Podcasts about ashley it

Women of Strength, we have a truly inspiring story for you today! Ashley joins us from the Liverpool/Sydney area in Australia and shares her VBAC with an inverted T special scar and extension story. During her first Cesarean, Ashley's OB mentioned that she had only performed that kind of incision one other time in her entire career and that Ashley would never have a vaginal birth.Ashley did not find out the actual circumstances around her first Cesarean until she requested her operative notes during her second pregnancy. In spite of what she was told, her heart longed for a VBAC. She committed to doing all she could to try and find a VBAC-supportive provider as long as it was medically safe to do so. Ashley went into spontaneous labor and utilized the tools available to help her baby rotate from a posterior position. She and her provider both stayed patient, trusted the process, and after pushing for 20 minutes, her baby girl was earthside!Special Scars, Special Hope Facebook GroupThe VBAC Link Blog: Special Scars, Special HopeHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode Details Meagan: Hello, Women of Strength. How are you today? I hope you are doing amazing. We have our friend, Ashley, with us today and you guys, she is from Australia. It has been so crazy. I don't know why I cannot understand time. We were talking about how we literally had to Google, “What time will it be in Australia if it's this time in Utah?” It was such a challenge to get this scheduled but I'm so grateful for Ashley for taking the time out of her Monday morning recording with us today so welcome, Ashley. Thank you for being here. Ashley: Thank you so much for having me on. Like I was saying to you before, The VBAC Link was so invaluable to me with all of the research and the statistics and just trying to hear other people's stories to help me change my mindset to get through it so I'm really excited to add to that with my story as well. Meagan: Me too. Your story has a little extra tidbit to it. Something that we know happens because we've got lots of stories on them as well. We actually haven't had one for a few minutes and yours is a special scar. You had an inverted T with an extension. Do you want to share with our listeners exactly what that means? We've had some J scars. There are all different special scars. An extension we know goes past the initial cut or incision. But tell us about the T. Ashley: Yeah, so I actually only found out after the surgery that it was an inverted T but I didn't know what that entailed so I had to do a bit of my own research especially when I fell pregnant the second time to know what was involved with that. Yeah, it was really scary just to see that I had a vertical cut in the middle. Obviously, you've got your normal horizontal cut–Meagan: Low transverse, yep. Ashley: Yeah, that's right and then through the center going vertically I had a 3-centimeter cut which was obviously riskier. A lot of providers said no to me when I started to look into it when I was pregnant the second time and started to have a look to get somebody to take me on. Even the public hospital that I had originally gone to with my son actually said, “No, you will have to have a Cesarean if you come through us.” In Australia, they can't really say no to you in a public hospital if that's what your wishes are, but I wanted somebody who was going to be supportive of me and the whole journey. So yeah. That's where I come to going private instead and having an obstetrician this time which I know is quite rare with VBACs. You find a lot of people who won't take you on. I had a really amazing experience if anyone is listening from Sydney. I'm in Liverpool and my provider was Brian Hollis and he's extremely VBAC friendly. He was amazing. He had actually somebody with an inverted T before. Meagan: Really? Okay, so he had also seen one. Definitely there are so many providers out there who do support VBAC and then they have a special scar patient come in and they are like, “I really like VBAC but I don't know. I've never seen this before.” But we know it exists so I can't wait for you to share more in your story and about him maybe because we know it's so hard. It's so hard to find these providers. It's hard enough to just find a VBAC-supportive provider in general and then that's something unique that Australia does that at least here in Utah we don't do with the private and public. We just have this hospital and then we have the birth centers and then we have the home births. There is not the dramatic difference in the hospital system like in your case. Okay. Oh my gosh. I'm so excited to dive it. I do have a Review of the Week. I'm so excited that I'm talking so fast. I do have a Review of the Week and then we'll get into those stories. Like you said, you didn't find out until after. That's is the case so many times. They don't even say during. We'll go into this as well if they went into why but sometimes there's not even a clear answer to, Okay, I now have this different, unique scar but why? We're going to get into that. We have this review from xxooxx and it says, “Informative, supportive, and empowering.” It says, “After having a C-section that I certainly did not want and that I did not know was not necessary, I knew nothing about VBACs. I had dove head-first into this podcast and on top of learning so much, I became informed and empowered to get my VBAC which I got. Thank you, Julie and Meagan, for loving your listeners and pouring your knowledge and support into us. What you do matters and I will always recommend The VBAC Link.”Well, thank you, xxooxx, for that amazing review. Congratulations on your VBAC and I couldn't agree more. This podcast really is so empowering and so informative like you were even just saying. I think a lot of this comes from the storytellers and the moms and the Women of Strength. This is just so amazing. I definitely suggest sharing this podcast to anybody. If they're not a VBAC mom, if they're a first-time mom or a second-time mom, I definitely suggest that because I truly believe that the stories on this podcast will help people avoid a Cesarean in general. Meagan: Okay, cute Ashley. You found out after so how did this first birth lead up to this inverted T with an extension? Ashley: Yeah, so I guess my story starts in 2020. I had a low-risk pregnancy and other than being sick the whole time but giving birth in March 2021 with my son and it was super traumatic. It took a long time to heal physically and mentally from it but my waters broke on their own two days before my due date. I had gone into the public hospital I was booked in for. I had seen the same midwife the whole pregnancy which was really fantastic. Midwives are amazing and just empowering telling a first-time mom, “You can do this.” I had no signs that anything would be wrong. So as usual, I went back home and then the contractions started that night. They started to really ramp up and become heavier so that night at about midnight or so, I tried to get some sleep. I wanted to stay home as long as possible. At 3:30 AM, I had to go to the hospital. I was just beyond. The pain in my back was just– yeah. I didn't know if this was normal but in the end, when I got to the hospital, I was only 3 centimeters dilated. I had used the gas and the TENS to get through the contractions but he was posterior which I was nervous about. I didn't know as many things as I knew in the second pregnancy in terms of Spinning Babies and trying to get into good positioning. With my son, I don't know how it happened but he was posterior and the pain was just unbearable. Meagan: And it happens. We learn through pelvic dynamic courses and things that sometimes really truly, babies have to enter in a posterior position before they get into an anterior position and sometimes that means back labor. It is very, very intense. It really is intense. Ashley: Yeah. Yeah, it was. At this point, it went on for a few hours and I just actually couldn't deal with it anymore so I had the epidural which turned out to be quite a good thing for me. It was relieving of some of that back pain but I still had felt a lot of it through it so it's almost like it didn't seem to work as much as I thought it would at that point. The contractions through my back were still there. We tried to do some things before I had the epidural to get into a better position, but it wasn't working for me. Every contraction, my son's heart rate would drop and the midwife was really good in just letting me keep going. “Let's see. Let's see.” But as soon as the doctor on call knew that it had been quite a few hours came into check me, “You've got meconium in your waters. You have to have a Cesarean.” I was just devastated because I had really thought that this was just going to be a great, empowering birth. I was so excited to give birth and to hear that it wasn't going to go the way that I had intended, I was devastated and crying. But yeah, he was in a compound position as well so he did have his hand up past his head. There were a few things going against me in that time. But despite all of this, they gave me a little bit more time to keep going and I did get to 9 centimeters. I was in a position where they thought, “Okay.” My midwife was pushing, “Let's try. Let's try and see if she can continue and maybe we can try some repositioning to get him out,” but the doctor was, “No. Cesarean. There is meconium in the waters. Let's get him out.” I was so exhausted. It had been 34 hours from the time my waters broke and I just gave in. When I was in that vulnerable position of just so much pain and didn't know any better, I just said, “Okay, I'll give in and I'll have the Cesarean.” During the Cesarean preparing, I heard the surgeon say to her assistant, “She's 9 centimeters,” and explaining it and the assistant said, “Should we just see? The head is almost there.” There was a little bit of whispering and then it all just stopped. I was just laying there terrified like, What's going on? They're talking about how far I've progressed and that they were concerned about me having a Cesarean.Meagan: Your baby was so low. Ashley: Yes. I found out later that he was so low that they had to push him back up during the Cesarean. Meagan: Did they push him back up vaginally? Ashley: Yes. Yeah. Meagan: They do that sometimes where they go in vaginally where one doctor is pulling from the other end and one doctor is pushing from the other end vaginally Ashley: Yes. Obviously the recovery is like you gave birth, isn't it? Meagan: Yeah. Ashley: Yeah. The doctor panicked and I was in such a blur that my husband and I actually debriefed afterward and he said, “I've never been so terrified.” A team of doctors just flew in. She was making calls. Obviously, when she started to begin the Cesarean, she saw that she couldn't grab him. He was too low and that's why they had to cut vertically but nothing was explained to us. We were just lying there terrified. The tarp was up. Meagan: They were doing their thing. Ashley: Yeah. And with our first child, we didn't know what to expect anyway but my husband just said there were all of these people who just flew in and there were all of these conversations and whispers. Not long later, he emerged. The tarp wasn't lowered and he wasn't breathing. He started breathing once they transferred him to resus, but that time was the longest time. Meagan: Absolutely. It feels like 5 hours. Ashley: Absolutely, yeah. I don't even know how long it was but it felt like forever. By the time that they placed him on me for the standard amount of time I suppose, I was in just a shock that the spinal block had made me have the shakes. It was just not what I was hoping for. Meagan: Anticipated, yeah. Ashley: Yeah. They wheeled him away with my husband. They went and then I was to go separately into recovery. Before I did that, the doctor then lowered the tarp and said to me, “You will never have a vaginal birth. I've only had to do what I just did twice in my career.” Meagan: Oh wow. Ashley: Yeah, and just so brutal. Just the shock of that was like, I didn't want this either. It was just really hard to hear because I just had this baby not how I had anticipated and to hear that for the future was a big shock to me. Going into recovery and then later on that initial bond with my son, I was just in so much pain that it was hard to hold him. It really took a long time to recover from it. The next day, she did come and talk to me. She said that she had to cut an extension and cut an inverted T incision of 3 centimeters to get him out. She said, “Yeah. I'm so lucky it wasn't worse.” Meagan: Wow. Ashley: Yeah, then she left and I just had to go home and start my new life as a mum with just this recovery. I could hardly walk. As a Cesarean, it's already painful, but I had all of this pain and it left me with an awful feeling mentally as well. I just obviously adored my son. I was so happy to be a mum but that lead-up and then just bang. That's how you're giving birth, it was just a shock. Yeah, so that's what happened. The details of it I found out with the second pregnancy. I didn't know afterward that was our only conversation we had. I didn't get any discharge notes with that information. It wasn't until I was pregnant the second time that I requested my hospital notes. Meagan: So important. So important to do. I really encourage anybody whether you were at one, two, different hospitals and all of the things, request your records because you really do learn a lot about what really transpired that day in your op-reports. Ashley: Yeah, definitely. Yeah, so I guess that brings me to now with pregnancy. A lot better, a lot happier result but I fell pregnant in May 2023. Both my pregnancies were normal, and low-risk. I was a little sick and I actually got quite dizzy and things like that but nothing that was going to impact me from giving the VBAC a try. Like I mentioned, I had gone to a few different providers and when I had my pelvic floor checks and things after my first son, I spoke to the doctors there and said, “Would it be possible to have a VBAC here?” They said no. That was something that was a big shock to me. I didn't expect that I would have to look for somebody. Yeah. That was a big shock. I found out through some of my friends about this OB who was quite VBAC-supportive and I knew I wanted to give it a try and ultimately, if I did have to have the Cesarean, I would be okay with it but I just wanted to try. I heard about this OB and had an appointment with him. My husband and I after the initial appointment were instantly comfortable with him. He was so supportive. He said to me, “Ashley, is this what you want to do?” I said, “Yeah. I really would like to try.” He goes, “Well, that's what we're going to do.”Meagan: I love that.Ashley: Yeah. I was just like, “Oh my goodness. He's so honest about this is how it's going to be.” “If you want to give it a go, these would be my conditions,” which were to have monitoring which I was fine with. I still was a little bit nervous. I know that some people would rather have no monitoring and just let your body tell you, but with the special scar, I thought if there are any signs of rupture, I really want to know.Meagan: That's actually a very common request from a provider in a VBAC situation. They usually want continuous monitoring. You can fight not to have continuous monitoring, but that's a very normal request. On top of VBAC, having a special scar, it's even more of a normal request for a provider to say, “Yeah, let's totally do this. I just want to monitor things,” because we do know that one of the signs of uterine rupture is fetal distress. Ashley: Yeah, that's right. He was just really supportive about, “Let's put a birth plan together and see what you want to do and I'll see what is the best thing to do.”During the pregnancy, I tried to do as much listening to podcasts. That's how I came across your page and Instagram just constantly looking for information. It's actually a beautiful Facebook group called, Special Scars, Special Hope. Being in Australia, I was just like, this is global. There were so many amazing women on there offering support and advice. There was even information on there– statistics. Yeah. I did a little bit of research but I didn't want to overwhelm myself. I just wanted to have a really strong mindset. There were times of doubt and, Maybe I'll just book the Cesarean, but then I thought, No, this is what I want. Let's give it a try. My OB was really supportive from the beginning about, Let's just see how we go. He retrieved my notes and he found out that all of those details where they had to push him back up vaginally and they had to do this extension cut and all those kind of things. It was good that he was prepared. He knew and I just tried to stay as active as I could through the pregnancy. I did the dates at the end. I did the raspberry leaf tea and the vitamins. I just was always on the ball. I tried to do as much as I could to prepare myself physically, but yeah.The conditions with my OB were that we said I would be giving birth at the public hospital that is next to the private. It was a different one to before because of any emergencies and that kind of thing. He would have to do some examinations every hour or so which I was also fine about. Obviously, I couldn't use water. That was one thing I really wanted. I wanted to be able to get into the tub. Meagan: Birth in the water. Ashley: Yeah, or even just use it for pain management. He said, “No, because of the monitoring,” so that was one thing I was ugh about. I thought, When I do go into labor and it starts, I will try and use water at home before I get to the hospital. My husband was so supportive of me and said, “I will help you. Let's do this. If you want to use the water–” he was a little bit nervous about, “When they start to ramp up, we really need to leave” because the hospital was about 30 minutes away. We just wanted to be at a point that no later than 5 minutes or so apart and they wanted me in. Meagan: Well, and you had already made it to 9 centimeters before so even though you'd be a first-time mom pushing baby out vaginally, your cervix is not as much like a first-time mom. Ashley: Exactly right. That was something that got me through the whole labor. I just kept saying to myself, My body knows how to do this. I've gotten here before. I know what to do. That was just something in times of doubt, I would just keep saying. But yes, my OB said at any point that he was concerned, we'd have the discussion and if anything was to go wrong, we'd be calling a C-section straightaway. I was fine about that. I came in at 39 weeks. Sorry, I booked at 39 weeks for a stretch and sweep but I got COVID. Meagan: Oh no. Ashley: My whole family all got COVID and I was just like, “No.” I couldn't hardly breathe. I was congested and everything. I'm not going into labor like this. I've done that much preparation. So I just tried to rest and get better. It was put out until 40 weeks. I had until 41 weeks then he said we would be having a discussion about a Cesarean. He didn't want me to go too long with the scar. So 40 weeks, my due date. I came in for a stretch and sweep. I came home to relax after, nothing. Nothing at all happened. No pain, nothing. Two days later, I started to have some mild period pains. I carried on the day with my son. I just kept going but I had been attending acupuncture weekly from 36 weeks. I had another session at 6:30 that night and by 9:30, the pain really started to ramp up. I decided to try and sleep but by the time I had a shower, laid down in bed, and at 10:00, they were coming faster, stronger, and I just knew I wanted to stay home as long as possible. I got into the shower then I did some type of positioning that I could get comfortable with the TENS machine on but I knew the pain of the back and I just knew that this baby had to be posterior again because the feeling was just like I had experienced it yesterday. Meagan: Deja vu. Ashley: Yeah. I just said to my husband, “She's posterior. I just know it.” We left for the hospital at 1:30 in the morning. We got there and I had to walk a really long distance from the car to the birthing unit. It was just so odd. There was no one there, no wheelchairs for me, just no one. Meagan: Huh. Ashley: Yeah, I was so shocked. I was like, What's going on? I just said, “This is going to help me progress.” Any little obstacle that would come up, I just said, “I'm going to be able to do this.” Helping I think in the end actually helped my labor progress.Meagan: I was thinking that. This is actually probably really good. That's a lot of movement for the pelvis and good for the baby to rotate. Ashley: I was having these contractions that I had to get on the floor to breathe them out and rock through them. It took us a long time to get from the car to the birthing unit because I had to keep stopping but when I did get there, they were like, “Wow. You are almost 5 centimeters. You have progressed really quickly.” Meagan: Just like you wanted. Ashley: Yeah. The contractions then were so weird. It was like I had to push but it was too early to push. She was posterior. It was confirmed so that pressure was just such an odd labor. I didn't have that at all even though I was posterior with my son too. This one was like an intense pushing feeling that I couldn't control. Then yeah. Once I had discovered that she was posterior too, I just tried to get into some good positioning. I had done a lot of research about posterior because I was terrified of it happening again. I got on the ball trying to rock back and forth and my husband was such a great support because we had done a little bit of information reading about this pressure point on the lower back. Meagan: The sacrum?Ashley: Yes, that's it so anytime I had these contractions, he would just push on there and I swear by that. I have to say more than the TENS machine, more than anything, that got me through that labor. But yeah. At one stage, I sat on the toilet to try and help with the pressure of this pushing and my waters broke. Yeah. That really ramped up from there. I was 6 centimeters at that point and it was unbearable. I couldn't take it anymore. I asked for the epidural and the midwife was like, “Are you sure you want to do that? You said you didn't want to.” I just knew that I had to do it. I couldn't take it any longer. I was at that point where I was asking, “Just wheel me in. I'll just have the Cesarean.” I didn't want that. I wanted to keep trying so I had the epidural and I fell asleep. It was just like my body needed that. Meagan: Yeah. Rest and relaxation can really be the best tool in labor. Even in early labor, we are so excited and want to keep going but rest and relaxation. Ashley: I was so tired, yeah. I just relaxed. My body completely relaxed and I fell asleep for about an hour. At that point, my OB came in to see me and measured me and discovered that baby had turned while I was sleeping and I was 10 centimeters. In that hour, I had progressed that quickly. He looked at me and said, “Ashley, you're having your VBAC.” He said, “You're going to push this baby out. Within a half hour or so, this baby will be here.” I just was in pure– I've got the feeling all over again. I just was so in a pure disbelief. I was just so happy and I just said to my husband, “We've done it. This is it. This is the moment that I really wanted.” Yeah. It's making me emotional all over again. I pushed for about 20 minutes under his guidance. I still had feeling and control in my legs because I didn't have the epidural at full dose so that really helped and within 20 minutes, my baby girl was born.And just that feeling of pure joy and pure connection, that bond was just immediate. Pride, shock. Meagan: It was just all of it. Ashley: When they laid her on my chest, I will never forget my husband– the pride he had in me. Yeah, it was just beautiful and it was truly empowering. It was a beautiful moment. It's just something you never forget. She's 12 weeks now and I just relive that moment over and over. But yeah, it was my healing birth. Yeah, it was beautiful. It was everything that I had hoped for. Just shock, really because it was such a different experience to the emergency that I had with my son. I had that golden hour. She wasn't taken away from me like my son was. They gave me that time with her and it was just pure disbelief in a beautiful way. Yeah, so that's it. I recovered so much quicker and I think for me, that chapter of my life closed. It was just a beautiful way to really celebrate what birthing should be like and how I should feel afterward. You know, that bond that you should have. Yeah. That's me. Meagan: I felt all of the emotions as you were sharing it and I know that I get an extra advantage because I can see your face and I can see you get teary. Oh, just to see it in your face. That moment is amazing when you realize you've done it and it is so overwhelming in all of the ways but holy cow, I am so happy for you. I am so glad that you were able to find the support because it's just so hard. It's so hard and you were even told– you hadn't even met your baby yet really and were told, “Just to let you know, you will never have a baby vaginally.” To even be told that in that space, that in itself is so overwhelming and being told, “No. No one here is going to support you. No one.” When you are proof along with so many other Women of Strength who have had special scars and gone on to have a vaginal birth that it is possible and you do not have to but when you're in that vulnerable state, I can just picture my own C-sections in an OR with the drape up and the bright lights and the beepings and if I were told that I would never have a baby vaginally again, I would already be in that emotional intimate space and vulnerable where I could have and many people could be like, Okay and then just never look past it and that was it. I'll never deliver vaginally. But that's where I think this podcast just is so important for people to listen and hear these stories that you may be told something and that may be true. That really may be the best choice in the future, right? It may be medically best or emotionally best but it doesn't mean it is always what your fate has to be for the rest of your life when having a baby. Ashley: Yeah, and when I was told that and then I fell pregnant, I thought to myself, Okay, if that is what is medically necessary, I will do that. I just want my baby here naturally and safely. If it isn't the way that I had hoped then that's okay. At one point, I even looked at the maternal-assisted Cesarean and I had that discussion with my OB. He said, “Yep Ashley, if you decide you're going to have the Cesarean elective, I'll do that for you.” He's like, “I will make it beautiful for you. I can play music you like. I'll do whatever you like. It will be different from the first.” I said to myself, Okay. That is an option if I just feel that. Meagan: That's a good plan B. Ashley: Yeah, that's right. Exactly. He said if we call it early enough and there are no signs of rupturing, “I can still do that for you.” I still felt really comfortable going in that no matter what, this would hopefully be a better experience than what I had. But yeah, you're right. There's almost this stigma that C-sections, especially with special scars, that your body failed. I wanted to break the mold on that that bodies aren't broken. I almost left my first baby coming home with him and I just looked at him and loved him and adored him but I also felt to myself, That's not how I wanted to bond with you by laying here and I can't move. I felt like my body was broken or it had let me down and this time around, I just believed in myself. I believed in my body and I said to myself, “Your mindset is everything. Going in, this mindset is how I'm going to birth this baby and get through it.” Birthing is incredible and I feel like we should feel incredible afterward. Meagan: Absolutely. Birth is incredible and it really is incredible no matter what, but the experience really does matter. We hear the whole “safe mom, safe baby” but of course, duh. That experience really, really counts and it sticks with us really for the rest of our lives. I mean, my oldest is going to be 13 in just a few months and I still remember her birth. My other is 10 and I remember her birth and of course, my VBAC baby I remember his birth and those are sticking with me. They are sticking with me and it's just I love that your provider was like, “Listen. I'm going to support here and if it goes here, I'm still going to support you and no matter what, we are going to make this a better experience for you.” I love that your provider saw the better experience as an important part. Ashley: Yeah. I'm paying for him and his expertise. But I almost felt like he just wanted me to be happy. For him, it was like, “I can see your pain. I want you to be happy this time around.” We felt that from the initial appointment. It was more than just, “I'm paying for you. You have to do this.” It was like, “Help me get a better experience for you. What do you want? What can I do?” That was so important to me so it was wonderful. It was really important to me to acknowledge him as well because he was such an amazing support. Meagan: Yes. I'm so happy for you. I'm so happy for you. I do just want to mention that group again, you guys. Special Scars, Special Hope on Facebook. What kinds of things did you see in your experience in that group?Ashley: It's just hearing other people's stories because I would see VBAC stories and I was like, Yes, 100%. I need to do this and I need to do that. It's got that little bit of a fear factor with it because it is a special scar and not that many people attempt it. So to have a group of women globally who do attempt it and just empower each other like, “Hey, I had an amazing experience. This is what I did,” that was just invaluable to me taking on all of this advice. Quite a lot of these women are in the U.S. and they do talk about how providers can either be for you or against you and just write you off completely. It is similar here too. There were quite a few who said, “No way.” They don't want that liability so yeah, it was just really great to have that group with such amazing, brave women who are going out there and sharing their story on there because it helps people like me who are like, Look, it can happen. It's rare, but it's not impossible. That group is amazing. I encourage anybody who has had all of these different types of scars on there, not just inverted T. There are people who have had inverted J's and extensions. So anything a little bit special. Meagan: Yes. I was going to go over the C-section incision types. We've got the low transverse which is considered the safest way to VBAC having a low, boring, low transverse. But then we have a low vertical which means they cut lower in the abdominal segment and it's vertical up and down. Then we have classical which is higher and sometimes we have classical scars when maybe a baby is very preterm, very small and the baby can come out that way, multiples, or maybe if a baby is transverse but it's earlier on or something like that, they may have to go higher. Then there is inverted T and like I said, inverted J's and then we have extensions on all of these. There have even been low transverse with an extension where it can go further or that's where it goes into that J. Yeah, there are just so many different types and honestly, the statistics are not that powerful out there. There are not a ton and I don't know. I would say there's not a ton of really solid concrete. There are some but they are smaller. Ashley: Yeah, really hard. I didn't want to overwhelm myself with statistics and things. A lot of people in that group share the rupture risks and the statistics and what they throw at you, these OBs are, “You've got a 20% risk of rupturing,” that would turn anybody away. I just knew from women in this group that I had just glanced over seeing that it's not that high. Don't let anyone tell you it's that high. Obviously, there are situations when you need to have the Cesarean because it is unsafe, but in my case, I knew that it wasn't a 20% rupture risk. I knew that there was definitely less and mine was 3 centimeters. It can be bigger than that obviously, but when I had spoken to my OB, he said, “It is 3 centimeters but in the span of your whole labor progressing, 3 centimeters is not a big deal.”Meagan: That's pretty small. Ashley: Yeah, it's pretty small so even just hearing that, it was like, “Wow, you are telling me something different than all of these other people.” It's good to back yourself up a little bit in your conversations and have just that little bit of research behind you. Meagan: Yes. We are also going to have a bunch of links in the show notes so if you guys want to go check that out, I highly suggest it. Go check out the show notes. We're also going to have the link to that group because anytime anybody has a special scar, I'm like, This is the group. It's so empowering over there. It's so informative. There are not many groups like that. Specialscars.org as well. Ashley: But even most of the people who have had a rupture as well, that group is just a safe space to talk about how you are feeling and there's a lot of women on there who have become friends really just in sharing their experience. So yeah, it's a really informative, great group. Meagan: Yep. Awesome. Well, thank you so much again for taking the time out and figuring out the time changes and being here with us just 12 weeks after your VBAC. Ashley: Thank you and thank you for everything you do to help empower women. Obviously, it's reaching globally and it's just so informative and supportive. Yeah, it's amazing so thank you for everything you do. Meagan: Absolutely.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

Former Rodeo Queen Cowgirl Justie Jensen shares her journey from growing up in Idaho to pursuing a full-time career in content creation and microblading, with a passion for Western fashion at the core.Justie delves into the intricacies of microblading, highlighting its transformative impact on confidence and self-image. She discusses her collaborations with various brands, including Black Star Boots and dream collab Wrangler, expressing her aspirations for future partnerships. Justie also opens up about her personal struggles with self-confidence, sharing a touching anecdote from her childhood.Throughout the episode, Justie offers valuable advice for aspiring content creators, emphasizing authenticity, consistency, and continuous self-education. She encourages others to pursue their passions wholeheartedly and remain resilient in the face of challenges.Ashley concludes the episode by promoting Justie's social media handles and podcast, "Cowgirl Handbook," and sharing a sponsor message from The Boot Babes.Justie Jensen:Instagram: @JustieJensenYouTube: Life with JPodcast: Cowgirl HandbookAshley, Host of Western Fashion Behind the Scenes:Instagram: @TheBootBabeWebsite: The Boot BabesQuotes:Justie Jensen: "I think just showcasing different ways to style clothes is fun."Justie Jensen: "Being able to work with Wrangler would be a really cool opportunity."Justie Jensen: "I'll post really unfiltered pictures of myself... just to prove to myself that it doesn't matter."Ashley: "It's always a good day to wear cowboy boots."This episode of Western Fashion Behind the Scenes is brought to you by The Boot Babes, the largest Western networking group for women in the world. Visit The Boot Babes to sign up for their newsletter and join the next women's adventure in the West.

Dawn Delatte and Jordyn Bonds interview Ashley Sheble, the Founder of AvidFirst, about her experiences and progress in thoughtbot's Incubator Program, which aims to help founders like Ashley turn an idea into a viable product. In the third part of the Mini Incubator Series, they talk about user interviews, data analysis, and prototyping to validate ideas. They emphasize the importance of being open to user signals and adjusting their approach accordingly. They also discuss the upcoming weeks of the program and the goal of refining their story and business strategy. Just catching up? Listen to Part I (https://www.giantrobots.fm/498) and Part 2 (https://www.giantrobots.fm/499) of the Mini Incubator Series! Follow Ashley Sheble on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashley-sheble/). Follow thoughtbot on X (https://twitter.com/thoughtbot) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/150727/). Become a Sponsor (https://thoughtbot.com/sponsorship) of Giant Robots! Transcript: DAWN: Thanks, everybody, for joining. We're glad that you're here. If you've tuned in before, great, welcome back. You're probably familiar with thoughtbot; if you're not, we're a product design and development consultancy that helps make you, and your team, and your product successful. We are currently running the second session of our incubator program, which is an eight-week program that takes you through a lot of different activities and exercises to help you identify market and product opportunities, experiment with them, and ideally come up with a solution that you can move forward with. I'm Dawn. I'm a Managing Director here at thoughtbot. And I lead a team that works with very early-stage products, and founders, and companies. And I'll hand it over to Jordyn. JORDYN: I'm Jordyn Bonds, and I'm the Director of Product Strategy on Dawn's team. And I'm kind of the...I don't know what, founder in residence for the incubator trying to bring my experience as a former founder to bear for our participants, in this case, Ashley. ASHLEY: Okay, my name is Ashley Sheble. I'm the CEO and founder of AvidFirst and have been working with Jordyn and a great team in the second incubator session. So, removing all bias from the statement I'm about to say, but if anybody's thinking about applying to the next incubator, just do it. It's an amazing experience. You're going to learn so much. There are so many smart, helpful people who really care about building cool products that make a difference. And so, do it. DAWN: I love it. Thanks for the impromptu promo. JORDYN: Yeah, thank you [laughs]. It's good to hear. DAWN: Yeah, I'm excited. Cool. Well, Ashley, why don't you maybe kick us off with a little bit of a recap of these past two weeks? What have y'all been working on? ASHLEY: Yeah, so, just for a little background, in case anybody hasn't been following along, AvidFirst is a technology company aimed at simplifying college saving and spending. Our goal is really to make 529 accounts more usable broadly and then, more specifically, attractive to next-gen consumers. And for those who aren't familiar with 529 plans, that's okay because neither are about 70% of Americans. But essentially, they are college savings vehicles. They're investment accounts that allow people to contribute money. The money grows tax-free and then can be withdrawn tax-free when used for qualified education expenses. And over the past few years, the term qualified education expense has really expanded from beyond just tuition and fees to room and board on and off campus, computers, technology, supplies, apprenticeships, K through 12, like, the list is getting longer and longer. And so, our goal is just to really help simplify a really complex system and savings vehicle to make them more appealing and attractive to people. So, the past few weeks, specifically, we have been aggregating all the data from our user interviews. We've done a lot of user interviews with different stakeholders and have been taking the information and saying, okay, what do we do next? How do we validate the way we're thinking about solving this problem will actually solve the problem in the way that we think it will? And so, through lots of process mapping, brainstorming different pilot initiatives, and then now working through some of the nuances of the industry. The 529 industry, specifically, is a complex animal. I don't really know how else to explain it. It's very complex. And so, we are just navigating these complexities and looking for solutions that will truly simplify the complexity. JORDYN: I will just dig in a little bit to that analysis of the interviews that we've been conducting. That analysis kind of, like, stepped up a notch in the last week in a really fun way where we, the team, really kind of dug into the dynamics of each interview, sort of the things that we're most curious about, and have been asking and really, like, scored each interview. And then did sort of a cohort analysis, like, where are the trends with which personas? We had already had some intuitions, and we just wanted to confirm with the data that we weren't deluding ourselves about what the direction was. So, that was a really, like, I think it was a really useful exercise and kind of fun to see. And what doing that helps with is our own conviction, but then it also helps us make sure that we are honing who we're talking to going forward. Talking to folks is, like, so critical and is so not scalable. It is so time-consuming [laughs]. So, you want to make sure that you're doing it really strategically. So, it's sort of, like, every wave of interviews we do, we do a little more analysis. And it's, like, we finally got to a critical number where we felt like doing this data pass was going to be statistically significant. We had enough interviews to really focus the interviews we're going to do going forward. So, just to give a little, like, lens into how that's worked and how we've been thinking about it. DAWN: I think we ask this question often, maybe every time, but I'm interested to see how it continues to evolve. But what was something that you learned these past two weeks that really surprised you or maybe even confirmed your hunches? JORDYN: So, as often happens, when you start talking to a focus group of people who share a lot of pain points in their lives or their work, you end up with, like, a lot of trends. Like, there might be a thing you're asking them about that you're particularly focused on or curious about, and you want to focus your questions on that. But invariably, you're talking to a human being, and they're going to talk about a lot of different things. And so, early on, and when we started interviewing people at the very beginning of this project in August, you know, we were very focused on college savings and spending. But an interesting thing, like, sort of trend that came up was also how much parents care about imparting, you know, some sense of financial responsibility in their young adults [laughs]. And we were like, well, that's interesting. Okay, let's, like, keep an eye on that. Maybe that's interesting to us. And what has kind of surprised me in the last couple of weeks is how much of that has sort of solidified. This is not, like, a news flash, by the way, like I think [laughs]. This is, like, a thing. Anyone who has teenagers out there is like, duh, like, why is this shocking to you? But the way that it ties into college savings and spending, I think we found some really interesting connections and threads there that have only gotten stronger with the specific cohorts that we've been talking to. So, I think that we, at first, had started as just this sort of, like, well, that's interesting, but we'll see where it goes kind of thing. And now it's, like, become a little bit more core to how we're thinking about just broadly what folks are facing, who we're addressing. So, I guess it wasn't, like, a surprise, but, like, the deepening of that signal, you know, in the sense of signal and noise, has been, like, really interesting to us, I think. ASHLEY: There's a system thinking expert that talks about how changes in a field are rarely made by the experts in the field but rather outsiders looking in. And so, for me, that's amazing because I don't have experience as a technology founder. I'm working with others who are founders in the technology space, which is great. But it does leave some question marks for us as it relates to building some processes and doing some pilot mapping, which completely overcomable because we're able to draw on resources from within the thoughtbot organization. And then, also, just network, people within our network. Jordyn seems to know everybody. I'll be like, "Do you know somebody in North Dakota?" And she's like, "Actually, yes, my third cousin's sister lives there, and I can get her on the phone." And it's just -- JORDYN: It's my first cousin. I will tell you, it's my straight-up first cousin. ASHLEY: Well, there's always someone that Jordyn knows no matter where, it seems like, which is extremely helpful when we're trying to find experts to help us answer some questions. So, it's great to be able to work through problems in a very systematic way, using some of the strategies that thoughtbot has employed, I guess, over and over and can be applied to different industries. But it does help us find, what are the questions we still need answered? And then, who are the people that can help us answer these questions? And be very strategic about that. JORDYN: I would add to that on the networking score. I think this is one of those things that first-time founders often struggle with. They struggle with recognizing who in their network is a valuable person to talk to in the first place. And then, they struggle with making those connections because it feels like you're asking people to do stuff for you, and that doesn't always feel great. But really, your network, and where you come from, and the people you know and who care about you are one of your biggest assets going into this work. And it's important to take stock of those folks as early as you can and think about how to involve them. And often, they want to be involved. They're excited to have a way to support you and contribute their expertise or whatever else. It's actually really transformed some of my relationships, like family relationships that I didn't necessarily have as...people I just discovered in my own sort of extended family who were doing related things to me. And we're much deeper friends now because we get to talk about that stuff all the time. And before I was a founder, we just didn't really talk [laughs]. So, just think through who you know and how they might be able to help you, and chances are they really want to. It's a very useful exercise. And it doesn't have to be super transactional. It can be a real bond builder. ASHLEY: Yeah, I would say that's completely true, especially from my own experience. I don't like to ask people for help, generally. And so, asking people for their time and for their advice, I'm like, oh my gosh, why are they going to give this to me? What can I do for them? But it's really been amazing how generous people are with their knowledge, and insight, and their time. I'm attending a conference next week for the 529 industry. And there have been so many helpful, kind people who are just experts in their field, leaders in their companies and are willing to talk to me about their experiences about what challenges they see. Because ultimately, you know, when a company succeeds and helps the industry grow, everybody grows and benefits from that. So, I hadn't really looked at it that way until Jordyn really encouraged me to just be, like, just call that person or just, you know, reach out. And sure enough, they were more than willing to be helpful. DAWN: I imagine there is a sort of a bit of human factor here in that, you know, what you're giving to them is an opportunity for them to share, like, something that's, like, deeply important to them and that probably not a lot of people ask them about, even their day-to-day work. So, I imagine that can feel good, too, and maybe even sort of help them better understand [laughs], like, what it is they're doing. So, you've definitely sunk into who to talk to. What about the how? Like, what are y'all doing now to try to continue validating that this is the right opportunity and that there's a product opportunity there? ASHLEY: Yeah, so, really drilling down on those two cohorts that we mentioned a little earlier, specifically one of them, making sure that we are asking questions now related to this solution that we are thinking about, and more around their experience with similar type of products or similar type of solutions to make sure that we are thinking about building features or building process flows in a way that will integrate into the way they're used to doing things today so it doesn't seem like a new learning curve to, you know, think about adopting our product. And then, also, just making sure that we are providing value, ultimately, because we don't want to just build something just to build something that we think will work for this group of people who told us that something is hard. We want to make sure that we're actually making something that's hard much easier than it already is. JORDYN: Yeah. We've really, I mean, to build on that, we've gotten a little bit further into testing messaging, which is we think that we understand folks' problems and how they are talking about them, but we really need to validate that. And, you know, we have created some landing pages and are showing them to folks and getting their reactions. But we've also started doing a little bit of prototyping, which we hope to start showing folks soon. And this is all just...a prototype, in this case, meaning this isn't, like, a clickable app. This is just, like, sort of a static design that appears clickable [laughs], think of it like a PDF with some links in it, and just showing that to folks and saying, you know, "What would you do here? How would you respond to this?" And it's just a really great way to...it's fast. It's easy to spin one of those up and then get them in front of folks and make sure that how we're thinking about this is sort of broadly in the right direction. It's so much cheaper to find out that we're thinking about this wrongly with something like that than with an app that we spent six months building and launching, ha-ha. Now, who's done that before? Not me, no, never [laughs]. I've never wasted a year building a thing. So, it's a really fun thing to do. And sometimes you can even...it's not even, like, let's validate what we're thinking. Sometimes, it's really helpful to actually throw some curveballs in there on purpose to make sure we're invalidating the right things. So, it's really fun to be moving into that phase with what we know to be true and really getting closer to testing things out in, like, a real-world situation. ASHLEY: It's somewhat surprising, too, what people are reacting to or not reacting to. The things that we thought people would be really excited about, they're like, "Eh." And the things that we thought are just kind of, like, filler on the page, they're like, "That's awesome." So, it's really crazy to see that juxtaposition. And then, you've got some people who will be like, "Huh, that's cool." And then, you've got some people who are like, "Can I sign up right now?" And you have to say, "We'll let you know when you can, but not right now." Just the differences are pretty surprising. JORDYN: Yeah, and I'm glad you brought that up, Ashley, about, like, the stuff that you just kind of put on the page to make it look like a real page, and then people really zero in on it. There's just so much serendipity involved in this work. And part of the skill in making products is being open to the right things at the right time, right? You want to stay focused on your mission and what it is you're trying to accomplish. But you don't want to ignore, you know, if people are reacting really strongly to something that you thought was sort of ancillary, it's important to, like, take a beat and think about that. How does that fit in? Can we use that? What you want to do is find lightning that you can bottle, and if people are not feeling lightning [laughs] about the primary thing you are working on but they are about something else, that's totally okay. I mean, the recent past of successful applications in software products is littered with stories like that, where people thought they were building one thing, and they just consistently heard about this related thing from their users. And they were like, well, why don't we just invest in that? It takes a lot of courage to stare in the face of that signal, the data that you're getting from people, and let go of the things that are not working and really embrace the things that are. DAWN: This reminds me a little bit of the conversation we were having when we were together in New York last week around the focus on validating or invalidating. The conversation we were having was kind of trying to shift that away from ideas to assumptions. But this is making me think that it focuses too much on one single thing that you're trying to get an answer for, as opposed to, like you're saying, being open to sort of receiving signals about completely tangential things or things that you may have not been paying attention to before. So, that makes a lot of sense. ASHLEY: Yeah. Now I'm thinking, like, should we put even more crazy things on the page and just see what happens? Who knows? JORDYN: I think there's another aspect of this first-time founders often struggle with, which is that feeling that you shouldn't put anything on the page that you're testing that you couldn't actually do. And it's tough. It can feel a little bit like you're misleading people. But there's absolutely ethical ways to do this, where you tell people, "Hey, this is just an idea. We're just trying to get people's gut reactions to this. We have not even put pixel-to-paper here. We don't even know. We just want to get your reaction." As long as you're transparent with folks about where you're at and about not promising them things you can't actually do, I mean, obviously, if it were as easy as just promising stuff to people of what they want, we could just make a landing page that said, like, "Free bag of money. Who wants free bag of money," right? [laughs] And people would be like, "Why is the bag of money free?" [laughs] Right? And so, you really want to be careful and not necessarily do anything that is misleading. But on the other hand, there's no better way to get folks' emotional reaction than to put something together and just see how they respond to it. So, there's a lot of, like, sort of nuance to doing this. And, Dawn, to your point, the balancing act between being open and being scattered, right? That's a fine line. I've definitely been on teams before that are just, like, the new hotness every week. "Hey, there's this cool app out. Let's just immediately redesign everything to look just like that." And you're like, "Maybe? [laughs] I don't know if that's, like, the best idea." So, it's a real balancing act, but it always comes back to who you're building for and what they want and need. And if you're staying very focused on that and measuring, you know, comparing every idea anything that comes your way against those, showing it to them and getting their reaction, you can't fail. Keeping no daylight between yourself and your customer that is the surest path. DAWN: Yeah, it kind of carries through to the core thing that we're saying, which is don't focus on one thing to validate or invalidate. Be open to receiving signals from other, you know, opportunities. But that's not validating or invalidating something. That's showing you where to focus your time. And then the product experiments and feasibility research and all of that is designed to help you to get closer to validation. But, in some cases, there's a point at which you have to take a risk, right? And your customers are ultimately going to tell you over time whether or not the solution was the right one. But you get more confidence. You get closer to the right solution the more strategic you are about that process, so...oh, go ahead. ASHLEY: I think the great thing about technology, too, is it's not set in stone. You can change it. If you learn something new, you can modify what you're doing to fit what you're hearing, and I think that's so incredible. We live in a time where there are so many tools and resources out there to really be nimble. And just to Jordyn's point earlier, I think the hardest part is being willing to take in some of these signals and be like, okay, this is what they want, and being willing to move in that direction versus the path you have already designed in your head. DAWN: Yeah, we've only got a couple of weeks left in this incubator [laughs]. How are y'all feeling? What are you planning? What are you looking forward to over the next couple of weeks? ASHLEY: I can't believe that time went by so fast. I thought eight weeks felt like two years when we first started. I was like, oh, we've got so much time. We're going to do so much. We have done a lot. But the time has really flown by. So, I'm just kind of, like, now thinking about how do I make the most of the last few weeks? And just make sure that we check all the boxes that we set out to check in the beginning, and then have a plan from there in terms of continuing the work in a productive and, you know, exciting way. JORDYN: Yeah, one of the, like, sort of Northstar outcome for us in the incubator is to give the founder confidence in what they're doing and their path, the confidence in that vision, and then enough confidence to articulate it consistently to the folks they need to sort of bring along with them. So, what I'm, like, really looking forward to in the next couple of weeks is honing that story for Ashley. Like, what's your story? What's your why? What's your how? What's your when? And how to make sure that story is just easy to communicate. I mean, already, Ashley, like, up top of this exact livestream where you articulated sort of, like, what AvidFirst is doing, I think I feel better and better about that articulation given what we know. It feels really good. It feels solid. And as we're going, we're just as skeptical as anyone else, right? But we're trying to anticipate what folks...external stakeholders broadly define what their misgivings are going to be. And we're compiling a kind of list of frequently asked questions about what AvidFirst is doing, like, why 529s? Why next-gen consumers? Et cetera. Just so that that story is so internalized that, like, you can't really be taken off guard necessarily. I mean, you want to be open to new questions and new ideas. That's not what I'm saying. But just basically, like, being able to thoroughly and deeply, at the drop of a hat, to sort of pitch this to your dentist while they're cleaning your teeth, you know, like that kind of conviction and, like, the solidity of the narrative is really what we're going for in the next few weeks. And I think we're well on our way there. We have all the pieces. It's about putting it together coherently, I think, at this point. It's really exciting, though. I do feel like we're really zeroing in on a valuable lens on college saving and spending that I think the market is really ripe for, so it's exciting. DAWN: Yeah, it's been great to see all the progress. We have a comment that I just noticed. ASHLEY: Oh. DAWN: Not a question, but I wanted to call it out because it was related to what you were talking about a few minutes ago, Jordyn. Kiran said they totally agree. "We had the same epiphany/pivot this summer. We went from direct-to-consumer to an enterprise model. Try to zoom out with a systems thinking lens, and it will help with a clearer path and tell your story." JORDYN: Yeah, that's awesome. DAWN: There are no other questions from the audience. And it seems like maybe there's still a little bit of a lag. So [laughs], we can wrap up. If anybody has questions after this, feel free to comment. We'll be, you know, checking out the posts on LinkedIn and YouTube. And we can follow up there. You can always, like I said, come and follow along. Check out our thoughtbot.com incubator site. You can both apply to the next incubator session and sign up to hear from us in our weekly newsletter. We write about progress on our blog as well, so thoughtbot.com/blog. There's all kinds of ways to find us and actually talking about the work that we're doing. So, please follow along. JORDYN: Anyone out there who's wondering, am I right for the incubator? Just apply. It's really, like, nothing is too early if it's just an idea you've been kicking around that's born of your industry experience or your personal experience. The application process is really lightweight. This is not going to take you days to fill out this application. We've heard from folks that even filling out the application is the first thing they ever did with regard to the idea, helped solidify it, and solidify their thinking for them. So, just go apply. You got something? You got an idea for an app? You see a growing market out there, and you feel like it's underserved with software? Just holler at us. We'd love to hear it. Apply. It's fun [laughs]. DAWN: Yeah. Thanks, everybody, for tuning in. Thanks, Jordyn and Ashley, for participating. See you again in a couple of weeks, yeah? JORDYN: Yes. It'll be the last week, so we'll have things to say, no doubt. DAWN: Yes, tune in. It'll be a good time. All right. Thanks, everybody. AD: Did you know thoughtbot has a referral program? If you introduce us to someone looking for a design or a development partner, we will compensate you if they decide to work with us. More info on our website at tbot.io/referral. Or you can email us at referrals@thoughtbot.com with any questions. Special Guests: Ashley Sheble, Dawn Delatte, and Jordyn Bonds.

Dawn Delatte, Vendela Colavecchio, and Jordyn Bonds interview Ashley Sheble, the Founder of AvidFirst, about her experiences and progress in thoughtbot's Incubator Program, which aims to help founders like Ashley turn an idea into a viable product. The discussion covers various aspects of the program, including the evolution of the product idea, insights gained from industry conferences, the importance of listening to customers, and the ongoing development of the go-to-market strategy. Everyone emphasizes the value of the Incubator Program in helping founders connect with their market and refine their strategy. Just catching up? Listen to Part I (https://www.giantrobots.fm/498), Part 2 (https://www.giantrobots.fm/499), and Part 3 (https://www.giantrobots.fm/501) of the Mini Incubator Series! Follow Ashley Sheble on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashley-sheble/). Follow thoughtbot on X (https://twitter.com/thoughtbot) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/150727/). Become a Sponsor (https://thoughtbot.com/sponsorship) of Giant Robots! Transcript: DAWN: Hello, everyone. So, since we have a bigger crew here today, slightly bigger crew, we should just jump right in, right? If you're not familiar with thoughtbot, we're a design and development consultancy who create and build products from the very earliest stages. We are currently in our second incubator session. This is actually our final week. We're wrapping up this week our second program with Ashley at AvidFirst. And I'll let everybody go around and say hi and give a little intro. Today, we're going to be chatting about how the program has been going, any new recent activity, and things that we've learned and done, and, you know, what's going to happen here after the session ends. I'm Dawn. I am a Managing Director here at thoughtbot. And I will shoot it over to you, Ashley. ASHLEY: Thanks, Dawn. And my name is Ashley Sheble. I'm the CEO and Founder of AvidFirst. AvidFirst is really focused on helping people save and spend for college in a modern way. We're simplifying the process, modernizing the experience, and really, with the end goal of helping families avoid student debt. So, I've been working with the thoughtbot team for the past eight weeks, really refining our strategy, and we'll talk about this here in a minute. But pivoting a little bit on the strategy just based on what we learn from the market from talking to users, from talking to experts, from talking to people with just insight around what's needed in the space. And so I'm excited to share more about the past eight weeks. DAWN: Awesome. Thank you. Jordyn, do you want to hop in? JORDYN: Sure. I'm Jordyn Bonds. And I'm the Director of Product Strategy on the Ignite team. And I am a two-time former co-founder of tech startups, so whence I come to this work. Vendela, I'll let you go. VENDELA: I'm Vendela Colavecchio. I'm the Design Director on our team here running the incubators at thoughtbot. And yeah, should I talk about my role on the incubator [chuckles] more? I guess the incubator is sort of funny because, you know, as a designer, typically, my tasks fall under more of a traditional design category. But I think with the incubator, we're, like, all hands on deck, just trying to get lots of things done and help out in any way that we can. So, definitely some design things, but also just a bunch of participating in discussions and getting all sorts of tasks done. DAWN: I'm sure we'll dive more into that. As usual, though, we're going to let Ashley kick us off, kick our discussion off with a little bit of an update on what's been going on in these past two weeks since we last chatted and, you know, where we are now. ASHLEY: Yeah. So, the past couple of weeks have been pretty exciting. I went to an industry conference. It was a 529 and ABLE conference. So, 529s are tax-advantaged savings accounts specific for education expenses. ABLE accounts are tax-advantaged savings accounts, specifically for people who have a disability. And so, spent a week learning from experts in both spaces, hearing from all the different stakeholders, so state agencies, program distributors, you name it, every sort of stakeholder in the whole industry was there. And it was amazing to just be able to go in and learn and meet people and hear their perspectives around what's going well, what's not going well. It could not have been more well timed because I think had the conference been earlier, I might not have been ready to ask the right questions from the different stakeholders. And had the conference been later, well, we couldn't have used any of that insight and learning to continue working on refining or pivoting the project. So, it was a great experience. People were so collaborative, so helpful. I think it's interesting that my perspective going in was, oh, people aren't going to want to talk to me. They're not going to want to share their insight. But it was quite the opposite. People were really happy to talk about what they thought could be improved or what they thought seemed to be going well. But it's only from one perspective. So, if you start asking questions around what you've learned from other people's perspectives, you kind of see this, like, aha moment. Like, oh, I hadn't thought about that before. Maybe that's something to consider. So, it was an amazing experience. So, as a result of that particular event last week, have really been synthesizing what we learned, filling in any gaps. And then just using that to think about a different strategy based on kind of the signals in the room, what people were really excited about, and what people really thought needed some work versus what we went into the conference thinking was the right answer, if that makes sense. DAWN: That's so exciting. Can you tell us more about this pivot? You mentioned a pivot. ASHLEY: Yeah. And I wouldn't call it maybe a full pivot. I would say it's more an expansion on the work we've already done, which is good. So, we're not just throwing away all the work we've done for the past seven weeks and saying, "Forget it." There are a lot of parallels in the 529 space and the ABLE space. A lot of the stakeholders are the same, and it's just a different target market with a little bit different need set. And so, really trying to understand what the differences are, and what the similarities are, and how we can replicate the work that we've already done for one space in the other space, and then build upon that a lot more rapidly than it took us to build the initial work for the 529. So, there's definitely some advantages that the two industries are really intertwined. But at the same time, there are some differences that we need to be keenly aware of and making sure that we're solving a problem meaningfully. DAWN: Jordyn and Vendela, how has this, not pivot, but new expansion or new strategy, how has this affected your work? VENDELA: What I'm thinking about on sort of a meta-level is how it's exciting to see that this new angle doesn't really change how we would approach the problem in terms of just running the incubator. So, it's almost, not in a discouraging way, but it's almost just like starting back from week one and kind of going through, what do we know? What do we need to find out? What kind of questions do we need to ask stakeholders, et cetera? And just seeing how having done that already together it makes it pretty clear what the path forward would be in terms of the process. In terms of information, who knows what we'll find out? But I think that's been exciting. The pivot doesn't feel so scary as it might sound [laughs]. JORDYN: Yeah, I would just build on that to say that it's giving us this really awesome opportunity to immediately run the same process that we just ran but, like, to see how much we've learned from doing it the first time. It's like you're starting over, but you're starting over from a better place, right? With more skills, way more understanding of sort of what's important and what's not important. And, you know, once you've run the process at least once, no part of it feels daunting, right? It just feels like work you know how to do, so it's like, okay, this is a really interesting additional sort of adjacent opportunity. We need to very quickly itemize all the things we don't know about it, and then figure out how to learn about it. Is it research? Is it interviewing? Is it testing? But none of those things feels unknown, right? It just feels like you get to do it faster and better. This is, like, a thing, you kind of can't convince someone without them having done it. And a lot of folks come to us, come to thoughtbot with a product idea. And we tell them like, "Okay, let's get in there and validate and invalidate things." And they're, like, "Invalidate? [vocalization] I don't want to invalidate my awesome, precious product idea [laughs]." And what we know that they don't know is that there are pieces that we're going to validate and pieces we're going to invalidate, but always you uncover new opportunities in that process. And you're just better and better at ascertaining what's promising about those things. So, it's only upside, but it feels like we're asking them to let go of something or to lose something, right? There's a feeling of like, it's like a scary...it's a feeling of like, I've built something, a tiny thing of value here, and you're asking me to risk that. And that couldn't be further from the truth. But it's, like, a really hard thing to convince someone until you've done it once. So, it's very fun, anyway, that we're getting to do this within one incubator cycle. Usually, it's, you know, it doesn't happen that quickly. ASHLEY: I like how you qualified that as fun. I will say...and Vendela and I were talking yesterday, and we were going through the sprints around, not starting over but beginning at the beginning with this new angle. And I was having the emotional rollercoaster of, like, what are we doing? Oh my gosh. And then, oh my gosh, this is so exciting. And then, oh my gosh, what are we doing? I feel very equipped now, having gone through this process once, to have the tools, the skills, the mindset to know, okay, it's part of the process. Here's what's going to happen. Here's what we'll probably learn. And just have a very structured way of approaching a new idea or a new angle, versus feeling like just thrown into the deep end and trying to figure out how to swim or which way is up. So, that's been pretty encouraging and eye-opening, too, that I developed all these skills that I didn't realize I had developed till we started redoing this, which is exciting. DAWN: I love that. It's kind of a testament to how valuable time spent is and how important it is to become really, like, more efficient with this process and the value of sort of rapidly being able to validate or invalidate different assumptions. I imagine that this might be a little bit different than what you expected. As Jordyn was saying, [laughs] most founders don't, you know, expect to have to loosen the grip on specific ideas. So, now that you're at week eight, how has this experience been overall for you? ASHLEY: It's been incredible. First of all, just the talented team that has been working on this project with me, I cannot say enough good, nice, positive things about that. I've heard horror stories about people working with teams that there's just a lot of dissension. There's lack of trust, all those things. And we had none of that, which is incredible. So, I feel very fortunate to have been with the team that I was with. I will also say that everybody had different strengths. And so, we're looking at an opportunity or a problem from a different lens in four ways, which is amazing because then you can cover so much more ground so much more quickly. I will also say, too, just the process: the thoughtbot program has for the eight-week structure is so intentional because sometimes I would think, well, wouldn't it make sense to do this thing before this thing? But just trusted the process, and the process was right. So, I would just say anybody that's thinking about going through the incubator or goes through the incubator next, just trust the process because you guys have a portfolio of success. You know what you're doing. I'm a testament to just really endorse the fact that each step is necessary in getting to the next step in a successful way. So, you're not taking two steps forward, one step back. You're constantly making forward progress. DAWN: That's awesome. What about you, Vendela, and Jordyn, how has this program and this session been this time around? VENDELA: I can talk about my experience as the first time going through the incubator, and then maybe, Jordyn, you have some insight on comparing the two or how you think it went in general. But I think one thing that has been really fun to do and participate in, and to Ashley's point about kind of having this environment of trust and just counting on each other that we're all distilling the information that we're hearing, I guess, accurately or in a way that aligns with how the rest of the team would perceive these things, is that we've had these really cool moments of not feeling like we 100% with complete certainty know exactly how something looks, but being creative about how we might get closer to that point. So, hearing a few tidbits here and there, thinking of ways that we're reading between the lines and interpreting that, and thinking about how we can narrow who we're talking to or approach the conversation slightly differently, so adjusting our script, or running some kind of other experiment, or structure things differently. And then, we might find that that angle wasn't exactly right, but by pursuing that angle, we learned something new that actually did get us closer in some way. And I think a lot of that was subtle throughout the process. But now, just thinking about this new kind of topic or pivot, whatever you want to call it [laughs], that we're pursuing, I think that lesson is going to be really valuable for Ashley moving forward, too, and just thinking, okay, I feel like what we're trying now isn't getting any closer. What have I heard that I could just grab, like, a small piece of string and pull on it, and see where that goes, and unravel something, and hopefully learn something new? So that there's just consistent kind of learning and not feeling like you're just totally blocked at any point. JORDYN: Yeah, to build on that a little bit, there's a real quality with this early work of just starting with what you have, where you are. And, you know, you don't have everything you need, like, you just don't, not in life and certainly not in [laughs] startup land. But the question is, like, figuring out what you need and figuring out how to get that from where you are. And that might be validation of a hypothesis you have, or it might be resources that you need that you don't have yet. And so, a lot of the work that we did together is to identify those things and to figure out ways to get them. And it's a real creative process because every problem is different. It's why it's really hard to talk about the programming in a specific way. It's like, you know, broadly, we're driving at the same outcomes every time. But every problem space, every industry requires a kind of different set of approaches, and, to me, that's really fun. It's like, okay, imagine as a metaphor, you know, that you are dropped from a helicopter into a jungle in Central America versus into Mongolia. Like, what you're going to need to survive in those two [laughs] environments is probably going to be pretty different, right? But that doesn't mean that your strategy for figuring those things out is going, like, the tactics you employ will be different. Yeah, I'm glad to hear, Vendela; that was a fun aspect of this. And sort of jumping off from that point, what was different this time? It's always different running this program. And every time, there's something new and different. But this was the first time we've run it with a FinTech product, and just learning about that ecosystem, the players, and the complex landscape of incentives and motivations, et cetera, was just, like, there was a steep learning curve for us at the beginning. And it was just super interesting and helpful to sift through that. It was like being, you know, dropped from a helicopter into a new sort of ecosystem. And we were like, all right, like, which berries are poisonous here? I don't know. But I also know that I need to eat something to survive [laughs]. So, it's like those kinds of questions, which is just super interesting. And then, what it always causes me to do is look at my own network anew. So, often, we find ourselves talking about, like, this question of starting with where you are with what you have. That includes with the network you have and the people you know. And it really depends on the problem you're solving, who you tap for what questions, right? And, suddenly, like, every one of these that we run, I get to turn to my own network. And I find new reasons to talk to different people about different things in my own network, which is really fun. It's like it allows me to get to know people in my own life in a new way. Like, every time this happens like, one of the first things we do is we turn to our own networks. Like, who do we know that has this problem or works in this industry, whatever? But having never worked on a FinTech product before, I didn't really need to do that with this lens. And it's like a whole new set of people lit up for me, and I got to have really interesting conversations with them. So, that was one thing that was different and really kind of fun. ASHLEY: It's funny to hear your take on the FinTech complexity because I feel like every time Vendela, or Jordyn, or Dave, who's not here, would ask me a question, it was, well, here's the answer, but if this, then that, or if this other thing, then that. It was never just a straightforward answer. And I was like, oh my gosh, they're just going to throw their hands up in the air at some point, but never did. They were just like, cool, that's fine. We'll figure out these different pathways, and if this, then we'll do that, and if this other thing, then we'll do this other thing. And I was just blown away by how nimble the team was and willing to just embrace the complexity. So, that, for me, was a huge positive. I don't know if you'll ever want to work in a FinTech product again; maybe yes, maybe no. DAWN: I would argue that we're more prepared now. You know, we've done a lot of FinTech work in the past, but applying this framework to understanding it as quickly as the team needed to, I'm sure, sort of pushed everybody farther, faster. So, Dave -- JORDYN: Yeah, I should say that was specific to me. thoughtbot has done plenty of FinTech work, Jordyn has not. But also, to your point, Ashley, like, I would love to actually. Now I'm like, oh okay, I kind of understand where the opportunities are here. I feel more prepared now rather than, like, more daunted. ASHLEY: Well, and you have a huge network in the FinTech space. So, that was something that was hugely helpful to me was talking with other founders who have been successful in the FinTech space, or people who have exited and had a great experience, or maybe people who have exited for, you know, reasons they didn't choose. But it was so important to hear from all those different perspectives and say, okay, here's what I would want to replicate, what I would definitely want to avoid. And so, anyways, just the network that Jordyn and others had and were willing to share with me was so valuable. DAWN: I was going to quickly shout out to Dave, who was sick this morning and wasn't able to make it. We were going to have him join. He was the senior developer in this sort of product pod that you've been working with. And I'm sure he has some interesting, more technical perspective to share. He did write a blog post, I think, maybe after week four, that I'm sure has some of those insights in it for folks who might be interested in reading from a developer's perspective. Yes, this is all wonderful to hear. I am curious to know what's next for AvidFirst. ASHLEY: Yeah, continuing on. There are a couple of things to pilot. And so, that's really the next step, pilot MVP as we think about this new angle. Because we want to make sure that the solution in mind is actually the solution that's needed. And so, those are the next steps, and then capital raise and then off to the races. So, if there's anybody listening that is interested in teaming up or wants to talk or contribute, would love to have a chat. DAWN: Is there anything that we can help with, anything on your mind, more network connections? [laughs] ASHLEY: Oh, gosh, offhand, I feel like I would be over-asking at this point because you guys have been beyond helpful. I really think the framework that I have to work with going forward—the team helped build a plan for here's what to do next, here's what to do after that, and here's what to do after that—is really setting me up for success as I think about continuing this journey without the amazing team day in, day out. JORDYN: Well, you have us as a team for life now, sorry. So, anytime you need something, [laughs] you can call. VENDELA: I was going to say I hope that you stick around in our Slack channel and update us on what's going on because now we're super invested, and we definitely want to hear how you're doing. ASHLEY: Yeah, absolutely. DAWN: Vendela and Jordyn, we've got another application window happening right now about to close for the next incubator session. Who should apply? What should they expect? JORDYN: Anybody with a business idea that involves software. The earlier, the better. And a lot of people, you know, come to us and are like, "Well, I have this idea that I'm kicking around for years in my head, but I haven't done anything yet. You know, what do I have to do to apply?" And we're like, "Sounds good. Apply." And then, other folks who are a little later, you know, and they feel like maybe they've hit some doldrums with an idea that they've explored a little bit. But they need a little bit of sort of reinvigorating and, you know, like a spark to get going on it. That's also a good time. We're really sort of excited to hear everybody's ideas. And the only, you know, downside is that we get more applications than folks we can work with. And there's always, like, a lot of great stuff in there. But everyone is encouraged to apply. You know, we used to have somewhat of a, like, non-technical founder. And when we first started, that was kind of the premise was, like, if you're a non-technical founder, we'll be your technical founding team. But I think we're finding that we kind of round out any skill sets in a way. If you bring a technical background, we can help you with the sales, and the marketing, and the business strategy. And if you come with those things, we can help you with the product and the technology strategy. It's the early-stage work, and the early-stage work is the early-stage work, regardless of your background. We can help fill in those gaps. ASHLEY: Yeah, I'll just add, too, I came in with this pitch check. I'm like, I'm ready to go, you know, we just need to build this thing. And, wow, the idea has changed so much since eight weeks ago. And so, I would just say, too, like, be open to feedback, be open to where the experience takes you. Even if you do have a really well-researched idea, there's always opportunity for improvement based on what the market says. And the market is constantly changing. And customer needs are constantly changing. And so, if you're not evolving with that experience, then you're going to get left behind or build a product for no one or, you know, a product for everyone is really a product for no one also. So, being open to the team's input and process is just invaluable no matter what stage somebody is coming into this with. JORDYN: That makes me just so happy to hear. And I will add that, like, I cannot stress enough that mostly what this program is for is to help folks connect with their market. Like, we actually don't want you to listen to us. We want you to listen to your customer all day, every day. How can you make sure you're moving with those folks, evolving with them, speaking their language, addressing the pain points that they have? Because that's why you're doing this, not because of what you think alone or what we think as your product pod. It's really what the market is doing and what your customer base is doing, and thinking, and feeling. And really, the programming is sort of geared toward helping people understand how to do that work. Like, you might conceptually understand that you need to do that. As a first-time founder, I certainly, you know, I had read the blogs, man. I knew I needed to be, like, customer-centric or whatever. But, like, I didn't really actually know how to do that. And once I did talk to some folks, it was a whole other new skill set to figure out how to listen for the things that mattered in what they were saying to me, right? Translating, you know, what folks are telling you and how they talk about their life and their work into product opportunities and innovation, it's a whole skill set that I, even coming into this work, you know, as a first-time founder with the background I had, I didn't have that skill set. You know, most people sitting out there would not argue, like, of course, you need to listen to your customer and move with the market, et cetera. But the question of, like, how to operationalize that [laughs], you know, is a completely opaque thing sometimes. Even for folks who have, like, done it before somewhat, it can still remain challenging. ASHLEY: Yeah, I feel in a better position now to continue keeping pace with the market. Because if you look at FinTech, historically, there were major innovations every ten years, and then that pace changed to every couple of years, and then it changed to every one year. And now you're seeing FinTech innovation accelerated to every few months; the landscape is different. And so, the solution today may need to be different in six months, or three months, something like that. But I feel like I have the tools now to keep up with that pace of change, whereas before, I would have been left behind. So, I feel really grateful for that. Thank you. DAWN: That warms my heart. We do have a question. So, does thoughtbot help with go-to-market strategy, or is the incubator more focused on zero to MVP? JORDYN: You know, I'm full of very spicy takes. Spicy take here: you're always going to market. Zero to MVP is different than go-to-market? I'm sorry, how? So, the answer is, like, absolutely. And really, what you're doing is perennially going to the market [laughs]. You're making a go-to-market strategy. You're keeping that fresh. You're keeping it new in the same way that you're keeping your products and technology strategy fresh and new, given what you're learning and what you're hearing. So, absolutely, I would say that's actually primarily what the incubator is for [laughs], and then making sure that those strategies are aligned. So, like, one of the things that I've seen in my own work at multiple startups, not just my own, is that those things can become disconnected as your team grows because people have different backgrounds and different...they just have a different focus, right? Your head of marketing has a different focus than your head of product and has a different focus than your head of technology. And keeping all of those strategically aligned and focused on the same customer and the same problem set is a lot of the work of an early-stage startup. And that's, like, a lot of the work that we kind of help founders figure out how to do. How do you tie your go-to-market to your MVP? Like, how do those two things fit in together, right? And how do you keep them in sync? It's not merely like you do this one time and then everyone goes their separate ways [laughs], and in 18 months, you meet back again and have a conversation about it, like, [laughs] not how this works. So, I mean, absolutely. VENDELA: I would add to that, too; I think something that we talk about with all these types of projects is just...and, internally, we talk about this a lot, too, like, we kind of hate the term MVP because it's so ambiguous really. Like, what does that mean for any given product? And so, I think, to your point, Jordyn, like, the going to market and the MVP are so tied together because the whole point of an MVP is to learn something so that you can then bring it from a minimum viable product to something more than that. And we talk a lot with founders about different approaches to MVP. I think some people have maybe a narrow view of what they can be. It's this, you know, maybe slightly lower fidelity but coded custom thing. And there's lots of ways to approach it that don't fit that definition and maybe would work better as a way to experiment and learn something, and then create a new version later on. So, you know, with that first version, you can still go to market, but you're learning something, and then you're maybe building a new MVP after that. And so, making sure that that's not too precious or hard to throw away is something, I think, we tell everybody, too. DAWN: Yes, that's great. Cool. Well, I think it's about time for us to wrap up. Thank you so much, Ashley. It's always an honor to kind of watch the team work with different founders and see them sort of learning as they go and seeing the product and the opportunities evolve. And it's been really great to be able to participate a little bit more this time and chatting with you and hearing about how things are going. I'm happy to hear that there was a lot of opportunity for you to continue exploring with AvidFirst. And we'll be here, so please [laughs] come to us as much as possible. Everybody is really excited to see, you know, you and this thing be successful. So, thank you, Vendela and Jordyn, as always, for being a wonderful team. If you're interested in applying to the incubator, do it. Don't hesitate. You can always visit thoughtbot.com/incubator for more information. And thanks for tuning in. AD: Did you know thoughtbot has a referral program? If you introduce us to someone looking for a design or development partner, we will compensate you if they decide to work with us. More info on our website at: tbot.io/referral. Or you can email us at: referrals@thoughtbot.com with any questions. Special Guests: Ashley Sheble, Dawn Delatte, Jordyn Bonds, and Vendela Colavecchio.

Lindsey Christensen is back as the Marketing Lead at thoughtbot! She's joined by guests Jordyn Bonds, the Director of Product Strategy at thoughtbot, and Ashley Sheble, a founder currently participating in thoughtbot's eight-week startup incubator, to discuss the multifaceted journey of entrepreneurship. thoughtbot's Incubator Program aims to help founders like Ashley turn an idea into a viable product. They're currently at the stage of validating assumptions about the problem space and target market. Jordyn introduces a new concept: a project roadmap visualization that includes an "emotions workstream." This is designed to help founders anticipate and navigate the emotional rollercoaster often associated with the early stages of startup development. Ashley finds the roadmap valuable, especially as it challenges her to examine her ideas from multiple perspectives. She appreciates the one-on-one support from the Incubator team, which complements her own expertise. She also speaks to the liberating aspect of acknowledging emotions in the startup journey, which is especially pertinent for female founders who often face additional challenges like lack of funding. Jordyn emphasizes the importance of early and continuous customer engagement for product validation and innovation. She encourages aspiring entrepreneurs to talk to potential customers as soon as possible to iterate and learn from these interactions. Jordan and Ashley stress that embracing the logical and emotional aspects of entrepreneurship leads to more effective and grounded decision-making. Follow Ashley Sheble on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashley-sheble/). Follow thoughtbot on X (https://twitter.com/thoughtbot) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/150727/). Become a Sponsor (https://thoughtbot.com/sponsorship) of Giant Robots! Transcript: LINDSEY: All right, we are live. So, thank you for joining us today. So, we've got a new founder that's going through thoughtbot's startup incubator. And we're going to be checking in with her as she goes through the program, learning what she learns, learning about the process. Quick reminder: thoughtbot is a development and design company. We help founders and existing companies create, launch, and improve amazing products and their teams. And one way we do that is through our startup incubator. The incubator is an eight-week program. And our second session just kicked off, which we're going to be talking about a whole lot today. So, I'm excited to introduce you to the founder that's going through that process, as well as our fearless leader of the incubator program, Jordyn, I myself, Lindsey Christensen. I'm the Marketing Lead here at thoughtbot. I'll be asking lots of questions. But if you also have questions, please enter them in the chat, and we'll get to those as well. Before we get to Ashley, I'm going to start off with Jordyn. For those who may not be familiar with you, can you tell us who you are and what you're doing? JORDYN: I am Jordyn Bonds. And I am the Director of Product Strategy on thoughtbot's, Ignite team, which is the team that is kind of experimenting with this incubator, shall we say. And I am a two-time startup founder myself. I've worked at other early-stage startups as initial head of product. Long ago, I spent ten years as a software engineer. So, that's my distant background. And I live in Boston. LINDSEY: Oh, we got our first comment. Someone says, "Thanks for sharing your experience." Thank you. Welcome. Love that. Keep the comments and questions coming. Okay. And now for our latest guest of honor. Ashley, can you introduce yourself to the audience? A little bit about you and maybe even about your journey to bring you here today. ASHLEY: Yeah, absolutely. So, hi, everybody. My name is Ashley Sheble. I'm currently based in Houston, Texas. I have about 15 years of experience in sales and operations roles. And I have two kids. I've got one who started third grade yesterday and one who started her senior year of high school yesterday, which is crazy. Time really flies by. But the reason why that's relevant for this conversation is because I have attended so many college tours over the past few years and started learning about just how expensive higher education has become. I had no idea that a public four-year in-state school could cost $100,000 plus for just four years. And then, you start looking at out-of-state and private schools, and that number doubles, which is crazy to me. So, after I got through that initial sticker shock, I was like, how is this possible? Like, now I understand why the student debt crisis is happening. And became really passionate about learning more about it and trying to figure out ways that I could help. Because obviously, the solutions and tools we have today to help people prepare for the education they or their children or family members need or want just aren't working. So, became really excited about that and working with thoughtbot as their second founder to explore this further. LINDSEY: Amazing. So, Ashley, fighting the good fight. Student debt, I know, a topic near and dear to many people who are dealing with this. You mentioned your kid's journey to college is what started the idea. Let's dig into that a little bit more. How are you approaching the challenge, the problems that you see? Or maybe, like, how long it's been that you've been kind of playing around with this idea. ASHLEY: Yeah, absolutely. So, I'm in a graduate school program and have used this as an opportunity to really explore different ways to attack problems. I became really interested in innovation and entrepreneurship at grad school and began just doing research, learning about ways to solve really big, complex problems, and found that technology could really be an interesting way to approach the student debt problem differently than what's been done before. It's an industry that has largely lacked innovation, and have been working with professors and experts just to think about ways to apply technology to this really complicated problem to provide a more simple solution for people who just want to pay for school. LINDSEY: And this is your first time being a founder. Is that right? ASHLEY: It is. So, thank goodness for thoughtbot being my partner here because I'm not a technical person, meaning I don't develop software. I'm not a software designer, and knew that that was going to be a critical piece of developing a solution. And so, I'm grateful for the opportunity to work with Jordyn and her team. LINDSEY: Have you, like, always thought you would, at some point, start your own thing? You know, have you always been entrepreneurial? ASHLEY: Yeah, I think so. I can tell you my first business started in third grade. I launched my babysitting venture and marketed my services all over the neighborhood and church, and wherever would allow me to hang up a flyer, and had a pretty steady book of business, if you will. And in hindsight, I really cannot believe that parents allowed a 10-year-old to babysit their kids. You know, maybe in the '90s there were fewer questions–definitely less legal restrictions around age. LINDSEY: The '90s were wild. ASHLEY: The '90s were wild, yeah. Maybe I just seemed mature and responsible. I don't know. I don't know. LINDSEY: Amazing. All right. Jordyn, so Ashley submitted for the thoughtbot incubator. What stood out to you in that application? And why did she seem like, you know, the right fit to go through the program? JORDYN: Yeah, Ashley's application was just totally...it had that combination of prepared, done her homework, done the work to present the story well, but also clearly had a passion and a connection to the problem space. It wasn't just, like, a purely academic exercise for her, and just came prepared–really gave thoughtful answers in the application. There's a number of interviews that happened during the application process. She showed up with bells on and asked really good questions, which is something we always look for from founders as well. And she just knocked it out of the park. ASHLEY: Thank you. LINDSEY: And why was maybe where she is in her business or product journey a good fit for the incubator? JORDYN: Great question. So, we sit at a really special moment, which is usually founders are coming to us, well, hopefully, founders are coming to us pre-product. So, they have not built a thing yet. They're basically at that moment where they've identified an opportunity. They've given it lots of thought, done a ton of research, maybe started talking to people about it. But they're not sure how to take an idea, an opportunity, and what happens between that moment and innovation, actually a plan for a product, a strategic plan for product, and the ability to execute on that. There's a big gap there in understanding, especially for first-time founders. It certainly was a gap for me as a [laughs] first-time founder. That's the ideal candidate for us. That said, we do have folks coming to the incubator who are interested in executing, like, a strategic pivot. Maybe they've found that the first thing they did was just, like, a market flop, and they basically want to do the programming. They're sort of starting over. Maybe they have a little bit...they're basically like, "Hey, we disqualified one idea. [laughs] We would like to come up with some other options." Those folks are also a good fit. And that is exactly the moment that Ashley is at. She's done a lot of great research so far–has a really interesting idea, interesting take on an interesting problem, but could really benefit from the programming of turning that into technical innovation. LINDSEY: Which leads me back to you, Ashley. Can you tell us a little bit about your pre-thoughtbot research, like, both, like, how you approached it and maybe even some things that you learned that have helped you with your early direction? ASHLEY: Yeah, absolutely. So, initially, just did a lot of industry research, just general population research, and then became a little bit more focused on solving problems for families in the U.S. right now. So, narrowing down that market scope. And then, our focus right now is drilling into: how can we serve parents, students at each phase of their journey as parents or students, making sure that we are adding value as we're creating a service to help attack saving for college in a really effective way that is easy to do and is also going to help somebody be financially prepared to pay for a really expensive price tag without having to rely on student loans? And so, we're doing a lot of focused research right now, building on what I did in grad school with professors and mentors and experts there, but being more focused and intentional around understanding each phase of the customer journey. So, whether you're a new parent, maybe a parent of kids that are a little older, or a parent of kids that are about to go to college or in college, how are we providing value at each stage of that journey? And so, we're really focusing in with customer interviews, understanding the pain points, and understanding what value is lacking as we think about building something that people want and like to use. LINDSEY: In that early research, is there anything you learned or, like, positive signals you got as you were talking to people where it gave you a motivation to keep going, like, there is a good idea here to follow? ASHLEY: Yeah, there have been some ideas that we're finding are just absolutely terrible, and they're just not going to work, which is good to know now before we spend a lot of time chasing something that's not going to be helpful. And also really finding some interesting patterns among conversations. We're digging in a little more where, initially, we thought, oh, nobody cares about that, or, oh, that's not a big deal. That's not a pain point, but actually, it is. So, Jordyn, with her experience as a founder in prior experiences she's been able to use what she learned that maybe went well or didn't go as well as she had hoped and apply that learning to what we're doing together on this particular project. And so, that's super valuable, helps me avoid some rookie mistakes, and definitely prevents us from wasting a lot of time and resources that probably would have been wasted otherwise. LINDSEY: Jordyn, can you tell me a little bit more about the kickoff, where we are? Because this is early, early days, where, you know, maybe a week in. You know, what does that initial kickoff with the founder look like? What are you doing? JORDYN: Yeah. So, the first few days are really spent...we as a team on the thoughtbot side need to get to the place where we know everything the founder knows to date. So, it's very intense, a lot of, like, resource sharing, research sharing, conversations, a lot of elliptical conversations where Ashley will tell us something, we'll all go off and do some digging and some research, and come back and be like, ask her some questions, where she's like, [laughs] "If you recall, I said that to you," you know. But, basically, it's one of those sort of processes where you don't know what you don't know. You start to understand. You come back, you ask questions, you dig. And the process is really about figuring out: where are the holes? So, Ashley has done a ton of really great work. She is but one person who has had divided attention. So, there are some places where we have some assumptions, all of us as individuals, and Ashley, specifically as a founder, has some assumptions about this problem space that we haven't validated yet. We haven't validated or invalidated. That's really what we're looking for. It's like, is this hunch correct, incorrect? How do we know? So, we're really in those first few days are listening for those assumptions, for those untested assumptions. There's a ton of stuff in there where she's just like, I know the answer to this already. Here's what I know, and here's how I know it. Great, cool, validated, got it. But there's this other set of things that really then becomes the focus of the subsequent weeks of work. And often, we find what those assumptions center around are early adopter market characteristics. There's the big vision, right? Which we don't doubt. Basically like, we do not disagree that paying for college is a huge problem. The student debt crisis is huge. There's a million ways to go about addressing that problem. How are we going to, from where we are right now, lay a pathway where we build value upon value? We find something valuable to give the market where it is right now, where we are right now, and then we build from that. And so, you know, there's assumptions about who needs this, who wants this, who's struggling to pay for college, who's having no problem at all paying for college. But what we're trying to do is sort of zoom in on that group of folks, very tiny, specific group of folks who are having this problem the most acutely in a way that we are best situated to address. That's the magic we're trying to do. So, it's really those early days are about listening to what Ashley knows, going out into the market, doing some research, follow-up research, but then really trying to come up with an early adopter hypothesis. And then immediately, as quickly as possible, interviewing as many of those people as we can so that we can validate or invalidate the assumptions we have about them. So, that's really the phase that we just started. Like, today and yesterday, we just started interviewing. We have our first sort of hypothesis about...Ashley mentioned the journey of, like, beginning of child's life. Maybe, as a parent, I have aspirations for this child to go to college. Where do I start saving? You know, that end of the journey all the way to I am actively paying for a college education right now. Where in that journey are the pain points? And can we focus specifically on a particular group of people at a particular moment in that journey in order to provide maximum value right now and then expand from there? So, we're doing a bunch of interviewing. I had a customer persona interview right before coming to this. You immediately start learning. There's just no substitute for it. The thing I tell founders constantly and I just sound like an absolute broken record, but you got to talk to people. You got to start talking to them now. You got to keep talking to them. You got to think hard and creatively about what you're hearing and who they are. And that's really the work that we're doing together right now. LINDSEY: Exciting. [crosstalk 15:04] Ashley, I was going to say how is this kickoff then for you? ASHLEY: Really good. One thing Lindsey and team have brought to the table, especially thinking about me working as a solo founder, is just around the fact that everybody has different perspectives. And we all have different expertise and different experiences that we're bringing to the table. So, the way that I've been thinking about a problem could be 180 from the way Jordyn's thinking about it or some other folks on our team. And it's really interesting to have to really test a lot of these assumptions. I'm like, oh yeah, everybody thinks this way. Oh yeah, everybody does this. And it turns out I'm the only one, or maybe only a couple of us in the group are aligning with that perspective. And so, it has been so valuable as a solo founder to have a team of people researching the same problem from a different perspective. So, I just wanted to add that. LINDSEY: No, that's a great one. And that is sometimes challenging, I think, for the founders. I don't know if you're finding this when you're just getting started. But as you go through the process, things that you have maybe held to be true or facts you end up finding out are assumptions, or maybe assumptions that are false. Which also reminds me of Jordyn: you were telling me something very interesting that you're doing during this incubator, which is founder emotions mapping. JORDYN: [laughs] Yeah. LINDSEY: What is this? JORDYN: Yeah, we've got this project roadmap visualization. It's a Gantt chart. Y'all, it is a Gantt chart. And it basically just lays out, broadly speaking, what we're going to do together on what timeline. It helps us, together, visualize where we're going, where we are, and what we need to do in between so that we don't lose sight of that. And this time, it was the first time that we added...we had this sort of insight that we should add an emotions workstream [laughs] because so much of the early stage is just an emotional rollercoaster because you are learning so much so fast. And if you're lucky and you immediately go into innovation, delivery, learning more, scaling, right? It's this very fast loop. And it's not just that you're learning stuff about your market really quickly. You're learning stuff about yourself and about the work. The learning curve is just really steep. And we had realized that you end up going through this cycle of emotions that's pretty predictable [chuckles], and that's great, right? We want founders to know that their emotions...not only are their emotions, like, totally valid, we wanted to welcome them in a little bit more than we have in the past. So, we added this little emotions work stream that was basically just like, hey, first week, first few days of kickoff, you're going to feel like a million bucks. You're like, yes, I know some stuff. I finally got a team working on this with me. To the moon, right? Like, you got this, like, very optimistic, exuberant kind [laughs] of attitude. Immediately, you start hearing perspectives you hadn't heard before in your problem space. You start uncovering contrary evidence. We start talking to people. Immediately, you start to learn things that you didn't know you didn't know, right? So, up until this moment, you've just had some blinders on, and you're like, the path is clear, and it is amazing. I'm just going to motor my way to success. And our process is about really taking those blinders off and figuring out what is actually around me on this road? Are there words of attackers coming at me from the sides? Like, I need to know those things, right? But what happens is you start to know what you don't know. And so, there's this dip. You start off very optimistic, and then you have a week or two of declining mood where you're mortified. You learn that you had some assumptions that are not valid. There's some other risks and things lying out there in the market. It's truly mortifying. Maybe you learn about a competitor you didn't know about because you just weren't searching the right words, or whatever it is, right? That moment a lot of founders are just like, the moment I discovered my first real competitor, and I had, like, a panic attack, right? That happened to me. But then you start to make a plan around those things, okay, cool. Like, maybe we need to differentiate ourselves. Maybe there is some more information we need to figure out about how to go after this, et cetera. And you start that slow climb of dealing with the new information that you have, right? And filling in those gaps [inaudible 19:22]. Then you start to climb out of the hole, right? You're like, okay, we got a plan. I got a team. We're doing the work. Awesome. You learn new, really exciting things. And then you end up back on that, like, high where you're like, this is so awesome. We have the best idea. And now we know everything there is to know. But no, no, you've just reached a new plateau [laughs]. And there are more things to be learned and more things...So, it's this really predictable cycle, and that's fine. That's good. You wouldn't be here if you didn't care about the problem space, right? If you weren't passionate about it. And so, we really wanted to actually call that out this time and make space for it and put it on the map. Hey, we might be feeling this way right now, just heads up. That's okay. We're going to be feeling really great in a week. And then, the week after that, we're going to be feeling [laughs] like garbage again. It's okay. Because knowing that really makes you feel. And it took me a long time as a first-time founder to realize that, like, my moment-to-moment emotional experience is...I need to make space for it. It is what it is. But it is not the story of my business. And it's a thing you just kind of have to learn after going through a bunch of those cycles. But, like, part of what we're trying to do with the incubator is help founders not fall in those potholes, not make the rookie mistakes, as Ashley put it. And one of those rookie mistakes is thinking that the first time you identify a direct competitor, everything that you've been working toward for the last year is useless, and you should quit, and everyone thinks you're a fool, and, like, whatever crazy narrative you [laughs] have going on in your mind [laughs]. We're kind of here to be like, it's okay. This is to be expected: onward and upward. The hard work continues. So yeah, it's very fun. At some point, we will publish a little version of this visualization with our little cycle of feelings on the bottom. But it reminds us to make space for them in the conversation when we are doing those check-ins. Like, here we are on this roadmap, and here's where our feelings may or may not be. ASHLEY: Her recap for day one is spot on. I left that conversation; I walked out of my office and told my husband, I said, "Listen, we're going to solve the student debt crisis. We're going to." And he was like, "Really? Okay." And I was like, "Yeah, we are." And then, like, two days later, I was like, "No, we are not going to be effective at this." And then, the next day, I was like, "No, I fixed it. We fixed it. It's fine." So, being able to reference that chart is really helpful and validating for me as a person to be like: I should be feeling like this; yes, I do. Perfect, you know, I'm right on track. And I think, too, as a founder, and especially as a female founder, you are expected to just keep it together. Maybe that's a self-imposed belief. But when you think about the fact that female CEOs only have about 2% of the venture capital funding, it's like, you know, why would I ever raise a red flag for myself by letting my emotions be part of the conversation or letting my emotions even have a place in the business I'm building? And so, for her to say, "Listen, no, that's a really important part of this journey; we need to talk about it and make space for it," is really liberating. And I think, too, just when you think about what has happened with the pandemic and all the awareness around mental health and behavioral health, and making sure that we're making time for managing emotions has been more important than ever. We see the research that if you don't manage those emotions, they're going to manage you. So, find a productive way to do it. Work with your team and find support in a way that works for you or a productive way to just kind of get some stress out without having to just internalize everything because that never works out. So, it's been really great to have her be able to bring that as part of our conversation and our project plan and make sure that it's a relevant piece. LINDSEY: Very well said. And I'm so glad you did bring up that point about being women founders, and, you know, having more of a, you know, an uphill battle and feeling that emotions are a sign of weakness or a sign that you don't know what you're doing. We have more impostor syndrome because of these outside factors like lack of funding, you know, lack of support. So, it's really great for you to share that and hopefully inspire others. In fact, we got a comment: "Ashley, your drive and ambition to solve a huge issue in our country is so inspiring." Thank you -- ASHLEY: Oh, thank you. LINDSEY: For adding that comment, folks who are following along. So, it sounds like, for you, the emotion mapping is a positive experience, where it's helping you kind of ground yourself as, even these early days, some assumptions are being challenged, or you're seeing some challenges in the business idea. ASHLEY: Oh yeah, absolutely. Circling back to the thoughtbot team, couldn't do this without them in a really tactical and effective way. Because they have the experience and the skills that I don't have, and us working together on this same problem has been incredible. LINDSEY: How did you come to get connected with the incubator and thoughtbot and submitting that application? ASHLEY: Yeah. So, I'm part of the Harvard Innovation Lab, which is the innovation program at Harvard for all the students. And somebody was talking about this incubator program, and there are a lot of incubator programs out there. And so, initially, I thought, oh okay, well, this will be just, like, all the others and probably not what I'm looking for. But I did some research and looked at the website and read more about the program and thought, oh my gosh, this is exactly what I've been looking for and didn't know existed because it is that one-on-one support, and most incubator or accelerator programs you're one of many companies going through the process. And so, the feedback I have from others who have gone through similar paths is it's great, and it's nice to have a cohort. But at the same time, you're largely figuring things out for yourself, which I was doing anyway. So, I was like, well, what value is that going to bring? This is a one-on-one experience. There's a team dedicated to working on this solution, problem, et cetera with me. And I'm just so thankful that there are software developers and designers that are interested in helping me tackle this challenge also. So, that was really exciting to have other people also excited about the same problem but able to bring different skill sets to the table to actually bring this to life. LINDSEY: Oh, that's great. Thanks for sharing. All right, so nearing the end of our chat here. Jordyn, what is next? I think we're going to check back in in a couple of weeks. What might those weeks include? JORDYN: Well, as I mentioned, we really began customer interviewing...I say customer, and this is really...often, it means a lot of things. It means interviewing people who might be users, people who might be customers, people who might be partners in what we're building. And we are just going to learn so much so quickly. We're going to invalidate a lot of things. We're going to come up with new ideas. So like, we will be different humans with a different perspective on the world in two weeks, which is really exciting. But really, so this effort is really about learning how to have your audience lead you. And it isn't about just listening to your audience. So, when they say like, "Make the button blue," you're like, "Okay, blue button, you got it." It's like actually hearing about their lives and their pain points and then innovating. They're not software developers, your audience typically, so they aren't solving this problem themselves. It's up to you to translate what you're hearing into something innovative. I think a standard metaphor here or example–I guess it's more like a case study—is, like, the famous Ford quote that, like, if he had pulled people and asked them what they wanted, they would have said faster horses, not a car, right? So, it's like, you got to look at the landscape, look at what's possible, maybe new things are possible technically, right? And so, we can solve this problem better, a problem that we know humans have, which is paying for college, or, in Ford's case, getting from point A to point B quickly. So, it's really our job to listen and let what we're hearing from the audience be our guide, but not just, like, sort of take dictation, right? And that's where the skill and having done this lots of times comes in. So, that's what we're going to be doing in the next two weeks. We're going to be listening very closely, iterating on the questions that we're asking and who we're asking them to. And out of that will emerge the strategically sound innovation path, and it never fails to work. I cannot stress enough that if you talk to [laughs] people and you listen to them, opportunities become very clear. So, if any of you out there are nursing an idea that you've been nursing for a while, and you're like, I'm not ready to talk to people about it; I need to think about it longer, nope. Talk to people about it today, please. Will you screw that conversation up? Yep. But the sooner you have it, the sooner you'll screw it up and learn from it. The longer you wait, the more your assumptions build, and then it gets very tense and very wrong. And you could really think yourself off into, like, a very weird place. So, I encourage you all to do your research; talk to people about what you're thinking, what you're working on, the people for whom it matters. And that is what we are going to be doing for the next two weeks, and then is what Ashley is going to be doing for the rest of the life of this company because you never stop. It's not a thing. You don't do, like, a customer research sprint, and then you stop. If you stop doing that, you stop innovating, and then other people in the market overtake you. Sorry, I feel passionate about this issue [laughs]. LINDSEY: No, that's good. That's a quick pitch at the end here for everyone to apply to the next session incubator. Start getting the idea and the research you've been doing together. This could be you. So, hope you'll join us again in two weeks as we catch up. And yeah, as Jordyn said, things are going to be...there'll be so many insights in that amount of time. I almost started laughing after I asked, like, what will happen in two weeks? Because I know it's going to be so different, you know, day to day you all are doing so much work, learning so much. So, I'm really excited to learn about that. So, stay tuned with us here in two weeks. We'll also be posting updates to the thoughtbot blog: thoughtbot.com/blog. And just really looking forward to following along with your journey, Ashley. Thank you so much for joining and sharing today. ASHLEY: Yeah, thank you for having me. LINDSEY: Jordyn, thank you as always. JORDYN: Of course. LINDSEY: And thank you, audience. Everyone have a fantastic day. Did you know thoughtbot has a referral program? If you introduce us to someone looking for a design or development partner, we will compensate you if they decide to work with us. More info on our website at tbot.io/referral. Or you can email us at referrals@thoughtbot.com with any questions. Special Guests: Ashley Sheble and Jordyn Bonds.

Overview Ashley Earley grew up in Georgia, where she spent most of her time running wild in the woods of her backyard, building forts to create her own fantasy worlds, obsessing over books, and experimenting with her writing. Today, she lives in Colorado with her dog and still spends her time devouring any book she can get her hands on, writing, and editing for her clients at Earley Editing, LLC. In May of 2021, she graduated with distinction from University of Colorado Boulder, receiving a B.A. in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing. She also enjoys snowboarding, exploring, annoying her dog, constantly eating chocolate, and sharing her writing adventures on Instagram. Her Thriller/Suspense short story, Chasing Hair of Gold, won first place in the 2016 Writer's Digest Popular Fiction Awards. As a writer, she leans into fantasy or horror due to her love of all things creepy. As an editor, she loves a little bit of everything when it comes to fiction. Give her that steamy, forbidden romance, give her vampires, or even that young lovey-dovey stuff with all the twists and turns! Book Website https://www.ashleyearley.com/ Favorites https://www.tatteredcover.com/ YouTube Transcript Stephen: Today on Discovered Wordsmiths, I have Ashley to welcome. Ashley, how are you doing? I'm good, how are you? I'm doing good. Before we get started, we're going to talk about your book, Heart of Skulls. Before we do that tell us a little bit about yourself, where you live, what you like to do and some things, hobbies and stuff outside of writing. Ashley: Okay. So I originally grew up in Georgia, but I live in Colorado now. I ended up moving out here for college and never went back or leave the mountains. So Stephen: do you ski now? Ashley: I snowboard, so I'm like, Stephen: the cooler person. Okay, cool. Got it. Ashley: Yeah, so I do snowboard when I'm not writing. I love reading. I have little coffee reading dates with my friends. I have a dog that I go hiking with quite often. Yeah, and then I run my own business, so I do that a lot of the time as well. So Stephen: pretty busy. Your own business related to writing or something separate? Kind Ashley: of related to writing. I write, I book edit. So I run my own book editing business with a couple other editors on Stephen: my team. You ever argue and yell at yourself about what should or shouldn't be in a book? Ashley: I do when it comes to my own books where I'm like, yeah, this works. This doesn't work. Oh my gosh, I'm a terrible writer. Like the typical stuff. Stephen: All right. What'd you go to school for when you went to Colorado, if I may ask? Oh, Ashley: I majored in English with an emphasis in creative writing. Stephen: So do you feel that has helped you with your writing career now? Or is it like it was nice, but not so much. Ashley: It was nice, but not so much. It did help with my editing career because I got to critique people in person and kind of fall in love with critiquing content. So that's. That's what I do now. So I'm a developmental editor who focuses on the content of someone's book and how it flows and all that good stuff. So it helped me with that and got me passionate about critiquing people. But otherwise for writing definitely not. I would say that they don't really teach you like the writing techniques people should be aware of. Stephen: Interesting. See, okay. And I ask that my own personal passions I feel we focus with younger kids in school way too much on spelling and grammar when they have no reference to what that is used for and where I feel we should work on just having kids tell stories and learn about how to tell a story and what makes a good story because once you write a bunch more, the spelling and grammar makes sense and falls into place. And I'm sorry, but The kids that are going to struggle and not get the w...

“This is going to change the course of your life forever.”Ashley's first Cesarean was after a 48-hour labor at almost 42 weeks. She deeply desired and prepared for a VBAC with her second baby, but consented to a second Cesarean after another 48-hour labor at just over 41 weeks. With her third baby, Ashley pulled out all of the stops. She was committed to having a VBA2C in all the ways she knew and didn't know before. Perhaps the most impactful part of her preparation was processing fears more intentionally than ever before. She proactively went to therapy to heal from her previous births and to preemptively combat postpartum depression. She released the weight of failure and inadequacy that she didn't realize she was carrying.With exciting twists and turns, Ashley achieved everything she hoped she would in her third birth. She says that this VBAC experience has forever changed her and her belief in what she is capable of. Additional LinksBaby Bird Birth and Doula ServicesHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode DetailsMeagan: Hello, hello you guys. We are at the end of August. I hope you guys have had a wonderful summer and that it's still great weather wherever you are listening from. We have our friend, Ashley, today and we are going to be sharing her stories. Something that we had requested or asked on Instagram is “What kind of episodes are you wanting to hear?” It seems that every time we ask that, a lot of people are saying, “VBAC after two Cesareans” and even extended to that, VBAC after three or even four multiple Cesareans. So today we have a VBAC after two Cesarean story. As always, we've got to get into a review but I am really wanting to talk because there is something about Ashley that she wrote in her bio. She said, “Her birth experiences have given her the passion for all things pregnancy, birth, and postpartum and have even led her to be a doula.” I just resonate so much with that because that's exactly how I became a doula, Ashley. I think that's how a lot of us in the birth world find that passion and that drive to support and help. So congratulations on becoming a doula and finding your passion through all of these experiences. Ashley: Thank you. Meagan: I full-on believe but I sometimes say that we experience these not-so-desired birth outcomes, right? Not-so-desired birth outcomes, but sometimes I think that we have those because we are meant to do something more and meant to experience those to help inspire and encourage and empower someone in the future. So congratulations on all of that. I am so excited for you to join the doula world. It's a journey, but it's awesome. Ashley: Yes, I'm excited. Thank you. Meagan: Yes. And then a little snippet also, a little secret– by the time this episode airs, she's probably going to be holding a newborn because her due month is August. That's really, really exciting. I'm just going to congratulate you right now in advance. Review of the WeekWe also have a review, of course. This review is from– I actually don't even know how to say this– I'm going to spell it out. It's bshsjbxbd. The title is “Life Changing.” It says, “This podcast is AMAZING. I just had my VBAC two months ago and I can honestly say that it is thanks to everything I've learned by listening obsessively to this podcast and joining this community. I am still listening even after my VBAC because I love hearing the stories of these amazing women and the loving support the hosts offer. Julie and Meagan clearly care so much about what they do and it feels like they truly care about each and every mama they talk to and connect through with the podcast and the community. I recommend this podcast to everyone who will listen when they are going for a VBAC. An amazing resource for those of us who are on our upcoming journeys to birth after a Cesarean. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”And thank you, bshsjbxbd, for your review. We always love your reviews coming in. If you haven't had a chance, I will never shy away from asking for a review. Your reviews are actually what helps people just like you listening to find this podcast. It is what helps the algorithm and especially in Apple Podcasts and on Google. It helps the algorithm know that people like hearing these stories and want to give you more. So if you haven't had a chance, leave us a review. We would love it so much. Ashley's StoriesMeagan: Okay, cute Ashley. Welcome to the show. Ashley: Thanks. I'm so excited. I'm so grateful. Meagan: I'm so grateful for you. VBAC after two Cesareans is so hard because I'm sure as you know through this journey– both of us specifically are VBAC after two Cesarean moms– it can be a really hard road. It can be really hard and really lonely, so we don't want anyone to feel that. I think that through sharing stories and relating, it's going to help people out there know that they're not alone and it is possible. Ashley: Yeah, 100%. I don't know that I would have been able to achieve that without listening to all of the podcasts and searching your site religiously. There is so much power in sharing your story. Meagan: There really is. There really is. Well, let's turn the time over to you to share your stories. Ashley: Cool, well thanks. I'll try to keep it pretty concise but as you know, there's a lot of background that you have to get to. We dealt with infertility for about five years. It was really unexplained. There was no specific reason. I actually had a bilateral ectopic at one point. Meagan: Oh, okay. Ashley: One of two they were able to repair. With the other, I had to have that one removed. So when I miraculously got pregnant in May of 2015, we were shocked and over the moon and just super, super grateful. Really, from the beginning, I knew that I just wanted a husband-coached natural birth. We did the Bradley Method class and we created this cute little birth plan to share with our provider. I really had a healthy and normal pregnancy and I thought, “I know what I want, so I'm going to get it.” C-section didn't come out of my mouth. It wasn't on the birth plan. It just wasn't anywhere around. Then at 40 weeks and at 41 weeks and at 41.5 weeks, the appointments showed nothing of concern, but I still had an unfavorable cervix. At all of those appointments, we had to sign an AMA saying that we did not want to get induced. We kept trying to do normal, regular things. Then on March 1st, I was 41+5. I woke up with a slight abdominal pain. I just did the normal routine. I went for a walk and all of the things we were doing. I did have a dance party that day instead of my normal yoga. I was like, “Let's get this started. Let's get moving.” Then those pains intensified throughout the afternoon and I finally was willing to call them contractions at some point that evening. They were about five minutes apart and we decided to go to the hospital. And like normal, not normal but for a lot of people, I got to the hospital and everything stopped. We decided to go home, but a nurse told us that because I was about 42 weeks and it would be against medical advice, my insurance would not cover my labor and delivery cost if we went home and then tried to come back. Whether that is true or not, at this point it is 3:00 in the morning and we are like, “What do we do? I don't know.” So we were like, “Let's just hunker down and just try to relax a little bit then in the morning try to get labor moving again.” So that was what we did. We decided to stay at the hospital. At about 8:00 the next morning, my OB came in and she wanted to strip my membranes. She accidentally broke my bag of water at the same time. I refused any other interventions at this point except they said that they did require that I have an IV and some monitoring. So after a lot of pressure from every nurse that came in the room and my OB, we agreed to a Pitocin drip at about 5:00 PM. Then I labored throughout the night. Things got super intense at about 2:00 in the morning. I was frantic. I remembered feeling like I couldn't handle the pain. I remember that the room was pitch dark and I'm just laying in the bed super frantic, super exhausted, no idea what to do. I tried getting in the tub. I hated it with all of the wires and the monitors around me so I just hated it. The nurse suggested that I try Benadryl to help me rest. I didn't rest but I got super groggy and I think that just made it worse. I was just physically, mentally, and emotionally– it was bad. There was all of this constant pressure to do things that I did want to do or I didn't want to do. I just felt so isolated and frustrated. I was dilated to about a 7 the next morning. It was 7:00 AM and I agreed to an epidural just to try to relax and get some rest and some relief. Then my OB came in and checked me. She said that my cervix was swollen at that point and that I started to regress.  Knowing what I wanted, she said that she was going to try to hold open my cervix and let me push. I tried but nothing really happened. Looking back, I'm like, “I don't know if she thought that would really help or if she was trying to appease me and try to give me a little bit of a confidence boost or something. I don't know.” At this point, I'm in labor for about 48 hours. I'm done. I was out of it. She highly recommended a C-section and I remember before I signed the paperwork, I looked at her and said, “Will you let me try for a vaginal next time?” I already knew. Again, also looking back, I'm like, “I can't believe I asked her permission.” But we do because we think that it is in someone else's control. Meagan: We do. Yes, yes. Ashley: So anyway, we had a gentle, normal, healthy C-section. Perfectly healthy baby girl. Recovery was fine. It was normal. It was good, but I had that defeat in my head and in my heart. It just stayed there and I moved on. So then about two years later, in January 2018, I was pregnant again thankfully and we moved. That first birth was in Florida and we moved to Michigan which is where we are now. I did a lot of research just on social media and things like that to try to find who is the VBAC-friendly provider in our area. I was super excited when I got in with one of the most VBAC-friendly practices in the Grand Rapids area. I was really happy that I could work with their midwife team for a VBAC. This time I just felt like I did more research and that I knew what went wrong last time, so I was like, “The same thing is not going to happen. I know what happened. Been there, done that. Moving on.” But that was kind of all we did. I did a couple of meditations. I read a couple of more books. I just was like, “I think we've got it.” Then 40 weeks came. 41 weeks came again. I just felt like– you know, from providers that you start feeling the pressure, especially with VBAC. Meagan: You do. Ashley: So then at my 41-week appointment, we denied the induction again. We endured a pretty fear-based lecture from the OB that was practicing there, but he did do a membrane sweep at that appointment. A couple of days later, nothing had happened. He did another membrane sweep and then I was like, “Okay.” I started getting that frantic feeling again. He did the membrane sweep. I went straight to acupuncture. I went straight home and had a castor oil lunch. Then contractions started about an hour later. They were about three minutes apart the entire night and then the next morning, my parents arrived from out of state to watch our daughter and things stopped. They pretty much totally stopped. We went on a long walk. I did more castor oil. I took a nap and woke up with super intense contractions so I felt like, “Okay. It's time we call the midwife.” She was like, “Try to just do what you can at home until things are unbearable.” I got in the bathtub at home and that's when I remember things caving in. Mentally and emotionally, I went totally dark. The fear of things I hadn't totally worked through from the first birth just came tumbling in. I remember laying in the bathtub being like, “I'm done. I can't do it. I can't. I can't do this the way that I want to.” We did end up going to the hospital. We were admitted there at about 6:00 PM and I was dilated to a 5 so that was a little bit reassuring at that point. But as we got to the hospital and all of the tests and the monitoring and all of that stuff, I just was so scared. The fear and the worry and all of the anxiousness crept back in. I did agree to an epidural again even though that wasn't something that I had originally planned. I just felt like I needed something to help calm me down. At around 11:00 that night, I was dilated to an 8. I tried to rest. We did some nipple stim. The next morning with little progression, I did start Pitocin at about 10:00 AM. I just remember being in the bed. The midwife would come in and we would try a couple of different positions, but that was really it. I didn't know any different. We didn't have a doula with us. My husband is a great support, but we didn't know what else to do. I ended up trying to push. I pushed for about two hours because my midwife thought that I was ready for that. There was no progression. I remember her saying that the baby's position was why he wouldn't descend. Again, looking back now, I'm like, “Oh, yeah. That makes sense,” but at the time, I'm like, “I don't know what that means. I don't know what to do about that.” So later, after I pushed for a couple of hours like I said, the OB came in, the same one who gave us the scary talk. He came in and he offered a vacuum, forceps, or a C-section. I think at that point, again, I was in labor for 48ish hours at that point and just tired. A C-section felt like the thing that I knew. I didn't do the research on the other things and I didn't have a great relationship with him, so I was like, “Let's do the C-section,” so we moved to the C-section. It was the same experience. It was gentle. It was safe and healthy and everything went fine. Our little guy was born at 9:00 at night. He had some breathing issues but nothing of concern. It was great. But this time, I struggled mentally for months after that with just that feeling like I failed again. I don't know if I'm going to ever get a chance again to have my VBAC or to redeem what I thought was possible for myself and for my family. Anyways, two years later in May of 2020 in the middle of the pandemic, we had a third miracle pregnancy and again, it was a very healthy, normal pregnancy. I decided to stay with the same practice because one, I knew that they were still one of the most VBAC-friendly practices, however, their midwife team is not able to support VBACs after two C-sections. Meagan: Just after two C-sections. Ashley: Mhmm, yep. I listened to an episode of The VBAC Link and there was someone on who is from this area. I ended up connecting with her and she told me about a great OB who worked who now had transferred into this practice that I was at. She was amazing so I was able to work with her instead of the other person who again, is a great provider but I just wanted a little bit of a different experience. Meagan: Right. Ashley: This new OB was a doula actually before she got into obstetrics. I just felt so much at ease and comfort with her. I remember her telling me, “You're in charge.” She would offer me things or tell me and give me information and then she would say, “You're in charge.” That changed the game for me. It just made me realize, “Oh, you're right. I am.” Meagan: It's crazy to think what the words, “You are in charge” did for you. Ashley: Yeah. It was amazing. I knew that with this birth, I was like, “This is my chance to get the VBAC.” We didn't know if we would have any more kids. I pulled out all of the stops. I hired a doula finally. My husband and I were on the same page. He's always been really supportive of what I want, but we had to sit down and have some pretty in-depth conversations about why I wanted it and why it was so important. I listened to every VBAC Link episode and every Evidence Based Birth episode. I did as much research and educating myself as I could. I started chiropractic care. I did Spinning Babies and nightly meditations. I started mental health counseling. At the time, I did it mainly because I think looking back, after my second, I went through a pretty intense period of postpartum depression. I didn't know it at the time, but I knew that this time, I needed to get ahead of it so I connected with a counselor just so I had that relationship built for after my third baby. What I didn't realize until after I started therapy was the mental block that I had from those first two births and so much defeat, failure, and fear. They were so heavy and I quickly realized them after just getting into regular therapy sessions. My therapist really helped me work through a lot of that which I am so thankful for. So fast forward through all of that prep that we do for months and months, this time I was like, “Okay. I'm sure I'm going to go to 42 weeks. That's just what my body does and I'm cool with it. It's going to be fine.”Meagan: Right. Right. Ashley: I went in for my 40-week appointment. Everything was normal except I did have a slightly elevated blood pressure which was abnormal for me. We did the NST. They did lab work and then I agreed to a membrane sweep. My OB was a little bit concerned that if my blood pressure would continue to rise or continue to be elevated then I would need an induction so she thought that the sweep would be the most gentle way to just try to get started. I was already dilated to a 3 so she was like, “I think it's a safe way to go. It's not too much intervening,” so I felt good about that.I did really normal things for the next 48 hours. With the other two, I got the frantic, “Let's get started.” Castor oil is a pretty intense thing, so this time I stayed away from that. I did a lot of inversions and curb walking. I went to the chiropractor and then at my next appointment, everything was normal. Blood pressure was back to normal and I was so thankful. I went home. That 40-week appointment was a Wednesday and we had a couple of days. Then on Sunday morning, I woke up and I had some slight contractions so I went for a super long walk. I did a lot of curb walking. I started an abbreviated or my own version of Miles Circuit just to keep things moving along. Contractions became pretty regular around 2:00 that afternoon. I was still hesitant to call it labor because I had experienced such long labors before that I was like, “Eh, this is a long road.” Meagan: Right. You're like, “Whatever. We've got this.”Ashley: But I did ask my husband to come home. He was at work and I asked him to come home just to help with the other two. That was about 4:00. I was like, “I just need to focus. I need to get in my space.” He took them to Target and they roamed around Target. I stayed home. I sat on my birth ball. I put my birth playlist on and I actually colored pictures for them just to calm myself and get in the right frame of mind. By the time they got home, I was just laying in bed trying to relax through the contractions. I managed to make it to dinner and have dinner with them and help with the bedtime routine, but I had to keep stopping through reading them their bedtime story just to breathe. After that, I just moved to our bedroom and I was really struggling. I was laying in bed and just walking around the bedroom. I remember that I felt sick but hungry, but cold, but hot and all of these different feelings were coming in. I had to just lean into my husband and hold onto him through every contraction. We did that for about an hour and he was like, “I think we'd better at least call the doula.” I was like, “Okay, okay.” She just listened over the phone to a few contractions and I remember her saying, “I think it might be time to go into the hospital.” Even though I was really struggling to cope with the contractions, I was super against going in because with my other two, I got to the hospital and everything stopped. I was like, “I'm not doing that.” Things kept progressing through. It was probably another hour and so I finally agreed, “Okay. Let's go in.” My husband was making arrangements for someone to come stay with our kids and pack the car. My water broke. I hadn't had that spontaneous experience before so that was kind of cool. He helped me get changed and get into the car. I remember I couldn't sit down. I was kneeling over the front seat on my knees and he was like, “This is probably going to be the hardest part of the whole labor, the drive to the hospital.” I was ready to push. I remember yelling the whole time, “I'm ready to push.” He was like, “It's going to be fine. It's going to be fine. We're almost there.” He's driving through– it was February and there was a snowstorm here. He was trying to stay as calm as possible. We pull up to triage. It was about 9:50 PM. I got into my wheelchair still on my knees. They wheeled me in and I'm like, “I'm ready to push. I'm ready to push!” yelling at whoever was with me. A nurse checked me in the wheelchair. She came running out and checked me. Meagan: Turned around just backward.Ashley: Yeah. I heard her yell, “She's complete!” I was like, “Thank you, God.” It was the best thing that I could have ever heard. They wheeled me into a delivery room and they helped me onto the hospital bed. I was on all fours and I just started pushing. At that point, everything is kind of a blur. I was so focused on just pushing her out. I knew everybody there was looking at me like, “Is she going to do this? Is this actually going to happen?” I knew that until I was holding her in my arms, a C-section was still a possibility. Meagan: Yeah. Ashley: It was never off the table and I was like, “I've come this far. We're doing this.” I do remember that I got a saline lock. At one point, they put a monitor on baby's head. My doula put my hair up for me. They kept giving me oxygen to help me breathe. People kept urging me to change positions and I was like, “Nope. I'm good right here. I'm not moving.” My OB made it there for about 10 minutes of pushing and helped me through the last few pushes and then I heard her say, “The baby's head was out and then her body,” and then I just reached down and pulled her up and yeah. It was amazing. Absolutely amazing. Meagan: Absolutely. That's so flipping cool that you could get there and be that far progressed. For you mentally, I'm sure– like you said, “I knew it wasn't off the table,” but that had to have just been so huge and put you in a space. Even when they were doing all of these things, you were able to stay in your space and keep going. 10 minutes! Ashley: Yeah. It was crazy. I remember after things, I had pretty significant blood loss and pretty severe tearing just because it was so fast, but my husband said, “This is going to change the course of your life forever.” And he's right. It does because when you follow your intuition, right? And you really experience something so redeeming like that, that can change you. So yeah. I'm really grateful. Meagan: Yeah. It totally does change you. I hadn't had my baby yet. I was still in labor and I remember one of my doulas saying, “If this doesn't go the way she is wanting, I'm worried about what she's going to do with her career and if she's going to be able to keep going,” because I wanted it so badly. Then I had my VBAC and everyone was like, “This just changed you forever. This just totally did something for you.” I remember that it's the weirdest thing. It's really hard for me to describe, but to have a birth– and it's not even just a VBAC in general– but to have a birth where you feel like you were more in the driver's seat and more in control and like you said, following that intuition and trusting your whole soul, there's something to say with that. There's a power that that gave me. Ashley: Yep. Absolutely. Meagan: And it did. It's changed my life for the long term. It's just so amazing. It's so amazing. Ashley: And look at all of the community that you guys have built. Meagan: Yeah. Ashley: Your experiences have changed so many people's lives. It's just really cool. Meagan: It's really cool how it all circles around. And every single one of these stories– I mean, we're hearing it through these reviews how these stories are changing people's lives. This community and I may be biased, but there is something about this VBAC/CBAC community that is so special. We are so vulnerable.Ashley: I think so. I think also, people don't really get it. I mean, I have a great family and friends, but there aren't many that understand it. Meagan: There aren't, yeah. Ashley: So to be able to come somewhere like this and find other people who really get it and it's really important to them and it's really valuable and it just creates this sense of confidence and meaning. Meagan: Absolutely. It's so true. I remember that there were very few. I could count on one hand people that I could really go to. I love the people that would listen. I would always want a listening ear, but these guys didn't just listen. They heard and they felt. They felt it when I said, “I don't know what I should do. I have this provider, but I'm feeling called to this out-of-hospital birth. What should I do?” They could feel the struggle that I was going through. They could feel the desire, the want, and the hurt. I had a mother's blessing and I will never forget. I was in constant chills because I could feel their energy. Ashley: Yeah. That's amazing. Meagan: This community is absolutely amazing and you are amazing and then you're just going to keep going on. You're going to have this other VBAC and then you're going to keep going on as a doula inspiring. That's one of the reasons too why we love having our doula community. We have our certified doulas. When Julie was with me, she and I couldn't change the VBAC world. We're just here in Utah. Through this community and all of these birth workers out there and all of these parents inspiring, we have people on our team that haven't even had a VBAC and they're like, “Hey guys, did you know that this is an option? Did you know that this is a thing?” It's so cool the conversations that are sparked and can change someone's outcome completely. So thank you so much for being here and for sharing your story. Good luck right now and congrats in advance. And yes! Do you have a doula page yet where people can go follow you?Ashley: I do. Yeah, yeah thank you. It's Baby Bird Birth and Doula Services. So yeah. I have a website and Facebook and Instagram and everything. I'm getting things kicked off and I'm very, very excited to really start working with other families and helping them realize that your intuition is powerful. Your birth experience really matters. Meagan: It really does. It really does. It is not that it matters of the method, but the experience is impactful. Ashley: Yep. Yep. Absolutely. Meagan: Right? Well, thank you so much again. Ashley: Thank you. I really appreciate your time and everything that you guys do. 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

Description: Co-hosts Ryan Piansky, a graduate student and patient advocate living with eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE) and eosinophilic asthma, and Holly Knotowicz, a speech-language pathologist and feeding specialist living with EoE who serves on APFED's Health Sciences Advisory Council talk with guest Ashley Spencer, patient advocate, a young adult from Bristol, PA, living with Eosinophilic Granulomatosis with Polyangiitis (EGPA). In this episode, Ryan and Holly discuss with Ashley her history with EGPA, how she was diagnosed, and some things you can do to advocate for yourself and others if you are living with EGPA. She explains the chronic nature of the disease and the treatments that help her in the day-to-day management of EGPA.   You will appreciate Ashley's positive attitude and determination to improve the outcomes of people living with EGPA.   Disclaimer: The information provided in this podcast is designed to support, not replace the relationship that exists between listeners and their healthcare providers. Opinions, information, and recommendations shared in this podcast are not a substitute for medical advice. Decisions related to medical care should be made with your healthcare provider. Opinions and views of guests and co-hosts are their own.   Key Takeaways: [0:50] Ryan welcomes co-host Holly Knotowicz. Holly introduces the topic: Eosinophilic Granulomatosis with Polyangiitis (EGPA) Today's episode features the perspective of a patient living with EGPA.   [1:52] Holly introduces Ashley Spencer, a young adult from Bristol, Pennsylvania, living with EGPA.   [2:03] Ashley thanks Holly and Ryan for having her on the podcast.   [2:19] Ashley says it is not a walk in the park living with EGPA. When Ashley was 16, she started displaying symptoms of EGPA. At the time, because of her age, doctors didn't associate her symptoms with anything other than severe asthma.   [2:45] Two years later Ashley developed sinus issues that required surgery. Every year she displayed more symptoms.   [3:03] Ashley says EGPA has three stages and early diagnosis can halt its progress.   [3:36] EGPA stands for Eosinophilic Granulomatosis with Polyangiitis. Eosinophils in the body are high, causing inflammation within the body including major organs.   [4:01] Ashley had exercise-induced asthma. She played sports and danced, but all of a sudden, it went from exercise-induced asthma to severe asthma. She was admitted to the hospital for it and needed continuous albuterol treatments. From age 16 until now, Ashley has not been able to get off steroids, which can cause severe issues.   [5:05] Ashley displayed sinusitis issues when she was 18. Within two years, she had four sinus surgeries in all eight of her sinus cavities for sinusitis and nasal polyps.   [5:26] The polyps were starting to show eosinophilia but not enough for a full diagnosis. Because Ashley was moving from adolescence to adulthood, she had to be transitioned from doctors at Children's Hospital Philadelphia to an adult doctor. Her family doctor told her she was getting worse. He sent her to National Jewish in Denver, Colorado.   [6:12] Ashley checked into National Jewish Health for two weeks. Every day she saw doctors and had testing. Ashley was diagnosed with Churg-Strauss Syndrome, which is now known as Eosinophilic Granulomatosis with Polyangiitis (EGPA).   [7:28] By the time Ashley got the diagnosis, she was in the last stage of EGPA, which is the vasculitic stage.    [8:09] A common misconception about EGPA is that it doesn't affect children and young adults. Another misconception is that EGPA patients may visually look healthy, similar to many autoimmune disease patients. EGPA affects the internal body.   [9:18] Ashley's lungs, sinuses, and her nervous system have been impacted. One morning she woke up and she was paralyzed from the waist down. This shut down her bladder function and she developed mononeuritis multiplex which caused severe peripheral neuropathy from her knees down.   [9:48] Ashley was hospitalized for three weeks and then went to a rehab to relearn how to walk. Ashley worked with her urologist to get a medical device to signal when she needs to use the bathroom.   [10:33] Ashley also has heart issues but if she stays on her daily maintenance medications, she does well.   [11:09] Ashley talks about specialists she sees: a pulmonary doctor, an ear, nose, and throat specialist, a women's healthcare team for bone health, a urologist, a neurologist, and an allergist and immunologist.   [12:18] A good day for Ashley would be if she got out of bed, took a shower, and went to school. A bad day would be not being able to get out of bed and just staying in bed all day and sleeping.   [13:17] Ashley and Holly discuss the “spoon theory.” You start the day with 10 spoons and each activity takes away one or more spoons. When your spoons are gone, you are done for the day. You don't have more to give.   [16:45] How you can help a friend with EGPA: Join a Facebook group for EGPA. Ashley shares a personal story of an online friend who became an in-life friend. She encourages listeners to explore Facebook groups related to eosinophilic diseases.   [18:31] It's hard for someonewith no experience with eosinophilic disorders to understand someone with EGPA.   [20:33] There are situations you can explain that help your friends not living with eosinophilic diseases to better understand you.   [21:41] Ashley has medication and a medical deviceto help her manage EGPA.   [22:47] Ashley shares how her care has changed over the last ten years. When she started at the Cleveland Clinic, she went on a biologic to improve lung function that changed her life. She was able to work out again. Her stamina increased. It also helped a little bit with her neuropathy.   [24:40] Ashley shares experiences with school and social activities with EGPA. She was in a college physical therapy program when her sinuses caused her to be admitted to the hospital. The doctors told her it was not feasible for her to continue to her senior year and she was heartbroken. She did not graduate or become a physical therapist.   [26:23] Ashley's career now is advocacy. She often speaks to new EGPA patients about the disease and treatment options. She also talks to allergy patients. Years ago, Ashley made national news by going into anaphylactic shock on a plane when flying to the Cleveland Clinic and a Cleveland Clinic doctor on the plane saved her life.   [27:38] Ashley's advice for traveling with EGPA is to wear medical identification jewelry.   [30:03] Ashley refers to those living with EGPA as vasculitis warriors. She always invites them to connect with others on social media  and to reach out if they need help.   [30:58] Ryan shares the online resources to help with the day-to-day management of EGPA at apfed.org and apfed.org/connections.   [31:28] Ryan and Holly thank Ashley for sharing her experience. Holly and Ryan thank APFED's education partners, as well, linked below.   Mentioned in This Episode: American Partnership for Eosinophilic Disorders (APFED) APFED on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram Episode 06: “Understanding and Managing Eosinophilic Granulomatosis with Polyangiitis (EGPA) with Dr. Peter Merkel” Peter A. Merkel, MD, MPH Children's Hospital of Philadelphia National Jewish Health-Denver Churg-Strauss Syndrome Mononeuritis multiplex The Spoon Theory EGPA Facebook Group Eosinophilic Disease Group on Facebook The Cleveland Clinic The Vasculitis Foundation @Apfedorg on Instagram Apfed.org/egpa Apfed.org/specialists Real Talk: Eosinophilic Diseases Podcast   This episode of APFED's podcast is brought to you thanks to the support of AstraZeneca, Bristol Myers Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline, Mead Johnson Nutrition, Sanofi, and Regeneron.   Tweetables:   “To be real with you, it's not a walk in the park living with EGPA, let alone being diagnosed with EGPA.” — Ashley   “When I was 16, I started displaying symptoms of EGPA. But at the time, because of my age, they didn't associate it with anything other than just severe asthma. And then, two years later, I developed the sinus issue.” — Ashley   “By the time I got the diagnosis, I was in the last stage [of EGPA], which is the vasculitic stage. So it was very sad.” — Ashley “It's not really seen in youth patients and young adults.” — Ashley

Ashley joins us today from Australia sharing her three birth stories and how she learned to truly trust herself. Driven out of the hospital due to discrimination and not being able to find support from home birth midwives, Ashley decided to go for a free birth. With a special scar, two previous Cesarean surgeries, a big baby, a high BMI, and a history of gestational diabetes, Ashley accepted all of the risks and was able to reap the beautiful benefits of undisturbed home delivery. Ashley shares with us her journey to acceptance when things didn't go the way she planned, but also how to persevere through to fight for the story she wanted. She now hosts The VBAC Homebirth Stories podcast and is a Homebirth/Freebirth Mindset Coach inspiring other women to have the courage to take back control of their birth stories!Additional LinksAshley's InstagramThe VBAC Homebirth Stories podcastHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode DetailsFull TranscriptMeagan: Hello, hello. Welcome to The VBAC Link. This is Meagan Heaton and we have Ashley here with you. Can I just tell you? She is amazing and you're going to want to listen to this episode 5 million times and then when you're done listening to it 5 million times, you're going to want to check out her Instagram and watch her videos 5 million more times because she is amazing and such a wealth of knowledge. We reached out and said, “Hey, we want to share your story on the podcast. We think it's going to be an amazing episode.” I don't think. I know it's going to be an amazing episode. Review of the WeekBefore we do that, I'm going to get a review per usual and remind you that if you would like to leave a review, we are on Google and Apple Podcasts. You can email us. Shoot us a message on Instagram. We love to add your reviews to the queue and read them on the podcast. This specific review is from Ana Neves and it says, “I've been preparing for my VBAC ever since my C-section, and listening to the stories in this podcast has not only taught and informed me all about the different options, but also inspired me. I know that when the time comes, I will be prepared and feel the power of the great and courageous people who shared their stories here.” Oh, I love that. “The great and courageous people.” Oh, I love that. I love that so much. Thank you so much for sharing your review and like I said, if you have a review to share and you want us to know how you feel about the podcast and all of these great and courageous people, please leave us a review. Ashley's StoriesMeagan: Okay, Ashley. I am so excited that you are here. It's been interesting from now in recording, we've had Australian people on the podcast a lot. It warms my heart and makes me so happy and makes me feel like I probably need to go to Australia now because one, I am obsessed with all of the knowledge you guys have on birth and I actually really like the way that birth is in Australia in a lot of ways. But I am just so honored to have you here with us. Ashley: Thank you. I am so excited to be here. That was such a beautiful, warm welcome so thank you very much for having me. Meagan: Yes, oh my gosh. I'm serious. I just love listening to you too. I just love your guys' accents. My Utah accent is pretty lame, but yeah. So let's turn the time over to you. I am so excited because I feel like I've heard little things, but I'm excited to just hear it right now with you. Go ahead. Ashley: Okay. So let's start from the first babe then. Basically, I went into that one expecting that I was going to have a vaginal birth because my mum had vaginal births, and all of the women before me did too. My mum had me in 7 hours. I was the first baby. My sister is two, so mum said, “If you have medication, you're weak. You've just got to suck it up.” So I had this, “If she could do it, I can do it.” I had this, “I'll have the epidural if I need it” sort of vibe. A lot of my friends had babies before me. They had children when they were 17-18. By the time I had mine, I was 28. I was newly married and I had watched all of my friends. They told me all of their birth stories and things. They had all had vaginal births. I thought that Cesarean birth was really for celebrities basically because when I was in high school, it was Posh Spice who was having this C-section and things like that. It was a trendy thing to do. It wasn't something that normal people did. It was an expensive thing that rich people did. Meagan: Like in Brazil. That's how it's viewed in Brazil. You are high-class if you have Cesareans. Ashley: Yeah. I mean, I went to the GP before I got pregnant and checked on my levels to make sure. I have always had a high BMI, so the doctor said to me, “The only thing I recommend is that you lose some weight because you might struggle to conceive,” so I went in knowing that there may be a hardship there. Some of the women in my workplace at the time had multiple miscarriages. My mother-in-law had 7 before my husband, so I went in with that kind of, “We'll see what happens, but it could take a while.” So I conceived within the first month of trying so that was a shock, but also so exciting. Super exciting. It was a month before my wedding, so I got sick just after my wedding for my honeymoon and all of the fun games and after that, I was just like a sloth dying because I got HG. I got HG and it was just 20 weeks of basically a challenge. Meagan: Yeah, miserable. Ashley: It was hard. I was so excited to be a mom. I couldn't wait from the time I conceived to birth the baby and have the baby in my arms. That's all I wanted. I went to the hospital and there was a bit of a mix-up between when I went to the GP and had the GTT, the test for gestational diabetes. The doctor told me that I didn't have it. I went to a hospital because that's what they do. You go to a GP and they just send you to the local public hospital and that's the one that you are allowed to go to, but they didn't really discuss any of the other avenues like private, or midwives, or homebirths or anything like that. So I went excitedly to my first appointment. I waited for over an hour and I saw some random gyno-obstetrician and they said to me, “You've got gestational diabetes so you'll be seeing us.” I was like, “No I don't. I don't have gestational diabetes.” “Yes you do,” she said and I burst out crying. It was this big thing. Basically, the difference was if I had birthed or if I had gone to the hospital in Brisbane which is the next suburb over, I wouldn't have had gestational diabetes but in the hospital that I went to, they were up with the times with the lower numbers because that was cycling at the moment. It was 2014. I had gestational diabetes and that meant that I had so many more appointments. It meant that I was only with obstetricians. It meant that I had to go to nutrition or a dietician. It was just so many appointments. It was out of control. From a very early stage, I was told, “You're going to be induced and you're going to be on insulin.” As soon as I was diagnosed, I was told, “You're going to be on medication.” Meagan: No talking about it. Ashley: “Yeah, let's see how this unravels and we're not going to start you on the pill, we're just going to go straight to insulin for you,” so it was kind of like they had already decided my fate. I was really excited to have an induction. It meant that I got a date for my baby and I was going to have my baby early. When I spoke to the other ladies in the GD who were getting induced, the lady said to me, “It's all good. I was induced and I had my baby in 5 hours.” I was like, “Awesome. Awesome.” I don't know what number baby that was for her because when it comes to induction, I know now that it really matters whether it's your second or if you've had a vaginal birth before, then an induction probably isn't going to land you with a C-section. I ended up getting my date, coming into hospital, and having no discussion. I kept asking, “Can we have a birth discussion?” It was always, “Next week. Next week. Next week.” There was no discussion about what happens at birth or really what to expect or any niceties or anything. It always felt quite cold. It was like the people didn't even want to be there, the junior obstetricians, it was like they were doing their time so to speak. It just wasn't a pleasant experience. I was expecting my first baby and I just felt like another number. Meagan: Yeah. It wasn't warm and fuzzy at all. That's for sure. Ashley: No. I just felt like it didn't feel right. It just felt really not nice. Meagan: Yeah, impersonal. Ashley: Yeah, exactly. I basically went in for my induction and my husband came in with me. That was a couple of days of having gels and people putting their fingers up and continued monitoring and just very uncomfortable. I found after they had done all of that process that my cervix was right shut up. It wouldn't open up. They said, “Okay. We are going to try and put the balloon in there.” That was the most excruciating pain. Meagan: Especially when you're not dilated. Ashley: It was excruciating and I was in so much pain. The doctor and midwife made out that I was making a big fuss because I was responding that it was painful, so they gave me a lot of gas and I was pretty much tripping out. It was really trippy. Meagan: Like nitrous oxide?Ashley: Yeah. I just felt like if this is how painful it is to put this thing in, how painful is labor going to be? How am I going to handle that if I've just been through two days of this? I think that I had a cannula in my hand as well because I couldn't really go to the bathroom without assistance from my husband. It was really getting uncomfortable. I had something up inside me. Meagan: Or poking you or something all of the time. Ashley: Yeah, exactly. So another night in the hospital we slept and then they said, “If it doesn't open and it doesn't drop out by the morning, then we'll talk about it.” I wasn't allowed to eat. I had to fast. Meagan: That's going to serve your body well. Ashley: I know. It's really cool. It's like they give you so much amazing care in the hospital to set you up for this amazing birth, and I woke up and it was still in there and nothing had changed. I felt really defeated and I felt like my body was broken like there was something wrong with me. Nobody had ever discussed or told me that there is a high failure rate to this or that this procedure can fail or that you may not be a great candidate for this procedure. Meagan: Or more time. More time can make you a different candidate statistically and raise your BISHOP score. Ashley: Yeah, they obviously did the BISHOP score and they would have seen that I wasn't a good candidate for this. They would have known that when they did all of these things to me. Now I see that as my body is so amazing that you tried to do all of this stuff to my body and my body was like, “Hell no.” Meagan: Nope. I'm keeping this baby in. Ashley: Clam shut, yeah. The junior doctor came in and she said, “Look. We recommend that you come in tomorrow for more monitoring. Go home and come back on Monday and we'll start the process again.” I was like, “What do you mean you're going to start the process again? This was really torturous.” I said, “What's the difference between a day or two? My body's not going to respond any differently. Can I just come back in two weeks?” I'm 38 weeks at this point and I'm like, “I'm not even 40 weeks. Can I come back in 2 weeks when I'm in labor?” Meagan: And a first-time mom.Ashley: Yeah, because my mom had me and my sisters right on 40 weeks, so I'm just expecting the same. She said, “No. You can't.” I was like, “Oh, okay.” She said, “No, you can't do that.” I said, “Okay.” She said, “You know what? We're just about to have an obstetrician meeting, so I'll go in there and I'll ask the consultants what they think and I'll come back with a plan.” “Okay,” I said because she also did talk about my option of being a Cesarean on the Monday and I said to her, “Look. I'm going to be honest with you. There's no way in hell that you're going to get me to come in for elective surgery. It's just not going to happen. I never wanted to birth like that and I don't want to.” She came back and she said– they obviously spoke about what I had said and they made for me later a plan to push me in the way they thought that I was going to bend the most, so they said, “Look. We've bumped all of the surgeries for the day and we're going to book you in as priority because we feel like you should be having this baby now.” I was kind of like, “Okay.” So they were bumping all of these surgeries. There were people sitting out in the waiting room waiting to have their babies, but they were going to bump me to have my baby first. I had my sister in the room who was a surgery nurse who had been pushing me to have surgery the whole time because she was traumatized. I'd been fighting her the way through like, “No. I don't want to do that. I want to have a vaginal birth.” I was so exhausted and my husband only had 5 days off of work, so he had to return in a couple of days. I had my in-laws at my house babysitting my dog and I was promised a baby. I feel like at that point, I was just like, “Okay, well if that's what you think, then okay. I'll do it.” I signed this 3-page waiver form by the way, which I was really scared of. I was like–Meagan: What am I doing? What am I signing?Ashley: My sister is getting me prepared. She just finished a shift from working upstairs in nursing and she organized for herself to get in there, so it was going to be my husband and her. They never allowed a third person, but because she worked there and knew people, she was able to weasel in. She's getting me ready like a good nurse. She's so excited. She gets to be a part of it and I'm just recording a video of, “If I die, tell my baby I love my baby.” I am so petrified. I've got video and photos and I just look at the photo and it's like me trying to look excited, but actually, I'm like, “Holy crap. This is really scary and I don't want to do this.” Meagan: Why is everybody so excited and I'm terrified? And why is no one talking to me about this? Ashley: Because I'm giving up control. They're not getting the knife, but I am. It's really scary if you've never had surgery. It's not something that we do every day and it's not something that I had ever gone through before. So off I go into surgery and it's really good that my sister was there because she got to take a lot of photos and she got to be a part of it. Meagan: That would bring some comfort maybe. Ashley: Yeah, I felt like they would step up a bit as well because they knew that it was one of their own in there and I was one of their own. She took a lot of photos and things like that, but when they were doing the spinal, no one can be in the room. I just remember feeling so petrified and shaking and looking into this big man's eyes who was holding me and thinking, “You look like a nice man. Keep me safe.” This midwife came around and she was like, “You look like a deer in headlights” because it was like all of these lights shining down at me. I'm in this crazy room with surgery stuff. I'm really scared. I'm petrified, but I went through the whole process and the obstetrician and everyone, it was Christmastime. It was early Christmas. It was December 5th and they were all having their Christmas party that night, so they were all very happy talking about the Christmas party. “You're going to the Christmas party? I'm going to the Christmas party.” I thought, “Well, they're not fast. They're not stressed. They're very happy. They're starting their day. I'm the first one. They're excited about the Christmas party.” It didn't feel very personal. I definitely didn't feel included in the process. They were just talking among colleagues. Meagan: I can so relate. So relate. Ashley: It's horrible. Meagan: Yeah. They were talking about the snow outside and how depressing it was because the one just gotten back from Hawaii. He was like, “Oh, I came back to snow.” I was like, “I'm right here. Can we talk about my baby? Can we talk about me?” Ashley: Yeah, it's very impersonal. I mean, it's one thing at the dentist to be chatting it up. I don't mind it at the dentist if they're chatting or something, or the orthodontist or something, but yes. I thought, “At least they're calm.” The baby was born in no time and then announced, “It's a baby girl.” I just thought, “Oh, can I go to sleep now? I'm not really interested in this. I'm very time. I'm shaking. This is not a great experience.” I just turned around and said, “Can I go to sleep? I don't want to hold the baby.” It's uncomfortable anyways, but I can't really hold the baby. I'm shaking. I've never really had that many drugs in my system before and off to recovery we go basically. That's a new experience as well. Yeah, it wasn't a great postpartum experience in the hospital. It was quite a negative experience with the night midwives, so I was really excited to get out. I left a day early because I just did not want to have to put up with the night staff. My husband wasn't allowed to stay. Meagan: Oh, why? Ashley: So in our hospital in the public system, some of them have got 4 or 5 to a room, so I was in a 4 or 5 to a room. They don't allow husbands to stay. I couldn't get out of bed. Meagan: I didn't know that. That's like old school.Ashley: It is old school. A lot of them are getting upgraded now because obviously, it's better to have your own room and stuff, but that's where I was lumped. No one wants to birth there because no one wants to share a room, but if you're in the catchment, that's where you get stuck unless you go private. So he got booted out at 10:00 at night, and then I was left with this witch of a midwife who every time my baby cried, she was like, “Oh, look. You're just going to have to sleep with the baby on your belly because I can't be coming back here to get the baby all of the time.” I was like, “But it's not guidelines. I'm not allowed to sleep with my baby with my chest. I can't sleep and it's stressing me out.” In my head, I'm saying those things, but yeah. It was horrific. The next morning, my husband came and I was letting loose at him. I was like, “Why weren't you here? The baby and I haven't slept.” I was so stressed. I mean, think about it. Being awake for 3 days, having been in the hospital for a long time, and then having gone and had major surgery, you're left on your own with this baby with barely any support. No one telling you what to do, trying to breastfeed with your nipples getting ripped by the way. Meagan: Pretty much abandoning you. Pretty much. Ashley: Basically. So the second night, I stayed and sorted that out, then I went home the next day. I did have a bit of a thing with the midwife. She was on again, so I ran down to the bathing room and I hid from her because– okay. One thing you should know about me is that I am a highly sensitive person, so something that someone might say to someone may not affect them as much as it would affect me. Meagan: It triggers you. Ashley: It really upsets me and being in a vulnerable position, I need someone who's gentle, nurturing, and loving. So I ran away and I hid in the bathing room with my baby. I was trying to work out why she was crying. I had fed her. I swaddled her. I changed her. I was really trying to work it out. She could hear the baby screaming and obviously thought that I was not looking after my baby. I said, “Look, I'm just trying to figure out what's happening here.” She's like, “You just need to hold her.” I was like, “No, I just need to figure out what's happening because I've got to go home with this baby and work this out.” She's like, “Why don't I take the baby and I'll look after the baby so you can get some sleep?” I'm like, “No. That's not happening.” I was so against this woman. She was like, “Here's your medication. Take your medication. I've been looking for you,” and then she sent another colleague down to come and check on me and try to convince me to give the baby up. But what I discovered by sticking to my guns and doing what I felt was intuitively right for me was that my baby was pulling her arms out of the swaddle and that was waking her up. So I put her in a little zip-up and from then on, she slept through the night. My husband came the next morning right on the dot. I had a shower. Baby was sleeping. He's like, “Where's the baby?” I'm like, “She's sleeping,” feeling like a million dollars. “I've got this. I've got this and we're checking out today.”Meagan: Yep. Get me out of here. Ashley: I went home and we struggled with breastfeeding. I got some really bad advice from one of the nurses that came to my house so I felt like a double failure. By 6 months time, I was mixed feeding to just formula feeding and I felt like a real failure. I let her down. I hadn't birthed her the way– I didn't feel like I birthed with, “When I had my baby,” or “When my baby was born.” I didn't say “When I birthed,” because I didn't feel a part of the experience. It happened to me. It wasn't inclusive to me. I just felt completely excluded. So I knew when I was going to have my second, I was having a VBAC for sure because I knew there was a thing possible. I knew about VBACs and I said to my GP, “What's the timeframe between babies?” She said, “24 months between birth and birth.” That was the thing then or whatever. I said, “Fine. I'm having 24 months.” I literally started trying within 24 months, whatever it was, 15, or whatever. I fell pregnant the second time. I was having a VBAC and I think I joined the VBAC group in Australia. I started learning all of the stuff, becoming informed and advocating. I knew that this time I wasn't having an induction because that's what caused me a C-section. I knew that I wanted to try to avoid GDM because that's what I thought was the lead-up for the induction rush. I didn't realize that my weight was obviously pushing against me so much. I didn't understand the reasons why or some of the discrimination that happened in the hospital at that point. I did the early GTT test and I passed that. I was like, “Yes. Maybe this is going to be different.” I'm going to show them. I'm educated. I know what I want. I'm informed. I'm also a people pleaser so I'm trying to get them on board with me. I'm trying to get them to agree with my decision. I'm trying to get them to be a part of my team and cheer me on and get excited.I'm just kind of getting met with obstetricians who were like, “VBAC is great and it's the best way to birth your baby.” I'm like, “Yes. This is amazing.” Meagan: You're like, “Thank you. This is what I want to hear.” Ashley: “But not for you.” I'm like, “What? Not for me?” “Well, for you, we recommend a planned Cesarean.” “Okay.” They never really spoke in plain language or explained it to me. It was only through digging and digging and digging and asking and asking and asking that I was finally able to get some answers. I essentially ended up getting gestational diabetes at 20 weeks, so then I wasn't allowed to see midwives because I had asked to see midwives and they said, “If you get GD, we won't release you.”Meagan: It disqualified you. Ashley: It disqualified me from seeing midwives. I said, “Look, you're a surgeon. Can I just see you if I need surgery?” The thing with GD is that there is a GD counselor and somebody that you report to outside of them, so why do I need to see you because you're not a GD expert or specialist? I actually see somebody. Why is a midwife not capable of looking after me? It doesn't make any sense. They're just trying to pull in all of the patients to keep their bellies full and make sure they've got jobs. I was gutted. I was absolutely gutted. I only failed by .1 on one of the tests and I wish I had known back then that I could have redone it and I probably would have passed it. It was really disappointing and I was like, “Oh, goodness me.” So I was diet-controlled through that time. I say diet-controlled because that's the readings that I gave them. I wasn't really diet-controlled but I was being a bit of a rebel because I was getting the same numbers as I was with my first baby and I was on insulin with her and insulin didn't do much. I thought, “Well, what's the difference going to be if they're the same numbers? She came out healthy and had no sugar problems or anything.” I kind of started to think, “Is this GD thing a bit overrated? If I was in a different hospital or a different country—”Meagan: I was going to say if you went somewhere else like last time, would it have been different or would it actually have been GD as well? Ashley: If I had gone somewhere different and I knew this because I was part of the GD community and I had friends that were birthing in Brisbane who were even having to keep below higher numbers than me. They had much higher numbers than me, so I thought, “You're with a private obstetrician and you're getting different information than me,” so I started to clue on that. And then also, when I was doing my readings on my fingers, I would get a different reading on this one to this one, so I started questioning, “If this one's .5 difference to this one, how accurate is this measuring?”Meagan: Yeah, interesting. Very interesting. Ashley: So it was very scary for me to do that because nobody's doing that and every time you're going there, they're like, “Dead baby. There was a woman who had gestational diabetes and her baby died.” And I was like–Meagan: You hear these and you're like, “What?” Ashley: I was like, “How did she die? How did the baby die?” They said, “Oh, we can't disclose that information. You're telling a room full of women with gestational diabetes that a baby died and the mum had gestational diabetes. She could have been hit by a car for all we know and you're using it to fearmonger us, but you're not willing to tell us how the baby died. It could have been negligence on the hospital's part. It may not have been GD related at all.” Meagan: Yeah, she just had it. Ashley: She just had it, so I found that quite disgusting and all of those things started to really add up. The more that I saw in the VBAC community, the more that I saw this was happening around Australia, the more I was determined to advocate and fight which is really hard for a highly sensitive person, but I got a student-midwife. I got the head midwife to come to my appointments. I had a student-doula who was a dear friend of mine and I started to grow a team around me. I refused to see one of the doctors at one point and wanted to speak to the best, most amazing doctor in the hospital, so the midwives set me up with the nicest obstetrician who still didn't support me to have a vaginal birth, but he was nicer to deal with. I mean, I had some crazy conversations with some of the obstetricians during that time. One of them was a junior and she said to me because I didn't want to have continuous monitoring. I just wanted to have the doppler. She said, “You know what my boss says? He says that if you don't have continuous monitoring, then you're basically free birthing in the hospital.” I looked at her and I was like, “You're crazy.” At this point, free birth to me was crazy and she was telling me that because I'm in a hospital and if I'm not doing that, then I'm free birthing. And I thought, “But I'm getting checked with a doppler by a midwife. I'm with obstetricians.” That is absolutely insane, but it goes to show the kind of mentality and the thought process that goes through the fact that they don't know how to be with women. They don't know how to observe and watch a woman. Now, my mindset is the complete opposite way. I see things in a different light than how they would see. They rely on machines whereas they don't rely on that connection. I'm the type of person that relies on human-to-human connection and I've listened to people and I love stories. That's how we learn. We don't learn about humans by watching machines. I started to learn about the inaccuracies of their machines and some of the equipment that they were using. It made no sense to me to have continuous monitoring when I knew that one obstetrician would send me to surgery for the reading whereas another one with maybe more experience who may be older and more chilled would be like, “Yeah, that's nothing.” If the results are at that rate, then that's not beneficial to me because then I'm putting my fate on whether I get a choppy-choppy obstetrician or a chilled, relaxed one on the day. So that was kind of my thinking. I didn't do growth scans this time. I didn't see the point in me having a growth scan to tell me that I was having a big baby. My first was 3.7 at 39 weeks. I knew this one was going to be 4 kilos and I said, “Look, I'm happy to birth a 4.5-kilo baby out of my vagina,” which is almost 10 pounds for your listeners and they just wanted to do Cesareans on 4-kilo babies as well as inductions. It was always about induction and I found out the reason why they wanted to do induction. They wanted to manage me. They weren't a tertiary hospital, one of the bigger ones, and so I found out that the junior obstetricians wouldn't be comfortable doing or maybe confident or capable of doing an emergency Cesarean on someone of my size, so I said, “That's fine. Just send me to that hospital or that hospital. Let's just do this. If it's a staffing issue, I don't want to stretch it out.” They just laughed at me. It can't be a big deal then, can it? If they're not willing to send me to a different hospital. We had so many conversations and it was anxiety-inducing. I would cry on the way to the hospital. I would cry on the way home. I'd have to get my fight on and I even had a conversation with an obstetrician that said to me, “We'll fight about that later.” I said, “That's exactly right though isn't it? It's a fight, the fight.” Meagan: Yeah, we'll fight about that later. That right there. Ashley: He goes, “Oh, I didn't mean fight. I don't mean fight.” I go, “Yeah, but no. You do.” Meagan: But you just said that. Ashley: But you do. Meagan: You're like, “Yeah, I can tell that you're not agreeing with me and you're telling me that if I want something else, I'm going to have to fight with you.” Ashley: And so I'm hearing about this informed consent and I'm like, “Informed consent.” I'm fixated on what would get them to be on my side. I've learned about informed consent. They legally have to support me, right? But that is just the fast in my opinion, in my experience, they wouldn't know what informed consent or working with a woman, it just blows my mind. I didn't realize that at the time, but there were a lot of conversations that were happening about my weight. “You're not going to be able to. It's harder for bigger women like you.” I would leave conversations thinking, “I'm not going to be able to birth my baby out of my vagina because I'm big.” Meagan: They were shaming you. Ashley: Yeah, basically I was told by an obstetrician that, “She's not a fatist, but—.” I was like, “I've never heard someone say ‘I'm not a fatist.'” I don't even know what that means. I had some really interesting conversations because I was asking questions and I was asking questions because I was asking so many questions. Every time I went to an appointment, the obstetrician would say to me, “Ah, I see you're having a repeat Cesarean,” and that would spike adrenaline. Read my book. Read my book. You would know that I'm having a VBAC and then, “Oh, well do you know the risks of VBAC?” Yes, I do. “Oh, you really do know the risks, but we still recommend that you have a repeat Cesarean,” and I would have to go through that every single time. Meagan: So discouraging. Ashley: It was a nightmare. By 36-37 weeks, I had received a phone call and they said, I could feel the smugness and a smile through the phone, “Oh, we're not willing to take the risk. You're going to have to go to a different hospital.” I was just horrified. I was so scared. I've just been kicked out of hospital because nothing has changed with me.”Meagan: But because I won't do what they want me to do and I'm being stern in following my heart. Ashley: Yeah, because I won't submit. I've told you from day one what I'm going to do, but I suppose the rate of success with that tactic is probably 99%, I'm probably the 1% of women who actually says, “No. I actually will not fall for your trickery.”Meagan: Yeah, okay fine. I'll leave. Ashley: I was so determined, so then I went to a different hospital and it was a newer hospital. They had birthing pools. I was hopeful that I might get in a birthing pool. You get your own room in the postpartum. I was excited. They had informed consent signs. The receptionists weren't fighting each other. This first one that I went to was pretty rough down there. They were lovely and polite. I thought, “Oh, this feels nice. Maybe I'm going to have a different response,” and I did. I saw an amazing midwife on entry. She was like, “If they're not going to allow you to do this, you advocate and you can make a complaint. That's disgusting how you were treated.” I thought, “Oh, wow. This is the best thing.” I saw an obstetrician. They were supportive. They wanted to do some of the same things, but they respected me. I felt like I was seen as a human. They would ask me questions and they would go and ask a consultant and the consultant would agree with me. I was like, “Wow, I am ticking boxes here.” I made some compromises because I was vulnerable. I did a growth scan and they found out that baby was about 4 kilos. Meagan: Like you already guessed. Ashley: I knew that at 39 weeks. I said, “That's fine.” “Oh, we recommend induction.” I said, “Yeah, I know you do. I'm not doing it.” That's what caused me the C-section last time. I'm not doing it. We went through the study at 39 weeks. I said, “That doesn't apply to me. It doesn't apply to me. I'm not in that study. It doesn't mean anything to me.” I don't know how you can have a study saying that it's going to work better on someone at 39-41 because you're not doing the same people. You're not doing induction on someone at 39 weeks and then going, “Hey, let's try it again at 41 or whatever it is.” You're doing different people. I don't want to know about it. I don't care about it. They said, “Okay, well I'll talk to the consultant. We'll look at the scan,” and then she came back and said, “Yep, you're fine. There's no fat on the shoulders, so yep. That's fine.” But if I hadn't said that, I would have been booked in for an induction, right? I would have just said, “Let's go, yep.” I sat there on the weekend with my husband shaking like a leaf again having to advocate for myself. It isn't an easy thing to do. Every time I have to raise my voice, I'm putting adrenaline into my body. I'm not raising like screaming, but I'm having to raise my voice. My baby would have been under attack the whole pregnancy essentially. I eventually get to the due date. A week before my due date– it was a couple of days before my due date– my midwife turns to me at the last appointment. She was training in the hospital last time, so I was really grateful that she was willing to come with me and support me even though she wasn't going to get her book signed off for this birth. And on that appointment, she said to me, “Look, my daughter's booked a holiday for me, so I'm going away on your due date. Are you going to have this baby soon now?” I was like, “Oh my goodness. You've just fought with me the whole time and now you've turned into them trying to get me to have my baby before my due date because it suits you.” Yes. I was heartbroken and I was so angry. I decided then and there I was not going to invite her into my birth space even if it was sooner because she had betrayed me on every level. I went into that appointment and the obstetrician didn't recommend it, she said, “Do you want to do a cervical stretch?” A sweep and I said, “No, I don't.” I turned to the midwife and said, “What do you think?” She was like, “Yeah, why not?” Of course, she said that because it gets the baby out quicker. So again, you've got to be careful about who you're with because if you're relying on people who've got a different agenda, you've got to take their advice or their opinion with a grain of salt. But I was a little bit interested myself. I'd never had a stretch or a sweep like that before. I was a bit interested. I was worried that I was going to go over due dates and I was willing to wait for 40+10 and I was getting a bit stressed like, “Oh, what if it goes longer?” You start to freak out at that point. There's a bit of pressure and with what I'd been through, I had the stretch and sweep. She said, “You're 3 centimeters and you're stretchy.” I was like, “Wow. Wow. Last time, they couldn't even– I was closed up.” Meagan: Get a Foley in. Ashley: Yeah. So I was so excited. I started to get some niggles and lose some mucus and a bit of blood and things like that. Two days later, I went into labor. She said to me, “If it does nothing in the next couple of days, then the baby wasn't ready to come. If it happens, then the baby was always going to come,” sort of thing. Now, obviously, what's the point in doing them if the baby is going to come and it does nothing but disturb? I mean, my complete mindset changed and flipped. But yeah, I went into straight labor. I was so excited and so proud of myself. I'm in labor this time. I never knew if my body was broken after all of the fearmongering and talk. I was just so proud of myself. It was exciting. I had adrenaline pumping through me. I was shaking with fear and excitement. I was going to wait the whole day to go in. I was going to essentially go to hospital when my baby's head was coming out. As soon as I went into labor, I was like, “Yeah. I think I should go to the hospital.” I was adamant the whole time I wasn't going in until I was ready to push and as soon as I was in labor, I was like, “Yep. Okay, it's time.” Meagan: Let's go. It's exciting. You're like, “Okay, let's go have this baby.” Ashley: Yeah, and it was fast and hard. When I go into labor, it's not any prelabor, it's just that this is on. I dilate pretty quickly. When I got to the hospital, I was 5 centimeters. They were really surprised at how I was doing because I was quite calm and quiet. They were like, “Oh.” I got eventually into the birthing suite. My doula came and set up the room really pretty. I went into the shower and had a midwife assigned to us. She just sat down and read my birth plan and was happy with everything. She wouldn't let me in the birthing pool of course because I was over 100 kilos even though they've got a hoist for bigger people if they need to. They're just not comfortable with bigger people in the birthing pool. I just did my thing and I said, “I don't any doctors to come in. I don't want anyone annoying me or harassing me.” And I just labored for a few hours until I felt like there were some waters or something I could smell and feel. The midwife said, “Do you want me to check you?” I said, “Yeah. Yeah, we'll see if the waters have gone.” She said, “Yeah, the waters have gone and yeah, this is a little fore bag so would you like me to break that?” I said, “Well, if you think so, okay.” At this point, my education had gone to the point of getting past the induction. If I had gotten into spontaneous labor and I saw a midwife because everything was raving about midwives, I'm going to be fine. This baby's going to come out of my vagina okay. I didn't know anything about birth really. I just knew what not to do. I'm probably not going to have an epidural, but I'm open to it. You shouldn't break the waters, but I don't really understand why. But I wasn't having my waters broken. I was just having a little bit of my waters broken. And then came the tsunami and it was my entire waters. It was all over the bed and it was all warm. I was like, “What is happening?” She had either–Meagan: So your bag never really did break until then. Ashley: No, yeah. Yeah. Yes. And there's some other information. She's like, “Oh, we'll put the screw on the baby's head.Meagan: The FSC, fetal scalp electrode? Ashley: We call it the clip. Meagan: A clip. Ashley: Yeah, some call it the screw. I call it the screw. It's a little clip and it barely hurts. That was one of my compromises from not having continuous monitoring. I said, “If I have that, then I can be mobile.” That was the compromise and negotiation. Then, I found myself locked to a machine by the way because it wasn't mobile at this point. Then as soon as I got off the bed, there was a decel, so I was back on the bed. I was in excruciating pain at this point. I come out of my nest in the shower where I was able to breathe through everything and I was standing upright. Now there was a bit of fear happening because there was a decel that she didn't recover from quickly enough, so then the obstetricians and everyone had to come in. They were kind of like, “Oh, C-section,” talking about it already. I said, “No. I don't want to talk about it. The baby's fine. Just let me do my thing.” “Okay, okay,” and then they hounded me to get a catheter in my arm even though I didn't want one. I said, “No, I don't want one.” It's really painful and I don't want it. She said, “Oh, come on. We'll just get one in.” I said, “Okay, fine. Just do it then. Just leave me alone.” So she put it in and I'm walking around with this thing coming out of my vagina, this thing in my hand and I'm out of the zone and really finding it hard to get back into how I was feeling. Meagan: Your space. Ashley: Yeah, my space. I must have been in there for an hour or two, maybe a bit longer. By this point, they've told me that I'm 10 centimeters on one side, 8 centimeters on the other and there were a couple more decels and maybe one more and they were saying things to me that I don't understand. They were like, “You've got an anterior lip. It's swollen. You're 10 centimeters on this side and 8 centimeters on that side. Your baby's asynclitic. Your baby's up high.” They're looking at me and I'm like, “I don't know.” Meagan: You don't know what any of that means. Ashley: I'm 10 centimeters. The baby is going to come out right any minute. I'm just like, “Is the baby's going to come out soon?” I was starting to feel some pushy pains as well, so my body was pushing a little bit too and then I think I went back into the shower and I called in my husband because he was a weak link and I knew he would do what I said. I was like, “I want an epidural.” And the epidural was there within 10 minutes. I knew that would happen. They wanted me to have an epidural on arrival because of my said. I went to the anesthesiologist appointment and they looked at my back and said, “No, you've got a fine back.” What they're worried about with bigger people is that there can be fat over the spine. I said, “Okay, well I've got a fine back,” which I thought would be fine because I never had any problems with the C-section. They said, “But we still recommend an epidural on arrival.” I was like, “Okay. Well, at least I understand why.” The thing is that I'm trying to get information from them so I can make informed choices, so if it's in my best interest, then I will say yes and I will do it. But if it's in the best interest of you to make your life easier, then I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to put myself or my baby at risk to make your life easier. I understood that an emergency C-section was a higher risk than a planned C-section. I understood that induction was a higher risk. I knew all of the before things and the choices. What I got stuck with is I didn't understand physiological birth. I hadn't done any research on that. So they were talking to me gobbledygook, all of these things were happening. I just never thought that this could happen. I never ever thought this would happen to me. My mom had me in 7 hours. What is happening? What are these things that are happening? Now I'm on the bed. I'm stuck on the bed because I've chosen to have an epidural and now I've negotiated because we have had a couple of decels. I've negotiated for myself what I think is a pretty sweet deal which I realize is actually a really bad deal of vaginal examinations every hour. The normal standard practice is about every 4 hours and I'm like, “Okay. How about if we just check every hour and see if there is any progress?” They're like, “Yeah, that sounds great.” Every hour, they come into me and they're saying, “No change. Baby's up high. No change. We recommend C-section. These are the risks if you wait.” They were talking to me about the risks that would happen in a Cesarean, not about the risks that would happen in a vaginal birth if I wait. So it was very biased. I was like, “Okay, so what happens if I wait to have a vaginal birth?” They were like, “Well, we just recommend a Cesarean.” I feel like I'm in a room stuck with the enemy. I said to my doula, “I don't trust them. I feel like they know what they're talking about, but I don't know any different either.” My doula was a student doula and it's not like I came in there with a midwife who is on my team. I'm looking at the midwife and I'm like, “Are you going to help me?” I'm realizing that she's team obstetrician. I mean, I've never met her before. She was just working there. I'm thinking, “This is not what was sold to me in the VBAC group if I see a midwife. Midwives are amazing, blah blah blah blah.” What I actually missed was that independent midwives that are not working in hospital have more free reign are the midwives that everyone's raving about. I'm thinking it's just random midwives, any midwives are awesome. And not every midwife's awesome because you've got different personalities. You've got different experiences. You've got different passions and every person is different just like you can find an amazing obstetrician. You can find an amazing personal trainer, but they're not going to suit everybody or everyone's needs. And they have a bias against different people based on color, based on gender, based on size, based on the way that you look. If they can identify with you, they are going to be more attached to the story and fight and advocate a bit more. If they're not really into you, they're going to be like, “Oh well. I'm not going to lose my job over this,” sort of thing. I've learned all of these things since. Eventually, after about 6 hours, I had another decel. I think I had about 3 in total. It wasn't a huge amount. Meagan: Yeah, and how low were they? Do you remember? Ashley: I don't remember. The problem was that she wasn't coming back as quickly as they would have liked. Meagan: Prolonged. Ashley: Yeah, it was prolonged. I also didn't know at the time that the epidural also slowed down my contractions too. I only know this from getting the hospital notes which is quite common with epidurals as well. Eventually, I just said, “Okay, fine. I'm fine. I'll go.” After the last one, it felt like my baby was at risk. If someone is coming to you every hour saying, “This is the risk. We recommend that,” eventually, you just give up. I think I had been in labor for a total of 12 hours at that point. The first labor I had ever had and off I went. As I was going out, the midwife said to me, “It's okay. I had a home birth planned, but I ended up in a Cesarean. You'll be okay.” I was like, “See? You never would have been on my team because you hadn't even had a vaginal birth yourself.” I looked at her and I was like, “That was the worst thing you could have ever said to me at that point.” I was like, “Just because you had one and you're okay with it doesn't mean that I'm okay with it.” It was the worst thing. She obviously thought it was really supportive, but I felt so betrayed. So off I went and I had my surgery. Everything started to go downhill. My husband got rushed out of the surgery with my baby and you could just feel that it was intense. I said to my husband, “I love you. Look after the baby. I think I'm either going to lose my uterus or I'm going to die.” Meagan: Were you hemorrhaging? Ashley: Basically, the story that they tell me, I'm not sure if I believe it, but even if it is true, it is what it is at the end of the day. One of the risks that they were worried about is when a baby descends too much, there's a– you know this yourself– there's always a risk of a special scar happening because there's more risk of a tear or them having to cut more. So that's what they were informing me about the whole time. They knew about the risk and they were trying to stop– Meagan: But they kept saying that baby was high, right? Ashley: They told me that baby was high. They said that when the baby came out, she flung her arm up and ripped it down to my cervix. Meagan: Oh, okay. Ashley: Now, how does that happen when a baby is up high? If she's up high, how is she ripping down to my cervix? Now I think about that. How does that happen? Because my cervix was fully dilated. Meagan: Yeah, except on that one side. Did it ever finish? That swelling, that edema, did it go down? Ashley: Not that I know of. What they told me was nothing had changed positioning in that. Then when I looked at the notes when I got the notes, he laid out, “I saw that the positioning had changed.” She had come down a station, but they never communicated that to me. I have a feeling that she was probably down a bit further than they had put because, on the paperwork, they also said I was only 7 centimeters. There was no mention of an anterior lip, so they fudged the papers a little bit and weren't honest. I mean, if you're going to make a few little changes, then obviously, there's a reason for that. It obviously looks better on paper. Meagan: That's what happens all of the time. The patient will hear one thing, then on the op reports, it's a little different. So we always encourage you to get your op reports. It's sometimes hard to read but get your op reports. Ashley: It is hard to read. You know, they put it on the board too here in Australia what you are and at what time, so the information is there for me to look at the whole time while I'm in labor, so it's not that one person just said it, it's literally on the board for you to see. I was quite upset when I saw some of the notes. I went through the notes. I've been through them multiple times now and I was just trying to learn. I was Googling, “What does this mean and what does that mean?” because I don't know the medical jargon. I'm learning all of the things and I'm looking at Spinning Babies. I'm looking at everything and trying to learn after the fact, but essentially what had happened was apparently, she had flung around there, tore my uterus down to the cervix and then they needed to call in a specialized team to come in and resolve that problem that they had created. The surgery went on for a number of hours and it was a very challenging surgery. I wanted to crawl out of my body essentially because I had been laying there for so long. It was just a horrible experience. I was reunited with my baby. She was born at 6:30. I was reunited with them at about 12:00 at night, so I had been in labor from 4:00 in the morning and then I was breastfeeding her because my husband advocated for her to be breastfed. So that meant that she had her sugars checked. They were fine, so they were happy for her to wait for me. I was really, really glad that my husband advocated for me. I was so tired when I got out of surgery and I was back in this hot room. I was sweating profusely. There was no aircon. Some of the rooms, even though it was new, didn't have aircon. I ended up in a room with no aircon and it was so hot. I had to have a midwife stay with me and do observations every 15 minutes to check me. I didn't end up in the ICU, but I lost 3.1 liters of blood. I had blood transfusions in the surgery, all of the stuff in the surgery to keep me awake, and all of that. I really wanted to go under, but they wouldn't put me under because I had been eating. It wasn't a great experience and I came out very traumatized from that experience. I ended up having PTSD with flashbacks. I was crying for months. I felt broken. They told me to never have a vaginal birth again, and that I could have two more babies so that was amazing. I was like, “Well, you must have done a good job if you think I could have two more,” but they must be born Cesarean. I was like, “Okay, no problems.” I was so grateful to be alive after that experience. I was trying to make sense of what had happened. The next few years, that was my mission to try to make sense because I've gone from a space of you're not allowed to have a vaginal birth to what happened, trying to understand what happened, and then planning our future because we wanted four children total. So I almost never had any more children. For 6-12 months, I was done. I was never going to go through that again. I was a broken person. I was really struggling, but I trained as a postpartum doula and I started to want to help women in breastfeeding and the things that I knew that I could support because I ended up breastfeeding that baby for 12 months and I felt like a success at that regard. I learned a lot about breastfeeding. I wanted to share my voice and help women, but I wasn't well enough to help women in the birth space because I felt like a failure. I was trying to learn and I wanted to be in a space where I felt safe. This was trauma and challenges were happening and this was me being able to help people and make a positive out of a negative essentially. And then I found you guys. I found your podcast and I was like, “This is amazing,” because you were the first place that was promoting VBAC after two Cesareans. Back then, nobody was having VBAC after two Cesareans let alone multiple now that we see happening. I think a lot of it has to do with your podcast because when you hear women's stories and you hear the statistics and you can actually hear other women doing it, that was the start of me getting hope and realizing that there was another way. Meagan: Oh, that just gave me the chills. Ashley: Thank you so much for your podcast. Meagan: I have a sweater on right now, but literally it just went up my arm. Ashley: Awesome. It is really nice to know that if I didn't come across your podcast, I probably wouldn't have taken that next step, so it is life-changing to hear other women's stories and have that resource. The fact that you guys had the stats and everything, I was very much in the stats trying to move through special scars. I eventually had gone onto Special Scars, Special Hope. Meagan: Such a good group. Ashley: Yeah, so amazing and started to connect with other women who were having worse scars than me. They were birthing on classical scars. I was like, holy moly. I think it was ACOG or maybe RANZ of New Zealand and Australia. They said it was okay to labor on a scar like mine because I had a vertical scar down to my cervix. That's the low-risk special scar. I was like, “If it's good enough for them, it's good enough for me.” Look at these people saying that. All of the obstetricians that I had spoken to because I had a meeting with an obstetrician. I had met with so many midwives who knew about the system. They said to me, “Look. They are going to be petrified of you coming to the system.” It was really good to get that feedback and from my own experience, they wouldn't allow me to have a VBAC let alone a VBAC after two Cesareans with a special scar and high BMI. I started to really try to uncover, so I met with an obstetrician from that hospital and she basically said to me, “Look, you're a square peg trying to fit in a round hole or a round peg in a square hole.” I looked at her. I didn't understand that. I had never that and I have never been referred to as that kind of person. I quite like doing what normal people do. I was looking at her. I'm like, “What are you talking about?” She just said to me, “Basically, I ended up with this surgery because the surgery who was working had decided that because of my weight, that that was all that I was capable of or that was the path that I was going through.” That was really the first time that I've felt like my weight has actually held me back or I've been discriminated against. When I look back at the fact of how I was treated and the conversations I was having, it was obvious that it was happening the whole way through, I just was so naive to it that it was happening in my face and I didn't even realize it because the thing is that I understand that being of high weight can put you at risk for all of these things. I'm looking at it from their point of view, but I'm not actually sometimes looking at it from Ashley's point of view. I understand their concern and I understood all of the medical stuff because I had listened to them. I had asked questions. I had read their policies for obese people. I understood that it was discrimination. I didn't understand it at the time. I didn't understand that they probably weren't seeing me as a human as maybe they would have if I was a skinny version of myself. We probably would have had a different conversation. They probably would have been cheering me on and holding my hand and saying, “You're an amazing VBAC candidate. We support you. We probably still want to do all of these things to you, but we're not going to kick you out of hospital.” That's the difference when I hear women's stories. Oh, she's allowed to get in the water bath and she's allowed to have a beautiful birth. She doesn't have to bend over backward and do a cartwheel and it's because she looks a certain way or she was really lucky because she got an obstetrician that was amazing. There are all of these things that have to line up. That's what has propelled me on my journey to find home birth as an option. Meagan: Home birth, home birth. So you talked about stats. You were on this mission of stats, so you went out and you found the stats about VBAC after multiple Cesareans, two Cesareans, special scars, found some stuff, said, “Okay, this seems acceptable,” and then you started a home birth. Based off of your own research, for you, you felt completely comfortable starting this journey. Ashley: No, I didn't. Meagan: Okay. Ashley: I didn't. I mean, I had to work through the fears with the stats and I was comfortable with home birth and the idea of home birth. I understood that home birth was as safe as birthing in a hospital and I understood that if I was birthing with a midwife I would have a medical person with me. Now, the next challenge that came for me was that I couldn't find a home birth midwife who would support me. I feel like I leveled up. I was leveling up the whole time. It was like, now you've got a VBA2C. Now you've got a special scar. Let's work through this. What do I feel comfortable with? What am I willing to take on? Okay, okay. That's doable. That's doable. I can work through that. What's the next thing? Oh yeah, the next thing is this. Okay, what am I going to do with that? A home birth. Okay, a home birth feels like a safe option. I can do this. I can do that. I can do that. Okay, that's going to be the best thing for me. I'm not going to go back to hospital. Meagan: I love that you said that. I can do this. I'm comfortable with this. You kind of have to go through that with anything. In life in general, but especially with this birth, you went through it and you were like, “Okay, yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Okay. Now, here I am.” Ashley: Yeah and I was seeing a psychologist at the time for all of the things to help me lose weight actually. My GP, I wanted to lose weight. I've been overweight my whole life. I wanted to lose weight. I went to a nutritionist and she was like, “You know everything. I think it's emotional.” I've got childhood stuff going on. I worked with him and I said, “The way that I feel about the hospital system, is this right?” He's normalizing my experience for me and saying, “You're perfectly normal.” I'm trying to say, “Am I having a trauma response here? I don't want to go into a home birth because I'm having a trauma response,” because the obstetrician said to me, one of them, she's like– she wasn't the best obstetrician for the debrief. She said to me, “You've got a risk of special scar, a 7% rupture rate.” I said, “That's a little bit different from what I found in Special Scars, Special Hope where they are looking at women.” I said, “Have you got any statistics?” She's like, “No.” I'm like, “So how can I trust that what you're saying is correct then?”Meagan: Well then, where'd you get 7%?Ashley: Exactly. She's like, “Look, if you find any doctor who's willing to support you, then they're not the doctor for you. I'm telling you what is the safest thing for you.” I was challenging her because at this point, I'm angry. I'm so done. I'm so done. I've just been through hell because of you people and I want to get information. I don't want to hear your judgments. She said to me, “If you find a doctor, then basically they're not right. They're doing the wrong thing.” I said, “So you're the best doctor in the whole world? You know everything right? You're the best and you know the best then? So if I find another doctor who says yes then they're wrong and you're right, that's what you're saying?” She was just looking at me. She was like, “I just feel like what you're going to do is you're going to keep looking until you're going to find someone and then you're going to put yourself at risk.”I'm like, “That is exactly what I'm going to do.” Meagan: You're like, “Well, I'm glad you feel that way.” Ashley: I should have sent her a postcard after my free birth and said, “I freebirthed. Thank you for driving me to this.” It is amazing the conversations you have when you really do have conversations. You can see where they're coming from and how very different their views are. Some of the fears and worries that they have are not about you and your baby. They are about themselves and their career, but the information I didn't know about her was that she was actually the head of obstetrics and she just lost her title and her job. She'd been bumped down. The reason why I went to her was because she supported breech birth in hospital and she was very vaginal friendly. She did support me. She was the consultant I saw on the paperwork that supported me to have a vaginal birth, but in the timeframe of me organizing to meet up with her, the information that I didn't know that I found out later was that she lost her job because she had supported somebody to have a breech and there was a poor outcome that the parents accepted, but somebody else had basically complained about. The only thing is that breech is so risky they say even though it's not. She's one of the radical obstetricians so she had been punished and so she was coming from a space of where she was. It's really important to know that information. You never know where they are in their career or how they are feeling, so she might have been really bitter at the time and negative and feeling like there was doom and gloom in the world. It was really shameful when I was speaking to my doula friends and they were like, “Oh really? She was so amazing.” I'm like, “Yeah, well maybe she is amazing but not for people like me. Maybe she supports this person because they've got a thin body and because of me, she's like, ‘No. I wouldn't touch you with a 10-foot pole,'” because it's too risky for her and for her job also. They are up against it as well in the system and that's something I have learned. My next mission was that I needed to find a midwife who was going to bat for me, not somebody who was going to be worried about losing their career because they come after the midwives too that are home birthing. So I had gone to the free birth podcast as well and I was listening to their stories. I was like, “They're a bit out there for me. I'm not brave enough to do that. That's a bit radical.” Eventually, my husband was the one that talked me into a free birth when we couldn't have a midwife to support me. It

The stretch between Thanksgiving and Christmas is a special one in our house, as we make it a priority to slow things down and focus on time with our family. Aside from all the gifts to be bought, the stockings to be hung, and the lights to be wrestled with, we make it a point to sit and enjoy our favorite holiday films. This list has been truncated over the years as not everything made for the holidays requires a yearly re-visit (see the Hallmark Channel), but the ones that have stuck around deserve their place. Is our list for everyone? Probably not. Do we care? Definitely not. We just figured everyone else has words on the matter, so why not us? If it helps, we're consistently on the big man's nice list, so our choices are not to be taken lightly. Either way, time to light that fireplace, spike the eggnog, and embrace our own holiday classics. Shop Around the Corner (1940) RJ: Looking back, I cannot believe the amount of convincing my wife needed to do before I would watch this film. My hesitancy was based in the fact the film was in black and white, and also a romantic comedy. Thankfully, I found my spot on the couch and enjoyed the undeniable likeability of Jimmy Stewart, and his chemistry with co-star Margaret Sullivan. Even the story was deeper than two people looking for love, but rather a complex look at the interpersonal relationships of co-workers. This is a great film to watch with the fireplace on, a bottle of wine, and the person you love next to you. Ashley: I find something so comforting about Jimmy Stewart's voice, so it's no wonder this is the first of two Jimmy entries on this list. Listen in to find out why I think you'll love this one as much as I do. Arthur Christmas (2011) RJ: This film was a wonderful surprise, as the first time we watched it was simply because we had watched everything else in our holiday rotation. I was absolutely floored by the animation style and the stellar voice-cast. The story is absolutely charming as well, plenty to keep parents and children alike entertained. The ending alone is enough bring out the kid in all of us. Ashley: I love Arthur Christmas. From the voice cast to the heartwarming script, this holiday film about Santa's second son is a must-watch every Christmas. The Holiday (2006) RJ: My mother and I went to see this in late December 2006. I was home from college and she was my usual movie date as my dad typically picked films as the ideal place for a nap. Now, neither of us are fans of Cameron Diaz, nothing personal, perhaps it's genetic, but it didn't change are outlook on how much we enjoyed this film. Years later, and it's now one I can share with my wife. My love for it really lies with the pairing of Kate Winslet and Jack Black, but I think Jude Law does a promising job of balancing out my outlook on Diaz. Another one to sit down, laugh, and split a bottle a wine with the one you love. Ashley: This film was a grower for me. I don't remember loving it in 2006 or feeling compelled to watch it yearly in the early 2010's. Now, this film occupies a nostalgic piece of my heart. Either that, or I'm vicariously living through Cameron Diaz as she spends her winter holiday snowed in at a cozy English cottage. There's so much to love about this low-stakes Christmas romantic comedy, earning it a coveted spot on my yearly re-watch list. Muppet Christmas Carol (1992) RJ: There are so many reasons I love this film, and I will overlook the biggest one, as it was the one playing the same day our son was born, but let me give you the other two. First, Michael Caine is a phenomenal scrooge, who plays the whole thing as a serious actor, even when he's speaking to someone who can only say “Meep Meep Meep.” That is the true tale of talent. Secondly, Steve Whitmere is my Kermit and his role of Rizzo the rat is irreplaceable. I accept no substitute. This is the definitive version of The Christmas Carol. Ashley: I'll echo RJ's earlier statements; this is the best version of The Christmas Carol. From the music to the casting of Sir Michael Caine, everything about this movie makes it feel like Christmas to me. Also, this has one of the few cinematic outings of my favorite Muppet, Bean Bunny. It's A Wonderful Life (1946) RJ: Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed. I am lucky to have a wife like Mary Bailey because everyone needs someone who is there to love and support you through everything life has to throw at you. George should have realized from the beginning, that the best thing to ever happen to him was finding her, but then that would be a much shorter film. Either way, this is the definitive film to watch to get into the holiday spirit.   Ashley: It's a Wonderful Life is not just my favorite Christmas movie, it's one of my favorite films ever made. I've watched this Frank Capra classic every year for as long as I can remember. It just feels entwined with the holidays for me and with the person I've become.

HERE'S A SNEAK PEEK OF THE GOODNESS…“Am I angry about what’s happening in this moment, or am I angry about what might happen in the future?” - Jenna“The more I resist the anger, the rage, and the sadness, the more they compound, so I just have to let myself feel them.” - Ashley“It takes more energy to resist our feelings than to allow them and be with them.” - Ashley“You can never outrun the waves of emotion. You can never make it to shore quicker than the waves will catch up with you.” - JennaWHAT YOU'LL LEARN ABOUT IN THIS EPISODE…Why we’re going back to basicsStrategies for riding the rollercoaster and waves of emotionsThe power of mindful media consumption right nowWhy now is the time to check in on our peopleHow we can increase awareness around our privilege now and going forwardLINKSShare the Eff Perfect love with a fellow perfectionist, procrastinator, or people pleaser!And because we’re in this together, be sure to take the Eff Perfect Pledge.And follow us on Instagram @effperfect!Shop the lookbook

Today I'm thrilled and super excited to be interviewing the amazing Alena Hennessy. Alena has released one of the most beautiful books I have read in a long time, the healing guide to flower essences.     Ashley: So flower essences are only part of your journey. You really combine the beauty and I think soft, gentle energy that flower essences share with us along with some creative expression and art. I'm wondering if you can tell everyone a little bit about your journey and how you got here today? Alena: Sure. Well, I have been an artist and been drawing and painting for as long as I can remember. I was also a tomboy nature girl. I grew up in Florida and so I spent all the time outside in the parks and just riding bikes. So I fell in love with nature at an early age and just have always been drawn to painting botanicals and animals and other things. I was a commercial artist for a long time and doing well with that. Selling to galleries and catalogs and whatnot. I came to a point in my journey where I wanted my art and my purpose in life to have more meaning. To be more connected to the mystery. So I studied at the school here in Asheville about 12 years ago, and that is when I learned about herbalism and flower essences and energy healing. From here I became a far essence practitioner. Then a few years ago, my mom and I collaborated and made this Oracle deck called mysteries of love Oracle about animal totems and flower essences. And the publisher found me and was like, do you want to do another book? And I already had three books out on painting. At first, I felt too busy to do it, but then she approached me again in the spring. I was like, sure, I will do it. And so that is how this came about. Ashley: I love that. And we were just chatting before we started our interview and you actually did the amazing piece of artwork that is behind you right now. I love that you can kind of see a lot of those influences and elements coming through in your artwork. It is so expressive and it is really enjoyable. In regards to the artwork in the book, you said it was a collaborative effort with someone quite special. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Alena: Sure. So my mom has been a fine artist since she was in university. When she was raising three kids, she kind of put that to the side. Now, she's pretty much in retirement, so she has more time to draw and paint. She moved up to Asheville a few years ago and we collaborated on a few projects, first being the Oracle deck and then this book. My mom painted and I did everything else -- the writing, the design behind the subject matter. And some of those cute, whimsical illustrations. And she did the main, more classical painted illustrations of all the flowers. So it was another collaboration. Ashley: It's such a beautiful project and it is so exciting to see it come to life. So let us dive into your book a little bit, obviously, it is all about flower essences. This is something that I have been working with for just about a year now. And my background is actually in botany and horticulture, even though I am a crystal person now. So I love plants and flowers. The essence was something that really spoke to me. And I think they did the same for you with your journey into urbanism and flower essences and becoming a practitioner. Can you give a brief introduction and understanding of what flower essences are and why we might want to work with them? Disclosure: The link here is an affiliate link, meaning I may earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. Yay! Alena: Sure. They are amazing. I find that deep healing happens in the subtle realms and the energetic realms and with our emotions and that is what flower essences are about. So they are very gentle. There are not any side-effects you might experience because it is on an energetic, emotional, spiritual level. So it is homoeopathic. Sort of.

What's the best way to develop a content strategy that reflects the reality of today's buyer journey? This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Ashley Faus, who is the Content Strategy Lead for Software Teams at Atlassian, shares why she thinks a playground provides a better analogy than a funnel for marketers looking to develop their content strategy, and how to use the concept of a content playground to provide your customers and prospects with a better buying experience. Highlights from my conversation with Ashley include: Many marketers use the concepts of the linear funnel and the looping decision journey to develop their content strategies, but Ashley says that those don't reflect the reality of how people buy. Much like in a playground, where there isn't a singular goal (get to the top of the jungle gym!), your prospects aren't always ready to buy and may have other interests. For this reason, a playground offers a better analogy. Rather than forcing prospects to follow a specific journey that we as marketers have determined is ideal, Ashley recommends focusing on creating strong content depth that allows your prospects to follow their own journey, wherever it takes them. For smaller teams that are just getting started, Ashley recommends identifying your "hedgehog principle" - that one thing you do better than everyone else - and creating a very in-depth piece of content on that. Then, you can use that content to repurpose into a variety of assets that can be used on social media, for your trade shows, in the sales process, etc. The key is to find a topic that is substantive enough to support the development of this amount of content.  In terms of how this content gets presented on your website, Ashley recommends ungating it, and then being very explicit with your CTAs so that your website visitors know exactly what they will get if they click a button.  She also suggests adding a related content module on your site to encourage visitors to browse through your content. The best way to begin measuring the impact of your strategy is to use simple tools like Google Analytics in combination with UTMs. As you grow, you can use more sophisticated marketing automation software like HubSpot or Marketo. Resources from this episode: Visit the Atlassian website Connect with Ashley on LinkedIn Follow Ashley on Twitter Check out Atlassian's Team Playbook and Agile Microsite Listen to the podcast to learn why envisioning your buyer's journey -- and their interactions with your content -- as a playground is a more effective way to approach the development of a content strategy. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth. And this week my guest is Ashley FOSS, who is the content strategy lead for software teams at Atlassian. Welcome Ashley. Ashley Faus (Guest): Nice to be here. Thanks so much for having me. I'm so happy to have you here. Ashley and Kathleen recording this episode. Kathleen: And, and for those who are listening, you can't see it. But Ashley has an awesome virtual Zoom background of the golden gate bridge. That's one of my favorite things about the pandemic is that it is revealing people's personalities through the Zoom backgrounds that they choose.  Ashley: It's been interesting. I actually think didn't have the latest version of Zoom. I got scared that if I upgraded and something went wrong, I wouldn't have access to it. So for a long time I was the lame person that didn't have a background and it was just my kitchen the whole time. So yes, I finally upgraded. Tell any of the listeners that are hesitant, you can upgrade. And it's not going to ruin your computer. And you, too, can have a nice virtual backgrounds. Kathleen: Oh yeah. For our all hands meetings at my office. We've been having so much fun with just seeing the backgrounds that people come to these meetings with. It's, it's awesome. It reveals so much about their personalities. About Ashley and Atlassian Kathleen: But so we have so much to talk about. And the first thing I want to talk about is really have you explain to my listeners what Atlassian is, and then also your background and what led you to your current role as Content Strategy Lead. Ashley: Sure. So Atlassian is a collaboration software maker. A lot of people are very familiar with JIRA, Confluence, Trello, Bitbucket, Status Page. We have a number of different products that people use all the time. JIRA especially is a staple for software teams. So I actually started at Atlassian two and a half years ago and I moved among a couple of different teams. My background is primarily marketing, but I actually started on the corporate communications team, moved over to editorial, doing a mix of content strategy, social media, thought leadership for the corporate side, and then just recently made the move over onto software teams. One thing that's kind of interesting and great is having that diverse background has given me that ability to move across different areas and go where my skills can be most useful. So I'm excited to dive in. I'm fairly new to the role, so it's been an interesting transition to try to onboard from home and then also start to get up to speed both from a content standpoint and a strategy standpoint, and then also from a tactical standpoint of where are all the different boards, where's the JIRA tickets? Like what's the process, what are the meetings? So, um, it's been fun. It's been fun. Kathleen: I will definitely say as far as Atlassian is concerned, I've been a user of so many of the company's products. I've used Confluence and JIRA. I'm currently using Trello. I know our dev team uses a number of products as well. It's a great company and a great suite of products, especially for anybody who's practicing agile, which I have done a few times. And so that was another reason I was excited to talk to you. But one of the things I think is really interesting is, you know, you mentioned you're relatively new in the role and we were just talking before we came on and you were explaining how your fiscal year, it's going to change over pretty soon. And so not only are you relatively new in the role, but you're being thrust into the situation of having to plan and strategize for a whole new year in the middle of the pandemic, no less all of these things happening at once. Your current focus is on content and I was really fascinated by how you think about content and content strategy planning and this concept of the content playground. So could you talk a little bit about that and what do you mean when you say a content playground?  What is a content playground? Ashley: I started thinking about it because I needed a new metaphor. Everybody that I talked to was talking about primarily the linear funnel. And you know, you've got your three phases with your editorial calendar and you say, "I need three content, three pieces of content per phase. I'm going to do one per month. Cool. Now I have nine months of content strategy, if my math works out". Most of your listeners are probably sitting there going, "That's not how you do content strategy. You can't just say one piece of content per phase and then call it". Kathleen: Wouldn't it be nice if you could though?  Ashley: You bought a calendar, write three articles and you're done. Then, you know, I know a lot of people have moved on to the looping decision journey where you basically add a fourth phase in there. And you're kind of almost recycling these people, but now there's a cross sell or upsell, but somehow you're dumping them back into that awareness phase from the linear funnel. If you look at the Google results for both the linear funnel and the looping decision funnel, it's kind of terrifying. It's very confusing. It basically just shows that we all agree that humans don't work this way. Nobody just goes politely down our little funnel. The 10-3-1 conversion was kind of the standard for a long time. You get 10 people in awareness. A certain amount of drops. So you get three into consideration to be able to get one to that kind of purchase decision. I was really wrestling with this because I was like, how do you create content in a way that allows people to do what they actually do, which is enter and exit and go sideways and all of that? So I had originally come up with this idea of a jungle gym. But there's two problems with that -- mainly that there's only one objective. It's either to get to the top or, if you're my three year old nephew, it's to go across without touching the lava below that. It's still me as a marketer forcing you into what I want you to do and it's taking all these touch points and saying, what's the fewest number of touch points that I can use to get you to a purchase? And yes, ultimately we need to sell products. Ultimately we have to make money as businesses, but it feels bad to everybody to just constantly be like, are you just trying to sell me something? Like what's the catch? I don't really trust you because I know you're trying to sell me. So if you look at an actual playground though, what's the point of the playground? Is the person who's sitting on the bench just enjoying the sunshine? Are they enjoying the playground the wrong way? No, actually perfectly acceptable. Sit on the bench. Again, you know, thinking about what the right way is to play on the playground for the adults and the playground designers, going down the slide is the right way. Three year old nephew, every time wants to go up the slide. If you translate that to content strategy, I recently had an example of this where in the traditional funnel, pricing is considered a very bottom of funnel action. If I'm asking you about price, man, I'm ready to buy. Well, in my case, I needed to go ask for budget before I could even do the RFP and I had no idea what that budget should be for. It was going to be a SaaS product. So understanding, you know, the subscription, SLA, the licensing tiers, all of that. And so I started reaching out to some vendors in the space asking them for just ballpark pricing so I could go get budget. And so many of them were like, well, allow me to send you a white paper about why this matters a lot and you know, Oh, you need to do a demo. And I'm like, Nope, I don't want to waste my time going through your traditional funnel when I don't even know if I have a budget yet. Kathleen: I have to just interject there and say amen because this has been a frustration of mine for so long. I had this recently with a marketing software product. It was exactly what you're talking about. It was last November and I was working on my budget and I knew that I was not going to purchase this product until halfway through 2020. And that was even before all this craziness with the pandemic hit. But I needed a placeholder number for it in my budget. So there's no chance I was going to engage in, like multi meetings and demos and hours long calls with people to pitch me what I know I'm not ready to buy yet. I just needed a price. There's nothing more frustrating than companies that make it that hard and it wasn't a one time thing. I just found myself doing this yesterday. Somebody started talking about email signature software and they mentioned the name of a new company, and I literally Googled the company name and pricing because I was like, I don't even want to waste my time looking at everything else and getting excited about it if I can't afford it. Ashley: Yeah, well, and it's interesting too because once I got the budget approved, I was already completely sold that this problem needed to be solved. I just needed to get management on board that yes, we are committed to solving this problem. So then I actually got into the sales process and you know, I started kind of at the top of that and I just said, look, I'm bought in, draw me all the way down to the bottom of the funnel and I want you to just pitch me. Kathleen: Yeah.  Ashley: It blew the sales people's minds. And they're like, well, let me just go through the deck. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. I don't know how many slides you have, but I'm telling you I'm bought in, I agree with you. This has impact. It solves a problem that I have. I have money, here's what my budget is. I'm BANT qualified. I need you to drop me all the way in and I need you to sell me. A majority of them just froze because they didn't know how to go through there. They only know how to do this step by step. And that's where I think the content playground comes in. Obviously there's a sales component to this too. When you do get people who just want to jump right in, I wouldn't send them to play on the swings. That's what we're doing right now. We're spending all our time on the swings. Let's just do it. Quit trying to force them to go down the slide. It's so funny because people have this idea that there's a specific way that you're supposed to build the relationship and you're supposed to, you know, okay, let's get you through the marketing funnel and get you through MQL and then SQL and then a sale. And it doesn't always work that way. Sometimes you meet somebody and they come at you and they're like, no, I'm literally ready to sign on the dotted line, whether it's you or one of your competitors. So why should it be you? Kathleen: Yeah. And not only is that an issue, but it's like I'm going to sign and it's going to be fast. So if you can't meet my fast timeline, just get out of my way. Exactly. That's so interesting. I love that concept. How to use the concept of a content playground to develop your content strategy Kathleen: So give me an example of, conceptually, how does that play out in terms of developing and executing your strategy? Ashley: I've done this at a number of different companies and then we also, you know, do this similar type of thing, whether you see whether you recognize it and call it a content playground or not. When you start to recognize companies that do it because you go through and there's a nice experience to say, Oh, I've kind of landed in this problem space or solution space and now I have the ability to go explore. So we've done that quite a bit in it last year and moving into this content strategy role on software teams, I'm getting exposed to some great ways that they've done it. So for example, we have this agile microsite and then we paired that last year with this agile coach series. This is all work that has been done that I'm excited to come in and kind of optimize and see how can we replicate this across other content types. And it basically says, you know, yes, JIRA helps you run in an agile way, but if you don't have the right practices set up and you don't have that mindset in those processes, a tool is not the thing that's going to fix it for you. And so sure we can sell you JIRA, but if we don't show you the right way to set up the workflows, if we don't help you have acceptable standups, if we don't help you improve your retros, having these things on a board is not going to solve, you know, your agility problems. And so putting that together, if you look at it from a content depth standpoint, instead of organizing around specific phases of the funnel, organizing it around content depth. So from a conceptual standpoint, what the heck is agile? Why does it matter? What kinds of success, you know, have people seen with it, what are the problems from a strategy standpoint, what are the practices and rituals? So that's where you get into some of the standups. That's where you get into some of the retros. And then from a tactic standpoint, how do you actually do those things? And so we have a number of things from the agile coach series, from the agile microsite and also our team playbook, which talks about things like my user manual. So how do you work together as a team? Um, putting together project coasters for kickoffs. And then yes, there's some product demos in there. There's some guides in there, there's some tutorials, there's here workflows that you can set up to do that in JIRA or to do that in Trello. But it's really that full content experienced to say, I just need help figuring out how to run my standups or my retros. And then, cool that I can do that in JIRA as well. So I previously worked at Duarte, if you're familiar with Nancy Duarte's work. Um, she wrote Resonate, which was, you know, a big game changer for a lot of people. They do workshops, they do presentation design for tons of big names and Fortune 500 companies. So we did this in a number of ways. When we launched her slide decks book for example, we put that as a free, ungated version on SlideShare. And then we linked over to this kind of more traditional inbound strategy page where you've got a landing page with a form, you give away a free piece of content, show good faith that this is good quality, and then you've got a form fill out to download some templates that people could use that would then drop people into a drip campaign where we would showcase more templates, we would showcase some use cases that we had built and give them more content to ultimately lead them to say, "Hey, if you want to buy a workshop to learn how to do this at a pro level, here's how you can do that." Getting started with your content playground Kathleen: So if I love the whole concept here, and I love the notion of content depth because I do think that there are so many marketers that almost try to cover too much and they skim the surface on everything and it doesn't work. I think the thing that could be challenging about this is hearing that, like, where do you start and how do you, how do you get there? Because you can't snap your fingers and have a lot of depth in all these topics right away. And also, how do you know what those top level topics are? If you were teaching this to somebody, how would you walk them through that? Ashley: So there's a couple of ways that, uh, we've been able to do it at Atlassian. Obviously we're fortunate we have a large team and a ton of experts that have complimentary skills. So for example, we have done a ton of keyword research to understand both search intent and the specific wording of that. From a market standpoint, agile came in and changed the game, and it turns out that JIRA was actually a really good fit to run agile. So we already kind of were keeping a pulse on the market and we started to see that agile is becoming this very mainstream thing, that our tool and our technology is really useful in helping people run. So let's focus on agile. Okay, where do we focus? And that's where things like SEO and keyword research, that's where focus groups, that's where digging through the feedback that your customers are giving you and asking like, what are the top questions in terms of workflows? How do those map to things like running scrum teams or running Kanban boards? How does that now map to workflows and guides and onboarding tutorials that we would share with somebody who starts with your product or working with Trello products, for example? So I would say I'm doing a listening exercise and there's a number of tools. You could do it on social media as well, particularly for software devs, which is one of our core audiences. They hang out on Hacker News, they hang out on Reddit. And so go look there. That's, that's another core tenant I think as marketers is loving the whole human and not just who are you as a buyer? I only care about you as a buyer or user. How do I get you to engage in the product every day or buy more of the service? Okay, these people have lives. And so if you can figure out what do they love, what are they passionate about outside of the one thing you're trying to sell them, that also gives you an entire new space to explore for thinking about what topics could you engage in. And so, when you think about engineers, efficiency, optimization, clean and concise process is something that's very important to them. Well what are some of the frameworks or what are some of the topics that deal with optimization that could potentially lead you to lead you to something like Six Sigma or manufacturing for example, right? There's a lot of ways that you could think about it if you just know what do engineers generally like? And it's like, they really like efficiency. They like optimization, they like tight, elegant solutions and just jump off from there to see, okay, what are the specific topic areas that would coincide with your product offering? And with the things that they generally care about, what does that mean? Kathleen: And if you don't have an enormous team and you want to take this approach, how do you do it? Because I imagine you'd have a choice of like, okay, I've identified 10 areas that I want to go deep on, you know, and I could either take area number one and fully play it out and develop all the content. Or I could do one article for each of the 10 areas and then go back and do the second article. Like how would you tackle it? Ashley: Yeah. So one of the things that Nancy Duarte actually talks about a ton, from Jim Collins book Good to Great is this concept of the hedgehog principle. And that's if you can do one thing and be the best at it, just do that one thing. So instead of trying to spread yourself too thin across all of those 10 topics, I would be ruthless initially in what is the thing that we actually have the ability to talk about without having to spend a ton of time and energy going and finding that expertise? What's the thing that leads most to the product market fit, or the service market fit, whichever of those that you're selling? And then what's the thing that has depth? This is something that I see a lot, is people start throwing topics on the board and you're like, okay, but how many words can you actually say about that thing? And for the most part, people were like, "Whoa". And it's like you can't even say one sentence about it. How are you going to write a full article? And then that also gets into, it's not just one article, it's okay, how do we also turn that into a video? How do we turn that into an infographic? How do we turn that into a social media post? Because this thing has to live for a lot of time. Nobody has time to keep creating net new content all the time. And so if this piece can't be repurposed or broken apart, it probably doesn't have enough depth to chase. So I would say if you're very first, starting from scratch, to limit it to probably two, maybe three topics that are related to each other and that you know, have depth. And I would say especially if you're dealing with a small team, like you're at a start up and the founder is kind of the only person who could talk about this, I'm definitely limiting that to two topics that you know you have in house expertise and then doing a good job to capture that from a conceptual, strategic and tactical standpoint the first time. And then go with the repurposing strategy. So instead of saying, "Oh my gosh, we have to cover it, a thousand words or a 20 minute video every single time", think about it as, no, nobody wants to read that, nobody's going to scroll through all of that. So let them pick their journey of how deep they want to go. Repurposing your content Kathleen: So can you dig in a little bit more to that repurposing topic because I was interested to hear you discuss all the different ways that the content can manifest, because I think a lot of people might hear this and think it's a bunch of blogs, but it's, it's really not. Ashley: One of my favorite campaigns that was super successful, there was a startup that I worked at that got acquired by Oracle called Palerra. Palerra was a cloud access security broker, which, you know, doesn't matter as much to the majority of the audience if they're not in tech, but, basically they're kind of a complimentary security product to a lot of cloud offerings. We were primarily an enterprise solution. Technology is a really heavy topic. And so what we did, when I came in, there was this raw word doc of just random customer interviews, and problems that they had faced. And so for example, we all know on a personal level we should update our passwords regularly. A lot of companies have that installed where it's like 72 days time to change your password. So at an enterprise security level, there's a similar concept for your keys to your different cloud services. And so we had a scenario where there was a customer that hadn't rotated their keys in like two years. It blew our minds. So our product actually found that. So we actually were talking about cautionary tales and focusing specifically on AWS because that cloud offering is quite ubiquitous among our customers and these are a lot of common pitfalls that our products can help solve. So we called it a cautionary tale. We turned it into an ebook first that then became the basis for our booth graphics at AWS Reinvent. And then we had a booth giveaway. We put an Amazon Tap in a clear box and then we had a bowl of keys sitting next to it and they looked identical. And so you drew a key and if it unlocked the box, you won the Tap. And so that was able to lead us into, "Have you rotated your keys? How are you doing password management?" But not just those basic tactical issues, but also like how do you know there's even a working key in the bowl? How do you know that Kathleen is supposed to have the key and not Ashley? What happens to the keys after the show? So let's say Kathleen and Ashley both leave and the bowls just sitting there. Now what happens to the keys? Right? And our product can help with that. And from a security standpoint, those are a lot of blind spots that at the time people were missing. And then the nice thing about that being at a security conference, people were very skeptical that there were any working keys in the bowl. Right? There's no keys. Yeah. So every time someone won, we took a picture and then we put it on the company Twitter feed. And then if they had a Twitter handle, we tagged them and ask them to retweet. And so there were people, and I mean we had people, well, again, they're very methodical about this. They're like, okay, it looks like roughly once an hour people are winning. So the last time somebody won, they just won. Okay, well I'm going to come back and try again later. Kathleen: Like people play slots.  Ashley: Yeah. It's like slots. But that was a great way. And then we were also able to share that ebook on Twitter as well to say, "Hey, if you're curious why we're taking pictures of the food, you can read this ebook." And then we were able to send that as well with some deeper case studies to anybody that we had scanned at the booth. So it was a really nice integrated online, offline and social media experience. That's another one of my pet peeves is people who are just like, come to booth 123. I'm not at the conference so you're just going to spam me for three days. So making sure that you have content that tells a story to your social media audience, whether they're attending the conference or not. Kathleen: That's great. That's a really good point about the shows too. Because yeah, you do so much marketing. And if somebody is not going, it's just annoying. How to share your content on your website Kathleen: So if you've created all this content, what does that look like on the website from an experience standpoint? Are there content hubs? Is it a resource center? How do you organize this all for presentation to your audience? Ashley: I think it really depends on the audience. I think HubSpot, obviously from the hub and spoke model that they've done, is amazing so that you can kind of see, you can dive in deep per topic, you could dive in deep from an integrative marketing standpoint, you can dive in deep from a tech stack standpoint and obviously they have solutions for that. So the way that they've organized it is actually really great because it allows people to kind of slice and dice how they want. One of the things that we've done that I think is really great and it lasts and is, for example, on the work-life blog, which is like a corporate level, so deals with things like teamwork, practices, leadership, et cetera. We've got a related articles function. And so when you get to the bottom of the article, yes, there's a CTA. If you want to sign up for the newsletter, you want to um, go talk in the community. Or in some cases where we're doing product focused content, it's go to the product tour or something like that. But then at the bottom there's related content. And so we have a mix of collections, a mix of tags, and then those get fed into the related content. And so there's always a next step for people to take. I think that's the biggest thing, whether you organize it as a hub, whether you organize it as a resource center that's done by topic filtering or content tagging, that ability for somebody to always take the next step and to, to only force that next step to be a buying action if they're in a head space for buying action. So if you're on a product tour, the request a demo or the sign up for free, or the do an evaluation for seven days or 30 days, whatever it is, that makes perfect sense. But if you've just read an article about productivity, it's a really hard landing to talk about five tips to manage your time and then all of a sudden be dropped into, you know, by the way, you need to buy Trello. It's like, why would I do that? So making sure that there's always a next logical action that either takes them deeper toward a purchase or deeper tool, words and practices that will help them or allow them to say, I don't know how I landed here. How do I get back to the first thing that I clicked so that I can get back on the path where I think I should be? Kathleen: Yeah. How do you execute that? Because you just gave the example of somebody who's just poking around and then they're all of a sudden getting pushed to buy. You know, being that it's a playground and people can go in any number of directions, how do you craft those next steps so that they make sense? Ashley: I think the biggest thing is, there's obviously an ideal customer journey and that does include some post-sale engagement. That could be things like documentation. It could be a support community. But really, I mean even from like, um, practically accessibility, labeling your buttons with what it is you're doing. Are you downloading this? Are you reading this? Are you clicking to do an evaluation? Are you starting a trial for free? What is that? And then that way people are very clear whenever they get down there, they know what they're clicking on. I know I've had this experience a few times where it's like, see more. And I'm like, yes, I wish to do that. And it automatically takes me into this form where it's like put in a credit card. And I'm like, you didn't tell me that's what I was doing. That's not, I didn't agree to that. So having really clear navs and in the resource center, not having buy CTAs all over the resources. For example, Intercom does a great job with this. They're a messaging, communication growth platform. You can go over to their journal section or their resource center and it's all thought leadership. It's all very high level and they state at the top, "This is free content. It's educational, no sales." And so, you know, when you're that part of the website, you're not going to get sold to and there's a nice handy button at the top. It's like go back to home. And that's where, you know, you could either be directed down an education path or sales path and you can kind of choose. So I think just being really explicit. We're past the point of I'm going to trick you into sales. It might've been on LinkedIn. I saw a discussion that maybe you and somebody else were having about, "Oh, I got a thousand leads from this form. And the question is, are they qualified?" Jay Acunzo actually has a whole rant about this. Stop gating your best content and then pretending whoever fills out that form is a lead sales lead. That's not what they agreed to. And so don't try and trick your audience. If they want to buy, they'll let you know. If they want to be educated and they want to form a relationship with you, they'll do that. And so giving them a clear path to let them either do sales or build a relationship makes them feel empowered. It gives everybody good feelings and it doesn't clutter up your sales process with people that are junk, that are not qualified or that are not actually interested in buying. Kathleen: So true. I find it's counterintuitive because, I started a few years ago ungating as much content as I possibly could and just putting it on the page and then adding like a little field just for email saying, "Want to get the PDF? Put your email in." And that was it.  What was fascinating to me is that not only did conversion rates not go down, in many cases, they went up. It's really psychology if you think about it. There's so much crappy gated content out there and the problem with gating it, first of all, is people are very jaded and a lot of them will think, I'm not giving up my email only to find out that this is junk. And so then they don't convert at all. Whereas, if you give the content away and then give them the option of downloading, you're basically allowing them to try before they buy. You're proving that what you're giving them is really good and if they do think it's really good, they are going to convert because they're like, "Well, it's no skin off my back. This is great content. I don't mind giving up my email address for it." And so the people that wind up converting on the ungated content are more qualified because they've self qualified. The other thing I've found, it goes back to your thing about being explicit, is especially when you don't have things gated, like on the page before or in the marketing you're doing for it, just coming right out and saying, "No need to fill out a form to get it." Ashley: Yeah. Kathleen: You don't have to give us your email address. People are so naturally almost defensive or they're like, Oh, Nope, Nope, Nope. They're going to ask for something. And if you can just come out and say, I'm not going to ask you for anything, that goes a long way. Ashley: Well, and I think what's interesting in this, in this thought about building relationships and giving that content away, a great example, there's a company that I worked with, they were an agency for us. We were a startup. We were using, you know, a lot of agencies and freelancers and they host these dinners and it's basically, you know, just get five, six, seven people together, have dinner, nerd out about marketing topics. And yes, we all know full well some of us are current customers of this company. Some people are prospects of the company. But I don't have budget or need to work with them anymore. But every single time I meet somebody that says that they have the need that this company services, I refer them and I refer probably three or four clients to them. I would continue to do that and we have a great relationship. They still invite me to the dinners. I sent one of my colleagues to a dinner to basically make a connection to say this might be relevant for you to meet some people that we might want to put spokespeople on panels with in the future. And so that willingness to connect with each other. I'm loyal to that company even though I have no budget and no need to buy from them right now. But I'm referring, I'm still giving them revenue because again, it's, it's fine for, for me, when I meet somebody at a conference and they're like, how would you do this? I'm like, actually this is a great company. Would you like an intro? And so a buying action may not necessarily be the person who downloaded the content buys. It may be, I mean, again, I talk about Intercom. I love the content that IDEO puts out. Again, I have no need to buy their services at this point, but I tell everybody, go look at HubSpot's content or go look at Intercom's content. And so there's no way for them to measure that. I'm just another random name on their list that hasn't converted, but I'm a brand champion for them and they don't even know it, you know? Measuring the ROI of your content playground Kathleen: That's awesome. So speaking of measuring, you get this all set up. You deploy it. How do you track and measure whether it's working, how it's working, et cetera? Ashley: So I've done this in a number of different ways depending on the company and the strategy and the bandwidth and all of that kind of stuff. If you're just starting out in your tiny little team, and you don't have the ability to do, you know, Tableau or Databricks or kind of all of these fancy data pipelines, at minimum just start out with your Google tracking. Google has free stuff that you can put on. Use your UTM codes to understand if these things are getting tracked from a social media standpoint, what's the referrals, if you are using any pages with forms from any of the marketing automation providers. Again, I'm pretty partial to HubSpot just because I think they do amazing content. The platform is great. We've used Marketo in the past, and other companies. So any of those are great to really understand what are the trends. I think that's the biggest thing. Making sure that you're looking at a correct trend level. I've worked a lot on the social media side and people get freaked out per post. "Oh my gosh, we did 10 posts last week and this one did, you know, half a percent better than this one." And it's like, let's zoom out and look monthly. How are things trending? Let's do some testing to see if we post more. Does our engagement rate go down if we, um, the other big thing is optimizing the CTA is for what you want to happen. So it's going to be really impossible for you to get somebody to like, comment, retweet, follow, and click through all in the same posts. Like there's not enough words for that post. And so making sure that each CTA belongs where it should be. So if you're asking for a poll on Twitter or Facebook, that's the goal. Responses in feed is the goal versus explicitly asking someone to click through. Make that explicit and you need to make sure that you're putting in some sort of hook or benefit. I see this a lot with people who are just starting in social media, for example, that they just give the title of the article or they just say, read these five tips. Well, what are they? On the opposite extreme, they give it away and they say, here's the five tips. And then they laid them out. And I'm like, well, now why do I need to read the article? You already gave me the tips. Give me the first tip that you think is the most interesting and then say, click through to read the next four tips. Kathleen: Right? Ashley: So, from a measurement standpoint, being very clear on a per post basis about what your goals are, if you're looking at click through rate or engagement rates and what type of engagement. So that's kind of more from a social media standpoint. If you're doing YouTube, if the answer is subscribe to the channel, if the answer is watch the next video, if the answer is go visit the page, those are very different actions. And so making sure you're optimizing those. And then obviously looking at things like organic traffic is always great. Looking at whether you have emails or product tours. From an email standpoint, looking at the open rates and the click to open ratio. So a lot of people look at the CTR, but that's a little bit out of whack. If there's a thousand people that opened it, but you sent it to 5,000, it's not very fair to say what's the CTR on the 5,000? Use it on the thousand. In some cases we've gotten really granular to look at which pieces of content get the most clicks. And so that helps us to understand, it's great that you want to put 10 pieces of content in the newsletter, but if only the first five ever get clicked, you need to find something else to do because you're not amplifying those things. Kathleen: How do you get people down further? Ashley: Yeah, exactly. What kinds of results can you expect? Kathleen: So any examples of like, what kinds of results does taking this approach yield in terms of pipeline or engagement or revenue or any of the above? Ashley: Yeah. From a scale standpoint, it depends. It's not very fair to say like, Oh, you'll get a thousand leads. It's like, okay, well if your revenue goal is 10,000, that's a struggle. Or if you're a billion dollar company, a thousand leads doesn't do you any good, right? So, we've done content pairing for example, where we've done a mix of gated content and ungated content. When we did that at Duarte, the ungated piece has over 300,000 views. Now it's been up for a couple of years, but it's got over 300,000 views. We were getting roughly 10 to 15% download rates of people going and getting that content. And so that's something where you're still getting the benefit of the people looking at it for free and ungated, but then you're starting to see higher engagement, you know, 10, 15% on that. Whenever I've done newsletter sends that have been more thought leadership focused with very light touch sales, we've been able to see 20, 30% open rates, 15 to 25% CTOR rates. Again, because we're serving that content that they've requested, not trying to shoehorn in sales. Whenever we've done sales, as a piece of content, like, "Hey, get a trial" or "Use this code" or "Refer" or "Here's an eCourse and then we'll give you one module for free because you've signed up for this newsletter" or something like that, those do have a much higher conversion rate for whatever the next buying action is. Again, it depends on the scale. So like the Palerra one at the time, you know, that ebook and we were a tiny little company. I mean we only had, I think when we got acquired, we had maybe 60 employees total. So very small company, 10 by 20 booth at AWS Reinvent, which is a massive conference. And we got, you know, almost 2000 views on that small ungated ebook. And then we got substantially higher open rates, and then our lead scans at that booth, I mean it was ridiculous. I want to say we scanned like 500 people and at most shows we were only scanning probably a hundred to 112 and so it was huge because it all tied in. Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: That's awesome. Well shifting gears because we're gonna run out of time. I have two questions that I like to ask all my guests and I'm really curious to hear your answers because you've worked with some really interesting companies who are very good at this. Is there a particular company or individual that you think is really killing it with inbound marketing right now? Ashley: So I will do the shameless plug for Atlassian, A, because I work there so of course I think we're doing a good job. But truly, I think one of the biggest examples of this, we have our team playbook and this is something again where we connected our work futurist Don Price, has done a number of different keynotes around the world and always promotes the team playbook and that has led to this health monitor -- the team health check, understanding where your blockers are. That led to a large engagement with ANZ bank, which is a huge bank in Australia and they have now done a case study with us. They're huge champions that come for our conferences and speak about how this one tiny little interaction with this health monitor has led to this entire agile transformation across their business. It's a mix of the tools, the people, the practices, it all came together perfectly. So, yes, that had a revenue result for us, but it started with that ungated content at a conceptual level about how do you do your team work better and that's what Atlassian really tries to empower. I mentioned Intercom as well. They have a ton of great content. They've got sales manuals, they got marketing manuals that talk about a variety of different ways to think about content marketing, sales, the interaction between sales and marketing. Highly recommend their content for both sales and marketing practitioners. And then, IDEO, just like if you want to elevate your creativity and you want to kind of think outside of a traditional business or products. I work in tech, so of course I'm in this little bubble that everything is SaaS and everything is ARR. IDEO has none of that. And so every time I go to IDEO and just like, this is fascinating, how does the world work when you're not in your little bubble? And so I would say, no matter what bubble you're in, IDEO will help you get out of it. That would be three that are a mix of marketing focused, tech and then a design consultancy that's just completely out of my wheel house.  Kathleen: I can't wait to check some of those out -- particularly IDEO. It sounds really interesting. Well, second question is, the biggest pain point I was here from marketers is that digital is changing so quickly and they feel like it's drinking from a fire hose to try and keep up with everything and stay educated and on the cutting edge. So how do you personally do that? Ashley: Yeah, so from a broader view, kind of outside of marketing or just business chops, which I think is really important, it's how do we fit in and especially as you move up in your career and you become COO or something like that, understanding that business acumen is really key. I love MIT Sloan review for that content and they've been killing it lately. Every single thing that's come out from them over the last probably six or seven months, I'm like, "Yes, one hundred percent fascinating". So I love MIT Sloan from a business standpoint. There's a couple of marketers that I think are a little bit contrarian and I joked about going on rants about things and I'm like, "Yes, ranting. I love it." Katie Martell is somebody that I've been loving her content lately. Jay Acunzo I think is great. He's really honing in on podcasting and show running over the last year or so. But just in general, his thoughts on content marketing and strategy are great. I love Scott Berkun. He is primarily a designer, and more on that design thinking. He has a new book out that I need to get because it looks amazing. It's like How Design Makes the World, I think is what it's called. And it's looking at how all of these interactions and everyday things influence our path, our actions, et cetera. So Scott Berkun is great. And then I would say just like a book that I always come back to is this book called The Medici Effect by Frans Johansson. It's primarily about intersectional thinking and divergent thinking. And so yes, there's an element of understanding the tactical nitty gritty from a digital standpoint. I think there's a number of, you know, Marketing Profs, CMI, HubSpot, all of those do a really great job of that. But how do you think about change? How do you think about a problem space? How do you think about a solution space? The Medici Effect is just every, it's like I come back to it kind of annually. It's like, okay, somewhere in there I'm missing something. I should probably just reread the The Medici Effect. In fact, I should probably just to think about the concepts and The Medici Effect to jolt myself out of being so focused on, okay, what does this button on Twitter do or what does this ads do? Like are we doing AB testing? We're doing multivariate testing, what's our competence interval, whatever. We're pulling those things down. Like I don't know what the best practice is. It's like I'm clearly thinking about it in the wrong way. If I'm so twitchy about such a small detail, you get lost in the weeds pretty easily. Kathleen: Those sound like some really good resources. I will put links to all of them in the show notes. How to connect with Ashley Kathleen: If somebody is listening and they want to connect with you online or follow you or learn more about this topic, what's the best way for them to do that? Ashley: I would love to connect on LinkedIn. I'm Ashley Faus. For the most part, I think I'm the first search result for that. And you can also follow me on Twitter also @AshleyFaus. Kathleen: Great. I will put Ashley's links to her social accounts in the show notes. So head there if you want to find them. You know what to do next... Kathleen: And if you are listening and you liked what you heard today or you learned something new, and how could you not because Ashley shared so many good ideas, head to Apple podcasts and please leave the podcast a five star review. That helps us get found by more people. And if you know somebody who's doing kick ass inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork, because I would love to make them my next interview. Thanks so much for joining me this week, Ashley. Ashley: Yeah, thank you for having me. It's always fun to nerd out about marketing. Kathleen: Yes!

RESOURCESlivingorganique.comThe Energetics of AuthenticitySHOW NOTES“One of the most important things I’ve realized over the last few years is the context of our culture and how much we are a product of it and its belief systems — without reflecting on it, realizing it, or questioning it.” –Ashley“You’re placing the highest value on the idea in your mind of who you should be, or what you should be, or who you’re told you should be. I thought I wanted to be what I was told.” –Ashley“The opinions of other people do not matter as much as my opinion of my own life. Why would I think that another person has a better concept of what’s going on energetically inside my soul than my own God- given innate intuition and gut feeling.” –Ashley“Our divine and sacred nature: God is out there; God is also in here, connecting “as above, so below.” We integrate the two. And we start to realize that the alignment is from God.” –Ashley“A lot of people get nervous with the word “energy,” and understandably so. But we are energetic beings, and our entire body is comprised of electromagnetic energy. This is proven in quantum physics.” –Ashley“We cannot cut out forms of energy and expect the physical body to heal and repair. Emotional health and spiritual health are critically important if we expect the physical body to run properly.” –Ashley“Disconnect from the voices. Disconnect from the “shoulds.” Reconnect with God. Start by evaluating the fruits of your thoughts and allow that internal voice to have your time instead of the Internet, Facebook, etc. Listen to what it’s trying to tell you.” –Ashley“It seems that the mom who has the most anxiety and turmoil is the one who is putting high value into what that others think. She becomes so concerned about pleasing, or appeasing, but it is often at the expense of her own children and personal symptoms.” –Ashley“Have the courage to say, 'This is right for me; it does not have to be right with others, and I’m good with that'.” –Ashley

Ashley: Hello. This is Ashley here with the Mompreneur Tribe. I am so thrilled today to have someone that's in it kind of different market. You really sometimes wouldn't think of a mom entrepreneur in this area. But here is a mom that is rocking it, is business partner with her husband. Her name is Catie Bird. She is with Harley Davidson of Durango, Colorado. Welcome, Catie. Thanks for being on. I'm just so excited because this is just ... You have such a unique business. So can you introduce yourself please and tell us a little bit about you? Catie: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much first of all for thinking of me and wanting to include me on your podcast, it's a really big honor. I think that being a mompreneur is definitely something to be really proud of and excited for. I'm in about two and a half years of entering that mompreneur role. So I'm still learning quite a lot of what it takes to be a business owner and whatnot. I'm just really grateful to you too for including me in this podcast. Catie: A little bit about me, my name is Catie and I am a southern girl from Texas, was born and raised in South Texas my whole life. And now as of about two years ago, I now live in Southwest Colorado with my husband, Trevor, who he and I have been married for 10 years, celebrated in November. We have two beautiful children. Millie is our daughter. She just turned nine last week and our son Reese, who turned seven recently as well. Catie: My husband, Trevor and I own Durango Harley Davidson here in Durango, Colorado, which is far Southwest Colorado. So if you think about the US map and you're looking in Southwest Colorado, we're right next to the four corners, so where we connect with Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. It's really a pretty amazing place to live as far as landscape, the mountain ranges and the rivers. It's just a beautiful place to be and a really big destination for motorcycle riders. Catie: There's so many wonderful rides that draw people here. So we are mostly a seasonal business, which is a big change for us from coming to Texas because we in Texas ... It's summer basically year-round. So people are riding motorcycle all the time, so things don't really slow down. Here, it's very, very different.We have about six out of the year to really sell, sell, sell, make it or break it before winter hits, and everything basically comes to a halt. So it's definitely a very different way of life in a very different style of business from what we're used to. I think we've done a really good job of adjusting to that and running our business based on that model now of seasonality. So- Ashley: Tell me about how you got there. That was the next thing is like why did y'all leave Texas to go up to Colorado and start out on this business? Because y'all been a part of the Harley Davidson Family for a while now, right? Catie: Yes, yes. My husband, Trevor has been working for the brand, sell Harley brand for gosh, close to 17 years now and with two dealerships back in Texas where we're from. I've never been involved with the Harley business. When I graduated college, I went into the corporate world and I started working for the NBA with the San Antonio Spurs was my first job out of college. Catie: That was a really amazing experience and really learned a whole, whole lot there. Then from then, from there I decided we were ready to start a family. And so I became a stay at home mom for about seven years, which I feel very blessed that I was able to do that as long as I was. All the time while I was staying at home or working with the Spurs, my husband was continuing with Harley Davidson in San Antonio in the New Braunfels area. Catie: Then I kind of started feeling my kids were getting a little bit older, starting Mother's Day out. I was kind of feeling like I was missing something, I love being a wife and a mom, but I was missing a purpose I felt like for myself outside of those roles. My best friend actually has started her own business selling custom men's wear, custom men's wear company. So I jumped on with her. Because I have a love of fashion, I have some merchandising background as well. So I jumped in and started my own business with her selling custom men's wear. So that was really fun and fulfilling. I was able to do it on my own time and still be there for my kids, and be home for Trevor and do the whole mom-wife thing as well. Catie: But just a few years ago, an opportunity kind of arose, Trevor and I had been really praying and thinking a lot about our future and what we wanted for our kids. While he had a partnership in some of the dealerships in Texas, we felt like it was time for us to branch out on our own, with all, with all of his years of knowledge, it was time for us to go and find our own dealership where that could be 100% owned by us and our family. Durango kind of fell in our laps, it's kind of a long story of how that happened. But it has been such a huge blessing. If you would've asked me 10 years ago where I saw myself today, living in Southwest Colorado, owning a motorcycle dealership would never have crossed my mind. Catie: I never grew up around motorcycles. I didn't know really much about them at all other than I would ride with Trevor and we would go places and do stuff. A little bit of the business side from what he would share with me. But that definitely was not in my wheelhouse of plans for myself. So it's kind of really interesting to see where I am now. But I wouldn't change a thing. It's been an amazing blessing for our family to be here. I also never thought I would leave Texas. I've gotten my Southern roots and they are deep. But it's really been fun, a fun adventure to try somewhere new and be somewhere new with meeting different people. There's so many wonderful blessings that have come from it. Catie: But now, when we took over ownership of the dealership back in June of 2017 is when we started, we were just blown away immediately by the team that was already here and in place. All of the managers that were with the business before we took over ownership are still with us today. That's something that Trevor and I are really proud of because this team that we have is in my opinion, the best in the business. Catie: They were really great about transitioning and learning a new way of doing things with our business model and whatnot. They have just really, really made our jobs easy as far as leadership because they all are leaders. They all do a great job. We really are a family here. And that's one thing that sharp and I have always talked about from the beginning is that we want to be a family where we want everyone to feel welcomed, and loved, and supported. Also, we are a family owned business. Our kids are very much involved in everything that we do here at the dealership and combined with them being here all the time and having a strong relationship with our team, we feel really lucky to be here. So that's kind of how we got where we are in a nutshell. Ashley: That's such a leap of faith to leave, be a Texan and leave. I feel like so many ... So many people come to Texas, they rarely leave unless it's a big calling. And you found that calling and y'all left. Now here you are, you're two and half years into this new business venture. But it sounds like you guys are very settled in it. Can you tell me a little bit about your roles? And what it's like being in business with your partner? And how you all divide up responsibilities and then day in and day out of juggling the kids? Catie: Yes, absolutely. So it's really kind of cool how it's worked out because I, to be honest, was not quite sure how it was going to go, working with Trevor 'cause we are together all the time anyway. And I'm thinking, are we going to butt heads? We've never worked together before. How is this going to work? And so it just fell into place in that I know his strengths, his strengths are my weaknesses and kind of vice versa as well. My strengths are kind of his weaknesses. So where Trevor takes over, he handles most of the overlooking things, the motorcycle sales division and all of the finance part of the business, which I am not a numbers person. That is so far over my head, and I will admit it. Catie: That is a big weakness of mine. Being a business owner, it's definitely something that you should know really well. I'm taking the baby steps to really try and dive, dive in and learn more about that side of it. But for now, it's great that I have this partner that does know that side really well so that I can focus on where the other needs in the business are, which are marketing and the merchandise sells, so the general merchandise department. So if any of you who aren't familiar with Harley Davidson or have never been into a Harley Davidson dealership, I'll just kind of explain a little bit of what it looks like. Besides this your showroom floor with all of the motorcycles, the new and used, we also have a very large general merchandise department. Catie: So clothes, fashion, writing gear, your leather jackets, your riding boots, all of your protective gear as well as just your casual gear that you wear when you're not on the bike, so the fashion side of it. There's also a parts department where you can come and buy motorcycle parts and then have them installed in our service department, which we have a really large service department. Very, very wonderful service department. Catie: We get compliments on our team back there all the time on their great service and, and how well that they do. So there's lots of different areas of the business that need to be managed and watched over. So Trevor does sales and finance and I handle all the marketing and the merchandise. And it works really, really well because there wasn't a marketing department here in the shop beforehand, before we took over ownership. Catie: It was kind of a split job between like our accountant. The accountant would kind of do it, the controller and everyone kind of shared responsibilities, which was great. They made it work because again, as a seasonal business, we only have about 10 full-time employees that are here year-round. Then once the season starts to pick up, usually in May, then we add about 10 to 15 more just for the summer. So we grow quite a bit in our peak season and then kind of go down to the skeleton crew in the winter time. But there wasn't a specific person that was handling the marketing. So my degree is in public relations and communication. So it was kind of an easy role for me to kind of just step into and start handling that part of it. Catie: So it's actually been really awesome working with Trevor because we respect each other's strengths and we lift each other up. We always lean on each other because we know that this is make it or break it for us. We moved our family away from everything that we knew to take on this dealership. This is our livelihood. So I know to respect him when he says, "No, Catie, this isn't going to work. We've got to restructure and think of something else," and vice versa. Catie: He does the same with me. So having that mutual respect and trust in each other has really made this partnership work, being able to work with my husband each day. I will say there are those days that he really gets on my nerves. I just go and I just shut myself in my office so that ... 'Cause we are husband and wife. We don't get along all the time and we don't always agree, but we respect each other. Catie: So I know when he's in a bad mood, if he's having a bad day, I'm just going to keep my distance today and I will handle what I need to do and vice versa. So it works. It works for us. Ashley: I like that you pointed out several different things. Being in a partnership with my mom, we've definitely learned that we play off of each other's strengths and weaknesses. So her strengths are some of my weaknesses and my strengths are some of her weaknesses. We really play that to the advantage of our business. Then at the end of the day, when you just have respect for your partner, your business partner, whether it's a parent or a spouse or a friend, it really truly goes a long way in business and being able to trust them that "Hey, this is for the good of the business." And like you said, it's your family's livelihood. It's the same with us. It's, actually two families' livelihood and plus you feel the responsibility of all the employees that you employ as well and their livelihood. Ashley: You want to make it work and make it successful for everyone. So I love those points that you pointed out. And then at the end of the day, not everything's perfect. We're all humans, right? So you really know how to keep your space. Catie: Yeah, absolutely. Ashley: So what is a tip that you would give to fellow mompreneurs that are trying to juggle it all and juggle having a business and kids? And because you were a stay at home mom, lik you are very active in your kid's lives and everything. How do you make it work? Catie: That's a good question and I think that I'm still figuring it out honestly. It's just day by day and for me, like I'm such a Type A planner type person that I feel like I have to have every moment of my day and my week planned out. I'm trying to reverse that and to just like being present in the moment and what I'm doing right then, and focusing on that and not stressing so much about what's going to happen later because I find that when I do that, if I'm at either when the kids are at work with me or if I'm at home with them, my mind is just constantly thinking about the next thing. Okay, what do I have to do next? What do I need to do for the kids next? Catie: Instead of being present right there and jumping down on the floor and making that puzzle with my kid or going outside just to kick the soccer ball with my son. I need to be more intentional and more present. And that's something that I'm really working on. So my advice for other mompreneurs out there is that even if you're not a planner or if you are, I do think it's ... I'm a very big list person. I think like being intentional and like actually scheduling that time even if it's just 10 minutes to give your children like your full attention is important 'cause otherwise, the day can just get away from you and you get busy getting ready for dinner, doing laundry talking to that client on the phone problem solving, doing homework, all of that tha. I find that if I schedule lik okay, from 6:00 to 7:00, that's strictly for Millie and I. Catie: Millie and I are going to sit and we're going to chat about her day. I'm going to give her what she needs right now. That's not going to happen every day. And that's okay. I think we also need to give ourselves as moms a lot of grace and understanding that we're not going to be perfect every day, all the time. The mom guilt is real. I have it all the time. The first year for me going from being a stay at home mom to working full-time in a new place without any other family here to help with the kids and all of that, I was really hard on myself and I felt like I was failing at everything, whether it'd be work or the kids because I wasn't doing it perfectly and I didn't have it all figured out. Catie: But now going into, let's see, we did two and a half years now. Like I'm finally learning that it's okay to not have it all figured out and to not be perfect in everything. My kids are loved. They're happy, they're flourishing in this new place. I rest in grace and mercy in that. Like I know that they are good. I guess the advice is just don't be so hard on ourselves. We're doing the best that we can and that's all we can do. I also think that it's really important for our kids to see us as moms struggling. I think that they need to see that mom isn't perfect but mom tries her best. I think that's important especially at work because my kids are at work with us all the time because we don't have extra help. We don't have other family here or whatnot. So a lot of times after school, they come up here to the dealership and they, luckily it's a pretty cool, fun place to hang out. My son loves to go to the service department and sit there and watch all the technicians work on the motorcycles. Ashley: Yes, a young boy's dream playground. Catie: Yeah. It's cool. I mean, I feel like he's getting an education just being back there, watching these guys work. He's got this engineer brain and it's really cool. He loves that. My daughter, she'll jump in on the sales floor and start folding t-shirts. She's an expert t-shirt folder now. She is very confident and talks to customers. It's so cute because I'll have customers come up to me and ask me if she's my daughter and I'll be like, yes. And they'll say, "Oh, she was so great. She came up to me and said, hi, welcome to Durango Harley Davidson. Can I help you find anything today?" So it's a cool place for them to be. I think they're also learning the value of hard work being here and seeing mom and dad running this business. Catie: But our kids also see our bad days. They see it like when there is an upset customer and they're watching how Trevor and I are resolving that. They're seeing like, if Millie comes back to my office and I'm just way behind on stuff, or I just lost this campaign that I ran just didn't go very well and I'm upset about it. I don't hide it from her. My son still so little, I think he's kind of oblivious to a lot of it. But my daughter, she's very in tuned to emotions and things. She doesn't miss a beat, but I let her see me. I don't try and hide it whenever things aren't going great. I think that obviously for her, her age, I don't show her everything that's bad or horrible. Catie: But I think it's important for kids to see that we're human and that we struggle when we fail. But the important thing is that we don't give up. That's one of our family rules. Birds don't give up, we don't quit. We can fail and that's okay, but there's more honor in failing than there is in not even trying because you're afraid to lose. That's big lesson that we want to teach our kids is you can't be afraid to go for what you want. We didn't make this leap of faith to Colorado with the expectation of failing. But we knew that we needed to do, we needed to make a change and this was where God's leading us. We're here and it's not always going to be easy and it's not always going to be exciting, fun, happy days. Catie: But we stand firm and knowing that we're here for a reason and we've got a purpose here. I just think it's important for our kids to see that we are human. When they see how we react to the problems and to things that are going good or bad, then they're learning as well. I'm hoping, my hope is that one day when they enter the workforce for real, they're going to know the discipline that it takes to be successful and not being afraid of failure because that was a big challenge for me is failing. Catie: Watching my husband throughout his business and his life with Harley Davidson, I've seen him take a lot of risks. We've also had a lot of failures. But I really respect that he's never let that stop him from trying something new and doing what he wants. So watching him go through that has given me the confidence to know that I can do this too. I may not know a whole lot about motorcycles. I do a lot more now than I did two years ago, but I know that I have passion for this brand. I have passion for our business and the people that worked here and our customers. It makes it extremely fulfilling to come to work every day. Ashley: Your passion just now, I am just taken away. When you said the we will show honor, more honor in failing like the life lessons that you just talked about right there and how you're showing that to your kids, it's so impactful. I tell this to my husband sometimes, I'm like taking our kids to work with us, they will learn so much more some days than they ever will in that classroom. Ashley: The life lessons, and you just like nailed it with everything you said and how your kids are involved in the business in the day in and day out, and being a part of it, and seeing your reactions with customers. I absolutely agree with you just because we have a retail store too. My oldest is old enough to come and understand those interactions. You're absolutely right. They're watching our interactions, they're learning from it. Ashley: It can be such a good thing. It can be such a good thing to show that to our kids and just the way you articulated it was so great and just hearing your passion behind it, how it's more than actually just you being a mompreneur and being in partner with your husband. But it's a whole family. It's the whole family there that made the move, that's doing this business together. That's incredible. I applaud you guys. I loved hearing all your passion just now when you were talking about just the tip that you give, it is true. It is so true. And how we be present in our day to day lives for our kids, but also to give ourselves grace. So much grace. Catie: Yeah. Exactly. So much grace. Yeah. We're not perfect and we never will be. But all we can do is just do the best that we can. I'm making it a goal of mine to just not worry so much about everybody being happy and everything being perfect and take me. It's okay. It's okay if they're not ... It's okay that they're here at work with me every day after school this week because I have a lot going on. You know what, that's all right. Because what would they be doing at home besides sitting there watching TV or jumping on the trampoline? They've got stuff to keep them busy here and I can be okay with that. They're going to be just fine. Ashley: Yes. Catie: So yes, grace is a big, big thing. Ashley: Yes. I look at it with our family business is that they could be at home with a babysitter in front of the TV or they could be there interacting with ... It's great communication skills. Catie: Absolutely. Ashley: It's much better than them learning to text or play on the computer. They're learning great communication skills, dealing with customers and learning to talk to our employees. Ttalking respectfully, I feel like that's a great teaching studio for them. Catie: Yeah, 100%. Ashley: Catie- Catie: That was awesome. Ashley: I have thoroughly enjoyed this conversation today. I think you provided such wisdom to other fellow mompreneurs and especially that we just need to show ourselves grace. Something I ask all guests is what is a way that we can show up or support your business and you guys during this season? Yeah, how can we support you guys? Catie: Awesome. Well, you can support us if in the way of just follow us like on our Instagram page we actually have a really cool Instagram page. We do all these different lifestyle posts everyday of different motorcycle riders far and wide all around the country, in the world. They're really, really neat. They all have positive messages to them as well. So our Instagram page is @DurangoHarleyDavidson, all one word, no dash or anything. And then you can also check out our website, DurangoHarley.com. But one thing I want to touch on and follow us on Facebook too. Yeah. 'Cause we post a lot on there as well. But we also own a motorcycle rally that happens here every Labor Day weekend. We just finished year two for us. It's actually a rally that's been around for like 26 years or something. Catie: But right when we moved here, it kind of fell out. The previous owner that had some bad business skills kind of had ran it into the ground. But it used to be, there used to be 20 to 30,000 motorcyclists that would come through Durango on Labor Day weekend. It kind of fell apart. So my husband and I, and our marketing partner in the rally, John Oaks really tried hard to rebuild this rally. Catie: Bring it into a new light with different, with newer events like hooligan dirt, dash races. We just did our first ever motorcycle hill climb at Purgatory Resort, which is where our ski mountain here. It was a huge success and it was really, really awesome. I encourage you also to follow Four Corners Motorcycle Rally on Instagram as well. They post a lot of really awesome content, but the rally is a great way to support our local community here in Durango. They would bring a lot of economic success here for that, that one weekend. So that's a great way to support as well, just talking about what it is that we're doing here in Durango for labor day weekend and bringing in that next generation of motorcycle riders and bringing something fun to the community. Ashley: Awesome. So we will. We will ask, we ask all of you listeners out there if you will engage with them. So follow them on Instagram for the Four Corners Motorcycle Rally as well as Durango Harley Davidson on Instagram. I'm going to go check them both out. Then of course I didn't realize that different Harley Davidson dealerships have different websites. So that's good to know. If you are a Harley fan or maybe you have a need to buy a gift for a Harley fan, that's where I am. My dad had a Harley day was then growing up. And so my only purpose I've ever had in life is just to buy gifts. Ashley: So I literally walk up to the counter and just check out. I've never even explored the dealership. I just ordered and picked up there. S go and shop you guys at Durango Harley Davidson. All of this information will be in the show notes as well as if you click through and you got to our show through a social media link, go back to the social media page cause we're going to tag those in the social media pages. Ashley: Catie, I thank you for being a guest on today's show. Listeners, I invite you, you just heard me talk about how we can support Catie and her husband, Trevor in the Durango Harley Davidson dealership, their business. Please go out, engage with them on social media. Ashley: That is something you can do that is free, to support any business. And sometimes you hear a big brand and you think, "Oh, that's just some national brand." No, there's actually families behind these big brands. So the Bird Family owns this dealership. It's family-run. Sometimes people get lost in those big brands, but no, it's actually a family-owned business. So go out and support them. Ashley: And if you liked today's episode, I invite you to hit subscribe and leave us a review. We always are looking for feedback and comments, and want to hear all your great thought and reviews. So thanks for listening and have a great day. Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. To find out more about Ashley, log on to the MompreneurBoutique.com that's the MompreneurBoutique.com.  

Kids, Business, Marriage – how do you do all the things? Get a glimpse during the last of this 3 part series on how to raise an entrepreneurial family! On today’s super special episode, part three of three, Russell and his lovely wife, Collette are interviewed by Joshua and Ashley Latimer about being an entrepreneurial family. Here are the questions Russell and Collette answer in part three: What ways do you teach your kids about entrepreneurship and finances? What advice would you give a highly driven entrepreneurial family? How important is it to have a like minded community? So listen here to Russell and Collette as they answer these important questions. ---Transcript--- Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson, welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. Are you guys pumped for today? This is segment number 3 of 3 of my interview, of the interview with my wife, Collette. If you haven’t yet, make sure you go to Honorandfire.com, and opt into the Latimer’s and get their free family checklist system that they posted. It’s a free family checklist for entrepreneurial families. And it’s amazing. What they’re doing is so cool, and I’m so grateful for this interview and that they created a really safe spot for my wife to be able to share her thoughts and her feelings. And I hope you guys are loving her even 1/10th as much as I love her, because she is such an amazing person, and I’m so grateful to have her being able to share some of our experiences with you. Alright with that said, we’re going to jump in right now to segment number 3 of 3, and these are the last 3 questions they asked us. Question number 8: What ways do you teach your kids about entrepreneurship and finances? Question 9: What advice would you give a highly driven entrepreneurial family? And question 10: How important is it to have a like minded community? So those are the next questions. I hope you guys enjoyed the series. If you have enjoyed it, please, please, please go to, again take a screen shot on your phone or wherever you are, post it on Facebook, Instagram, social media wherever you post, and please tag me and tell me why you like this segment of this session. I’d love to hear some of the thoughts and the feelings about why you guys enjoyed this time with my wife. And maybe if you guys do, let us know, maybe we’ll do this more often, have her come on and share some more stuff. So excited. With that said, let’s queue up the theme song and we’ll jump into the exciting conclusion of my interview with the Latimer family and my beautiful wife, Collette. Ashley: How do you teach your children about entrepreneurship, and what ways will this give them an unfair advantage in life? Russell: I think … Collette: go ahead. Russell: One of the cool things that we did was a little, about two years ago we had Caleb Maddox and Emily come out, two young entrepreneurs, and spend the day with our kids, which was really cool.  They kind of talked to them about it, got them excited about it. And then Caleb and his dad, Caleb’s dad told us that what he did is he gave Caleb these success books and said, ‘I’ll pay you $20 for every book you read.” And I thought that was the coolest thing, so we started doing that with the kids. Some kids are more money motivated than others, but man, they’ve read tons of success books now on success. The Rich Dad Poor Dad for Teenagers, Success Dogs, Dallin’s read both of my books which is crazy. He’s like, ‘I don’t understand most of the things dad, but I read them.” Collette: Well and actually Aiden, he’s out, he’ll be 9 in august, but he’s been putting little mp3 player plugs in his ears and walking around and listening. So I think that’s cool. Russell: Yeah, so that’s been big. We brought them to one Funnel Hacking Live, but they were young and it was crazy and it was kind of hard. But this year, I think you know this, we’re doing a new event this summer specifically for kids so I can bring my kids to it. So it’s going to be really fun to kind of get them into that kind of thing. And then the other thing I really want to do, we haven’t discussed this, but I had a friend, her name is Rae Perry, used to run these home schooling programs, and she would do these events where she would have the home schooled parents and kids would come, they’d have speakers on each topic. So one of them would talk stock market, one of them would real estate, one would be internet marketing, one would be eBay, all these different things. And everyone would sell their courses, and then they’d have the kids each go and buy a course each event, and that’d become their curriculum to learn. I’m going to learn about stocks, and they’d go deep the next year on stocks, or on real estate, or whatever their thing was. So I kind of want to have our kids pick things like that in the summer, in fact, this is actually something, I forgot about this, we had this on our family night on Sunday. We’re trying to figure out, Summer is coming soon and we don’t want the kids all summer on their screens, right. So first we’re like, “We’re going to do a screen free summer, no screens all summer.” They were all just like, “Ahh.” Collette: So was I. Russell: Then Collette’s like, “Well what are we going to do with them all day? You’re going to be at work, this sounds horrible for everybody.” So okay, let’s rethink this. And then when we were in Puerto Rico hanging out with Brendon Burchard he said something really interesting. He said, because we were talking about social media and one guy there was like, “I don’t do social media, it’s a waste of time.” And Brendon’s like, “No, you don’t understand I’m not a consumer of social media, I’m not consuming it, I’m producing it. There’s a difference. As a producer I go and I produce something and I’m done, and it’s helping other people. But I’m not sitting there consuming other people’s things.” And that was the aha with our kids. Right now they’re consumers, they sit there and watch some stupid guy with blue hair play video games for 4 hours, watching somebody else produce, they’re consuming. And I was like, “I don’t want you guys being consumers. You don’t value, the world is not better if you’re a consumer, you need to be producers.” So we talked about, with them we talked about starting a YouTube channel and then each of them gets their own playlist. And we say, “Every morning wake up and…” Ellie’s our daughter who’s obsessed with the craft channel. “Wake up, go watch the craft channel, figure out what craft you want to make, then drive to the store, buy the stuff, come back, have you and your brothers film it, make the craft, then edit it. And you’re allowed to use as much screen time as you want, as you’re producing. You’ve produced a video that you published live, and now you’ve produced something.” So our whole thought is you can only use screen time during the summer to produce, not to consume. And then I thought it would be fun for them, there’s the email skill share, and all these different sites. I’m like pick out a skill that you want to learn, go learn it and then you can make videos of you teaching it back to people. So that’s kind of the goal, helping them be producers this summer instead of just consumers. Ashley: I love that. Joshua: That is gold. That is gold. Can I squeak in a mini follow up question to that though? Russell: Yeah. Like if we’ll execute on it. I don’t know. Joshua: I just want to make sure, respecting your time that we’re just moving along and everything, but this is so amazing. So what’s your philosophy just on finance with your kids and stuff? Okay because you’ve been broke and you’ve had lots of money, and you’re wealthy. Are your kids aware of it, is that something that you talk about? Is the business just your front stage, internet marketing stuff, or in the home are you talking about, “Here’s what we’re trying to do, we’re trying to go to a billion dollars. And we’ve got to restructure our org chart and our model.” Is any of that happening or is it just dad-Russell all the time. And there’s not a wrong answer, I just think people would be curious. And then when it comes to money, do you give them an allowance, do you teach them that they only get paid for value creation, do you buy them a car when they turn 16, do they have to buy it? How does that all work for you guys? Russell: The first part of the question, I have not been good at that, bringing them into what I’m doing more. A lot of times we’ll show them funnel hacker tv episodes and we’ll talk about a couple people we’re meeting, so they see a little bit of that. But we haven’t talked about the finances or the goals. That’s actually really interesting, I’m glad you brought that up just to think about. And on the other side, we don’t do allowances, they can work for money. We had them pull weeds for money, we had them read books for money. Collette: That’s allowance, well, I guess for money. Yeah. Russell: Allowance is like guaranteed, “Here’s money because you’re alive.” Collette: Oh. Joshua: Allowance, true allowance is like just pure socialism. You have a pulse, here’s some money.  {inaudible} Russell: It’s funny because some of our kids are super money motivated, and some aren’t. Dallin and Ellie both like money. Ellie will do something, or like, if she scores a goal in soccer we give her a dollar. So she’ll do stuff. And she’s a consumer. She spends it. She’ll make money and then she drives to the juice place and buys juice 5 seconds later. Collette: Drives her bike. She drives…she does not drive. Russell: Rides, yeah. Collette: She gets there. Joshua: Well, you know what we started doing? Our kids love to play games, Fortnite and all that, watch YouTube and stuff but they can only do it now by spending points. So what they do, when they take out the trash and do stuff, we have a little app that we built for my company called automate motivate, it’s actually for businesses, but we use it with our kids. Ashley: Or employees. Joshua: They get points since they’re doing stuff, but they can only play game time when they cash in their points for an hour block of game time. And it’s been a complete ridiculous success. Every day when they come home they’re just like, “What can I do, I wanna…” and then they do it, and they can earn 30 minutes of game time. It’s kind of game-ified that, but it’s not money directly. But there’s different things, they get game time, or they can go to the movies with mom or something. Ashley: It’s been interesting, some of our kids want to buy game time, and then the other one is like, “What can I buy on Amazon right now?” He wants, it burns a hole in his pocket, he would ride his bike to the store if a store was near us. We live in the middle of nowhere. Joshua: Well, that was great. Thank you for all of that, so much awesomeness. Question 9 is kind of for other people. What advice would you give a highly driven entrepreneurial family, and what advice would you give their spouse? So sometimes the man is the entrepreneur, sometimes the woman is, sometimes they both are, oftentimes one is not entrepreneurial, and one is a maniac, what advice would you say to that young couple that’s about to go down this crazy up and down, they don’t even know if they’re going to have to fire 80 employees in one day, 5 years from where they’re starting. Russell: {inaudible} Joshua: What would you say to them? Russell: I’d say on my side, I always think, I always tell people, you can only be as successful as your spouse will allow you to be. And I’m so, I look at everyone else I ever dated before, people I knew, if I didn’t marry Collette, there’s no way we could have got  here. It’s just not possible. And I think I’m so grateful for her, how much grace she’s given me during the times of like, the hard times, or the low times, or the times I didn’t produce, or times I didn’t show up right. It’s so easy to hold judgments and to hold grudges and to hold things like that, and she’s never been that way. There might be something we get in an argument about, but then it’s gone and she forgives, and it doesn’t keep lingering and lingering. I think a lot of times you see that in a relationship, it lingers and lingers to the point where it just breaks. And she’s never been that way. It’s just kind of like, I don’t know, she gives me, I guess grace is the word in my head, just forgiveness of like, I understand that you’re doing stuff, that doesn’t make sense. It’s not normal, but I still love you so it’s okay. Collette: Oh, it’s so hard because that question all the time, like at Funnel Hacking or when people do run into us like, ‘Give me some advice, tell me what to do.” I’ve had a couple of women just in tears, “how do I support my husband.” And it can go both ways. And it really made me think, because I’m like, “How did I allow Russell to live this dream? How did I allow him to move forward without me cracking?” But the truth is I did crack. You know, you go through all the things and I mean, we weren’t rich right out the gate. So we had a little family, worked hard for all that you had. You see and like, I want him to live his dream, I don’t want him to be miserable with this life, so it’s kind of, everybody is so different. Advice to me is hard because everybody is a different personality, but I would just say, communication. Because I just learned that I would tell my younger self that as well, communicate. And the other thing is do something for yourself. So the advice to a highly driven, for instance, he’s the dreamer. He’s always like, “What’s your dream?” and I’m like, ‘I really don’t know. Keep everybody alive, keep up the house, to be this mom.” But to do something for yourself, go out with your girlfriends and breathe, and communicate that with your husband, or your significant other. Take some time for yourself because otherwise you’ll crack. And I did crack a lot. I learned the hard way. But also, podcasting, all these great, amazing tools that we have today, I would tell people that are out in this world to listen to all the positive things to get through these moments. How to deal with a dreamer. I don’t know. Joshua: That was an amazing answer. Ashley: That was like a mic drop. Joshua: I’m pretty sure you know. That was perfect. Ashley: I think so too, that was amazing. Collette: There’s always tears, and there’s always a little something, that’s just human nature. But we’re not perfect. Joshua: Have you ever felt pressure to act like that’s not the case? I mean, things are weird at home, you’re a public figure, because you made yourself internet famous. But you know what I mean? Is there, what’s that like? Collette: What is that like? Why am I stumbling? Russell: I think sometimes you feel, I mean for sure you feel the pressure. It’s funny too because people are like, “how are you always happy?” because I’m happy when I’m clicking, “Hey! How’s it going guys!” and then it’s back down and you’re like back to the fight. You want to see what’s actually happening here, we’re really upset right now or whatever. But it’s interesting because I think a lot of times you feel like you have to keep that posture. Because the fascinating thing is the times that I don’t, the times I break posture and I’m more vulnerable with frustration or things like that, that’s when I feel like, that’s when people actually connect with me more. It’s funny, Natalie Hodson I was talking with her yesterday, she did an instagram or something like, “You guys think I’m a nice, cool, calm, collected mom, I just screamed at my kids for 30 minutes, I threatened to throw the TV over, I’m a horrible mom.” All these things, she’s like bawling her eyes out and everything. And she told me she had 351 DMs from that one thing, she said, “I’ve never had that before.” That’s what draws people in. And I think that, you know I feel like we tried you know, I don’t know, I think there’s always some of that, but I’ve tried to be more like, things are tough sometimes. I remember at the very first wrestling practice with the kids out in the garage, I did a whole podcast about like, ‘Man, that sucked.’ I want to record this now so someday I can have my kids remember the first practice, how horrible it was, how mean they were, how they just let, just try to share more of the pain part, because people actually resonate with that way more than the posture. Joshua: People crave authenticity. But now Russell’s going to choreograph fights so that he can make great content. Collette: Ha, ha. Joshua: I’m just kidding. Collette was going to say something, I’m sorry. Collette: Oh no, I 100% agree. I don’t feel like, well sometimes maybe, I’m like we get dressed up a certain way, that’s when people come up I’m like, ‘ugh. I don’t have makeup on.” But who cares, whatever. Seriously, we’re all people. Joshua: Totes. Collette: Yeah, yeah. Ashley: We never do that ever. Russell: Sure you don’t. Ashley: He did that last time. Joshua: I did that, we just talked to Alison Prince and her husband and I don’t know where it came from it just came out. Ashley: And he did it twice in that interview. He’s not allowed to do that. Don’t do that. Joshua: It just felt right. Collette: That’s hilarious, I love it. Russell: {inaudible} Ashley: It’s not right. It’s not. Okay, last question, how important is having a like minded community as an entrepreneurial family? Joshua: Like, we want to assemble all these people that care about crushing two comma clubs and doing huge things of business, not about money, it’s just who you are, it’s what you are, but equally and more so care about crushing it at home and just connecting with your spouse and being a super parent. How important for those people is it to be in community with other weirdos like that? Russell: I think it’s super important. Yesterday when we were preparing for the interview Collette asked Dallin, our oldest twin, 9 minutes oldest, about what he likes about this thing. And he’s like, “You know I don’t like being wealthy because I have friends at school that make fun of me for being the rich kid.” And for us, it’s like, “ugh” and it’s funny because the kid who said, I specifically know who it was, his dad told me, he’s like, “My kids ask me how come I don’t have my wrestling room at my house? Why can’t I get a job like Russell’s?” So it’s funny because both kids, the opposite direction. But I think it’s important because it’s like, we live differently right. Most people, they wake up in the morning, they go to 9 to 5, they come home, they watch tv, or they drink beer, you know, that’s the majority of the world. And we’re out here trying to change the world and have fun and do other things, and thinking about other people besides just ourselves, and we’re trying to create. And the more they’re around other people trying to do that, the more they’re not embarrassed of it. It’s like, it broke my heart hearing that yesterday because I’m like, if that’s how he feels because he’s embarrassed, we need to get them around more people who are creating. Because you know, when he hangs out with Caleb Maddox that night he’s writing a book because Caleb you know, the more you’re doing that, the more it inspires, the more they’re able to see kind of what’s possible. So I think that’s a big reason why we’re doing the kid event in the summer so they can plug into that. We’re having a couple kid speakers come as well, so they can see, I wan tthem to have their eyes opened to, “Oh my gosh, I can do this too, and this is cool.” And it’s not a bad thing, it’s a super positive thing. Collette: Yeah, I agree. It’s a big deal. I’m like, ugh. I really appreciated getting these questions beforehand because I really did, I was asking my kids the same thing, so it was interesting to get each of their perspectives. But anyway… Joshua: Well, thank you guys so much. We’re actually, part of what we’re working on is this thing that’s called the family war plan. It’s not a journal, we’re not going to call it a journal, because that’s not cool enough, we’re going to call it a war plan. But it’s for families and it has all this crazy stuff. Ashley: it’s an experience. Joshua: If we, I don’t know when they’ll be done or whatever, but if we get them done in time, I want to just give a bunch to Clickfunnels to give to the families that come to the thing with their kids. Collette: Gosh. Joshua: I don’t  know if they’ll be done or not. But it’s so epic and thank you, thank you. Triple thank you, thank you. Ashley: Thank you, and you were fabulous, absolutely fabulous. Russell: Really good, I’m super impressed. So proud of you. Collette: Awe, thank you. Russell: You’re a natural. Collette: I’m not a natural. Russell: We’re starting a podcast together. Joshua: You did a great job. Ashley: Yeah, you did a great job. Joshua: Enjoy, I’m assuming you’re having a day off since you’ve been doing crazy, ridiculous things. Collette: I’m making him go to zumba tonight. Russell: That’s our date night. We’re having some zumba. Collette: There may be some blackmail happening here in the future. Russell: I just found out yesterday that zumba is dancing. I did not know that. Joshua: You’ll just own it and do an instagram. Ashley: It’s like really hard dancing, you don’t stop, you keep going. Russell: I thought  it was like a cardio, like a workout. Collette: I’ve never done it either. Russell: Then Dave told me yesterday that it’s salsa dancing or something. Collette: It’s going to be amazing. That’s our date tonight. Joshua: Congrats too, on your wrestling thing. Russell: Thanks, so much fun. Joshua: {inaudible} thing to do that no one literally does, except for Russell. Collette: Mid life crisis friends. Bring him back to glory days. Joshua: you looked like you were in beast mode though, you were smashing people, dude. Russell: I only showed you guys the highlights, when I was smashing. The two I got smashed in you didn’t see anything from that. Joshua: Did you get wrecked by someone, or was it close. Russell: yeah, I lost 2 matches, I won 5 matches. So when all is said and done it was… Joshua: It’s amazing, and you just started training a few months ago for it, didn’t you? Russell: We had three practices before we went, because I hurt my neck. So it was, it was fun though. We had a great time. Next year, and there’s a kid tournament at the same time, so next year I’m going to bring all the kids and Collette, and we’re going to do a family party. Collette: Yay, a wrestling party. Russell: She thought she outgrew the wrestling. Collette: It’ll be fun. Ashley: Oh my gosh, you might be my new favorite person on the entire planet. I’m a big fan. Joshua: We’ll bring Collette honey too, from our honey bees. I don’t even know if you like honey. Collette: I love honey. Joshua: Okay, we’ll bring it. {Inaudible} the bee and put the honey right in the jar for you. [back and forth inaudible} Collette: Oh my gosh. Russell: I assume that’s how it works. I don’t know. Collette: I don’t know either. Joshua: Alright, thank you Russell. Ashley: Thank you. Russell: Thanks you guys, it was super fun. Collette: Thank you, thank you. All: Bye.

This is the second episode in an exciting series where you’ll get a chance to meet my wife Collette and her views on running an entrepreneurial family. On today’s super special episode, part two of three, Russell and his lovely wife, Collette are interviewed by Joshua and Ashley Latimer about what their family culture is like. Here are the questions Russell and Collette answer in part two: If you had to start over, what advice would you give your younger self? What does it mean to be a Brunson? How does your family stay motivated during tough times, and how do you reset? And What are some marriage and parenting systems that are working for you? So listen here to find out what it’s like to be a Brunson by taking a sneak peek into their family culture. ---Transcript--- Hey everyone this is Russell Brunson, welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. So I gotta know, how was the first episode with my wife? I’m nervous and excited to share her with you guys. She is such an amazing person who doesn’t get any of the limelight or the spotlight and this is kind of the first time she’s had a chance to be out there. So I hope you guys enjoyed the first episode. If you haven’t listened to it yet, go back and listen to episode number one, we cover three really fun questions. And again, if you’re liking these take a picture on your phone or wherever you’re listening to it, go to Facebook or Instagram or wherever you do social stuff and post it, and do #marketingsecrets, and tag me because I’d love to see your thoughts. And then comment in the comments of your post what you thought about episode number one, what you liked about it, what was meaningful for you, what helped? So let me know on that one, and then do the same thing with this episode. So episode two right now, we’re going to jump into, we’ve got 4 questions we’re going to go through right now. So I’ll tell you what the 4 questions are real quick, and then we’ll jump in. Question number four:  If you had to start over, what advice would you give your younger self? Which is really good. Question number five: What does it mean to be a Brunson? What’s your family culture like? Question number six: How does your family stay motivated during tough times and how do you reset? And question number seven: What are some marriage and parenting systems that are working for you? Oh man, I’m excited for you guys to listen to this next episode, again, we’re going to queue up the theme song, and when we come back I’ll play the next segment of the interview and again, if you’re liking this or you get any ideas or ahas, please take a screen shot on your phone, post it and tag me and let me know what you guys liked about this episode with my beautiful wife, Collette. Alright, let’s queue up the theme song, and we’ll be right back. Joshua: Alright question number four. Ashley: Okay, if you had to start all over again, what would you do different this time and what advice would you give your younger self? Russell: I know, do you want me to tell them mine? Collette: Yes. Russell: Alright, so at the 7 year mark when we were struggling with our marriage and everything, we tried traditional counseling but I think the biggest impact for both of us was going to Tony Robbins. I went to UPW first, walked on fire, came home and I was like, “Ahh!” and it’s funny, we were both in the same state when I left, but then Tony gets you up to here. So when I came home I was like, “Collette, you’re really depressed, you should go.” So she went and came home on fire and we’re like, “Ahh!” Everything was awesome. Then we went to Date with Destiny after, that year we did everything Tony had, I went to Tony for the whole year basically. But we went to a Date with Destiny and I remember Tony talked about the 6 human needs and all that kind of stuff and he talked about why we do what we do, what need are we trying to get met? And it was interesting because he helps you figure out what are your primary needs. For me, my primary need, the primary desire I have is love and connection. I’m looking for love and connection. And in my head though, I was like “I need to go get significance so my wife will love me and connect with me.” So I’m going and trying to take over the world, and make a million, and all this kind of stuff thinking that me being significant will make her love me more. So I went through this indirect pattern to try to get love and connection, that was the whole thing. And I remember we did a launch and made like a million dollars, and I came home and I was like, conquered like, “We did a million dollars.’ And she was like, “I just wish you’d come home.” Collette: Debbie Downer. Russell: I’m like, “I just conquered this thing.” And I had this realization at Date with Destiny, she loves me already, we already have connection, I don’t have to go prove anything. It’s like I’m going through this huge long path to get the thing that’s just right here. So that was my big thing. And I think, I don’t know if it’s just me, but I think a lot of entrepreneurs we do it initially because we need that significance, we’re looking for that because we want love and connection with our spouse or our parents, whoever it is that we’re trying to impress. I think if I was to start over again, I would take things slower and just, I don’t’ know, there was a period in our life as I was building, where I was checked out and I was doing the thing, and that drove us apart. As opposed to like, not being so obsessed with the end goal and just slowing down and really, I don’t know. I think it’s the same thing, when we launched Clickufnnels, the same thing. Me and Todd had disconnected from everything to be able to get this thing off the ground. Where I think now it’s a lot better spot where now it’s fun because we’re traveling together, we’re doing a bunch of fun things, and she came to this mastermind in Puerto Rico, and it’s jus tmore things together, and I would have slowed down and done more of that from the very beginning. As opposed to thinking I had to go leave and get significance to come back, you know, slay the beast and come back and “here it is.” I would have been like, “Let’s go get this thing together.” Joshua: It’s funny because she already loved you when you were selling potato guns making $20 a day, right? Collette: Yes. Joshua: But we forget that. I feel like I’m in counseling right now. {Cross talk} Joshua: I think I’m doing that right now. Okay, this isn’t about me, this is about you. That’s good, anything else you want to add or do you want to go to question 5? Collette: No, I think that’s pretty good. I wish I could go back and be… Joshua: Let’s talk about what it means to be a Brunson, like from your kids perspective. For us, we’re obsessed with this stuff, we have our family logo on, we have these shirts we had made custom, “Do Hard Things” is one of the things we tell our kids, all kinds of stuff. And I know that Russell thinks that’s really cool because he’s like geeking out when we talked about it a couple of times, but tell us what’s unique about your family culture. Russell: First of all, I want to do all that cool stuff you guys are doing, they have so many cool things they’re doing. Anyway, I think a couple things that really, I think I watched Collette bring to the table that’s really fun, especially after Tony Robbins. We realized that every morning our poor kids wake up and they’re about to go to the evilest place on earth, we call it school, and they’re already tired. It’s like they wake up and it’s like, I remember waking up as a kid and hating waking up and hating going to school and you’re miserable until school’s over. And what Collette’s really good at, is getting the kids excited in the morning. She’ll turn musi con, and she’ll be goofy and dance with them.Doing stuff so that this wake in the morning is not this horrible thing, trying to get them to crack a smile. I remember there would be times when the kids were little, us picking up and dancing around the whole house with them and just trying ot get them to not be miserable you know, being in a good state so they can go and conquer school, or conquer the difficult things. It’s one of my favorite things I watch Collette do all the time. What are other cool things? We always tell them that Brunson’s, because all the kids don’t want to wrestle ever. So I’m always like Brunson’s wrestle. We do hard things. They, yeah, that’s a big one. Joshua: Do you use NLP on your kids to make them become wrestlers, Russell? Russell: what’s that? Joshua: Do you use NLP on your own kids to convince them to be wrestlers? Russell: I don’t think that stuff works on your wife or kids, it’s really weird. It works on everybody else. Collette: So stubborn. What’s wrong with us? Joshua: Yeah, when Ashley drops the kids off at school… Ashley: Oh gosh, don’t say this. Joshua: Just tell them all the stuff…. Russell: Yeah, let’s hear it. Ashley: Oh gosh, we pray, that’s one thing we do. But we make the prayer a little bit more… Joshua: fun. Ashley: a little more fun at the end. I say, “And then all my people said…” and they’ll be like, “Amen!” If they don’t end “amen” loud enough, Joshua: It doesn’t count. Ashley: It doesn’t count. We gotta pray again. And we just sit in line and wait. Joshua: And then you roll down your window and say, “I love you” way too loud and embarrass them. Ashley: yeah, and I do this other thing too that they like. I go, “Bring em out, bring em out. She’s 3 feet tall, and 39 pounds and she likes to party, Finley Sarah Latimer.” And I do that for all my kids. Collette: Oh my gosh. Russell: That’s so cool. I love it. Ashley: They don’t think it’s cool. Some of them do. Joshua: They think it’s cool until like 4th grade. Russell: In 4th grade they’re embarrassed. Joshua: It’s not that embarrassing yet, they just own it, like “yeah mom, you’re the best mom. Yeah.” Ashley: My sixth grader just puts his hood on and walks into school. Russell: He walks away. Collette: I’m curious because Russell takes the kids to school certain days, same thing, in the funnel hacker jeep with music pumping and then whatever else, lights flashing, I don’t even know. And breaking the rules, going up the wrong way, dropping off the kids. Anyway, I’m like, I asked the kids the other day, they love it. And they’re in middle, those are the middle schools, middle schoolers. Russell: Do you like Daddy’s jeep? “Yeah, it’s so cool.” Collette: Then I feel like the lame-o, I’m like, “Get in the mom-mobile. Let’s go.” Ashley: One time I tried to download that song, “Bring em out, bring em out.” And then I downloaded it, and I didn’t listen to it before I played it. And it’s like totally inappropriate. In my mind, I thought it was just the “Bring em out, bring em out.” Nope. Russell: There’s two versions. Radio version and non-radio. Ashley: It’s inappropriate, so you just have to do it yourself. Russell: One of the things that you’re talking about that I thought about that we did about a year ago, that’s really cool. After Charfin came and did an event, he talked about setting family goals, or he talked about this in your business. Like in your business having a hall of fame goal, and then what’s your superbowl goal, the yearly goal, and then you have your weekly’s, your monthly’s. So we did this, not quite a year ago, we said as a family, what’s our hall of fame goal? Someday, what do we want to be known for, what’s the hall of fame goal? So what we set for that goal, so in the Mormon church there’s temples, and the best thing to do is to get married inside the temple, that’s where you’re sealed for all time and eternity, it’s this really special thing. But to go to the temple you have to be worthy. So you have to be living the commandments, you have to be doing stuff like that. So our family hall of fame goal is that we all want to, when Norah is old enough to get married in the temple, Collette: Norah’s the baby. Russell: She’s the baby, we all want to be worthy enough that we can be in the temple with her. So that’s our, if that happens, then yay, we were successful as parents. Yay, our family. That’s kind of the thing. It might not happen, you know, who knows? So every night now, it’s fun, they all pray, “Please bless us to be worthy to be in the temple with Norah when she gets married.” That’s a thing that we all strive for. Ashley: How sweet. Russell: And then we set a super bowl goal, what’s the goal for the year now, that’s going to get us closer to the hall of fame. So the goal we set was to be able to read the whole Book of Mormon as a family, which we’d been trying to do that since they were born. Collette: We have. We finally did 13 years later. Russell: Yeah, so we set the goal, and then we said, “you know when they win the super bowl, they get to go somewhere crazy. They all go to Disneyland and dump Gatorade on their heads. What do you guys want when we succeed?” and we had this goal, so they all wanted to go on a cruise, a Disney cruise with their friends. So we set it, set the goal, set the date, and they were so cool. There were times that we’d be out on a date and they’re texting us, “We just read two chapters.’ Or we’re out of town and they’re reading. They actually set the goal and pushed it and it was so cool to see them achieve the goal and Collette had it set up so that Disney, when we were on the cruise they came out and gave us awards and cake and all sorts of crazy stuff to celebrate it. Collette: Of course, they treat you well at Disney. Ashley: I love that. Joshua: That’s awesome. Ashley: That’s really good. Okay, Joshua: question number six. Ashley: How does your family stay motivated or focused during tough times? And what does your family do to reset when things get out of sync. Collette: I say, reset, we kind of like, I’m going to start with the reset. I feel like, for instance, Russell was at his busiest Christmas break, all the things, but we ended up going to McCall, Idaho, which is a couple of hours out of town, in a little cabin, disconnected, and it just kind of reset. Everybody was playing board games, everybody was together, in this tiny little kitchen that I loved. I don’t know, in this big home people can just scatter and they’re gone. I feel like you can eat dinner, and they’re gone. So I feel like, Russell: Everyone’s stuck, it’s so cool. Collette: We’re in this cute little place, and we’re tight together doing the things. So for a reset, I just loved that. Going either on, even if you can’t go for a couple of days, just a walk or take a break outside, just to reset, break the pattern. Joshua: I just thought you guys built funnels as a family to reset. Russell: Funnel cakes. Ashley: I love that. Joshua: I don’t feel like you guys probably have, at least Russell, I hear he’s a motivated guy, so how do you stay motivated? You just kind of are that, right, and then you guys do Tony Robbins, and you’re doing the dance parties in the morning, that’s really valuable, resetting. Is there internet at that cabin? Collette: There was wifi I think, they had a smart tv. Russell: We didn’t have, we had our phones but that’s all we had. Collette: Russell didn’t even crack his computer open, which I’ve never seen that in a lot of years. So I feel like the reset was good for him. {Clapping} Collette: Yeah, it was big. Joshua: That is so hard. That is so hard. That is no joke. Okay, question number seven, this is a good one. And when I say “system” I’m going to ask you what the most important marriage system and parenting system is, you know throughout your journey. System is, people don’t say that phrase, we’re going to kind of bring that phrase out, but it’s just the way that you do something. It’s, every family is already fully systemized, the question is are those systems serving you well, are they serving your kids well? It’s not if you need this, because you already have them, the way you talk to yourself, the way that you take care of your body or don’t. So what do you think in terms of marriage systems, and parenting systems, what are a couple of really important ones that come to mind? Russell: I tell you as we were reading these questions ahead of time, that was like, huh, maybe we need to work on our systems. Collette: We’re doing better than we think we are. I feel like we’ve never had a really awesome system, other than positive vibes. Russell: I think a big thing for us too is that we go to church every Sunday, and then one thing that, one of the beliefs of our church is we have a thing every week called family night. And we’re not perfect at it, I wish we were perfect at it, but family nights we sit down and it’s cool because it starts with an opening prayer. And then, you know, usually there’s a spiritual thought, and we try to calendar out what’s happening this week, so we have some context of what’s happening, and then we should be better. We used to always make treats and stuff, we should probably get back to that. Collette: Yeah. Russell: We used to always, we had a family home evening board and they always like, “We need an opening song. I get to lead the music.” Do all this stuff when they were younger. Collette: The problem is they’re growing up, so we’re getting into the prickly teenager years. Russell: Teenagers are hard. Do you guys have teenagers already? Ashley: Yeah, he’s 12. Joshua: He’s 12 yeah, almost. Ashley: Oh, and it’s so hard. And this is a whole new avenue of life. Russell: Yeah, we’ve got two that are 13, and it’s like one’s in a15 year old body, and one’s like a 9 year old body. So it’s kind of like, the older ones, it’s so hard. And they beat each other up all the time. How do you referee that? Do you let them fight it out? Collette: We’re in the middle of craziness trying to figure it out. So suggestions please, anybody. Russell: If you have a guest who’s figured that part out, let us know, we’ll listen to that one and then we’ll come back for a recap. Joshua: Yeah, we’re going to find the answers. This whole project, we’re not trying to be gurus at all, we’re just, we want to do this, we want to be intentional with our family. So we’re just going to facilitate and crowd source for system ideas, and you know, deliver that to the tribe or whatever. Ashley: And literally I’ve been taking notes. I’m just like, “Oh my goodness.” As I’ve been learning from the entrepreneur part, and then also the parenting part. It’s mind blowing, amazing. Joshua: So with your kids, in regards to parenting or marriage systems, I know you guys do date night sometimes, but with Russell’s schedule it’s probably next to impossible to have total consistency, I’m assuming. But what about with your kids, is there any little things you do, annual things, is there….One thing, I’ll give you one thing that I do that’s really cool. We do Sawyer Sunday, Maverick Monday, Tucker Tuesday, Finley Friday and it’s not perfect at all, Ashley: June May Thursday. Joshua: I’ll sit down and play legos for 45 minutes and just be totally focused on that one kid at a time. That little thing is ridiculous, the impact it has on the kids. But that’s an example. Is there anything else you guys do as Brunson’s that’s… Russell: We gotta do that, that’s really…. Collette: I feel like individually we’re not awesome. I feel like we’re like, I mean, we go out and play and we play hard. So Russell’s outside playing with all the kids, but for individual, for instance, I haven’t done it in forever, but I pulled one of my kiddos out of lunch the other day and took him to lunch. He’s like, “Mom, I really needed that.” But of course, his love language is quality time. Russell: And when we get them all together they all fight. I think that’s a big thing we gotta start doing. Will you help us come up with cool names for our kids in the days of the week? Collette: Oh no, I’m going to come up with some later.

We have guests on the show today! Lilia is the co-founder of wedwell. She created this platform to help challenge the wedding industry to bring more self care and wellness practices to this important time in someone's life. Ashley is a tarot reader on wedwell's platform. Ashley blends tarot and her innate intuitive abilities to serve those who feel misunderstood with a little everyday magic. Um, we love them. Big Takeaways We hear a lot of listener questions about ways to celebrate wedding planning stuff in unique and fun ways. We're talking about weekend retreats, showers, bachelorette's, engagement parties...how to change them up? Here are some ideas! Make wellness a fun treat for you and yours. Hire a tarot card reader for your girl's weekend. Schedule some yoga classes for all your wedding tribe. Make sure you and your partner make time for relationship wellness...wedwell can help with mind, body, and heart connections. FYI - We would love to have a psychic reading at a cocktail party! Invite us! Lilia created wedwell so that other people in the midst of wedding planning would have a sort of one-stop-shop for wellness practitioners, one place to go and find help navigating the big decisions and the toll that stress will take during planning. All of the services are offered remotely - so all you need is a phone or computer. wedwell is a site that caters to women, and all the practitioners on the site are women. Their demographic is women that care about wellness, but still want to have fun. Bringing these things...yoga, meditation, aura readings, tarot readings, health advising, meal planning (based on the position of the moon!), conscious vow-writing, body image coaching...it's comprehensive! Working with some comprehensive wellness experts can help guide wedding planning by highlighting some of your strengths and weaknesses, so you can move forward more confidently, more centered. And help you tap into a mindfulness on your wedding day so you can be present and soak it all in! Working with someone ahead of time might hlep strengthen those tools. Links we referenced https://www.bewedwell.com https://www.instagram.com/wed.well/ https://www.facebook.com/bewedwell https://www.instagram.com/magicalmind.tarot/ http://www.magicalmind.co/book-a-tarot-session/ Quotes “When I got engaged, I noticed that within the wedding industry there is so much pressure and so much stress and I experienced is all myself. And I was like - if I'm teaching yoga and I'm meditating...I can't even imagine how people deal with this without these tools. And I thought - I have to create a platform to bring wellness to weddings.” - Lilia “I get stressed and depressed and upset just like everybody else out there...there's shit going on. And if you layer that with the stress of wedding planning...this is a recipe for STRESS.” - Michelle “We started with wedding yoga and then it evolved into a concierge where you can go online and find a service.” - Lilia about her business growth “It all comes back to energy. We're all just trying to tap in and see how we can interact.” - Ashley “Wow. You sound exactly how I wanted you to sound.” - Christy, about Ashley “It's not a black and white world. There is so much grey. Let's actually get into it.” - Ashley, on how she works with people intuitively “The essence of motherhood is love. And the way you love others is by doing things that make you feel good.” - Ashley, to Christy “You're in a tower moment. You just have to let it burn.” - Ashley, to Michelle Get In Touch EMAIL: thebigweddingplanningpodcast@gmail.com FACEBOOK: @TBWPpodcast INSTAGRAM: @thebigweddingplanningpodcast BE SURE TO USE THE HASHTAG: #planthatwedding TWITTER: @TBWPpodcast PHONE: (415) 723-1625 Leave us a message and you might hear your voice on the show! PATREON: www.patreon.com/thebigweddingplanningpodcast Special Guests: Ashley and Lilia Karimi.

You know those gorgeous, magazine-cover-worthy, sexy, cinematic engagement photos you see online - the ones with the beautiful couple frolicking in the ocean as the sun sets behind them casting a golden glow over their gorgeous, entangled bodies? Yeah....That's what we're talking about on this one. We're talking to the California photographer that has mastered the art of the sexy, beach-y engagement photo. She has tons of advice about engagement sessions, hiring the right photographer, and dressing for success. Big Takeaways Christy reads the news every morning before she gets out of bed. Michelle doesn't. She drinks water and meditates. Do you! Big Photography Companies - Ashley got her start in George St Weddings, she was contract photographer for them back when she first started shooting weddings. Ashley got paid an hourly fee, and the clients met her on the wedding day, no consultation beforehand. We on TBWPP strongly advise our clients to meet with their photographers ahead of time. We encourage you to hire a professional that you really feel comfortable with, since the photographer-client relationship is very important. Especially on your wedding day! Golden Hour - the last hour before the sun sets. It's glow-y and warm and photographers LOVE it. In Orange County, on the beach, this is the perfect time to shoot an engagement session. Ashley's instagram (link below) is full of these photos, they are sexy and soft and quintessentially California. Ashley says her main goal is to show the connection between two people and that it all starts with communication between everyone. When everyone is comfortable, Ashley can have some fun with them - and that's when the sexiness shows up! Photographers and planners work hand in hand. If you don't hire a planner, your photographer ends up having to coordinate the flow day-of. And while she's doing stuff to facilitate transitions, or position cake cutting, or wrangle family members for formal photos, she isn't actually shooting! So, you, as the couple, might miss out on some great shots when you look at your album later...because your photographer didn't capture everything she should have! A planner allows a photographer to do her job - well! A photographer's job is 10% shooting and 90% editing and running a business! Consider that when you are looking at pricing - finding one to hire. Ask them if they edit their own photos or outsource that job, if it matters to you. Places Ashley's brides shop: Lulus, Free People, Asos, and Flynn Skye. Links below! Links we referenced Song Finch: https://www.songfinch.com - Our awesome sponsor https://www.ashleypaigephoto.com https://www.instagram.com/ashleypaigephoto/ https://www.lulus.com http://www.revolve.com https://www.freepeople.com http://www.asos.com/women/dresses https://flynnskye.com *Quotes * “You're drinking water and meditating, I'm chugging coffee and devouring news. All before 7:30 am. That's why we're so good together. Because we go the opposite way.” - Christy, on morning routines “The most important thing on a wedding day is to trust your photographer. You need to trust her, and you need to vibe with her!” - Ashley “My favorite part of the wedding day is getting time alone with the bride and the groom. Because those are the photos that are going to go on the wall. I maybe get 20-10 minutes of this on the wedding day, but for an engagement session, I get 1-2 hours.” - Ashley “It's really important to have some kind of planner or coordinator, especially if you have a larger wedding.” - Ashley, after telling us about the time she had to herd guests into the hall for dinner (missing out on shooting time) “I'm looking at your instagram, these photos are very sexy. There's a lot of body-talk going on!” - Michelle, on the sideboob we see on Ashley's feed “With your engagement session, it's awesome if you incorporate things that you connect on, or do something that you do together already - it's going to make for great photos, and it will feel less staged.” - Ashley Get In Touch EMAIL: thebigweddingplanningpodcast@gmail.com FACEBOOK: @TBWPpodcast INSTAGRAM: @thebigweddingplanningpodcast BE SURE TO USE THE HASHTAG: #planthatwedding TWITTER: @TBWPpodcast PHONE: (415) 723-1625 Leave us a message and you might hear your voice on the show! PATREON: www.patreon.com/thebigweddingplanningpodcast

"I was lucky enough to be able to interview the amazing women at Energy Muse - Heather Askinosie and Timmi Jandro. I was so pleased to get to talk to Heather and Timmi just after their visit to the Tucson Gem Show when they were still totally flying high on all those amazing crystal vibes." Ashley Leavy:  In this week's show, I have something super exciting. I was lucky enough to be able to interview the amazing women at Energy Muse. Heather Askinosie and Timmi Jandro. I was so pleased to get to talk to Heather and Timmi just after their visit to the Tucson Gem Show when they were still totally flying high on all those amazing crystal vibes. So, we got to talk about some great experiences from the show, as well as some of their favorite practices for staying grounded and centered in the present moment while they're bringing back and picking out all those amazing crystals to share with everyone through their website, energymuse.com. We also got to talk about their recent book, which many of you may have heard me recommend several times before. It's one of my top three favorite crystal books of all time and it's called, "Crystal Muse". We discussed a little bit about some of their favorite crystals from the book and the rituals that they just can't live without. It was so exciting for me because I have my own kind of favorite rituals from the book already. It was really great to hear from the authors themselves about which of these rituals are really part of their daily routine and just need to do to help stay centered, balanced and grounded. I just really loved connecting with Heather and Timmi about the book. So, I hope that you really enjoy this interview. I'm going to go ahead and play it and of course, I'll be back at the end of this show to talk about it with you a little bit more. Ashley: Hi everyone, today I'm so excited because I'm going to be interviewing the wonderful women at Energy Muse. Heather Askinosie and Timmi Jandro have been gracious enough to share some time with us and talk a little bit about their recent adventures at the Tucson Gem Show. So, ladies, thank you so much for being here. Heather: Thanks for having us. Timmi: Thanks, Ashley. Ashley: It's my pleasure. Now, you know, I have to tell you I'm totally addicted to Instagram [laughs]. So over the past couple of months I've been following a lot of your adventures at the Tucson Gem Show this year. And you, ladies, have really been rocking and rolling, excuse the pun. Shopping your fannies off and finding all kinds of beautiful things. I'd love to know and I'm sure everyone listening would love to know... What is it like actually shopping for a company as big and amazing as Energy Muse at the Tucson Show? Timmi: We’ve been going for so many years now. What's really great about it is we have our specific vendors that we visit every single year. Now that we've worked with them for so long, they're kind of ready for us to come, so things were set-up. This year, we went a whole week earlier than we normally do, so we really got the number one picks. Like, amazing, amazing stuff. But, it's really hard to capture that whole Tucson Gem Show if you've never been there. It's not like it's just at a convention center or one location. It's spread out all over Tucson, so at any given day, we might be driving back and forth all over to different venues to see the vendors that we are going to be buying from. Ashley: Yes, and you know, I always find that it is hard to explain that to people if you haven't had the privilege of attending the show. It's so surreal because it's literally every fast food parking lot has a tent in it, every hotel is emptied out and is full of crystals and it's such an amazing and awe-inspiring experience but it's also, it's a lot of work. [laughs] Timmi: Yes, it is. I mean, here you are looking at like the most beautiful things that have been created on this earth and you almost get mesmerized by picking them...

The Hill are Alive at the sight of a Slow News Week but that won’t stop Walkie and Ashley It’s time to go to warp […]

Ashley, with 16 days since her last drink, shares her story….. Do not forget the AALRM race in Bozeman MT, on 5/20.  This supports recovery.  You can also sign up to do a virtual run at www.recoveryelevator.comrun.  Enter promo code “recovery” for a discount.  The Café RE private face book group will be capped at 300 members.  If you would like to join the original group, now is the time to sign up.  Go to www.recoveryelevator.com and enter the promo code RE1 to get your first month free. Alcohol does not make us more intelligent.  We all know that drinking and drinking is not good.  When we start drinking, our mind starts to shift and suddenly is seems like a good idea.  We only have a short distance to drive, right?  The statistics show that we drink and drive 76 times before getting caught.  Drinking also causes us to say and do stupid things, like trying to coax a poodle to run across 5 lanes of traffic, or shout out that a girl had a funky looking toe at a bar.  It you would like to send an e-mail with the most unintelligent thing you have ever done while drinking, drop a line to info@recoveryelevator.com.    SHOW NOTES   [11:22] Paul Introduces Ashley.   Ashley – I have been sober for 16 days and feel more focused this time.  I am from Iowa, 32 years old and have 3 sons.  I am trying to find new sober hobbies.   [13:11] When did you first notice that you had a problem?   Ashley – I started drinking at the age of 12.  I would party with older people.  I was sneaking booze at the age of 14 and my family sent me away to a home.  By the time, I was 21, I had 3 children and 2 DUI’s.  I still did not think that I had a problem.  I later lost my license for 5 years.  I was home alone, couldn’t drive and my drinking really took off.   [16:11] Was it hard getting sober at such a young age?   Ashley – It has been really hard since everyone I know drinks.  I am trying to distance myself from my drinker friends and find sober friends.   [17:47] You were sober before.  What happened to cause you to drink again?   Ashley – I was doing a cleanse to try and lose some weight.  But then a concert came around and I drank there.  I stopped for a few weeks but went to a funeral where everyone was drinking.  I ended up doing a shot and it was game on from there.  I drank for 6 days straight after that. I just couldn’t say no whenever someone offered me a drink.   [21:11] Did you ever put any rules in place to try and control your drinking?   Ashley – I’ve tried every rule imaginable; from only drinking on the weekends, to never drinking at home, or only drinking after the children went to bed.     [24:00] How did you get sober this time?   Ashley – I try and go to AA every day and I listen to podcasts.   [25:41] What are you going to do differently this time? Ashley – I am distancing myself from my drinking friends and trying to make new sober friends.  I also am looking for on-line support in order to locate sober people in my area.   [27:54] Do you think you will ever be able to attend shows sober?   Ashley – Right now, no.  But I love music so eventually I would like to be able to go.  It is going to take some time.   [29:23] Did you ever go to any “dark” places while drinking?   Ashley – I had tons of blackouts and I lost my license for 5 years.   [29:23] Paul and Ashley talk about a time when she felt like drinking but managed to control the urge.   Ashley – I was recently home alone and starting getting those thoughts of drinking.  I watched a few videos on U-Tube and thought that if I drank, I would ruin my week again.   [33:05] What is a typical day like for you?   Ashley – I try to keep very busy with work.  I also plan what AA meeting I am going to attend and get up and go.   [34:52] What are your thoughts on a HP?   Ashley – I believe in God and would go to church occasionally as a child.  I am trying to get back into church.    [35:49] What are you most proud of and how are your relationships now?   Ashley – I am most proud of being there for my children.  I am more active with them.  My relationship is much better with them.  My children see me being active and happy.   [37:33] Do you have anything on your bucket list?   Ashley – I want to be able to truly love myself and my life.  I want to be able to do things without booze.   [38:35] Rapid Fire Round What was your worst memory from drinking? when I was drunk, I got jumped in an ally way    Did you ever have an “oh-shit” moment? not being able to stop drinking while attending that funeral What’s your plan moving forward? stay distant from my drinker friends, go to AA,  podcasts What’s your favorite resource in recovery? Verbal surgery podcast What’s the best advice you’ve ever received (on sobriety)? do not think so far ahead What parting piece of guidance can you give listeners who are in recovery or thinking about quitting drinking? start right now, focus on today You might be an alcoholic if…… you go to your local gas station and the cashier is questioning why you do not have any beer Resources mentioned in this episode: Recovery Elevator Retreat Connect with Cafe RE- Use the promo code Elevator for your first month free Sobriety Tracker iTunes Sobriety Tracker Android Sober Selfies! - Send your Sober Selfie and your Success Story to info@recoveryelevator.com Check out the upcoming Machu Picchu trip in 2018.  Send an e-mail to info@recoverelevator.com   “We took the elevator down, we gotta take the stairs back up, we can do this!”  

Our resident teacher Ashley Graffeo was lucky enough to participate in #EduHam and stopped by the very next day to tell us every single detail. We talk about the cast member Q&A, the mind-blowing student performances, seeing Hamilton (!!!), and to quote Ashley: “It was beautiful. This is Hamilton's America. Get it.”

Aliza Latta is a twenty-one-year-old writer, storyteller, artist, and hand letterer. She is a huge fan of both courage and ice cream, and we like how she thinks. We chatted with Aliza about her art, where she gathers her inspiration, why she chose not to go to college, and how choosing her own creative path has helped her find her passion. Here’s where to find Aliza: Website: www.alizanaomi.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/alizalatta Instagram: www.instagram.com/alizalatta Etsy Shop: www.etsy.com/shop/choosebrave Facebook: www.facebook.com/alizalattawriter Here’s where to find Ashley: Website: https://www.BrooksEditorial.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/brookseditorial Instagram: http://instagram.com/brookseditorial Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/brookseditorial Here’s where to find Abbigail: Website: https://www.InkwellsandImages.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/abbigailekriebs Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/abbigailekriebs/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/inkwellsandimages/ Mini Book Club: The Passion of Mary Margaret by Lisa Samson The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls Half-Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls Room by Emma Donoghue Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver Wine Folly by Madeline Puckette Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Caine Resources in this Episode: Boomerang from Google Inbox Pause for Gmail Quotes from this Episode: “It helps when you love it, because then it doesn’t feel like work.” - Aliza On Blogging: “I don’t know what my tagline would be. We’re always growing, and I want my blog to be a representation of that.” - Aliza “I feel like as I get better at the business side of thing, I step back and think ‘You are not doing anything creative’.” - Ashley “It can be a hard struggle between being the responsible business-y individual and also creating things that you want to look back on.” - Abbigail “I am a very all in person.” - Aliza “I am really, really happy with the choices that I have made.” - Aliza “There’s no one success metric for everyone.” - Abbigail “I’m often trying to figure out why I feel certain things.” - Aliza “I realized that the only reason I would accept this book deal was to say that I had a book deal…. It was this tangible thing that showed my worth. That’s not a good enough reason.” - Aliza “If there is one thing we are learning from this conversation is that there is no balance, anywhere, in life. There is just a lot of give and take and lot of different season and you just have to go with it and do whatever is in front of you at the moment.” - Ashley “I worked, I saved, and I went.” - Aliza “It’s always awesome when you can find the place or the ritual where you are like 'OK, now I can be creative.' ” - Ashley

Today we are chatting with Jessica Lawlor. Jess is a communications professional, writer, personal branding expert and speaker in the Philadelphia area. After six years in the corporate PR world, Jessica left her job this spring to run her own communications agency, blog, and brand, and to teach yoga. We chat about her time management now that she is self-employed and how yoga brought new inspiration to her life. Here’s where to find Jessica: Website: http://jessicalawlor.com Yoga: http://jessicalawlor.com/yoga/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/jesslaw Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jessicallawlor Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jessicallawlor/ Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/jessicalawlor/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicalawlor Snapchat: @jessicalawlor Here’s where to find Ashley: Website: https://www.BrooksEditorial.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/brookseditorial Instagram: http://instagram.com/brookseditorial Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/brookseditorial Here’s where to find Abbigail: Website: https://www.InkwellsandImages.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/abbigailekriebs Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/abbigailekriebs/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/inkwellsandimages/ Mini Book Club: Yes, Please by Amy Poehler Ask Gary Vee by Gary Vaynerchuck The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo Maybe In Another Life by Taylor Jenkins Reid Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo Quotes from this Episode: “I have no deadlines, which is a good thing AND a bad thing.” - Jessica “I’m still trying to do my most creative writing first thing in the morning.” - Jessica “You have a chance to get that first energy burst out on whatever is most important.” - Ashley “Having that set amount of time forced me to only work on what was most important for that day.” - Jessica “Online work expands to fill up the time you have available.” - Ashley “I’m trying to be gentle with myself, knowing that I have all these hours ahead of me in a day.” - Jessica “I do my creative work in the morning and my afternoons are a little more social.” - Jessica “The definition of Getting Gutsy is stepping outside of your comfort zone to live a life that makes you truly happy.” - Jessica “Emailing people to be guests on this podcast have been some gutsy moments for Ashley and I.” - Abbigail “It’s worth sitting down to write even if you never get a book deal.” - Ashley “It’s much, much harder to sit down and do the thing that you are passionate about. But the key really is in getting started.” - Jessica “Those goals I have for a couple of years down the line start with writing tomorrow’s blog post.” - Jessica “Sometimes ideas can be exhausting.” - Abbigail “I have found so much creativity through my yoga class and through my yoga teaching.” - Jessica “It doesn’t seem to matter where you are at, someone else is in the same place.” - Abbigail

Nikki Tran is a photographer, painter, pianist and puppy-mom to a Yorkipoo named Rusty. Over the last several years she has built a business as a talented wedding photographer in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. Now, she’s decided to give up what some people would think is a dream job to return to a 9-5 life. Listen in as she describes what her motivating factors are, and how she plans to make room for her creativity in this transition. Here’s where to find Nikki: Blog: http://nikkitranphotography.com/blog Wedding Photography Website: http://nikkitranphotography.com Photoshop Resources Website: http://theenchantedcollections.com Facebook (Wedding Photography & Blog): https://www.facebook.com/nikkitranphotography/ Facebook (Photoshop Resources): https://www.facebook.com/theenchantedcollections/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nikkitran1015/ Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/tran2011/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/nikkitranphotography Here’s where to find Ashley: Website: www.BrooksEditorial.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/brookseditorial Instagram: http://instagram.com/brookseditorial Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/brookseditorial Here’s where to find Abbigail: Website: www.InkwellsandImages.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/abbigailekriebs Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/abbigailekriebs/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/inkwellsandimages/ Mini Book Club: We gushed about our favorite classic children’s lit as well as what books we turn to as escapist literature. What are your favorites? Tell us on Twitter with #ChasingCreative! The Mary Poppins Series The Harry Potter Series The Laura Ingalls Series The Doldrums - Nicholas Gannon Anything - Susan Branch The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern Four Seasons in Rome - Anthony Doerr Anne of Green Gables - Lucy Maud Montgomery Quotes from this Episode: “Owning my own business has opened up a lot of doors for me.” - Nikki “I looked at what the professionals were doing and I did it too.” - Nikki, on being self-taught “I don’t think you ever lose that feeling of being a fraud... I like what I do. That’s all I need.” - Nikki “What I’m hearing is that everybody just feels like they are completely winging it.” - Ashley “It’s great when other creative people can be honest and say ‘Nope, I’m totally faking it over here! How about you?!?’” - Abbigail “If you don’t like what you’re doing, it’s not going to work.” - Nikki “No 9-5 job, no kids, no schedule… it sounds like a dream, but it can really mean 60 or 70 hour work weeks because there are no boundaries.” - Ashley “Make creativity easy for yourself.” - Abbigail “I’m completely different than I was at 22, and it’s only been 4 years.” - Nikki “We feel so much pressure to make money off of everything. It can be just as successful to have a steady job and work on the things that you really care about. Sometimes the pressure takes all of the fun out of it.” - Ashley “I’m excited to leave work and come home and work on creative things that I really want to do.” - Nikki “It it gets rejected or doesn’t get in, it’s OK. At least I wrote it.” - Ashley, on creating for the sake of creating “I think it’s good to mix personal and business... People want to know the you behind the business.” - Nikki “I love the kiddish wonder in things.” - Nikki “I’m 26-going-on-5.” - Nikki

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

Join us for this episode of Chasing Creative as we talk with creative community builder Kayla Hollatz! Kayla is a PR and social media professional by day and a creative coach, community builder, short-form poet, and host of the Twitter chat #createlounge by night. Listen in as we talk about investing in your audience to build an authentic community, finding the courage to launch your creative projects, and fighting off online overconsumption. Here’s where to find Kayla Website: www.kaylahollatz.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/kayla_hollatz Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kaylahollatz/ Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/kaylahollatz/ Periscope: https://www.periscope.tv/kayla_hollatz Grab Kayla’s poetry collection, Brave Little Bones! Don’t forget to stop in at #CreateLounge on Wednesdays at 7 p.m. CT! Here’s where to find Ashley Website: www.BrooksEditorial.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/brookseditorial Instagram: http://instagram.com/brookseditorial Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/brookseditorial Here’s where to find Abbigail Website: www.InkwellsandImages.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/abbigailekriebs Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/abbigailekriebs/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/inkwellsandimages/ Quotes “Remember how important it is to keep chasing that creative work, because we need it.” Kayla “The people I’m investing in are going to come along with me because I care about them.” Kayla “The only way that you’re going to build loyalty is by building trust, and the only way that you’re going to build trust is by giving value. That value is going to show that you’re really keeping your community in mind and you’re creating content for them.” Kayla “Everybody has something that they can bring to the table that no one else can. Nobody else is going to be able to do exactly what you do and bring your perspective and experience to your creative work.” Kayla On silencing that critical voice that says you have nothing to offer: “The best way to silence that is by not only creating what you do but launching that creative work.” “What you do and what you launch is going to inspire other people.” Kayla On passion projects: “Just get started on it, fall in love with it, and launch it.” Kayla “There’s room to have passion projects that you hold dear to you that nobody else necessarily has to see, but it can still have value to you, and that makes it still valuable of your time and effort.” Kayla “Just because you’re not putting something out there for likes or tweets or to sell doesn’t mean that it’s not worth going after in your own time.” Ashley “It’s just so important to keep going after what you’re passionate about. Even if it’s something different from what you do professionally, I really believe it will still help you professionally because it’s going to flex those creative muscles and make sure you’re always looking at things in a different way.” Kayla “I think everything you do influences the other parts of your life. I don’t think you can separate your creative self from your ‘real life’ self.” Abbigail “Part of what we have to do as creative people is make time to honor that little part of the self that wants to create, that wants to do something just for the sake of doing something.” Abbigail “It’s worth fighting the feeling that creative work isn’t worth your time because what you’re doing is really worthwhile, even if you can’t see it or measure it.” Ashley “The numbers may feel good and make you feel warm and fuzzy for a little bit, but what’s going to make you feel so, so fulfilled online is having a group of people that are likeminded who are rallying around you and who support just about everything you do.” Kayla “When you’re investing your time in your people, they’re going to invest back in you.” Kayla “As much as we can talk about connection, there’s also the sad reality that we all do, in some way shape or form, have to make money---hopefully doing what we love. Having a community that’s set up to respond well to your product is going to have those people become not only loyal community members but also loyal community members that convert when you do offer new products or launch something new.” Abbigail “Give yourself the excuse to play around, have some conversations, and see where you enjoy being and where your audience enjoys being. That’s when you can start to make those one-on-one connections and have them go from just an audience member to a community member.” Kayla “I think when overconsumption happens, that’s our cue to shift ourselves from consuming a lot of content to creating more content.” Kayla “You can’t invest well into your community if you’re not investing in yourself as well.” Kayla “Anytime we start to second-guess something, we want to take some time to make sure we’re moving in the right direction.” Kayla “None of us can be at 110% at all times. It can feel like everyone else online has it all figured out, but none of us really do. We’re all just trying to do the best we can with the energy we have.” Kayla “Make awesome things.” Kayla “As long as we make sure that we’re always making room for creativity, that’s going to make room for everything else that we hold really dear to us.” Kayla “Writing short-form can help anyone who wants to improve their long-form writing.” Ashley Mini Book Club The Anatomy of Being by Shinji Moon Spoken word poetry by Sierra DeMulder: http://www.sierrademulder.com/ Reading Novalis in Montana by Melissa Kwasny Online poet John Blase: www.thebeautifuldue.com

Welcome to the first episode of the Chasing Creative podcast! In this short intro episode we’re giving you the rundown on what Chasing Creative is all about. We’re sharing where we’re at in our own lives, including our constant struggle against creative burnout. We chat about not having enough energy for creative projects at the end of the day, the ways we (kind of) prioritize our creativity, why we have a love/hate relationship with Twitter, and what you can expect from the Chasing Creative podcast going forward. Here’s where to find Ashley: Website: www.BrooksEditorial.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/brookseditorial Instagram: http://instagram.com/brookseditorial Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/brookseditorial Here’s where to find Abbigail: Website: www.InkwellsandImages.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/abbigailekriebs Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/abbigailekriebs/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/inkwellsandimages/ Mini Book Club Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne Valente Quotes from the Episode “You can spend your time creating things, or you can spend your time marketing things.” -- Abbigail “I had this realization that all the podcasts I listen to have all these famous people they interview. And they have really great insights to share, but they don’t have action steps that someone like me---a regular person with a toddler---can take right now.” --- Ashley “It’s a difficult balance between ‘We make money and we’re surviving’ and ‘But we also want to be creative.’” --- Ashley “Nobody in school told us how to get up every day and continue to be creative.” --- Abbigail “Our society tells us that creativity is a nonessential. It’s a hobby you squeeze in when you have time or at the end of the day or maybe when you’re retired. The message of Essentialism tells creatives that if creativity is something that’s important to you, you need to make it an essential thing in your life. Make it a priority.” --- Ashley “We’re following through on an idea. This is good for us!” --- Ashley