Podcasts about as lori

MY TODAY'S GUEST: Lori Beard is a life coach, author, speaker, and podcaster originally from Puerto Rico. After she has raised eight children, she began her search for personal growth, and what has started as an academic pathway turned into a transformational journey. As Lori was training to master the art of life coaching and clinical hypnosis, she was able to begin her healing journey. Ever since she has empowered the lives of hundreds of clients. Lori is undeniable proof that transformation can happen when we are ready to claim it. www.steadfast-forward.com DO YOU WANT TO START WRITING? ✍️ Take my free 5-Day Writing Challenge: https://www.estherbuerki.com/writing-challenge ✍️ Find my free resources and online programs on my website: https://estherbuerki.com ✍️ Follow me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/inspirationbyestherbuerki ✍️ Follow me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/esther_buerki ✍️ Join me on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/estherbuerki ✍️ Get in touch with me through e-mail: contact@swissmadestory.ch Esther Bürki SWISS MADE STORY Im Stumpen 7 8409 Winterthur Switzerland --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/esther-buerki/message

Seventeen hundred U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) bases around the world are subject to sea level rise, which has increased by seven to eight inches since 1900. Natural hazards, such as severe storms and hurricanes, are occurring more frequently; and climate change is changing the profile of those hazards. Innovative solutions are needed to protect these bases. In this episode we’re talking with Dr. Todd Bridges, Senior Research Scientist for Environmental Science with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and National Lead for Engineering With Nature®, and Lori Adornato, Program Manager at DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, about the passion they share for oceanography and for solving future challenges by using innovative nature-based solutions.   Ensuring that DoD installations are resilient in the face of a broad range of natural hazards is critical and demands innovative, outside-the-box solutions. As Lori explains, numerous DoD installations around the world have “gray infrastructure,” bulkheads or seawalls made out of cement blocks that are placed in the water. These require considerable maintenance and can actually create additional problems like changes in the way water and sediments flow that can compromise both habitats and the structural integrity of structures and shorelines. Sustainable solutions are needed for coastal erosion, storm, and flood risks. Natural systems have been supporting such functions for millennia, including coral reefs in the tropics and oyster reefs in sub-tropical areas.   DARPA is investing in leveraging nature to support mission resilience by establishing the REEFENSE program (a combination of “reef” and “defense”), which Lori manages, to take advantage of the natural functions that reefs provide. REEFENSE isn’t a restoration effort. It is an initiative focused on building new, living reef structures through a combination of an engineered base structure, the “building power” the oysters and coral organisms provide, and the beneficial organisms that help to maintain the health of the reef – a nature-based combination that attenuates wave energy and protects shorelines. The goal is to support nature-based ecosystems that can sustain themselves naturally and grow and strengthen over time as calcium carbonate from the oyster shells and coral skeletons is deposited. As Lori explains, this allows the reef to keep pace with sea level rise following the same dynamic that you would find in a normal healthy reef ecosystem.   One of the challenges of this approach is using reef builders that can adapt to the rapid changes associated with climate change, particularly the rise in ocean temperature, which can cause coral bleaching and kill the coral. One way to address this is through adaptive biology, selecting organisms that can better withstand the temperature rise to help the reef system survive.   “It's fascinating, exciting, and inspiring for an agency like DARPA that’s known for ‘gee whiz’ technology to be doing research like this,” notes Todd. “It’s truly engineering with nature. Our EWN team is super excited about working with DARPA on this program, bringing these proposed structures into our laboratories to evaluate them and get at their engineering performance as they transition to deployment in the field.”   It is estimated that the U.S. already derives a flood risk reduction benefit of $1.8 billion annually from existing reefs. In some highly developed coastline areas like Florida and Hawaii, annual benefits exceed $10 million per kilometer of reef. These benefits were discussed in previous EWN podcasts, including Season 1, Episode 3, with Brigadier General Patrice Melancon and Season 1, Episode 6, with Mike Beck. DARPA is pursuing REEFENSE to develop solutions that will support the resilience of coastal military installations and the mission of the Department of Defense worldwide.     Related Links:  EWN Website ERDC Website Todd Bridges at LinkedIn Todd Bridges at EWN Lori Adornato at DARPA   DARPA Launches Program to Mitigate Coastal Flooding, Erosion and Storm Damage Using Natural Infrastructure to Increase Resilience for Military Installations: EWN Podcast S1E3 Coastal Resilience at Tyndall Air Force Base Assessing the Value of Natural and Nature-Based Features in Coastal Storm and Flood Risk Reduction: EWN Podcast S1E6 The Value of US Coral Reefs for Flood Risk Reduction: J Nature Sustainability

For this episode, I bring you a powerful conversation with world-renowned Alexander Technique teacher Lori Schiff. As Lori shares on her website, the Alexander Technique “is a method for living better through your own mindfulness in action.”  It can help you gain confidence and reduce pain, tension and fatigue. It allows you to connect with yourself to nourish presence and mobility and, from there, leads to performing better in all areas of your life. Lori expands on: How Alexander Technique affected her life and her journey Who the Alexander Technique is for What the Alexander Technique is: a method for living that teaches us to pay attention and choose our reactions to stimuli How the Alexander Technique encourages the connection with our self – our wholeness – and the development of conscious control (mind body connector) How the Alexander Technique is a means to more freedom, for the whole person and their whole life How it can help in class and in lessons, in the practice room, and on stage This is an information and inspiration packed episode and I know you will appreciate Lori's knowledge and wisdom and lover her energy as much as I did!   MORE ABOUT LORI SCHIFF: Website: http://lorischiff.com/ Ms. Schiff is a full-time professor of The Alexander Technique at The Juilliard School and a guest teaching artist for various schools and organizations nationally and internationally. She has been a faculty member of The Juilliard School since 1991 and was in residence at The Aspen Music Festival and School from 1993 - 2015. Ms. Schiff joined The Riverside Initiative for The Alexander Technique as Associate Director and Senior Teacher for Teacher Training in 2018. Ms. Schiff was Certified as a Teacher of the Alexander Technique at ACAT-New York in 1987. She continued with years of postgraduate training with Walter and Dilys Carrington at the Constructive Teaching Centre in London. She is a graduate of the Northwestern University School of Music in Trumpet Performance and has her Masters in Music from Manhattan School of Music. She served as the Alexander Technique Teacher for the Metropolitan Opera Lindemann Young Artists Development Program, and at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. She also served on the senior faculty of the American Center for the Alexander Technique's Teacher Certification Program. Institutions where she has been a guest teaching artist include: The New World Symphony, The U.S. Military Academy Band at West Point, The U.S. Army Field Band and U.S. Army Soldier's Chorus, The San Diego Symphony, ToneBank International Music Festival, National Youth Orchestra of China, University of Maryland Opera Studio, and The Internationale Meistersinger Akademie in Neumarkt, Germany. She has presented Master Classes at institutions including The Metropolitan Opera, Opera America, West Point Military Academy, Fort Meade, The Academy (ACJW) at Carnegie Hall, Manhattan School of Music, Maryland Classic Youth Orchestras, The National Orchestral Institute, The Baltimore Symphony Youth Orchestra and The New York Youth Symphony, Theater Aspen, MorseLife Senior Residences, and Holland and Knight, LLP. In 2013, she assisted in organizing and taught the Alexander Technique for actress and playwright, Anna Deavere Smith's Acting and Empathy course in San Francisco. She returned to San Francisco in 2014 to work with Ms. Smith's course, Personal Narratives: Global Identities. Ms. Schiff is a recognized senior teacher of the Alexander Technique by the American Society for the Alexander Technique and has presented master classes at the AmSAT Annual Meetings in San Francisco, Ann Arbor, Las Vegas, New York City, Boston, and Minneapolis. She was a guest lecturer on Teaching the Alexander Technique in schools of music for The International Congress for the Alexander Technique in Lugano, Switzerland. Ms. Schiff served on the Board of Directors of the Aspen Music Festival and School as Chair of the Music Committee for nine years and was President and Chairman of the Board of The American Center for the Alexander Technique for five years. More recently, she completed two years on the Board of Directors of The American Society for the Alexander Technique. Ms. Schiff has a private Alexander Technique practice in NYC. She is the founding director of Flight Feather Productions, LLC, an organization for creating and supporting uplifting educational experiences for corporate and artistic communities. With composer Lance Horne, she is the Co-Director of Creativity Lab, a program for inspiring community and collaboration through collective creativity. As a committed recreational runner, she has completed four marathons, several half marathons, and countless 10ks, 5 Milers, 4 Milers, and 5ks.   Visit www.mindoverfinger.com and sign up for my newsletter to get your free guide to a super productive practice using the metronome!  This guide is the perfect entry point to help you bring more mindfulness and efficiency into your practice and it's filled with tips and tricks on how to use that wonderful tool to take your practicing and your playing to new heights! Don't forget to visit the Mind Over Finger Resources' page to check out amazing books recommended by my podcast guests, as well as my favorite websites, cds, the podcasts I like to listen to, and the practice and podcasting tools I use everyday!  Find it here: www.mindoverfinger.com/resources!   And don't forget to join the Mind Over Finger Tribe for additional resources on practice and performing! If you enjoyed the show, please leave a review on iTunes!  I truly appreciate your support!     THANK YOU: Most sincere thank you to composer Jim Stephenson who graciously provided the show's musical theme!  Concerto #1 for Trumpet and Chamber Orchestra – Movement 2: Allegro con Brio, performed by Jeffrey Work, trumpet, and the Lake Forest Symphony, conducted by Jim Stephenson. Thank you to Susan Blackwell for the introduction!  You can find out more about Susan, her fantastic podcast The Spark File, and her work helping creatives of all backgrounds expand their impact by visiting https://www.susanblackwell.com/home. Also a HUGE thank you to my fantastic producer, Bella Kelly!   MIND OVER FINGER: www.mindoverfinger.com https://www.facebook.com/mindoverfinger/ https://www.instagram.com/mindoverfinger/    

2020 has been intensely stressful for many people. This episode is all about healthy methods, habits and strategies to help you cope and become more resilient. Integrative Health Coach and Wellness Educator Lori Kearney gives us very helpful advice and practical tips that you can implement right away to help you cultivate a resilient mind-body. Lori shares how to cope during the health and economic crisis brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. These tips will also help you during any time in your life when you are dealing with adversity, transition or simply having a tough day. What you’ll glean from this episode will also help you deal with challenges that may arise during the upcoming holiday season. Lori goes deep, I know you will find this episode extremely beneficial. We know that stress can wreak havoc on our health as environmental toxins do. In fact, stress is considered a toxin according to environmental science. The mind-body connection is extremely powerful. Stress is the primary cause of disease and aging. Learning and implementing strategies to deal with stress, anxiety and adversity plays a huge role in your overall health and longevity. As Lori points out, resilience is something that can be taught, it is possible to grow our emotional intelligence. Vibrant Life Method Group Program: https://kellybonanno.com/2020/09/vibrantlifemethod/ Free 30-minute breakthrough session with Lori Kearney: https://www.mindfulhealthwithlori.com/ Workshops Done with Lori Kearney: www.workshopsdone.com 1:1 wellness coaching sessions with Kelly: https://kellybonanno.com/work-with-me/private-eco-wellness-session/

Welcome to From the Frontlines, a special Healthcare Change Makers mini-series. Healthcare providers and support staff have been on the frontlines, fighting for Canadians since the start of this pandemic. In this series we’re handing the microphone over to some of those amazing individuals.   Today, Marc Aiello, Communications and Marketing Coordinator at HIROC, and Philip De Souza, Director of Communications and Marketing, speak with Lori Zillman, a Registered Nurse from Alberta Health Services working as a Communicable Disease Coordinator in the South Zone of Alberta.   As Lori mentions in this episode, her team is “small but mighty.” Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Lori and her team at South Zone’s Communicable Disease program have been working hard to respond to all the challenges brought their way.   Key Takeaways: [1:22] Lori speaks about growing up in Alberta, her family, her current role and the type of work her team does [3:25] Coordinating with Alberta’s provincial response team and other zones during the pandemic [4:23] Keeping morale up during these difficult times [5:40] How proud Lori is of her team’s passion for tackling challenges [6:47] Strong leadership and resources are necessary for operating a team during a pandemic [8:54] How Lori’s team effectively responded to an outbreak in South Zone [10:57] Lori’s best piece of advice for similar healthcare teams across the country [12:08] Working together and collaborating to support the communications process   Mentioned in this Episode: Alberta Health Services   Access more interviews with healthcare leaders at HIROC.com/podcast Follow us on Twitter, and listen on iTunes. Email us at Communications@HIROC.com.

Sometimes our biggest act of courage is getting to know ourselves. Are you scared to be still and just sit with yourself?  Have you ever thought about why that is?  Have you considered that knowing yourself is essential to growing your business?   In today’s episode, I talk once again with my longtime friend and coach, Lori Bainum. Lori’s extensive career in the media industry has taught her that understanding our personal values is key to a leading successful organization. In the Courage section of our Summer Strategy Sessions, we’re exploring how you can’t grow your business without taking risks.  But how do we know when to be courageous - when to take risks - when we don’t know what’s important to us? Lori shares with us that:  “Leadership begins with being centered in ourselves.”  If we want to succeed in business, we must take the time to figure out our values. This exercise has the added benefit of strengthening your messaging to your target audience. As Lori states, “People won’t understand what you’re about if you don’t understand what you’re about.” Empathy is essential to effective leadership. People naturally follow leaders who understand them, their fears, their desires, and their values. Empathy is understanding what it is like to be in another’s shoes. Lori challenges us to consider, "How are you going to be able to put yourself in somebody else's shoes if you're not willing to be in your own shoes?" In today’s episode, we discuss what courage looks like when we choose to lead from our values. Listen now! In episode 28 of Small Stage, Big Impact we discuss: [4:15] Lori’s definition of courage and how it may be counter to what we’ve been taught [8:53] How we can figure out who we are during chaotic times [15:30] The connection between being rooted in your values and being rooted in your sense of self [19:04] The two types of procrastination, and how one type can help you make the right decisions [22:40] How leaders need to be empathetic in order to connect with the people they are leading  [28:00] How we can keep our workplaces from being toxic by remembering each other’s humanity [44:30] Why embracing positive conflict is essential to becoming a high-functioning team [54:28] How the focus on productivity can be like dieting (and true productivity requires self-awareness) [1:00:10] The type of courage that is required of leaders who want to have truly productive meetings [1:08:00] Tips for handling anxiety over feeling like you don’t have enough time left to live the life you want [1:18:00] What you can do now to courageously transform how you lead your team and your business   Resources mentioned by Lori and Renia in the episode: Patrick Lencioni’s book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team Don’t miss a single episode on courage during our Summer Strategy Sessions

Have you ever wondered if your spouse is worthy of your forgiveness? “If God can forgive me for the things I have done, I can forgive my husband and fight for my marriage.” Those powerful words were spoken by Lori, a woman who is standing for the healing of her marriage. As Lori shared her testimony publicly, she was reminding herself of the reason behind her decision to fight for her marriage. We can forgive just as we have been forgiven. This episode with Charlyne and Lori will strengthen your resolve to forgive your spouse and pray for your marriage to be all that God wants it to be.

What kind of marketing team is needed to take a business from $1M to $10M in ARR? This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Fleetio Director of Marketing Lori Sullivan shares her journey from Fleetio's first marketing hire to head of the company's growing marketing team, and how she built a team that drove 10X revenue growth - most through inbound marketing - for Fleetio. Listen to the episode to get Lori's thoughts on what you should look for in your first head of marketing, what roles should be your second and third hire, and transitioning fro specialty roles to what she calls "scale roles." Highlights from my conversation with Lori include: Fleetio is a fleet management company with a SaaS product and customers in over 80 countries. The company was founded in 2012 and Lori joined Fleetio in 2015. At the time, she was employee number 6 and the company had just $600,000 in annual recurring revenue (ARR).  Fleetio is a marketing-driven company and more than half of its website visitors and conversions come from its inbound marketing efforts. Most of that growth can be attributed to organic. Lori says that in small companies, the first marketing hire really needs to be like a swiss army knife - capable of doing many different tasks. Because so much of the company's strategy revolved around SEO, Lori put in place a tech stack that enabled her to get the data necessary to build an effective SEO strategy. She relied heavily on Google Analytics and the Google keyword tool, as well as Drip for marketing automation. Now that the company has grown, she has moved from Drip to Marketo. Lori's first two hires on her marketing team were a content marketer and product marketer. She believes strongly in insourcing as much of your marketing talent as possible.  She also believes that a manager should step in and do a role first before hiring someone to fill it, so she managed the company's paid media strategy for some time before hiring a growth marketer to take that on. She strategically outsourced design work and video production until she was able to add full time specialists in those two roles. In the early days, her content marketing manager handled the company's social media marketing until she was able to hire an events and PR person who took it on.  As Lori has gone about filling all of these roles, she has placed great importance on culture fit, and has other members of her team interview new candidates. She also has every candidate that reaches the final stages of the hiring process do some sort of hands on skills assessment. While she wishes there was some sort of formula that could tell you when to hire new marketers, Lori says you really need to pay attention to the work you're doing and how that is contributing to growth. Resources from this episode: Visit the Fleetio website Connect with Lori on LinkedIn Listen to the podcast to learn how Lori built a marketing team designed to help Fleetio 10X its ARR - and get Lori's advice on building your own marketing organization. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth and today my guest is Lori Sullivan who's the director of marketing at Fleetio. Welcome Lori. Lori Sullivan (Guest): Hi Kathleen. How's it going? Kathleen: Great. How are you? Lori: Doing pretty well. Wrapping up the year strong over here at Fleetio. Kathleen: I know, I was going to say by the time this gets published it's going to be 2020 but we are recording it the week before Christmas and so I'm just grateful that you found time in your schedule to come on because I think... I'm sure like any marketer, you probably have a ton of things to do at your end. Lori: Yeah, well, like any growing SaaS business, we're trying to hit our annual goal and end the year strong and get a good a launching point for 2020. About Lori Sullivan and Fleetio Kathleen: Absolutely. Now before we jump into this conversation, and we are going to talk about growing SaaS businesses, maybe you could tell my audience a little bit about yourself and who you are and what led you to the position you're in today as well as what Fleetio is? Lori: Absolutely. So I am a seasoned B2B marketer. I spent a number of years in marketing agencies and specializing on the B2B lead gen side. I worked with a ton of different types of clients from startup businesses to large corporations running and executing lead gen programs for them, digging into the data and analytics around those as well. And in 2015, I got the opportunity to come over to Fleetio. So we are a fleet management software company. So we help our customers track, analyze and improve their fleet operations. We have customers in now over 80 countries, which is pretty wild, and we've really helped our fleet customers keep track of things like maintenance, fuel parts and inventory. So any business out there that has a fleet of mobile assets, whether that's vehicles, equipment, drones, any thing that moves, Fleetio can manage it. So we help people keep track of fleet operations and really improve the efficiency and productivity of the fleet so at the end of the day they can achieve their own businesses' mission. So we were founded in 2012, and I came on the team in 2015 when we were at about around $600,000 in annual recurring revenue (ARR). I was employee number six, so a really small team and I was marketer number one. So it was a really exciting opportunity for me to use my B2B lead generation skills to come in and build an inbound lead gen engine. Kathleen: I love that. And it's so interesting for me to hear you talk about the fleets, right? Because you said a few things, you said drones and bikes and I hadn't really thought about it until you just said it, but yeah, the definition of what constitutes a fleet is really changing these days. You even have autonomous vehicles and things. It's so fascinating how that industry is evolving. Lori: Yeah, absolutely. The transportation space in general is just a really interesting area right now, especially with the rise of electric and autonomous vehicles. And the transportation market in general is just growing tremendously. It's changing. We're really trying to stay on the leading edge of what's going on and really anticipate what the market is going to need and what fleets are going to need - not just next year but in 5 years, 10 years, so we can really be that modern solution among our competitors to offer what's really necessary as technology and vehicles and assets change as the years go by. Kathleen: Now you joined the company at a very early stage and this is a topic that I'm so fascinated by because I'm drawn to early stage companies and I love coming in as the first head of marketing and building a team and all that, and you have been very successful at driving leads for the company and quite a bit of it is inbound, correct? Lori: Absolutely. Most of the revenue to date here at Fleetio has been driven by inbound. So we've been a marketing-led organization and honestly that's one of the reasons that this opportunity, coming in early stage was really interesting to me. I've kind of carved out that specialty for myself and I thought okay, "My background can really help to build this at this company." So yeah, we've been fully inbound driven. How Fleetio grew through inbound marketing Kathleen: That's great. And that's a real feather in your cap as the person who came in to kind of build that marketing engine. One of the things that you and I talked about, which I was excited to dig into today, is some of the mechanics that happen behind the scenes to support that kind of growth. And maybe before we get too deeply into that, just if you could talk for a few minutes about what has driven your inbound results. Because when you talked with me it was very content oriented and that sort of thing. So if you could provide an overview of that because I think that'll be great table setting for the conversation we're going to have. Lori: Absolutely. So I think anyone who is in the early stages of a SaaS business and then know they're going to focus on inbound first, one of the first things that most people invest in is content marketing. So in 2015, none of our competitors were really focused on inbound. So there was a low barrier to entry when it came to some of the categories, specific keywords that are usually really high competition in a space. We found that we could compete for those even with limited resources back in the day through content marketing and focusing on keyword, focusing on keyword specific blog posts, content on our site, technical SEO as well, making sure that our site was well optimized, to not only register for and rank high for high competition keywords and category keywords, but also long tail keywords. And with limited resources back in 2015 and 16, we knew that we could crank out really interesting and engaging blog posts. Again, not a lot of our competitors were doing that at that point so we could get the leg up on the content marketing side and really position ourselves as a thought leader in this space. So we started with blogging. We then moved into a lot of video content, white papers, eBooks, webinars. We do webinars really frequently and they're definitely popular among our customers and prospects. So content marketing really was what led the charge. It ended up equating for a little over half of all of our website traffic and half of conversions in the early days and it is still a really large piece of the pie when it comes to site traffic, lead generation and even revenue. Organic specifically still leads to most of the ARR that we see today. So it was a really great, I think strategy back in the day to start there to start building that. And as we've built our team, we specifically hired around those content roles so that we can continue to invest there and continue to double down on something that has been proven to work for us. How Fleetio staffed and grew its marketing team Kathleen: I love this topic because you really have done the block and tackle work of creating a very strong inbound content engine. And I can have tons of guests come on this podcast and talk about all kinds of sexy strategies, but at the end of the day that strong foundation of really just good content marketing, is what needs to underpin all of it. I mean, it's The Inbound Success podcast, that is what inbound marketing is all about. So I love that. And like I said, I was really interested maybe to focus on the things you did behind the scenes to support that. Because I think most of my listeners understand what it means to do good inbound marketing. It's funny, not everyone will do it, but everyone understands it conceptually. So as the first marketer coming in, I've been in that position and I sometimes feel like it's a little bit of a chicken and egg situation because you know what needs to get done for a business, but you also have the realities of resource constraints and revenue, et cetera. So talk me through what that looked like in terms of how soon did you hire someone, what was that role and what did you do in the interim? How did you do it all in the beginning? Lori: Absolutely. So I think it's important when a SaaS business is hiring its first marketer, if the hope is to have that person come in, be a marketing team of one for a short time, and then build a team, which was the case with me and Fleetio, that person does need to be a little bit of a Swiss army knife because you are going to be, like you said, blocking and tackling. There's a lot of things that need to get done, but especially if you're going to focus on inbound and content in general, the person also needs to be a strong writer. Now when I stepped into work at Fleetio, I didn't have a fleet background, probably not surprising. I didn't have a fleet background and so I sourced a lot of external resources to do Q and A's and calls and interviews and would cite these people in our blog posts. I looked externally to get that expertise that we were building at the time. I also looked to see what competitors were doing in adjacent markets. So like I mentioned, a lot of our competitors weren't really doing content marketing as we were and as we were hoping to. But there was a lot of that going on in adjacent markets. And so I looked at what other people were doing and tried to replicate that with our own flare and then also looked at where our actual competitors were ranking for certain keywords where we were not. So we did a lot of keyword gap analysis to see what topics we needed to talk about. A lot of people, when they start out kind of building a content marketing presence, building blogging presence, they start to develop content themes just around what they think is interesting or what they think their market thinks is interesting. And it really should be grounded in data. And so we adopted the tools early on to do that keyword research, to invest in analytics tools to see how we were performing and really tried to understand what would be the most valuable keywords or themes to talk about on our blog, in our white papers, instead of just kind of deciding for our market what they thought was interesting. So we've really tried to rely on data as much as we could. Even in the early days. We'd do that even more today with different tools and technologies that we've adopted to give us that visibility. But we've really tried to listen to the data to do that. Kathleen: That's a great analogy about being a Swiss army knife and it's really true. There's so much that needs to get done at that early stage and I completely agree with you about writing skills. That's one of those tough things that you can't... those are a lot of things you can Google and learn how to do as a marketer. If you can't write at that point, you can't Google and become a better writer. I mean I suppose you could, but it would take way too long. So totally agree on that. Fleetio's marketing tech stack Kathleen: Now you mentioned technology. What tech stack did you put in place back in those early days? Lori: Absolutely. So technology was really important to us. We like to think we're good consumers and technology since we're a SaaS company and we build tech. In the early days we didn't have a lot of monetary resources to invest in tools, so we used a lot within the Google suite, so we use Google analytics. We used Google's keyword tool to do a lot of keyword research. We quickly adopted a marketing automation software. We use a tool called Drip, which was kind of a lightweight version of a HubSpot or Marketo, though their platform has grown tremendously over the last few years. We've since moved off that to something a little more powerful, we use Marketo today. But that tool set early on allowed us to have the visibility that we needed. We've since grown that to look into kind of more areas and have more data around the full customer journey. But in the early days especially trying to figure out what keywords to focus on, it was helpful with Google analytics, their keyword tool and our marketing automation software. Making the first marketing hire Kathleen: Got it. Now how long were you at the company before you hired someone else to join your team? Lori: About a year. Kathleen: Wow. Lori: So I was a marketer of one for close to a year and we really tried to be strategic around creating a marketing team. We didn't want to bring on anyone that wasn't absolutely necessary and super critical at the time because in the early days we were of course investing a lot in content marketing. Our first two marketing hires were a content marketing manager and a product marketing manager. And really both of those were very content focused. The way we split up those roles and responsibilities was, our content marketing manager really owned blogging, white papers, webinars, anything under the lead generation umbrella. And then on the product marketing side, our product marketing manager really owned value-based content around our product features, creating a walk through videos or demo videos of the product. There's a lot of video happening on the product marketing side. So those two areas were really important to us to fill early on, and then we've grown them from that point. But we hired both of those roles about a year in to my tenure here at Fleetio. Insourcing v. outsourcing Kathleen: Now were you also outsourcing at the same time for some things? Lori: We did a little bit in the early days. We keep almost everything on the marketing side in house today, which I think is really exciting. I mean, we know our brand better than anyone else, but in the early days, especially design work was really necessary to outsource. And we would get creative in the ways that we found people to do that. We outsourced a lot through Upwork and would find some really solid designers on Upwork that we could give repeat projects. And Upwork's a great way to find different freelancers for different types of things. But we we did outsource a good bit of design work that we could not do in house. Kathleen: And how about the video, because you mentioned that video was a key part of your strategy? Did you have a team in house for that or did you outsource that as well? Lori: In the early days we outsourced our video work, especially animation, animated explainer videos and things like that. We would outsource that work. Our original product marketing manager and people we've added to that team got really great at doing screen shares, screen share videos to walk through the product and do different feature tours and things like that. So we tried to develop that expertise in house, but we would outsource the more heavy design or heavy animation type videos. Today we do have someone on the content team that is fully focused on video because it is a key part of our strategy. We were able to bring that role on board this year in 2019, and that was a really exciting one for us. Kathleen: That's great. I love that you're going in that direction. I believe so strongly in video as well. And there's plenty to keep a good videographer busy as you grow. Lori: Absolutely. Yeah. Whenever we hired our multimedia specialists, that's our videographer role, I quickly learned that we could have two. It's such a powerful medium, especially when it comes to our market. Telling the story of all the different things Fleetio can do to help a company's fleet operations, it's become a very robust product. And so video is a very powerful tool and one of the best communication tools that we have to really communicate our product's value. So was very excited to invest in that role this year. What to delegate Kathleen: That's great. Now you mentioned after a year you added the product marketing person and the content manager. You mentioned how they were splitting responsibilities, but how were they splitting things with you? Like what did you hold onto at that point? Lori: Absolutely. So at that point I was helping on both ends, still developing some content, helping kind of strategize around where we wanted to take content marketing, where we wanted to take product marketing, the roles we were going to add in the future to support both of those areas, we have multiple people on both of those teams now, also focusing still on kind of adding more to our marketing mix. So at that point we were dipping our toe into paid media through Google Adwords and we were using AdRoll for retargeting at the time. We were starting to figure out what a paid strategy looks like for us, and so that was one of the big responsibilities to start developing what that looks like. When it came to building a team, my philosophy and our CEO's philosophy, it was always let's have our director step in, start to build the area, kind of do the job for a month or two and prove a solid case for the next hire. So we really got hands on with, especially in the early days, we got really hands on with that area of the business before we made a hire. So just to really prove that it was a crucial need, a critical need at that time and it was the right time for making that hire. Pay-per-click marketing Kathleen: You mentioned pay per click marketing, where you actually doing the paper click at that time or? Lori: I was. I was and in 2018, so a few years of years later, we hired a growth marketing manager, which he has really two roles here at Fleetio. One is to run our pay per click advertising, he is an expert in that, much better than I was trying to really string that together. But the other area that he focuses in is true growth marketing. So he does a lot of experimentation alongside engineers and product designers within our signup flow, within the onboarding flow for new customers, really trying to improve things like trial to paid activation. And so we've really, within the last couple of years, started to dig in to true growth marketing. And so that's an element of his job as well but he also focuses and has wonderful expertise on the pay per click side. Who manages social media? Kathleen: Great. Now I'm curious, back in those early days when there was just three of you who handled social media? Lori: It was on the content side. So our content marketing manager at the time handled social media. Now we actually have a media and event specialist on our team and social media, PR, communications, things like that fall under her responsibilities along with events. So events and trade shows are still really big in our industry, in the transportation and fleet space. People are still heavy going to trade shows each year and so we definitely want to have a presence there. So that's part of that role. But she also focuses on social media now. Hiring a designer Kathleen: Okay, great. All right, so you had three people - you, your product marketing manager, your content marketing manager. Who was your next hire after that? Lori: After the content marketing manager and growth marketing manager, our next hire was actually a designer. We had been outsourcing our design work for a while and we had a couple of freelancers that we worked with regularly on the content production and video production side, but we really wanted to bring that expertise in house. And like I said today, most of almost all design work that we do happens in house. So we hired a brand or visual designer to come in and really work with people on both the content and product marketing sides to develop assets for our website, which is really our most important marketing assets as inbound marketers, develop sales collateral, really everything under the marketing umbrella here at Fleetio. So we brought on a designer, we've since brought on web designers, so someone's specific to our website, again, it's an incredibly important resource for us when it comes to lead generation. So adding that design talent was really critical as well. Kathleen: Yeah, and you guys have a really nice cohesive visual brand, so if you're listening you should check it out. It's Fleetio, F.L.E.E.T.I.O.com. The website is very tight visually. So that really shows that you have that resource focused on it. It looks like you've got custom icons and really good consistent imagery, et cetera. Lori: Yeah, design is really important to us here, both on the marketing side and the product design side. We believe that design flows through every single thing we do, whether it is through visual design or the way that we design our professional services offerings for customers. So design is a huge focus here. In the early days we also had a designer come on board around the same time I did. He was more focused on the product design side, but did play a huge role in kind of architecting the initial kind of brand of Fleetio, laid some of the foundation there, which was really, really wonderful to have that asset early on. Adding specialized and "scale roles" Kathleen: Yeah, that's great. So talk me through from there, what happened, like how did the rest of the team growth occur? Lori: Absolutely. So the way I thought about building a team, a couple of years into my time at Fleetio, it was really about filling the specialized roles, the areas of expertise that I needed to build. And then once those were filled, it was about hiring what I call scale roles. So I may have two or three content marketing specialists developing blog posts and white papers, I may have multiple designers to support a lot of the content marketing and product marketing work, the web design work that's happening on a regular basis. So first we finished filling those specialty roles. I mentioned bringing on a web designer, that was really key for us. I mentioned bringing on a media and events specialist that was also very important hire. We also brought on a partnership marketing manager. So integrations and partnerships are really important to us here at Fleetio. We have a number of integration partners, different telematics programs, fuel cards, maintenance shops. We integrate with a lot of different types of products and have a lot of integration partners that we can collaborate with, co-brand different marketing efforts. And so we brought someone on to really facilitate and grow, not only those relationships, but the revenue that we're getting from our channel partners as well. And then we started to look at the scale roles. Like I mentioned, we brought on a couple more product marketers to further drive home the value of Fleetio in our sales collateral and on our website to really own the customer communication that we were sending out, whether that was through email or in-app messages. And then we also started to double down on the content marketing side. We hired a videographer. We hired another content marketing specialist who focuses on written content. So it was all about laying the foundation with those areas of expertise and what I call specialty roles, and then stepping into kind of hiring for what I would call scale roles. Managing a growing marketing team Kathleen: Now, at what point in the evolution of the team did you introduce kind of layered management? Lori: Yeah, that's a great question. So we just started kind of having that layered or middle management layer really in early 2018. So it's newer to our team and it really happened first on the content marketing side and then on the product marketing side and it has definitely, I feel made the team more efficient. It gives really talented people even more ownership of their areas and the ability to teach and coach and even learn from their direct reports. So that was a really exciting thing to kind of build out more of a structure on the team. We'll continue to build that out, especially in 2020. But 2018 was the first time that we really saw that middle management layer established. And I was really excited by that. That to me felt like, "Oh okay, this team is really growing. We're really becoming this powerful force." So that was a really exciting milestone. Kathleen: That really also fundamentally changes your job and your day to day as well, doesn't it? Lori: Absolutely. Yeah. So whenever I am having kind of a one-on-ones and during the week with my direct reports, I always want to make sure and check in with people that don't report to me. For instance on the content marketing side, have a dotted line to our content specialists or to our videographer. It's definitely important to me to have the strategic conversations with them and that one on one relationship, even though I'm not the person who they technically report to. We have a pretty close knit team. So we're a team of nine right now and we have a really close knit team. I think we get a lot done for just being nine people and every single person on the team teaches me something weekly. I'm incredibly proud of the caliber of people, both personally and professionally that we've brought on. I think at Fleetio we do a really killer job at hiring and the marketing team is definitely true to that. Lori's approach to hiring marketers Kathleen: Now any specific tips or secrets to hiring that you think have worked really well for you? Lori: That's a great question. We really... I would say picky is a bad word, but really I am picky in the hiring process. I think really having those deep conversations with people in the hiring process, try to envision not just yourself working with them but different members of your team working with them. We have a pretty stringent hiring process as well. I'll start the conversations and then I'll always loop in at least one or more members of my team to interview them as well, kind of in the later stages. I think that's really important. And to get the feedback from those team members. How do you feel about working with this person? Do you feel that they're a good culture fit? We really drive home the idea of culture fit here at Fleetio in the hiring process and it's really paid off. We also typically for most roles do some sort of quick hands on assessment in the later stages of the hiring process. Just because, I mean you can have a wonderful interview with someone, you can get along with them great, you can visualize yourself working with them being very productive. But just seeing their hands on work really makes a huge difference. And so that's something we leaned on in most roles here in the hiring process and I think that's a great and very impactful part of of the process in general. Kathleen: I just want to stop for a second and underscore what you just said about having a hands on activity as part of the hiring process. Because I have done that as well, and the quality of candidates that make it past that stage differs dramatically from the quality of candidate that sort of makes it to that stage, and then it is revealed in that activity that either they're great or they're not as great as you seem to think they were. And I've had phenomenal results with that. So I love that you guys do that too. But that's actually kind of controversial, I have discovered. I'm a member of a bunch of groups online and there've been several conversations about this with a lot of people saying that they don't think it's right to have activities. I personally disagree, but I think it's interesting the different outlooks on it. Lori: Yeah, I've seen that as well. And I also personally disagree. I think as long as you limit it to a certain amount of time, for instance, any project or hands on assessment that I give someone in the hiring process, we usually say, "Dedicate an hour or less to this." You don't want to get people into those too early on in the process or take up too much of their time, but I truly believe in them. And it's also not just to prove their hard skills, you also get an idea of how much effort they put into getting this job, right? Kathleen: Yeah. How much do they want it. Lori: Absolutely. So I think you can just, you can learn a lot. We also use it as a talking point in final hiring conversations. "Tell me about your experience doing the assessment? How did that experience go? How did you start? What were the steps that you went through?" I think you can get a lot from someone asking those questions about something that they literally did hands on and really understand how they work, how they think about their work, their intensity. I personally disagree with anyone online that would say that it's not a great thing. I think it's been really valuable to us. Kathleen: Same. And I like what you said, it does show you how someone thinks, which is almost as important as the quality of work that comes out on the other end, really- Lori: Sure. Kathleen: -from an alignment standpoint and et cetera. So that's so fascinating. How to know when its time to hire another member of the marketing team Kathleen: Well, one thing I wanted to ask you is, you've built this team, you've been successful in growing revenue and leads for the company, do you have any benchmarks that you personally use, financial benchmarks, to determine when it's worth adding another member of the team? And I asked this because it's fascinating to me in sales it can be very cut and dry. If when you add X amount of revenue, you need X numbers more of salespeople, or if you add X number of customers, you need X more sales people. In marketing it is definitely not as cut and dry. So I'm just curious and the answer may be "no", I'm curious if you have any benchmarks that you use? Lori: Yeah, that's a wonderful question. I've read a few articles online about this topic as well. It's so interesting in marketing because there's not an exact formula. So I think the short answer to your question is there's not an exact formula. However, I do believe in... we build projection models every year. I think about how much lead generation, the velocity at which lead generation is going to grow month over month to really get us to that revenue goal for the year. So we build these projection models and I do use those to kind of pace hiring. But I think intuitively based on the team's capacity, what areas are really leading to the most revenue? I mentioned organic is a huge generator of revenue for us, so we want to continue to scale that team. I think intuitively I know the roles that we'll need for the next quarter or the next year, but the pacing that we lay out for ourselves, the goal setting that we do, it kind of helps me determine the timing. So I would say not an exact formula, but if you build a good prediction model or projection model, it can help you on the pacing and the timing around your hiring. Kathleen: Yeah, absolutely. And I just recorded yesterday a great interview with Peter Schroeder from Onna about growth modeling. So if you're listening to this, by the time this airs, I think the previous episode, the one immediately prior will be on growth modeling. So check that out because then you can learn how to build your prediction model. Lori: Nice. Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: Well I could talk all day about this because it's not the sexy stuff, but it's the really important stuff about how you build a team and what that growth engine looks like. Shifting gears. I have two questions I always ask my guests and I'm curious to hear what you think about this. The first is when you think about inbound marketing, is there a particular company or individual that's really killing it these days? Lori: Absolutely. There are a ton. I constantly am looking to other growing B2B SaaS organizations for inspiration from an inbound perspective. I think Intercom always kills it and they've just grown so fast, mostly driven through content SEO. I really respect their efforts. Another one that's really interesting to me is Autopilot. I think what they did is pretty interesting, just their tremendous growth. I think it was zero to over 2,000 customers in just two years and most of that was really focusing on inbound and nurturing across the full customer journey. I think their model is really interesting. One smaller company that I always look out for is called FullStory. We actually use their products here at Fleetio and it's a wonderful product. I think they're an Atlanta based company and they did a big raise earlier this year, but I just think they've really differentiated themselves amongst their competitors, like Mixpanel and Amplitude and I continue to watch them grow and I think just their strategy and what they continue to do is pretty impressive. So those stand out to me for sure. And then of course anyone that's created a category for themselves, Drift, Outreach. I'm always looking for any content that they publish around their growth strategy and kind of how they continue to grow then double down on their efforts. Those always are really interesting stories to me. Kathleen: Yes, I am obsessed with the topic of category design. It's really interesting. Absolutely. Well those are great. Now marketing is changing so quickly. How do you personally stay educated and up to date? Lori: That's a great question. I think there's a million ways to answer that, a million places to look for that type of information these days luckily. I'm glad there's a lot out there. I'm a huge podcast person, so as I know you are. And so I love again a plug for Intercom, but I love Inside Intercom. I think their podcast is great. They did a growth series recently. I think it was around seven or eight episodes that I found really interesting, both from a sales and marketing perspective. And then, let's see, I like HubSpot's Growth Show a lot. I think that's a great one. And then just kind of under the SaaS umbrella and not necessarily marketing, I like Scale or Die and then SaaStr, an oldie but a goodie. Kathleen: Those are all good ones. And I will put links to all of those in the show notes. So if you're listening and you want to check them out, head over to the show notes and you can click right through and listen. Great stuff. How to connect with Lori Kathleen: So interesting. Lori, if somebody wants to reach out and ask a question or learn more about you or Fleetio, what's the best way for them to connect with you online? Lori: Absolutely. I would love that. The best place to reach out to me is LinkedIn. It's Lori Sullivan and I'm sure you can post a link as well. Definitely check out Fleetio at fleetio.com F. L. E. E. T. I. O. We are constantly updating our website. Great thought leadership content. Again, a wonderful team producing that content and really kind of shaking things up in our space that we're super proud of. Kathleen: It is a great site, like I said earlier, not just from a visual branding standpoint, but from a content standpoint, with lots of good examples on the blog of types of articles, you've got video case studies, there's so much good stuff here. So definitely check that out if you want to see an example of a company that's doing inbound really well. You know what to do next... Kathleen: And if you're listening and you liked what you heard today or you learned something new, I would be incredibly grateful if you would take a minute and head over to Apple podcasts and leave the podcast a five star review. That really helps us to get found and find new listeners. And if you know someone else who is doing kick ass inbound marketing work, tweet me @workmommywork, because they could be my next interview. That's it for today. Thanks so much, Lori. Lori: Thanks so much for having me, Kathleen.

In this interview, we got to know democratic candidate for Colorado House District 60 Lori Boydstom. We learned about her passion and drive to fight for the people! As Lori just kicked off her campaign, she does not yet have a website, but check her out at her Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/lorihd60/ Donate to Our Revolution Colorado Springs: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/ourrevolutioncs Follow us at our website: https://www.OurRevolutionCS.com/ On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OurRevolutionCS/ On twitter: https://twitter.com/OurRevolutionCS

Social Media Professional and Co-Founder of 1909 DIGITAL, Lori Byrd-McDevitt, joins the Social Pros Podcast to discuss the reality of burnout in the social media manager community and what we can do to prevent it. Huge thanks to our amazing sponsors for helping us make this happen. Please support them; we couldn't do it without their help! This week: Salesforce Marketing Cloud Emma Full Episode Details The life of a social media manager can be demanding to say the least. The role entails more than simply updating the company’s social media channels. And, around the clock monitoring paired with a growing list of responsibilities stirs up the perfect recipe for burnout. Despite all of this, a lot of people (even the ‘higher-ups’ in a business) tend to disregard and overlook the Herculean effort that social media managers perform on a daily basis. The unspoken truth is that social media practitioners have to constantly prove themselves and their strategies. Everything they do is under constant scrutiny and the tremendous pressure is enough to trigger burnout. Social Media Professional and Co-Founder of 1909 DIGITAL, Lori Byrd-McDevitt, isn’t afraid to talk about burnout in the social media managers community. Not just that, but she helps thousands of social media professionals focus on self-care and preventing burnout before it strikes through her Museum Social Media Managers Facebook Group. As Lori pointed out, “You can’t unburn burnt toast.” In other words, we need to work together to prevent burnout, which is quickly becoming a wider social media manager problem. In This Episode: 05:04 – How social media for museums differs from other companies 08:50 – How museum executives tend to view the role of social media 11:05 – How the Museum Social Media Managers Facebook Group evolved over time 14:02 – How to balance and integrate various goals into a social media program 16:37 – The reality of burnout in the social media manager community 23:35 – Self-care tips to help you avoid burnout 32:11 – Useful tips around Facebook group administration Resources Get the new State of Marketing report for free from Salesforce Find out more about the community at SocialMedia.org with a special form for Social Pros listeners Read Salesforce’s FREE e-book, 50 Social Media Best Practices Discover how Emma can help you reach your email marketing goals Read Ella Dawson’s article – There Is No Cure For Burnout Learn more about Dr. Zubin Damania’s views on burnout in the healthcare industry – It’s Not Burnout, It’s Moral Injury Check out Lori’s Museum Social Media Managers Facebook Group Find out how 1909 DIGITAL can help you build an authentic marketing plan Read, ‘Objective Lessons: Self Care for Museum Professions’ Visit SocialPros.com for more insights from your favorite social media marketers.

“For every minute spent organizing, an hour is earned.” –Anonymous Great Escape Radio host, Jody Maberry and Lori Allen, Director of Great Escape Publishing discuss The Lifechanging Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondo. Although the book came out in 2014, it’s getting more attention now because the author has a Netflix series. The book and the series are about tidying up, but it’s more than that. It’s about changing the way you do things. As Lori watched the program she realized how much this bleeds over into her travel writing and photography. For example, her photos stay on her computer instead of being on her wall where they should be. The book is about how to clean-up and declutter—but the process isn’t just about cleaning up, it teaches you something about yourself. Lori realized this as she was going through the process of tidying up her clothes. There are two main pieces to the process: You don’t organize by room, you organize by category Don’t declutter a little at a time, make it an event and do it all at once—even though it might take months. Listen in as Lori describes the process laid out in the book and how it relates to photography and even other areas of life. For more information on Great Escape’s programs, visit:  https://www.greatescapepublishing.com/program/. Or if you’re not yet signed up for their free newsletter, you can do so here: https://www.greatescapepublishing.com/subscribe/?ref=podcast.

“Rome wasn’t built in a day, but they were laying bricks every hour.”—John Heywood Great Escape Radio Host, Jody Maberry and Great Escape Publishing Director, Lori Allen talk with Jed Vaughn live at the Ultimate Travel Writer’s Workshop in Austin, Texas. Lori invited Jed back to the workshop to be on the success panel for a second time. Jed’s travel writing success is unique in that he hasn’t chosen a specific niche to focus on. He’s written about sailing, fishing, coffee, wine and beer. He’s also written about music. “I think I haven’t narrowed and focused on one niche because I get bored easily. But I’m also passionate about a wide variety of things,” Jed explains. When Jed discovered the Great Escape travel writing program, he hadn’t written anything since high school. He started by taking the travel writing course at home—which provided the formula. But attending the workshop brought networking into the mix and that’s what launched his career. As Lori explains… “Our editors and speakers give you the formula and the writers speaking on the success panel show you the formula really works.” Listen in as Jed shares some of his experiences and why he thinks not having a niche works best for him. If you’d like to get started with travel writing, like Jed, you can learn more here: https://www.greatescapepublishing.com/start/travel-writing/.

This children’s book writer and illustrator is the artist behind View from My Run, where she does scenes from along her runs in the same time it takes her to do the run itself. She indicates on her site that she has always been an artist but it took her 39 yrs to become a runner and a bit longer to marry the two together. Lori was successful in the business world as a Corporate Creative Director and then moved on to a career that blended her passion for art and children’s literature. We discuss the process Lori goes though in developing her books and the amazing process it takes to let the picture build the story with a limited number of words allowed in the genre of writing for children. As Lori progressed as a runner she found she was using her run time to problem solve in her business life and had a desire to blend the two together. From that A View From My Run was born, where she paints scenes from her runs in the same time that the run took. She has also now worked with the NY Roadrunners Club and others to help runners develop their artistic side. Today’s Guest Lori Richmond is a picture book illustrator in children’s publishing. She has appeared on Today, Good Morning America and CNN. She lives in Brooklyn NY with her husband and two sons. She runs and draws her runs in New York. What you will learn about: How Lori jumped, at age 39, from a 20 yrs career in a Corporate Creative Director role to go back to her roots as an artist. She built herself an 18 month exit plan that allowed her to return to a passion of art and children’s literature. The process Lori follows in developing a story idea into a picture book where the words and the story blend together into a cohesive whole. How Lori considered herself a fitness failure from childhood, but at age 39 she realized she also needed to take charge of her health in addition to taking charge of her business career. She was inspired by her sister and others in her studio that were runners, including one studio mate that wrote the first C25K program. Her first road race was a half marathon. We discuss how she blended running and art. Her inspiration was realizing her training was paralleling her art work and how she used her runs to problem solve in her artistic life. A photograph taken on a run across the Manhattan bridge inspired her to paint the scene and then realized that a good side project for her to relieve stress was to paint the scenes from her runs to marry the two together. We discuss the comparison trap, how we compare ourselves to others, rather than focusing on how we feel when we are doing an activity. You don’t have to be the best to get something out of it, the joy comes from the feelings. When you run, you have to trust your plan and training. When you do art, or any endeavor, you have to also trust your plan. You have to go forward from where you are, not where others are. Stay with your own compass and where you are in your own plan. We discuss how Lori paces her drawing like her running when trying to determine how to finish a scene in the same time as her run duration. She adjusts her strategy to use materials or details based on the time she has. The same applies to race strategy where she adjusts based on the times she is actually running vs a plan. How she has found that she sees her surroundings differently now that she is paying attention while she is running vs being so how we are so over scheduled and busy that we neglect to admire what is around us. Inspirational Quotes: Children are fearless in their artwork and use their imagination to draw the most beautiful vision they see in their mind. And then at some point we are taught that if it does not look like what you are drawing, it is wrong. When it is imperfect, that is what makes it yours. Concentrate on how you feel rather than what it looks like. Drawing is visually expressing your idea, and if you communicate, even with as simple as a stick figure, it is a success. The unfinished ones sometimes end up being the most interesting ones. Resources: Last week's episode with Derek Murphy of Marathon Investigation Tina4Real Podcast  Running for Real Superstars Community Support Tina through her Patreon Page Buy a Running for Real T-shirt, Tank, or Hat Lori on Instagram Lori on Twitter Lori's website Bunny's Staycation Book Oopsie-Do Book A Hop is Up Book Skelly's Halloween Book   Thank you to Bombas and Bodyhealth for sponsoring this episode of Running for Real. I absolutely LOVE these Bombas Socks, and I think it is SO COOL that they donate a pair to a homeless shelter for every pair you purchase (socks are the number one requested item from homeless shelters, but they cannot accept used pairs). Use code running4real at Bombas.com/running4real and you can get 20% off your first order!   Now I am back to training, guess what was the first thing I did to start making sure I recover quicker (as coming back to fitness really beats your body up!), yep, you guessed it, BodyHealth Perfect Amino! Get 10% off at Bodyhealth.com using coupon code TINA10   Thanks for Listening! I hope you enjoyed today's episode. To share your thoughts: Leave a note in the comment section below. Join the Running for Real Facebook Group and share your thoughts on the episode (or future guests you would like to hear from) Share this show on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest. To help out the show: Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews will really help me climb up the iTunes rankings and I promise, I read every single one. Subscribe on iTunes or your favorite podcast player. Not sure how to leave a review or subscribe, you can find out here. Thank you to Lori, I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the show.

Great Escape Radio Episode 68: Take care of yourself “It’s not selfish to love yourself, take care of yourself and to make your happiness a priority. It’s necessary.” – Mandy Hale To learn more about how you can live better, travel farther and earn more as a travel writer, visit: www.thetravelwriterslife.com. Great Escape Radio host, Jody Maberry, and Great Escape Publishing Director, Lori Allen, discuss the importance of putting yourself first. We’re all guilty of it. We don’t always eat right, or exercise, or go to the doctor when we need to. But who are we hurting when we don’t do those things? We’re actually hurting all of those around us. It’s like Lori said in a previous podcast: “You have to take care of yourself. If you don’t take care of yourself, you’re hurting your whole family.” Lori has been pushing this same concept with Great Escape Publishing members recently. “A lot of our members are heading into retirement. And they are also feeling the effects of aging. Their bodies are breaking down. Mentally they are still in their 30s. Physically, they’re not. Some of that comes down to choices—food, exercise, and visiting the doctor.” But if we take the time we need to make positive changes today, we’ll save ourselves months and years of struggles later—and we’ll be able to live life to its fullest. This isn’t just about health, it’s about quality of life. “When we’re miserable in our careers and not following our dreams because we think we don’t have time, we are stressed out. But again, who is paying the price for that? Your body, your family, and your friends.” We always hear the saying: “Life is short.” But, the truth is, life is really really long. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. And if we want to make the most of it, we have to make the changes necessary to keep ourselves healthy and to follow our dreams. If we don’t, everyone around us suffers. As Lori points out… “At Great Escape Publishing we sell courses on travel writing and photography. But that’s not what we’re really selling. What we’re really selling is the idea that there is a better way to live. A unique way to see the world. A way to make an income doing things that inspire you… things that inspire others.” Listen in for more inspiration to not only take care of yourself but also your dreams. And for more information on breaking into travel writing visit: www.greatescapepublishing.com/start/travelwriting. Or for information on breaking into photography visit: www.greatescapepublishing.com/start/photography.

Great Escape Radio Episode #61: Practice Makes Perfect “For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.” - Aristotle Great Escape Radio host, Jody Maberry and Great Escape Publishing Director, Lori Allen discuss overcoming the obstacles to get started with photography or travel writing, practicing your craft, knowing when to quit and learning how to figure out the things you most want to do. People often talk to Jody about getting into podcasts. Their first comment is typically “I’m not very good behind the microphone.” Jody’s response is always the same…. “Of course you’re not. You haven’t done it yet.” Jody’s been doing podcasts for several years now and he’s gotten good at it. “The guy you hear in the first few episodes is not the same guy you hear today.” The same is true for photography, travel writing, leading tours or whatever endeavor you pursue. Lori discusses the initial stumbling blocks… “The technical stuff is often the first stumbling block and you do have to figure that out,” she explains. “But getting the right camera is not going to automatically make you a great photographer.” “The trick to being successful is always more time—more practice.” Listen in to understand why the old adage “practice makes perfect” applies to everything in life—including photography and travel writing. Lori and Jody also discuss the importance of realizing when it’s time to give something up—yes, winners do quit sometimes. As Lori says… “Success always looks like a winding road. Follow it, embrace the detours, and keep going. Eventually, you’ll find the success you’ve been looking for.” For more information on getting started in travel writing go to www.greatescapepublishing.com/start/travelwriting or, if photography is what you’re interested in go to www.greatescapepublishing.com/start/photography.

Great Escape Radio Episode 48 – The Unlikely Travel Writer "I'm always excited by the unlikely, never by ordinary things." - David Hockney To find out more about how you can get started with travel writing visit: www.greatescapepublishing.com/start/travelwriting. Great Escape Radio host, Jody Maberry, and Great Escape Publishing Director, Lori Allen, introduce us to travel writer, Kurt Jacobson. "Kurt calls himself the unlikely travel writer," says Lori. "He didn't go to school for writing, wasn't scholarly, and never considered himself to be a good writer." But Kurt's not the only one… in fact, he's like a lot of the Great Escape Publishing members. Lori explains… "There was a time when we sought out travel journalist for travel recommendations, but now we're getting those recommendations from our neighbors, best friends, siblings, kids, and parents. Opinions come from everywhere." We don't need a trained journalist to tell us where to go, so it makes sense that travel writers come from all kinds of unlikely places and backgrounds. As Lori says… "Kurt is pretty much the 'poster child' of who can be a travel writer today." Kurt shares his story with Jody… "I grew up in the shadow of literary greatness in my household: my mother was a librarian, my father was a psychologist, and my brother was an A student. All were very well-spoken and well-read." Kurt says he was an underachiever… he never even finished the 11th grade. Living with the stigma for decades of not being properly educated, Kurt never thought he would be a travel writer. "My brother used to tell me I should write a book about my escapades from the years I was living in Alaska. My response was always 'yea, right' - I never thought I could write because of my lack of education." Instead, Kurt became a chef. And after being away from the culinary world for a while, he decided to start a food blog. He goes on to share his story of how that led to travel and ultimately led him to the Great Escape Publishing Ultimate Travel Writer's Workshop in Denver, Colorado. And that changed everything… Today Kurt has over 80 articles published with another 25 or more in the works. Listen in to hear what motivated him to get serious about his writing and why he's decided to focus on local destinations despite having traveled extensively all over the world. To find out more about how you can get started with travel writing visit: www.greatescapepublishing.com/start/travelwriting.

Great Escape Radio Episode #37: The triple threat traveler “When your work combines your passions it doesn’t really feel like work.” - Sophie Parmantier If you’re interested in creating and selling simple travel videos, visit www.greatescapepublishing.com/start/video for more details and tips on how to get started. This week host Jody Maberry talks with Sophie Parmantier who has found a way to fund her travels and make money through travel videos. Lori Allen, Director of Great Escape Publishing, introduces us to Sophie… “In acting there’s something called a triple threat: someone who can sing, dance and act. That’s how I feel about Sophie. She started as a travel writer getting paid to visit places around the world and write about them. Then she fell in love with video. Now she is bartering her way around the world with little clips about the hotel where she’s staying, or things she’s visiting along the way.” Sophie shares a few tips for marketing the videos to companies and using the travel videos to complement her travel writing career. “One important tip is to be inventive, find a good angle for the video and be original,” says Sophie. Companies are using short 1 minute clips on social media to help market their destinations. And it’s easy to turn those 1 minute clips into $100. As Lori explains… “Attention spans are short. Consumers are getting much of their information, news and travel ideas from social media sites. It’s an ideal time to get started making these little videos and begin bartering your way around the world and making money.” You’ll need very little to get started: a tripod and a microphone. Those things along with your cell phone camera will get you up and running. If you’re interested in creating and selling simple travel videos, visit www.greatescapepublishing.com/start/video for more details and tips on how to get started.

Great Escape Publishing Radio – Episode #28: Great Escape Publishing Events! “Sitting on the red sand dunes in Namibia and watching the sun come up, it almost feels like you shouldn’t be allowed to see something so beautiful – it’s that amazing.” - Lori Allen To learn more about the workshops and expeditions offered by Great Escape Publishing go to http://www.greatescapepublishing.com/menu/?type=event and check out the events listed. Host, Jody Mayberry, talks with Great Escape Publishing Director, Lori Allen, about the amazing live events Great Escape Publishing offers. “There’s a difference between education and training,” explains Lori. “Education is what you get when you read a book. Training is what you get when you are actively doing whatever it is you’re learning and someone is there to provide feedback.” The home study programs offered by Great Escape Publishing will give you the education you need to get started in travel writing or photography. But the live workshops and expeditions will give you the training you need to excel. With feedback you learn faster, differently and your skill improves immensely. GEP offers a number of live events each year. Some are in the USA and others are in exotic international destinations. And there’s a difference between the workshops offered and the expeditions. Lori explains… “Workshops are exactly what they sound like. We get a hotel conference room, bring a group of instructors in and a large group of participants and we hunker down and work on stuff. Typically, there will be three days of listening to presentations and on one of those days the participants will go out into the field to either take photos or to find a story to write – depending on whether it’s a photography or travel writing workshop. And we give them feedback in small groups to improve their skills.” Expeditions are exactly what they sound like, too… “On an expedition, we get in a jeep or on a train and we go someplace. We’re in the field the vast majority of the day: waking up at sunrise for the perfect photos or finding the right time of day to capture the light in a particular destinations. Expeditions are smaller, usually about 9 participants or possibly up to 16 for places like Tanzania where we’ll rent out an entire camp.” Traveling with a GEP expedition means experiencing things like the Yi Peng Festival of Lanterns in Thailand, or the Hot Air Balloon Festival in New Mexico. When you travel with Great Escape Publishing on an expedition you can expect these things… ***Fun ***Time to play ***Learning or improving your skills ***Expect to be amazed As Lori says… “The world is covered with these amazing and beautiful places and events and experiences and if you go with your camera, it feels like you’re playing.” Great Escape Publishing expeditions are different than typical photo safaris for several reasons… ***Beginners are welcome ***It’s not a tour, you will actually experience unique events ***You’ll learn how to sell the photos you take To learn more about the workshops and expeditions offered by Great Escape Publishing go to http://www.greatescapepublishing.com/menu/?type=event and check out the events listed. TIP: These events sell out quickly. It’s best to add your name to the workshop alert list on that page to get upcoming event announcements.

On Win's Women of Wisdom today, Best-Selling Author, Win Kelly Charles welcomes LoriHarder. Lori grew up in the tiny town of Marquette, Michigan. Lori was an overweight kid in an overweight family. “Bad genetics,” She was told, which is easy to believe when it’s all you ever hear. The kids in elementary teased Lori about her weight and her religion, which turned her into a little girl with anxiety and full-on panic attacks. Lori was homeschooled in high school, and her family’s religion did not allow for sports or extra curriculars. Lori’s teen years focused on dieting, exercising, binge eating, and becoming totally obsessed with body image. Lori sure learned how to self-sabotage, but she knew if she didn’t do something big, then Lori would end up locked in a padded room. One day Lori was watching a fitness competition on TV where strong, beautiful women displayed superhero-like acts on stage. Whoa. Lori’s world screeched to a halt. Lori wanted to be just like these women, and she wanted to provoke powerful, positive feelings for others just like these women were doing for her. From that day on, Lori had a magnetic pull to the fitness industry. Lori begged her mom to buy Lori every fitness magazine that she could find and all kinds of workouts on VHS (remember those?). The second that Loricould drive, she wanted a gym membership. As Lori shifted her focus to fitness, not only didLori improve her body, but she started to feel amazing. Feeling strong in her body put me in control and lit a fire inside of her soul that got Lori thinking about new possibilities for her life.Lori wanted to show others that, they too, had the power to change, so Lori dedicated the next two decades of her life to educating herself on food and fitness. In the last eight years Lori have awakened new curiosities. She have learned a heck of a lot about self-love, business, finding your tribe, empowerment, cleansing your environment, relationships, protecting your energy, becoming resourceful despite your lack of resources, and doing what it takes to just freakin’ go for it. In the last eight years, Lori have had epic failures, disastrous relationships, business ideas that have gone up in flames, heart-wrenching experiences, and soul-crushing criticisms, all of which have caused me to second guess herself and my beliefs. Lori have almost thrown in the towel. But real change can only happen if you never give up. So Lori never did. She chose to keep getting up after life’s beat downs. Lori have trumped talent, had some powerful wins, and some knee-hitting moments of gratitude. Lori have found her truest of relationships and am proudly rocking her million-dollar business. Lori is the CEO of her life. To learn more about Lorivisit http://loriharder.com/. To learn more about Win Kelly Charles visithttps://wincharles.wix.com/win-charles. To send feedback to Win, email her atwinwwow@gmail.com. To be on the show please fill out the intake at http://bit.ly/1MLJSLG. To look at our sponsorships go to http://www.educents.com/daily-deals#wwow. To learn about the magic of Siri go to https://www.udemy.com/writing-a-book-using-siri/?utm_campaign=email&utm_source=sendgrid.com&utm_medium=email.        

GEP Podcast #12 “Talking behind the scenes isn’t the secret to success – doing something is.” -- Lori Allen For more on how you can get started with photography today, visit: http://www.greatescapepublishing.com/start/photography. Great Escape Radio Episode #12: The Secret to Photography Success In this episode, Lori Allen gives her thoughts on fabulous photographer and Great Escape Publishing workshop instructor, Bonnie Caton. “It would be hard to find a better photography teacher than Bonnie,” says Lori. “She has only been doing photography for about five years or so, but she’s always been a good at teaching – and just keeps getting better.” Attendees at the Great Escape photography workshops love Bonnie because she understands what it is like to be a beginner, to feel intimidated by a camera and what to photograph. As Lori points out, “Everything she learned has come from the Great Escape Publishing instructors and programs. Bonnie is still growing and is excellent at taking others along with her – down the travel photography path.” In a clip from Bonnie’s presentation at Great Escape Publishing’s annual Ultimate Photography Workshop this past spring, you’ll learn about her journey from scaredy cat procrastinator to successful photographer. It took her several years to really start selling her photos, but once she threw herself into it, she was off and running. Bonnie recalls, “As friends began noticing my photography they started asking me to take photos. They wanted headshots, family photos and other shots. Then a friend’s mother contacted me to do photos for a big event. She wanted headshots, group shots, action shots and a number of other photos. I accepted the assignment, hung up the phone and thought ‘holy crap’ what am I going to do!” But that gig was successful, despite her fears, and it led to more gigs, which led to even more gigs. In 2014, she almost made it to her goal of $10k in photography revenue. And with some more hard work in 2015, she surpassed a goal of $12k in photography revenue. Here are some things Bonnie did to keep her photography business growing as she was starting out: ***She registered her business and put up a website ***She started taking herself seriously ***She began introducing herself as a photographer (even though she had another job) ***She created a calendar and put a monetary goal at the top ***She began tracking her progress In the last couple years, her initial ideas about the kind of photography business she wanted have changed. She’s now found a niche she really likes. “I started out thinking I wanted to do something really deep – like family documentaries. But it turns out that I really like taking headshots. I love making people feel good about how they look – it’s become my thing.” Bonnie is just one more story about the success that comes from pushing past the fear and being open to new paths when they come your way. For more on how you can get started with photography today, visit: http://www.greatescapepublishing.com/start/photography.  

GEP Podcast #6 “There’s winning and there’s learning, but there is no losing.” For more about how you can get started with photography today, visit: www.greatescapepublishing.com/start/photography. Great Escape Radio Episode 6: Introduction to travel photography When you’re first getting started with photography, it’s important to remember this theme: “There’s winning and there’s learning, but there is no losing.” At Great Escape Publishing’s photography workshops, Director Lori Allen notes that beginner photographers often become discouraged when presented with the fabulous photos taken by the professional instructors. But they shouldn’t. The only way to become a great photographer is to take pictures. You don’t lose when you take a bad photo – you learn. And while the journey from beginner to expert photographer may be a long one –that’s part of what makes it fun. And Great Escape Publishing likes to focus on the fun in their workshops and programs. In fact, most of their pro instructors didn’t start as career photographers. Photography started as a hobby for them and later transitioned to a career. Or they were travelers who happen to sell their photos and make a living at it. They are just people who like to take pictures and have found a way to sell those pictures. What makes Great Escape Publishing’s programs stand out from the rest is that they not only teach beginners how to take better photos, but they also show them where to sell them- and there are thousands of places to do so. Traditional stock photography, micro stock agencies, newspapers, online and print magazines, tourism boards, hotels, resorts, chambers of commerce – the list goes on and on.   You can even sell your photos as fine art! As Lori notes, “We are a visual society today. We are putting up more photos in our homes so there’s a huge opportunity to take photos in your local community and sell those photos as fine art. If someone has never been to Paris, they might not want a photo of the Eiffel Tower in their home. But they will put up a photo of places that mean something to them.” Take photos in your own backyard and within 5 to 10 miles of your house. Find a unique way to capture your town – not just landmarks. Think local: the bagel shop where you get your breakfast, the high school baseball field, a back road only the locals know – the possibilities are endless. “In my hometown all the locals take the back roads to the airport to avoid traffic delays. Along that road there’s a guy who has goats – lots of them. Goats are in the trees, on top of old cars…everywhere. Someone took a photo of that – it’s brilliant, it’s exactly what people want to buy. It sums up every airport run I have ever done. I want that photo on my wall,” explains Lori. Here are Lori’s tips for getting started: First, get a camera and practice taking photos of anything – your backyard, your kitchen, everywhere you go. List the places you want to photograph. Then take those photos in every season and in all types of weather: rain, sunshine, snow, fall. Build a portfolio.. Learn how to edit your photos using a photo editing software like Lightroom. Next it’s about printing – the way you print your photos is important.   Choose the right print shop because the paper and quality of the ink matters. Approach local businesses about displaying your photos to assist with sales. All of these might seem overwhelming, but Great Escape Publishing has done the footwork for you. Follow the link below for a free report with more helpful advice on how you can get started selling your photos today. For more about how you can get started with photography today, visit: www.greatescapepublishing.com/start/photography.