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In this special student-hosted episode of the “Weinberg in the World” podcast, student host Ashley Guo interviews JJ, a 1997 Northwestern graduate in psychology who now works at Microsoft. JJ shares his journey from initially pursuing a pre-med path to discovering his passion for psychology through an Intro to Psych class with Professor David Uttal. He discusses his struggles with organic chemistry and how psychology felt more natural to him. JJ also talks about his diverse coursework, including Russian and Eastern literature, history, and art classes, which enriched his undergraduate experience and allowed him to explore various interests. https://www.linkedin.com/in/jjguajardo/ Transcript: Ashley: Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with JJ who graduated from Northwestern in 1997 with a major in psychology. He is currently at Microsoft. Thank you so much for being here with us today. JJ: Well, I'm happy to be here. Thanks. Ashley: We're excited to hear that about your work at Microsoft. Before we do that, we'd love to hear more about your time at Northwestern and what drew you to study psychology initially. JJ: Yeah, good question. I kind of have a funny journey through Northwestern, although probably not super atypical given what I've heard. When I got to Northwestern as a bright-eyed freshman, I was pre-med. I was going to be a medical doctor. That was my path, so I was very excited about going that way. I was trying to figure out what major that I would want to take on it because I didn't think I wanted to do a straight biology major, physics, or something like that, so I was just playing around a little bit. One of my friends, upperclassmen, suggested... He was pre-med, and he was taking psychology classes. He's like, "It's actually a pretty cool major for pre-meds." That's interesting. So I took an Intro to Psych class with David Uttal, and I loved it. I was fascinated by the subject matter. It was one of those moments in time when you're like, "I'm actually kind of okay at this." I was definitely struggling in the pre-med classes, especially when I got to organic chemistry, which absolutely crushed me. I just couldn't quite grasp that kind of subject matter. Whereas, the psychology classes I was taking, between Intro, I took a developmental psychology class with David Uttal as well, and then other ones, it just sort of clicked. It just worked well, and it felt like I didn't have to try super hard. It sounds weird, but I didn't have to try super hard to do well. That's not because it's easy. It's just because it was kind of coming easy to me, which is weird. So I thought that was a good sign. As I continued to struggle in organic chemistry and continued to really fall in love with the subject matter in the psychology courses I was taking, it just felt like a natural thing to stop doing the pre-med track and pursue psychology from there. Then, yeah, I just jumped in head first and took a bunch of different courses. Obviously majored in it. I worked in a lab with Dr. Uttal for a couple years doing hands-on research with the kiddos in the lab in developmental psychology. Yes, that's how I got into it, and was very, very happy to do so. Ashley: Wow, that's amazing to hear. I also took Intro to Psych and really loved the class because I'm a cognitive science major, so that resonates a lot. JJ: That's awesome. Yeah, it's a lot of fun. It just felt natural, and it just worked. Ashley: Is there any other classes that you took or extracurriculars that you felt like gave you even more chance to explore psychology? JJ: Oh, interesting. It was funny. I actually took a bunch of, this is kind of weird, Russian, Eastern lit classes- Ashley: Cool. JJ: ... and history, sort of random because one of my friends was taking one, and I'm like, "Yeah, that sounds like fun." I had a couple different professors, I can't remember the one's name, but they were just absolutely fascinating. It's one of those kind of situations where, while the subject matter is interesting in and of itself, when somebody is passionate about teaching it and they have so much more to add, it just makes you more excited and interested. So I took way more classes in that subject than I thought I would've normally, which is kind of cool. Then I was also able to take a few art classes, which was really cool. I took some drawing classes later on in my time at Northwestern. That was really fun, and it let me explore the more creative side. I just loved taking a wide variety of things at Northwestern. I think the way that our curriculum was set up and the opportunities that it afforded were awesome, just to be able to explore various topics that I might not have done otherwise. Ashley: Oh, I see. I noticed that you also continued to pursue PhD. Can you share with us what led you to that decision? JJ: Yeah, yeah. Like I said before, I was doing research in the lab, so I was doing hands-on work, and I really found it fascinating. Then one summer, the summer between my junior and senior year, I got some grant to continue doing research over the summer, which was great, as part of this program and had a really great time doing that. I could run my own research and stuff. Ashley: Wow. JJ: Really, again, it just felt like a natural fit. I was already okay at it, and I liked it. So going into my senior year, I was not sure what I was going to do, to be honest with you. I figured I'd go get a job somewhere and not knowing what I was going to. But talking to Dr. Uttal, he was very encouraging of looking at grad schools. At the time, I was pretty ignorant about them. I didn't know what that would entail. I didn't know how much it would cost and if it was feasible for me and everything. But he reassured me that there were certainly grants and fellowships available and that maybe I was a pretty good candidate for some schools. So I went ahead and applied to various programs that were doing some really interesting developmental work, developmental psychology work, a few around the Midwest. Then eventually the University of Chicago, I got into there and just fell in love with the school and the program. It looked awesome. They gave me a full fellowship to go there with a stipend, so it was a no-brainer. So I just jumped straight in from undergrad to grad school. I studied there for five years and got my PhD in developmental psych, studying small children and infants. My eventual thesis was on nine-month old babies, so a very different subject matter than I'm dealing with now. But it was a great time. I'm really happy to have pursued that and finish the degree. Ashley: Wow. I see. How did you found your first job after PhD? JJ: That was kind lucky. It was probably my late third, early fourth year of grad school when I realized that I didn't want to pursue academia as a career. I really liked what I was doing, but I didn't think I would love it enough to do it for my life. In complete transparency, the University of Chicago is a great program, and there were some really amazing people coming out of the program. Folks who were older than me, were a couple years ahead of me, were on the job market with amazing CVs and really a great list of publications and just fantastic candidates, and they were having a hard time getting jobs. They were getting jobs, academic jobs, in places that I just couldn't ever see myself going to or being happy living in some of these places. I want to have a little more agency about where I ended up. I figured that academia was not going to let me have that agency. It was going to dictate where I go, so I decided it wasn't going to be the route I pursued. So I started thinking about non-academic jobs, but I again didn't have a whole lot of... not support, it's not fair, but just a lot of people around me didn't really know that world because they were all academics. At the time, the University of Chicago didn't have a very good system for helping people like me looking at non-academic stuff, although they've done a great job now, and that's a whole other subject. I was looking at jobs. I had something lined up through a friend in Chicago doing some market research. But then happened to look at a job on this old website called Monster.com. It's where you'd find jobs back in the day. I saw something about, "Do you like video games, and do you like working with kids?" I was like, "Yes, and yes. That's awesome." Love video games because I was playing a lot of PlayStation at the time. So I applied. It was with the group who I currently work with now, Xbox Research. I think back in the day we were called Games User Research. This was back in 2002, so a long time ago. I was very excited to get an interview, phone interviews, and I ended up getting the job. It was just a vendor role, which means that I was not working for Microsoft. I was a contractor contracting to Microsoft, but I was happy to do that. I figured I'd come out to Seattle for a year and try it out, and then maybe ended up back in Chicago where my family was. But on a personal note, I came to Seattle, and I met my future now-wife six months after being here, and I was never going back. So I've stayed 22 years now. So that's how I got that role back in the day. Ashley: Wow, wow. So you didn't really decide to, I guess, officially move to Seattle when you first left? JJ: Yeah, it was just on a whim. "Yeah, I'm going to go out there." I took a flight with a backpack and my golf clubs. Then my parents drove out in a van with a bunch of my stuff. Again, I figured it'd be about a year or so and had to move it back, but never went back. Ashley: Never went back, never went back. Oh, I see. I'm curious, your previous, I guess, time either in Northwestern or UChicago, how does what you learned in school or maybe outside of school apply or not apply to your current job? JJ: It's an interesting question. It's kind of funny. In psychology, I think about that major and why it worked well for me and everything and what I loved about it. I think at its core, it's like, as psychologists, we observe human behavior and try to make some sense of it. That's just kind of what we do. That translates perfectly to the work I do. So in my job as a games user researcher, we watch people and we talk to people as they play our games, as they use the systems, and try to make sense of it. That's our role. That's at the most basic level of stuff. But when I think about when we're in the lab, like a usability lab, for example, where we're literally watching somebody play through a game or through part of a system, and we're watching to see where they succeed or where they struggle, and we're talking to them and we're trying to get to the root cause of what's actually happening, why they're actually struggling, what is it that they're not seeing properly, or, to be more precise, what have we failed to convey as designers, we have to use those techniques that we learned in psychology to drill down to the root cause of an issue, to really question in the right way, in a non-leading way, don't be biased and lead people in the wrong direction. So we use all those kinds of tools that we learned in psych. Then on the other end, when we're doing the analysis, same kind of thing, like all the data that we look at, the way we're going to interpret it, the tools we use to analyze it, that's all from the psychological training, the methods, and experimental backgrounds that we have. So I got all that from school, which is great. That training that I got at Northwestern, and then certainly in my later program, created the foundation and the basis for me to be able to do my job successfully. So I use it quite a bit. Ashley: Wow. JJ: Now, I don't use the developmental psychology stuff a whole lot given that I don't work with babies, but I did for a while. There were some games and products that we were developing for kids that I actually was brought in to do work on because of my background, so I was able to use some of the developmental psychology knowledge and domain expertise there as well. Ashley: Wow, that's amazing. Because I know not everyone can get to use what they learned in school in their actual job- JJ: Yeah, [inaudible 00:13:52]. Ashley: ... so that's amazing to hear. Were there any challenges that you faced when you first came out of UChicago going into your job? JJ: I think probably the biggest challenge or biggest surprise, I'd say, was the speed at which you work in business. In grad school over the course of five years, I ran two big research projects, one for my master's and for my PhD, and each of those had sub-components, of course. Then I had ran a couple of side projects with my PI at the time as well. I probably had four or five things that I did over the course of my time there. So you just do the math, and it's, on average, about a year for a project. Then you go to industry. You're given a problem to try to solve or try to get some insight on it, and you got about a week to do it. It's a very different pace. So I think that was surprising but exciting as well. I think there was a moment when you realize that this is non-academic research. You're not going to try to publish in Nature or some other journal. This is to try to answer a business decision and give a team information to be able to make some changes to the product to improve it on a pretty quick timeframe, and that's all you need to do. I think once you realize that, the stakes are a little bit different. You can adjust accordingly and speed up your work and everything. So that was a big surprise, though, was the timelines and the speed at which we operate. Ashley: I see. I guess I know that the speed is definitely going to be different after school compared to during school, but a week compared to a year is very- JJ: It's different. But at the same time, the scope is much different, like I said, and the stakes are different. I do think that the training that I got at Northwestern and UChicago certainly gave me the ability to look at data and make sense of it relatively quickly and communicate that stuff, those insights back to the team with speed and accuracy as well. So I was well-trained to be able to do that. Ashley: I see. Gathering and then analyzing and then communicating that, those are really important parts. Were there any project that you've worked on that you really enjoyed? JJ: At Microsoft? Ashley: Mm-hmm. JJ: Yeah, I've got a bunch that I just loved doing. One of the best parts about my role, my job is that we do have freedom to... We have to answer questions and work with our partners and make sure we're fulfilling that need, but there's also a certain level of freedom within that. I kind of do it the way you need to do it or you want to do it, which is pretty cool. So a few projects I worked on, one was on the Forza Motorsport series, which is the racing games. That's part of Microsoft, part of Xbox Game Studios. They had been building this series of games for a decade or so. I think we were going into the sixth version of the game. I just took over working on the project, the product. I was talking to the creative director of the studio, and I was asking, what are his big questions? What does he want to know? One of the things he want to know was, who plays our game and why? Well, that's a big question, and I thought a pretty easy answer. It's like, "Well, people who play racing games play your game, or they like cars." But that wasn't going to satisfy him. So I went and did a bunch of research using data analytics, so the big, big numbers, as well as survey and interview, so kind of a combination of methods, to put together a set of gaming profiles, so the kinds of people that play the game, the motivations they have for playing the game. Someone might want to play the games just because they really enjoy playing by themselves and running through an entire single-player campaign in a game and play 60 hours of the game, win all these different championships. That might be a motivation to play. Someone else might be motivated just by playing against other people. They want to play with their friends online, and that's the motivation. Someone else might be motivated just because they've got 15 minutes to blow off some steam after work and before they need to do something else. They just jump into a race, and they want to just drive really fast for a little bit of time and drive some cool car. So we ended up finding these different groups with different motivations. That ended up informing the next versions of the game and how we actually built the game. So it was pretty cool. The design team, we built a lot of assets and resources around these kinds of profiles, these kinds of people, and then we build the game to meet those needs. So we're like, "We're going to build for this kind of person, this campaign kind of player. We're going to build for this multiplayer person, these various things." So you could really see our fingerprints all over the next versions of the game, which was really cool, really rewarding. You don't get to see that kind of impact at that level too often in your career. So that was a really fun project to take on, and I just really enjoyed the work. It was really fun diving deeply into millions and millions of data points and looking at these ginormous spreadsheets and making some kind of sense out of it. Ashley: I see. Just from hearing, I feel like there could be a lot of transferable skills a student could learn in school and also potentially use that in their future careers. JJ: Absolutely. Yeah, definitely. Ashley: Are there any advice or suggestions you would give to students who are interested in, let's say, pursuing a career in user research or a related field? JJ: Yeah. I think one thing I would offer to students is to try to get involved early, if you can. There are a lot of professional conferences that have discounts, for example, for students to join. So I would say get involved in the community as soon as you can or as soon as you want to, just because that's the whole game. I hate saying this, but so much of it's about networking. While I find that, I've always found that kind of cringey and annoying, it's incredibly necessary, and it's just something I've come to terms with. So I'd say, make sure that you start building your network early on. Because the more you're out there, the more your name is known, the more contacts that you have, the more likely you are to be able to land something or at least get an interview and talk to somebody about it. I think that's a big part. Again, these professional conferences, they're very, very welcoming of academics and students. Because we all come from that background, so we're all very much like, yes, we should absolutely bring the next generation of people in. There's a lot of freedom to interact at those conferences and to meet people. Me and my colleagues are all super happy to talk with students and give advice and try to make that connection, if we can. So I would say that's one big piece that I'd offer, for sure. Ashley: So networking and also just exposing ourselves to different scenarios or different events. JJ: I think so, yeah. Ashley: Okay. Thank you so much for sharing. It's really helpful to learn about your career trajectory and the advice that you share with students. This will really help students who are trying to figure out their careers in college. Really appreciate you being here today. JJ: Yeah, happy to do it, for sure.

This episode is with Ashley Love Richards and Fallon Morey, cohosts of TSFU the PodcastKatherine and Fallon play a game with Ashley asking her Christian Clichés to see if she knows what they mean. We also discuss the perspectives Catholics and protestants have of one another, the origin of Alcoholics Anonymous (spoiler, it's Christian), and whether or not AA is a cult. This conversation is comical and fun—and borderline irreverent. Shoot Christians Say YouTube VideoThe New F Word EpisodeUncertain is a podcast of Tears of Eden, a community and resource for those in the aftermath of Spiritual Abuse. If you're enjoying this podcast, please take a moment to like, subscribe, or leave a review on your favorite podcasting listening apparatus. You can support the podcast by going to TearsofEden.org/supportTo get in touch with us please email tearsofeden.org@gmail.comFollow on Instagram @uncertainpodcastTranscript is unedited for typos and misspellings Katherine: [00:00:00] I actually, hi, Fallon. Hi. These are my two friends that I just met through. That's a fucked up podcast, and we had a blast hanging out and, and, and interview doing an interview. I had a blast hanging out with them and doing an interview with them.And so we decided to do this episode. Fallon grew up similar to me in evangelicalism and Ashley did not. So we're going to play a game called Stuff Christians Say, where Fallon and I are going to introduce Christian sayings to Ashley and ask her what she thinks they mean. And this is a like Not a pass fail like no, like there's, there are no stakes here other than testing your Christian, your Christian knowledge before I, I'm going to play a video, a little video to, to get us warmed up, but before I do that.Ashley and Fallon. I would love to hear what brings you here today. Ashley, go Ashley: first. What's up, Kathryn? [00:01:00] Hey! Super excited to be here. So yeah, I have a podcast called that's so fucked up and it's about Colts and murder and other generally fucked up stuff.Although I would say I primarily focus on Colts and coercive groups and I can high control groups. Obviously that's more where your podcast and your stories fit into. I saw Jesus camp 17 years ago when it came out in 2006. I saw a bunch of evangelical children being brainwashed at a camp to Take abortion out of the you know, take abortion rights away because a third of their fucking friends could have been there that night and they weren't.And then I saw it 17 years later, like right after our abortion rights got taken away. And I was like, hold on, this is a long game. And then I saw shiny, happy [00:02:00] people and I've been obsessed with high control, coercive Christianity ever since. So I'm very excited to have met you through me and Fallon doing a segment called the new f word.The f word was fundamentalism fundamentalism and Actually, it's really funny or it's actually really fun the episode that Catherine was on was called the new f word the C and F and E words Which sound like they're going to be really bad, but it was Christianity, nationalism, fundamentalism, and evangelicalism.So, you know, really, I had a lot of fun. I thought that was fun. Katherine: That was one of my funnest, my funnest or most fun. I don't know. Funnest, funnest episodes that I've ever, ever interviewed on. I had a great time with y'all. Ashley: I wanted to make sure that we knew what the fuck we were talking about before we started [00:03:00] talking about it, because as you said, I have, I am not religious, I did not grow up with any religion, I have a Patreon segment where I learn about the Bible, it's called Ash Learns the Bible, because I knew about that one story, I think Solomon, where they try to cut the baby in half, and I was like, That is fucked up.Is there other shit like that? Because I want to hear about it. So, basically, I guess what I'm trying to say is that Christianity has taken over my life somehow. Katherine: That's an intellectual exercise. Ashley: Yeah, not in That I'm involved with it, but I'm just fascinated and I'm fascinated Katherine: when I meet people who didn't grow up the way that I did because it's so normal and it's so normalized and then as you mentioned on the episode that we did together that I will link in the show notes about How 80 percent of [00:04:00] the United States identifies as Christian, there's so much that's just like very inundated into the culture and most people have had some kind of like church experience.And so when I can't encounter people who don't have any, any upbringing in that I'm fascinated by that. What was your life like? Yeah, it's like, oh! How did you, how did you do Ashley: that? I'll tell you, I'll tell you one thing that made my life different and a lot better that I definitely know, and Did I grow up with fear and shame as a child?Yes, I grew up in a house with a narcissist. But, I tell you what, I was not afraid that any fuck up that I did was going to get me sent to hell. I didn't even know about hell, you know? Like, you guys were constantly in fear that you were going to go there. I didn't even know that it was a fucking thing. I think I saw all dogs go to heaven and...I knew heaven was like a, probably a cool place for [00:05:00] dogs. Yeah. But that was the extent of my knowledge. Right. I love it. I love it. And it has been up until, up until pretty recently. I Katherine: mean, you're going to know so many things after today, after our game today, the lingo. Yeah. And I, I, I, I'm now I'm like worried.Is God going to judge us for playing this game? Fallon: God is not going to judge us for playing this game. Ashley: They loves it, but welcome Katherine: Fallon. Tell us today. Fallon: mainly to talk to you again, cause it was so fun the last time. But then also, like you said, I, I think I've told you before, but I grew up Catholic. So, you know, Catholics are very like religion at arm's length.There's so many rules. There's very like, you know, you spend a lot of money and you go to mass and the mass has like exercises in it where you stand up and sit down a lot and kneel. And my mom used to, or my uncle used to call them the Pope's aerobics when he would go to [00:06:00] mass. And. Around like high school.I started to hang out with Christian people who are more in the evangelical crowd, and I, I think I just wanted to be accepted by somebody. Katherine: Pause. You said you hang out, you hung out with Christian people. Did you not consider yourself a Christian as a Catholic? Fallon: No, not really. Because I wasn't, I wasn't really yourself.Catholic. Yeah. Just Catholic. Like it was like it was I don't know, like it, like it was a nationality or something. Like I, I didn't have a concept of what it meant to be religious because I wasn't really connected to my religion. Like it like you had to go to the dentist, but you just had to do it more frequently.It wasn't like a big deal to me. And then I, I wanted some, like. I want to say I wouldn't, wasn't like meaning and purpose to my life, but I ended up hanging out with kids that like went to church camps and did God stuff. So they bought me my first Bible, the little. [00:07:00] Like tie dyed teen study Bible everyone had in the mid nineties, you know, and They had like the little stories in it and they taught me all about purity culture.Yay. And like good friends do and and then I sort of went on my own path and discovered You know, religion and church when I was in college and then in when I was in the Navy, I got like rebaptized again and I was like fully into it. I would say only about eight years ago, I stopped believing in going to church.And I would call myself having been like evangelical during those years. And now I would call myself. I don't know. What is it called when you believe in a higher power, but not necessarily like the Christian Katherine: God? Spiritual, but not religious. Yeah, that's Fallon: a good Ashley: way. Like I think that agnostic means that you believe in a higher power.You just don't claim to know what that higher power is. And I don't know if something greater than you. Fallon: Yeah. So I don't know if there's like a higher one power or if it's like the power of the [00:08:00] universe. I think there could be. You know, there's like weird forces out there. I believe in ghosts and maybe reincarnation and all that kind of stuff, but I don't subscribe to like a, a religion.So I don't I don't find I need it anymore. But then I met Ashley like last year and somehow found myself on this crazy windy road to becoming one of her co hosts, which has been amazing. And we did this F word segment together where I got to meet you. So I think that's, I think that's my path.That's my my journey here. Katherine: As you were talking, I thought of two other things to add to the list. It's like, we can't just assume because like, we're too like, like, yes, we're more religious people, assuming that, you know, certain things, but I'm like, we can't assume that Ashley knows these things. Ashley: Yeah, I actually had two quick questions.So if you're re baptized, That means you're a born again Christian, which means you're evangelical, right? I just want to make [00:09:00] sure, do I have that right? It's a symbol, Katherine: but could mean a lot of things. It Fallon: could mean a lot of things. Katherine: Like Presbyterians will baptize babies, and it's like a future hope. Like, we're hoping that they will be a Christian in the future, but it's not saying that the baby is a Christian.Like Baptists will baptize someone as an adult because you have to be old enough to like make the decision yourself. And then that is a symbol that you are a Christian when you are baptized as an adult. So it's different for everybody, but it's like more like a Ashley: ceremony. And so being born again, that doesn't equate to evangelicalism.It is. It does. Yeah. It can be. Not always though. See, this shit is slippery. It is. I mean, what? I Katherine: haven't heard of anyone outside of evangelicalism using born again Fallon: though. No, that's really a, that's really a, an evangelical kind of terminology. [00:10:00] Which Katherine: means that you have accepted Jesus into your heart.Totally. Ashley: Totally. Yeah. You guys, I put up a video the other day because I, I don't know if you saw it on the story, but it said, when you take your friend to church and they don't know what to do with their hands, and this girl is slowly doing the Macarena.Katherine: that would 100 percent be me. I'd be like, I don't know what's happening. Ashley: They're all raising their hands. Katherine: I remember. Fallon: Go ahead. Oh, I was going to say my stepfather was not a religious person and my mom used to make him try to go to mass. She quickly abandoned, but he would walk into the church and he, he would go, what am I supposed to do with water?Like there's a bowl of water. What am I supposed to do with it? And I was like, stick your fingers in it and then blessed yourself. And he's like, what do you mean blessed yourself? And I, so we, we taught him up, down, left, right. And so then anytime we mentioned church for like [00:11:00] the rest of. Their marriage, we'd be like, we're going to church.And he just like, yell up, down, left, right. Like that was his synonymous word for with church in church. Katherine: Oh, yeah. Ashley: I love it. But they told me that spectacles, testicles, wallet, and watch was to help people to remember how to do the Katherine: Austin Fallon: powers told you that Ashley: bitch. Another person, religious person Katherine: told me that I swear, I swear, Ashley: or I'm making weird shit up.Also, you guys, the video I was just referring to, I believe was from Deuteronomemes, which is my favorite new account. I'm gonna follow them after. Fuck. You gotta go follow them. They put amazing Videos of like mega church pastors, wild and out and people going way too hard singing at church. Like it's, it's, it's really good stuff.You guys, Katherine: I'm going to, I'm going to follow them [00:12:00] after, but in preparation for this game, I'm going to play a little video for us and folks who grew up. Religious probably I've seen this video, but this is just going to get us warmed up real quick and let's get warm, share my screen. So I'm so Ashley: excited Katherine: and here we go.Bless his heart. You think he's backsliding? I think I saw him drink. Yeah, but in moderation. I just wasn't seeing much fruit. He's going down a slippery slope. How's your heart, man? How's your heart? I'm just such a words guy. It was a total God thing. I'm blessed. Been working on my testimony. Is that secular music?We're opening with a secular song tonight. Wait, is this a secular song? Isn't she secular? Which station is the fish? 104. 3, the fish. Safe for the whole family. You know he's a believer. I think he's saved. I just pray you'd give him traveling mercies. Pray for all powers unspokens. I echo that. I just really like to echo Pather's prayer, Father.I echo that echo of my echo of his echo. I really [00:13:00] feel like I'm being released from this, you know? I'm trying to be relevant. I'm just trying to be in the world, not of it. Hey, do you want to join our small group? You want to join my D group? You want to join my cell group? Community group? Access group?Accountability group? Axe 27 group? Dude, he brought it. He brought the word. That service last night rocked me. They're pretty purpose driven. Yeah, it's Seeker. Don't they do Seeker service there? I feel like he's gotten really watered down. I don't feel like he really teaches the word. It's just not enough meat, you know?Are they non denom? We have a great Wednesday night supper. Let's invite some dudes over and fellowship tonight. We're gonna have a sick time of fellowshipping tonight. Dude, we had the sickest fellowship last night. We're going straight velocity. Ignite. Yeah, I'm going to ignite. The edge. The dive. The bridge.The ramp. Fire. Courageous. Passion. Echo. Reverb. Noise. Velocity. Drive. Elevate. Radiate. 722. 635. 419. Orange. Blue. Yellow. Green. Clear. Neon. Catalyst Conference this year. I don't do that because I feel like it ruins my witness. Been struggling with that. I'm really wrestling with a, I'm wrestling with a doubt.Need someone to hold me accountable. I'm really trying to be intentional with her. I'm [00:14:00] pursuing her, for sure. I'm trying to guard her heart. Guard her heart though, bro. Do you hold me accountable to that? Yeah, well, Bounce your ass. Dang it. Crap. Shoot. Sheesh. Frick. Darn it. What the H? Holy crap. Son of a bee sting.Dude, he's really teeing me off. I'm gonna kick his ass. Are you assing me right now? Not cool. I find that offensive. I find that offensive. I find that Fallon: offensive. Oh my god. I don't care how many times I watched that. I watched it right before you got on the call and I watched it yesterday and I still laugh every time, every time because it's, it's.It's Katherine: so real and that's literally how people talk though. Ashley: Let's have some fellowship. I want to say that I understoodmaybe about 20 percent of that. Fallon: This game is going to be amazing. We should watch Katherine: it again at the end and see if it makes [00:15:00] more sense. Ashley: Although also, whoo, I got to say some of that brought me back to my AA days. A lot of fellowshipping and AA, a lot of great Katherine: testimonial, you know, maybe in different words you know, but.Mm. I have a suspicion that AA is a culti, is culti. Do you think AA is culti? Ashley: I have a suspicion that I'm really irritated that culti shows don't want to talk to me more about my experience in AA because it was culti as fuck and people are like, Yeah. I don't want to put 12 step programs down. It's like, well, listen, if you knew what I was going to say, it would be that AA saved my life probably.And I needed that Katherine: accountability when Ashley: I started. And then it became a little culty and maladaptive, so I'm not totally talking shit. Not everything that's culty is inherently bad, but Katherine: well, that's kind of church [00:16:00] Ashley: is pretty fucking culty motherfucker. Like I did wreck the words. The shit that I did recognize was either from.AA or the Bachelor because they said a lot of like, what's on your heart in a season of the Bachelorette that I watched Katherine: Are we ready? Ashley: Are we ready? Ashley? I'm so ready. All Katherine: right. I feel like we should have had a game Ashley: sound. I'm excited as F Katherine: all right. Take it away.Fallon: All right. All right. If somebody said to you guard her heart, what does that Ashley: mean? Be like be a man and make sure that you protect her. That's pretty close. Nailed it. Woo! One for one, Ashley. There's Fallon: also, there's also a secret meaning which is in the dating, like, in the dating concept. I actually got this one from my husband.It's like, guard her heart. Basically, don't have sex with her. Like, Katherine: don't, don't stir up her emotions. [00:17:00] Yeah. Be a good Christian people. Make her want to have sex with you. Fallon: Yeah. You know, those wily women, they might just want to have sex with everybody. Guard her heart. Katherine: Okay. And then it's also used in a broader context of just like guard your heart against, you know, temptation, guard your heart against sin, guard your heart about, against desires and yeah, it's a very common, common, So, so Ashley: you should be guarding her heart against sin and desire.Yeah. Because you're the man and that's okay. Ew. I hate it. At first. I was like, no, Katherine: that's cool. You're supposed to guard their eyes. So you're supposed to cover your body to guard your, your brother's eyes. Help him guard his eyes so that he wasn't led into temptation. Yeah. Yeah. You visually see Ashley: the patriarchy is so strong already.You guys, I can't Katherine: get better. Ashley: Good job. Good job, Ashley. Yay. I don't, I bet I feel like I [00:18:00] didn't get the second meaning, which was so much grosser. It's like, you know, those ladies and the crazy Katherine: feelings. Oh, Fallon: no. Well, we'll award points like the way they do on whose line. So we'll, you know, instead of a thousand for that one, you get 500.All right. Okay. Katherine: Next. Good job. Good job. You may already know this, but the uncertain podcast is the affiliate podcast of tears at Eden, a nonprofit that serves as a community and resource for survivors of spiritual abuse. This podcast and the work of tears are supported by donations from generous listeners. Like you. If you're enjoying this podcast, please consider giving a donation by using the link in the show notes or visiting tears of eaton.org/support. You can also support the podcast by rating and leaving a review and sharing on social media. If you're not already following us, please follow us on Facebook at tears of Eden and Instagram at uncertain podcast. Thanks so much for listening.And now back to the show. All right. What does Ashley: [00:19:00] backsliding mean? Okay. So again, I'm kind of thinking AA. Okay. You've made progress on something, and now you're not, you're not making progress anymore or you're maybe even going back into your bad habits. Katherine: Yeah, I mean, I think it's similar. I think the word backsliding has this idea of like sliding back sliding back your old ways.And so, yeah, but I think it can kind of be used interchangeably with any sort of like, it's like a slippery slope into into. Ashley: Sin, if it's temptation and sin. Yeah. Katherine: And like that was like a slippery slope in the churches that I grew up in, which are very patriarchal and women couldn't be pastors. If you like, let a woman teach on Sunday morning, it was like a slippery slope to like a woman.[00:20:00] Having leadership and so it would be like a point of contention or a slippery slope would be like, you know, letting your child go to, if it was like, you're only supposed to homeschool your kids, but you let your kid go to a co op, that'd be like a slippery slope to putting your child in school or holding hands is like a slippery slope to having Ashley: sex.Oh, yeah. Katherine: Quite any more to say I'm backsliding quite the Fallon: jump. Yeah. I just have to wonder why there's so much sliding, like Christianity is on the mountain covered in Ky and you just, Ashley: any minute you're just ready to like, just slide, slide Katherine: down. Sliding. Well, there's an a lot of like going upward, like climbing the mountain right.The heights. There's all this idea of like heaven being above and you're like climbing and you're moving upward and you're climbing the ladder. There's a lot of that. And so then sliding would be like you're sliding back down Ashley: into the [00:21:00] mire. So if you like stopped praying as much or you started watching secular television.Fallon: Yeah, that's the one. Ashley: Whoa. Because I know what secular means. It means like of the non christian world, right? Right. Fallon: I heard that meaning a lot more what Ash said, which is like somebody came into their belief later in life and they were doing really, really well. And usually they're like on fire for Jesus, right?Like in the beginning. Oh, yeah. And then. When they're backsliding, it means like, Oh, they, they, I saw them hanging out with a friend who's not in church and I saw them go to the regular movie. So I think they might be backsliding into their Ashley: secular life. You guys are fucking tripping me the fuck out right now because that is so AA too.Like backsliding, slippery slope. If you're hanging out with. You know, your old friends who used to [00:22:00] drink and do drugs with that's a slippery slope. If you, if you, if you stop coming to as many meetings, you know, that might mean that you're out. Does AA have a Katherine: foundation of Christianity? Like did Christianity?Ashley: Well, motherfucker, I do know the Lord's prayer by heart. So you tell me, I would say big yes, hold on, hold on, hold, hold the phone, hold the phone. Hold on. Dear God. Give us our daily bread. Hold on. Give us our daily bread. Lead us not into temptation and walk through the valley. Fallon: You've lost some of it.I think over the years I haven't been to Ashley: a fucking AA meeting in a long time, but I used to know that shit. Walk Katherine: through the valley of the shadow of death. Amen. Ashley: I take a look at my life and realize there's nothing left, Katherine: [00:23:00] you know, coolio. Yeah. Yes. Fallon: My guys. I was thinking Amish paradise from Ben's weird.Owl Ashley: lives living in an Amish bear. There you go. Love weird. Owl. Fallon: Well, right now we're definitely backsliding because we're getting secular up in here. Ashley: Okay. No, but you guys, are you hearing how many AA connections Katherine: there are? I wonder, I need to research this now. Did AA start by Christian found with a Christian foundation?And is, is the prayer from AA that give me the courage to accept the Ashley: things I cannot? Yeah. Oh yeah. Okay. Hold on. I know that one. That's the serenity prayer. God. I believe it starts with God. No. Yeah. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.Is that, is that religious? Is that a religious poem? Katherine: That, that is in religion and there will like that will happen, but like, I don't know which came [00:24:00] first. Did it come from AA into Christianity or did Christianity bring that into AA? I don't know. Shit bitch. I don't know. We should figure it out though. We have another podcast episode coming up.Yeah, we do. Hey Fallon. So, Fallon: If I say the term, a baby believer or a baby Christian, what does that mean?Ashley: Like they just got indoctrinated. Yeah. God, you're so good at this. Fallon: Contrary to popular belief, it does not mean a tiny baby who is also a Ashley: Christian. Well, you guys, honestly, I think I've got a little bit of a leg up at this point. If we would have done this episode six months ago, I think that... Right. I probably would have been a lot more lost.I'm not gonna lie. I've learned a lot about Christianity recently. Katherine: We're gonna have to go to the hard ones. Ashley: Yeah, we're gonna have to go to the hard ones. Oh, were you guys starting off with softballs? No, bring it. Katherine: Yeah, okay, tell me what transubstantiation and the trinity Ashley: are.[00:25:00] Okay, good job. Well, you stumped me on A, okay? And the next one was what? Transubstantiation Katherine: and the Trinity. Ashley: Okay, the Trinity is the Father, Mary, and the Holy Ghost. Very close. It's the Katherine: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, yes. The Holy Ghost, Holy Spirit, Holy Ghost. You got it. Ashley: Hey, what's Holy Ghosting? Is that a thing?Or is that a sex thing? What? Is that a sex thing? I heard it was like when you come on somebody's back and then leave. Katherine: Is it that a Superman? Oh Fallon: my God. The fact that both of you know more than one term for weird Katherine: sex acts and she's like, no, it's Fallon: not that weird. It's this other weird superman. Ashley: We're thinking of the, the Dirty Sanchez, which I don't actually know what that is.It's different. Fallon: No, let's talk, Ashley: talk about that. Life is about the rusty trombone, Katherine: you know the trans substantiation? You [00:26:00] don't know what that Ashley: is? No. Okay. The Trinity though. Yeah, that's father, son . Katherine: Do you know that that means that God is three in one? Ashley: He's the father and the. No, no, he's a, he's a buy one, get one free deal.Buy one, get two free. Wow. That's a hot bargain. Hey, question is Jesus God? Yes. Yes. Okay. But I thought Jesus was like God's son. Also, yes. Also, yes.Katherine: My uncle Ashley: was my grandpa and my grandpa was my uncle too. Ding a ling What's going Katherine: on here, dude? Alright, transubstantiation. Both Protestants and Catholics know this one. Transubstantiation means that when you're doing communion, Do you know what communion is? Do you know what communion Ashley: is? Is that when you eat the...The bread and the wine? Okay I'm sorry. Can we all just touch on how [00:27:00] fucking weird that is? Body and blood of Christ. Yep, give it to me. Put it in my mouth. I want to eat that and drink that. Are you kidding me? Nobody's fucking thinking this is weird? Katherine: Yeah, it is weird. And what makes it weird, in my opinion, is transubstantiation and the, the Protestants know this because the Catholics actually believe that the bread and the wine become the body of blood of Christ when you are taking communion, but the Protestants see it as a symbol, not as like actual blood and wine.And the Protestants know transubstantiation because we know that that is what differentiates us from the Catholics. And what makes the Catholics not Christian is because they believe in transubstantiation. Fallon: Oh, yeah. Cause you guys will be like, what's so weird guys is they believe that like, that's actually Jesus's like leg or body. [00:28:00] And like I said to Catherine, what's weird is that they believe that God actually talked to them while they were like taking a dump this morning and told them what to do that day.Ashley: Like go eat me. Fallon: Yeah. Okay. Yeah, no, no. Just like go to your church and say, God told me this morning that I should ask you guys each for five more dollars. Everyone goes, Oh, he must've actually told him like, that's weird. But the believing that that's Jesus's body is not weird. Whatever. Ashley: You guys. Catholics are metalas fuck, dude. It's wild. I'm sorry, but I have been reading some of the Bible and I'm pretty sure that he said cannibalism isn't cool. There you go. There you go. You guys, you know, the Bible, he doesn't God say, doesn't God say not to eat people? Yes. He says yes. He totally [00:29:00] does. I remember it. And they're just up, up there eating him every Sunday.Catholics. I don't, I don't understand. Catholics Fallon: believe that like basically set up their mass. So their weekly service is a mass. If anybody, I'm sure people listening to the show do know, but they, the mass is really every Sunday. Each week. A reenactment of part of the Last Supper, what they believe happened at the Last Supper of Jesus, which you'll get to in the second part of the Bible, and so they say, Jesus took the bread.He gave you thanks and praise. I know the whole mass broke it and said, eat this. It is my body. You know, so he, they believe he said it and that's why they say it. And then they believe that when you wave your hands over the cauldron, it becomes the thing. Not there's no cauldron, but Katherine: usually put clips of, of conversations, but I want to do that clip because Ashley's face.[00:30:00] Ashley: What are you talking about? Oh, you guys. And that's Catherine. That's why it's witches are evil. Yeah. I was going to say also that it sounds like witchcraft. So like what? Yeah. Fallon: Oh God, now I got to find a good one. Hold Ashley: on. I know that. And that was, that Katherine: was considered two. So we're at, I think five now.So we Ashley: have five more. So when you were, when you asked Callen, sorry, when you asked Fallon earlier, Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. So when you asked Fallon earlier, Oh, so as a Catholic, you don't consider yourself a Christian. I thought that was a very interesting question for you to ask because I thought that the big difference was.Christians, there's a whole bunch of denominations like Protestant and whatnot. And Catholics just like rocked out on their [00:31:00] own. And they were like, listen, you guys can, or I think the Christians were like, this is too metal. We're going to do our own thing. Right. So it's kind of like Catholics versus Christians a little bit.No. Katherine: Well, I always heard it like Catholic versus Protestant and there would be people who would be like Catholics are not Christians. And then the Catholics that I knew got offended by that. And we're like, no, we're Christians. And like, you don't get to decide if we're a Christian or not. And worshiping Mary and transubstantiation were the main arguments about why Catholics weren't real Christians.And so I grew up with Catholic relatives and, and it was always like, are they a Christian or are they not? And Fallon: I would say largely like my thing was just, I never thought about my faith, like with that kind of question when I was younger, like church is just something you do. And Catholic church is not like.You know, an evangelical service where like you, you might be crying and you're raising your hands and you're [00:32:00] singing moving songs, closing your eyes and you're like, somebody is preaching from their heart half the time, like Catholic has a very specific service. They have a book that gets published and it's basically like on this day you plug in this reading and it's the same every year and the church is always the same.The priest gets like a little chunk of time in the middle to say whatever he wants, but that's it. There's no, there's no ad libbing throughout, and so it's not anything you can really attach your heart to, right? Not, not really. And this is, this Ashley: is like three hours every Sunday? One hour. That's still too much.One hour. That sounds boring as hell. I mean, honestly, I'd rather go listen to Omega Pastor fucking while out about I, I saw the best one the other day. He's like, We don't make it rain on booty cheeks. That was the first fucking thing he said. He said a whole other list of sinful things that they don't do.That's hilarious. I just, but I do [00:33:00] remember that. And I was like, Amen. You know? Fallon: Right. Ashley, I'm going to, I'm going to put a hedge of protection on you. What am I going to do?Ashley: Well, I feel like it's something to do with protection. Katherine: Another way would be saying the same would be like, I'm going to pray a hedge of protection over you. Ashley: Is it like a a forest field, but it's a bush because God appeared as a board, a burning bush. I love Katherine: it. I love that. That's really complex. It's very simple.Ashley: Yeah. Basically. Is it not what I said? No, No, Fallon: it's about protection and it's not really a force field. It's just, you're praying for protection, usually from like Satan, like something's happening in your life and the way I've heard it, Satan's about to get in, like Satan's attacking you from all sides. So I'm, I'm like the way I would surround my house with like a big hedge to keep, keep people [00:34:00] out.And from looking in my windows, like I'm, I'm praying for like something to protect you from bad forces. Ashley: Why does it have to be a hedge, though? Yeah, I don't Fallon: understand the hedge either. I feel like, I feel like, if Satan is really this crazy, powerful being that can influence everything else, he could probably just whip out his chainsaw, right?Like, get through some leaves. And just, like, right through that hedge, so. Katherine: You were talking about that before we started. Yeah. About how hedges actually know that. Not that sturdy, but yes, I think a force field is kind of like a spiritual field Ashley: like you are. Yeah, that's, that's kind of witchy though, you know.Yeah. Oh, oh, for sure. They would stone me to death or something for that. Hey, Katherine: I've been asking for y'all to help me find a witch to cast a protection spell. Ashley: Right? And I was like, I'm a baby witch. I'll buy a book. Katherine: And as I was looking at the like online, I was like, this is just prayer. Oh my God. This is just [00:35:00] praying like, Oh no, I Ashley: want to read you some of the, the prayers, the spells.Oh my God. They sound like prayers. Oh my God. I want to read you some. Not of this one. Spell or prayer. We'll do it after. On Katherine: that note. If someone were to say I have a check in my spirit, what, what, what do they mean? Ashley: That they feel like they have accountability within them. Like somebody's checking their spirit, but it's, it's, it's like God within their heart or Jesus. Or whatever. You guys, I'm killing this Christianity game. Yeah. I think I'm so proud of myself. I think Fallon: I said on a previous episode that you might be a better Christian than any of us at this point.And it's highly possible that knowledge alone, that might be absolutely Ashley: true. I'm well, because I didn't grow up with it. You guys, I'm fascinated. I'm like, that's Katherine: probably like, you're probably retaining it a lot more because it's [00:36:00] fascinating. Whereas we grew up with it and it was just like everyday jargon.Yeah. And like, we've never had to like explain it to somebody before, but you're learning it in a way. In which you can like explain it to somebody and check in spirit. My grandmother used to say that all the time, just like check your spirit or mind the checks, mind the checks in your spirit, which was like, basically the, yeah, like the Holy Spirit was like speaking to you to tell you something was like dangerous or, you know, stay away from it, or basically intuition, but the Jesus, Jesus version, Ashley: I'm thinking about how scary it is as somebody with a fucking.Jesus Christ. Am I right? And how many people in coercive controlling religious groups are being told constantly that they're going to hell and then if they have PTSD or any kind of mental mental illness. People, they're [00:37:00] just told to pray it away. I'm imagining having the mental health issues that I do and being in a situation where everybody around me was like, that's not real, or that's the devil getting you.Like, holy fucking fuck. That sounds so scary. I'm just imagining if I, like my brain's crazy. And I think if the, if his enough people were telling me that my panic disorder and shit is the devil fucking believe that and they'll be scared the fuck Katherine: out of me, dude. Oh, absolutely. Interested in listening to more than 40 archived Uncertain Podcast episodes? All you have to do is sign up to become a monthly supporter of 5 or more. Becoming a monthly supporter will give you access to popular episodes such as Confessions of a Christian Parent and When Bad People Do Good Things.You'll also get access to this episode without any interruptions from yours truly. Become a monthly [00:38:00] supporter today by going to tiersofedian. org slash support. Fallon: So Ashley, I'm going to ask you, what are your, what are your unspokens?If I say that, if I say unspoken, what are, what am I talking Katherine: about? Yeah. Ashley: Unspoken Fallon: or I pray for your unspokens. . Ashley: Oh, thank you. Context. It's like the shit you don't say that you did because it's, it's a, sins be, Fallon: could be. Usually they're talking about unspoken prayer requests. Ashley: Like Katherine: the things that you don't know that you need prayer Fallon: for.Yeah. Yeah. Like either I'm thinking about it and I don't want you to know that I'm praying for it or all of like, if I'm like, I pray for all of Catherine's unspokens, it means that I'm praying for all of the stuff she actually needs that she doesn't know she needs. And maybe. Oh, but you know, your pastor may know that you need more than, than you do.Right. Like pray for all that shit too. So Katherine: I was 29 years [00:39:00] old, a missionary woman prayed over me and, and she prophesied that I would get married and I would have this, like, we would be like this power couple. And this was like, Almost 10 years ago. Ashley: Where's your Christian power husband? Where is my Christian power spouse?Where Fallon: is your Christian power husband? That sounds like an action figure that we need to develop. Katherine: But I just remember it being like, they're going to be a power couple lord. A power couple lord. He has a Fallon: starched white shirt with two buttons. Ashley: Okay, bitch. Listen, I'm about to throw some terminology down. Is that prosperity gospel?Not Fallon: really. Prosperity gospel is more like. Ashley: Is that like being rich means you're close to God? Yes. Katherine: Ish. That's prosperity gospel. Yeah. Like God is blessing Fallon: your life. Or it's okay to have abundant money and not necessarily like help every person with it and keep it for yourself because [00:40:00] God wants you to be rich.That's what the MLMs like to Ashley: use. That's some televangelist type shit, right? Fallon: Yeah. The ones that raise money. Like Ashley: the guy who has all the planes. Who's that guy? He's big on TV. Olsteen? Probably. Like, he's really fucking rich because he preaches on TV and people are super Fallon: into it. I don't know if Joel Osteen, maybe there's a few of them, Joel Osteen's the pastor in Texas, right?And he has like, he has like a giant super mega complex house and like millions and millions of dollars and huge church. Yeah. He's a big prosperity gospel person. Amway likes to tell you to read him. Ashley: He's a, he's a prosperity. No, no, no. Joel Osteen is a televangelist. So yeah, I think he is the one who's.Yeah. With the Katherine: plane. So razy rich. Oh, and Ashley: like. the planes? I think so. What Katherine: does it mean to be in the world, Ashley: but not of it? Okay. So I feel like that means that you have to go to [00:41:00] work, right? And you have to, you have to do stuff that's in the world. But don't let the secular people drag you into their sin because you should be.More in like the godly world and so it's saying be in the secular world because like you have to also you have to tell people that Jesus is what's up and you know, you got to go out there and like proselytize and let people know that like Catherine I learned this from you that if you're doing good work in the workplace, you're doing it for Jesus Christ.Did I, did I nail it? Oh, you Katherine: totally nailed it. 100%, 100 points. 100 of the points. 100 percent of the points. I feel like Ashley: an amazing Christian right now. Fallon: You are. You would have giant. Katherine: You are halfway up the mountain to Ashley: the kingdom. You guys, I'm on fucking fire for Christ right now. [00:42:00] Fallon: I need that on a t shirt.I'm on Katherine: fire, Ashley. You're a burning. Oh yeah. Ashley: Oh, I mean, ignite me baby. Cause I can't, I can't get hotter for Jesus. All right. Yeah. Fallon: Yeah. Anyhow, I think, I think you, cause the last one, the last one, I've had so much fun. Oh my gosh. But you're too good at this. It would be so much better if you were like baby believers are tiny babies that somehow believe like that would have been funny.Yeah. Ashley: You guys, you guys didn't know that I was going to fucking bring that, that passion of the Christ heat. You're like a super agent. Fallon: You are. You're a sleeper agent for Christ. Ashley: Okay, that's a t shirt. Katherine: That's a t shirt.All right. Fallon: So, I'm gonna end with this one. I'm pretty sure you'll get it. But, if I say, God put it on my heart. [00:43:00] Ashley: Okay, this is one of the things that I told you I learned from The Bachelor. So, when God puts something on your heart, it means you, like, really need to speak to somebody about something, because if God puts that on your heart, like, fuck, that means you got to do it.Right? Yeah. That's good. And like people on the bachelor. No one can argue with you about it. No. Yeah. Cause people on the bachelor would weirdly have God put it on their heart that they had to go see the bachelorette like after the rose ceremony. Like God put it on my heart and I needed to come here and yeah, God put it on my heart to come get to know you better.Yeah, Fallon: exactly. Somebody justifies their actions by implying that God told them to do a certain thing a certain way or say a certain thing. And like Catherine said, that's the big piece. You can't argue with me because it's from God. Right. Right. God tacked this post it note to my chest that said, you know, I need to, to tell you you're a [00:44:00] jerk or whatever.And like, I Ashley: must be, because that's funny because God put it on my heart to Fuckin talk about all of these fucks and expose them for the fuckin dick tits they are. Allegedly. Allegedly. Allegedly, right? Heavy on the allegedly's. That's what, Katherine: It gets really funky in the dating community. When I'm going to be like, the Lord told me that we were going to get married and they would like tell the person that, or it was like a common, like commonly used excuse for women.If they didn't want to date somebody, if someone asked them out, it should be like the Lord, the Lord wants me to be single right now. Like God Ashley: doesn't want, I like that. I would use that even as a secular woman. I'd be like weirdly, I just got in touch with Christ. He put it on my heart to Not date you.Yeah I, I gotta I just have to trust the Lord on this Katherine: one. Yeah, no. Yeah, but then strangely, six months later, suddenly God was okay with them being in a relationship. Ashley: [00:45:00] Yeah. I like that. I kind of like that though. Fallon: I Ashley: know. Well, Catherine, that's why I wanted you to look into Twin Flames universe. Because I think that's exactly the, the idea.That they're running on because I was watching this documentary on Amazon Prime, you guys, it's really great. And I was like, why are they fucking bringing Christianity into this? This is about finding like your soulmate, which actually seems more like some woowoo shit, blah, blah, blah. And it's because they encourage you to stalk your love interest, because if God's put it On your heart to love them.That means you're supposed to be together and you should pursue them until they realize that that's the correct thing. Katherine: I know a lot of relationships that turned out that way. Like the, the guy just stalked her for years or the, or the woman did the same thing, like just like hung out for years and years.Like, [00:46:00] I believe, I believe the Lord has us together. My Fallon: spiritual gift is stalking.Ashley: Mine is patience or whatever. Women always get your mercy. Oh, yeah. Fallon: You're a mercy giver. Patience is definitely not my spiritual gift. Katherine: All of my spiritual gifts were gifts that women weren't supposed to have like leadership. And Ashley: why did you get hooked up with those? Katherine: Yeah, man. Talk to God about that one.Ashley: You're like, bitch. He put it on their hearts. I don't know. Katherine: He gave me these gifts and then he gave me boobs. What up? Ashley: What? Everyone was confused. Okay, Katherine: so Ashley, how did you feel about this game? I feel like you got at least an A. I feel like I Ashley: think I know Christianity better than I thought I did. You Katherine: definitely.I Ashley: might know more than some Christians at Fallon: this point. I think it's [00:47:00] amazing that, you know, you don't even know, like, it's not even that, you know, like Christianity, you know, like Christian slang, Katherine: that's you're in the world. You are in the Ashley: world, but I'm not of it. You guys. Okay. Let's get it straight. No secular music or entertainment up in this house.I only produce the content. Do not listen. Don't listen to it. Good for you. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. You're so holy. You're holy. Holy, holy. I'm holy ghosted Later. So you're holy. Ghosted. . Yeah, . So, Ashley, I don't wanna know, Katherine: I'm curious, like, what is your feeling about these phrases? Like, did they come across as like, just like super weird and like, this is like this?Or is it like, oh, this is normal. This is just Ashley: culture? Well, like I said, part of it felt super familiar because of aa. Which I'm like, yeah, Katherine: I think that shit's, like, Ashley: pretty Christian, though. I did say the [00:48:00] Lord's Prayer quite a few times. And... I just also remember a conversation that I had with my mom where she was like, that sounds pretty Christian.And I was like, no, you don't get it. It's a spiritual organization and like how people in Colts always really argue with people that they're not. We're not, we're not a cold. We're not though. You know, it's like we just have these meetings and you know, the fellowship tonight was like tight as fuck.You don't know what you're talking about. Yeah. So what I think I do notice, Not so much that it's weird, but that it's culty because one of the big hallmarks of cults is having your own fucking lingo that outsiders don't understand. Fallon: Great way to keep people who you don't want out out and a great way to keep people who you've got in because everyone likes to feel like they know the group speak, right?Oh my Ashley: god, you know, it'd be so fun if I asked you guys if you knew what these AA sayings [00:49:00] meant. Like first things first. Yeah. Anybody? Is that Katherine: from AA? It is. Ashley: Yeah, it is. Take a stab. Katherine: Just focus on what you have in front of you and don't worry about the rest. Ashley: Yeah. You nailed it. Yeah, basically like so if you, so a lot of people will like get sober and then also become a vegetarian who goes to the gym six times a week and doesn't smoke anymore.So that is, Oh yes, they just replace the addiction with something else. Absolutely. Absolutely. But you know first things first means, so like if it can mean. Just don't get overwhelmed with everything and just take care of what's most important first. And it can also mean, like, if you're trying to quit alcohol, wait until you feel comfortable with that before you try to quit cigarettes or whatever.Because, super easy to backslide, very slippery slope. [00:50:00] Fallon: But you know what? I've heard that when I started, like, when I got came, like, started to go back into like deep Christianity when I was in the Navy, shut up. I heard that from somebody who was like, well, I heard including a God put it on my heart. But he was like, when I first became a Christian, I had it put on my heart that I should only focus on one thing at a time. So like my, he was like, so I would encourage you to only focus on following God for one year and no dating and no thinking about romance for one year, because otherwise you can't be sure that you're doing like that thing correctly.So yeah, that. That shows up. Like, if you're a new Christian, focus on being a Christian, don't focus on trying to date and, you know, do this, Ashley: stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it. That is what they say in AA too. They say for your first year, don't date. Don't. All right. I'm going to, I'm going to Katherine: Google it. Does AA.Oh Ashley: my God. I'm freaking out. You guys, I was. [00:51:00] So much more Katherine: in a cult than I thought Fallon: what? No, you were just a Christian for Katherine: a while. I love that Christianity informed your view of AA being a cult. I'm like, oh my god. Oh my god. The similarities Fallon: are meeting through AA's immediate precursor The Christian Revivalist Oxford Group, they and other alcoholics fellowship there until forming what became Ashley: AA.Okay, that's the thing. They realized that the altruistic Christian model, they are. That's what it says somewhere. Katherine: An altruistic Christian movement is what it says. Ashley: Shut the fuck up. Shut the Katherine: fuck up. Where? The end 1935 when Ashley: it was founded. Okay, so, okay, now I'm starting to remember Bill Wilson the big book.Bill Wilson of, also the big book the Bible of AA. Bill Wilson, our charismatic leader who gets celebrated on his birthday. Katherine: Like, Ashley: like. There's often [00:52:00] a picture of him in the rooms. Oh my Katherine: gosh, this is such a Ashley: cold. Freaking out. I, that is why I'm a good Christian. I fucking was a good Fallon: Christian for quite a while.Catherine. I almost feel like I need to be like, you need a whole a episode and we should stop this Ashley: here. Yeah. No, we Katherine: got to stop now. Cause this is crazy. Christian and the ASF. But I definitely think you should do an AA episode for that's a fucked up. You should definitely do that. I think it sounds it. It sounds like everyone I know who's been through AA when they would like tell the stories, I would be like, that sounds like so shaming.And so like behavior oriented and it sounds so like restrictive. And so I'm just like scarcity mindset and just like, it doesn't sound like human to some extent. Ashley: No, I'm like, I'm like tripping out. I'm making like so many [00:53:00] wild connections right now. Oh my God. And especially Katherine: because typically what leads to addiction is trauma and it didn't sound like there was any depth into addressing the Ashley: trauma.Well, this is fun. And you, when you do your steps, one of the steps is to. Admit all of the ways that you've wronged everybody in your life. And I said, what about my mother who abused me? And they said, well, you have to find your part in that, which is that as a 30 something year old woman, you're still holding on to that resentment.Whoa, Katherine: that's straight out of Christianity. Straight. Ashley: Also every night you're supposed to write an inventory, which is like all the ways that you had fucked up that day. That's like shame based. Yeah, if, if you get out, if you're out of the program, when you come back in, you have to take a newcomer chip and be like, yeah, after 10 years of sobriety, I drank for one day and now I'm a newcomer and that [00:54:00] whole 10 years is gone and everybody's like, everybody's like, yay.And you're like, okay, cool. Like I'm getting love bombed by the group. I'm glad to be here. This is the only way to stay sober because in AA, there's only one truth is the only way to stay sober. Katherine: So AA becomes the new Fallon: addiction. Hey, Oh my gosh. Yeah. We got to talk about this. Wow. Okay. Katherine: This is a whole new episode, but yeah.So in conclusion, Ashley, any final thoughts, Fallon, any Fallon: final thoughts? No, this was really fun. We're glad to get back together. Well, I was, I think I speak for both of us. So glad to get back together with you. And it was really fun to see Ashley unravel all my expectations that she wouldn't know Christian Ashley: lingo.So, and to see Ashley. Fully realized that she was in a Christian cult for multiple. I mean, that doesn't make me Fallon: happy, but yes, it was Ashley: but Katherine: it solves the mystery for me as I'm like hearing people's stories. I'm like, that sounds cool. Ashley: [00:55:00] Yeah, but Katherine: I can't say that because so many people like worship AA and found it so helpful.Ashley: . I think I'm finding that I want to say what the fuck I want to say and say, I said what I said, but I will be honest as well and say.I think at times it was really fucking helpful. I think at times I needed that. I think some people, legit, that is the only fucking way for them to stay sober, is with that level of accountability, and trying to like, get out of their narcissism by finding that there is something bigger than them and they're not the center of the universe.So I do say it with the, I mean, Like I always say, cults are on a spectrum. They're not always super harmful and coercive. But, is that shit culty as fuck? Yeah. And, like I said, it was really helpful for a while. And then it became maladaptive, which is when I felt shamed. Because I smoked weed. [00:56:00] Because I got sunstroke and was like violently throwing up and I understand the medicinal properties of marijuana and then they were like, yeah, you went out and I was like, no, I didn't.And I actually left because I wasn't going to let this fucking group of people tell me that I had that my sobriety was fucked. I was like, no. Actually, it's not. So, fuck you guys. I'm out. And now I've been sober for, if we're not going by AA time, about nine fucking years. I've had a couple drinks in between.I think I went like one year, actually, probably drinking. That does not negate the other fucking eight. Yeah. Where I did not pick up a drink. So, you know, it's, I heard something really interesting. And I think that you were in a cold. depending on whether or not you Think or decide you were in a cult. I thought that was very interesting.Like it's not really up to other people to tell you that you were in a cult because maybe you were and you had a great time. Like maybe that one fucking [00:57:00] Scientology or NXIVM class that you took at the very low level and you never went into the organization. Maybe that class helped you, you know, so.Katherine: Exactly. And, and, and I think that that is the opposite of fundamentalism when you can kind of hold those things together and just be like, it was helpful. But the organization itself is harmful Ashley: and yeah, because life's not black and white, right? Like there's a lot more Katherine: gray. I can say the foundation of evangelicalism, I believe is problematic, but I'm not going to, but I can also say people I know go to church and have a good experience and they genuinely have a good experience and it helps them be a better person.So right. Both of those things can be true at Ashley: the same time. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, I think that's a great place to end. Me too. Thanks everyone for being here. Yeah, you guys, and If you guys have not checked out Catherine's episode on our feed, please do follow us on That's So Fucked Up. We're on all the platforms where you listen to podcasts. We did a six episode [00:58:00] series on Christian fundamentalism. One with Catherine. It was awesome. So check that out and Catherine, thank you so much for having us.Thank you Katherine: for being here guys. This was so fun. Ashley: Hell yeah. Katherine: Christianity.

TOPIC: Waymo driverless car destroyed in San Francisco, LA high-rise tagged with graffiti, JOE AZ: "black birthrates declining over past 20 years", KEN FL: "thank you JLP, you've helped me", ASHLEY OH: "comment on seeking thrills", SUPERCHATS, HAKE NEWS

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.

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

[00:00:00] Michaela: Hello, and welcome to the Software Engineering Unlocked Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. McKayla, and today I have the pleasure to talk to Ashley Hansberger. Ashley is Director of Developer experience at Tackle io. But before I start, let me tell you about my latest project. Awesome cos.com. Yeah. All my work on Culture Views has now its own dedicated home at awesomecodereviews.com.You find articles about code review best practices code review checklists, news about the latest research on code reviews and of course workshops and courses I offer around this topic. So please hover over to awesomecodereviews.com and check out my latest work. But now back to Ashley.Ashley is a vivid speaker and proponent of testing, and she loves to share her experience in conferences during blogging, all about testing and engineering productivity.Before she was working at Tackle.io, she was the director of DevOps engineering at Black. So I'm super, super thrilled to pick her brain today and, you know, learn all about her experience. Welcome to the show Ashley.[00:01:08] Ashley: Thank you so much for having me. I'm, I'm so happy to be here. .[00:01:14] Michaela: Yeah. Yeah. I'm really, really happy.So I want to start really at the beginning. I know that you have been a tester at the start of your career. Yes. So how, how come that you're now, you know, the director of developer experience, how did you come into developer advocacy and so on, but what's, what's that[00:01:30] Ashley: path? , I'll try to give the short story, but it might become a long and winding journey, but that's okay.Yeah, I did start as a tester and, you know, went from manual testing and I'm not even gonna say how many years ago, because it feels like ages ago and it was, but that's okay. . So I started as a manual tester and as many companies go, you know, started to learn automation and really found a passion for leading that effort.So I went from tester test lead. Test architect into really becoming a technical product owner. How do I start advocating the voice of what is needed technically to balance against the features needed so that we can think about how do we design and create the frameworks and develop the automation that we need to get the feedback loops in place for our code?That kind of led me down to a path of really thinking about testing and continuous delivery and adopting DevOps principles of like flow and feedback and continuous learning and thinking about DevOps from a culture perspective. And once we had a reorg, I was asked to lead release engineering. Now that became a really interesting experience for me, not knowing a whole lot about release engineering, but being able to lead people and thinking about our infrastructure as code and how do we even test our infrastructure.And guiding a team of DevOps engineers to be able to do just that. As we develop a microservice oriented architecture, how do we create the, the easiest path forward for a team to spin up a service, develop what they need to, and not have to worry about the underlying architecture behind, behind the microservices that they need to create.So my team creates the Pav road at that point. But what I really found I was most passionate about was bringing people together, learning how to work together and really focusing on people and their experiences at work. I was also asked you, as you mentioned, I've been speaking in the industry a lot about testing.But what I really found it was about, at the heart of it, was how do we advocate for these ideas and the ways in which we should deliver software? So I was also asked to start thinking about how do we influence an organization through change for an idea that we wanna implement at, at that point, it was agile and how do we scale that across an organiz?So I got to start thinking about, well, how do we approach change as humans? And, you know, thinking about the, how our bodies and our minds react to change. How do we move through that change, whether it's positive or negative, we, we need to be able to move through it. And I started really getting interested in the psychology of change and how we do that and influence it through other people.But at the end of the day, we also have to be effective. And what makes effective. Psychological safety. And so I really started developing not just the, well, what are the things that we're trying to do as a team, but, but how do we do that? And what are the things that we need? And so I really got into a deep dive of looking at Amy Edmondson's work and psychological safety.How do we apply it and learn about our own teams through those mechanisms and start building the, the underpinnings of having an effective. At the end of the day, what I've decided after a lot of reflection was I'm most interested in our experiences as people in tech, because if we are not having a good experience, how can we truly be our best selves?And if we can't be our best selves, how can we produce something that is really meaningful in providing positive impact to others? At the end of. We might be able to, but it's not gonna be sustainable. So I've been studying on the side organizational psychology pursuing my master's in network.And I started developing a program around developer advocacy and thinking about our experiences at Blackboard. But through just luck and circumstance was asked to come implement what I've been building over at Tackle io. So I get the chance to start ground up with a fairly new company compared to my 17 years at at Blackboard.And just start from scratch. And it is so amazing to have the opportunity to build from the ground up with a team that is excited about this change, excited about how we can think about our experiences in a positive culture and sustain what we need through the growth of the company.[00:05:40] Michaela: Yeah, that's, I mean, it sounds amazing and I think that what strikes me the most when you describe everything is.At the heart, you're describing some internal. Focus, Right. Which, yes. Which I often see developer experience and advocacy and so on. And it's always outside focused. It's like we want our, you know, tool to be used by others. So and then, and then you have all these developer experience professionals and people and, and this focus.But again, it's a customer focus actually, right. and what you are talking about is exactly that. What I'm so interested in is the internal focus. So not how can we, you know, make a good experience for our customers, the developer , but how can we have a great experience for our internal developers? Yeah. You know, that are, that are making whatever, you know, it, it doesn't have to be the developer products.Again, it can be something, you know, completely, you know, let's say it's healthcare or yeah, it's, you know, whatever software you're actually producing. But how can we look internally that we have great experience and, and, and, and I think from that perspective, it's so natural that you're coming from the testing and DevOps side, right?Yeah. Because. There is always enough time to program. Well, because you have to. Right. So , you know this, they can't take it away. We have to somehow program, we have to code. Mm-hmm. . But there is not enough time for testing for DevOps, for pipelines, for ci, you know, for, for making sure that we have a good code base.We don't have technical debt. We have maybe, Good meetings. We have a good culture. We, you know, we understand each other. These are all the things that we can scrape away, you know, and just bare a minimum. Let's code . Yeah. And, and so I think, yeah. So when you describe it like this, it makes sense that you're, as a tester, arrive at a developer[00:07:39] Ashley: advocacy Yeah.Role. And think about it as, as a tester early and you know, at the heart of testing, we care about what is the user going to experience, Right? Mm. I got into testing because I cared so much about that user experience. Well, now my users are my, my engineers in the, in the whole program, internal, they are my clients.And it's not just about the code that's delivered or application that's created. You know, we think about these core experiences that make us effective and productive. And it's not just, did I deliver a. . It's the meaning behind that. Do we understand significance and meaningfulness in our work? Do we understand the positive impact we had?Do we have variety in the things that we do? That helps us, one, learn and grow first and foremost, but also keep us interested in what we wanna achieve. Yeah, do we have the ability to see it through start to finish? I can't tell you how many projects I started that I've just just ripped off of for somebody else to finish and not be able to see what happened with that.All of these things that affect like our, our wellbeing and our mental state as workers, you know, really helps drive that experience. And when we can have a good positive experience, we're more committed to our teams and our work and our companies. We become very much tied to the mission of what we want to do.And we're more likely to stay. So we see higher attrition, we see higher job satisfaction. These are all interconnected things that I'm so deeply fascinated by and want to help just make the best experience possible for anybody. Yeah,[00:09:16] Michaela: yeah, yeah. I did this study that you, read the paper about it, right?Last year. About developer experience and what, you know, what makes a good or a bad developer experience, what changes and so on. And we had these factors, right? Mm-hmm. . And I really like to do this, this study because exactly of the reasons you said, right? It's not only productivity, but it's wellbeing, it's, you know, retention.So there are so many good things that are coming out of a good developer experience. And what I also like, you know, from this experience is, Sometimes if you are in this tech bubble, right? Everybody's like, Oh, engineering is so great. But then we have to think, is it true? Right? Is it true that it's so great or is it just a lot of people are in it for the money, which I think is a.It's a fair reason to be in it for it. Right. But if you have a good experience, then suddenly it's not only the money why you are in tech, Right. It's also Oh yeah. Because you're having a good experience. And I think a person that's not only because you know of the paycheck and thinks, you know, apart from the paycheck, it's actually miserable here.they write different software than, you know, the person that says, Well, you. I'm in a, in a high paying industry, but what I'm doing, I'm really excited about. Right. I, I feel committed. I feel yeah, I'm proactive, you know, doing something. I can, you know share my ideas. I have colleagues that help me.This is very different things, and I, and I think those people that have a good experience in their work, they deliver a complete. It's game changing, you know, the, the kind of software Yeah. And product that they are delivering. I mean, that's, that's my experience. How do you see that?[00:10:52] Ashley: Mine too. You know, I've been on the, the teams that were, became feature factories ultimately, and that was that, don't worry about the experience of the people, just get these things out.I've been on teams that have really focused on the human aspect. Right. And it's just night and day experience. The, the difference is so vast in what drives somebody to want to, to deliver the best software. At the end of the day, I mean, I don't think nobody shows up and goes to work. I'm gonna deliver crap software, Right?No, but. It makes it so much easier when you know you have a team you can come in and talk with and ask for help and learn from each other and have clarity in what you're trying to achieve and the processes that help make this as easy as possible. I don't know if, if you've had this experience before, but one time I was learning to, to get my local build set up so I could write some, So write some automat.And to run it, it took me five days to get that first build going on, on my local machine because it was so convoluted and hard and at the end I just felt like I have created fire. But why should that be the experience that we have? Like it should be so easy. And what if we had a world in which your first line of code is delivered that first day that you join a company or join a team because we've made it so simple for you.To just get that build up, deliver your first line, and, and, and push it to pride. Like how, how delightful of an experience would that be if you can see that you're adding value from day one instead of six or eight or 12 or even longer weeks later, you know, from that first time that you joined that team.And I think when we can have those experiences, like from the ease of being able to do something to understanding to how we work and, and, and operate with a team. That just makes it so much happier, which matters on our wellbeing because we need that balance in life too. I mean, I've seen and I've experienced where I've brought a bad workday home and my kids notice, and I don't want that for them.Right? I want it to be, even if we've had hard problems, we can do hard things. It's not saying that this is gonna be easy, but I am gonna make it an enjoyable environment in which to. And have that safety to fail and celebrate those failures versus feeling like I got yelled at because I miss something as a tester and it made it into production rate.I've been yelled at. It, it hurts and you take that and you internalize it, and it might affect how you approach something again in the future or what to raise a risk in the future. And we need that for our own psychological wellbeing to be able to, to have that effective experience and become more productive over time.Yeah. Yeah,[00:13:44] Michaela: definitely. I think there are a couple of things that really resonate with me. So there are two things that you know, are quite different than I want to discuss. One is, Yeah. That you were talking about factors, Right. And I also describe factors in the paper. Mm-hmm. And some of those are technical, right?So for example, the CI pipeline or maybe also having this build go through, having you, this image set up. You can run actually the software, this is more a technical problem, but on the other hand, we also have the culture problem, which, you know, they're always fading into each other because if, you know, if the build doesn't really work, maybe can you reach out to another person?Will, you know somebody sit at your desk and help you? You know? Or will you get, you know, strange looks and maybe somebody comes over and say, Yeah, do this event is gone. And then you feel bad asking them again. Right. . So . Yeah, exactly right. So there. Technical and the social aspect of it. And I think, oh yeah, those are really important.What's your, what's your experience with that?[00:14:45] Ashley: Yes, so, so critical. I think if we don't have learning behaviors, and by that I mean am I on a team that is willing to learn from each other? Be able to have the practices in place to know when we need to go learn something and help each other learn.You probably have a variety of skill levels a variety of skill sets, you know, on your team, and so how can we leverage those from each other to build a cohesive unit as a working group and learn from each other? You have to have some social elements that you're taking account for. If I can't ask for help, I'm going to flounder and fail in in my, in my world.I remember my first time learning automation and I was getting stuck on writing some code for it. And you know, I think some of us have different drivers on do we feel comfortable asking for help? Do we need to be perfect? Do we just wanna please other people, right? Or do we just wanna get something done?But. If we listen to those drivers in a world, let's say, I'm afraid to ask for help. I don't wanna ask for help cause I don't wanna appear weak. What am I going to learn? How am I going to become a part of that team? And when I can ask for, for help from somebody that helps create a social bond with that person that makes us want to be able to continue to work for and with each other.And I think it's so critical that we create those, those relationships as well to help improve that experience. Yeah,[00:16:21] Michaela: so my question is also, Blackboard was a large organization, right? Or Yeah. Yeah. And now Tech Li o is smaller. You said what? What's[00:16:32] Ashley: smaller? Yes. What's smaller? So the company itself is 300.So Blackboard by the time I left, I was around 3000 people. Yeah. Okay. I go to tackle io 300 people total. So I went from an engineering department that was around 1200 to an engineering department that is right around 90 people right now. Okay. And that's what I actually, I love it. I didn't know what to expect.But what I'm finding is I have the time and the bandwidth to build a relationship with each person in engineering right now. Mm-hmm. . So my goal is to actually have a one-on-one with every single person in our department, which was not feasible at my last company, . Yeah. You will at least have met me, by the time we hit the end of October.So I finished my first quarter. My goal was to meet every single person engineering. But I love that because what it lets me do is create that, that touchpoint, that human connection with somebody, because not many people wanna just open up immediately and say, Here's all the things that would help my experience, Right?I don't jump in and say, Tell me all the things that are wrong so that we can go after and fix. I will eventually, but how do I create that trust? To me, it's more important to build that relationship, build the trust, so that when I do ask you, you know, I'm coming from a place of honesty and good intent.And really it's not about complaining. It's about what can I do to make your experience better, and how do you know that I'm the person that cares so deeply about. That you will trust me to help make this happen. And so that's really what I'm after. It's, it's kind of amazing in a way. So yeah,[00:18:12] Michaela: so we have this 300 and the 3000, and then there are companies in the size of three, right?Yeah. And I actually worked with, you know, a big range from them. Yep. Even at larger corporations. Right. With hundred thousand people, but. . I wonder sometimes, right, with, let's say Microsoft, for example, is really large organization and, and they have like their own department for developer experience, I mean mm-hmm.wasn't called developer experience, but it was, I was in this team, it was called Tools for software engineer team, or one ES one engineering systems team. So, but the focus is making engineering better for the internal developers, right? Mm-hmm. , it's a large endeavor because there are like 100,000 people and a large portion of that, let's say 40 or 50,000 R engineers, right?So mm-hmm. , but then you have like, as you. 3,303. And lately have a lot of experience with smaller companies, right? Let's say 20, let's say three, maybe 5, 10, 100. And what I also see is that especially the startups, They also don't value developer experience, , , you know, like then, then we are so small and everything is just a hustle and the grind.That there is no place for developer experience. I don't know if there is place for heart. Yeah. Later on, you know? And, and, and I always feel like if you can't, you know, if you can't focus on developer experience, if you're a three person team, or not only developer, even employee, you know? Mm-hmm.experience. If you are a three person startup or a five person startup, and you know, all those are after thoughts because now we have, you know Yeah. To get to the market and make money and, and, and, and, and later on we will think about, you know, how people. Mm-hmm. ,[00:20:01] Ashley: I think what I like, this will not work.It's interesting because, so tackle's my first startup and I was really, really intentional when I started you know, thinking about what is next on my journey. Mm-hmm. on a company that has, has proven that they value the employee experience. Mm-hmm. , and I'm not taking, you know, just engineering, but what impressed me about tackle is.From the start, they cared about wellbeing. It is in their values that they established as a beginning, at the beginning stages of their company. That, you know, we care about each other. That we worry about our wellbeing and our leadership reflects these values. And you know, if they see it not happening and they still do, tap me on the shoulder, say, Ashley, I saw you are on Slack sending a message at midnight.Why? Please don't do that. Or I thought you said you were on vacation. Why are you responding to a message? Things that I don't know that I ex I expected when I joined, but deeply appreciate that it is so ingrained in their culture to care about the experience and our wellbeing. So I was, I feel really fortunate to land where I did.But what I love is that, you know, they're about, we were on, on series Cs, so, you know, not, not super early for tackle. Not quite late stage yet, and. They saw the need as they scale and grow their department to worry about the developer experience and care deeply about it enough to create a new program.Mm-hmm. . So I was super excited, that, you know, I was selected to come in and help establish this program where, yeah, you don't hear about it too often in the small startup space. Because yeah, you gotta get, you gotta prove out your. Your value, right? You wanna make sure that you're hitting the market need as a early startup, you know?But how do we do that in a way that gives, it focuses on the care and feeding of our engineers who are going, who are, It's very easy to dive into just. Go work all day only and deliver this thing because we need to do this. Right? Yeah. But I love that, that that is not necessarily the case here.[00:22:16] Michaela: Yeah.Thankfully have forgotten a name of the company because otherwise, you know, I name in Shame, which I'm not the person for. I don't like naming. No, I don't. But anyway, No, I don't like that. So I have forgotten the name, , but there was a Twitter thread and, And this guy was, You know, come it work for me. We are like really hard problems.Really low pay . Yeah. You work all day? No, actually he didn't say low pay. I think he said. Competitive. So competitive vape, but you work, you know, day at night and evenings and whatnot. Right. Yeah. And, and if you like, free time, don't work for me and so on. Right. It was longest read and, and I, I read through it and I think it was meant a little bit sarcastic or fun, nor, I don't know exactly.But yeah, it was this, this hustle culture thing, Right. And I thought like, wow, I don't know.[00:23:05] Ashley: Yeah. It's how that like puts us off too, right? Yeah. Like if I read like incredibly passionate about delivering everything, it's like, of course I'm passionate. I wouldn't be applying if I weren't passionate about my role.However, Yeah. I internalize that. as, I need you to work all day and all night on this problem until it's out the door. Like, yeah, it's a, I'm just not, I'm too one. I'm too old for that. Two, I like to spend time with my family and my kids like, yeah, if I see something like that on a job posting or hear it described like that, it kind of turns me off in a little bit.Like, yeah, why am I not expected to have balance? Yeah. It was[00:23:43] Michaela: really like, if. Work life balance for you means to have a lot of free time. This is not for you, right, . I'm like, well, what else[00:23:53] Ashley: should it mean? This is about the biggest red flag I ever heard. Yeah, Yeah.[00:23:57] Michaela: But but, but, but I wasn, but I'm wondering.Right. And it was all under this umbrella of all we startup, right? And, and so you have to be super passionate about, and so but I wonder if you can get rid this DNA or if you can strive it off at one point, Right? If could say, Oh, now we are this 10 person and we don't make it enough revenue. And so we hired all these people that have this mindset of, you know, Working day at night and, and whatnot.Mm-hmm. and so on. And then at one point we transform into this developer friendly, employee friendly entity. I, I, I can't imagine, Right?[00:24:32] Ashley: I, I, yeah. I think it's possible. I think you have to assess, you know, there's, there's things that you can look at. If I put on my organizational psychology hat, right, , you can look at the current culture mm-hmm.And what it is, and you can look at desired culture. Mm-hmm. and it, it could take a very heavy lift and a lot of time to get to that desired culture. But I think it's feasible if you understand where you're starting from, where the desired end state is, and then start putting an action plan in place to get there.So let's say you are in a sales driven culture, right? Yeah. Sale, sell, sell. And it basically informs what your engineering backlog is. It's kind of a dangerous and scary spot to be as well, because what if they, they sell something that you haven't yet built and they promise it to somebody. That's a really high stress environment, right?But what if you want to move to a more collaborative and generative environment or culture? Okay, cool. How do we now set the the things in place with sales, communicate to them, This is how we wanna start doing things. and then start working with them. Well, what, how, how can we do this? Right? How can we meet in the middle so that you're still able to sell something?Because of course they have targets at the end of the day. But how can we get to a place that is healthy for everybody? Maybe let's sell what's there, not what is in the future. Something can always go wrong, right? And what are the steps we need to take as an organization to support that and start transitioning to a more collaborative and communicative culture.From that, or maybe you have a very hierarchical driven culture. Everything is top down. It's very bureaucratic. I think that you can also set in place the ways to move along this dimension of, of what is more collaborative in nature, more organic feeling than a very, I like to call it the, like 1990s, early two thousands management style.But I've seen us transform. It took years, but we've done it right. Like I had no problem at Blackboard at the time talking to the CEO if I just wanted to talk about something with him. Whereas earlier in my career, it was very, very difficult to get that call with the CEO to just have a chat or something.You know? It just depends on what that. Yeah,[00:26:50] Michaela: maybe there's a, a German saying, I don't think maybe you can tell me if there's a English version of it. I just translated literally so it, it doesn't sound very nice, but , the fish starts to think at the head. , Do you have something like this? ? I don't think[00:27:10] Ashley: we[00:27:10] Michaela: do , but what it means is that leadership somehow sets the stage, right?Oh yeah. For the company and for the culture. And, and so what you describe is, Yeah. Is so I, I've seen two. Right? When I joined Microsoft, it was still Bama. Yeah. And it was an extreme different culture and organization you know, than you know, when it changed and, and it was transformative, right?[00:27:38] Ashley: Yeah. I was, It takes adaptive leadership to be able to drive that type of change. It takes transformative leadership. Yeah. I would say the closest that, that I think I've heard, Well, it was funny, I was just watching, remember The Titans with my children last night? Yeah. I don't know if you've seen that.But it's about a team that comes together you know, at, in a point of United States history where we're, we're integrating schools and a football team forms. And one of the saying that always sticks out to me is attitude reflects leadership. Mm-hmm. , And I always take that with me because as a leader, my, my own attitude is going to be mirrored back to me from the people that work with me or for.And I always try to make sure that I am leading in a way that I can stand by and that I want my team to, to. You know that they have the best attitude and ability to move forward. But yeah, you, you have to have to make that change. It, it's leadership style, right? Yeah. You, you have to be able to work with others and collaborate.Rarely is it gonna be a top down decision making driven thing that's gonna drive change. It's gotta come bottom up. It's gotta come top down and sideways to be able to communicate all the things and work together. , you have to have a clear vision. You have to be able to, to guide. You might not have all the answers as that leader, but you sure can ask questions to get there,Yeah. And help the team through that and navigate through that change cuz ch change, like I said, it can be a change for the better. But it is hard, , whatever we deal. Yeah. It's[00:29:07] Michaela: extremely hard. Yeah, that's true. I mean, I'm working with people on culture views, right? So very focused. At Microsoft I worked at many different aspects of developer experience, like the, the, the cycle testing and so on.For my workshops right now, I'm really focusing on culture views. Mm-hmm. And so it's, it's one area. And in my workshop we are going to. Code reviews, right? And the code review processes that people have and thinking about, you know, how can we make the experience better and. and it's hard, right? Yeah.Even though it's a small thing, you know? Yeah. You would say, well, you know, it, it's even at the fingertips of developers. But still, it's really hard because it's a team practice, right? It is. So you have to have more people on the team really be willing and committed to make the change. But then if they do it, if they are committed, I mean, it, it takes wonders, right?It, it, it's really different experience. It's, yeah, it's[00:30:00] Ashley: huge. It's, it's not, and it's not just the, the timing of the code review. Cause I've also, you know, part of the experience is how fast am I getting my feedback? Yeah. So that I can make the changes I need to, and, you know, get it through, it's what is said in these code reviews.Yeah. I remember I like, I was so blocked when I was first learning, I got one of the meanest comments ever , like on a code review. Somebody I guess didn't realize it. It was like one of my first prs and just like, Why would you do it this way? And I can't believe what I was like, Okay, I think I'm just gonna not automate anything ever again or write code ever again.It's fine. . Yeah. So you have to think about the experience there, right? Like. What is that, that holistic view, not just the timing and how many people are able to do a code review, but what is the content? What is the meaning behind it? Are you actually teaching and coming from a place of learning and growth versus maybe we had a bad day kind of getting snippy with people, or I just wanna get through this code review because I have a lot on my.It just depends. Right? But I think you need to take that whole view. Yeah. Of what is that, that whole experience. And[00:31:09] Michaela: I actually like culture views so much because very similar to, you know, developer experience. I would say the developer experience is like the big umbrella, right? Mm-hmm. . And then culture views is one aspect of it, but it's an interesting aspect because it has.It's a technical sociotechnical engineering practice, right? So you have the social aspects, you have the technical aspects, so you have to be technical words as well. And then you all have as the third organizational aspect. So in this little practice, you actually have all three. Most important skill sets in there.Oh yeah. Right. And I think this is what makes it so fascinating. Yeah. So I want to come back a little bit to the paper that I wrote with Avi Notre and Margaret and story. Right. It's called, How is it called? Let me see. To level an actually framework for developer for improving and understanding developer experience, Right?I think this was the title that we settled on. And so the paper is really, so we made an in depth study really on what's important for developers, what's impacting their experience, right? For the good and for the bad. And so we made the list of several factors. So this was a qualitative study. So a couple of themes.We did interviews, a couple of themes emerged, right? And some of them were really the factors. But then it was also what's hindering developer experience. How do people compensate, you know, their negative experience and so on. And you, you read the paper, what, you know, what was interesting for you and was there something in it that you could actually take And You know, and apply maybe in your job.Yeah. As developer experience director.[00:32:47] Ashley: Yeah. It's, it's, it's when I came across the paper so how I was approached my job was can you take the things that you were learning from organizational psychology and apply them to engineering? That's, Yes I can. Let's talk . And so I do, you know, I try to do a little bit of research each morning, what's going on in the field, what are people other people finding?Cuz it's still fairly new-ish compared to other topics in our field. Right. And when I came across the research paper, I was so excited on a few fronts. One. That okay for you? Yes, I am new to like doing research and graduate level work, but I was really happy that my methods are very similarly aligned with your research methods.Granted it's within my company, but very, But you know, let's have the qualitative interviews. Let's understand. Let's find the themes. I had started theming my things out. Mm-hmm. then I was really happy that my themes were aligning with the themes that you also had been outlining. That's. You know, different words, but ultimately very similar structure.Things that we're, we're looking at and hearing from people. But what really fascinated me and what I loved is that holistically looking at the paper, , all of these aligned to things in, in organizational psychology. From where do we find fulfillment and job satisfaction? You know, the importance of having clarity in our goals how we work with product.Sure. We're not gonna be talking about how do we work with product managers and organizational psychology, but we are gonna talk about how do we understand our significance? Where do we fit in this universe? Do we understand how we provide value? Do we understand the positive impact we have? Are we able to work iteratively?Are we able to do feedback loops? Everything in software development in the world of psychology is an I P O model or input process. Output model that is just super cyclical. That's all we, I look at these diagrams all day long. That's DevOps, That's testing, that's like software development life cycle, right?Thinking about our tooling when we look at your development and release theme, right? All of those questions we look at the environment, the health of my code, how confident am I all of those things come down to our experiences that we can generalize into. Or if I like to think I like how can I apply it into organizational psychology terms?Cause I like to write about it in, in my classes. But I was so excited to think, okay, I think I feel like I am home. I'm studying the thing I'm passionate about. I feel like I'm a scientist, practitioner can go forth and do these things. I even like, how do we notice when people aren't feeling these things?How do we notice when people are having a bad experience? I thought that was such a critical part of the paper that's not often talked about. I think, you know, we, we all say, Oh yeah, we should do this based on my experience. But what I really enjoyed was reading, you know, What are the, what are those implications?What should we look for as leaders? How might people be coping if in the absence of these factors? And those should start to give us some, some red flags there if we're not careful, what we might lose people or worse, not be able to revalue at the end of the day. Yeah. I mean, worse to me is losing people and having somebody have a horrible experience and, and be turned off from tech because I almost quit tech.Right. I don't wanna lose that, but are we going to be able to meet organizational goals without looking at developer experience? I'm not convinced we can. Because we're building the thing the organization exists to deliver. And if we don't focus on that experience, you know, what are the implications not just for our teams and the people, but for the company as a whole?And, and your paper is just so, so good, and I can't wait to dive in more for further research on my own, even if it's within my teams. But I, I. I just think it's such an opportunity for growth for us to discuss as a community, for us to think about not just what are our personal experiences, but what does science and psych and psychology and organizational psychological research tell us?That can be applied here too, for even deeper interventions. And in looking at that,[00:36:47] Michaela: yeah, this sounds really inspirational. So one of the, the last questions that I have for you is for my listeners, if they want to improve developer experience and. Companies, what would you suggest them? What's, you know, what are some of the things that we should tackle first?Is there some factors that are more important than others? Is there something that you can say in general, you know, this is a good, you know, this is a good investment Yeah. Of your time and money.[00:37:16] Ashley: Yes. So I don't necessarily think you have to go have a separate developer experience program to be effective.But I do think there are a few aspects. If you want to show quick wins, you know, what are the things that might be high pain points, low effort, and just start doing You know, I somebody once said, Be the change. You want to see , so how can I do that? , maybe it is, Oh, I need to talk to my team about psychological safety and, and run this workshop with them.Maybe I want to make sure that we are clear on how we write stories so that my team has a clear understanding of what work they need to do and why, but also how do we go in and break that work? What are some short term wins that we can find to build trust that people see that we are effective to then get more and more complex over time.And so I think, you know, some things are really hard and gnarly and take very spec specific skill sets to do and implement. Those are great, Put them on a roadmap, but think about what are the short, fastest things I can do that will be even a quick, easy win for my team, Make their lives easier, provide value at the end of the day and maybe not such a heavy lift on maybe one person.And then maybe start to show more and more of those as you grow, and then be able to get the buy-in to build the team that can solely focus. .[00:38:40] Michaela: Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes it's really hard to get the buy in. Right? So, so hard. . Yeah. . Is there something that you can recommend? Like how do we, how, how do we, you know, translate or make sure that other people not in engineering understand the value of developer experience?What's your pitch? I mean, there's the, the metaphor for a technical depth, right? Where Yeah. Are we talking about that? To, you know how you, Nobody cares about that on Yeah, exactly. , but how. How can we, I think developer experience is even more complex, right? Because people at least care about the software.So technically that even though it's hard, it's a hard sell, I think or hard sell. At least it's about the software developer experience is even about the people, right? It's even more. Fussy and so on. How? How can we make sure people understand the value of it? How would you explain it to management or to C level[00:39:36] Ashley: that happy.Happy engineers. Happy clients. Right. If you look, focus on the happiness and experience of your teams, at the end of the day, you should have happy clients because we are able to, The things that we think our clients value and see value in just ev all the more effectively. So I think if you can sum it down without having to talk about all the technical aspects.Right. What would your slogan be? Mine is always, usually people first off or second. However, when I think about in terms of providing the value to sea level, happy engineers, happy developers, happy clients. Yeah. You know, it, it shows, right, the, there's this, there's a saying or analogy here in the us. A happy cow makes better milkOh yeah. Really? . If they're grazing, they're eating. You know, good food, they're ate, getting access to grass, the milk quality goes up. They're not stressed. It's funny how even or if you're a human, like think about the stress and the effect of stress on our bodies biologically. And physiologically, you can still maybe perform the actions you need to do, but at the end of the day, your, your blood pressure might be up.If we don't have that, that stressors on our engineering teams think about the quality that they might be able to deliver in a sustainable way, in a way that makes them excited to stay at the company and want us to be there day in, day out, and excited to get up and go to work and work with their team.I[00:41:06] Michaela: don't think that there is a specific developer research exactly on this topic, but I know that there is quite a lot of employee research, right? Mm-hmm. So employee experience, which is a. , it's a topic on its own, and it's a little bit older than developer experience, right? Mm-hmm.So we borrowed a lot ideas and concepts from, from that field actually. Mm-hmm. , and they show exactly that, right? They, they show with case studies and with different studies that companies that are valuing, right? The experience of their employees in general. Yeah, those can also value the customers and that they're much more successful doing that.Yeah, so I will probably put some some of that in the show notes as well. So if people want to deep dive, they can.[00:41:55] Ashley: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It all, it all comes down to like, you know, science and research that's been done, you know, many years over. We're just looking at a specific application of it Exactly. In tech, and it's fascinating to see how you can, how it's been generalized for more fields than just our industry.Right. But when we can take a look back, And see, Oh yeah, Oldham's job characteristics theory is actually super applicable to us. For example, like thinking about five dimensions of, of our jobs and what are the critical psychological states that emerge from being able to have positive experiences in those, those five characteristics.And then what are the outputs that we see, right? Retention, higher value, happy client, all of these things, higher productivity. All the things we care about in, in engineering that you know, it's just amusing to me to reflect back and like, Oh my gosh, this, this research was done in the 80, 1980s, like yeah, so many years ago and still applies to what we do.That's true and I love it. Yeah.[00:42:57] Michaela: Yeah. Yeah. So, cool. Well, thank you so much Ashley, for, for sharing everything today with me and I will put everything that we talked about in the show notes and obviously thank you. We'll also link your, your profile. Is there something as a last message that you want to give to my listeners?[00:43:17] Ashley: Oh, . Sure. Let's see. You know, it.always put the people first. I think when in doubt, I've never seen it fail me as a leader. Yeah. Think about, you know, your wellbeing, your team's wellbeing. If you can put that first, I really feel like the rest will fall into place. And even though those other aspects might be really challenging, Because you come from a people first mindset, it makes it so much easier to tackle those challenges together.Yeah.[00:43:54] Michaela: That's a really good closing note, and I totally agree. So thank you, Ashley, for being on my show. It was really a pleasure talking to you.[00:44:02] Ashley: Thanks for having me. Yeah, thank you so[00:44:04] Michaela: much. Yeah, bye bye. Bye. Hi, this was another episode of the Software Engineering Unlocked Podcast. If you enjoyed the episode, please help me spread the word about the podcast.Send episode to a friend via email, Twitter, LinkedIn. Well, whatever messaging system you use, or give it a positive review on your favorite podcasting platform such as Spotify or iTunes, this would mean really a lot to me. So thank you for listening. Don't forget to subscribe and I will talk to you in two weeks.Bye.

In the lead-up to our 100th episode in a couple weeks, Logan and Trevor are reflecting on some of their all-time favorites lists. This week, they discuss their favorite video game characters. Shoutouts: "Investigating Three Indie Superstars Accused of Emotional Abuse" by Chris Bratt, People Make Games https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDPzZkx0cPs "Despite its beautiful Ori games, Moon Studios is called an 'oppressive' place to work" by Dean Takahashi, GamesBeat https://venturebeat.com/2022/03/18/despite-its-beautiful-ori-games-moon-studio-is-called-an-oppressive-place-to-work/ "JK Rowling's Anti-Transgender Stance And Hogwarts Legacy" by Jessie Earl, Gamespot https://www.gamespot.com/articles/jk-rowlings-anti-transgender-stance-and-hogwarts-legacy/1100-6501632/ "Why Sander Cohen is one of BioShock's most memorable elements" by Ashley Oh, Polygon, highlighting "Why We Remember Bioshock's Fort Frolic" YouTube video by Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit https://www.polygon.com/2016/10/10/13228630/why-sander-cohen-is-one-of-bioshock-s-most-memorable-elements Follow the Nerds: Logan: @LeftyLoggy Trevor: @TrevorJStarkey That Nerdy Site: @thatnerdysite

In this week, the 3rd episode of the RE4 series we finally find Ashley! warning: MGS2 spoilers in this episode so when you hear the warning, skip ahead 30 seconds. https://twitter.com/RetroReplayPod https://www.re4hd.com/?page_id=6064 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

KOTICK TOCK TIME'S UP: This week, after a scathing report, employees of Activision/Blizzard walked out calling for the expulsion of the company's CEO, Bobby Kotick. Our hosts examine the situation and how it symptomizes larger aspects of video game culture. RELEVANT LINKS: Grind, Kirsten, Ben Fritz, and Sarah E. Needleman. "Activision CEO Bobby Kotick Knew for Years About Sexual-Misconduct Allegations at Videogame Giant." Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones & Company, 16 November 2021. Jackson, Gita. "Workers Walk Out As Board, Company Stand Behind Activision Blizzard CEO Accused of Covering Up Sexual Abuse." Waypoint, Vice Media, 16 November 2021. Ashley Oh's tweet about the cosmic horror of the Taco Bell gong sound. Plunkett, Luke. "Let's Meet the Activision Board Members Supporting Besieged Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick." Kotaku, G/O Media, 17 November 2021. Pulliam-Moore, Charles. "Comic Book Workers United Wants a Seat at the Table." Gizmodo, G/O Media, 08 Nov. 2021. Schreier, Jason. "Playstation CEO Criticize Activision's Response to Misconduct and Harassment Allegations." Fortune, 17 November 2021. RELEVANT EPISODES: "Less-Impressive-Than-Expected No. 7" (01 July 2017): Where our hosts discuss the "interesting" game from a creator of Mega Man, Mighty No. 9. "Sword Club" (30 July 2021): Where Andrew and D. Bethel talked about Activision Blizzard being investigated by the state of California. INFO: Visit our website at forallintents.net and leave your thoughts as comments on the page for this episode. Join our Facebook page Social: Andrew - Twitter & Instagram, D. Bethel - Twitter & Instagram Find Taylor on Twitter and Instagram Subscribe to our YouTube channel. Subscribe to and review the show on the iTunes store or on Spotify. FEATURED MUSIC: "Disco Medusae" by Kevin McLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3652-disco-medusae "District Four" by Kevin McLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3662-district-four Tracks are licensed under Creative Commons BY Attribution 4.0 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Ashley Oh joins us as we take a long stroll from Djose to the Thunder Plains, dealing with Wakka's racism, Seymour's skeeviness, and getting our final party member along the way. This week we talk the homogenous culture of Spira under Yevon, talk about how Rikku adds so much to the party without fully giving away what her deal is just yet, and we talk about how Yuna's selflessness may be about to put her in harm's way. Enjoy the show! Become a Normandy FM patron: http://patreon.com/normandyfm Follow us on Twitter: Normandy FM: @normandyfmshow Eric: @seamoosi Kenneth: @shepardcdr Ashley: @itsashleyoh

Ashley Logan is the Founder and CEO at Yakkety Yak, a full-service purpose-driven content marketing agency that provides blog writing, social media marketing, video production, and website design and development for brands and organizations that want to make the world a better place.  Ashley says that the agency's “sweet spot” is content creation and storytelling. She believes alignment with the greater good and “giving back” are two things that are necessary for changing the world. “You have to be purpose-driven,” Ashley says. “You have to stand for something.” A writer from age 5, Ashley graduated with an undergraduate degree in creative writing and landed a job selling for a private label candy manufacturer. She was  “a creative person trapped in a corporate world.” As she traveled around “slinging candy,” Ashley saw that widely different companies used the same words talk about themselves in the “digital space.” She decided she wanted a “bigger ticket” career and moved to commercial real estate.  To appease her creative drive, Ashley volunteered and created content for nonprofit organizations. Social media platforms were just starting to rise. She wondered, “How could you turn those social media engines into a marketing machine?” In 2012, Ashley finally understood that she needed to combine all of her “passions for business, storytelling, content, and nonprofit work.” She went back to school to pursue a master's degree in Journalism in a program renowned for teaching people how to write for target audiences.  Ashley officially launched Yakkety Yak in 2014 and took clients as they came . . . until she realized she could no longer tell stories and work hard for jerks. The agency now maintains a focus on content and storytelling for a far more restricted clientele:  Organizations that “do good” (nonprofits),  Have, as a component of their organization, the intention of “giving back” (perhaps a part of the company raises funds to donate to non-profits), or  Are amenable to adding a “do good” component to their organization (Yakkety Yak works with these organizations that do not yet have a purpose-driven mindset to help them define and build that “piece” into their company culture).  Ashley thinks it is important for its clients to inform people of their “contributions to the greater good” by “putting it out there in your story, putting it on your website, weaving it into your social media, holding your teams accountable, and shouting it from the rooftops.” She thinks high quality video will become an increasingly more powerful marketing vehicle. Ashley is working with a designer to “revamp” Yakkety Yak's office space with improved ventilation and flexible seating and intends to “open the doors” after Memorial Day. Ashley sees “the new office” as a safe place where “people can come and work if they want to escape” and gradually get people back together with flexible hours and a combination of in-person and remote work. She misses the “vibration” that comes from having a “team all together” but also notes that COVID has done wonders for work-life balance. Ashley is best reached on the agency's website at yakketyyak.com, where visitors can find links to all of the agency's social channels. Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I'm excited to be joined today by Ashley Logan. Ashley is the Founder and CEO at Yakkety Yak based in Chicago, Illinois. Welcome to the show, Ashley. ASHLEY: Thank you so much. I appreciate you having me here. ROB: Absolutely. Why don't you start off by telling us about Yakkety Yak and what makes the firm unique? ASHLEY: Yakkety Yak is a full-service content marketing agency based in Chicago. We do everything from blog writing, social media marketing, video production, website design and development – basically any mechanism to help our clients tell their stories, we work with them. I guess what makes us unique is that we focus on working with brands and businesses that care about doing good. We're a totally purpose-driven agency working with brands and businesses that want to make the world a little bit better. ROB: What does that look like when we actually get down to a client? What does a client look like who has this purpose-driven focus? Are there maybe some examples you can share of how they're getting out in the world? ASHLEY: Absolutely. That can be nonprofit organizations, of course. They fall into that category. We work with many patient-facing organizations like the American Migraine Foundation, the American Brain Foundation, and other brands in that category. But purpose-driven doesn't have to be nonprofit; it can be an organization whose culture focuses on giving back. They have volunteer events where they donate proceeds to a nonprofit organization. Ultimately, that alignment with a greater good is our sweet spot because one, it helps with storytelling, but also, in this day and age, giving back is such an important part of changing the world, making it a little better. ROB: Finding that sort of specialization and alignment can sometimes be a journey. How did you come to focus on that as a specialty? ASHLEY: That's such a great question. When I founded the agency back in 2014, we didn't have the luxury of selecting the types of clients that we worked with. I'm sure you've heard this a lot with your guests. We worked with some people that we probably didn't want to work with. Ultimately it came down to that if we're going to tell stories and work hard, we don't want to work with jerks. [laughs] So we didn't. We stopped working with jerks, and that's it in a nutshell. Is that terrible? ROB: No. I mean, who wants to work with jerks? I don't know anybody who says they do. I haven't heard that strategy yet. I'd be fascinated if we have somebody listening who has a strategy built around working with jerks and charging a premium for it. I'm here for that conversation. ASHLEY: [laughs] I love it. So that's really what it came down to. We also help businesses who don't have a purpose-driven mindset to build that into their company culture. Maybe they came to us and wanted to think about “How do we put our story out there in a way that has more employee retention, that we can attract more visibility from our clients?” We always say you've got to be purpose-driven. You've got to stand for something. So, we've also helped coach our clients into getting into this space, too. ROB: What does that transformation look like? Maybe an example of where a company was starting. The purpose is usually there, much like your own firm; you just have to find your way to it. ASHLEY: That's exactly it. Just setting the intention, putting it out there in your story, putting it on your website, weaving it into your social media, and holding your teams accountable too, and just shouting it from the rooftops. That's especially applicable to clients of ours that aren't necessarily nonprofits but are doing something to give back – make sure that their employees know about the work they're doing at an executive level and then down to a grassroots level. A little bit less in COVID time but coordinating fundraising events or teambuilding events around giving back. ROB: It sounds like it would almost pull you towards being involved in – if an organization didn't have core values, you might not even be working on marketing. You might be working almost on their internals before they get to the externals. Do you end up getting pulled in that deep? ASHLEY: Sometimes, yes, we do. But I think that primarily our sweet spot is in the content creation and the storytelling. That's where we really like to be. Certainly, we will help clients define their brand strategy, and that includes core values and messaging. But we definitely like to focus on the story element. ROB: Understood. You talked about not having as much of a focus when you started, but let's even go a little bit further behind that. What led you to have the sort of audacity to create your own job and create some other jobs along the way? How did you get into that lane? ASHLEY: I love that word. I love the word “audacious.” Let's see, I've been a writer for my whole life, ever since I was in kindergarten, I think. I won a Young Authors contest for a short story I wrote called “Crystal Met the Ogre.” I still have it. Kind of funny. But I've been a writer my whole life, and I loved to tell people stories, but I also had a knack for business and trying to create processes and connect people. After I finished my undergrad at University of Tennessee – I was a creative writing major; I worked at the school paper – I ended up in a sales position. I wasn't expecting that I was going to be in sales, but also that I was going to like it so much. I started off working for a candy manufacturer based in Chicago. It was a great experience. I was 22, had half the country as my territory, was flying all over, slinging candy. But I wanted a little bit more of a high-volume sale, and I moved into commercial real estate. Through that experience, I was a creative person trapped in a corporate world and interacting with people at the C level. What I found was that all of these brands and businesses didn't know how to talk about themselves. They were all innovative. Every single one of them called themselves “innovative.” All of them called themselves “streamlined.” I realized it was a problem that in this digital space, people didn't have the words to differentiate themselves from one another. You could close your eyes and hear across multiple industries and see people using the same exact words to describe themselves, with no differentiation. So that was an observation. In the meantime, I was volunteering for nonprofit organizations in Chicago and helping them with content creation. This was that sweet spot when social media was just starting to go from being that you needed a .edu email address to that anyone could sign up for Facebook at this time. How do you turn those social media engines into a marketing machine? I cut my teeth on that through nonprofit work and ultimately decided that I was onto something and needed to combine all of my passions for business, storytelling, content, and nonprofit work. So I left my career in commercial real estate and went back to school to earn a master's in journalism from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. They have a great program for writing for a target audience. I simultaneously founded Yakkety Yak, and the rest is sort of history. ROB: That's a great upscaling moment on the writing there. I like that. I wonder a little bit – I'm just going to pull on a thread here that's a little random, but we'll see where it goes – if you don't mind me asking, what was the candy? Who were you selling to, and what made it desirable for them to buy this candy? ASHLEY: [laughs] It was a private label contract manufacturing. That's what we pitched. I worked with Cost Plus World Market and Harry & David, and we were doing premium toffees. We would produce it for them under their own private label brand. Coming from Chicago, we'd make the candy and then it would be in like a Harry & David package, for example. They also did those really beautiful Christmas candies, ribbon candies. That was it. No chocolates and no gummies, but pretty much everything else. It was cool. There was a factory. The CEO of the company gave me my first job out of school, tolerated me, trained me in sales. He actually passed away a couple of years ago, and he just made such a positive impact in my life, giving me this opportunity. It was pretty cool getting to walk through the candy factory and make friends with the factory workers and be part of creating something from end to end. ROB: That's very cool. Those are typically, in my reckoning, pretty high end, nice candies. It's a creative process. It's not what it sounds like at first when you say sales. I think we all sometimes miss doing tangible work, something you can put your hands on and something you can see sitting on a shelf. ASHLEY: Yeah, it was cool. And it was fun. It was my first experience in business. We would go to these candy conferences, and I was the youngest by far. I was the only female, interacting at Happy Hour with the good ol' boys who'd been in the business for 40 years. It was fun. It taught me a lot about how to defend myself. It taught me a lot about how to keep composure as a woman in business and overcome challenges. That experience grew me really well for commercial real estate, which was a little bit more of a cutthroat type of industry. ROB: Right. You went from a boys' club to a mean boys' club. ASHLEY: [laughs] I did. ROB: Even trickier. Maybe a little bit gentler in a more creative space. But I think what's interesting is the through line is, as we all know as an agency owner, you are selling, but it sounds like a common thing across your sales experience is you're really helping people get what they want – which is much easier than trying to convince them they need something they're not aware of. ASHLEY: I think so, yeah. ROB: Very interesting. Ashley, as you reflect on – you said 2014 was the starting of Yakkety Yak? ASHLEY: I have two dates. 2012 is when I founded the agency and I went back to school, and I had a few very small clients at the time. But 2014 is when I hired my first employee and Yakkety Yak became my full-time job. So I use that as my real date. ROB: Got it. Over the course of that 7+ year time, what are some things you've learned that you might do differently if you were starting from scratch? ASHLEY: That's a great question. My journey has been really interesting. I built the agency from scratch. I had no outside investors. I'm pretty risk positive; I'm comfortable in a space of jumping and leaping to the next level. It doesn't make me nervous. I don't spend a lot of time dwelling on mistakes made because I do believe that every experience leads you to the next, and you've got to build upon it and take with you the tidbits that help make you stronger. For example, looking at my career trajectory, the candy business, while I knew it wasn't my life's passion, that sales experience helped take me to the next level. Any adversity that I faced in commercial real estate, I took that with me to become a founder and CEO and be gutsy as hell. But one thing that stands out for what I would do differently is I think in the area of hiring. I have worn every hat in the agency, and I wish that I'd had more help sooner because that would've helped me scale faster. I haven't mentioned this part yet, but I've got three really little kids – and a COVID baby. It would've been great – when my second son was born, it was 2018; I was 38 weeks pregnant, and I had an employee resign, which meant that I was not going to get any maternity leave. I had my baby on a Tuesday and I was back to work on Monday. If I had built a deeper bench, then I would've been able to have a little bit more balance early on. ROB: What do you think it was that prevented you from building up that team? ASHLEY: I think when you're an agency starting out and you're competing in a market like Chicago – we have some major players here. I'm going up against, from a benefits standpoint, a salary standpoint, and a credibility standpoint, some powerhouses. It took a little bit of time to earn some credibility and name recognition. People, I will say, do remember the name Yakkety Yak, so I am proud of that. Recruiting top talent takes time and building up a team and building that referral network where people say “Hey, that's a place where I really want to be and where I want to work.” ROB: Got it. What were your first couple of hires when you went from a team of one to a team of more? ASHLEY: Oh gosh, one of my first hires was – and he's still one of my favorite employees; he moved back to California and is doing some really great things right now – a graphic designer. I had the way with the words, and I was bringing in the business but also doing a lot of the content creation, and Curtis was doing the graphic design elements. And then support from a writing standpoint, so I eventually started to be able to outsource that and build a team. I shouldn't say outsource; I mean delegate. That's the word I mean. And finally, 2018 was a breakthrough year for me where I finally was able to build – we had more than 15 people. Now we're a team of 20. It's great to have such amazing talent at the agency now. I wish that I had done that sooner. But when you're bootstrapping your own business, it's kind of part of the deal, I think. ROB: Congratulations on that growth. You mentioned a COVID baby, so I'm sort of expecting, by your story, that maybe you did get some maternity leave this time around? ASHLEY: [laughs] I didn't. Well, lesson learned from the second child, but we were in crisis – not crisis, but I didn't think that it would be good for me to have no visibility to my team when we're all suddenly working remotely and in the middle of a global pandemic. So, I made sure to still be around for internal purposes, but I did remove myself from some client-facing work for a period of time. I had my baby Memorial Day weekend, and by Labor Day my clients were seeing me on the regular again. ROB: Got it. I can definitely see a case for visibility to a team in a time where everybody's in uncharted territory. ASHLEY: Sure. ROB: Where are you and your team in terms of office? Did you have an office, do you have an office? Are you going to have an office? Are you keeping the same geographic footprint moving forward? How are you thinking about physical space in the context of Yakkety Yak? ASHLEY: That's such a great question and something that's so relevant right now. We have this awesome office in a loft building right near the train station, Union Station in Chicago, and it's great. I love the space. It's got that brick and timber feel, lots of natural light, open area. But we jammed a lot of people into that space. I'm currently working with a designer, Lauren Ashley Allan. She's a really awesome up-and-coming designer. We're revamping and rethinking our space so that it is comfortable for people when we return to work. Flexible seating options is what we're focusing on, in addition to little booths so that people who are a little more conscious or want more privacy can work in a confined space that has ventilation. The goal is that we're not going to mandate that the team come back to work, but we are going to open our doors after Memorial Day, and I'll be there and give people a place that they can come and work if they want to escape and gradually start getting people back together. I think what I've been noticing is I miss the vibration, like the good vibes that come from having a team all together. So, we're putting some thought and intention into how we're designing the space, and we'll move forward from there with some flexible hours, combination of remote work and in-person. ROB: Right, but you're probably not going to have folks moving to Portugal and being fully remote, that you could think of? ASHLEY: I don't think so. [laughs] ROB: [laughs] It sounds like you're being very intentional about your space, which is compelling, and it sounds like even within the office environment, you're really differentiating that work environment. Knowing Chicago, knowing where you are, you have a benefit of accessibility and transit and that urban lifestyle for those who choose it. And obviously, in Chicago, you can get into the city from very, very far out on a train if you want. And then not knowing the specific block you're on or whatever, during normal times, there's probably a good vibe, good places to grab lunch together, grab Happy Hour together. It's not just some nameless office park. ASHLEY: Right, exactly. That camaraderie is just important. I really felt for people – especially those who are in there, mid to late twenties, single, living by themselves, and stuck at home during COVID. That's a lot for people. I think that we've got a lot of healing to do as a country when it comes to finally starting to emerge back into everyday life. I want to be there and I want to create a safe space for my team to come in and get work done and feel welcome and safe and so we can continue doing the excellent work that we've been doing and build off of that energy. ROB: That sounds excellent. How's your team thinking about that? I know everybody's all over the spectrum, at least from people I know. Some people would be in a closet together tomorrow and some people are waiting until they get a shot or even longer. What's the range of what you're seeing? ASHLEY: A range, you're exactly right. I'm giving people space to make the decisions on their own for now. We continue to check in on it. I've said that in 2021, at this point, we're probably not going to do a mandate to go back to work. But we will open the doors and encourage people to come in if they want to. The beauty of the transition that's taken place from a remote workforce standpoint is that now we see that we can work remotely, that if you've got to coach your kid's softball team in the afternoon, you can work from home, and that's going to be fine. We're going to be able to connect, and no one's going to miss anything. I think this has done wonders for the work-life balance, and I hope at least at Yakkety Yak, that's a trend we're going to really continue to let permeate our office culture. ROB: I love the intentionality of it. I'm a little bit jealous. I'm a little bit more of a “ready, fire, aim” sort of person. Over the course of the past year, the last four people we've hired have all been remote, and we're going to figure it out later. I'm hoping that late fall/early winter, we'll get together and visit one of our team who lives down in Chile. It's completely different. Walking away from the office and loading the furniture into our basement kind of made it real, you know? ASHLEY: How did that feel for you? ROB: I am very comfortable with the change. The thing I don't like in my basement is there's no people there. There's fresh air and light. It's a little rustic, shall we say. I do miss the getting together, but if part of it means that instead of being in the office and doing little things, we get to do something more pronounced like spending a week in Chile and getting some different gatherings, I'm interested in it. It's a change of pace for sure. Ashley, when you think about the future of Yakkety Yak, the future of marketing and how you're working with businesses that give back, what are you excited about in the future that's coming up? ASHLEY: I couldn't be more excited about video. We are doing some really, really, really incredible work when it comes to especially the patient space, telling people's stories about how they've been impacted by various health conditions, diseases, disorders. I love using video as a mechanism for storytelling, regardless of the target audience. There are so many cool things now with TikTok and how to use visual elements to show a progression, and people are doing that every day in their homes as amateurs, and how that's going to translate to professional level videos I think is something that is so cool and something you're going to see exploding in marketing space over the next 18 months. ROB: One thing I wonder about, if you have an opinion on it, is when I think about audio and the way it's going, I see a lot more attention going into the sound on versus sound off experience and accommodating people who might be muted. What direction do you see that going? Are we going towards where every video's going to adapt, or are we going to where we're assuming that so many people have some sort of Bluetooth headset in that they're going to have audio on? How is that trending? ASHLEY: That's a really great question. I'm going to answer it in two parts. One, I think that the pandemic has shown everyone the importance of quality A/V, like when you can't hear someone on Zoom or there's a delay in a recording when you're watching things virtually. I think that high quality video and audio is something that's more of a priority than it's ever been. With that said, I think it depends on the platform. We wouldn't necessarily, for a virtual fundraiser or virtual event, have all of the text scrolling at the bottom of the experience, but when it comes to ads and what's happening when people are scrolling through Instagram, I think it's absolutely vital to have the words there because people are scrolling through Instagram in their beds at night when they're not necessarily wearing headphones and they don't want to wake up their partner, or they have babies that they're feeding and don't want to scare the babies. That's my personal experience, but I think it applies across a multitude of scenarios. And people are multitasking, too. They might have one window open or be on a conference call or a Zoom call and scrolling through Instagram. You can't have that dependence on the audio in those scenarios.  So, when it comes to social media, the text is vital. When it comes to other experiences where you're holding people's attention for a little bit longer, then I think you're okay without it.  ROB: Very, very interesting. Thank you for illuminating the topic. Ashley, when people want to find and connect with you and with Yakkety Yak, where should they go to find you? ASHLEY: Our website is the best spot to find us because you've got links there to all of our social media channels. You can find us at yakketyyak.com. The spelling isn't necessarily intuitive. ROB: How did you choose the spelling of Yakkety Yak? ASHLEY: [laughs] I don't know. I think it was probably the domain that was available at the time. But it was important that we were Y-A-K and not Y-A-C-K, so we went from there. ROB: Perfect. Ashley, thank you so much for joining the podcast and sharing your experience. I definitely wish you the best as you get that revamped office up and humming and get everybody back working together in person. ASHLEY: Thanks, Rob. I really appreciate your time today. This was fun. ROB: Thank you so much, Ashley. Bye. Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Hello and welcome! Today, I am so excited and honored to be interviewing the amazing Kathryn Solie. Kathryn does a lot of amazing different work, but primarily she teaches some meditation classes and workshops on poisonous plants and plant medicines.    An Interview with Kathryn Solie: What poisonous plants can teach us about healing.   Interview transcript: Kathryn Solie: Thank you for having me here! Ashley: Oh, it is my pleasure and my honor. I have really been getting into this journey with plants and plant medicines and I actually signed up for your Poisonous Plant Medicine, Class 1 and Class 2. And I know that you are going to be starting a new round of that very soon. I was wondering if you could introduce yourself to everyone? Tell them a little bit about your story, and how you got started on this path, and what you are up to now? Kathryn: That is always an interesting question to ask because it is hard to know what exactly brought me here. There has been so many different things, but essentially, I work with plant medicine. If I am just talking to a regular person, I just say, I am an herbalist. Probably, not a lot of regular people are listening, so I can kind of go into a little bit more detail in the way that I work with them. I work a lot with plant consciousness, or what a lot of people call plant spirit medicine. It's really similar to the way that you work with crystals in that they have this energetic medicine. I have been really pulled towards poisonous plants. Or I kind of want to do air quotes as poisonous, because it is the dose that makes the poison. Everything is poisonous, even water can kill you if you have a big enough dose. Those plants have just really called me in the past few years. And their medicine is really needed on the planet at this time. They help bring us into the shadows and to our deeper psyches and to our unconscious into places where we are discouraged from exploring. Our current society only focuses on being happy. Be happy all the time. And it is great if we can be happy all the time, but there is also likely an undercurrent underneath that has all our life stories and moons and fears and that is always going to be there. That is normal and healthy and part of being human. I feel like the poisonous plants can help guide us through those spaces that might be normally kind of uncomfortable.    Ashley: I feel so grateful that you are bringing this up. In my personal journey with these medicines, this is exactly when they showed up in my life. When I really started to consciously dig into that shadow aspect. I found that I needed some support, and this was what came through. For me, this was what my body, my mind, my spirit all needed. To kind of do this work on multiple levels and find that energetic support and that medicine for this, really deep dive inner journey, personal healing, transformative, shadow aspect work. Was it something similar for you personally that drew you in? Or did this just evolve naturally in your exploration of herbalism? Kathryn: I think that it was always kind of just part of my makeup as a person, just even as a little kid I was always kind of, not, I would never use the word morbid, I feel like other people might use that word, but just kind of interested in the aspects of life that people try to keep hidden. Even for many years before I really fully stepped on the plant path, I was really on a path of meditation and non-duality and kind of eastern philosophy in eastern religion. I still am on that path, but a big part of that path for me was working with the archetypes of the wrathful deities. In Hinduism and Buddhism you get Kali, which is symbolic of transformation and of going into these difficult times. Or if you have worked with this astrology -- Saturn, Pluto -- that kind of energy. I feel like that kind of aspect of life has always felt natural and comfortable to me,

Writer Ashley Oh joins the RPG Pals for an in-depth discussion of Final Fantasy 8, a very coherent game with an easy to explain plot and little-to-no basement aliens. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week's episode of GameSpot After Dark, Kallie is joined by Michael Higham, Kurt Indovina, and Ashley Oh to talk about The Witcher 3, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and Murder By Numbers! If you have any questions for the cast, email us at afterdar

On this week's episode of GameSpot After Dark, Kallie is joined by Michael Higham, Kurt Indovina, and Ashley Oh to talk about The Witcher 3, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and Murder By Numbers! If you have any questions for the cast, email us at afterdarkpodcast@gamespot.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

TRANSCRIPT:Ashley: My name is Ashley Hart and our family did the growing Christmas tree in Goshen project.Katie: Alright so you worked on getting to know your neighbors last year through this project? And talk me through that year, what did it look like, what did it take for you guys to put all that together?Ashley: Well it started off with me getting really excited about creating something new. So I came up with a list to my mentor of all the fun ideas I had. Then evaluating how those ideas matched with the community that we lived in and what would be a gift to them and something that we could make memories together with them. So we kind of spent time connecting with neighbors in a different way than we had before. So we might go on a walk and stop over and say good evening to our neighbor or call them over and invite them over for dessert or whatever. And that kind of got the relationship frequency enough that we were able to have more conversations.Katie: Yeah, and were you bringing the idea of this Christmas tree project to them right away or how did you start on that path to get to that project idea?Ashley: So I think one of the things that I realized for myself and took that to the way I was connecting with our neighbors was that I in my own life wasn't prepared for a big ask and so I didn't want to throw a big ask at someone else. Really I was still putting feelers out to see if the idea that we had could even happen. So our neighbor happened to be a landscaper, so I didn't even know if he would plant Christmas trees in December or not, or if that was like not going to work. If the trees were going to die or the ground would be too frozen or whatever.Katie: Because you guys did not have Christmas trees on your property when you started this?Ashley: Correct.Katie: But you had how many acres?Ashley: Eleven acres.Katie: Eleven acres and what are you going to do with it, how are you going to make that an asset to the community?Ashley: Right, and we had always kind of had a vision even on our wedding day we invited people to our property and invited people to spend time there. We wanted it to be a hospitable place but I don't think we had the tools and the permission that we were given to make it kind of an official thing to start inviting people and doing something unique for the community.Katie: So it took some permission seeking?Ashley: I think so, which is weird, but yeah. I think someone saying here's some support and here's some encouragement and start dreaming. And I was desperate for the idea to be dreaming about something other than being concerned about what's going on in our day to day experience.Katie: Right what was your main concern at that point, what were you worrying about?Ashley: I think I was really focused on ensuring that our daughter would be prepared to engage in her community and the way that I thought I was going about that was through therapy and appointments and things like that because that required so much energy I just didn't think I had anymore energy to start something new. Katie: So you were trying to pave the way for your daughter to be part of the community some day, but you weren't really sure about how to go about it. And meanwhile you had other day to day appointments and things that you had to be doing that were taking up time, energy and effort and that that permission that you go to do something off the scope of the therapy list.Ashley: Oh yeah it was like it was such a gift. Yeah it was just you know you get stuck in the grind of doing what's best and the idea to imagine creating something that intrinsically you already know what is good for you, and what is good for your family and what is good for the community. And just someone saying ‘Go for it' it's really.. I've talked about that you're getting to lift your eyes off a problem or what is perceived as a problem and getting to lift your eyes to bringing beauty into your world and your community.Katie: Yes, so before you started this, was it a year long project, about?Ashley: Yeah.Katie: Ten months, year long project, before you started the year long project to plant Christmas trees in your yard and invite your neighbors to, can you explain actually a little bit more about what that Christmas tree project was in the end?Ashley: Yeah, so the goal was, we started the project in July, and because of the event, our event was in December. So we had to kind of move quickly once we decided what we were doing but the idea was to invite families in the community, so because it's a rural community that's a wide area, but invite community members to come and to plant a CHristmas tree on our land. And we wanted it to be a healing experience to everyone who came so we talked through what's healing for community and individuals. So we brought the five senses into the experience. So we had art, lighting, lumineers, paths through the fields and Christmas music anda baker came and baked Christmas cookies that's from Goshen and hot cocoa and a bonfire. So we tried to make it as memory making as we could by sealing in those five senses and then families are invited to come back each year and they can either take their Christmas tree if it's tall enough for them or they can just check on it and take a picture with their family. So that's been really fun to see families bewildered in the generosity. Families would call us and say, “ok so what are the rules around this?” or like ‘well how do we sign, and ensure that this is ours.” And so they've just been really surprised by the generosity.Katie: They also are seeking permission.Ashley: Yeah.Katie: To just show up and have a Christmas tree party?Ashley: Right. Right.Katie: Yeah it kind of shows that we've lost a little bit of our muscle for community building. We don't really know what to do in the face of something as ordinary and simply beautiful as this, it's kind of like there's a catch. Where's the marketing here?Ashley: Right, exactly and we have a friend here at Starfire mention that really we're just returning to our roots as rural people. Who used to sit on one another's porches and play music and eat together, so we talked about that that evening that we want more of that. And we really got a sense from our neighbors that they did too. So people would come by and talk to me about it like, “Oh I have this idea or I have that idea.” So we're hoping that fosters more and more of that. Katie: Did many people know your family who came to the event? How did you make connections and make that neighborliness happen?Ashley: So it was funny because several days before the event we had no one signed up for the event.Katie: Seven days before?Ashley: Several, several so like three or four days before. We had like signs up, we had advertised.Katie: So really quickly describe your neighborhood real quick because when you say you have signs and things up it's at like the one library and maybe like…Ashley: One coffee shop.Katie: Yeah.Ashley: There's one coffee shop, there's like two fast food restaurants or three and two gas stations and a library. Otherwise it's a very rural community. So we had posted things on Facebook, on the Goshen Facebook community page but then we had also put it in a coffee shop. So we really had no idea how many trees we needed so we picked thirty, I'm not sure why but it was crazy because somebody called like three or four days before and was like I know it's really late but is there anyway our family could sign up? And I was like yeah we've got some room.Katie: You hang up and were like woo-hoo!Ashley: Yes totally, like we got one and her friend wanted to sign up too so that made two families and what we didn't know which I think is really important is having people invested in the process, so our neighbor Dan brough him and everyone he knew to that event. He was excited about it because he had done so much in giving advice and shopping around for trees and going to get thte trees, that he was invested enough to want it to be a good event and want his people to come and experience it.Katie: And is this the landscaper you had mentioned? So you had a neighbor, I mean you have eleven acres how many acres are around you?Ashley: We have one to our right and one to our left then we have one across the street, so yeah. Not a lot.Katie: So you have three neighbors in the vicinity of you and neighbor Dan was one of them. What a gem.Ashley: I know he is a gem.Katie: How did you meet him? Did you already know him?Ashley: Yeah, he has been friends with my husband's parents who live right next door also. So he's been a friend of their families for a while and you know in rural communities if there's something wrong everyone shows up. But otherwise you kind of naturally keep to yourself and sometimes you might stop over and say hi but this just was really nice because we got to spend more time together and got to use one another's gifts in a way that brought people together so that was great.Katie: Yeah. So this was not the first time that you've been part of a community in an intentional way. This experience that you had in your neighborhood with your family was sort of precluded by your own youth living in intentional community being part of living with a family, so you've tried community in various forms?Ashley: Yeah it's always been important to me.Katie: Can you talk more about that?Ashley: I think I've always experienced more joy when I'm doing life with other people and yet when you're doing life with more people it can be complicated too. So that's just being with other people. Katie: That's a good thing to know going into it.Ashley: Yeah I think so.Katie: You had seen some of the pitfalls of it but you had also lived some of the joys of it and knew I want this for my family now too?Ashley: Right and you know even having your own family that's having a small community. So yeah I've experienced it in multiple different settings and really just treasured the gift of letting people be beyond the veils of their front doors and back doors and getting to spend real life with one another.Katie: Yeah so you've sought it out in that way. You've been seeking it. How were those experiences that you've had in the past in the intentional community that you have been different from the one that you experienced when you reached out to your neighbors and kind of had this project type experience where you're connecting over a shared idea, a creation versus like all living together in the same house?Ashley: Yeah, well it's nice because you have a goal and it's accomplishable and you're kind of bringing everyone in so that's different I would say. Then just all doing life together. You have an event and then it's done.Katie: Yeah, you've all achieved something together and like you said earlier and it's a way for everyone to use their specific gifts like you had the baker that came, neighbor Dan brought the trees, there were other people who probably set up the decorates and had ideas around where to plant the trees. Even the people who showed up that day, their gifts were their presence and getting enthusiastic about what's going on. And everybody can kind of have a role there and doing something that's kind of out of the ordinary.Ashley: Very out of the ordinary for Goshen. Yeah we had one experience where it was like an art installation where we zig-zagged rope through the trees and everyone brought a little lantern out, different sizes of light lite lanterns so by the end they had created this beautiful art piece and we talked about you've all brought your gifts here tonight, just being together and this is just a display of what could be as we spend time together and do life together.Katie: Yeah I love that imagery. So we're going to segue. To the time you decided to move away from this place. The moment you made the decision after all of this goodness had been created to say you know what we're going to try a new neighborhood. Take me to some of the decision making and what was that like? Was it difficult? Where you anxious about leaving? Did you feel like what if we regret this because we've made all these connections. What was your motive there?Ashley: Sure, yeah well I think one important thing to talk about as far as the project goes is we were in the midst of deciding while we were doing the project. So I asked my mentor should we do it in Goshen? Should we do it where we think we're going to go? And we kind of ended up deciding to do it now and do it where you are and I think there's a lot of lessons in that.We don't have to wait until we think everything is right to start building community and to start creating spaces of belonging for our neighbors and memory making moments for each other those are always good and always can be healing, so I'm glad we didn't wait. Katie: And you also have a two year old, three year old?Ashley: Three year old now.Katie: A three year old. So as parents too it's like well I'm going to wait until my kid gets older, things are less hectic. So doing it in the midst of all of it and what's the value in that that you found at the end even when you guys were packing up your bags and deciding to leave?Ashley: Well I think the biggest take away for us was that we built the muscle to like we now have the muscle to build community. And I”m just naturally looking for it all the time going like ‘oh what could we do here?' So we've done a couple of things in our new neighborhood not for any project per say but because we now have the muscle and we want community where we are. Katie: Yeah tell me what were some of the first few things that you did when you moved to the new neighborhood that maybe you didn't do when you moved to your Goshen neighborhood?Ashley: Yeah, so our new neighborhood before we had actually bought the house but we were pretty sure that was where we were headed it was trick-or-treat so we were like ok how often are you invited to every single person's house at the same time. Like this, we can't miss this.Katie: Yeah that's a good point.Ashley: Yeah like never.Katie: Yes please come knock on our door and we'll give you things.Ashley: So we went to that neighborhood that night, just to introduce ourselves and said we are probably going to be living right there and we're eager to connect with you guys.Katie: Wow so even before you put money down on the house, even before you closed on the house?Ashley: Yes, yes.Katie: Wow, ok.Ashley: Yeah, so we were excited about building community there and we really wanted to take what we were learning and not just leave it in Goshen, but bring it along with us for all of us. So that's one thing that we did, that was in late October and then in February we made jars of hot cocoa and put our picture on them and our address and we said we're your new neighbors and our daughter was in a little red wagon and just saying hello and that inspired lots of conversations and people coming to our house and bringing us stuff. So that kind of got the wheels spinning in the neighborhood I think.Katie: Were you writing down names after each one?Ashley: Yes, my husband actually was really intent too which was a fun dynamic to see him to start getting invested in the idea of community building because he didn't grow up building community like I did as much.Katie: And he was the note taker he was the one, yeah?Ashley: Yeah, wanting to know his neighbors.Katie: So I think what you just touched on which is really important is we think sometimes we need to be the ones welcomed in and instead you guys were the welcomers to your new neighborhood to your new neighbors to say hey we're here and we want to know you. So taking the first step doesn't always have to come from the other person.Ashley: Right, and I think that's kind of fun for the neighbors to be like ‘wait she flipped the switch, like what just happened there?' Yeah, and it was totally fun for us so we said we would do it again in a heartbeat because we got to go in people's houses and visit and people came in our house, it was nice. Katie: Yeah when you left your neighborhood behind did you have any lessons that you were taken from what you learned over that year with the Christmas tree project that you were like we're going to do it differently this time. We tried it that way and now let's try it this way. Was there anything that stood out where you're like…Ashley: Lessons learned?Katie: Yeah.Ashley: Yeah, I think the big lesson, my big takeaway from growing Christmas trees in Goshen was with a new event, a new project no one knows what to expect so it's really hard to get people invested unless they're a part of the creation of the idea, and so we only had a couple people that were involved with the creation of the idea. And so that ends up meaning that you're doing a lot of the creation and administration of the event, so my take away in the future is that I want our neighbors there with us like what should we do with our community what would be something that our community needs or wants that would be fun for everybody. So bringing everyone into the decision making piece..Katie: From the beginning?Ashley: From the beginning. Now we're trying to back track and go like maybe we do a Christmas planning in July so we get everybody to come together to start working towards the goal for the event.Katie: Yeah and it's what you said before neighbor Dan was invested from the beginning and he was somebody who brought a lot of people with him, so the people who come it's hard to sometimes invite the whole neighborhood if it's just your family. But the more people who come, the more networks they have and everybody's networks kind of show up too. But also you're saying just the excitement piece and getting it all together, it's not all on you as a family to plan it all and dream it all up and there's more shared ownership.Ashley: Right which means there's more presence at the event too. There's ten families that are excited about it and they're bringing all their gifts and networks there. So that's a big help, so I think that that would be if I was doing that again when we tried to do that but I think we're all just learning as we go and I think we did it by inviting a group of people, we weren't good at explaining this is what we're thinking about we just said come plan with us we're going to do an event and they were like i have other things going on so..Katie: Yeah, sounds like work.Ashley: Yeah, exactly, so eventually they came to the event and they're definitely a part of our community but not bringing people in early to help ideate and create it.Katie: What about just in terms of knowing neighbors and interacting with them differently are their things that you do as part of your lifestyle now that maybe you didn't do you know in your former neighborhood that know you can kind of.. I guess I'm asking that because you can reinvent yourself when you move somewhere, you can be a new person in a way. So there's a benefit in showing up as this new neighbor and being like ok this is the type of neighbor I want to be now, I might not have been that in my neighborhood prior but now I can show up and nobody knows me and I can start new right?Ashley: Yeah I think the big thing that we've done differently is just at the outset let people know that we're interested in being together. So a lot of people I've learned that in suburban neighborhoods like to play and do outdoor life in their backyard with their privacy fence and so we've spent a lot of time in our driveway and in the front yard and going for walks and interacting with people that way so some of it is just relearning how to be in a new environment too. Katie: Yeah I love that so you're spending time in the front yard so that when people get home from work and they pull in their driveway you can be like ‘hey'!Ashley: Right.Katie: Privacy, there's a value of privacy that we have as Americans.Ashley: For sure.Katie: But we aren't necessarily happy in our private lives we'd rather spend it with other people we just don't know what that looks like any more. So do you think that you have a different mindset than you started this with and in what way?Ashley: I definitely, I have a huge different mindset yeah. In so many different ways I mean it's like so many different layers, my mindset during community building I'm still super excited about community building in our new neighborhood and I'm also so grateful that i now see people who are neighbors with their gifts. Like that I think is different than before which is surprising to me because I thought that I saw people that way always but I think you know as we were getting to know people in our new neighborhood we were like ‘oh my gosh this is amazing we have this person across the street that does this or that's interested in that' and before I think we were just trying to do our own thing and then relating to people asit happened where as now we're much more intentional about making it happen that we connect with those people and creating spaces where we can do that together.Katie: So seeing those gifts as an avenue for ‘this is how we can connect with them, wow' let's learn from that person or is that the difference?Ashley: Yeah and I think even outside of our neighborhood I'm just learning how other people we're connected with have their gifts and who they are, connect with us and vice versa.Katie: Like the common?Ashley: Commonality, yeah the things we share and care about. For example, my uncle is a musician and piano tuner and everytime he and my daughter get together they just love doing music together. And so I asked can we do this quarterly even though you live two hours away, can we like break bread together and do music together and so we've been doing that for two and a half years since we started getting involved here. So I think just being more intentional and making it happen putting it on the calendar and dreaming in a different way.Katie: Yeah and you brought up your daughter and I think I want to bring it back to this idea that in the beginning you were like I need to prepare her to be part of the community. In what ways do you see her now as a part of the community and was there preparation in that or did it sort of did she, did she just get immersed in this way through gifts?Ashley: Yeah I think I've been really intentional about not putting her up on a stage to be engaged with but instead just being a part of our family and people engaging with us and with her. If that makes sense. Katie: Was that a shift for you to think of it that way?Ashley: I think possibly yeah I think I had an intrinsic sense of her belonging and her belonging in her community but I think I had to learn what things I want to bring our family around and to fuel and what things I want to invest in with our family, if that makes sense.Katie: Time-wise even?Ashley: Yeah.Katie: Where you're spending your time?Ashley: Yeah, we did study with our congregation with families and the number one asset the number one deficit that they had was time. That's your number one thing, right, you have to spend it where it counts and so for us we really decided that we look like being together as a family and being with our extended family and being with our neighbors.Katie: Yeah. I guess that part of it in the beginning you were looking at therapy and things to get her ready for people and now you're just like you're doing those things still.Ashley: Yeah, and I guess my answer is I always had a sense intrinsically that she belonged no matter what and I think that having conversations with my mentor affirmed my intrinsic sense of her belonging, does that make sense?Katie: Yes, do you think that hearing that from somebody who is in the disability field to say something as ordinary as like go get to know your neighbors, was that.. Because it's playing into your instincts as a parent that you already know and it seems like most places aren't playing into those instincts they're telling you ‘we're experts and this is what we know that you don't'. And for someone to give you something that you already know as a way of life, you have taken that and it's caught on so quickly and so rapidly.So I guess that was kind of part of my question was like in the beginning you were waiting maybe on ‘well we've got to get these things done, we've got to line this stuff up and then maybe we'll find community or maybe there will be a way to be connected to people, maybe there will be a better time' and then hearing from somebody who's in this role to say no it's now, that you do it the best time is now.Ashley: Yeah, I think it was helpful that my mentor also was involved with their neighborhood, like they're doing it, I've been involved in community and i know the fruits of it. It's helpful to be reminded that it's good and my eyes were just stuck on ensuring that I did everything that I thought I needed to do to support her. It was kind of like with blinders on just missing like the biggest piece of providing her abundant community now and making those connections.Katie: Well what I love about this too is that it's a metaphor for most people's lives, whatever that thing is that you're trying to do the best at, do right at is preventing you from just living and usually that is all you need to be doing. But we're going, we're trying to succeed or we're trying to reach these different heights that have these requirements and steps along the way.Ashley: And then we reach those and there's more. Yeah, we're on like the treadmill of the institution and instead of getting invited out of that and saying ok I'm also going to look for something outside of those boundaries to build my life on is huge.Katie: So what is at stake for you for your family if you don't make an effort then to get off the treadmill? If you don't make this effort to connect to the people around you?Ashley: My daughter being isolated as she gets older and I mean for a girl who is in my bones to know the joy of community that's just not an option. So it makes me really sad to think of her facing isolation when it's not in her bones either.Katie: Were you getting a glimpse of that already? I mean she's really young, were you already feeling like that was part of your lives or becoming part of your lives?Ashley: Well interestingly I was going to a lot of different community things, events and stuff and we were the only ones there who had a child with a disability and I was like I know that's that is not always the case but in the unique places that I was that was the case. So one I thought it was important that I was there and two I just hate that that's the culture that that's set out for families for anyone that's marginalized, right?Katie: The culture being we don't go to ordinary places in the community.Ashley: Yeah being like, well the culture being you're welcome if you are a certain way.Katie: Yes so the culture speaks more towards the families of and unwelcoming sense to say like there's a group for that and it's over there.Ashley: Yeah I think one thing was we belong and we're going and she was really young so I mean when you go to a six month old story time it's fine. Difference is more evident as kids age but I think so kids get older it probably would be more challenging to face that head on for the first time without having some understanding and foundation in kind of what do we believe about this what do we believe is true.Katie: As you grow into connections in your neighborhood do you think you're kind of heading off that uncomfortable feeling in the community when you, as your daughter does get older?Ashley: Yeah it's interesting because we have two or three intervention specialists in our neighborhood. So you can always tell when people have a predisposed idea and so you know you just meet those in conversation and bring to the conversations what you believe in small snippets over time. But yeah I think we have work to do and I think our daughter will lead the way in that with our support. So I think the biggest thing I think maybe it was a quote I read from Starfire, you guys were quoting someone that talked about when you toddle, have people who have known you since you've toddled. Do you remember that quote?Katie: David Pitonyak, “Who holds your story?”Ashley: They'll be like that's.. You know we know her, yeah?Katie: Yes. Ending on a piece of hope what is one hope that you have for your family in the next ten years that has to do with your community building work?Ashley: I hope that we establish rhythms with our neighbors that go on year after year and that we know one another's stories. And when my neighbor is sick I know what to make him because I know what he likes, you know, just the good life of community. And if my daughter is out and she isn't supposed to be out then they know me and they know where to bring her, or that she gets invited to the pool party across the street. Just the basic stuff, nothing extravagant but maybe extraordinary in this time, yeah. Katie: Yeah that is extraordinary, is there anything else you would want to say?Ashley: I don't think so.Katie: Ok I love that, thank you.

Cordaro chats with guests about the health challenges common for people of color. Physical fitness and diet advice from fitness pros. Guests: Bryce Jordan and Ashley Oh. Music: Amber Alert by Cordaro Santiago

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.

Welcome to Love YA Like Crazy! You're listening to a special episode recorded by one of the two hosts, Jacob Haller, while he was at PodX in Nashville. This is the last episode in the series, which I think goes out on a high note! For this one, Jake talked to Vox Media's Allegra Frank, who is also a cohost of 'The Polygon Show', about Andrew Clements's 'Things Not Seen', and we were also joined by past guest Simone de Rochefort, which was very excellent! Note that the discussion includes spoilers for 'Things Not Seen', as well as Clements's 'Frindle' and Libba Bray's 'Beauty Queens', and the final episode of Game of Thrones. As mentioned in this discussion, Libba Bray wrote an article about the experience of trying to bring 'Beauty Queens' to the big screen. You can find it on ew.com. The episode contains a brief clip from The Polygon Show's bonus episode about the Game of Thrones finale, in which a couple of the podcast's cohosts, Ashley Oh and Simone de Rochefort, improvise a missing scene from the show. If you enjoy it, I recommend listening to the rest of the show, and other episodes of the Polygon Show in general! Plus, a correction: Jake mentioned that he and Carrie previously recorded an episode about 'Shiver' by Maggie Stiefvater, except I called it 'Frozen'. Anyway, if you want to hear Carrie and me critique the book, here's a link to the episode! We recorded in a space provided by Netflix, for which we thank them! Thanks to Shaenon K. Garrity for designing the Love YA Like Crazy icon, to the Sentimental Favorites for the use of their song 'Hey There', and to Charlie McCarron for the 'Love YA Like Crazy' tag. You can help support production of this podcast, and get rewards in return, via our Patreon page at https://www.patreon.com/loveYAlikecrazy .  

The great Ashley Oh from The Polygon Show joins the pasta paisanos to discuss this intricately plotted homage to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's masterpiece Herlock Solmes. Professor Kooparity has enslaved Princess Toadstool's people (?) so they need the help of the world's greatest detective (??) to free them by insulting Koopa for holding the world record for failing kindergarten the most times (???). In the live action, Mario and Luigi win the award for Plumber of the Year, which is most certainly a result of them being the only plumbers left in a post-apocalyptic Brooklyn. I know we say this a lot, but this episode of the Super Show is so fucking weird and funny.

Hi crystal lovers, this week I'm so excited to be here with the amazing Heather Askinosie of Energy Muse and co-author of Crystal Muse. So, thank you so much for being here with me.   Heather Askinosie: Thank you for having me. I love coming and talking about crystals. Ashley: Well, it's our pleasure to have you. And you know, a lot of people are getting more and more into crystals now. But it just seems like sometimes people feel a little overwhelmed by all the different things that they can do with them. And one thing that I love about your book, the Crystal Muse, is that you make working with crystals so accessible. Heather: Well, thank you. Ashley: Yes. I mean, you make it something that anyone can do. It's not intimidating, you give great instructions. It's like my go-to reference now, and a book I always recommend to our students. There are some things that you talk about in there that I think are so important for keeping your energy body aligned and keeping your energy field clear.  Could you tell us a few of your favorite things that you do with crystals to keep your field clear and aligned? Heather: Well, I think that the fastest way to clear your energy field is to use Selenite because it is, in my opinion, one of the most high vibe crystals that exists on the planet. When I feel a little out of sorts, I'll go lay down on my bed and I'll just lay there with the Selenite on my chest. I kind of let selenite do the work. Sometimes, I might add a thought of, “Please clear my energy and help realign me into my body, into my own inner power.” But it's almost as if light, a column of light, really infuses my body.  I really like the wands, but I also love working with larger pieces of Selenite too. Sometimes it's as simple as just having something to hold on to, you know? I think it's easy to forget that. Crystals are our tools, and Selenite is a really, really powerful tool. So I feel like if you're going to have something in your crystal tool chest, Selenite would be my top recommendation. Ashley: Yes, yes. Heather: So, do you think that too? Ashley: Oh, absolutely. This is one of my favorite tools to work with. I love the larger pieces too. And you know what? I don't always think the size matters so much. But there's something that just-- it's just that physical heft of it, that weight of it that just really gets into your body and gets connected. Heather: I agree. How much do you think intention plays a role in this work? You said that you like to place the Selenite on your body and just say to yourself that you're intending to be more aligned. How much do you think that plays a role in what's happening for someone? Because you said on the other hand, you just allow the crystal to do the work. Heather: Yes. I think it's a dance, and sometimes there's times where I'm at a place where I can really go there and be like, you know what, it's time to get centered and it's time to be aligned. And then there's other times where I'm not at that place, when it's been one of those days and I've had whatever with my family or with work or what-- just life. It's just a journey. Those days, I'm just like, I've got to just put it on and be like, “Help me.” So, some days I definitely think intention plays an amazing role in our lives, because where intention goes and where our thoughts go is where energy goes. But there are times where I just need a crystal friend to lay on me and just help me get back to that point. Our award-winning Crystal Healing Certification Program is coming soon...   Ashley: So true. Heather: So, that's how I work with them. Ashley: You've mentioned that you have days that are a little bit rough where you just have to have a crystal do the work and help you out. I know that from personal experience and from working with people all over the world, that we tend to all have those days. Most people agree that it's because there are these energetic co...

Today I am so honored to be speaking with the amazing Judy Hall, who you might be familiar with because of her work on the Crystal Bible series of books. She has just come out with an amazing new book all about crystal grids, and I am so excited to hear all about it from her and share it with you.   Ashley: I'm so excited to speak with you. This is a topic that has really become so popular over the past few years. Why do you think there is this new and sudden interest in crystal grids? Judy: Well, for me, I've used them for many years. It's such a convenient way of generating energy. They are somewhere to put your intentions. Does that make sense? Ashley: Absolutely. Judy: You can lay them out, set them up, and then they will work for you, and you don't have to keep playing the intention. In fact, the more you can let them get in with it themselves, the more effective they are. Ashley: So, you recommend using them as more of a background energy? Judy: A powerful energy running in the background is how I would describe it. I think that they work on many different levels. They will work on what we think we need, but also, because crystals are sentient, intelligent things, much more intelligent than we are, they know what we really need as well. They also know and will work on what is needed around us. So, when I set up a grid, it's not just a question of 'what do I want?' or 'What do I think I need?' -- I always try to work with the crystals for the highest growth. Ashley: Oh, I love that. Judy: I'm not pushing myself deciding that. But if there is a bigger intention or a bigger outcome that they can bring about, I'm very happy to cooperate with them on that. Ashley: I love that. Judy, there are lots of definitions for what a crystal grid is or what a crystal grid should be. How do you like to define a crystal grid? Judy: That's a tricky one, isn't it? Because people understand different things by it. To many, it's a pattern based on basic geometry, and that in itself, creates an energy. The crystals that go onto the grid work with an underlying pattern to bring energy into harmony. It can be really simple. I was writing the other day about a tombstone grid but I was actually keeping them either end as if it were an infinity symbol. Ashley: Oh, beautiful! Judy: It was around the immunity points on the chest. As you can well hear, I've had a cough and the English weather is not helping. We've got rain, fog, and all things that are not really good for breathing. So, I was setting up a crystal grid using some new cherry quartz and emerald quartz (which are being called tangerine). We found last year that it works best if you put some on the higher heart and at the base of the breast bone. It actually creates this infinity symbol that meets over the heart, and it's very good for strengthening the immune system. Ashley: Oh, I love that. So let me ask you this: most people tend to think of a crystal grid as just being something that you would put maybe on an altar or something in your sacred space. But in what you just mentioned, you're actually placing the grid on the body. How would you decide whether to use a grid on the body or just set up somewhere in your space? Judy: To me, it does rather depend on what I'm doing. If I want to balance my chakra for instance, that goes on my body. Although, if it's going to be inconvenient to have crystals on my body for very long, I might equally setup a chakra grid on a tree of life grid or something like that. If I'm doing earth feelings or sending energy to a situation like trying to find the right job, then to me, that's something that I will put either on an altar or tuck away in a corner of the house. I use the feng shui grid to position the grid sometimes. So, if I'm looking for love I will go to the love corner, or if I'm looking for money I'll go into the money corner, that sort of thing. It's very much a question of 'Where does it fee...

"I'm so excited for this podcast episode today because I have the pleasure of interviewing the amazing Ezzie Spencer of Lunar Abundance. I've been following Ezzie for several months now and I'm just always so impressed with the amazing information that she puts out about the different lunar cycles and moon phases."    Ashley: So, Ezzie thank you so much for being here with me. Ezzie Spencer, PhD: It's my pleasure to be here. Ashley: Could you just maybe introduce yourself to everyone really quickly and tell us a little bit about your business and your work with lunar energy? Ezzie: Of course! I am an author and a speaker and I do some consulting work as well. I basically teach others how to connect in with the moon cycle to create a better life. More specifically, to really live in the flow of life and to tap into that joy and peace and sense of purpose which so many of us are really yearning to find. It's a personal practice that I share from my own experience and my own quest to come back to myself and to create more abundance in every single way in my own life. Disclosure: The links here are affiliate links, meaning I may earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. Yay! Ashley: Oh thank you so much for that. I am so excited about this book! I find myself in the position of someone who really needs to read this book because like so many of us, at times I feel really disconnected from what's happening in my body and with my emotions. We're always looking for a way to reconnect with that part of ourselves. In your book, Lunar Abundance, this is really the main focus. It's about this re-connection to your inner self. It's about tuning into your own energy by using the moon as a mirror. I was wondering, could you tell us how the moon and these cycles, these ebbs and flows, really help us reconnect to that part of ourselves? - because this is a big part of what you speak about in the book. Ezzie: Yes for sure. So I really did live from the neck up in so many ways when I was younger. This is one of the reasons why I felt that there was something missing in my own life. I really felt that sense of disconnection in my life. I was working in a very different career. My job was in the field of law and there was a lot that was good about that, but I couldn't ignore the sense of feeling divorced from who I really was. I was out of tune with the natural cycles and rhythms of my own body and natural flow of life. I also felt like I had lost that connection with the natural environment and that sense of mystery and magic which I had as a child. It started to disappear when I went down that more traditional path to get some of those external trappings of success, if you will. I wanted to come back to myself to cultivate that sense of self-awareness of who I really was and why I was here on this Earth. I needed to cultivate a deeper relationship with my own feelings and emotional world, with both my inner world and my physical body as well. Eventually, I found that sense of that femininity and natural joy by working with the moon cycle. I was drawn to this very, very organically ten years ago, before it was a big thing on the internet and on social media. It was something which I started to connect with when I was writing my journal at night. I was trying to make sense of how I was feeling about my place in the world. So I started to draw little faces of the moon throughout my journal - the whole cycle, not just the full moon. I found that throughout the entire moon cycle there was this natural correlation between where the moon was in the sky and how I was feeling within myself. Those correlations would actually repeat over multiple moon cycles, so they became this pattern that would be predictable. Through this, I started to understand more about myself and the rhythms in the world. There's a lot of theories about why the moon has the effect that it does,

It's been awhile since your nice hosts recorded in the clubhouse, and they have a lot to talk about, including news about Martha's now-in-development point-and-click game!This, plus the return of Mortho, an uncritical endorsement of capitalism, and Stephen admitting that Uncharted 4 maybe had some good things about it.That Nintendo Labo Robot Game Looks Awfully Familiar - Chris Kohler, KotakuThe Global Game Jam is this weekend! It's not too late to sign up!An Overwatch Women's League isn't the answer - Ashley Oh, Polygon Steam 0:10:06 Stephen McGregorHardwareMarketingThe biggest issues with Steam in 2017, according to 230 developers - Lars Doucet, PC GamerVerdant Skies will be out on Steam real soon! We previously talked about Steam Direct in the clubhouse... "We joke here." ...and had Andy, Beth and Gabe Korth in to discuss Steam Greenlight. Steam GreenlightA few alternatives to Steam: Itch.io, Good Old Games, Humble Bundle, Robot Cache.So You Want To Compete With Steam - Lars Doucet, Game Developer Games in Games 0:43:35 Mark LaCroixGame DesignGamingTV Tropes has a great list of games within games.The secret world of hidden games - K. Thor Jensen, Geek.comMicrosoft Excel ‘95 contained Hall of Tortured Souls and Excel ‘97 had a space simulator!Long Lost Emulation Easter Egg Discovered in GoldenEye - Kate Cox, KotakuInside the Development of Gaming's Biggest Mystery, 'Frog Fractions 2' - Patrick Klepek, WaypointUncharted 4 Has The Perfect Video Game Ending - Luke Plunkett, KotakuWolfenstein 3D returns with a twist in Wolfenstein 2 - Patrick Gill, PolygonOne of Martha's favorite games, Spy Fox in Dry Cereal, contains a small game ca…

It's been awhile since your nice hosts recorded in the clubhouse, and they have a lot to talk about, including news about Martha's now-in-development point-and-click game! This, plus the return of Mortho, an uncritical endorsement of capitalism, and Stephen admitting that Uncharted 4 maybe had some good things about it. “That Nintendo Labo Robot Game Looks Awfully Familiar” - Chris Kohler , Kotaku The Global Game Jam is this weekend! It’s not too late to sign up! "An Overwatch Women's League isn't the answer" - Ashley Oh , Polygon Steam 0:10:06 Stephen McGregor Category Hardware Marketing “The biggest issues with Steam in 2017, according to 230 developers” - Lars Doucet , PC Gamer Verdant Skies will be out on Steam real soon! We previously talked about Steam Direct in the clubhouse... "We joke here." ...and had Andy, Beth and Gabe Korth in to discuss Steam Greenlight. Steam Greenlight A few alternatives to Steam: Itch.io, Good Old Games, Humble Bundle, Robot Cache. “So You Want To Compete With Steam” - Lars Doucet , Gamasutra Publication Games in Games 0:43:35 Mark LaCroix Category Game Design Gaming TV Tropes has a great list of games within games. “The secret world of hidden games” - K. Thor Jensen , Geek Microsoft Excel ‘95 contained Hall of Tortured Souls and Excel ‘97 had a space simulator! “Long Lost Emulation Easter Egg Discovered in GoldenEye” - Kate Cox , Kotaku "Inside the Development of Gaming's Biggest Mystery, 'Frog Fractions 2' " - Patrick Klepek , Waypoint “Uncharted 4 Has The Perfect Video Game Ending” - Luke Plunkett , Kotaku “Wolfenstein 3D returns with a twist in Wolfenstein 2” - Patrick Gill , Polygon One of Martha’s favorite games, Spy Fox in Dry Cereal, contains a small game ca…

In each episode of Quality Control, a Polygon editor talks to a critic after they review a new game, movie or piece of gear and allows them to add a little bit of extra context and insight. Why did they feel the way they did? What do they wish they had been able to discuss in more depth in their review? Also: Did they play it wrong? This week, guest host Charlie Hall talks to Ashley Oh about her review of Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In each episode of Quality Control, a Polygon editor talks to a critic after they review a new game, movie or piece of gear and allows them to add a little bit of extra context and insight. Why did they feel the way they did? What do they wish they had been able to discuss in more depth in their review? Also: Did they play it wrong? In this episode, Polygon editor-at-large Justin McElroy talks with Christopher Grant and Ashley Oh about their takes on Polygon's top games of 2016. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices