first of all, you have a craft room and you're crafting and you're sewing and you're making things. I'd love to know when the Etsy store opened, like when.   Dulce Sloan Listen. I used to have a jewelry business.   Amy Yeah.   Grace And what did you make?   Dulce Sloan So, like feather earrings. I was the first one to start.   Amy Okay. Wait. That was the thing, that was a moment.   Dulce Sloan That was a big moment. I started making my mom and my mother was like, because my mother always had businesses. She has a clothing business named after me. All these other sh-- I've been like. And my first business when I was like, nine. I'm very tired because I've been working for 30 years. Yeah. And so and I'm not 40. It's not fair, but this man's not having to sweep me away. We got to figure this sh-- out. And I mean, you hope, but hope's hard. So I would make all this handmade Legos, like beadwork and stuff like that, and I would go to different things around Atlanta and sell jewelry. And then I used to do crafts at kid's birthday parties, so like scavenger hunts, all kinds of sh--, and then at the same and then still having a day job, still doing stand up. So acting all of that sh--. Yeah. So I'm just, I'm tired.   Amy You're like, I'm not going to do the jewelry store. It's for you now.   Dulce Sloan I thought, because, like, I had a bunch of jewelry that I had made cause I started getting into U.V. resin, and I was like, I could sell this as merch. Then I'm like.   Amy Wow. That's that's the best part about a real answer is that it's just for you.   Dulce Sloan It's just, yeah, like, I have this whole crowd from, like, a, like, the silliest thing. Like I made like these like every year for my manager's birthday, I'll do like, a vintage of him. So, like, the year, like two years ago, I'm like a doll out of him. Yeah.   Amy Oh, no, that. Wait, what? Voodoo. What?   Dulce Sloan Now I'm saying they invited the Holy Ghost. Don't play me.   Amy So he didn't, like, clip his hair and then make it out of him? No. Gotcha. Okay. Sorry, sorry. I heard.   Dulce Sloan I hear you. It's a little because I did one for my nephew too, so that could be like a little felt doll out of him. I used to work at like my last day job was a stucco supply company, like construction materials. So like, I made like a picture of him out of, like, different colors of stucco just from the guys in the back.   Amy Yeah. Um.   Dulce Sloan But it's funny because he's Jewish and he had a little Jewish afro, so the dude in the back was his new black clothes are like, so you've been a, you have a black man, a picture itself. I was like, That's not what's happening. I see why you would think that I actually for page stucco, you need to calm down. Um, so then like from I've done like parlor beard, uh, vinyl all kind of like every year I just come up with like a different is a stupid thing that I started myself. I did like a big cross-stitch thing. I have one time oh wow that it faces. So it's just like it's a face.   Amy I know but that's our too is like not doing the face is is of that is a choice a choice like choice.   Dulce Sloan But like so I have a cricket as well. So this year I was able to like I took a picture of him and then did the image of it.   Amy Do you mean where an actual cricket or a cricket phone or what do you mean the cricket either?   Dulce Sloan Okay.   Grace We are not crafty bitches, you know. We don't know the terminology.   Dulce Sloan I hear you because I said cricket. Somebody was like, Yeah, like am I am I right off the bat? So no, there's no magical creature at my house.   Amy You don't have a little Jiminy.   Grace I was like, Jimmy.   Amy All right tell me what it is. Go.   Dulce Sloan It is. It's a so basically it's like a they call it a is a cricket like crap machine. So basically there's a computer program that you can use to create like different images and then you can either cut them out or draw them on whatever material you want to see, whether it's because, like, I'm bad at drawing.   Amy Yeah, yeah, me too.   Dulce Sloan So, like this year when I did, like, the thing of him, it was like, I guess it's giving like Andy Warhol because I had, like, this marble paper that was like four different colors, this marble paper. And then I had like I was trying to, it was Shrinky Dinks, but it didn't work so that like four suckers are hard to use. It's an ad for different colors of the construction paper. That was the main color out of the marble paper. And then so it drew the image of him on the paper and I cut it out and I just colored it. And so it's like a a square thing of him and like in like, primary colors.   Amy Thank you. You are a woman of many talents.   Dulce Sloan Yeah, thank you. I'm very tired.   Amy Yeah, yeah, I get it. I get it. You know what? Yeah, yeah. I feel like.   Dulce Sloan I mean, I tried. We tried to pitch like a crafting show with an Amy Poehler show was our yet. And I was like, f---.   Grace Making things.   Amy Wait a year, make it again.   Dulce Sloan Make it easier, do it again. I mean, it's great, but I'm just like, but what if it was black people? Yeah.   Amy But like lit a lot of a lot of things. What if it was Black people? Right.   Dulce Sloan Cause I often cause, like, honestly and what I really want to do, because, like, I watch all of these, like, murder mystery shows. Yes. They call, like, the cozy mysteries, the best that the whole like the genre of the book. So you have three you're like and I wonder.   Amy A blanket with your tea being like who got murdered.   Dulce Sloan Just holding with two hands like, oh, who did it?   Grace I'm safe here. Right.   Dulce Sloan So they have like 20, literally like 15. They got the one for the bitch. You play DJ on Full House.   Amy She be out here getting murdered.   Dulce Sloan I don't know. No. She's trying to solve the crimes.   Amy She's of solving the murders of murder.   Dulce Sloan And like Miranda Teagarden or some wild sh--, I don't know that that would be shady. And everyone I'm saying is that they have like, you can go like this, look like the crossword murders. The matchmaking works. Yeah, after like 20 of these shows, but there's only one with a black woman. And then her love interest is Rick Fox and all.   Amy And I want to start crafting with Dulce Sloan. I want this in my life.   Dulce Sloan This and we have to work on it because I want to be on my f---ing Scooby-Doo, Sherlock Holmes, Nancy Drew bullsh--.   Grace And we want to see that sh--.   Dulce Sloan Roll up to your neighborhood being like, I'm not sure who did it, but I have an idea.   Grace And then you go and interview the wrong person first, right?   Dulce Sloan Yes. She's out here looking for clues. And then there's my will. They won't. They love interest.   Grace Yes.   Dulce Sloan Because like the one with Lori Loughlin, like that was the only one where someone's married. Yeah, all the other ones. And they keep having these B and C storylines where her kids that are very useless.   Amy We don't care about the kids. We care about the woman who's solving the mystery. Yes, we care about the women solving the mysteries.   Dulce Sloan Right? So, like, I love her, but I'm just like, I'll give a f--- if your son that passes math test. You killed Pastor John.   Amy And that's the question to take home tonight, ladies. Who killed Pastor Justin. Thank you so much, you guys, for coming and seeing The Antidote Live.   Grace Oh, yeah. We hope this injected a little bit of joy into your week. I know it did mine. How about you, Amy?   Grace Yeah, it definitely did. We should do this again sometime. We should do this again. Live sometime.   Grace We couldn't have done it without you, our lovely audience. So thank you so much for being a part of our first live show. We hope to do more of these in the future.   Amy Yea, we doing with that. Goodnight.   Grace If you'd like to follow us on social, follow me. Grace at GracyAct. That's G-R-A-C-Y-A-C-T.   Amy And follow me. Amy at AmyAniobi. That's A-M-Y-A-N-I-O-B-I and follow the show at theeantidotepod.   Grace That's thee with two E's.   Amy If you like, feeling good about yourself. Please subscribe at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Antidote is hosted by us Amy Aniobi and Grace Edwards. The show's production team includes senior producer Se'era Spragley Ricks and associate producer Jess Penzetta.   Grace Our executive producer is Erica Kraus and our editor is Erika Janik. Sound Mixing by Evan Clark.   Amy Digital Production by Mijoe Sahiouni. Talent Booking by Marianne Ways. Our theme music was composed and produced by TT the artist and Cosmo The Truth. Send us your antidotes at AntidoteShow.org And remember to follow us on social media at theentidotepod. That's thee with two E's, y'all. What, what!

In this episode of The Antidote, Amy and Grace connect with actress, podcaster, and beauty maven Ashley Blaine Featherson-Jenkins about how we all can benefit from a ‘hot girl walk', the act of surrendering, and falling in love with New York City again. Amy and Grace share their bummer news of the week –  racist backlash over The Lord of The Rings series on Amazon, and the state of Texas sending students home with DNA kits so their bodies can be identified “in case of emergency.” They also share their antidote: an overnight mask and showering at night.  This week's Creative Tap-In:  “A creative life is an amplified life.” -Elizabeth Gilbert Do you have a favorite antidote, or need an antidote suggestion? A question for Grace and Amy, or something you loved that Amy, Grace or one of their guests has said on the podcast? Share a message with The Antidote team: https://mpr.tfaforms.net/111 or tag us on Instagram with the hashtag #ThatsMyAntidote, or leave us a message on our hotline at 833-684-3683. Sponsors: BetterHelp Online Therapy -  betterhelp.com/ANTIDOTE FULL TRANSCRIPT Amy The world is a dumpster fire. I'm Amy. Grace And I'm Grace. Amy And we want to f---in help. Grace We're comedy writers in Los Angeles. And as a reflex to the madness on the news, we're keeping it positive, but opinionated. Amy We talk about cultural moments we love. Grace Talk to people we adore. Amy Crushes we have. Grace And self-care we stan. Amy During these trying times we all need to show that focuses on joy. Grace This is The Antidote. Hey, everybody. You're back for another week. Amy Ooh, I love. Wow. Grace given us Broadway. Give it up. Musical theater. Grace Give you some vocal stylings, I guess. I don't know what that was. But thank you for coming to The Antidote for yet another week, friends. Amy Yeah, and thank you guys for attending our live show in New York. Grace Oh, it's so great to see you. Amy The listeners who were able to make it. It was so awesome. For those who weren't able to attend. Stay tuned to our live show. We're going to be putting out a recording as a future episode. You can kind of experience it. You know, it won't be the same, but it'll be similar. Grace Yeah, but we'd love to do more live shows in 2023, so stay tuned and see when our next one is. Amy Yeah. Anyway, I know this is kind of old, but I guess I was just like going back. There are old texts or something. Grace and I saw the video of Maxwell breaking it down on stage with his niece. Grace Yes. I was like is Uncle season now here? Okay. He came to make the aunties first and Auntie Junior is like myself. Because I was like, ok Maxwell. And the funniest tweet that I thought about it was. Like when he was like. Doing his little Meghan thee stallion knees move Like they're like there's literally no song Maxwell has that justifies this cause, because somebody put it over this woman's work. So it's like. Amy And I just want to be like n---- stand up. Grace But like he, you know, we got all our jokes off our Black Twitter and Instagram. And so he responded, he's just like, Y'all could never and so he made it the Maxwell Challenge, I believe. Amy Oh, I love it because I love the Maxwell Challenge. I need to see some more men doing that. Well, need is doing a lot of work in that sentence, but I would not mind saying, but it really is a good season. Like you said. Grace I'm just really happy that Maxwell is getting his flowers. You know, new people are discovering Maxwell, those of us who are around the first time around, they're just like, Oh, Maxwell, I'm glad you still doing it. And I'm glad your knees are still good. Amy I actually really love that Maxwell is getting his flowers and all of the Zaddy's. I mean Ginuwine he out here. Grace Oh yeah. Same ol G. Amy And also Usher singing to Issa Rae on stage. Grace Oh she deserves all the songs right to her face. Amy I mean, I do love all these nineties men turn it up and also through dance, like dancing is a source of joy. We love to dance. And I know that our guest, you guys stay around for our guest, Ashley Blaine Feathers. And she actually talks about the joy of dance and our interview with her. So it'll be really fun to revisit this topic. Grace And beautiful, funny and profound. Queen. Yes. I can't wait for you to hear this interview. But honestly, Amy, we wouldn't need the antidotes if we didn't have something to get an antidote from. Amy Starting now, top with our bummer news of the week. First of all, this is an ongoing bummer news issue. Oh, gosh. But I feel like we just kind of got to talk about it a little bit. There's been so much racist backlash over the new Lord of the Rings series on Amazon. There have been all these trolls or like Middle-Earth, it has elves and hobbits and wizards, you know, fictional things. But people are having problems with the color skin of some of the actors being cast in the show. Much like people having problems with the fictional mermaid Ariel being a different color than they wanted to be. So there's an actor named Cynthia Robinson who portrays the Queen region of New Manaugh, I think is how it's pronounced. Cynthia Robinson portrays the Queen region of this fictional city, and people are mad at her in response to the backlash, she said. My focus, especially as more of the show has aired, has been the more joyful aspects of what this story means to people, end quote. And I love that she's turning it into a little bit more positive of a message. She's basically saying, block the haters and the real fans who like the work that they're doing, which I really appreciate. It can be really hard to be brought down by sh-- like this. But I do have to say, for a bunch of people who are like full nerds watching this stuff and I'm a nerd about a lot of things, but fantasy ain't my sh--, but it is fantasy. And so it always kind of rocks me a little weird when people are like, Oh, but this thing that is fantasy isn't what I find. Like Harry Potter, like Hermoine with her kinky hair. And I'm like, her name's Hermoine she might be Black, you know, like, doesn't really bother me. But I think it's because as Black people, we're used to imagining different types of worlds, and white people don't really have to. Grace Yeah. And I'm just sad. Like, when I hear that quote from her. Oh, it makes me think about is like all the many times as Black women that were expected to rise above that, we're expected to make a positive. We're expected to, like, not show if we are upset about racism. You know, I'm sure, you know, maybe in her quiet moments, she's not bothered by it. But in my quiet moments, I'm continuously bothered by it because I was just like, What do you want? Like, do you want do you want worlds where we don't exist? And I'm sorry, but we exist, you know, and because we exist on a lot of amazing things exists because Black people exist. Yeah. And I'm sorry that you want to be in a world where we don't exist, but you're not going to get that. Sorry. In 2022 and 2023. You're just not going to get it. Amy And not in the future and not in fantasy. Grace Exactly. And so my question is always like, are we still doing this? Like every single time, y'all do not look good. Whoever is making these racist statements, it doesn't make you look good. It doesn't make you look good to your friends. It doesn't make you look good. Your family members, maybe they all races too. But like all the justification about why. He's like, well, this would have been in Europe. Or whatever. No, it wouldn't have been in Europe because it is not real. And guess what? We were in Europe, too, back then. You know what I'm saying? Like that this whole, like, fantasy that we weren't in Europe or where we were in any of these places is a fantasy because we were there the entire time. Like. Amy I was Black. Grace You know what I'm saying? Even like Shakespeare wrote about the Moors, like you wrote Othello. We were there. We were there. So, like, this whole thing, like, you're just racist. Just stand ten toes down and say, I'm a racist piece of sh-- so we can know which way to categorize you and keep it moving. Like, it's just sad that these actors who are getting an amazing opportunity, like a lot of these times, like these actors, this is their first, like, big thing and they have to f---ing be subjected to all this backlash that doesn't have to do with them. They didn't cast themselves. Amy Yeah, they didn't cast themselves. Exactly. What you just said makes me think of people who are mad at Ariel and they're like, well, technically, the Little Mermaid was written by Danish Man and it's from Denmark, so shouldn't she be blind? And I'm just like, y'all are so weird. Like, I'm like, it's fictional. Grace She's a mermaid. I saw this tweet about how they didn't believe that Ariel would be black. And literally it was. So after all the Africans y'all threw in the ocean, y'all surprised the mermaid is Black. Amy Yeah, that's real. By that. Grace And that's by thatwitchbitch. Fair point, girl. Amy Fair point. Think we didn't learn how to live down there yet? And that's my issue is like they're using, like, nerd logic to try and justify their racism. And you're absolutely right. Like, just say you're racist. Like you're saying all these technically is an actual these and well, if you really think about it and it's like, no, no, now you're just not creative enough to imagine a world that could look different from you. So just admit that that's not the only bit of bummer news this week. There's also this coming out of my home state. Apparently, Texas parents have been given DNA kits to help identify their children. In case of an emergency.   Grace Damn.   Amy And I'm like, How f---ed up is this? The state of Texas is sending students home with DNA kits so their bodies can be identified in case of an emergency. Today has stated that, quote, The threefold pamphlets allow caregivers to store their children's DNA and fingerprints at home, which could then be turned over to law enforcement agencies and, quote, presumably in order to identify their bodies. It sends a clear message that the government of Texas is not going to do anything to stop these types of shootings from happening.   Grace I know Texas is such a red, red, red state, as blue as California, New York are is this red as Texas is? So here's the thing about this country, and I don't know how else to say it is. I just don't understand how some people think. Yeah. I really don't understand. So y'all would rather do this, then? Gun control. Mm hmm. Y'all would rather send your kids home with DNA kits, then be like, Hey, how about we don't let regular people have weapons of war? That's what you would rather have.   Amy When I think about this sh--, I get so, so frustrated. How do you feel, Grace?   Grace Yeah, terrible. I mean, that DNA kid thing is super, super, super, super sad. And then. Okay. Like, racism exists. We all know it, but every time it hits, it's still like a terrible moment in your day. How about you?   Amy Yeah, very much the same.   Grace Okay, let's get into the antidote.   Amy So this is the segment where we tell you about the culture we consumed and things we did this week that made us feel better about the bummer news, which we need. What was your antidote this week, Grace?   Grace Okay, so, you know, I'm away from home, which is great in many ways, but also sad anyways. And so, you know, when you're you're away from home, you pack your essentials and sometimes you don't you forget something back at home or whatever. And so what I've been enjoying as part of my self-care routine is an overnight mask. Ooh. So the one I have in L.A. is called Drunk Elephant. I like, you know, just smear that on is the last part of my evening skincare routine. But I left it in L.A. So I was telling my showrunner this this is the type of small talk that I subject my showrunner to. Bougie complaints. Like, Oh, I left my overnight meal and yeah.   Amy In my other abode.   Grace My God. So she's like, Oh, I actually have a recommendation for one that I really, really love. And she's a very beautiful lady and she has lovely skin. So I was just like, Oh, okay, let me tell Danielle, please tell me which one you like. And so she recommended this one buy fresh and it's the fresh black tea firming over night mask. And so all right, let's try it out. And it is so good.   Amy Really. Is it like a mask? Like a physical mask or like a cream or a gel?   Grace It's a cream.   Amy How it's go on?   Grace So basically every night I smear on some lactic acid, which is very hard about keeping your skin cheap. And then I do some like a retinol cream or whatever, and then I put on some hydration, but my skin is very, very dry, especially in the winter. And I'm in New York now, which means I'm in heating. So it's a very dry air. So I decided to try this out and oh, it goes on. It's like very thick. You know, I'm working on a show called Survival of the Fittest, so we like it thick. And so I smeared it on and oh my God, I woke up in the morning and my skin felt so buttery and they want you to rinse it off in the morning. So I was just like, okay, whatever feels buttery now, but when I get in the shower and I run there, it's going to feel like my normal ass dry skin again. But no, I rinsed it off and my skin still felt very hydrated, very soft, and yeah, it was just a really lovely thing. So now instead of being fat that I left my favorite overnight mask in L.A., I discovered this brand new one, which is really, really lovely, smells great, very hydrating. So, you know, I took a negative situation. I turned it into a positive.   Amy I agree with that. You definitely did. And, yeah, we need to be luxuriating in our skin. Yeah, why not? It sounds great.   Grace And so what is your antidote this week, Amy?   Amy Well, this is hilarious. It's actually kind of tied to yours. You know, I've been coming through with the real basic antidotes, but it's like when I'm thinking of, like, a choice that I make as opposed to a thing that I just do by routine or like that's in my schedule or that I wrote down on my to do list. But I'm like, This is a choice I'm making. This actually has become an antidote for me during production. I shower at night. I'm mostly like a morning shower. I like to shower to start my day to wake me up. But during production, our days start very early. So like my pick up on Monday is at 5:45 a.m.. So that means I got to wake up before that. So my antidote during production is that I shower at night and it kind of has like a twofold thing for me is that I get to kind of wash the day away like you're moving around. I sweat no matter what. Like, you're just, like, walking around really quickly, all day long, you're running back and forth. But by the end of the day, I feel like a little weird. Like, you know, it's just like, physically, I'm like I'm kind of, like murky, let's say, all over. And so showering at night is such like, I always think of a shower as something that wakes me up. But I will say that during production, I'm so damn tired, nothing is going to like, Oh, I can't sleep now. So I'm like, I shower at night and then I get to go to bed feeling really fresh and I'm not climbing in my bed all grimy. I'm like getting bad, feeling really, really good. And because it's winter, it's like cool sheets on my warm skin. I'm just like, Ooh, I love this. And then I haven't done an overnight mask. I've been washing my face in the shower, then I wash it in the morning, but now I'm like, Oh, maybe I should do an overnight mask and then just wash my face in the morning. And that'll still be like a refreshing little me moment before I start my day. But yeah, I love both are antidotes. Great, because they're both so simple and doable, but they are about like kind of like snatch and a little bit of self-care back from a busy day. And I just love that they're both about taking care of our bodies, which are the vessels through which we do all our work.   Grace And literally, you're teaching me something to I mean, I sometimes shower at night, but yeah, we have to get up bad early, bitch. Man, I'm not showering at night right now because, yeah, what I'm doing is like waking myself up like an extra 20 minutes early so I can have in the shower before work. Because even though I don't feel like it at that hour in the morning, I'm not going to penalize anybody else for that.   Amy Yeah.   Grace And no. But yeah, I'm going to start showering at night too.   Amy Yeah. Nice. Well, listeners, if you guys tried any of our antidotes at home, share them with us using the hashtag. That's my antidote. Or leave us a voicemail at 8336843683. And we'll be back after the break.   Grace Welcome back to The Antidote. We have a special guest today. Who is it, Amy?   Amy Our guest today is an actress, podcaster and beauty maven. You know her luscious bass from Netflix's Dear White People, NBC's Grand Crew and the movie Bad Hair. And she just debuted the first original podcast from the Oprah Winfrey Network called Trials Two Triumphs. She is still basking in newlywed bliss, the picks on idea. She loves therapy, documentaries and being an inspiration in every way she can get cozy. Take your plastic off the sofa and please welcome the Multi-hyphenate talent. Ashley Blaine Featherson Jenkins.   Ashley Blaine Featherson Jenkins Oh, yes. I mean, I. I mean, you guys have another career in life. I mean, you guys are going to be hosting the Oscars.   Amy From your lips to God's ears.   Grace From your lips to God's ears. Okay. You know.   Ashley Blaine Featherson Jenkins I mean. That was fantastic. I don't know if I've ever been intro'd any better.   Amy Well, you are easy to intro because that's how fantastic you are.   Grace I mean, everything we said was true.   Ashley Blaine Featherson Jenkins Y'all got me feeling like Beyoncé.   Amy That's why I had to sprinkle some references in there. Because you's a queen.   Ashley Blaine Featherson Jenkins Oh, thank you my sisters. Yes. Oh, I'm so excited to be here.   Grace Thank you. We're excited to have you. Well, she's very, very impressive, isn't she, Amy? But we aren't here to talk about your many, many, many accomplishments. We are here to get deep.   Amy Yeah, yeah. Let's check in first. How are you feeling today? Like, for real? Not small talk. Is there anything weighing on you? Making you feel good?   Ashley Blaine Featherson Jenkins Here's the tea. I am feeling amazing.   Amy Yes.   Ashley Blaine Featherson Jenkins It is. No, I really am. And I'm really happy that I. You know, last week I didn't feel amazing. Yesterday I did not feel amazing. I legit had like I was like kind of moping around, but I'm sad. I kind of start like, yeah, dragging my feet and like, you know, honestly, a lot of it's unconscious, but my husband Darryl will notice he was like, What's wrong? And I was like, I don't know what's wrong. And, and I, you know, I, I'm getting better at doing like. America has a problem, everyone. oh, yes. I mean, you know, here's the thing. I think it's all of the things, but I think I was just feeling really overwhelmed. And I'm one of those people that, like, I don't I'm trying to get better at feeling the hard stuff in the moment rather than letting it kind of seep in more and more. And so I didn't. So I let it out. I had a good cry and I feel fantastic. Today is the first of the month. Yeah. You know, bills are paid. You know, I look good. I smell good. Yeah.   Grace Okay, we can confirm she looks good as f---. Okay.   Amy Yeah, and she looks like she smells good. You know, we haven't gotten into smellavision yet, but. Yeah, I buy it.   Ashley Blaine Featherson Jenkins But, you know, I really this month, it's kind of taken me eight months of the year to do it. But this month I really have that feeling of like I feel extremely motivated to really feel build this month up with good death. I feel deeply inspired by I love that.   Amy I mean, I do think there's, you know, maybe it's the Renaissance, the fact we are in a period of like a bad like a black bitch renaissance. We are literally in that period right now.   Grace I just wanted to say I really love what you said, because I do think that every day that we wake up, we do kind of have a choice. Like, I love how you are already like framing your entire mom to be like, I'm going to fill this month up with goodness. And I bet because you have declared that you definitely will.   Amy Let's keep the good vibes going, y'all. We need that right now. This show is called The Antidote because life is hard and we all need different antidotes to deal with the bullsh--. So tell us, Ashley, what is your antidote? In other words, what is something non-work-related that's bringing you joy this week or this month?   Ashley Blaine Featherson Jenkins I am committing to doing Hot Girl Walks every day.   Amy I need more info about.   Grace What's a hot girl walk?   Amy What's a hot girl walk?   Ashley Blaine Featherson Jenkins Oh my goodness. So actually my friend JP Jennifer Pauline, who's just one of the most wonderful human beings in the world. She. So she invited me on a hot girl walk. Right. This is such an L.A. story. So she invited she was like, girl, we got to go for a walk. And I was like, yes. And I thought she was just like coining it that herself. You know? And I was like, that's what's up. But then she was like, No, it's a thing. So then, of course, I went to, you know where. Tiktok.   Amy Yes.   Ashley Blaine Featherson Jenkins Of course.   Grace Where the children tell us what's cool. Yes.   Ashley Blaine Featherson Jenkins Because I don't know what's going on. I'd be like, okay, let me go to Texas. And it's a whole trend that's going on where it's for anybody. But I you know, this this girl, I forgot her name, but she started this thing called a hot girl walks where you walk. Well, for her, it was four miles a day.   Amy Four miles? Oh, it's physically hot. I see.   Ashley Blaine Featherson Jenkins Yea, I don't think I can do four miles a day because that seems like a lot like I think, you know, if you live somewhere like New York, you can easily do that day in two days, whatever. But the point is, it's not about how far you go, how long you go. It's just about committing to going on a walk. That is not. The goal is not to change anything physically about yourself. The goal is really just to spend time with yourself and to think about yourself as being sexy and confident and strong and all of the good things you can think about yourself. And she suggests while doing so, listen to a podcast she actually has. That is like the thing you should do. And I, you know, I did it today and I get why the kids are doing it. I mean, I feel I mean, I feel lifted. Yeah, I am together. I'm gathered. I feel so great. I feel so great. And I think a lot of times, you know, I'm always, like, working out for, like, the physical part of it, you know, and not just because. I want to feel good or just spend time with myself, but it doesn't always have to be like strenuous exercise. Like I work out. It can just be I took a walk, 4.8, nine mile, you know. You know what I mean? Like it doesn't have to be a whole thing.   Amy You know, the best part about it, like the coining of it, of a hot girl. What? To me, I was like, Oh, I want to feel hot like my beautiful hot while I'm walking, as opposed to feeling like I'm working, if you will. Yeah, because I do a lot of walking, like you said, for exercise, but just to like be with myself and like look around, take in my surroundings, like enjoy my body's movement. I'll do a lot of that. And now I want to.   Grace That is so cool because you know what? I stopped walking as much because during like the early days of the pandemic, we still in this pandemonium, and now we got monkeypox. Okay? But we're about to talk about that right now.   Ashley Blaine Featherson Jenkins I cannot with the monkeypox.   Grace But during that time, I remember, you know, I was working at Insecure with this queen. And I remember we would have our our break for lunch. And I would always I would eat first and then I would go for a walk just to get out of the house for a bit. But I have stopped doing that so much. I mean, I love walking. I lived in New York for 15 years and I moved to this part of L.A. in particular so I could walk to the grocery store, walk to target, whatever. Right, right. But I stopped taking walks for pleasure. And I think this is a lovely reminder that I did enjoy it. Like sometimes I'll be walking down the street. I was like, one of those crazy people you would know was in my headphones because I would be either singing it loud or I would stop for a moment for a little dance break. Yeah, I didn't give a f---. I was just like. You can look at me if you want to.   Ashley Blaine Featherson Jenkins I love it. I love it. But that's the goal. Like, get back to that, you back to that. Like that's what I'm on. And.   Amy We're going to do.   Ashley Blaine Featherson Jenkins That's my antidote.   Amy I love that. Like Grace. We're going to go for a hot girl walk.   Grace Let's go for our girl walk. I mean, I won't make you hike because I know you don't like that, but you can go.   Ashley Blaine Featherson Jenkins No, it's a walk not a hike. It's not a hot girl hike.   Amy Well, now, since we're talking a little just a little bit, we'll get off the pandemic a little bit. But you got married in the pandemic. And I want to know, like the pandemic was like a testing ground. Yes, it was a testing ground for relations. Some somehow got further apart and some got closer together. Are there any lessons or things you've learned about sharing space with your partner during this crazy time?   Ashley Blaine Featherson Jenkins Oh, my goodness, I. I think the biggest like lesson is to be grateful for the time. You know, like Daryl and I had the perspective of, like. I remember early on in the pandemic, I remember he said to me, We better cherish this because we're probably never going to have it again. And he's right. You know, I don't know. You know, another time, hopefully we are not stuck in the house again in the same way during a pandemic. Right.   Amy Hold my collar y'all, I'm like, oh, my God, give me out this house.   Ashley Blaine Featherson Jenkins You all. She started hyperventilating. Okay. No. And but but I'm grateful that I had a partner who rather had been lamenting and was like, This is great. We get to spend time and, you know, just do things like we would dance around the house or, you know, like, I don't know, just binge watch things all day that we just don't have the time to do anymore, you know, stay up late. Yeah. You know, until the wee hours of morning into the wee hours of the morning. Just so many things that we look back on now and are like, that was a really crazy but beautiful time for us. And I think that it really so much good came out of it. You know, in the pandemic, we bought our first home, we got married, we honeymooned. We, you know, we've done so many, so many amazing things. And I think it taught us to like. What's for you? Even a pandemic can't stop humans. You know, like this ship is going to keep sailing, this ball is going to keep rolling. And it really is just about how you choose to receive it.   Grace What was your favorite thing like from that time, spending time in the house with each other? What was your favorite thing that you guys did together during that time?   Ashley Blaine Featherson Jenkins My husband Darryl's from Detroit, MI.   Grace Me too. Do you know where he's from in Detroit? Like which part?   Ashley Blaine Featherson Jenkins Yeah, he's from the east side of Detroit. Okay, cool. He grew up off of Hannah. Yeah, he went to Cass.   Grace Oh, he went to Cass Tech, okay.   Ashley Blaine Featherson Jenkins Okay, so he's like a real. He's a michigan guy. Okay, I went to Howard, and, you know, a lot of my a lot of my friends at Howard were from the Midwest and, you know, Detroit or Chicago. And so early on in Howard, I learned how to like hustle and all that type of stuff. So I found out in the pandemic, which I've known Daryl for almost 13 years, so I don't know how this went over my head. He didn't know how to hustle. And so I taught him, Oh.   Amy That's incredible.   Ashley Blaine Featherson Jenkins Sorry, Daryl, I'm exposing you to all the Detroit people. But I taught him how to hustle. Yes in our at the time, we were in, like, a little cute, but like a little non air conditioning apartment in Beverly Hills at the time. And so we were just hustling up in that one bedroom apartment and it was it was just like and I recorded us like I got my phone up in a row, like I have my hair wrapped, but I just was like, this is a memory we'll look back on and be like, Oh. What this is insane.   Grace You taught him how to hustle, that's so cute.   Ashley Blaine Featherson Jenkins That was a fun night. Yeah, yeah, that was a fun night.   Grace I mean, he should take you to the car show, like the auto show sometime, cause that's the big Detroit thing. Yes.   Ashley Blaine Featherson Jenkins I got to do that. So many things.   Amy I feel like that period in your life, like, obviously I don't I don't want to forget that the pandemic, a lot of people experience a lot of loss, but all of this like is about surrender. And you talk about that so much about how to surrender. And sometimes you don't have control. I mean, none of us had control over what was happening. Those of us who lost a lot and those of us who had the luxury to get introspective and like really sit with ourselves and you really got to surrender and have a partner through it, which is really beautiful. Yeah. And as we're, like growing now, are there ways that you find surrender in your day to day, even like the processing of emotions that you talked about, like having a rough month and having to cry it out? Is that a form of surrender for you? Like sitting in it.   Ashley Blaine Featherson Jenkins For sure. I think, you know, as you were talking, I was thinking about surrender. And like you said, it's a if you know me, if you listen to anything I say, I'm always saying I'm trying to get better at the art of surrender. But what I'm realizing is that, like, there's the step after surrender, right? So like, surrendering is giving it up and saying, okay, you know, Jesus, take the money, but. On the other side of the step after surrender, I think, is acceptance. And you have to accept whatever may come from the surrender. You can't surrender and then lack acceptance. Yeah. Because then you're kind of in the same between. Right. You're still not where you need to be. And so that's that's what I'm trying to work on. Tubas, like both of them. It's like surrendering and then being confident about the acceptance of whatever may come. And I do that in sometimes it's crying it out, sometimes it's talking it out. Sometimes it's actually saying it out loud, like. This is too much for me. You got it. Wow. Look, I can't. I can't do this or. You know what? I trust you more than I trust myself. So please, you know, order my steps. Sometimes it's bad, but I just, you know, honestly, surrender is a muscle. It's a muscle muscle that we all have to work.   Grace And the process of surrender, I really think, like in our work, in our business, I think it's so important to have that kind of perspective because there's so much that we cannot control. You know, you cannot control like who greenlights your stuff or you can't control like when you go into an audition whether you're going to get it or not. But like that act of surrendering, knowing that you're going to be okay or like that you're giving it over to a higher power to help you deal with it like that. I think it's so important rather than trying to control everything, because we in our human powers cannot we cannot control it.   Ashley Blaine Featherson Jenkins We just can't can't do it. No.   Amy Have you taken any good trips recently now that we get back outside?   Ashley Blaine Featherson Jenkins Oh, my gosh. So I just got back from Austin, Texas.   Amy Oh, I love Austin.   Ashley Blaine Featherson Jenkins Do you? It's not, you know, I don't know.   Amy Okay, well, here's what I'll say. Here's what I say. I'm from Texas, I'm from Dallas. And Austin is like the to me, it's the best parts of Dallas and with a little bit of California sprinkled in. So that's why I like Austin. But I'm curious, what's your take on it? I mean, I don't want you to, like, slammed the city.   Ashley Blaine Featherson Jenkins Well, no. no, no. I'm not going to slam the city. I my first time going was in, oh, 2017. We actually premiered Dear White People. There was my first time there at South by Southwest. And then I went I just went this past weekend on a my 15 and my 15 year anniversary trip with my line sisters. Yes. And my sister. So so it was amazing because I was with some of my favorite people on the face of the planet and we just had a good time. We're always going to make a good time wherever we go. So I did that. I've actually been traveling a time this year. I was in New York and May in like New York. I just.   Amy That's Grace's city.   Ashley Blaine Featherson Jenkins New York makes me feel I could cry thinking about New York. Something about New York.   Grace Thank you Ashley.   Ashley Blaine Featherson Jenkins I love that city. New York. If I literally would wake up like, good morning, New York.Like, I just I was skipping down the street, it was raining, and I was just like I was like that that video of Drew Barrymore in the rain.   Amy Yes.   Ashley Blaine Featherson Jenkins That's what I look like. And I wonder everyone's like clowning her for it. But I'm like, no, I understand why she felt like that. So I was in New York and then yeah, but I mean, I've been to New York many times, but something about this last trip, I was there for work, but I kind of made into like play and I just fell in love with New York all over again.   Grace New York is kind of like one of those places where, like, I lived there for 15 years before I moved to L.A. and New York was kind of one of those places. Like, I would still like ten, 12, 13, 14, 15 years, and I would just be walking down the street and I would like look up and see, like the Chrysler Building all lit, lit up. And I was like, Wow, I'm here. You know, I did it. I made it here. You know, it's like there's there's always just. Such a special energy that's there. So I completely get it in New York in the room.   Amy You mean, you don't do that on the 405?   Ashley Blaine Featherson Jenkins Question. Do you ever feel like that in LA?   Amy You don't do it on the 405? When you in traffic?   Ashley Blaine Featherson Jenkins Have you had the feeling of like, I'm here, I've made it like do you have that here.   Grace I mean, it's just a different feeling. I mean, like New York just has, like, things that you can look at. Whereas L.A., sometimes when I am like, you know, it's a pretty sunny day out and I'm driving down like a row of palm trees and I can see the Hollywood sign in the distance. I'm just like, okay, you cue L.A., like, Yeah, I'm here. I made it. You know, I used to always dream about Los Angeles as a little girl, so 100% I do have those moments. But yeah, right now I'm in a missing New York moment. So that really spoke to me.   Amy Wow, Ashley, I feel so much better now that we've talked to you.   Grace Yes, she's right.   Ashley Blaine Featherson Jenkins Ditto.   Grace It's still 2022, and it's due in 2022 things. But we feel so much better now that we've chatted with you today.   Amy Yes. Yes. Do you have anything coming up you want to tell us about anything you'd like to plug? You can even be something you just love, not something you've created.   Ashley Blaine Featherson Jenkins Oh, my goodness. Well, obviously, I have my podcast new episodes every Monday. Anywhere you listen to podcast trials to triumphs.   Amy And last but not least, where can people find you on the Internets?   Ashley Blaine Featherson Jenkins Oh, yes, you can find me at Ashley Blaine, B-L-A-I-N-E. Ashley spelled the original way. On Instagram and Twitter. Yeah, that's it. Yeah.   Amy Well, thank you so much, Ashley. This has been great talk.   Grace Thank you so much, Ashley.   Ashley Blaine Featherson Jenkins I adore you two. Thank you.   Grace Thank you. Bye. Okay to close us out. We're doing our creative tap in, which is our segment about creativity. Amy, are you ready for this week's quote?   Amy As ready as I'll ever be.   Grace Okay. Here we go. A creative life is an amplified life. That is by Elizabeth Gilbert. Say one more time. A creative life is an amplified life. Elizabeth Gilbert.   Amy Okay. I love Elizabeth Gilbert. She's the author of Big Magic. Right. We both know that. Yeah. Yeah, we both love that book. You told me about it. That's why I read it as you recommended it to me. So I'm a I'm a Liz Gill fan because of you. And I'm going to get a little literal on the quote amplified is like to increase the volume of turn something up. Mm hmm. So a creative life is a life that's been turned up a notch. And I agree with that. And I don't think it means having a creative career like you don't have to have a creative career to have a creative life. It's just how you creatively put things in your life, like what you do to express yourself creatively and to live creatively and to switch up your routine every now and then is going to like change, you know, raise the volume, raise the vibration on your life. So I think that is a very simple like, simply put quotes. But being creative raises your vibration is sort of how I am reading it. And I believe that is true. I strive to be creative, even beyond writing, however I can, even if not every day weekly, to try and just, like, keep my vibration high. And so I'm going to remember that. Liz. What about you, Grace? What does it make you think?   Grace Well, it makes me think about how often as writers, what we do is notice and amplify, you know? Oh, so we so we notice things that are going on in front of our eyes, in front of the world, you know? So I might walk down the street and just see, like, a guy or a girl like me dancing by herself. So I get to be I say down the street, and I make a character out of that. I'm just like, Oh, why is she dancing? Who is she? Where is she from? Is she happy, as she said? Is she dancing it out because, you know, something that happened in her life or is she just so joyously happy that she's dancing down the street like? So I think our job as artists at times is to take the things that happen in our lives, the things that we see, the things that we experience, and we amplify them to make art. So it makes me think of that, but it also makes me think of how blessed I feel to have creativity in my life. Yeah, because I feel like because I have creativity in my life, there are so many things that I can process, good or bad, through the lens of my creativity. Like even if I have a really bad experience, if I have a bad date, which I often did in New York, I was always on some bad dates, some man was ruining my day. But at the even in the midst of it, I would be like. You know, what is this, a character? You know what? I'm going to put this in something I write someday. So even though even when the bad things happen to me, I have the gift of being able to process it through my art. So when I hear creativity, a creative life is an amplified life. It just makes me think of all the ways that I can use what happens to me, good or bad, to to amplify, to create something that people can find some sort of relate ability in. Because, you know, we always say in writing that the specific is universal. So the things that happen in our everyday lives, if we can get specific, there's often people who can relate to it on some level, even if it's not exactly so. So, yeah, that's it kind of makes me think about, about the gift of being able to process trauma and joy through the lens of creativity.   Amy It was a simple quote, but I really love both our interpretations of it.   Grace Uh. Me too. Thanks for listening to the antidote. We hope this injected a little bit of joy into your week. I know it did mine. How about you, Amy?   Amy I feel good, girl. We should do this again sometime. Oh, we'll be here next week.   Grace And in the meantime, if you'd like to follow us on social, follow me. Grace. At Gracyact. That's G-R-A-C-Y-A-C-T.   Amy And follow me. Amy at AmyAniobi. That's A-M-Y-A-N-I-O-B-I and follow the show at theeantidotepod.   Grace That's thee with two E's.   Amy If you like, feeling good about yourself. Please subscribe at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.   Grace Goodbye.   Amy And next time you're out for a walk, twerk it out a little bit. And the antidote is hosted by us, Amy Ameobi and Grace Edwards. The show's production team includes senior producer Se'era Spragley Ricks and associate producer Jess Penzetta.   Grace Our executive producer is Erica Kraus, and our editor is Erika Janik. Sound Mixing by Alex Samson.   Amy Digital Production by Mijoe Sahiouni. Talent Booking by Marianne Ways. Our theme music was composed and produced by TT the artist and Cosmo The Truth.   Grace APM Studio executives in charge are Chandra Kavati, Alex Schaffert and Joanne Griffith. Concept created by Amy Aniobi and Grace Edwards.   Amy Send us your antidotes at AntidoteShow.org and remember to follow us on social media at theeantidotepod. That's thee with two E's.   Grace The Antidote is a production of American Public Media.   Amy What, what!

TranscriptCorey: This episode is sponsored in part by LaunchDarkly. Take a look at what it takes to get your code into production. I'm going to just guess that it's awful because it's always awful. No one loves their deployment process. What if launching new features didn't require you to do a full-on code and possibly infrastructure deploy? What if you could test on a small subset of users and then roll it back immediately if results aren't what you expect? LaunchDarkly does exactly this. To learn more, visit launchdarkly.com and tell them Corey sent you, and watch for the wince.Jesse: Hello, and welcome to AWS Morning Brief: Fridays From the Field. I'm Jesse DeRose.Amy: I'm Amy Negrette.Tim: And I'm Tim Banks.Jesse: This is the podcast within a podcast where we talk about all the ways we've seen AWS used and abused in the wild, with a healthy dose of complaining about AWS for good measure. Today is a very special episode for two reasons. First, we're going to be talking about all the things that you want to talk about. That's right, it's time for another Q&A session. Get hyped.Amy: And second as is Duckbill's customary hazing ritual, we're putting a new Duckbill Group Cloud Economist Tim Banks through the wringer to answer some of your pressing questions about cloud costs and AWS. And he has pretty much the best hobbies.Tim: [laugh].Jesse: Absolutely.Tim: You know, I choke people for fun.Jesse: [laugh]. I don't even know where to begin with that. I—you know—Amy: It's the best LinkedIn bio, that's [laugh] where you begin with that.Tim: Yeah, I will change it right after this, I promise. But no, I think it's funny, we were talking about Jiu-Jitsu as a hobby, but my other hobby is I like to cook a lot, and I'm an avid, avid chili purist. And we were in a meeting earlier and Amy mentioned something about a bowl of sweet chili. And, dear listeners, let me tell you, I was aghast.Amy: It's more of a sweet stewed meat than it is, like, some kind of, like, meat candy. It is not a meat candy. Filipinos make very sweet stews because we cannot handle chili, and honestly, we shouldn't be able to handle anything that's caramelized or has sugar in it, but we try to anyway. [laugh].Tim: But this sounds interesting, but I don't know that I would categorize it as chili, especially if it has beans in it.Jesse: It has beans. We put beans in everything.Tim: Oh, then it can't be chili.Jesse: Are you a purist that your chili cannot have beans in it?Tim: Well, no. Chili doesn't have beans in it.Amy: Filipino food has beans in it. Our desserts have beans in it. [laugh].Jesse: We are going to pivot, we're going to hard pivot this episode to just talk about the basis of what a chili recipe consists of. Sorry, listeners, no cost discussions today.Tim: Well, I mean, it's a short list: a chili contains meat and it contains heat.Jesse: [laugh].Tim: That's it. No tomatoes, no beans, no corn, or spaghetti, or whatever people put in it.Amy: Okay, obviously the solution is that we do some kind of cook-off where Tim and Pete cook for everybody, and we pull in Pete as a special quote-unquote, outside consultant, and I just eat a lot of food, and I'm cool with that. [laugh].Jesse: I agree to this.Tim: Pete is afraid of me, so I'm pretty sure he's going to pick my chili.Jesse: [laugh].Amy: I could see him doing that. But also, I just like eating food.Tim: No, no, it's great. We should definitely do a chili cook-off. But yeah, I am willing to entertain any questions about, you know, chili, and I'm willing to defend my stance with facts and the truth. So…Amy: If you have some meat—or [sheet 00:03:19]—related questions, please get into our DMs on Twitter.Jesse: [laugh]. All right. Well, thank you to everyone who submitted their listener questions. We've picked a few that we would like to talk about here today. I will kick us off with the first question.This first question says, “Long-time listener first-time caller. As a solo developer, I'm really interested in using some of AWS's services. Recently, I came across AWS's Copilot, and it looks like a potentially great solution for deployment of a basic architecture for a SaaS-type product that I'm developing. I'm concerned that messing around with Copilot might lead to an accidental large bill that I can't afford as a solo dev. So, I was wondering, do you have a particular [bizing 00:04:04] availability approach when dealing with a new AWS service, ideally, specific steps or places to start with tracking billing? And then specifically for Copilot, how could I set it up so it can trip off billing alarms if my setup goes over a certain threshold? Is there a way to keep track of cost from the beginning?”Tim: AWS has some basic billing alerts in there. They are always going to be kind of reactive.Jesse: Yes.Amy: They can detect some trends, but as a solo developer, what you're going to get is notification that the previous day's spending was pretty high. And then you'll be able to trend it out over that way. As far as asking if there's a proactive way to predict what the cost of your particular architecture is going to be, the easy answer is going to be no. Not one that's not going to be cost-prohibitive to purchase a sole developer.Jesse: Yeah, I definitely recommend setting up those reactive billing alerts. They're not going to solve all of your use cases here, but they're definitely better than nothing. And the one that I definitely am thinking of that I would recommend turning on is the Cost Explorer Cost Anomaly Detector because that actually looks at your spend based on a specific service, a specific AWS cost category, a specific user-defined cost allocation tag. And it'll tell you if there is a spike in spend. Now, if your spend is just continuing to grow steadily, Cost Anomaly Detector isn't going to give you all the information you want.It's only going to look for those anomalous spikes where all of a sudden, you turned something on that you meant to turn off, and left it on. But it's still something that's going to start giving you some feedback and information over time that may help you keep an eye on your billing usage and your spend.Amy: Another thing we highly recommend is to have a thorough tagging strategy, especially if you're using a service to deploy resources. Because you want to make sure that all of your resources, you know what they do and you know who they get charged to. And Copilot does allow you to do resource tagging within it, and then from there should be able to convert them to cost allocation tags so you can see them in your console.Jesse: Awesome. Well, our next question is from Rob. Rob asks, “How do I stay HIPAA compliant, but keep my savings down? Do I really need VPC Flow Logs on? Could we talk in general about the security options in AWS and their cost impact? My security team wants everything on but it would cost us ten times our actual AWS bill.”Rob, we have actually seen this from a number of clients. It is a tough conversation to have because the person in charge of the bill wants to make sure that spend is down, but security may need certain security measures in place, product may need certain measures in place for service level agreements or service level objectives, and there's absolutely a need to find that balance between cost optimization and all of these compliance needs.Tim: Yeah, I think it's also really important to thoroughly understand what the compliance requirements are. Fairly certain for HIPAA that you may not have to have VPC Flow Logs specifically enabled. The language is something like, ‘logging of visitors to the site' or something like that. So, you need to be very clear and concise about what you actually need, and remember, for compliance, typically it's just a box check. It's not going to be a how much or what percent; it's going to be, “Do you have this or do you not?”And so if the HIPAA compliance changes where you absolutely have to have VPC Flow Logging turned on, then there's not going to be a way around that in order to maintain your compliance. But if the language is not specifically requiring that, then you don't have to, and that's going to become something you have to square with your security team. There are ways to do those kinds of logging on other things depending on what your application stack looks like, but that's definitely a conversation you're going to want to have, either with your security team, with your product architects, or maybe even outside or third-party consultant.Jesse: Another thing to think about here is, how much is each of these features in AWS costing you? How much are these security regulations, the SLA architecture choices, how much are each of those things costing you in AWS? Because that is ultimately part of the conversation, too. You can go back to security, or product, or whoever and say, “I understand that this is a business requirement. This is how much it's costing the business.”And that doesn't mean that they have to change it, but that is now additional information that everybody has to collaboratively decide, “Okay, is it worthwhile for us to have this restriction, have this compliance component at this cost?” And again, as Tim was mentioning, if it is something that needs to be set up for compliance purposes, for audit purposes, then there's not really a lot you can do. It's kind of a, I don't want to say sunk cost, but it is a cost that you need to understand that is required for that feature. But if it's not something that is required for audit purposes, if it's not something that just needs to be, like, a checkbox, maybe there's an opportunity here if the cost is so high that you can change the feature in a way that brings the cost down a little bit but still gives security, or product, or whoever else the reassurances that they need.Tim: I think the other very important thing to remember is that you are not required to run your application in AWS.Jesse: Yeah.Tim: You can run it on-premise, you can run at a different cloud provider. If it's going to be cost-prohibitive to run at AWS and you can't get the cost down to a manageable level, through, kind of, normal cost reduction methods of EDPs, or your pricing agreement, remember you can always put that on bare metal somewhere and then you will be able to have the logging for free. Now, mind you, you're going to have to spend money elsewhere to get that done, but you're going to have to look and see what the overall cost is going to be. It may, in fact, be much less expensive to host that on metal, or at a different provider than it would be at AWS.Corey: This episode is sponsored by ExtraHop. ExtraHop provides threat detection and response for the Enterprise (not the starship). On-prem security doesn't translate well to cloud or multi-cloud environments, and that's not even counting IoT. ExtraHop automatically discovers everything inside the perimeter, including your cloud workloads and IoT devices, detects these threats up to 35 percent faster, and helps you act immediately. Ask for a free trial of detection and response for AWS today at extrahop.com/trial.Jesse: Our next question is from Trevor Shaffer. He says, “Loving these Friday from the field episodes and the costing”—thank you—“I'm in that world right now, so all of this hits home for me. One topic not covered with the cost categorization, which I'm tasked with, is how to separate base costs versus usage costs. Case in point, we're driving towards cost metrics based on users and prices go up as users go up. All of that makes sense, but there's always that base load required to serve quote-unquote, ‘no users.'“The ALP instance hours, versus the LCU hour, minimum number of EC2 instances for high availability, things like that. Currently, you can't tag those differently, so I think I'm just doomed here and my hopes will be dashed. For us, our base costs are about 25% of our bill. Looking for tricks on how to do this one well. You can get close with a lot of scripting and time, teasing out each item manually.” Trevor, you can, and I also think that is definitely going to be a pain point if you start scripting some of these things. That sounds like a lot of effort that may give you some useful information, but I don't know if it's going to give you all of the information that you want.Tim: Well, it's also a lot of effort, and it's also room for error. It won't take but a simple error in anything that you write where these costs can then be calculated incorrectly. So, that's something to consider as well: is it worth the overall costs of engineering time, and maintenance, and everything like that, to write these scripts? These are decisions that engineers groups have to make all the time. That said, I do think that this is, for me I think, one of the larger problems that you see with AWS billing is that it is difficult to differentiate something that should be reasonably difficult to differentiate.If I get my cell phone bill, I know exactly how much it's going to cost us to have the line, and then I can see exactly how much it's going to cost me for the minutes. The usage cost is very easily separated from—I'm sorry, the base cost is very easily separated from the usage cost. It's not always that way with AWS, I do think that's something that they could fix.Jesse: Yeah, one thing that I've been thinking of is, I don't want to just recommend turning things on and measuring, but I'm thinking about this from the same perspective that you would think about getting a baseline for any kind of monitoring service: as you turn on a metric or as you start introducing a new metric before you start building alerts for that metric, you need to let that metric run for a certain amount of time to see what the baseline number, usage amount, whatever, looks like before you can start setting alerts. I'm thinking about that same thing here. I know that's a tougher thing to do when this is actually cost involved when it's actually costing you money to leave something on and just watch what usage looks like over time, but that is something that will give you the closest idea of what base costs look like. And one of the things to think about, again, is if the base costs are unwieldy for you or not worthwhile for you in terms of the way the architecture is built, is there either a different way that you can build the architecture that is maybe more ephemeral that will make it cost less when there are no users active? Is there a different cloud provider that you can deploy these resources to that is going to ultimately cost you less when you have no users active?Tim: I think too, though, that when you have these discussions with engineering teams and they're looking at what their priorities are going to be and what the engineering cost is going to be, oftentimes, they're going to want metrics on how much is this costing us—how much would it cost otherwise? What is our base cost, what's our usage cost?—so that you can make a case and justify it with numbers. So, you may think that it is better to run this somewhere else or to re-architect your infrastructure around this, but you're going to have to have some data to back it up. And if this is what you need to gather that data, then yeah, it is definitely a pain point.Amy: I agree. I think this is one of those cases where—and I am also loath to just leave things on for the sake of it, but especially as you onboard new architectures and new applications, this should be done at that stage when you start standing things up and finalizing that architecture. Once you know the kind of architecture you want and you're pushing things to production, find out what that baseline is, have it be part of that process, and have it be a cost of that process. And finally, “As someone new to AWS and wanting to become a software DevOps insert-buzzword-here engineer”—I'm a buzzword engineer—“We've been creating projects in Amplify, Elastic Beanstalk, and other services. I keep the good ones alive and have done a pretty good job of killing things off when I don't need it. What are your thoughts on free managed services in general when it comes to cost transparencies with less than five months left on my free year? Is it a bad idea to use them as someone who is just job hunting? I'm willing to spend a little per month, but don't want to be here with a giant bill.”So, chances are if you're learning a new technology or a new service, unless you run into that pitfall where you're going to get a big bill as a surprise and you've been pretty diligent about turning your services off, your bill is not going to rise that much higher. That said, there have been a lot of instances, on Twitter especially, popping up where they are getting very large bills. If you're not using them and you're not actively learning on them, I would just turn them off so you don't forget later. We've also talked about this in our build versus buy, where that is the good thing about having as a managed service is if you don't need it anymore and you're not learning or using them, you can just turn them off. And if you have less than half a year on your first free year, there are plenty of services that have a relatively free tier or a really cheap tier at the start, so if you want to go back and learn on them later, you still could.Tim: I think too, Amy, it's also important to reflect, at least for this person, that if they're in an environment where they're trying to learn something if maintaining infrastructure is not the main core of what they're trying to learn, then I wouldn't do it. The reason that they have these managed services is to allow engineering teams to be more focused on the things that they want to do as far as development versus the things they have to do around infrastructure management. If you don't have an operations team or an infrastructure team, then maintaining the infrastructure on your own sometimes can become unwieldy to the point that you're not really even learning the thing you wanted to learn; now you're learning how to manage Elasticsearch.Amy: Yeah.Jesse: Absolutely. I think that's one of the most critical things to think about here. These managed services give you the opportunity to use all these services without managing the infrastructure overhead. And to me, there may be a little bit extra costs involved for that, but to me that cost is worth the freedom to not worry about managing the infrastructure, to be able to just spin up a cluster of something and play with it. And then when you're done, obviously, make sure you turn it off, but you don't have to worry about the infrastructure unless you're specifically going to be looking for work where you do need to manage that infrastructure, and that's a separate question entirely.Amy: Yeah. I'm not an infrastructure engineer, so anytime I'm not using infrastructure, and I'm not using a service, I just—I make sure everything's turned off. Deleting stacks is very cathartic for me, just letting everything—just watching it all float away into the sunset does a lot for me, just knowing that it's not one more thing I'm going to have to watch over because it's not a thing I like doing or want to do. So yeah, if that's not what you want to do, then don't leave them on and just clean up after yourself, I suppose. [laugh].Tim: I'll even say that even if you're an infrastructure engineer, which is my background, that you can test your automation of building and all this, you know, building a cluster, deploying things like that, and then tear it down and get rid of it. You don't have to leave it up forever. If you're load testing an application, that's a whole different thing, but that's probably not what you're doing if you're concerned about the free tier costs. So yeah, if you're learning Terraform, you can absolutely deploy a cluster or something and just tear it back out as soon as you're done. If you're learning how to manage whatever it is, build it, test it, make sure it runs, and then tear it back down.Jesse: All righty, folks, that's going to do it for us this week. If you've got questions you would like us to answer, please go to lastweekinaws.com/QA, fill out the form and we'd be happy to answer those on a future episode of the show. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please go to lastweekinaws.com/review and give it a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you hated this podcast, please go to lastweekinaws.com/review, give it a five-star rating on your podcast platform of choice and tell us whether you prefer sweet chili or spicy chili.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

Amy Honey is a pull, no punches, powerhouse, speaker and trainer in the areas of customer engagement, body language, behavior modification, sales and habit transformation. She has extensive background in high ticket sales and is known by her peers as a powerful closer, Amy is also passionate about helping girls and women find their courage just as she had to do starting at the age of 16, when she found herself alone and independent through her own resourcefulness, she still managed to graduate from high school. Her passion for personal growth, travel and transforming lives has taken Amy all over the world, helping people transform their lives through behavior, observation and habit change.   Learn more about Amy. Learn more about The Passionistas Project. Full Transcript: Passionistas: Hi, and welcome to The Passionistas Project Podcast, where we talk with women who are following their passions to inspire you to do the same. We're Amy and Nancy Harrington. And today we're talking with Amy Honey, a pull, no punches, powerhouse, speaker and trainer in the areas of customer engagement, body language, behavior modification, sales, and habit transformation. She has extensive background in high ticket sales and is known by her peers. As a powerful closer, Amy is also passionate about helping girls and women find their courage just as she had to do starting at the age of 16, when she found herself alone and independent through her own resourcefulness, she still managed to graduate from high school. At age 20. She became a single mom and chose to put her family's welfare first while overcoming numerous obstacles in an unreceptive marketplace. It was during these life challenges and her entrepreneurial journey that she crossed paths with personal development and discovered her love for speaking and training her passion for personal growth travel and transforming lives has taken Amy all over the world, helping people transform their lives through behavior, observation, and habit change. So please welcome to the show Amy Honey. Amy: I'm so happy to be here. Passionistas: Oh, we're so happy to have you. What are you most passionate about? Amy: Personal growth. My path through that is sales. Do you ever watch any of chef Ramsey, Gordon Ramsey stuff? He does this show called Kitchen Nightmares and he goes in and what that shows really about is about personal growth, but his, his avenues through cooking, you know, so that's his version of it. So I think everybody has their version of personal growth. Passionistas: Talk about your journey through life, where you started out your experiences, that we talked about a bit in the intro at the age of 16, becoming independent, and why personal growth has become such an important concept to you through your journey? Amy: I probably started in sales at two years old. I was just like, I was just in, I was just, I loved the idea of being able to create something and then, and then make money for my time or my creation. And so even as a little kid, I made like pet rocks and sold them to my family, or like we would travel through Germany were my dad was a military. So we traveled and I was, I was adopted. So it's my, I'm a single, an only child. Oh, come into play later. So we were traveling through Germany and we had this like VW bus and it had this rack in between. So my parents was very difficult for my parents to get to the back of the, of the VW bus, you know, camper and the frigerators right there. So they would ask me for food and I would just charge them. So it was like, it'd be like a nickel, like, okay. Yeah. And I would like walk up with my little, you know, you know, I'm like eight years old and I'd walk up with my little paper and say, you know, okay, I'll take your order, you know? Okay. That'll be five cents, you know, whatever, but they paid it because they didn't want to get it into the back of the bus. Little did I realize supply and demand, but I learned it very early on, I guess. And and so then from there, uh, later on, I actually started out. So, so it was a dance instructor. So I'm really into dance. I'm really into moving energy. So I became a dance instructor at age 13. So very young, my dad, since the time I was three taught jazz, tap, ballet, gymnastics. I taught everything. I started assistant teaching at 13. And then by the age of 16, I was teaching my own classes. And then at the same time I was working two jobs, so, and going to high school. So I was working on the phones for Kirby vacuum cleaner. So I sold Kirby vacuum cleaners on the phone from the age of 14. And then at the age of 16, I was allowed to go door to door. So I wasn't allowed to do door to door sales until I turned 16. So this is back in the eighties, dating myself here. So at that point, I just was good at talking to people because for me, it was about connecting. And then at age 16, I'm out on my own. And I moved out on my mom and dad's house. I just they're great people. We just had large differences in opinions. It's very interesting DNA to me is very interesting because my parents are really good people, but I got the opportunity to meet my birth family about five years ago. And now I'm really, really close with my brothers. I've got four brothers that never knew I existed. And so what I found so interesting is that I'm so much like them in the way that I think about the world and my sense of humor and all that stuff it's naturally in your DNA. Right. And so there was just a difference of opinion. And so when I moved out at 16, I always felt like it, like I did something wrong. This is my fault. I'm a bad kid. I'm horrible person. But in the meantime, I am putting myself through high school. Like I still worked. I still graduated high school on time. So, you know, it was, I was just had a really, I always had a really strong work ethic anyway, but I also had an ethic of like, okay, I just, whatever it takes to get it done, like whatever it takes to get it done at the same time, I started really seeking at that point. Because I really thought something was wrong with me. Like I was, something was wrong with me. So I started seeking and I sought out counseling and I sought out, you know, which was also kind of like wrong. Like if you went to counseling, like by my parents' standard, you know, you were wrong or you needed to be fixed or something goes wrong with you. But I don't think that we put enough emphasis on the importance of mental health. So I just started seeking and I, I started finding books and I remember one of the very first books I read way back, when is a book called peeling, the sweet onion. And it was always all about the layers of who we are and how we're going to forget it kind of over and over and over again, and how to really become more of, of the center of who we are, like getting the layers of the, kind of the crap off, you know? And so that was one of the very first and it's, it's an old book and it's not really popular these days, but it's still super relevant, like really super relevant. So, and then I just, you know, went on to Tony Robbins and you know, all of these other people. And then I started working in the seminar industry, doing sales, like doing sales, but doing coaching because for me, sales is not just like getting the number, like it's funny. Cause like I get on, like I talk to my family all the time. I was just talking to them last night and you know, all sale. I had a good day or I had a bad day, you know? Uh, and, and my daughter was asking me, well, what, what makes it good is like, if you just get a sale and I said, no, no, it's the conversation. If I can get on the phone and help somebody and have a great conversation and they don't buy anything from me, I had a great day because I impacted somebody's life in a way. So to me, sales is about service and connecting the right people with the right products and figuring out the right flow of energy with the sale. So maybe that right flow of energy might be a no, but when you come to the highest point of service with that person, and you're not just looking at them as a transaction or a number, when they are ready, they will come back to you and maybe they never will be ready and that's okay too. But if you push them into a sale, you're going to it's, it's just, it's horrible, bad karma on you. I think bad energy on you. You're, that's where you're going to get higher cancellations. You're going to get people complaining about your company. You're going to get all these things, right. So to me, it's just not worth it to push a person into a sale. Passionistas: And then when did you start public speaking? Amy: I've been a teacher since a young age. So I was in front of groups of people with no problem and teaching dance. And I teach zoom by owned. I owned a gym. So, you know, just I've always been in front of people, not a problem. I was also a stuntwoman. And so I'm don't have any problems being in front of cameras. That's my husband and I are both stunned, Exxon actors. So I just never had a problem being in front of people. But when I started working in the seminar industry, I was forced to get in, you know, we would have to intro the speaker. So it was like all of a sudden I had to introduce a Les Brown or somebody and I'm just, Whoa. Okay. Okay. So it was just kind of run into it. And then I just started speaking. And for me, I just think when you can speak to a group of people, it's a lot easier than trying to one-on-one because there's always things like a, every single, every single business. I believe that we have to educate our clients because an educated client is a good client and when they understand it and they're educated enough. And so I feel that there's things that every single business repeats over and over and over again. So if we can take those things that we repeat over and over again, and I end make a video or, or get them as together as a group and say it, you're not exhausting yourself saying it over and over and over again to each client. Passionistas: Tell us a little bit about being a stunt woman. What attracted you to that world? Amy: I was always into fitness. I wanted to do martial arts from non-time. I was a real little kid, but I was, I had to do, you know, I had to dance. So dancing was the thing or piano, piano, piano for a while. It was not ladylike to do martial arts. So it wasn't allowed to do martial arts. So as soon as I turned eight, well, as soon as I turned 16, I moved out. But by the time I was 18, I had my feet underneath me and I'd graduated high school and stuff. And so at that point I was like, Oh, I can take martial arts. No, one's stopping me. I can pierce anything. I want, I can get tattoos. So yeah. So I did, I went and started taking martial arts. And at that same time I was body doubling as an actress. So I was living in Oregon at the time and I was on this movie set and I met a stunt coordinator on the movie set, Steve, his name was Steve, really super nice guy. And I was like, huh, that's interesting. And so I was, I was an extra on the set. So as I was body doubling and I met this I met the stunt coordinator and he said to me, and I started just digging and asking questions. And he said, look, if you're really interested, why don't you fly out to LA and meet with our stunt guys and see what you think? And I said, Oh, okay. And so I booked a flight to LA and it was so funny. Cause I'm like, I'm 51 years old. Now I think I was 22 or 23. At that time I weigh a lot more now than I did then. So I was probably like 105 pounds, like soaking wet, five foot tall, I'm little. And so I get on this plane, I get on the plane. This is 1994. It's like, get on the plane and no one's on the plane. And I'm like, this is really bizarre. Right? Well, come to find out, that was the 1994 earthquake in Northridge that had just happened that morning. So everybody canceled their flight, right? So like I'm on the flight by myself and I'm heading to LA and they've got this guy, his name was big. Wayne picking me up at the airport. This is a guy I've never met before. Right now, big Wayne is like a massive dude. He kind of looks like the rock and is probably about as big. And I walk up and he's holding the sign and I'm like, this is how every horror movie war starts like, Oh my God, what? I'm like, I'm just like, I'm walking into this thing. I don't know this guy. I'm getting in the car with a stranger. I'm in a strange town. I was just like, what was I thinking? Like I'm freaking out at this point, like inside my heart is like, but I'm like, no, no, I trust my gut. I trust my gut. So he took me out to eat with a couple of the other stunt actors. And it was very interesting because they wanted to know my philosophy on life. Like they wanted to know if I believed in fate, they wanted to know if I believed in circumstance. They wanted to know if I believed if I created my own reality at that point, like I was really young, but they wanted to know these things because they weren't going to trust me with teaching me some of these things. If I didn't believe that things happen for a reason that you're in the right place at the right time that you trust yourself. Because it's very important when you're doing choreography with another stunt actor, you have to trust that when they're supposed to Zig, they're going to Zig. And when they're supposed to zag, they're going to zag. Otherwise you're going to collide and people get hurt. So that's how I learned. And so the kinds of stunts that I do were our high falls and lighting myself on fire and fight scenes. Passionistas: What projects did you do? Amy: Oh gosh. Like I did a lot of a lot of TV and I did quite a few like Showtime, HBO movies. And I couldn't even tell you some of the titles because they have what's called a working title. And then, and then, and then it goes to print crime strike was one of them like any like cops reenactments. I played in a battered woman a lot because I get beat up really well. So I can really, I can really sell, I can really sell a punch. There's a really cool chase credit card commercial. And it's actually a friend of mine. Her name is Melissa Barker and she's gets hit by a car and she comes off and she's like, yeah, you know, like you can't, I can't predict everything what's going on, but I can predict what's in my wallet kind of thing. And um, so she's actually a really big stunt woman. And she, she was one of the girls I trained with early on and with her and her husband, Eric, Betsy's another big stunt guy. So yeah, she's still going strong. I'm 51. I don't bounce. Like I used to. And um, and I got out at a point when, you know, I realized that most stunt people have broken their back at some point. So I was like, yeah, I think I'm going to cash it in quit while you're ahead. Passionistas: Your husband was also a stunt person. Did you meet him in that industry? Amy: The funny thing is we did not. We actually met, do you know who, uh, Joey Dispenza, Dr. Joe Dispenza. He's written a book called breaking the habit of being yourself. He's a, he's a speaker. And again, it's personal growth. So we met doing personal growth. That was really funny. Cause we were at this thing where he was talking and I think we were like the youngest people in the crowd. So like, we were both like 36 at the time. And so we were like the youngest people there and everybody else was like, well, over 60. And so we were just like, Hi, a young person. And so, and it was like, he was like, Oh yeah, I'm a star. I'm like, Oh my God, I'm gonna stop a woman. So that was interesting. But he did, he is from Australia and he did stunts for a live action shows. He did some movies, but he mostly did live action. So he did, he was a Warner brothers movie world. He opened up the universal Japan. He went to Indonesia. So he was a stent, a livestock action performer for years where he did shows daily after it, that you eventually opened your first business together. Passionistas: So what was the first business you started together? Amy: It was the gym that we started together before that we were kind of doing our own things, but then I'm an entrepreneur and a big risk taker. And it's funny, he's a stunt man, but he's not risky. So I'm more of a rule breaker and a risk taker. And he's more by the book by the rules. So jumping off a building is not risky to him. As much as like purchasing a brand new business is scary, scary to him. So, uh, so he always worked for the people kind of thing, but now he's learned to be an entrepreneur. So the gym was the first business that we opened together. Passionistas: Tell us about running your own gym, what was that like? Did you like doing that? Amy: Oh, I'm so glad we're not doing that. I loved helping the people. It was great, but God, it w like what a babysitting project that was because our gym was a little different. We were like our more high-end studio. So you didn't just come to the gym and work out when you wanted everything was classes. So I taught Zumba, I taught spin. I taught, I created my own classes like riding row, which was like a, like a spin and row class combined. And then I had employees and stuff, but Oh man, what a headache? What a headache and a brick and mortar. And I'm so happy that we do not have that during, like when the pandemic started, all I kept saying was like, I'm so glad we don't have the gym. I'm so glad we don't have the gym. We never would have survived it. Passionistas: Now while you had the gym, you developed the Five Elements of Health. So tell us about that and why each one is important? Amy: What Jamie says is you've got five elements of health, exercise, sleep, hydration, nutrition, and emotional environment. And when you get all five, you've got a grip on your health. That's what he says. You got a grip on it. Um, so they're all important, but the most Important one of course is emotional, uh, environment. And what emotional environment contains is the energy around you. Emotion, emotion is energy in motion, and it's the people around you. And it's your, it's your health space. And it's your, it's everything that has to do with your mindset. And the emotional environment is the most important one because you, it's almost like if you think of a triangle and you think of like, the emotional body is like at the top of the triangle and the physical bodies at the bottom. If you change the physical body, but you don't change the mind up here, you're just going to come back to that physical body that you were at before. So you could lose all the way you could do it. This is why people lose weight. And then they come right back to here. This is why people win the lottery and then spend all the money and don't have the money because they got the physical level, but they didn't do the mind level up here. So what I realized in that is that the mindset was the most important piece. So, so for me to really help people would be to focus on the mindset. So that's what we kind of shifted to, is focusing on the mindset. I worked with people that needed to lose hundreds of pounds. That is, it can be a slow moving boat. You got to kind of give them a wide berth and let them be able to, you know, come around to this new lifestyle. And it takes patience and it takes, but it's really takes shifting that mindset. And so this has changed. Nothing's going to change in the body and if it does change, it's just going to go right back to where it was at. If the mindset doesn't get changed along with it. And so, Passionistas: So is that what inspired you to create Improv for Impact? Amy: Improv for impact is more my husband's business, but it's a tool that I use in sales, Tai Chi. So improper impact. He's, he's always done improv, but when people think of improv, they think of comedy or they think of like, whose line it in any way, or they think of like comedians. Oh, that's funny. What I realized when I was recognizing it and watching what he was doing was I was like, Oh my gosh, what a brilliant way to, and a fun way to figure out what people's habits are that are holding them back from success. Because as he's playing the games, I'm watching the patterns. And what happens is when you play a game, there's always rules on the game, right? So anytime you add rules, it adds stress. But even though it's fun, stress, anytime we're in a moment of stress, like it, like if you think of like, like fun games where you're like, ah, and you're like, you're like kind of get a little stress. We always revert back to our habit in times of stress. So then I could identify, I easily identify what the habits were. So there's certain games where we can watch it or say, Oh, that's interesting that person doesn't like to take responsibility for things, or, Oh, that's interesting. This person always wants to push their idea, but they're not willing to listen to other's ideas or, Oh, that's interesting. This person always says no before they hear it out because in their head and this is, this really can help teams. It can help innovation with business. Because what we see, a lot of people do is like, say I'm an employee. And I come to the boss with an idea and the boss goes, well, we can't, no, that's not. We can't do that because in the boss's head, he's thinking, what's going to cost this. It's going to cost this. What are we going to do? Right. But if the boss had just said, yes, okay, well, let's figure out how that can happen. Maybe another idea is going to come out that maybe it's not that idea, but if he was open to it, instead of just immediately blocking that idea, he would be able to innovate and be able to come up with something completely new. I love Apple. What Apple did. Steve jobs came back. When he came back after he had been gone from his company for a while, they spent, I think, a few days on this. And they said, well, what business are we in? And they said, well, we're in the computer business. And he said, no, no, no, no. What business are we really in? We're what are we really in? What are we really doing here? And they took days to figure this out. And they spent time just minds, you know, brainstorming what they ended up coming up with was no, we connect people to their passions. And that's how they came up with the iPod. That was when they first came up with the iPod because, Oh, well, their passions are what their passions are, music, their passions or photos, their passions, or family emails, their passions are, you know, these kinds of things. So that's was, became their motto. And it was like, it was a different, innovative way of thinking about things. So if we can stop blocking that, then we can, then we can, then we can identify who in the companies doing these things. Passionistas: We're Amy and Nancy Harrington. And you're listening to The Passionistas Project Podcast and our interview with Amy Honey. To learn more about Amy, visit her website amyjohoney.com. Now more of her interview with Amy. How can people transform their habits to, to connect better with their clients and communicate their values better? Amy: We teach about the energy of sales. So we teach about looking at the energy and then we also teach really active listening, truly active listening to somebody, and we teach them how to stop blocking them. So for instance, if I come to you and I say, Hey, Nancy, I got this great health product. Are you open to taking a look at it? And you're just like, no, I'm like, Oh, okay, cool. What, what interests you the most? Right. So like trying to connect on a different level, right? When somebody tells you no or blocks it, you have to accept it. So what I see a lot of salespeople do is they keep pushing. Yeah. But this is really good for you, but this is really… no, Nancy, this could really benefit you. Like really? You need to look at this, right? No, she already said no. Right, stop it. And just stop. Like sometimes it's better just not to sell. Passionistas: You really are passionate about helping girls and women find their courage. So how do you do that? Amy: And especially single moms because I was a single mom. So especially single moms. I met my husband when my daughter was 18. So how do I do that? How do I help women? I, I think that women are really powerful in who they are. And I love, I specifically love helping women and teaching women how to sell because we are, we are nurturers. We are naturally a nurture and we naturally create through pleasure. So men push, push, push hard, hard, hard, buy, buy, buy women don't function that way. So I like to teach women sales by just using their own nature of who they are. You know, don't try to be me. Don't try to be the other best salesperson in the world. You've got to be you to do it. And you are valid and you are valuable in who you are. And so that, so I, I, I, I, especially just, I mean, I work with companies and corporations, but I really am super passionate. Like when I see a woman, especially a single mom, I'm kind of like hone in on her. And I'm just like inner ear, like really amazing. You can do it. Passionistas: What's the philosophy of Sales Tai Chi. How does it work? Amy: So Sales Tai Chi right now, the main thing that we're training teams to do, we're training them how to recreate their live events to online, because it's just necessary right now. So how do you recreate that live event experience and do it online? Sales Tai Chi is all about the energy of the sale and the flow of energy and how to take whatever comes at you and move it into the energy that you want it to be moved into. So rather than blocking the energy of a no accepting the energy, turning the energy into what you want. And when, when you do get to know what I train our teams to do is to accept that no, you know, when you get objections, that's different than a no. When you get objections, you want to turn that objection and vet and validate their objection. Because if somebody says to you, Oh, I just, I just don't have the time right now. Well, that's just, that's an ex an objection in reality. It's an excuse because they just told me they really wanted this, but now they're telling you they don't have time. Right. So you never want to say, Oh, but you've got plenty of time. Or you got, because you're just invalidating their excuse and their excuse in their own head is really valid. So it's more about asking questions, you know? So when they, when they say, Oh, I don't have time. Oh, I know. Yeah. Time can be. That can be tough. Do you want more time? You know what I mean? So it's like, it's like accepting, accepting it. And if it's a no, except the no sales is like kissing, the other person has to be leaning in, or you can't kiss them. Passionistas: You talk about how I shouldn't try and sell the way you try and sell. So how does somebody tap into their, their personal strengths to figure out what their best approaches? Amy: So I would just ask you, like, when you're like, do you, do you sell anything right now? Passionistas: We sell a subscription box. Amy: Okay. Oh, cool. What's in it? Passionistas: It's all products from women owned businesses and female artists. Amy: I love that. That's great. Okay. So what is your favorite thing about the products? Like what are you most excited about that excites you about that product? Passionistas: To me, the most exciting thing about the subscription box is that we're supporting other women. Like it's just, you know, we, we beyond selling the products, we, uh, interview every woman in the box and we share their stories so that people are, aren't just buying the product. They're supporting the woman behind the product. And to me, that's what I love about doing the subscriber. Amy: What do you absolutely hate about selling? Passionistas: Asking people for money. Amy: Okay. Yeah. So then what I would do with you is I would shift your mindset around about that because are these products gonna serve that person? Passionistas: Yes.    Amy: So if you're not selling, you're not serving. So I would just help you shift that mindset around asking people for money because it is value. It is valuable, right? Passionistas: Oh, yeah. Amy: And then how do you sell as yourself is you just find the things that you like. So if you really love connecting with women, then just connect with them. You don't have to sell them anything. Right. Just connect with them. If that's your favorite part about it, and you hate asking money, but you love connecting, then just connect and then it's, it doesn't even feel like you're asking for my needs similar to like, you know, would you tell your best friend about a great movie that you just watched? Passionistas: Sure. Amy: So why wouldn't you tell them about the subscription box? So you're going to just tell your friends as if you were telling them about a great movie. I'll leave you with a little story. This was a kind of a big lesson for me. So when I did own the gym, I had a, I would help people lose hundreds of pounds. And I had a program that was $5,000. I'd be with you for a year. I guaranteed at least a hundred pounds of weight loss. So during that, I thought, you know what? I want to really help everybody. I really just want to help everybody and not everybody can afford me. So maybe I should just run like a free, almost weight Watchers type of a class on the weekends. So on Saturday I did an, a full hour. I had about 18 as a smaller town side, about 18 people that came during that entire year that I did that. I was there every week. Not one person lost one pound. And the worst part about it was there was a guy and he passed away at age 36, at 450 pounds. I feel like if I had sold him that package, that he would probably be here today because when people put, put money in the game, they're invested, they're, they're gonna do it. They're gonna, you know, and, and just think about the women that do buy your box and that why, like how excited are they when they get this box? I mean, who doesn't love to get a box of stuff where you're just like, I don't know what's coming and I can't wait. It's like opening. Right? Like, so tap into that excitement that the women feel that buy your box. And then that makes it a little bit easier to ask for the money because you know, they're going to be excited to get it. Passionistas: What advice would you give to a young woman that wants to be an entrepreneur? Amy: Go for it. Jump in with both feet. Don't hesitate. It's like stunts. Once you go to jump off that building, if you stop yourself in the middle of it, you're going to get hurt. Once you commit, commit and do it, don't hesitate that hesitation. That's like, there's, there is a lot of dead squirrels on the road to indecision, right? So don't hesitate when we hesitate. That's when we know, are we going to make the right decisions all the time? Probably not. That's okay. Stop beating yourself up about it. Take a little risk. It's okay. Get out there and do it. Passionistas: Thanks for listening to The Passionistas Project Podcast and our interview with Amy Honey. To learn more about Amy, visit her website, amyjohoney.com. Please visit ThePassionistasProject.com to learn more about our podcast and subscription box filled with products made by women owned businesses and female artisans — to inspire you to follow your passions. Sign up for our mailing list, to get 10% off your first purchase. And be sure to subscribe The Passionistas Project Podcast, so you don't miss any of our upcoming inspiring guests. Until next time stay well and stay passionate.

On the twelfth entry of our See It to Be It podcast series, Amy C. Waninger speaks with OJ Gordon about his entering the real estate industry from the insurance industry and the unique role he's taking on in doing so. OJ also suggests that people interested in getting started or learning more about the industry look into getting involved with the local chapter of their National Real Estate Investors Association (REIA). Check out the show notes to find out more!Click here to find your local National REIA chapter.Find out how the CDC suggests you wash your hands by clicking here.Help food banks respond to COVID-19. Learn more at FeedingAmerica.org.Visit our website.TRANSCRIPTZach: What's up, y'all? It's Zach with Living Corporate. Now, look, every now and then we try to mix it up for y'all. So look, dependency and consistency is really important, but even within those lanes of consistency, you gotta have a little bit of variety, you know what I mean? You don't come home and just eat the same thing every day, or even if you do--you know, you got a meal prep thing--maybe sometimes you put a little red sauce. Maybe sometimes you put a little green sauce. You know, you gotta just, you know, mix it up from time to time. Maybe sometimes you grill it. Maybe sometimes you saute. Maybe sometimes you rotisserie. You gotta just--am I hungry? Yes, I'm hungry, y'all. My bad. Listen, check it out. We have another entry for y'all from our See It to Be It series. Amy C. Waninger, CEO of Lead at Any Level as well as the author of Network Beyond Bias, she's actually been a member of the team for a while now, so shout-out to you, Amy. Yes, thank you very much for all of your work here. And part of her work has been in driving this series called See It to Be It, and the purpose of the series is to actually highlight black and brown professionals in these prestigious roles, like, within industries that maybe we--and when I say we I mean black and brown folks, I see y'all--may not even know exist or envision ourselves in, hence the name of the series, right? So check this out. We're gonna go ahead and transition from here. The next thing you're gonna hear is an interview with Amy C. Waninger and a super dope professional. I know y'all are gonna love it. Catch y'all next time. Peace.Amy: Hi, OJ. Thank you so much for joining me today.OJ: Hey, thank you for having me. Glad to be here.Amy: Oh, it's great talking to you again. So you're one of my Network Beyond Bias success stories because you and I met at my very first ever industry conference when we were both in Hawaii for the CPCU conference, and you were part of my "I'm gonna talk to three people today if it kills me" program, and we were both sitting front and center at a big session, and I think I turned to you and said, "Hi, you're sitting front and center too. We should probably talk," or something really dorky like that, and then we became friends from that. So you were one of the people that I kind of collected at that conference just because I forced myself to talk, and I'm so glad I did.OJ: And I'm glad you did as well, absolutely.Amy: Well, thank you. So we're gonna talk today about your entering the real estate industry--and the role that you're taking on is a little unique from what most people think of in terms of real estate, so can you tell me first what it is that you do, who you help and how you help them?OJ: Sure, absolutely. So my primary focus is helping people who have real estate problems. So folks who have repairs that they can't make at their home. They have code liens, tax liens, debt that they can't pay off, or for whatever reason they need to get out of the home that they're in and they don't have a solution that traditional real estate can help [?]. So for whatever reason they can't put this house up on the market. They can't make a profit selling that house on the market. Planning unique solutions to help them get to where they want to be.Amy: And so this is--like I said, it's kind of a special situation that you're creating, a special opportunity that you're creating for yourself. Can you tell me how you got involved in this and sort of what about it appealed to you?OJ: Yeah, absolutely. So as you know I work in insurance, and there are many times where you run into a situation where there's something not covered by a policy, and that could be a $10,000, $15,000, $100,000 problem, and when someone has an issue like that and they're not able to get financing or fix the problem, you know, it becomes a safety issue where they're living in a home that's potentially unsafe, they're living in a situation where, you know, no one should be living, and I got into insurance because I wanted to help people, and for the most part we can. There are tons of things that are covered, but in those situations where something isn't covered and, you know, there are people who feel helpless, they don't know what to do, and I didn't know what to do. I didn't know how to [?]. So I started looking into different solutions, and I actually met a couple real estate investors who were like, "What? That's exactly what we're looking for." I was like, "Why would you want this house that has, you know, $30,000 worth of damage? There's a mortgage on it. There's all these issues," and they were like, "This is exactly the situation that we're looking for. We want to help people who are in these situations, because we want to get them living somewhere safe, and we want to take that home and put in a position where someone can live in it again." So it just really appealed to me. You get the opportunity to help people. You kind of get to be thrifty and take something that was broken and fix it, and just, for those reasons, this industry really appeals to me.Amy: That's fantastic. So I recently moved into a new home about three years ago, and it had a lot of problems that we weren't anticipating. You know, we knew it would need a new roof for example. We didn't know that within the first year of ownership we were gonna lose our water heater, our HVAC system, our sump pump, you know, and have problems with some other things, and so I can see how very easily, even without, like, a traditional insurable loss--like, you know, there was no fire, there was no flood, right, it was just wear and tear on a house that had not been maintained for 20 years--and, you know, it was expensive, and we were already sort of maxed out on the mortgage, and so, you know, we had to kind of take out a second mortgage. It's really embarrassing to say, but we had to take out a second mortgage to pay for, you know, several thousands of dollars worth of repairs to a house so we could live in it, 'cause you can't live in a house in Indiana without heat, right? You can't live in a house in Indiana, you know, that's leaking carbon dioxide into your house. So, like, we had real problems, and people don't have a lot of reserves. A lot of people are living paycheck to paycheck. I know that's been my situation for most of my life. You know, it's really easy to get upside down really fast, not just in your mortgage but in your monthly expenses, and then to have somebody who can come in and say, "Hey, I can help with this." You know, "You're not gonna be homeless. You're not gonna lose money on your house." I can see where that would be a really welcome message for folks who are struggling or who are concerned about those things, because I can see how, you know, just a lot of people are just a few thousand dollars from disaster. I know I've been there many times in my life.OJ: Absolutely.Amy: So it's wonderful what you're doing. So what's something--I know you have already alluded to this a little bit, but what's been the biggest surprise to you about this industry? Something that you weren't expecting when you first got into it?OJ: So actually, the thing that surprised me most was, you know, you hear about real estate investors and you're like, "Oh, they're these slimy people and, you know they're just trying to make a quick buck and, you know, they're gonna offer you way less than what your house is worth," and that's kind of the stigma, and there are a few bad people who do those kinds of things, but for the most part everyone I've come across has really just wanted to help people. You know, whether it was me first getting into the industry and wanting to learn, people were willing to take the time out of their day to explain things to me, to walk me through processes. Their main focus is not how much money I've made, it's how many people did I help, and I think when you can go to bed at night knowing that your main focus is how many people we can help, you can sleep well, and it really kind of changed this thing in my mind. I was thinking, "Oh, man, I'm gonna be one of these slimy real estate investors," and really it's not that. You know, there are many times where a person doesn't need a real estate investor. They just need a real estate agent or, you know, they don't need either one of those things. They need help managing their cash flows, right? They're just spending too much on their discretionary spending, and that's taking away from their needs. And just being able to have those conversations--like, I went and got my real estate license also so that I could help those folks who need, you know, a traditional solution. And, you know, I partnered with some credit repair and some budgeting specialists who can talk to people about money management and focusing on taking care of their needs before going out and, you know, spending on things that they want, and that's really been able to help people, and it's just an amazing feeling knowing, "Hey, you know, I might not have made any money today doing this real estate investing, but I've helped someone, and this thing that I've done is gonna benefit them and it's gonna benefit their kids for years to come."Amy: That is wonderful. And it's always a shame to me when somebody says, "I was surprised by how nice people are," or how much people want to help, because we--I think so many industries have a bad reputation, right, that people are only out for themselves, you know, they're snakes in the grass and they're just waiting to attack, you know, and I have found too, as I've shifted my career a few times now, that there are always people willing to help. If your heart's in the right place--and you do have to be careful about it, right? Because there are some people who are out there looking to take advantage, but I would say probably 99% of the people that I've met at different stages of my career, when I'm ready to take on something new or make a jump or learn about something new, 99% of the people I meet are genuinely helpful, genuinely want to have a positive impact and, you know, show me something that will help me move forward. OJ: Right, and I've been fortunate to come across those people and really--in the real estate industry you kind of hear, you know, it's cutthroat, and I have not encountered that. I'm really--maybe I've been lucky. Maybe this is just the norm. But I've been fortunate to meet people who are genuinely interested in helping me to develop, helping me to learn what I needed to know so that I could help more people.Amy: That's fantastic. So if somebody's not in real estate today and they're interested in getting started or learning more, what resources are available to them or where would you suggest that they start?OJ: Sure. I would suggest find the local chapter of the National REIA. Here in Orlando there's CFRI, Central Florida Real Estate Investors. It's a nonprofit group that focuses on real estate investment education, you know? There's an ethics course that you have to go through, and it's really designed to help real estate investors who are starting off in the business start making the right decisions for the right reasons and to be well-informed, and it's a great way to just network and meet with people who have been in the industry for a very long time, meet people who have just started, and kind of be able to pick their brains and partner with them and figure out how you can come together to find solutions for folks. So definitely get involved with the local chapter of your national REIA.Amy: And REIA is a Real Estate Investors Association? REIA.OJ: Right. Correct.Amy: Okay. And so just to be clear about this, you didn't take--I'm gonna pick on Trump University. You didn't take a Trump University $30,000 real estate course to figure out how to do this, right? You went and talked to people who were really doing this every day who are in it for the right reasons, who are highly ethical and willing to help you without thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars in investment. Is that correct?OJ: Absolutely correct, and don't think that you have nothing to offer, right? So my background is in insurance, right? Well, if you're buying homes you need insurance, so knowing about the insurance industry--and, you know, I've been an adjuster and I've been writing estimates, so I have, you know, building [trades?] knowledge, and, you know, bringing whatever you have from whatever it is you do can benefit you, right? Like if you're an accountant, well, you're gonna need to be able to keep track of a lot of moving parts and a lot of numbers, so that's a skill that's needed. You know, if you work with your hands--if you're an electrician or a plumber or a carpenter, these are skills that are needed to get these homes up to code and make them safe for people. So, you know, having that trade knowledge is something that's tremendously beneficial. So this isn't limited to, you know, white collar jobs, blue collar jobs, anyone can do this. Amy: That's excellent, and I love that message, that you bring what you have and you find a way to contribute and people are there to help you and guide you and partner with you along the way.OJ: Absolutely. Amy: And, you know, that builds such a sense of community in an industry, when you know that you can't know everything, right? The accountant is probably not gonna be the plumbing guy also or, you know, vice versa. So I think that's a wonderful message, and I think it's important for people to realize that so many skills are transferable from one industry to another, and it sounds like this is an industry where maybe more than usual skills are transferable in.OJ: Absolutely. Amy: That's wonderful. So what are your thoughts on where this is headed in the future? Is this industry gonna need more people, or do you see this as a short-term set of problems that maybe in five to ten years will sort of take care of itself? Like, what do you see as the talent needs going forward? OJ: So just like the market is cyclical, the real estate investing needs are cyclical, and so this isn't something that's going away. People need to live somewhere. Anyone can come across a real estate problem. Like, when I bought this house, Matthew hit in Florida and destroyed, you know, pretty much everything in my backyard, and I did not realize how expensive fencing could be.Amy: And you're an insurance guy. You should know how expensive fencing can be, OJ. Come on! [laughs]OJ: And so I had a huge lot, right--the house sits on a third of an acre, and most of it is the backyard, so I was actually deployed helping folks who had damages at their home and I find out "Hey, you know, your fence is down," and I have a pool so I can't leave holes in the fence because that is a huge liability issue. So I called around to get some folks to kind of get me an estimate, and the first guy called back and said, "You have 321 linear feet of fence and two gates," and I just knew. I was like, "Oh, man. This is terrible," and, you know, he quoted me a price, and, you know, if it hadn't been a catastrophe, that was not something that I would have been able to do. And so, you know, I know how real these problems are, these things that come up are. And the policy I had didn't have a ton of adjacent structures coverage, and so, you know, the policy was only gonna cover a small portion of it anyway, so I had to pay for that fence out of pocket, and if I had to charge that to a credit card and make those payments, that would have been tough for me. And so I realized just how tough it is when those unexpected events happen, and sometimes your insurance can't help you or, you know, the things that you were counting on just don't work out for whatever reason, and it's, again, just something that isn't going away. This is an industry that will be here. As the market changes the needs change, and so we'll be here finding solutions for folks.Amy: So I want to take a step back for a minute because, you know, insurance--and I've worked in insurance for 10, 12 years now, right, insurance is one of those things that people hate paying for and they hate using it, right? Because if you're using your insurance it means something horrible has happened, and it's something that we think, "Okay, I want my premium as low as possible because the threat of having a claim is a remote possibility that we don't really know how to calculate," right? We don't know how to calculate that risk. What are the odds that I'm going to use this? We're afraid to use it sometimes if it's, you know, a minor thing. Who can people--let's talk about prevention for just a second. Who's the best person for someone to talk to when they purchase a house or even if they're renting about what kind of coverage they need and what they should be paying for coverage? Because that sounds like a first step to preventing getting yourself into this sort of a financial crisis to begin with, right?OJ: Right, and so if you have a financial planner, that's someone who you should talk to. There are agents everywhere. Go talk to an agent. You know, I sold insurance when I first got into insurance, and the way I look at insurance is you pay me your premium and I give you peace of mind, right? So I need to make sure that this policy that you're purchasing is going to give you that peace of mind, and so when you're purchasing insurance you shouldn't start off with how much premium you want to pay. You should start off with "How much coverage do I need to have peace of mind?" Right? So if you have a home that would cost $300,000 to rebuild if there was a total loss, total fire, and you only have $50,000 of insurance, you do not have peace of mind. You are not going to be able to rebuild that home, right? And so you just want to talk to your agent and talk to your financial planner. Understand the costs, you know? You don't have to become a builder, right, but understand the costs associated with rebuilding a home or, you know, if you're getting an auto policy, right, if you cause an accident, right, there are financial implications. You could end up liable for thousands of thousands of dollars of someone's medical bills, lost wages. You could be hurt and not be able to work, right? And so these are situations that your agents and your claims professionals come across every day, and, you know, I've been on the liability side, and I've seen where someone, you know, got hit by an uninsured driver and had $10,000 of uninsured motorist coverage but $50,000 worth of medical bills, and, you know, they were trying to keep their premium low, and you're not doing yourself a justice by saving $20 in premium when that $20 in premium is tens of thousands of dollars of additional coverage, and you don't know when you're gonna have an accident. That's why people call them accidents. You don't know when you're gonna have a fire. You don't know when these unexpected events are gonna come. If you're purchasing a policy, don't do it because a state says you have to do it. Don't do it because, you know, your mortgage company is saying you have to do it. Do it because you understand that this policy is gonna provide peace of mind in a time where you need peace of mind. The stress of going through these things, right, is overwhelming sometimes, right? And just having, you know, a professional on the other end who can say, you know, "Hey, I know what you're going through. These are the things that are gonna happen and, you know, here's how we can help," is tremendously beneficial.Amy: Absolutely. And, you know, higher premiums don't mean better coverage. OJ: Right. Read your policy. [laughs]Amy: Read your policy, but not just that. Shop it around, right? Because I had--so when we moved into our house I went through the insurer that I had on our old house, and I won't name names, but we'll call them Company A, and Company A, my premiums on my new house were about $4,000 a year, and my coverage was I want to say about four... no, it was about $500 worth of coverage on just the house, and about a year later I decided I was gonna shop it just to see because it was coming up for renewal, and I got coverage through Company B, and Company B was $1,300 a year, and they estimated the rebuild cost of my house at over $700,000, and that's what they insured me at. So I was paying a lot more--I was paying three times the amount that I could have been for about half of the coverage with the first company versus the second, and it's all about how much do they know about your area, how much do they know about the kind of house that they're insuring, how much do they know about the risks and the likelihood of risk where you live, and how good is their math, right, when they're running those numbers, and so I think it really pays for people to talk to different companies and find out, because if I thought when I bought myself--I didn't pay $700,000 for my house, but if I had thought when I bought my house I needed $700,000 for the replacement cost coverage, I would not have insured it for $450 or $500,000, right? Because the other thing that happens that people don't know--and I don't want to go off on a big insurance thing, but the other thing that happens that people don't know is if you do have a total loss and you're under-insured, you don't get all the money your insurance company promised you at the beginning.OJ: Right. So there's that [?] percent co-insurance and [?] the cash value. Right.Amy: Right, so if you have a $200,000 house, let's say, and you have $100,000 worth of coverage on it, and you have a total loss, your insurance company will say, "Well, you know what, it's a lot more common to have a $100,000 loss on a $200,000 house than it is to have a $100,000 loss on a $100,000 house," right? "So we're only gonna pay 50% of your policy payout, or 80% of your policy payout, because you weren't insured to the full amount of your home." And so not only are you not getting the full value of your home, you're not even getting the full value of your policy at that point. You really want to make sure you've got full replacement cost on your home.OJ: Right. So, again, start with the amount of coverage that you need and then shop based on the coverage that you need. So compare apples to apples, right? 'Cause one company, like you said, could offer you--like, let's say Company A offered you $400,000 worth of coverage for the same $700,000, right, and then Company B said, "Hey, we'll offer you, you know, $700,000 worth of coverage for $1,000," right, you're getting the same coverage, right, but if Company A was saying, "Hey, $1,300 a year for $700,000 worth of coverage," and Company B said, "$1,000 for $400,000 worth of coverage," you're paying a lower premium, but you're also getting less out of the transaction, definitely. Your starting point should be "How much coverage do I need?" And then shop around, and always say "Hey, these are the limits that I want. This is the coverage that I need. How much are you charging for that amount of coverage?"Amy: Yep. Absolutely. Thank you, OJ, so much. That is so helpful, and I see several spinoff topics on this conversation, because I think it is important, and I think people really don't understand this. Insurance is kind of a black box, right? I pay a premium and then I pray I never use it, and we need to be more educated consumers about that, definitely. So I wanted to ask you a little bit, any other recommendations for our listeners about what they might want to learn about this industry or where they might go, you know? Articles or places that they might just show up and read or listen to learn more.OJ: Sure, sure. So there are tons of podcasts out there about real estate investing. There are seminars that happen throughout the year, but some of those seminars are thousands and thousands of dollars. I wouldn't recommend that you pay thousands and thousands of dollars starting off, especially not knowing if you're gonna dive in full-time, right? You don't want to spend $30,000 on something that might be a hobby, right? But just definitely reach out to folks. So if you get involved in your national REIA there are Facebook groups, and just reach out to folks who are in the industry and talk to them. I mean, the best value that I've gotten is just conversations with folks and learning things that I never would have thought about, right? I remember one conversation I was having with a guy named Bill Cook, who's a really successful real estate investor, and we were talking about mobile homes, and it was like, "Well, why would anyone want to buy a mobile home," right? And he shared with me that during the recession that was the best investment that he could make, because people were calling him and saying, "Hey, I need somewhere to rent, and I can't spend $700 or $800 a month. Do you have anything for $450?" And his phone is just ringing and ringing and ringing, and he had nothing in his inventory that he could rent for $700 or $850 a month, and then he got into investing in mobile homes, and he was able to now provide clean, safe housing for folks who couldn't afford $700 or $800 a month, but they could afford $450, and it was a smaller investment for him, right? Instead of buying a stick-built home you buy a mobile home, right, the costs are way different, and so he could make that work in his business model and help folks out who needed somewhere to live. And so, like, just having those conversations and understanding that, you know, you might have a preconception or you might be thinking of something in a way that is gonna prevent you from helping people, and just really having those conversations and being open-minded.Amy: That's fantastic. I would like to ask you to finish this sentence. "I feel included when ________."OJ: The people around me are laughing.Amy: Well, OJ, I can tell you that I am so happy to have you in my network and count you among my friends. I have so much fun talking to you, and I think the world of you. I think that you are on just this meteoric rise, and I expect great things from you. You're somebody that I want to, from the moment I met you I wanted to invest in you personally, because I wanted to see what you would become and what you would do in the world, and so I want to thank you for letting me be a part of your journey and thank you for joining me today.OJ: And I want to thank you for having me. It has been truly amazing getting to know you and seeing all of the wonderful things that you're doing and all of the value that you're bringing and all of the awareness that you're bringing just on the side. We had a conversation about intersectionality, and there was a talk on intersectionality here in Orlando, and I went, and, you know, I figured "I'm a person of color. I kind of understand other folks," and it was astounding how much I didn't know, right? And so just kind of--that conversation with you kind of inspired me to kind of go and learn about different groups and, you know, I actually had a mentor who identifies as a gay man, and I had no idea, and we were having a conversation surrounding intersectionality, and he confided in me, "Hey, you know, I've been a gay man for my whole life, and I don't share that with people because I've been ostracized." And, you know, here's a guy who's, you know, in his 50s, right, who doesn't feel comfortable being himself or expressing himself. And I had known him for quite a while and didn't know this about him, and it was kind of humbling to have him share that with me and realize that, you know, while I may have had my struggles, there are other people who are experiencing different struggles, and, you know, there are conversations that need to be had so that those people are empowered, right? And it was at that talk about intersectionality that, you know, we kind of talked about identity privilege, and I didn't realize how much identity privilege I experienced, and it was really eye-opening that, you know, here I am as a minority, but I experience identity privilege, and there are things that I need to do to empower those who don't have the same identity privilege that I do, and so I want to thank you for just bringing awareness to me and inspiring me to kind of go out and learn more, because it really is important.Amy: Thank you so much for saying that. I think one of those most powerful things that we can do as people, right, not as managers, not as coworkers, not as in whatever role but just as people, is ask questions and give each other the space to share, because it's in those spaces where we learn and we grow and we really build connection. And, you know, in the talks that I give I always tell people, "Look, if you think no one in your inner circle is LGBTQ, there's a really good chance you're wrong about that. And it's not that they're not there, it's that they're not comfortable talking to you about it." And the same goes for a lot of other identities too, right? You know, I know a lot of white people who will say, "Oh, I'm friends with--you know, I have lots of black friends," which is always a sign that they don't of course, but when you ask, like, "Who?" You know, it's usually somebody at work that they kinda sorta know, and, like, "Have you ever talked to them about their experience being black in the workplace?" "Well, no." I'm like, "Well, you're not a very good friend, are you?" [laughs] Wouldn't you want to know what that experience is like for your friend? So no, thank you so much for opening yourself up to those conversations and for sharing so much of yourself with me. I'm just honored to know you, OJ. I really am.OJ: Thank you. The feeling is very mutual, Amy.

In this advanced English conversation, a special guest, Moreno Scatozza, joins us to talk about space exploration and some really interesting facts about outer space! Follow Moreno Here:  Website Facebook Instagram   Advanced English Conversation about Space Exploration: https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/g3uhm5/Ep_50_Podcast_Version.mp3   Transcription: Amy: Let’s get started with the interview. How are you doing today, Moreno? Moreno: Good. How are you? Amy: I’m doing great. Thanks. Let’s get started with a little bit of an introduction about you, if you could. Moreno: Absolutely. So, hi, everyone. My name is Moreno Scatozza. I am a big fan of astronomy. I have a podcast which I speak about the facts of space and planets, stars, anything really to do with astronomy. And I have episodes on this podcast and I’d like to simplify things for the general public, let’s say. Because let’s face it: space, astronomy can be very confusing and also there’s just so much to talk about. So, in my podcast I’d like to kind of simplify things and also put things into category so you could really see things a little more clear. Amy: Yes. So it’s basically trying to take the scientific version, which is a little bit boring and overwhelming for the typical person and put it into a term that makes it interesting and understandable. Moreno: That’s what I’m aiming for. Amy: Nice. That’s cool. Well, I’m sure that some of our listeners that are interested in space exploration and just things that are going on in our universe and planet are going to be interested to check out some of your episodes. How did you get started into this? Where did it come from, this inspiration? Moreno: Well, I’ve always just loved space since I was a kid. I also wanted to learn more. Once you learned something that you're interested in, you wanted to just keep learning like a snowball effect. You want to progress and want to know why, and after you know why, you want to know why why. And when it comes to space, it’s infinity so there’s always the unknown and it’s always a mystery. So it’s almost like solving things and understanding things. Once you understand things about space, you also understand about things in your normal day-to-day lives, and I find that connection really important and I think a lot of people should know about. Amy: Okay. Now I want to know exactly what you're referring to. So, how have you found that connection between what you've learned about space to how it relates to your real life? End of Transcription Sample. To get access to the full transcription for this lesson and the other 49 conversation lessons currently available, register as a Real English Conversations member here.   Do you Want to Speak in English Better? Amy and Curtis are experts in helping our students to improve their speaking and listening skills, improve confidence and reach their goals faster. Learn more about Private Lessons with us here   Get ALL the English Lessons & Online Courses Real English Conversations is a website for students that want to start USING their English skills! Join our WhatsApp group to practice speaking and get excellent online lessons that can be studied anytime. Members of our website get immediate access to: All the online courses to quickly improve speaking, listening and increase vocabulary All the transcripts and exercises related to each podcast lesson! Our Member-Only WhatsApp Speaking Practice Group Learn More about the membership options here Other Advanced English Podcast Conversation Lessons: [Audio] English Conversation: Doctor Visits  [Audio] Learn Smarter: Actionable advice to Learn English Faster [Audio] Phrasal Verb Podcast: Carry On and Wander Around [Article] How to Speak English Better and Improve Fluency

On the eleventh installment of our See It to Be It podcast series, Amy C. Waninger speaks with Bobbie Shrivastav, co-founder and CPO of Benekiva, about her personal journey that led to the insurtech industry, and Bobbie graciously shares where she goes for support among other women and people of color in the insurtech space. Connect with Bobbie on LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram.Find out more about Benekiva. They're also on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.Find out how the CDC suggests you wash your hands by clicking here.Help food banks respond to COVID-19. Learn more at FeedingAmerica.org.Visit our website.TRANSCRIPTZach: What's up, y'all? It's Zach with Living Corporate. Now, look, for those of y'all who are new here, the purpose of Living Corporate is to create a space that affirms black and brown experiences in the workplace, right? There are certain things that only we can really understand, and when I say we I mean the collective non-white professional [laughs] in corporate America. And when we look around--if you, like, Google being black and brown in corporate America, you may see, like, a post in Huffington Post or something that kind of communicates from a position of lack, but I don't know if we necessarily see a lot of content that empowers and affirms our identity and our experience, and that's really the whole purpose of Living Corporate. It's with that that I'm really excited to talk to y'all about the See It to Be It series. Amy C. Waninger, who has been a guest on the show, who's a writer for Living Corporate, and who's also the author of Network Beyond Bias, she's actually partnered with Living Corporate to actually have an interviewing series where she actually sits down with black and brown professionals so that we can learn about what they actually do and see ourselves in these roles, right? So it's a variety of industries that she's--she's talking to a lot of different types of folks. You're gonna be able to see what they do, and at the same time you're gonna hopefully be able to envision yourself in that role, hence the title See It to Be It, okay? So check this out. The next thing you're gonna hear is this interview with Amy C. Waninger. Y'all hang tight. Catch y'all next time. Peace.Amy: Bobbie, thank you so much for joining me. How are you today?Bobbie: I'm doing good, Amy. How are you?Amy: I'm doing great. I was hoping you could tell me just a little bit about your company so that we can sort of level set on what the heck is insurtech anyway.Bobbie: So a little bit about my company. I'm co-founder and chief product officer of Benekiva, and our entire mission for our company is to bridge the gap between the carrier, the policy holder and the beneficiary, and we do that by offering carriers--right now we're focused on life and annuity--organizations with claims automation, asset retention and data management.Amy: And so for the people who aren't in the insurance industry or don't know a whole lot about life insurance, let's break that into plain English. So you're trying to solve the problem--I'm gonna put words in your mouth and you correct me if I'm wrong--you're trying to solve the problem where someone dies and they have a policy and their beneficiaries maybe don't know that that policy exists or how to get to it, and you're trying to help people get the money that they deserve based on those policies being in effect, right?Bobbie: So yes, so--it's actually six-fold, 'cause our--we have six different modules that we've created, but before I go into the six different modules, success for our company is when a beneficiary has just received a check that they had no idea was coming. For us, that is what we are striving towards. Our foot in the door is through claims, and what we've learned by just interviewing and just statistics alone is that the claims process is simply outdated, so we have a 100% digital claims solution that also includes moving the money if the carrier wants to. So that's our first module, then we have modules that allow carriers to track their unclaimed property in the shipment [logs?], Bene Retention is taking the claims process and giving the ability for the carriers to serve the beneficiaries by using their sales [force?]. The module that you talked about, which is Bene Update and Bene Notify. So what we want to do is Bene Notify is when a triggering event happens--and unfortunately in life it is a death, death is a triggering event, that's when we want to notify the beneficiary. But on the update side, what we want to encourage carriers is how do you create that engagement with the policy holder so that we're getting that Bene information ahead of time? So you're not--right now if you look at carriers and how they're trying to find beneficiaries, Google is their best friend. How do we make Google not their best friend? 'Cause they can't find these benes, so they're looking online, they're look at obituaries. It's just a manual process to just find a beneficiary. Amy: Yeah, you would think they would've had that under control years and years ago, but good for you for putting all those pieces together.Bobbie: Oh yeah, and we've heard horror stories, even on the carrier side, where their bene information is still in file folders. So it's not--they've not even done the transformation to get some of the information online. So yeah, it's a huge problem, and we are very excited to solve it. So that's what, you know, drives us every day.Amy: That's fantastic. So can you tell me--how did you get into this space? Because obviously you're solving a problem that's never been solved before, and something led you here, so what was it?Bobbie: So it's an interesting story. So in 2016 I was working on a startup with Soven, who's one of the co-founders of my original startup and Benekiva, and he's also my husband. So both of us had this startup around digital--it was a digital documentation and e-signature platform, and he has roots in Iowa, so we--his parents were coming from Nepal, so we decided to go visit them, and my key was, "Hey, we're beta testing this product." And the product is Docsmore. I'm not sitting there and hanging out with family. That's great, but I also want to do some business development and just see what the Des Moines area looks like--'cause we live in North Carolina. So that's what led us to meet Brent, 'cause we had reached out to several people, and there was one person in particular we met, and she was Brent's client, and Brent Williams was a financial advisor, a very successful financial advisor--250 million assets under management--so he met with us, and he initially thought--when his client heard about what we were trying to do she's like, "This is interesting. You should talk to Brent, and let me do the introduction," so it was once again that networking. It was so cool. So we met up with Brent, and Brent thought he was telling us about financial advisory 'cause of our corporate backgrounds. He was like, "Okay, they look like good couples. I can help serve them," and the entire conversation--this is when Soven's like, "We're more interested in learning about your startup. What is it?" You should have see Brent's eyes. He just, like, "Oh, my gosh. I gotta share about this insurtech startup" that he was starting, and it was--as a financial adviser, he has gone through the claims process with this policy holder's loved ones, and he's seen the breakdown from the insurance--like, from an advisory angle, and that's when we fell in love with the problem. He was looking for innovation and tech folks to jion the team, and Soven and I had just bought life insurance policy because we--my child right now is 4, but at the time she was 1 and we just bought a life insurance policy. I'm like, "Are you telling me there's, like, a two-thirds chance that policies don't get claimed?" And she may be one of them. So we're gonna go--we're gonna go solve this problem. So that's how we connected back in 2016. That's when Benekiva was born.Amy: That's awesome. So you actually have a tech background, not an insurance background?Bobbie: I have a tech and financial services background.Amy: Okay. Also--Bobbie: Insurance is brand new, and I kind of immersed myself when I met Brent.Amy: That's neat. Yeah, a lot of people in insurance don't get there on purpose, right? They kind fall into it, and that's okay. We'll keep you. Bobbie: I love it so far. It's been amazing to find people like you and Tony and others that--it's been a great community of people, so I feel so welcomed.Amy: Good, I'm so glad. So what's been the biggest surprise to you about starting this venture in the insurtech space?Bobbie: So initially the town that I live in and our startup community, I'm the first insurtech startup in our area, in Winston-Salem. There's not many, and if there are they're hiding 'cause I've not seen anybody. Amy: Startups that hide are usually not very successful, by the way.Bobbie: So when I talk to folks about Benekiva in our local community, they were like "Yeah, that's not a problem. That's not a problem that needed to be solved," and I was like, "How can you say that?" And it's because they don't work in insurance. They've never been in the insurance--they don't understand the value chain. So I came in with the bias that yes, we are solving this problem, how will the market react when we launch? And we literally thought it was going to be this short, steady ride, we'll have this, like, really, really [?]. It's just gonna be just new. It's gonna be a long several years before we can get some good traction, and we have been blown away, and that's been the biggest surprise. So we know now, like, that kind of is confirmation. Like, we did so much research so we knew that there was a problem, but the fact that the market and the carriers and the supporters that we had gives us such good confidence that yes. So all of those other folks in my community who said "You don't have a problem," I do. I'm solving a problem. So that's been--but what's funny though is the same people that, when Brent talks to them, they're just enamored by the problem we're solving, but when I pitch it's kind of like, "Yeah, you don't have a problem." So I get some type of a bias sometimes, and I'm wondering what it could be, but... oh, I know what it is. Never mind. Amy: Imagine that. So yeah, I know people who will hire--I have talked to a couple women entrepreneurs who have hired men to go in and say that they're the boss to get money, to get clients, to close deals, and because for some reason when it comes from a man it's a great idea, so they just make that work for them. So I guess it's good that you have a partnership with someone who--Bobbie: Yeah, and we work so well as a team, and honestly from a Benekiva perspective, our entire team, we're just one big family. But he even recognizes, you know, that we do a lot of partnering when it comes to--'cause he's done sales all of his career, right, and I've been in tech, so I've learned a lot, and we've just been jointly doing selling, and what we've found is super powerful is when you have a male dynamic and when you have a female dynamic in the room trying to work with problems, right? I come at it from a different angle. He comes it at from a different angle. And we have just made that work so good, and it's actually what makes our company unique, because we do, we have that--we embrace diversity, and we do things together.Amy: That's awesome.Bobbie: Yeah, and he's a big supporter. He's like--he's the first one to say, "Okay, Bobbie, there's a woman in tech event and you're gonna go and present that." So I have a very supportive founding team. They push me to do stuff, so it's great.Amy: That's awesome. I'm so happy for you, because there are so many women, especially in tech, who would just, you know, yearn for an opportunity like that, to have an opportunity to contribute at their fullest, and I just think it's wonderful that you've found that and that you're doing it in a way that's just gonna help so many people. I just think it's awesome. I'm so excited for you.Bobbie: Thank you, thank you. And I encourage other women too. Like, that's--get out of that mental state of "We can't do it," you know? We have enough supporters that we'll make it happen, and a lot of our supporters come from men. So it's awesome.Amy: They need too because they're the ones with the seat at the table, right?Bobbie: Yeah. I mean, just recently a Twitter post where they had published, like, a top 10 or top 20 or top 30 insurtech list, and Nigel was like, "Where are the women founders?" And he, like, blasted [a few?] women founders, and it's people like that that make you feel so supported in our industry. 'Cause our industry is tough.Amy: It is, absolutely, and, you know, I've seen so many, like, future leaders, right, and almost without exception future leaders are young, white men, and it's like, "No, future leaders are everybody, and if you can't see that, then you're perpetuating the problem." So I'm so glad that you have those allies in place. So speaking of that, where do you go for support? And I know that you identify as a woman of color, being Indian-American. Where do you go for support among other women or other people of color in your industry?Bobbie: So honestly, in our industry, it's social media. I have a great group of core women that we support each other. Like, you're one of them. We support each other by tweeting, sharing. If I have an issue--like, I was just texting with my friend Marie, and just, you know, [?] is another one. We just have a good support system, but there's a group in LinkedIn for women in insurtech, and if you're a woman in insurtech you need to join that LinkedIn group. Add me on LinkedIn and I can add you to that group, because it's a good way to get that community growing and just encourage women entrepreneurs, especially in our industry. So I've done mainly--100% actually. It's all social media.Amy: I think social media is so under-recognized as a networking tool, and I did that myself early on. I was like, "I don't want anything to do with Twitter. I don't understand it. I want no part of it," and someone told me "No, you really need to be on Twitter," and the really needing to be on Twitter thing was like, "Okay, fine, whatever," right? And I started a little bit and I started a little bit more, and then I started to figure out how to grow my following there, and my network has exploded because of Twitter. And it's not superficial, ridiculous, like, trolling kinds of relationships, right? It's real, honest to God human people who, you know, called me when my book launched to congratulate me. Called me on the phone to congratulate me. Not tweeted at me, right, but, like, actually made a human connection. It's people who have invited me to speak at their companies. It's people who have, you know, referred me for opportunities. There's such a sense of community on social media, and I think a lot of people who don't use it that way don't recognize that that exists. When people say, "Well, how do I connect with people who are different from me?" My first thing is start on social media, because it's a great way to listen to a conversation without inserting yourself into it, and that's the first step in building trust.Bobbie: I'm reading a book right now about how to create--I'm on the chapter about how to create, like, CHAMP networks. It's--yeah, I mean, doing things on social media, I think people, there's--you know, you often get so much spam, and I think that's why people don't engage it in much, but once you can filter those people out there are some--especially in insurance, in insurtech--there's great conversations that are happening in pockets and bigger pockets, and it's a great support network.Amy: Absolutely, and, you know, as people connect with you and see you as one of their own, whatever that means, right, whether it's in your discipline or in your industry or in your demographic group, right, when people connect with you and really feel that they start to open doors for you. And these are people you wouldn't have access to you because they don't live where you live or they don't work at your same company or whatever. So I think it's just so powerful to put yourself out there and kind of let the universe take over in a way.Bobbie: Yeah, it's been the best--I was always on LinkedIn, but I think I really truly started understanding the value of LinkedIn in the last two years, because I have not--I've not been one of those people who truly engaged. I had a good following, you know, but now if you look at the conversations I'm having they're super meaningful and I'm building those relationships. Previously I was just at'ing co-workers and, you know, having the relationship and bonding at the workplace. Now, as an entrepreneur, you know, you don't have that luxury, especially with me being in Winston-Salem, being the only insurtech company, it's just it forces you to reach out.Amy: Definitely. So if somebody's not already in insurtech, where do you recommend they go to learn about this industry and what skills they might have that would transfer in or how they might get started, you know, in a career of their own here.Bobbie: So the way I entered insurtech was through startups, right? Like, I had an initial--I was an entrepreneur and just landed myself here. So I saw a complementary need that what I was trying to do with Benekiva was doing. What I would recommend folks that want to get into insurtech is find those problems that you want to solve. I wouldn't have gone into insurtech if I didn't fall in love with the problem. That's just not my personality. I don't build companies just to say, "Oh, it's gonna be profitable." I'm very mission-focused, so it's gotta touch my heart in order for me to even get involved. So I think if there's a passion or an interest or, like, if you're even curious about "Why does this happen in the insurance space?" Oh, my gosh, find a startup, and I would always encourage people to find a startup. Go to those startup weekends, right? Create something, like, an idea. You get resources for free. So much resources are available. Just maximize on that. And then if you've got enough momentum, build it. If not, then partner with somebody. You know, like, as a start, you know? So I always encourage entrepreneurs, like, if you're passionate about something, just do a side hustle, do a whatever, but just figure out, and then once--you will feel it when you've got the momentum to say, you know, you can leave, you know? You can leave your full-time job and do your own entrepreneur journey.Amy: It's scary, isn't it? 'Cause you went through that when you were an employee--Bobbie: Yes, that side hustling. Amy: Yeah, so tell me about that thought process. How did you prepare for that departure?Bobbie: I think I shared that story with you when we first met. So--it was so funny. So 2015 is when I was, like, you know, I jumped into entrepreneurship. And I had a full-time job. I had a very nice career. And when I dipped my toes in, the first thing I did was I told my boss, which there were--my employers, they were super supportive, and they were like, "We all have side hustles. You should have one too," so they totally encouraged me [?].Amy: That is so rare, by the way.Bobbie: Very rare, but I worked for a fantastic organization. And then I literally had--there's so many phases, and you've probably experienced it--imposter syndrome. "Am I gonna make it?" Oh, it's so tough. I mean, there's so much, like--it's a hard road. So one of my friends--we became very good friends, and she does coaching. She's a transformation coach. And she's just like, "You know what, Bobbie? You're so smart and you can do this," and I'm like, "Yeah, she's just saying that because she's my friend," but she's like, "Let me do a coaching session with you," and that went onto I wasn't part of a group coaching on things that initially, before I did that, I thought it was all, like, voodoo stuff [?], but it really worked because it helped me declutter all of the biases that I had and gave me the confidence. So what I did was March of 2017, I won't forget, I wrote a card and I said--I kind of planned my end-of-day--like, this is the date I'm gonna leave my work. I'm gonna have this grand party. I'm gonna say bye to everyone. And I wrote the date of September 29, 2017, and I looked at it every single day. Every single day I looked at it. So it gave me this kind of, like--I'm a project manager by trade--gave me, like, a timeline to get things done, get things planned out, and September 29th is when I left my full-time job.Amy: That's incredible. I love that story for so many reasons. Okay, so just one more question and then I'll let you go today, but when do you feel included, Bobbie? Tell me about a time when you felt genuinely included.Bobbie: You know, honestly--so the entrepreneurship journey has been difficult, and everybody has those stories, and I think I've literally felt included when--I've been on this journey in my local community since 2015. 2017 is when I really pushed, really organized an event where I really wanted local companies to meet startups, local startups. We talk about buying local, and I'm like, "It's time that you buy local products from startups, tech products. Don't go to Company ABC when another company is doing something similar. You should give them an opportunity. Give them a seat at the table." So I worked with our co-working space to do an event, and I was told that "Bobbie's legit," and I think that's--it kind of, like, pissed me off, but then it also gave me, like, this confirmation. Like, "Okay, now I think people are taking me serious," you know? But it took two years, and that's what my mission is, is it took me two years as a woman, right? And I know what the biases are. It's because I'm a woman. That's the issue, and I don't want any other woman to ever feel like they're not included earlier on in their journey. I felt included, and now I'm never gonna let anybody else not feel included until they've proven themselves. There's no need. There's no need.Amy: That's so beautiful, and I love that, that it took somebody else saying "You're legit." And how many of us struggle with that feeling of "I won't be accepted. They won't think I'm really supposed to be here," right? You know, Amy Cuddy, who did the TED talk famously on, you know, power poses and, you know, she talks about, "Oh, well, I'm not supposed to be here" because she had been in an accident and lost some of her IQ, you know, even though she had been on this meteoric rise. Then that was kind of taken away from her, at least in her own mind, and I think so many of us feel like we're just not supposed to be here, and when somebody else says, "No, no, no, you're legit," or, you know, someone that we really admire, you know, talks to us as an equal or, you know, or treats us that way. I just think that has such a profound impact. And you know what? It costs nothing.Bobbie: Yeah, it costs nothing. It's just you have to have an open mind and an open heart.Amy: Exactly. Bobbie, thank you so much for being my guest today. I greatly appreciate your time and your talents and I look forward to so much more from you.Bobbie: Thank you. Thank you so much.

In our fourth See It to Be It podcast interview, Amy C. Waninger chats with Chris N. West, an opening keynote speaker and seminar leader on digital marketing. His talks have been presented to teams in Germany, Canada, and the UK. His career has taken him to 48 states. He is the Founder of LR Training Solutions, a corporate training company based in Houston, Texas. These discussions highlight professional role models in a variety of industries, and our goal is to draw attention to the vast array of possibilities available to emerging and aspiring professionals, with particular attention paid to support black and brown professionals. Check out some of the SI2BI blogs we've posted while you wait for the next episode!Connect with Chris on LinkedIn and check out LR Training Solutions!He also has Twitter and Instagram!Visit our website!TRANSCRIPTZach: What's up, y'all? It's Zach with Living Corporate. Now, look, every now and then we try to mix it up for y'all, 'cause--so look, dependency and consistency is really important, but even within those lanes of consistency, you gotta have a little bit of variety, you know what I mean? You don't come home and just eat the same thing every day, or even if you do--you know, you got a meal prep thing--maybe sometimes you put a little red sauce. Maybe sometimes you put a little green sauce. You know, you gotta just, you know, mix it up from time to time. Maybe sometimes you grill it. Maybe sometimes you saute. Maybe sometimes you rotisserie. You gotta just--am I hungry? Yes, I'm hungry, y'all. My bad. Listen, check it out. We have another entry for y'all from our See It to Be It series. Amy C. Waninger, CEO of Lead at Any Level as well as the author of Network Beyond Bias, she's actually been a member of the team for a while now, so shout-out to you, Amy. Yes, thank you very much for all of your work here. And part of her work has been in driving this series called See It to Be It, and the purpose of the series is to actually highlight black and brown professionals in these prestigious roles, like, within industries that maybe we--and when I say we I mean black and brown folks, I see y'all--may not even know exist or envision ourselves in, hence the name of the series, right? So check this out. We're gonna go ahead and transition from here. The next thing you're gonna hear is an interview with Amy C. Waninger and a super dope professional. I know y'all are gonna love it. Catch y'all next time. Peace.Amy: Hi, Chris. Thanks for joining me.Chris: No problem. It's good to be here.Amy: Thank you. So as you know, this series is designed to help young people, particularly young people of color, see all of the opportunities that are available to them in their careers, in the economy, and we're gonna spend a little time later just talking about specific support systems available to people of color in your industry, but first, can you just tell me a little bit about how you got involved in digital marketing, then how that evolved into a speaking career?Chris: Okay, sure. How I started, it was a while ago. I got my degree in marketing, and then I got a job at Google as a marketing specialist, and through that job, part of it was we would go around the country to talk to small business owners about how to use Google products to grow. So this was anything from Google+, Google advertisements, Google map listings, and pretty much all of the Google tools that can help a small business and also a large company out as well. So through that experience, it really helped me figure out what I would like to do long-term in the future and what it meant to me to do that for small business owners and other organizations. And once I started doing that training through all of those small business workshops, that's when I started realizing that I have kind of a skill for [?] to people. And also, not only that, but skill in digital marketing in general. So I got certified a while back in some of the e-marketing topics and decided to keep pursuing it over time. So then I ended up learning more about the industry as far as speaking after my Google experience, when I started researching more about it.Amy: So was your background--before you went to Google, was your background in marketing or was it in technology?Chris: It was in marketing actually. So yeah, it was a degree in marketing. Some of the companies I've worked for in the past, it was specifically marketing jobs, and that's before even Google. And the good thing about my experience at Google is that I would do about two to three I would say different jobs every six months, and I got to really learn what I would like to do long-term. Amy: The reason I asked about your background before you went to Google is I think a lot of people think of Google as a tech company, and if you're outside looking in you might think "Well, how would somebody without a technical background get into a tech company?" And I think the lesson from your story is that marketing is a skill that's transferable to a lot of different industries, including tech, and so we have to think not just about our industry but also about our function and how that function can be used in different industries. Have you found that to be true?Chris: Yeah, that's true. I never really thought of it that way, but yeah, that makes sense. Like, doing something that you can use in different industries as well. Because even as I was there, I was probably, say, out of 100 people, I would say maybe 10 people, you know, were minorities. Yeah, so I think it's still a challenge for them as well as far as being more diverse with the teams that they have, and especially the marketing team I was a part of, it was rare to have diversity. But yeah, having something that you can transfer to go to multiple industries and try to figure out how to stand out is really important.Amy: That's great. And so what was the biggest surprise to you about--you know, as you kind of went through school and you decided, like, marketing was gonna be your focus, once you got into the work world, what surprised you about the job or about the function that you didn't expect while you were in school?Chris: Oh, okay. I didn't expect to have to kind of, like, have to deal with the politics side of everything, you know? Like, dealing with the organizational structure. I thought I would just get the job, everybody would be fun and happy, no issues, no drama. [laughs] You know? But going in there and learning that it's not just about the job, it's also about how you can deal with different types of people with different backgrounds within the organization? So that's one of the main things I learned, and then also being able to be a leader and communicating your ideas, where as before, when I was in college, I was kind of on the quiet side, you know? So, like, learning in corporate, you have to kind of, like, communicate your ideas to the right people. So that's the one thing that I've tried to get better at over time, right, when I got into the workforce.Amy: Yeah. I think so much of success in an office or success in a business is not doing good work. I think--so I know a lot of women and a lot of people of color, we tend to suffer from impostor syndrome. We're worried that we have to kind of prove ourselves and prove that we're good enough to be where we are, and I think what we tend to miss is the political side, and it's we're spending so much time with our heads down trying to do the best job we can that we don't take time to make sure that other people know that we're doing a good job. Have you found that to be the case?Chris: Yeah, I think that's true with many people that I've met in the past as far as anybody trying to go after, like, their goals. I think people have so much--many people, when they get into the workforce, they get so much experience, but nobody knows about the experience, you know? It's like everybody, so many of you are doing awesome things, and then they don't even put it on their LinkedIn profile what they've done, you know? They don't have a--if they're trying to market and they don't have a website to showcase what they've done. And I guess some people think it might be bragging and everything, but you've got to think about who's gonna tell the story. You know, who is really gonna tell your story, and in general, no one's really--not many people are gonna know what experiences you've had unless you tell somebody or you say exactly what you did. So you just--I feel like people gotta spend time to learn how to market theirselves and kind of showcase things that stand out with their career. Amy: Absolutely. Building a personal brand is so important, and it starts--whether you're doing it intentionally or not, it starts the minute you step into the job.Chris: Yep, the minute. Yeah, it definitely changes pretty quickly. [laughs] Especially if you're trying to network within the organization and trying to get promotions. [?]. It's not just about the good work you're doing.Amy: Yep. So your brand is really what other people are saying about you, and if other people don't know that you're there, then you don't have a brand, and that's tough. It's tough to overcome that. So I always tell people, "Look, it's not bragging if it's true." So if you've actually done it you better speak up, 'cause it's not bragging if it's true.Chris: Somebody else is going to speak up for theirs though, right? You gotta stand out these days.Amy: So if somebody's not in marketing and they're thinking that might be a really good field for them, first of all, what characteristics or what strengths do you think play well in a marketing space for a person?Chris: For a person? I would say being able to look at things and figure out how to make things better, how can you improve awareness about a brand. A lot of it I feel, when it comes to marketing, you gotta have new ideas on a constant basis. So if you're the type of person that is always looking at how to make something better or maybe make something look better or you're able to connect with multiple people, I think it's definitely a good career. And as far as--there's so many different types of marketing. There's marketing yourself and then marketing at a corporation level, and if you work at the corporation level you really need to know, like, the latest trends or what's going on, what companies are using to market their organization, and these days it's not about just being able to design a brochure anymore or just being able to create a logo, it's more so people want everything, you know? They want you to know about social media, something about it. You don't have to be a complete expert, but you need to know what's going on out there as far as, like, the different channels. E-mail marketing, social media, things like that.Amy: And so if somebody sees themselves in that profile, that they're an idea person and they like staying up on trends and that sort of thing, where can they go? What kind of resources are out there to help people learn more about the industry, learn more about the function and kind of feel out if it's a good fit for them?Chris: I would say the American Marketing Association. That's where I started. That's where I got a lot of my experience, and over there you're gonna meet people that that's what they do on a daily basis for a full-time job. They're marketing managers, marketing specialists, directors, executives. So pretty much everybody [?] goes there. So they have the national level, and of course they have, like, pretty much a lot of local chapters on the professional level in pretty much all of the major cities. And even if you're a student, they have, like, a college [?], which was a part of when I was a college student. So that's the best way to start. So every month they'll give you what's new, what's going on, and they'll give you ideas on how you can stay up to date. Amy: That's great. And so I'm guessing since you're a speaker you do a lot of work with the Association now. Probably on the other side, right?Chris: Yeah. You know what? I haven't really started. I plan on it in the future, you know? [?] But I do work with other associations, but yeah, that is definitely a plus that comes with me being a part of it. I'm probably more likely to be able to speak at some of those events, so yep.Amy: So I think it's interesting, because it took me so long to even realize that--so I'm a first-generation professional, and it took me so many years to realize that associations even existed and what they were for and how I could use them, you know? And to me it's a great tragedy of my career that I didn't figure that out sooner. And it's funny, because I've done a few of these interviews now, and every time I ask somebody "How do people learn more?" They always mention an association, and I wish I would have asked that question when I was younger to people who were experienced in different fields.Chris: Yeah. It's like--so many people that go to the associations, it's part of the same goal, you know? They're all trying to reach the same goal, but then what they're doing [is] they're trying to look for new ideas from other people, and it's just, like, a good environment, and it's not--I feel like it's different from just going to a networking event, 'cause a networking event, you have so many people with different types of goals. Some people are looking for a job. Some people are looking to network for business. So it's like... usually those don't work out, but if you go to an association, it's specifically what you need. So, like, targeted basically.Amy: Exactly, and they usually offer educational sessions at their meetings or their conferences, and so, you know, you can find something depending on what your skill level is or your experience level. You can find something that is applicable to you, and then you can network with people who have similar experience or more experience and get involved and really learn and kind of build a name for yourself within your industry just by volunteering, right?Chris: Yeah, just by volunteering. Yeah, that's a good way to really get to know the right people in there. So volunteer your time whenever you can, whether it's local or national. I highly recommended it.Amy: Excellent. So can you tell me a little bit about what you think about the current or future talent demands in marketing? Do you think that this is an industry or function that's going to need to staff up over time, or do you see it kind of leveling out or trailing off in the near future?Chris: I think that the demand is gonna get higher because more and more organizations are realizing the importance of being online and understanding what's going on. So you have many people that have been in marketing for a long time, but they've done it the traditional way, so there's still, like, a high need for people to come in to do, like, the online marketing side of it, social media and digital marketing. So that continues to grow as more and more people get online, more and more people depend on it. And I think especially since organizations these days are actually making revenue from online channels, you know? Like social media and the digital marketing channels. So it's more and more needs. So I think it's just gonna grow, but yeah, definitely understanding more than just one area of marketing is what I've seen, and if you look at many job descriptions, they're gonna ask you for those multiple areas. Not just being able to use Photoshop or just social media but e-mail marketing and, yeah, everything.Amy: Excellent. So you had mentioned that when you were at Google you were maybe one of a handful of people of color in the marketing team that you were on, and I would imagine that that's the case for a lot of people of color in different companies around the U.S. I know that there's--and I'm gonna screw up the percentage, but something like 3% of marketing executives are women or something like that. Like, a really low number. They have a whole conference around it now I think. So where can people go who maybe feel a little alone or they want to get involved but they don't want to be the only in their office? What kinds of communities exist for people of color that can help them feel connected so that they can maintain their stamina while pursuing their passion.Chris: Okay. A lot of times I think there's different organizations--and, you know, if they're part of an organization, many companies are starting to have, like, communities within their organizations, such as... I can't remember. Within Google, there's, like, Black Googlers or something like that, things that are specific to a niche within your organization so, like, people can have a different experience. I mean, even in different associations there's always--there could be subgroups, you know, that specifically target a different group of people. So I'll say it starts with the associations, and then from there figure out what the other organizations specifically on, who they are, like, what kind of culture they have.Amy: That's helpful, and I think too that the importance of employee resource groups or business resource groups or affinity networks, whatever they're called, the larger companies tend to have those, where you come in and you kind of, you know, pick a group that you feel more comfortable with and find a mentor maybe or at least, you know, know where to go for some help navigating all of the politics like you said earlier and, you know, kind of getting the inside scoop on some of the unwritten rules of the workplace, 'cause those rules change wherever you go, right?Chris: Yep, yep. Or you can always create one too. [laughs]Amy: That is true. So I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about your work as a speaker. We talked a little bit earlier about impostor syndrome, and I'll get to that in just a second, but as a speaker, you know, we have to position ourselves as experts, and the term "expert," right, there's no national certification of expertise that you go and you take a test and then somebody says, "Here, you're an expert. You can use that in your brand or your title." So what do you think makes someone an expert in their field? What makes you an expert in your field?Chris: When it comes to being an expert, I would say it's really just experience. Just, like, what kind of specific experience have you had when it comes to what you're talking about or what you're doing? Because there's a lot of--I mean, literally you could just wake up tomorrow and call yourself an expert. [both laugh] So how can you stand out from everybody else? And what I always recommend is specifically getting experience. I mean, sometimes people say they can't get a job so they can't get the experience to become an expert, but you can always volunteer. You can always, like, do stuff for free for an organization. So for instance, when it comes to marketing, I've done stuff for free for organizations just to get experience, and then once I learn it and once I get good at it, then I can say that I'm an expert, you know? That's when I know the ins and outs of it. And then you realize that you're more advanced than the audience that you're trying to reach as well. For example, if your audience is small businesses and they have nothing to do with marketing and I'm a marketing person, if I've worked with an organization for about six months or a year where I help them with their marketing and then help them drive traffic or revenue, then I'm an expert to the small business. Amy: Oh, I love that. So you see expertise on a continuum, and so long as you're ahead of the person you're talking to, you're an expert.Chris: Yeah, yeah. And then also experience though. [both laugh] So I'm not saying read an article and then you're an expert, but [laughs]--Amy: Right, actually knowing how to do it. No, I think that's brilliant. So have you struggled with impostor syndrome yourself?Chris: Yeah, I think so. I mean, sometimes--I'm trying to remember what impostor syndrome is. It's "not good enough," right?Amy: Yeah. It's the feeling that, like, the more you know, the more you feel like you don't know, so you never quite feel like you've arrived, or you feel like--the way I've experienced it is I feel like people are going to find out that I'm just faking it. And so, you know, the way that manifests itself for me is I have, like, a wall full of certifications to prove to myself that I'm not just faking it, right? [laughs] So what does that look like for you?Chris: Oh, okay. Yeah, that does happen, you know? Like, I feel like, depending on your--I mean, for me it was more so like since I was younger I started doing some of that speaking stuff, like, younger, and then of course being a minority I kind of have to say--I feel like I have to say every single thing that I've done, you know, because if I don't they're gonna go, "Oh, this guy doesn't know what he's talking about," you know? [laughs] So yeah, it does feel that way sometimes. It does feel like that sometimes, but I start to remember that "Okay, I do have legitimate experience," and I start to look at what have been the testimonials? You know, what have been the reviews? After the event, I look at the reviews. That kind of helps me understand that "Okay, I feel like I am at that level that I'm at right now." But yeah, I feel like it's a constant struggle, especially when you're trying to move forward. So, like, when I first started, I was so used to doing, like, really small events that I thought "Okay, I can't do an event with more than 10 people, you know?" [laughs] Like, and then realizing, like, just trying stuff and realizing "It's okay." You gotta grow somehow, right?Amy: Yeah. No, I think that's great, and I like that, that, you know, you just keep growing and just keep taking the steps. I think that's so important. Do you feel like you have to clear a higher bar than others? You said that, you know, you feel like because you're black you have to, like, list everything you've ever done so that people understand that you're the real deal. Do you feel like that there's a bar and then there's a bar for you that's higher?Chris: Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I definitely feel that way, 'cause you have to--'cause yeah, I look at it as... when people see, like, people like myself, since I'm black, you know, they don't really see this type of person in that position, you know? Like, you don't see that many minority speakers out there, or even just like I said, like, when it comes to marketing and tech companies. Since they don't see it that much, they probably automatically assume that you don't know what you're talking about, you know? [laughs] There's been times where I walk in to the presentation and people don't think I'm the presenter. You know, they probably don't think I'm the presenter, so I have to, like, really show up and meet all of the expectations, and I feel like I have to do a little bit more too. So I gotta kinda give 110%, you know, instead of just trying to give an 80% or 70%, you know, and getting by. And people can get by, you know, but if you're in a different category, I feel like you do have to put a little bit more effort in. And I think one challenge is that initial reaction too. Initially when people see you, then after they hear your content and everything like that, that's when they kind of understand "Okay, this person is an expert," but the challenge is the beforehand. You know? What matters is before, right? In order to get a client, you still have to present yourself effectively and show that you know what you're doing. So that's where the challenge is. Like, everybody can like you, but it's like you still have to get that client first, right? [laughs] So there's the bar, right? Yep.Amy: Yeah. No, I definitely--I can definitely see how that's true, and I think the more differences a person has relative to the larger group the higher that bar gets and the more hurdles you have to clear and the more you have to prove yourself, you know? And that can be exhausting. I was a woman in tech for 20 years, and, you know, I would have men much older than me--when I was younger at least--who would say, "Oh, you're a really good programmer for a girl." I was like, "Hm. You know what? I fixed your code." [laughs] But they didn't want to hear that, right? So yeah, I can see how that could be a life-long frustration. Now that I'm older, I think that it's not as bad for me personally, but, you know, I'll never outgrow being a woman, right? I still get that occasionally, right? And we'll never outgrow our race, and we'll never outgrow our ethnicity or, you know, coming from another country or having a disability. Like, these are things that, you know, are a struggle over and over and over, but, you know, I long for the day when we can just all be taken on our merits and given the same benefit of the doubt.Chris: Yeah, that's--hopefully one day, right?Amy: We're a long way. [both laugh] We'll see, we'll see. So I want to ask you, in the time that we have left, to finish two sentences for me. The first one is "I feel included when ________."Chris: All right. So... I feel included when I'm informed about new opportunities. Amy: Ooh, I like that. Okay, and "When I feel included, I _________."Chris: When I feel included, I work better with the group and I give back.Amy: I love it. And I think that's true with most people, right? Most of us, we want to know what's going on, we want to give back, but if we don't feel safe to be ourselves, we can't put ourselves out there like that.Chris: Yeah. You want to feel included, right?Amy: Absolutely, absolutely. Chris, thank you so much for your time today.Chris: Yeah, it was great. Thanks.Amy: Okay, thanks.Chris: It was awesome stuff.

In our first See It to Be It podcast interview, Amy C. Waninger chats with La'Wana Harris, a global diversity and inclusion consultant, author and coach who has dedicated her career to aligning performance with business strategy. These discussions highlight professional role models in a variety of industries, and our goal is to draw attention to the vast array of possibilities available to emerging and aspiring professionals, with particular attention paid to support black and brown professionals. Check out some of the SI2BI blogs we've posted while you wait for the next episode!Find out more about La'Wana's book, Diversity Beyond Lip Service, on Amazon!Learn more about the organizations she mentioned, WOCIP and HBA!Connect with her on LinkedIn and Twitter!TRANSCRIPTZach: What's up, y'all? It's Zach with Living Corporate, and I'm really excited to talk to y'all about something really important today. You know we try to mix it from time to time. We have our full episodes and we have B-Sides. You know, we'll have guest hosts. We do different things. We do listener letters, you know what I'm saying? We have something else special for y'all today, and what it's called is the See It To Be It series, okay? This is an interview series highlighting professional role models in a variety of industries. The goal of this series is to draw attention to the vast array of possibilities available to emerging and aspiring professionals, with particular attention paid to support black and brown professionals. Many of y'all should remember Amy C. Waninger. She is the author of Networking Beyond Bias, and she was a guest on the Living Corporate podcast in Season 1 to talk about effective allyship. Well, Amy has continued on with Living Corporate as a writer, and she's also blessed us with a partnership in getting a special series out. So what you're gonna hear is Amy talking to a variety of black and brown professionals, as I said at the top, from a variety of industries, and it's gonna be really cool because it's really gonna zoom in from a technical perspective on what they do while at the same time hopefully inspiring folks who may not see themselves in an industry to actually see themselves, hence the title "See It To Be It," you know what I'm saying? All right, so with that being said, I'm gonna go ahead and dip. The next thing you're gonna hear is an interview with Amy C. Waninger and an amazing minority professional. Catch y'all next time. Peace.Amy: Hi, La'Wana. Thank you for joining me.La'Wana: Hi. Thank you for having me.Amy: Sure thing. I'm really excited to talk to you today about your experience in the pharmaceutical industry. Can you tell me a little bit about what you do and how you got started there?La'Wana: Sure. I actually just finished my career in the pharmaceutical industry, and I'm taking some time to explore launching a book as well as doing some consulting. So after about two decades, I'm looking forward to a new chapter. While in the industry, I started in sales and then had a chance to work through some training, leadership development, government affairs, market access, a number of different areas, trying to get a 360 degree view of the business. And I was very fortunate to have all of those different experiences with just two companies, Johnson and Johnson and Sanofi, a French-owned pharmaceutical company.Amy: Oh, that's fantastic. And so what attracted you to the pharmaceutical industry in the first place?La'Wana: A number of things. Well, my degree's in biology, and so I've always just been fascinated by science and in particular life sciences, and I also had an opportunity to not only use my passion for science but then also integrate that with my interest in business. So I had an opportunity to both live out my passion but then also pursue my professional interest around business, and the two integrated well within the pharmaceutical industry.Amy: That's great, and I love that you said that you took all of these different roles and got, you know, a 360 degree view of your industry. I think that's--it's exciting to me when somebody does that, whatever industry they're in, to see it from all different angles and really understand it inside and out. What was something you learned about the pharmaceutical industry that surprised you?La'Wana: Well, a number of things. I would say around--if I looked at specifically around things that were surprising, it was around the impact that we're able to have on a person's life and the far-reaching impact around the world, because, in particular with the last company that I worked with, there was a number of therapies for rare diseases, and looking at how you literally change a person's life with the therapies that you have, and it was surprising to me, not that the therapies could help, but just that the amount and just the gravity of the impact that we're having on a day-to-day basis. And then personally, for me, I went through a tragic event where my daughter suffered a stroke at the age of 17.Amy: Oh, no.La'Wana: Yes. And at the time, the therapy that she was given--and she's fine now, but the therapy that she was given was a product from my company, and so, you know, it's not just we hear about patient stories and testimonials and all of the wonderful things that happen. I lived it, and, you know, I don't think you can have any greater impact than that.Amy: Yeah. Being a part of the process of saving your own child's life or quality of life is a pretty amazing experience that not many of us get. That's phenomenal, and, you know, it's a good reminder that everybody is somebody's baby, right? La'Wana: Absolutely.Amy: That's great. So if somebody's not in the pharmaceutical industry and they're looking for more information on maybe where they could start or what skills might transfer, where do you recommend they start their research?La'Wana: Yes. Well, there's a number of places if someone is looking to--and it depends on where they want to enter the industry. So if they're looking in sales, there are a number of certifications now that are available where they can get some formal training as well as obviously using what I call Uncle Google, which will give you tons of tips and those kinds of things, and if they're looking to enter at different professional levels such as medical and those other pieces, then obviously they would work through some of the associations and societies respective to their field or discipline.Amy: Okay. And for--since the audience for the article series is primarily young people of color, are there resources or organizations or affinity groups within those associations to help people of color feel a little less alone in what I would imagine is a pretty white male-dominated industry. La'Wana: Yes, and your imagination is pretty spot-on. [laughs] So it's a lot less imagination than reality, you know? But there are a number of really genuine, like-minded people that are working to change that, and that is a part of what I will spend my time doing until I decide to retire completely is working with people of color and helping them navigate their careers and path to success. In particular to pharma, one I would highly recommend for women is Women of Color in Pharma, and Women of Color in Pharma is a new association, relatively new association, that is specifically working with women of color and helping them bridge the gap and providing them and supporting them throughout their career. So that would be one, and then also we have the Healthcare Businesswomen's Association. Again, both of those are for women, however men are of course encouraged to support as allies and stand and support with the women because, you know, we can't do it alone. We all have to work together. And then if they're looking specifically for, say, career or some skill-based training, there are a number of associations there. Individual consultants as well. If you look at some of the pharmaceutical companies themselves, they have a number of resources on their company websites that they can go in and first-hand learn more about what the organizations are doing. And then the last one would be the ERGs. Some of the progressive ERGs are actually reaching out and putting out very good messaging to help give some clues for people of color and those who may not be or may be underrepresented within their respective companies.Amy: Okay. And ERGs, by that you mean employee resource groups, and those are typically affinity groups or affinity or ally groups within companies.La'Wana: Absolutely. The affinity groups, not only employee resource groups but also business resource groups as well.Amy: Okay. And so I want to take a step back for just a moment and think about--there's so much in the news lately about the lack of medical research and the lack of case studies and really in-depth understanding of how certain diseases may manifest differently in different populations, how the symptoms might look different. One of the ones that I saw most recently was how anxiety disorders manifest among women of color and black women in particular and that those symptoms don't always look like the symptoms that doctors are told to look for in people who are suffering from anxiety. You know, women with heart disease is another one where women have different symptoms of heart disease than men, and so it stands to reason to me to me that it's not only a benefit to people of color to get involved in this industry for their own careers and their own growth because there's a lot of opportunity there, but there's also a tremendous amount of opportunity for pharmaceutical companies to get more perspectives on what they should be researching, how they should be researching, and who should be included in those conversations. Can you speak a little bit about that from your own experience? La'Wana: Sure. I will tell you though I have to take a step back before we even get to the point of treatment, because pharmaceutical organizations as well as the health care industry in general first needs to build trust, because, as you know, without going into detail, there are a number of real situations where there's reason to distrust the health care industry, whether it be pharmaceutical or otherwise, and without going into all of that history, the first piece is once we are--the industry is able to build trust with populations of color and people of color, then they'll have those folks willing to participate in clinical trials, because it starts there. These therapies are based on trials, and so there are a number of organizations and people who are working towards increasing the representation of people of color in clinical trials, but then also making sure that those therapies, as we move more and more towards therapies that are customized to individuals, then we'll have the representation to see those advanced therapies really have the impact across all of the different people demographics. And to your point about understanding, absolutely. If you have people around the table from all different people groups, then when therapies are introduced or when you find that there opportunities for business development, even looking at which therapies you may pursue, what your pipeline looks like, all of those various pieces, when you have well-represented diversity around the table, then you're better able to meet those needs, and what we're finding now--even though of course we're talking about the actual treatment of patients, when you look at the development of business, you're seeing more and more large pharmaceutical companies going into emerging markets. Now, how do you go into an emerging market if no one around the table has been there? So yes, not only is it needed for the actual therapies themselves, it's needed for business and sustainability.Amy: Absolutely. And I would imagine the ERGs and BRGs play a large role in that, in helping companies identify those companies and tailor maybe their messaging or their approach to those opportunities as well.La'Wana: Well, yes and. [both laugh] I say yes and because they CAN. Now, whether or not they're actually being utilized that way, that depends on the organization because every organization is in a different place on their respective diversity and inclusion journey. So you'll have some organizations that are more savvy, more sophisticated, they actually have the business working hand-in-hand with the ERGs or BRGs, and they're utilizing them in that manner. Then you have others where the ERGs and even some BRGs are more about social activity and awareness. Now, both are needed, it's just that one is on the early end of the spectrum when you look at diversity and inclusion maturity and the other is further along and more sophisticated. So yes is the answer that it should be that way, and that is one of the ideal ways of really leveraging that population, but it's not happening in all cases.Amy: No, that's understandable, and I think that's true across all industries where, you know, companies are maybe, you know, not as far along on the path as they ought to be or would like to be. I hate to use ought to be or should language, but I certainly think that they should be there, right? [laughs] We should have been working on this from the beginning. This shouldn't be something that "Oh, well, you know, it's--we're almost in 2020, and now we're gonna start including people from our communities in our decision-making." It's crazy that it's taken this long, but--[laughs]La'Wana: It's mind-boggling.Amy: It is.La'Wana: You know? And I mentioned the book earlier, and I'll go ahead and just note that here, is that that's why I wrote the book. The book is Diversity Beyond Lip Service: A Coaching Guide for Challenging Bias, and that, what you just said, is one of the pieces that's at the heart of the book. It's time to move beyond lip service. We've been talking about diversity and inclusion for decades, and the reality is, and the data bears out, the fact that the things that we saw the barriers, they're not true barriers. There's more than enough women to have positions in leadership and be on boards. There's more than enough people of color who are qualified applicants and able to do a stellar job and performance. That's not the real issue. So to your point, yes, we've been talking about it, and we've actually had some action towards moving the needle, it's just that we're not seeing the results that we should at this point, and it's time to put the accountability measures in place the same as we would for any other business metric that's underperforming.Amy: Absolutely. Thank you for that. Now, when does your book come out? La'Wana: May. It'll be out May 28th officially, but there will be some copies, you know, available in April. So we're right there. Amy: Oh, that's wonderful. Congratulations on that. That's a huge accomplishment.La'Wana: Well, thank you. I hope it helps. [laughs]Amy: [laughs] I hope so too. I cannot wait to get my hands on the book. There are actions at the company level that need to happen and then there are actions at the individual level that need to happen, you know, in every conversation, in every room, in every meeting, and, you know, we need all hands on deck. I say at the end of my own book that, you know, look, we've got big organizations with lots of problems to solve. We can't have anybody sitting on the sidelines, and we certainly can't afford to put anyone there.La'Wana: Absolutely, and that includes white men. Amy: That absolutely does, and we need them to jump right in and, you know, grab hands with the rest of us. You know, I always liken it to a Red Rover game. Did you play Red Rover when you were a kid?La'Wana: Oh, absolutely.Amy: Yeah, and everybody joins hands--La'Wana: [?] Red Rover right over, yeah. [laughs]Amy: Yeah. You try to keep, like, the one person from breaking through, and my thing is no, everybody joins hands and runs for it, you know? We'll all get there together, and that's how it should be.La'Wana: Absolutely.Amy: Fantastic. So tell me a little bit about the consulting work that you're doing or that you plan to be doing and what's that look like. Who are your clients and how will you help them?La'Wana: Sure, absolutely. The good news is I have a clean slate. My last official day in the pharmaceutical industry was 12/31 of 2018, so I am only two months out. So I'm still answering some of those questions, but I'll tell you what my model is. What I've done thus far is to of course write the book, and I've built some companion or collateral pieces to support the book, because my vision is not just to have a book that's a good read. We have some more rich dialogue, and it's another day in the world of diversity and inclusion. My plan is to work on the how, so I have developed what I call inclusion coaching, and it focuses on diversity and inclusion from the inside out, because I feel thus far we've only focused--the majority of D&I work has focused on the outside in. We tell people what to think, what to say, how to behave, all of those things where we're giving it to them from the outside in. My approach is that we start with where a person is and for them to go deep internally to realize what are your biases, what are your preferences, how are you wired, and quite honestly, just where are you with D&I? And let's start from that place of truth and, honestly, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Not just "Oh, I believe in D&I." Okay, but then we look at some of the actions around resource allocation, hiring practices, firing practices, development and promotion, we don't see the actions line up with the words, and I believe that's because there's incongruence internally. So that's where I'm focusing. So my plan is to have the book, have the collateral pieces, and then teach people how to do this--because I'm also a professional coach--and put it in the hands of leaders, whether they be community champions, social activists or business leaders, put it in their hands and say, "Here's the method. Keep it very simple. Now, go use it. Go for it," and to put some simple language around how to do it. So my plan is to focus on everyday inclusion where folks know how to be inclusive, not just be told to be inclusive and that they have bias, because we've talked about the business case, we have developed ERGs, we have unconscious bias training. You hear about it every other day, and when something happens, the first thing we hear is "Oh, we need to have some unconscious bias training." No, we need to have some conscious bias training. Let's talk about what's really happening and the conscious choices that we make every day. So anyway, that is the plan, and I want to hand that off to all that are, you know, feel that it can help and then see that hopefully translate into some patterns of everyday behavior that's simple enough to de-mystify what we mean when we say we should all live inclusively.Amy: Oh, La'Wana, I wish you every success. I hope that your programs and your message take hold and take root and really transform people from the inside out, because we need this so badly, and it's--I hope you work us all right out of jobs, because--La'Wana: That is my goal. [both laugh]Amy: That would be wonderful, and then we could focus on doing other work. But oh, my gosh, yes, absolutely. I agree 100%, and I wish you every success. Could I get you to finish two sentences for me?La'Wana: Sure.Amy: The first is "I feel included when ______."La'Wana: I feel included when I'm able to be myself.Amy: And the second is "When I feel included, I ______."La'Wana: When I feel included, I--I'm at peace.Amy: Oh, thank you for sharing that.La'Wana: Yeah.Amy: It is so important that we all find ways to help other people be at peace in their own skin with us in the room. I think that's so important. Thank you, La'Wana. I appreciate this very much, and I look forward to so much more from you.La'Wana: Absolutely. Thank you.

In this episode, we discuss the topic of allyship and sit down with Author, Public Speaker, Educator, and CEO of Lead at Any Level, Amy C. Waninger to discuss what allyship looks like practically in the workplace.Length: 45:09Hosts: Zach | Ade#LeadatAnyLevel #Favethings #PatreonOur Patreon (and other links): https://linktr.ee/livingcorporateAmy C. Waninger's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amycwaninger/Buy Amy's book here: https://amzn.to/2ztwZaUTRANSCRIPTAde: “First, I must confess that over the past few years I’ve been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Klu Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action;” who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.” This excerpt from Martin Luther King’s letter from a Birmingham jail highlights a point in his movement where he was particularly frustrated, and as he wrote here, his frustration was not with those who were very clearly against him but were with those who were, in his words, lukewarm to his cause of social equity. From my perspective, I realize that I probably will constantly face opposition. My real question is “What does true support look like?” This is Ade, and you’re listening to Living Corporate. Zach: Whoo, that was a heavy quote. Ade: Yeah. It’s--I mean, it’s kind of weird that so far we haven’t quoted Martin Luther King, Jr., I think. But, you know, whatever. Considering our show. Zach: Fair enough. So today we’re talking about effective allyship in Corporate America, and honestly I’m really excited we’re discussing this today. When you talk about Living Corporate and the fact that we’re trying to highlight the views of under-represented people in Corporate America, a lot of that has to do with how we partner and get partnership from people that don’t look like us. Ade: Right. And honestly, just the world and the context in which we’re living, it’s so weird. Like, it’s, you know, simultaneously more diverse than ever, and more voices are popping up and, you know, demanding to be heard, but at the same time there is this relentless push back, and it feels like the more voices pop up, the more there’s this, like, push to maintain the status quo, just whatever against the idea of recognizing the truth and reality of all of these different experiences. Zach: Oh, you’re absolutely right. I mean, honestly, when you talk about, like, the reality of different experiences at work, right? So at all of the different places I’ve been, every job I’ve had so far had some type of ERG or employee resource group or affinity group or whatever you want to call them, but that’s kind of where they just group people by their identities, right? Or by how they believe people identify themselves primarily, and 99% of the time--I’ll say it this way. I can count on one hand how many discussions I’ve had at work around race that weren’t like, “Oh, you’re black? Well, yeah. We have, like, this black stuff over here.” Like, “You can just go over there with all the other black people, and y’all can be black - together.” Ade: Okay, so I’m curious. Ever, over the course of your professional career, just an instance really of someone being in your corner--someone obviously being someone who did not have a marginalized identity within that context, someone who really practiced effective allyship, who had your back in tense situations. Zach: That’s a really good question. You know what? I think so. So one time I was at work, right? And every time I would be in these meetings, like for a particular project, I would get ignored. Like, I would speak up, and I’d say something. I’d give a point, I’d ask a question. I’d say something, and it would get ignored. But then the people on my project, my colleagues, they would then say what I just said, and then they would get applauded, right? Yes, and it happened all the time. Ade: Ugh. Been there. Zach: So finally this white knight--and no pun intended considering the quote that we gave at the top of the show, it was actually a good thing--this paragon of parity, this champion, he approached the project manager at the end of one of these meetings and in a hushed but direct tone said, “Hey, the way you’re treating Zach seems odd.” Ade: Uh… is that it? Zach: Yeah, that’s it. Ade: Okay. So, um, that sounds nice, and to be real, like, I am not necessarily expecting, you know, knights to come up and, you know, duel people to the death for our honor or throw on their capes and leap from one building of oppression to the next to try to save us all. I just--I feel like it’s hard enough being, like we’ve said multiple times on this show, one of the onlys in a work environment. It’s hard enough when you feel like you’re just at it by yourself. Sometimes, all it really does take is that one quiet conversation to feel like you’re not alone, and I really want to focus on the concept of people who are dedicated, not just, you know, having the idea of allyship but dedicated to using their privilege and their space and their social capital and their power in ways that benefit the people around them who lack that same social capital, and, you know, sometimes a little bit of the coded language, a little bit of the flexing of social capital muscle, goes a really, really long way. Zach: I mean, it would be great if we could speak to someone, perhaps someone who is not an ethnic minority. Someone who maybe they wrote a book about unconscious bias and diversity and inclusion in the workplace? Someone who’s had many public speaking engagements and who’s the CEO of a firm that promotes in the trenches leadership, diversity and inclusion and career management through mentoring, public speaking engagements and other offerings? Ade: Are you talking about our guest, Amy C. Waninger? Zach and Ade: Whaaaaaat? Zach: [imitating air horns] Sound Man, come on, you know what it is. Give me [inaudible]. [Sound Man complies] Ade: Ugly. Ugly. Ugly. Zach: We’re gonna get into our interview with our guest, Amy C. Waninger. Zach: And we’re back, and we said before, we have Amy C. Waninger here with us on the show today. Amy, thank you for joining us today. Amy: Thank you for having me, Zach. I’m excited to be here. Zach: Absolutely, excited to have you here. Would you mind--for those of us who don’t know you, would you mind sharing a little bit about yourself? Amy: Absolutely. I started my career in 1999 as a software developer and, you know, kind of went through all of the bubbles and bursts in the early 2000s in IT. For about the last 10 to 12 years I’ve been in the management space, so progressive management roles in and around information technology, and in the last 10 years I’ve focused on the insurance industry. I recently started my own company, Lead At Any Level, LLC, and through Lead At Any Level I do authorship of, you know, a blog. I have a book out, as you know, and public speaking engagements, training sessions, coaching, individually consulting around career management, diversity and inclusion, and leadership skills. Zach: You have written a book called Network Beyond Bias. Can you explain the title? Amy: Okay, sure. So that--it’s kind of a long story, but I’ll try to make it as quick as I can here. So the word Beyond was really important to me. I did a--I went through a process with a woman named Erin Weed. She has a company called Evoso, and she does this process that she calls a dig, and she helps you get to a word that is powerful for you. It’s this very structured, important, detailed process around how you get to this word, and the word that I chose for myself at the end of this was the word “beyond” because beyond has a lot of power for me, you know? The idea that wherever you are today, you can get beyond. Whatever horizon you can see, you can go beyond it, and so the title comes from the need to network with diverse populations and with people, you know, with all different perspectives, and I don’t believe that we can undo our biases necessarily, and we shouldn’t ignore them. We need to accept that they’re there and then move beyond them, and the subtitle, Making Diversity A Competitive Advantage For Your Career, came from what I saw as a gap in the diversity and inclusion consulting space and even in the writing about diversity and inclusion in the corporate world that we tend to target organizations or senior leaders in that conversation and not engage people at the everyday level. You know, just everyday individual contributors that are maybe trying to move ahead in their careers, and that was important to me for a couple of reasons. Number one, I think people who--by the time they’re in the C-Suite or they’ve got the VP titles or, you know, they’re pretty high up in these large companies, I think they’re very entrenched and engaged in the way things are and not necessarily looking to change because they know how to play the game as it exists today. And, you know, for people who are struggling to get into that in-group that can be really challenging, so I wanted to focus on people who maybe haven’t made it as far as they want to go yet and want to get there but get there in a very inclusive way, and so how can individuals engage in the diversity and inclusion conversation in a way that feels authentic for them? And there’s some element of--I don’t know how to explain it. There’s some element of just because it’s the right thing to do, right? Not altruism, but doing the right thing, but also in a way that helps them move forward in their own careers, because I really feel like if we can engage tomorrow’s leaders today--and I kind of wrap up the book with this--if we can engage tomorrow’s leaders today in being more inclusive and kind of changing the way we network and changing the way these conversations happen for our careers, we can make lasting changes that will get us to, you know, get more diverse representation in the C-Suite. Zach: You know what? It’s interesting that that’s your answer because it leads me into my next question, which is actually--I’m gonna lead in by reading an excerpt from your book, okay? So I’ma read this excerpt. “In the United States, few words are more polarizing than race and racism, yet Americans suffer from constant racial tension, race-based economic disparities and institutionalized racism. If we are to change this, white Americans must listen to those experiences and perspectives that could inform and enlighten us. Our blindness to our privilege is oppressive. Our sense of entitlement is embarrassing.” So I’ve read your book. Really genuinely enjoyed. Amy: Thank you. Zach: Like, as a black man I was like, “Wow, I’m really surprised there’s a white person saying this.” Right? Like, I was very surprised. I’ve read content in the past, like from various authors, who have a similar tone, but they’re typically not white. In this you allude to allyship, so could you first expound on this excerpt and then help us understand what you mean by being an ally and being someone who listens and learns and things of that nature? Amy: Sure. So I’m gonna start by saying that I’m really grateful that you’re calling attention to this chapter. This chapter, writing that chapter about race, was the hardest part of writing the book, and the book almost didn’t get written because I knew that I couldn’t write a book about diversity and inclusion without acknowledging that I’m white, and I didn’t--I struggled so much with how to write about that in a way that was from my perspective but not exclusive of other perspectives, and I struggled with how to write it in a way that was genuine and authentic without--you know, there’s a lot wrapped up in the word “race” for everybody, and, you know, as a white woman I think that, you know, I’ve heard other white people say it’s important for us to talk about this because white folks have access to conversations and audiences that people of color do not, and I think until I wrote about this, on my blog and in my book, I didn’t really understand what that meant. So getting back to your question though, I think allyship is important because as you noted, I--you know, I exist in a white world. I mean, that’s just--that’s my reality, right? The environment that I grew up in--I grew up in southern Indiana in a rural community that was 99.9% white, non-Hispanic, and I was--you know, I was kind of the ethnic one in the room most of the time because I wasn’t German and Catholic, you know? I was different, and I wasn’t that different, right? So, you know, it’s been hard for me to get to a place where I can understand my role in the race conversation, and it wasn’t that I grew up necessarily thinking that--I didn’t grow up thinking that racism was okay. I mean, that was, you know, very ingrained in me from an early age, but what racism meant in an all-white community, it was still racism, right? Even if you weren’t racist, like, it was still a racist environment because there was no--there was no one different. So it’s been an evolution for me over, you know, the course of time, and when I wrote the chapter on race and the blog post on race, I actually reached out to a couple of people of color in my network, and I said, “I would like some feedback on this. I would like some help with this,” and Sabrina Bristow, a friend of mine from North Carolina, she does social justice work in the human services space of government, and she helped me with that chapter. And I actually--I kind of had started a little too advanced, she thought, for most white people, so I had to backtrack a little bit and include, “Okay, here are some things I’m getting right already,” right? By including people of color in my network and, you know, having genuine relationships, and going out of my way to find people and to build relationships across racial boundaries, because it’s very easy for us, for anyone, to stay in their neighborhood, to stay in their enclave, right? And we’re a very segregated society, especially--you know, I think--in the northern states I think we’re a little more segregated even because of public policy that drove segregation kind of under the--you know, under the covers. It wasn’t explicit, right? But it was perhaps--and I hate to use the word effective because it sounds positive and it’s not, but, you know, it was perhaps a more lasting segregation in the north because it was policy that was guiding it, and it was subversive policy at that. You know, in the south, where it was very explicit, it was easier to undo. So I’ve had to learn all of this because this isn’t what we’re taught in schools, and it’s not--you know, if you pick up the newspaper or magazines or, you know, if you read white bloggers, you don’t read about this. What I’ve had to do is I’ve had to expand where I get my information and who I listen to and what those people learn. So, you know, you get a much different perspective if you--I’ll get outside of the black and white, you know, racial categories for a moment--if you read books for Asian-Americans written by Asian-American authors, for example, about the corporate landscape, what you read sounds much different than, you know, what you might get if you are in a meeting with a bunch of managers and there’s, you know, a 5-minute section on how to include Asian-Americans in your work [inaudible], right? It’s just different. It’s a different perspective. Zach: Yeah. Amy: And so, you know, I started listening and learning that I need to go where I’m a fly on the wall listening to how people talk amongst themselves about the problems that they’re facing, and then I need to figure out how I can--when those perspectives are not represented in a room that I’m in, how can I bring those perspectives to light so that the people who are in the room understand that their perspective isn’t the only one that matters just because they’re the only ones in the room? Zach: As an ally, how do you balance being vocal while not, I don’t know, talking too much? Like, do you have any type of rules that you follow to not, in a sense, colonize the movements and spaces you want to support? Amy: Yeah. So I knew that you were gonna ask me that question, so thank you for that in advance, and I struggled with it originally because I don’t have hard and fast rules. I think the guidelines that I try to follow are--I’ve come to the realization that when people are in the majority in a room, any room, they’re very candid, and perhaps too candid sometimes, right, that they divulge things that they probably shouldn’t. People tend to be very candid when they’re in--like, especially in a super majority in a room. People who are in a minority in a room tend to be very emotionally intelligent, right? Because speaking up can be threatening, and so what I’ve found is if I’m in a space where I’m a minority, if, you know, maybe I’m the only white person in the room--maybe I’m the only non-Hispanic in the room, maybe I’m the only woman in the room. That happens quite a bit. You know, I tend to be more in listening mode and receiving mode, and I try not to ask a lot of questions because I don’t want other people to have to educate me, but I think about those questions, and then I can go research them later. I can contemplate or I can read and, you know, not stop the conversation because, you know, the white lady has a question, right? Let the conversation continue as it is, and I can absorb and kind of take that away. But then when something comes up where I feel like someone else is being dismissed, that’s when I speak up. So I have a hard time speaking up for myself. If I’m feeling defensive about--you know, like I said, I grew up in technology, and I started in ‘99, and I was frequently told, you know, “Oh, you’re really analytical for a girl,” or, you know, “Wow, you code really well for a woman,” you know? And I would just kind of roll my eyes, and if I said anything back it was usually not--it was usually not work-appropriate if I said something back. Let’s just leave it at that. And so I got to the point where I was like, “You know what? I’m not even gonna address these things,” but where I have learned that there’s power and where I think you build respect and you can become an ally--I don’t think you make a decision to be an ally and you are one, and I would never use the word ally to describe myself without first saying, “I aspire to be an ally,” because I think it’s ongoing work. I don’t think you can give yourself that title. I think someone else has to give it to you. Zach: Wow, yeah. Amy: But the ways in--I’m sorry, go ahead. Zach: I was just saying wow. Like, yes, absolutely. I’m listening to you. Amy: Yeah. So the way I aspire to be an ally and the way I aspire to do the work of an ally is to recognize what perspectives are missing, and if those perspectives were in the room and had a voice, what would they say? Or if those perspectives are in the room and don’t feel like they have a voice, can I make space for that? Can I stop the conversation so that someone else who is maybe not in the super majority in the room can speak up? Or, even more importantly, can I say “Hold on, I think if we look at this from a different perspective,” and then I can share what I’ve learned by being in those spaces, right? In those spaces that are predominantly of color or, you know, in different ways so that I can help bridge that gap and sort of make that translation so that it doesn’t always fall on the one black person in the room or the one Hispanic person in the room or, you know, the one Asian-American in the room to speak up, right? To me that’s allyship, not making people advocate for themselves all the time. You have to advocate in a way that includes them. Zach: Yeah. You talked a little bit about gender diversity and you being the only woman in the room, and I can empathize. I can’t sympathize, right? But I can empathize, and let me confess something, like, with that in mind. For me, it’s deeply frustrating when I see diversity and inclusion programs only focus on gender diversity, right? So, like, if you look at the tech space, and if you ask, like, the common, average person--we have this app called Fishbowl, which is, like, an anonymous posting app for consultants, and there are times when I’ve seen people post questions like, “What do you think about the diversity and inclusion at your work?” And most people--typically people tend to be a little bit more honest on these anonymous online threads, for good or bad--they’ll say, “Well, it’s good for white women,” right? And so for me, I agree with that, right? Outside looking in as a black man, like, just my perspective, it seems as if these programs are very much so focused on gender diversity but don’t really look at the cross-section of the ethnic diversity or the sexual orientation diversity, right? So in your book you talk about representation in the C-Suite, in chapter 33. Can you talk more about that particular chapter and the things that you wrote around that topic? Amy: Sure, and I don’t have the book in front of me so I’m gonna not speak specifically to the numbers… Zach: Sure. [laughs] Amy: [laughs] Because I don’t have the numbers memorized. That’s why there’s a book. You know, the representation of women I think--of white women, and I want to be clear that we’re talking--and I think you and I spoke about this before we did the interview, right? Zach: Right. Amy: We talked about we get these numbers about, you know, pay disparity, and we say it’s 83 cents on the dollar for women, and that’s not true. It’s 83 cents on the dollar for white women. The numbers for, you know, women of color get worse and worse, right, as you start going down the list. So, you know, black women make less than white women, Latina women make less than that, indigenous women--you know, I don’t even know if they collect the data on that, right? It’s ridiculous the disparity between white women and women of color, and when we talk about women, right, we tend to talk about women as if that’s all women, and it’s not. It’s white women, so let’s be very clear about that. White women make up--and I want to say it’s less than 6% of the C-Suite, right? Of CEO positions in the United States, and I think there were, like, 27 this year out of the Fortune 500. So we’re talking, like, itty-bitty numbers, right? But white women have better representation in the C-Suite at their 4 or 5% or whatever it is, have better representation in the CEO spots of the Fortune 500 than do all people of color, and so I agree with you. I think that it’s a missed opportunity when we--you know, I think ERGs are important, and I talk about that in the book too, employee resource groups and how it can help you connect in spaces that are affinity groups for you, and it can help you connect in spaces that are not affinity groups for you so you can understand different perspectives, but I think one of the things that that can do if we’re not careful is it can kind of divide people up where the employee resource group for women ends up being all white women because women of color identify as, you know, Latina or, you know, African-American first and women second, and the pride ERG is the same way by the way. I think, you know, a lot of times the LGBTQ community is the white LGBTQ community and ignores the perspectives of people of color and, you know, assumes, right, “Well, if they’re here they’ll find us because they’re gay,” and that’s the most important thing to the LGBTQ community that’s white is that they’re gay, but, you know, for--you know, for Asian-Americans or Hispanic-Americans or black Americans that may also be LGBTQ, that’s not the first thing people recognize about them, and so their primary identity is in the racial--you know, in the racial or ethnic category. So all of that to say I don’t think we should cut people up. I think what we should do instead is, you know, recognize that feminism has been white feminism for a long time. You know, white women have benefited a lot from not just their own advocacy but also from the civil rights movement and the African-American civil rights movement of the ‘60s, and instead of claiming ours and then hoping that other people will follow or, you know, “Once we get there we’ll reach out our hand,” I think is the absolute wrong approach. I think what we need to do instead is when white women hear that, oh, we make 83 cents on the dollar, I think it’s incumbent upon us, it’s imperative for us to say, “That’s not the number for women. That’s the number for white women,” and we need to be the ones, white women need to be the ones to stand up to say, “Look, this is not an inclusive conversation just because you’re talking about me. That doesn’t mean you’re being inclusive of everyone.” And, you know, we all face the same systemic issues, right? White women face a lot of the same issues that people of color face that, you know, people who are immigrants face, but the way we’ve carved up the problem it’s like we’re each trying to get our own seat, and what my book seeks to do is to get everybody, like, wherever they are, to start reaching out. So it’s almost--instead of one person trying to break through, it’s more like a game of Red Rover, right, where we’re all holding hands, we’re all moving forward together, and then when we get there we all get there together. And then our C-Suite isn’t, you know, 10 white men and two white women and maybe a person of color, it’s, you know, this whole Red Rover game of black, white, Hispanic, gay, straight, you know, Asian, men, women, non-binary, cisgender, transgender, you know, abled, people with disabilities. You know, it’s all these things, and we all get there together and we all lift each other up. Zach: Hm. So talk to me a little bit about Lead At Any Level. So I know that you intro’d with that, about the company that you’ve started, and you’ve shared that you’re from Indianapolis and that you engage in predominantly white spaces. So I’m not trying to be pessimistic, right, but I’m looking at… Amy: [laughs] Zach: [laughs] I’m looking at American history, and I’m also looking at the words that you wrote in your book, and I’m curious, like, how do you expect to break through and work past, as you’ve described it, the entitlement of white folks? I ask because I’d say any time we as Americans talk about race--so, like, if you want to look at the situation around kneeling, if you want to talk about even how we talk about diversity, and we say, “Well, it’s about thought diversity,” and if you want to talk about--any time that we’ve in the past I would say 54--really the past 400 years, but just looking at, like, our most recent era of just, like, the past 50, 60 years, we talk about race within the context of making sure that the majority is comfortable with the ways that we engage topics around race. So I’m curious as someone who’s starting a company, or rather who has started a company really tackling this subject, how do you plan on breaking through and navigating that? Amy: Sure. So people of color can’t fix racism, right? People of color can--there are all of these--you know, there’s, like, respectability politics, and I know that there’s a lot of code switching, and there are all of these things that happen within communities and within just the mindset and the sort of the self-censoring people of color, right? And no matter what happens, right, whether it’s a protest--you know, someone kneeling for the anthem because of, you know, the pain in this country that’s happening, right, or, you know--it’s one of those things where it’s kind of like you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t, right? If you march, it’s the wrong march. If you speak, it’s the wrong words. If you protest, it’s the wrong protest. If you’re quiet, it’s the wrong thing. You know? We’ve tried every combination of people of color doing things to try to end racism, and where racism needs to end is in white America. Like, white folks are the ones who are gonna have to step up and fix this because we’re the ones that are perpetuating the problem. So I want to be clear. My company is not--the stated purpose of my company is not “end racism in the United States,” and I know there are people for whom that is their mission, right? That is their work. What I want to do is I want to help individuals at all levels of organizations see that if they’re not accepting and welcoming and doing hard work around their own biases and their own privileges and understanding that maybe--you know, maybe yeah, you’re really qualified for this job that you’ve gotten, but you probably got there not just based on your qualifications but also based on, you know, your relationships and based on the network that you have and your ability to say and do the right things and to look a certain way, right? So if I can help people understand, and particularly white folks, right, that hey, if you really want to be a leader, being a leader means standing up for those who don’t have a voice. Being a leader means being courageous. Being a leader means moving beyond where you’re comfortable into where you really need to go. That’s what leadership is, and, you know, through the work that I’m doing, whether it’s, you know, consulting or coaching or classroom training, yeah, I do--some people might say that I soft-pedal it in a way that makes it more palatable, but I think that in a lot of cases unless you can get your foot in the door you can’t even have a conversation. And so, you know, I talk about privilege in terms of, like--in kind of silly terms to start, but it opens people’s minds to the conversation you can have about privilege, you know, if you can just start laying those--you know, putting those seeds in the ground, and then you can build the conversation from there. I think the great tragedy, and I think where privilege is, you know, just at the most basic level, is that, you know, I grew up white. I grew up talking a little bit about race, but it wasn’t an everyday conversation in my household growing up, right, because it wasn’t that my family needed to worry about, and I think that’s the experience of a lot of white folks is that, you know, we--you know, they tell us, “You just treat everybody the same and you’ll be all right,” and that’s not enough, and I think it wasn’t until just the last couple of years where I realized that treating everybody the same and treating everyone respectfully isn’t enough. Like, we have to take steps to undo some of the damage, and we--you know, I don’t think any one of us can do it all, but, you know, if we can all do it in our own way in a way that’s authentic, in a way that gives us life, and not in a way that--and that’s different for everybody, right? There are ways for me to do this that are energizing and there are ways for me to do this that leave me in a crumpled heap on the floor, and so I’ve had to find my own way to have this conversation that I feel is energizing and that I feel is productive and that I feel like is authentic for me, and that won’t be the same for everyone. So I’m not sure I’ve answered the question, but I think because I’m white I can talk about racism without being labeled as angry, you know? But on the flip of that, because I’m a woman, if I talk about sexism or I talk about, you know, gender disparities, or if I call out someone’s micro-aggressions, you know, where they’ve referred to me as a girl, or--you know, people--one of my favorites is when I’m traveling people are like, “Well, who watches your kids?” I’m like, “You have never asked a man that question. Ever.” [laughs] “You have never asked a man who watches his kids when he’s traveling for work.” Like, nobody does that, right? Zach: Right. Amy: But if I call that out as a woman, and not just a white woman but as a woman, I’m too sensitive, right? So I need--in the same way that I need to stand up and say, you know, “Whoa, hold on.” You know, “Don’t insult a person of color by telling them they’re articulate.” You know? Like, why wouldn’t they be art--like, that’s not a compliment, right? That’s a slap in the face. I need to stand up for that because I’m not angry, I’m just pointing out, you know, somebody’s ignorance, right? Whereas if you did that--you could have the exact same conversation, use the same words, the same tone of voice, but then you’re gonna be labeled as angry, right? “Why are you so angry?” And I think in the same way, you know, women need men, not just white men but men of color, and women of color need this as well, for men to say, “Hold up.” You know? “She’s not being sensitive. You’re being a jerk.” Zach: [laughs] Amy: [laughs] And kind of tease that out, and that’s kind of the point of the book about--you know, the whole part about allyship is if you want somebody to stand up for you, you have to be willing to stand up for somebody else first, and that’s what I’m trying to do. Zach: That’s powerful. No, this is amazing, and I’ve really appreciated our conversation. So before we wrap up I want to know, do you have any shout outs? Anybody that you want to recognize and thank? Amy: Oh. Well, first of all I want to shout out to Jennifer Brown. Jennifer Brown is a consultant, a TEDx speaker--or maybe a TED speaker--she’s amazing, and she wrote the foreword to my book. She is one of the most internationally-recognized diversity and inclusion experts in the country, and I want to thank her. She was the first person to encourage me in this work. I just want to thank her for that. She’s been amazing. And I want to shout out to you guys. You guys are doing something--the Living Corporate podcast is doing something that I think is wonderful, where you’re giving a voice and you’re giving kind of the inside scoop to folks who maybe feel like they’re on the outside, and you’re creating a sense of community that is beyond corporate borders, beyond--you know, you’re knocking down walls and reaching out and holding hands, and I think that’s amazing, and I’ve been so impressed with the quality and the insights that you guys provide on this podcast. I think it’s amazing, so I want to shout out to all of you. Zach: Oh, my goodness. Well, thank you so much, and let’s make sure that we link your book, Network Beyond Bias: Making Diversity A Competitive Advantage, in our show notes, and we’ll put it on our Favorite Things so that-- Amy: Oh, thank you. Zach: No problem, ‘cause I really enjoyed it, and I think everyone who’s listening to this should read it. I don’t care where you’re at in the diversity and inclusion discussion or--if you’re listening to this, you should read it. It is a great read. Amy C. Waninger. Thank you so much for your time today. We definitely consider you a friend of the show, and we hope to have you back. Amy: Well, thank you, Zach. I’d love to come back. Zach: Awesome. Peace. Ade: And we’re back. Wow, that was an amazing interview. So real talk, right next to our Preston Mitchum B-Side, that was top 5. Top 5, top 5, top 5. I know Drake’s cancelled, but whatever. [laughs] Zach: That was a really real talk, yeah. I mean, honestly, it was refreshing to have someone who doesn’t look like you empathize with your experiences and be so honest about the reality of the world that we live in, right? Ade: Seriously. I truly appreciated her comments around, you know, gender diversity and LGBTQ diversity. I think that intersectionality is just such a big thing, and it’s very easy to get lost in the sauce, but also we just have to keep in mind the multi-faceted nature of being and also the fact that under-represented and marginalized identities in general experience very, very different things in the spaces we occupy. Zach: Absolutely. And I think ultimately, when I think through my interview with Amy, the biggest step revolves around courage and just speaking up. It’s not like she had some secret formula. She was just speaking truth to power. I mean, we had a section even on there where she said, “Look, there’s a point as a white woman where I have certain privileges where I can speak to race and I can speak to ethnic and diversity, and at the same time, Zach, even though you’re a person of color, as a man you have the opportunity to speak to items around sexism,” right? And patriarchy and things of that nature. So there’s opportunity for us to speak up. Ade: Right, and I think the abiding truth of Living Corporate as a whole is we’re challenging our listeners and ourselves--we’re holding ourselves responsible as well--to live authentically but also with courage, you know? And what the conversation with Amy reminded me of was the fact that--and she sort of alluded to this--we have more power than we believe we do. In a lot of ways we empower each other, we empower ourselves, when we speak up for others, when we utilize our privilege in ways we never have before. When you group with people who look like you and ERGs, affinity groups, happy hours, whatever, all of these things exist because they are necessary and there is a space for them, but even beyond those resources and beyond those spaces, figuring out ways to, you know, plant your roots and insist that you will not be moved, in a lot of ways figuring out how to collaborate with others, support each other, challenge other people, and bringing your whole self--in a professional fashion--to work. Supporting others honestly and truly is really your call to action, I suppose. Zach: Absolutely. Okay, so let’s go ahead and get into our Favorite Things. Ade: Oh, that’s like my favorite. My favorite, my favorite, my favorite. My favorite section. All right, so I hate to sound like the book nerd but I can’t help myself. I’m on, like, my 80th read-through of a book called Sister Outsider by this amazing writer by the name of Audrey Lord. If I ever, ever, ever am blessed to parent a kid, I’d probably name one or several of them Audrey, and yes, I am absolutely willing to have an Audrey 1 and an Audrey 2 in my household just for the sake of having a child named after Audrey Lord. Anyway, that said, if you’ve never read Sister Outsider, Audrey Lord basically has this collection of essays in this book, and if you’re at all interested in black feminist literature she’s a really great place to start. My other favorite thing at this point? I’m really living for thunderstorms. I think I’ve mentioned a couple of times--again, like, I’m a very predictable person so, like, books and water, those are, like, my things. So I’m really into thunderstorms right now. I sleep to the sound of thunderstorms, and this is a complete aside, but there’s this app on my phone and it’s the only thing that gets me to sleep. It’s called Tide, and there is a thunderstorm sound setting on there, and it puts me right to sleep, and it’s the greatest thing ever. So I’m here for actual thunderstorms. I’m here for thunderstorm sounds. I’m here for thunderstorm playlists. So if anybody out there actually has a link for a thunderstorm playlist, hook me up. I’m here for it. That’s all I got. What about you, Zach? Zach: Wow. So first thing is--[laughs]--definitely I love Audrey Lord as well. You know, great work. Beautiful work. The point around thunderstorms is interesting. Technology is crazy. So you’re telling me there’s an app now that actually simulates thunderstorms? Ade: An app. It simulates thunderstorms. It simulates ocean sounds. You can do, like, a focus period. It does naps. It’s frickin’ amazing. Sponsor us, Tide. Zach: Sponsor us, Tide, and we’ll [inaudible]-- Ade: I’m here for you guys. Zach: Ah, yeah. That’s something I’m--I’m trying to get into this. That’s great. [laughs] Ade: [laughs] No, but seriously. Zach: Yeah, no, that’s awesome. Okay, so Tide is the name of the app? Okay, I’m gonna check that out. Ade: It does forest sounds. There are forest sounds, my guy. Zach: Forest sounds? Okay. Well, cool. Look, my favorite thing right now has to be Amy C. Waninger’s book Network Beyond Bias, right? So I shouted it out during the actual interview with Amy, and I told her that I was gonna shout it out during Favorite Things because I really enjoyed it. I read it. Very thoughtful, very frank, very approachable. Definitely a recommended read for anyone interested in learning about diversity and inclusion, leadership development, unconscious bias, effective representation, and a slew of other things. It’s very, very thorough. It covers so many different topics in very--just, again, approachable and transparent ways. Ade: Oh. Well, okay. Great. As a reminder, to see all of our Favorite Things, very, very simple. You just want to go to our website, www.living-corporate.com, and click “FAVES” right across the top. Zach: Yes, and as another reminder, we have a Patreon. In fact, you-- Ade: [imitating air horns] Zach: Okay… Okay, so Sound Man, go ahead and add those horns. [Sound Man complies] Zach: [laughs] As another reminder, we have a Patreon. In fact, Sound Man--so I know you just hit Ade with the horns, but go ahead and hit me with some of that royalty-free jazz music. I mean, I don’t know, you can probably find some tracks from, like, 1970 or something. Just give me something smooth. [Sound Man complies again] Zach: Okay. You playing it? Okay, here we go. So listen, I know you want exclusive content, right? But you can’t get it for free. But guess what? We got it. You want giveaways? We got that. You want extended interviews? We got that. You want exclusive writing written by guests? We got that, and guess what? It only costs a dollar to get in, baby. Just a dollar. Ade: [laughs] Zach: One dollar. So do me a favor, do you a favor, do us a favor, and become a patron. Become a patron today. I got the links in the show notes right there. Open up your phone and press details. You’re gonna see the links all right there. All right, that’s it. I’m done. Sound Man, cut it off. [Sound Man dutifully complies] Ade: I wasn’t ready… So we just got to go home. Okay, guys. That was our show. Thank you for joining us at the Living Corporate podcast. Please make sure to follow us on Instagram @LivingCorporate. We’re also on Twitter at LivingCorp_Pod, and subscribe to our newsletter through www.living-corporate.com. If you have a question you’d like us to answer and read on the show, please make sure you email us at livingcorporatepodcast@gmail.com. Also, don’t forget to check us out on Patreon at LivingCorporate as well. We’re all over Al Gore’s internet. And that does it for us on this show. My name is Ade. Zach: And this has been Zach. Ade: A pleasure as always. Ade and Zach: Peace. Latricia: Living Corporate is a podcast by Living Corporate, LLC. Our logo was designed by David Dawkins. Our theme music was produced by Ken Brown. Additional music production by Antoine Franklin from Musical Elevation. Post-production is handled by Jeremy Jackson. Got a topic suggestion? Email us at livingcorporatepodcast@gmail.com. You can find us online on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and living-corporate.com. Thanks for listening. Stay tuned.

Does the thought of Thanksgiving make your palms sweat? Does your stomach hurt, BEFORE the meal? Maybe holiday fun translates to holiday dysfunction when it comes to your family gathering? We hear you. So just in time for your yearly gathering of the relatives, from the left, right and center, we offer this survival guide for talking turkey and politics. On this week’s podcast, host Andrea Seabrook takes your stories of politics and holidays past and runs them by journalist Amy Dickinson , who writes the syndicated advice column Ask Amy. Here’s an excerpt of their conversation. Amy: It’s very common starting around September for people to write to me already nervous about Thanksgiving and how are they going to manage these disparate points of view. And its not like “oh how silly”, it’s a real issue. We don't spend enough time together to work things out, so it all happens around the table…I actually have a number of suggestions for families to cope with the dinner. A lot of people say pass the butter and retreat to football games. If who ever is host of the dinner can be a little more intentional they can create a different sort of atmosphere at the table. One way to do this that’s worked really well in my family is with toasting people. You sort of start the meal with toast. Andrea: Besides a toast... another thing Amy says you can do is get everyone to write down their funniest Thanksgiving memory, and then pass the stories around to read aloud... Amy: So you have a kid reading Uncle Harvey’s memory from 1942, you know it’s a lot of fun and it engages people more in a personal way because I think a lot of families if they are political and if they are likely to engage in political arguments the goal should be to just sort of stave that off just maybe over coffee instead of over turkey and stuffing. Andrea: Now what about people who WANT to talk politics around the turkey? Or worse, what if you’re seated next to one of them... That’s what happened to Jeff Pierce when his sister brought her fiance home to meet the family for the first time at Thanksgiving. Jeff Pierce: I had just won a scholarship for writing an essay on the importance of unions. Instead of not bringing it up he ask, “So what do you think of unions?” Because he knew I was the only liberal in my family. He really took advantage of my uncle who is the most conservative person in my family and together they were just jumping on me and I was just sitting there trying not to get incredibly angry. Andrea: So he’s trapped. What do you say to him? Amy: Okay, now everyone needs to focus- this is really important. This is when you get to use children as human shields. Andrea: I've been waiting for some way that was okay. Amy: I know they come in so handy! It sound like this person did what he could to suppress his anger and I think that’s great but sometimes you can just say this is a really loaded topic for me so I’m just going to ask Billy, “How was that soccer game?” Andrea: The thing to remember, says Amy, is that, it’s not just dinner, it’s THANKSGIVING. And with every helping could come a new tradition, a new memory, even if they are a little goofy.