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  BE SURE TO SEE THE SHOWNOTES AND LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE HERE.   Eve Picker: [00:00:15] Hi there. Thanks so much for joining me today for the latest episode of Impact Real Estate Investing.   Eve Picker: [00:00:21] My guest today is Avra Jain, co-founder of the Vagabond Group. With a career path that has taken her from bond trading on Wall Street to developing properties along some of Miami's trendiest streets, Avra has earned a reputation for identifying the next IT neighborhood. Her remake of The Vagabond Hotel on Biscayne Boulevard in the historic MiMo District of Miami changed the course of that neighborhood forever.   Eve: [00:00:58] Be sure to go to evepicker.com to find out more about Avra on the show notes page for this episode. And be sure to sign up for my newsletter so you can access information about impact real estate investing and get the latest news about the exciting projects on my crowdfunding platform, Small change.   Eve: [00:01:23] Hi Avra. Thank you so much for being on my show.   Avra Jain: [00:01:27] Thanks so much.   Eve: [00:01:28] Very nice to be here, yeah. I love this quote from your website, which says, "We operate from the perspective as storytellers, allowing history to take center stage and create a genuine sense of place". And I would really love you to tell us a little about what that means.   Avra: [00:01:46] Well, that really has come from the work that we've done. We, kind of, we got there. We, I'd like to think there were people that actually, sort of, do it and then rather than talk about it. So, I can say that that actually, actually came from the work that we're doing. My team is three architects, one of which was, has a master’s in historic preservation. And so, when we start a project, or we do a project, the first thing that we do is that we study the history of the community, of the buildings themselves, architecturally, culturally. And so, we always sort of start from the story. And if there isn't a story, we don't do the project.   Eve: [00:02:36] Oh, interesting.   Avra: [00:02:37] Yeah, so we actually, so that quote really came from how we really operate. So that's a real reflection of the work.   Eve: [00:02:48] So what sort of stories do you look for?   Avra: [00:02:52] You know, it varies. So, in Miami there's a section of, there's a historic strip from the 1950s and 60s called MiMo which stands for Miami mid-century modern. So, there's a boulevard, Biscayne Boulevard, which used to be US1. So, if you were driving down post-World War Two in your 57 Chevy and you were going to Miami, the Magic City, you would have driven on US1 or Biscayne Boulevard. And there is a section that had these old 50s and 60s motels and, you know, with a big neon signs, and so, we came up here, one of the projects, larger projects that we did, that we're known for is the preservation work. When we renovated the Vagabond Motel to Vagabond Boutique Hotel. And that was the tipping point for the historic boulevard. So, we bought about 10. The neighborhood at the time was all drugs and prostitution. And, you know, it had been a neighborhood that you would've just driven right through with, you know, the shades down next to the baby seat, you know, but there were some spectacular, you know, vintage mid-century architecture, which I know you're an architect so you can appreciate.   Eve: [00:04:17] Yeah, I know. I took a look on your website. They are stunning.   Avra: [00:04:21] Yeah. So well, these were buildings that were up for demolition. And they were in disrepair, you know, SWAT teams were coming in once a month to empty them out because of, you know, drugs and things that would go on. And so, we knew that in order to, and this was a neighborhood that used to be Main Street, Biscayne Boulevard used to be Main Street. If you couldn't afford to stay at the Eden Roc or the Fountain Blue, you would've stayed at the Vagabond. Same architect that did the very famous Delanoe Hotel on Miami Beach. So, we knew what it once was. So, it was about, you know, bringing it back. There are other times when we actually, you know, neighborhoods, right, where we go into warehouse districts and create neighborhoods. This was a neighborhood that was so all we do was bring it back. And there was actually some really affluent neighborhoods nearby and surrounding neighborhoods that were also original from the 1930s and 40s. So, it was really a beautiful project to do both architecturally and for what it did for the community. The thesis was, if we bought enough of these motels that were 20 dollars an hour, you know, sixty dollars a night. The hotel that we bought next to Vagabond, in the lobby the sign said: "no refunds after five minutes". And it originally said ten minutes and they whited it out. That was the neighborhood and so we bought six of these old motels. A couple of them were abandoned and the rest of them we shut down. What happened was we thought is, if you shut down where people were actually doing these bad things, could the neighborhood find itself again? And it did.   Eve: [00:06:20] What gave you the courage to do that? And what sort of resistance did you feel for these projects?   Avra: [00:06:28] Oh, no resistance. Oh, my gosh. The city was like, the mayor, you know, we when we opened the Vagabond, we had nine hundred people. Everybody, all the arts, everybody. It was like a really big deal. This was, you know...   Eve: [00:06:40] I suppose I meant from the point of view of, because opening is easy. But what about the financing? I mean, how easy....   Avra: [00:06:47] Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I was going to say, we had no community resistance. In fact, people continually thank us all the time. But the resistance, yeah, sure financing, couldn't get any.   Eve: [00:06:58] Yeah, I'm sure.   Avra: [00:07:00] Yeah, no, I mean you know, you've done this enough times, Eve. So in fact even my traditional real estate investors, I had done a lot of adapted use in New York City and other places and a lot of my investors which go all the way back, you know, twenty five years to New York City, even some of them were like, ah, you've done a lot of crazy things, but they just could not get past the working girl on the corner. They couldn't get past it. They could not see the architecture. They could not see, they couldn't see the history, they just couldn't see it. They couldn't believe that it would come back. And so, a lot of, in this particular case, a lot of the money for that particular project was myself and my partners, you know, my spouse. I mean, we put up, I'd say 40, 50 percent of the money. So, it was really a cash project. But we found some very clever financing opportunities, financial opportunities. So, we did, I did my homework. I always tell people, you know, part of real estate is doing your homework. Understanding zoning, understanding the community and doing the outreach. Understanding building codes, a lot of homework. Well, I'd done my homework and I knew that there had been an ordinance set up in 2010, where you could sell development rights for historic properties. So, you know, in New York City, we knew that we could do this. We call them transferable development rights.   Eve: [00:08:32] Right. I'm very familiar with them. Yeah.   Avra: [00:08:34] So in Miami, for this particular strip, because it was historic, they down zoned it, meaning they limited, they did a height restriction of 35 feet. They took away buildable rights for the property owners. In exchange for doing that, they offered the property owners the ability to sell those development rights. So, floor area ratio, you know how much you could build. And then later they adopted a policy that also allowed you to sell the density. Like how many apartments you could build. The number of doors we call it, right? So, I was able to arbitrage that and the value of the transferable development rights for the Vagabond was three million dollars.   Eve: [00:09:24] Wow.   [00:09:25] And the purpose of those development rights and the ability to sell them is also to incentivize property owners to preserve and invest in the historic preservation of the property. So, you can sell those rights, but you have to reinvest them into the property and meet historic guidelines.   Eve: [00:09:43] Interesting.   [00:09:44] Yeah, it's not a little project. Actually, I think that, you know, in order to get historic preservation to work, you really have to give people incentives because it's very expensive. For those of us who build, doing historic preservation it's more expensive. It would've been cheaper for me to knock the building down and build it again than it was to actually preserve the existing Vagabond. So, they have to give you incentives otherwise... there's a reason why developers let those buildings go into disrepair and   Eve: [00:10:16] because they're expensive, yeah. Historic tax credits help as well. I don't have Florida has a state credit as well, but I've used those in the past and they certainly help to fill the gap, that's for sure.   Avra: [00:10:29] Yes. We qualified. We nationally designated the Vagabond Hotel. We met those standards and got the federal tax credit. So, we got 20 percent of our investment into the property. Yeah, every state's different. Every state's different. Every municipality is different.   Eve: [00:10:47] This really took creative financing and the, since then, you said you bought six of them and how did the financing change one you opened the Vagabond Hotel?   Avra: [00:10:57] Well, once we opened the Vagabond, sold the development rights, we were able to, get banks to give us some financing. But most of the projects we did, we did cash. We did cash and we financed after. It was just still, even now it's easy, you know, but I took rents, rents on the Biscayne Boulevard for twenty, twenty-five dollars. The Starbucks leases from me for 70 dollars, triple net. So, now it's very easy to get financing. And the Boulevard has a lot of cachet, but it   Avra: [00:10:57] It's very difficult, yeah. I mean, this is actually why I started Small Change because, you know, banks almost squash the creativity out of what needs to happen, the creativity and innovation out of what needs to happen in cities, because you can't, they want to only finance what's been done before. So, how do you tackle a place like this if you can't get financing and you don't have the cash?   Avra: [00:12:00] Yes, it's almost, I would say, it's almost impossible. So, you know, you rely on friends and family. A lot of it's your check book. But that's also the opportunity. Those are the properties that are also undervalued, right? The property that trade that are most expensive, are really a function of financing. You know, Multifamily trades at a tight cap rate because that is the darling with the lenders. Banks really, and part of it is the regulations, banks have to fund based on cashflow, income from properties. The regulations almost mandate it.   Eve: [00:12:36] Yes.   [00:12:37] So, lending on land or lending on an abandoned building and for adaptive reuse, which is unfortunate because in a lot of the underserved communities you need.   Eve: [00:12:48] That's exactly what you need, yeah.   Avra: [00:12:49] And what you lose because these are buildings that need a lot of work. Of course, they're not income producing, nobody should be living in them. And some people do live in properties like that and shouldn't be there. So, you know, the banking industry does not set up to be helpful. You know, what has happened, short of being able to fund yourself or have enough track record to to attract funding, is that there's a, sort of a hybrid lending space now. Used to be you could only get bank financing or a bridge loan or, you know, hard money loan you call it, right? 13, 14 percent which makes projects also unfeasible. You just, you give away all your profits in interest costs. But there's hybrid money out there now, that is more flexible, and you can get, you know, between six and nine percent depending on the project and you’re, and the sponsorship. We've been able to get hybrid money for projects like this. And it's really because of our track record. And it's all personal guarantees, right? I have to sign personally on everything.   Eve: [00:13:58] Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I sign my whole life away.   Avra: [00:14:02] Until the projects completed. You know, it's very hard for people to get into this business from the developer's side. You know, I have three architects that work for me and they didn't want to be in a firm, just, as you guys would call being a cad monkey. I think, you know where you're just drawing all day, right? And so, they wanted to be developers. And so, they came and worked with me. And they're learning development really is about money. So, when you think about what does it take to be a developer? We're not licensed. Architects are licensed, builders are licensed, right? Your electrician's licensed. Even the real estate agents are licensed. Developers are not licensed. You can call yourself a developer as long as you have a check book.   Eve: [00:14:52] Yes. So, what would you tell other women who want to be real estate developers?   Avra: [00:14:57] You have to love it. Well, first of all I'd ask, what does developer mean to you? So, if I asked you Eve, define developer, what, how would you define it?   Eve: [00:15:07] Well, for me, it's all about the buildings. I'm very passionate about buildings and places and using architecture to make better places. So being a developer for me is the opportunity to really make some significant change through the money that I invest, or I put together to make buildings better.   Avra: [00:15:34] And then there's a lot of people that would like to do that, right? So how do they do that? Right? And there's, I think there's a lot of people with vision and, so, you need the money, right? And then you have to be able to execute. And so, a lot of what goes right or wrong is in the execution. So, you know, you have the vision, but it's the, now is the execution. You know, how well do you budget, the quality of the work, the team that you can assemble. And you know the surprises, right. You know, we say we're in the problem-solving business, really, especially with more adaptive reuse or historic preservation. You have no idea where you're buying. You know, we've gotten pretty good at it now and I can tell you every time it's different.   Eve: [00:16:24] Oh, yeah, it's a challenge. But that's the fun of it. But listen, why? You know, you're a female developer, I'm a female developer. There are very few of us. Why is that? Because, you know, women are very good at team building.   Avra: [00:16:40] Well, I think a lot of women are doing it. They just don't have the title, right? So, in my particular case, I'm the founder and, you know, I know I run the company, but a lot of women are doing it. They're just not, I think the front person. Interesting. You do your work, you're the front person. You're doing it but the women that work for me, they all work, you know, I give, I empower them, they all have their own projects within, within the Vagabond Group. They all run their own jobs, they do the architecture, they do the expediting, you know, of course, all under. And they've been with me long enough. They know at first, you know, tightly under my watch and now, you know, call me if you need me.   Eve: [00:17:25] But still, that's a little bit different because they don't have access to their own money. And that's, I think, you know, as you said, the deciding factor. So, where I live there's very few women who kind of can plan their own destiny as real estate developers. I actually don't know of anyone else at the moment. So,   Avra: [00:17:45] It's money, so that's it. You've really defined it. But I will say there's a couple of other things. So, you know, because people have asked me Avra, why, you know, why aren't there more? Well, one is money. And a lot of that money comes with track record. You know, I wouldn't give a first-time person, developer money. I mean, you know, you really have to have experience in order to gain that. So, when I first did my first projects, it was mostly my money.   Eve: [00:18:11] Yes.   [00:18:11] You don't want to lose somebody else's money while you're learning, right? So, there's a learning curve here and so, as you learn and you'd have track record, you can get sponsorship, but you really have to have that, you know, especially in what we do, right? So, what you and I do, we find these. It's easy buying a multi-family, lipsticking it up, creating value. OK that's one thing. But to actually go in and create place, that's different. And that requires mostly cash investments. The returns usually reflect the risk, they always do. I mean, I don't, you, know people, you know, people go "I get two times two times my money". And people are happy getting two times their money in four to five years.   [00:18:59] I can tell you that isn't, that would never be a deal on my desk. If I don't think I'm making four to five times equity, in five years, I don't do the deal, which is why I'm able to get sponsorship. So, part of it is discipline. You know, there's a lot of projects I'd like to do, but I look at them and go, you know, I just can't I can't pencil it. And then, those projects that I can't pencil, which is like affordable housing, I just do myself and I'm OK. But those don't make money. I'm OK that they may or may not make money because I'm doing those for different reasons. Those are for social reasons. But when I'm doing deals where I'm taking in investment money, you know, the returns for the type of deals that we do, at least the perceived returns need to be much higher. But I do that for myself. I mean, a lot of this is my own money and I treat everybody's money if it's my own money. I also don't take fees. I'm not a fee developer, so I get paid based on success. So, I don't, I don't take fees.   Eve: [00:20:03] Ok. So, you right alongside equity investors who risk their money, then.   Avra: [00:20:09] Right alongside. So, I don't make a penny until you make money. And I think that's part of what, the other way that I've been able to raise money. Now, not everybody can do that. That's not realistic for a lot of people. But I've been able to do that because I set myself up for that. I saved enough money. I don't want to get paid, which is why I've been able to get, you know, the investment I get. Because people want to know that your interests are aligned and there are a lot of developers out there, they're really in the fee business. They're just, they're in the fee business period. And I don't think that that makes us aligned.   Eve: [00:20:52] So, tell me a little bit more about the 50s motels that you're converting to affordable housing?   Avra: [00:20:58] Yes, we I did one, we did one in Little Haiti, not too far from the Vagabond. So, if you couldn't afford to stay at the Eden or at the Vagabond, if you couldn't afford to stay the at the Vagabond, you would have stayed at Superior, Superior Motel and Apartments, which is west, further west and 1950s. It's a more modest property. You know, in some of the more modest neighborhoods then historic properties are more modest, but it doesn't mean they're less important. And I bought the building to do affordable housing. The person that runs affordable housing for the county, Mr. Lu, he would say, he actually stalked me into doing this. He wanted to put a new face to affordable housing in the projects that were being done. So, I started by giving him suggestions on what I would do and how I would go about it and then he said, then he just asked me to do something and I did. I can tell you that it was a horrible experience. Working under the administrative aspects of affordable housing. You know, they wanted to give me a small sur-tax loan. That was a half a million dollars sur-tax loan. And then by the time they were ready to give me the loan, I said, I don't even want it. It'll be the most expensive money I've ever gotten because I've spent fifty thousand dollars in administrative costs to get a 500,000-dollar loan, right. There was like a 10 percent cost. You know, every draw request was like the size of a Bible. I said, you know...   [00:22:28] No, that's right.   [00:22:29] I said, Mr Lu, I can do the work, but I can't handle the administrative aspect of this. I wouldn't get a draw for, you know, a draw request. I don't know how sophisticated everybody is on the podcast so I'll try to be a little more descriptive, but, every time you build a building and it's time to, and you have a loan, you do the work, you turn in your invoices, so to speak, and you're supposed to get reimbursed. Well,   Eve: [00:22:57] Quickly, right? Quickly is the idea because you'd need the money to keep going.   Avra: [00:23:00] Well, six to 10 weeks.   Eve: [00:23:03] Yes, I've been there.   Avra: [00:23:05] Which means that in you know, that if a guy doesn't get paid for six weeks or would anyway, if you weren't getting paid six weeks after you've done a job, you'd leave the job site.   [00:23:16] Yeah. So, it costs a lot of money in time because you're,   [00:23:19] So I ended up floating the entire job, meaning I paid everybody myself and then getting reimbursed, you know, six, twelve weeks later. And again, that's not feasible for most people. And that's why affordable housing doesn't work. And that's why, when you drive around and you see these, sort of half-completed buildings, is because you have to have the means in order to get through those projects. And I ended up, I probably have a half a million dollars of my own money in the project making zero return. So, because the cost to do it right versus the rents that you should charge. It doesn't mean, I can charge higher rents but truly affordable rents, you cannot build affordable housing in Miami. If you gave me a piece of dirt and said Avra, build affordable housing at 80 percent of the averaged income, I would tell you I couldn't do it.   Eve: [00:24:15] You can't do it anywhere, actually. You can't do it anywhere in the world, I don't think. So, oh, maybe some places, but it's a standard problem, yeah.   Avra: [00:24:22] Right, so it has to be subsidized, so you have to get grants. So, the reason why we were able to do historic preservation was because of the, you know, the entitlement programs to sell entitlements. That allowed us to grant ourselves some moneys to do these, what I called public benefit projects, historic preservation of the benefit. And you're saving time, you're saving moments in time, right. And then, same thing with affordable housing. You cannot do affordable housing without subsidies and grants. It's impossible. So, those are instances. And people think, oh, well you can get financing for it or people will do impact investing on these things.   Eve: [00:25:02] No, you can't.   Avra: [00:25:03] A bank doesn't lend to the same criteria where there's a public benefit or not. It's not to say they don't want to, but they can't.   Eve: [00:25:12] Yeah, so non-profits become very important in this equation. It's very difficult. How successful has that motel been and have you built other ones that are affordable? Do you have a waiting list?   Eve: [00:25:22] Oh yeah. Well that project, it's called, it was a motel and efficiency apartments. So, there's all apartments, most of them efficiency apartments. Very successful, 100 percent occupied. When you can charge a...And we were able to lease to more high risk candidates, you know, maybe people who've a felony in their past, you know, not a violent crime or something, but we're able to lease to people and not take security deposits. And a lot of, you know, our employees, one of the reasons why we started, we did, we started to do some affordable housing. When we opened the motel, or the hotel, Vagabond Hotel, because we realized our staff were taking two or three buses to get to work, and they were single Mums. So, we actually started subsidizing housing for our employees, early on. We bought an apartment building close by and then we realized that obviously this was not just a Vagabond issue. This is a national, well certainly a local and certainly a national issue. So that started our efforts in affordable housing, was sort of subsidizing for existing employees. And then, when we did the other ones, we're very conscious about trying to fill the void. We can do that because it's a personal investment. We're not a large institution doing affordable housing we've seen. This is not a money maker. I think there's a way to do it where you could get, you know, you can you know, people go, well can you do impact investing and get a five or six percent return? We can, because I don't take developer fees.   Eve: [00:27:04] Right.   Avra: [00:27:05] And we self-perform a lot of the work. So, I'm able to do that. So, on the project I did after this, I took in two small investors who wanted to participate in impact investing. So, we did one in Little Haiti and then we did their next projects in Overtown. Forty-four units in Overtown. And we're in the process of renovating that. Also, a 1950s, late 50s, so it's a combination of preservation and affordable housing, which we think is important. You know affordable housing is not bricks and mortar, it's about people and the qualities of their life and how they feel about themselves. We say we're really in the self-esteem business. You know, how does a single mother feel in their house? The stress level, you know, knowing if her kids are in a healthy environment or not in a healthy environment. The projects we're just in the process of doing, we finished two of five buildings so far, we keep everybody on-site and we rotate them. So, nobody leaves the property, they're not relocated. So, people are not, their lives are not disrupted. They stay where the kids go to school, where they went to school. Their friends are still their friends. They go to the same church, you know. So, we think it's important when you do affordable housing to keep communities intact. That's one of our prerequisites. Even when we did the property in Little Haiti, we did two units at a time and rotated people. So, they did not have to move. So, in the building we just finished one of the, in one of the buildings was a single mom and her child was having a lot of health issues and DCF was going to take the child away because they didn't think that the mother was giving the child the asthma medication and everything, because the child was suffering. And the minute we moved her from the apartment that she was in to one of the new apartments, the child was fine.   Eve: [00:28:59] Wow.   Avra: [00:29:00] She almost lost her child because of the housing, the quality of the housing she was living in.   Eve: [00:29:06] That's pretty shocking.   Avra: [00:29:09] It's shocking. It's unacceptable. I mean, so, most of the buildings that we, so all these buildings that we bought in Overtown, I mean, they should be condemned buildings. I mean, I'm surprised people didn't, well apparently, they had. Some people had fallen from the second floor into the first floor. I mean, the people live in those conditions because they can't afford higher rent and they don't want to move. You know, these tend to be closer to core locations, right? They're older buildings, closer to where they work, it's where their communities are and they don't want the landlords to fix up the apartments because if they do, they know they have to raise the rent and then they might get kicked out. So, people choose to live in these really, you know, sub-human conditions because they can't afford the rent if it was renovated. So, in that particular project, we teamed up with the CRH, the Community Redevelopment Agency in the area, and because they had seen our work in Little Haiti, they had asked us to do a similar project in Overtown.   Avra: [00:30:16] And my, my response was, no. I said, it doesn't work. I go, it doesn't work. I can't afford to subsidize all these projects. So, I said, you know, I told them what they needed to do. One, they had to remove all the administrative. No good developer would operate under those administrative restrictions. And two, I said you're going to have to pay for it. And if you want the rents truly affordable, you're going to have to pay for all of it. Because if you want a seven-hundred-dollar rent, I need to be in that unit for seventy thousand dollars. And by the way, it costs eighty-two-thousand dollars to buy the apartment. And it's going to cost you another fifty-thousand-dollars a unit.   Eve: [00:31:03] To renovate it.   Avra: [00:31:05] So if you want me to do it, and I'm not going to wait, I'm not going to take draws, you're going to have to give me five hundred thousand dollars every time I start a building. Because I'm not going to, I'm not going to chase you down. I'll do open book. Open book, come anytime you want, knock yourself out. But I can't do the work and meet all the typical requirements. And so, they, they said Avra, yes. Do it.   Eve: [00:31:35] Wow.   [00:31:36] It went all the way to Commission. Commissioners voted on it and I did the project. So, they basically bought down the rents and people are living in two- and three-bedroom apartments, beautiful two- and three-bedroom apartments. When I say beautiful, you're an architect. You know, I floated the walls. I did resilient channels for the wall boards for sound.  Wool between. Everything's copper piping. We don't, you know, rebuilt from the inside out. If you'd walked in, you would have fallen through to the studs, to the studs on the floor and you would have seen the roof two ceilings up. So totally rebuilt, you know, with all the right quality materials. No, everything mold-resistant, every, you know, impact glass safety, all those things. So, people are living in really beautiful apartments. And, so think about what that's like. For them. For them, they're people, right? The pride, how their kids feel to come home, to work, the family gatherings. Remember it's, we don't build buildings. You build buildings, but it's really the quality of the experience in the building. It's how people feel. Otherwise, buildings can be nice to look at, right? Right? What are they really? I mean, building to me, they're made of organic materials, I mean, buildings live. And as builders and developers, we have to, you know, we feel that, we think about that. You know, so lots of times I get a building and it just doesn't feel right. It doesn't have the life. And our job is, that when we do these projects, these adaptive reuse and historic preservation projects, whether it's for, you know, an adaptive reuse or for affordable housing, you have to think of it as how do people live? How are people going to feel when they're there, when they're inside? And that’s, you know, sort of, that’s sort of how we operate.   Eve: [00:33:48] That's how it drives you. So, these products, I know we've talked about them a lot, and they're clearly your passion projects. You also work on very, very big projects.   Avra: [00:33:58] Yes, so that I can afford to do the passion projects.   Eve: [00:34:02] Yes, that's the bread and butter work, right?   Avra: [00:34:05] So and those, you know, are more traditional, you know, I do. By the way, they're very good local community banks here that I work with in... we're very fortunate during Covid and everything that, you know, my friends that had the large banks, you know, had a lot of trouble getting, having to work with them and work with their tenants. But the community banks in Miami really stepped up and were the first to say, you know, what can we do? How can we help? So, I've good local banking relations, banks that have lent to me for 20, 25 years that support, you know, that support my projects. Even if they're slightly out of the box they, again track record, they support the project. So, I'm able to do, I'm getting ready to do a large adaptive reuse project towards 50,000 square feet of adaptive reuse in a warehouse district. There might have been a day where I wouldn't get financing, but I will get financing for that, 50 percent loan to cost, and then I'll have the capital stack of my own investors. Then, you know, on some bigger projects, I'm getting ready to do a project on the Miami River. That's a big project to earn, it's a new build. Two hundred fifty-nine apartments,200,000 square feet of office and retail. It'll be almost 180-million-dollar project with 120-million-dollar loan. I'M partnering with a very large developer, Property Market Group, PMG, they build really well. I'm really excited to have a chance to work with them, there are developers that you respect and then there's the other developers that you would really like to work with, and this is one of them. And they're both. And so, they build beautifully. So, they, we're teaming up. They're going to do the residential portion and I'm going to keep the office and retail. You know, without them, they're providing that completion guarantee. I mean, I wouldn't have, I wouldn't have the balance sheet. We're talking financing here, right? I wouldn't have the balance sheet to guarantee a 120-million-dollar construction loan. So, you know, so that's very limiting to do big projects. Problem. You know, I don't do, one reason why I don't do a lot of big projects is because of the financing. It's just by the time we bring in the capital stack and everything, you know, and then when you do that, you lose, you give up a lot of control over the integrity of the project. People start value engineering everything out of the project. And so, you know, the vision gets lost and all-of-a-sudden it's work and it's not fun. You know, it's one reason why I don't do a lot of large projects. So, whereas on the smaller projects, we can keep control. So, you know, so, yes, I am doing a large project because it's a spectacular site with a spectacular vision. But I don't do that as often. The risks are high and the loss, I think more than anything, is the loss of, you know, the vision. I mean when you do big, big projects. You know, what I always say you have to have two things when you, when you partner with people. You have to have the same vision, but you also have the same have the same values. Some people can have the same vision but then if they don't the same values, it is not the same. So, lots of times that happens when you do these, sort of, bigger projects.   Eve: [00:37:36] Yeah. You know, I've always stuck with smaller projects for much the same reason. Because I can finish them the way I think they should be finished and no one's egging me on to do something different.   Avra: [00:37:47] Everyone wants you to cut corners. Hey, it's already sold. Hey, it's already leased. You know, then, who cares, you know, it's a, if it's a 10-year paint or a fifteen-year paint? Well I care.   Eve: [00:37:58] Yes, I'm with you.   Avra: [00:37:59] Those decisions that get made, you know, again, the more people that are involved. For developers that have cut those corners, it's short-sighted because then, why do they come and lease my building instead of their building? Because people can feel the difference. They can feel the difference in quality. So, you know, it's interesting right now in this market and during Covid, and people are consolidating and deciding which offices to keep or which ones not to keep or which neighborhoods to be in or not be in. And I can tell you I have two very large tenants that had offices across the city, and they chose to consolidate. And both of them chose to be in my buildings and give up other spaces. And it really is because of the quality of our buildings, the uniqueness of our buildings. It speaks to their brand. And this was a time when spending the money and having your building be special, having there be a story to the building and the neighborhood that is in mattered. Because lots of times you can't spreadsheet this stuff. Anybody in finance and in the financing world wants, you know, a spreadsheet, right? Well, let's do a spreadsheet, right? You can't spreadsheet the quality of a space. You can't spreadsheet cool and placemaking. There's no spreadsheeting that. But when there's stress in the market and you see how people move and what they choose to keep and where they live or work, how, where rents are more stable or whatever, you see the performance. But when I'm doing a spreadsheet and presenting it to a bank, there's no way to quantify that.   Eve: [00:39:45] Yeah. Just shifting gears a little bit, are there any current trends in real estate development, especially around the pandemic, that you think are most important for the future of our cities?   Avra: [00:39:58] Well, we're staying the course. I mean, our mindfulness, our thoughtfulness, it hasn't changed. If it's before the pandemics, during the pandemic, or the after-pandemic. So, we've always practiced sustainability. Even in our new building, everybody's talking about these new air filtration systems and water systems. We had already designed that into our building before Covid. So, you know, it was like we were already there. We already felt like the wellness trend was, we already got on that bus a while ago. Now the tenants are going to be asking about it and insisting on it. We were already on that bandwagon by. My team is architects and so we are always looking at what's new, what's cutting edge and hopefully somewhat cost affordable so we've already, we're adopting a lot of those. So, I think those things will become more mainstream now. Good. And maybe that will even make them more cost effective. So, we haven't changed. Again, our mindset has always been, you know, we need to adapt to reusing. You use existing buildings. I mean that's the ultimate in sustainability, right?   Eve: [00:41:07] Yes, I agree.   Avra: [00:41:09] It's like fruit shopping, right? The most, the best thing, people don't realize how many CO2s go into building a building. And you knock it down, you spend more CO2s and then you rebuild it and spend more CO2s. There is a really great study out there, and I don't know if you've read it, on green building. And it was put out actually by the historic preservation community but if you were to take a building and knock it down, build it back, using green, let's say green technology, all the new Green Technologies, Sustainability, LEED certified, whatever, it would take you 80 years to make up for the damage done. 80 years to make up for the fact that you knocked down a building. So, we think, you know, so we are all about keeping existing building,   Eve: [00:41:56] Keeping, yeah, yeah.   Avra: [00:41:57] Absolutely. And it's interesting. We, and we do it, you know, we don't stop and think, oh, my God, we're saving the environment, right? But we know that it's important to the sustainability story. But we also know that it's important to the cultural story, to the story of community and social resiliency. When people talk about resiliency, but they talk about it like, you know, well, how high is your sea wall, or whatever. Resiliency, by definition, is your ability to bounce back. It does not say how high is your seawall, it's your ability to bounce back. And that is a social, that is a social response, not a building response, not a civilian engineering response. So, we think that focus, that part of social resiliency is part of keeping community. And part of keeping community is to try to save and do adaptive reuse with existing buildings. Again, we're back to why we build our business around this story. We think without the story we, it doesn't, it isn't going to get us where, we won't be interested. And it's got to be a story that, when you do projects that have a story, people want to be a part of it. People want to be a part of it. People want to work on it. People want to help build it. And then people want to live in it and people want to do their business in it. You know, I think builders, developers underestimate the market.   Eve: [00:43:37] Yeah, I think you're right.   Avra: [00:43:38] I think they underestimated them. They know the difference. And they know how it feels. And if they have a choice to spend a dollar here or a dollar there, they're going to spend it where it also feels good.   Eve: [00:43:51] Yeah. So, one last question for you. And that is, what's your big hairy goal?   Avra: [00:43:59] Gosh, you know, I guess just, you know, I'm living it every day. You know,   Eve: [00:44:06] That's a great answer.   Avra: [00:44:07] Yeah, I just, you know, we just keep doing what we're doing, and I think, you know, we talk about, you know, always wanting to learn, right? And knowledge is empowering, but it doesn't give you power unless you use it. So we are, you know, we're always learning, always curious. We're always helpful to other developers. Very transparent. We open source. So, if you go on, I think you've been on, our website. If you go onto VagabondGroupConsulting.com and you hit open source, we open sourced our affordable housing project. You get all the money we spent, all the inspections, all the time, all the materials, everything. The things that went well, the things that didn't go well. I think that one of the goals would be to hopefully encourage more developers and especially people in the public benefits space. Anybody'd be taking public dollars for sure, to open source their projects so more people can learn and so that more, more thoughtful developers can hopefully...   Eve: [00:45:16] That's a great idea. I'm definitely taking a look. And I'm super jealous of all of fabulous 50s motels that you're renovating. It's a fabulous...   Avra: [00:45:26] Here's a question for you. So how, in your platform, can you help developers like me?   Eve: [00:45:33] Well, if you want to start raising money from a broader group of people, from the community, that's really what investment crowdfunding is about. And I see there's a, how can I say this? I landed in Pittsburgh unexpectedly and one of the really big things I learned here is that people really want to be involved with their community and making it better with their city. It doesn't really matter where you go, people are very connected to the place they live in. And I was working with dollars that dried up in the late 2000s and started thinking about crowdfunding to replace them. You know, also working with banks that became more and more skittish and wanted to do less and less innovative project lending. And so, all of that kind of led me to investment crowdfunding, which really lets the crowd decide. So, you could, very soon you'll be able to raise, there's actually upgrades to the rule under way, but very soon an issuer, a developer, would be able to raise up to five million dollars a year from anyone over the age of 18.   Avra: [00:46:47] Wow. No, no subscription agreement.   [00:46:50] No, no, there's subscription agreements, but we handle all of that electronically online. So, if you go to a funding portal like Small Change, we are registered with the SEC and members of FINRA and it's a very heavily regulated rule. We kind of manage all that. And you basically create a disclosure package which we help you create, register it with the SEC and then everything else is handled electronically as people invest. So, I think the most meaningful thing for me is that if you want to bring along people in your community, you normally don't have a chance to invest and create wealth based on what's happening in their own community. This is a way to do that.   Avra: [00:47:38] So, I think it's a great idea. I actually went on your webpage and I thought about it. So, in in the affordable housing project that we did in Overtown, we actually, one of the partners, because we were getting large grants, they asked, they basically assigned us a local CDC, a community.   Eve: [00:48:00] Right, a development corporation, yeah.   Avra: [00:48:02] Yeah, to be part of the ownership. And it was Mount Zion, which was actually the oldest church in Miami, I think. They're a part-owner, you know, less than 10 percent so the lender has no issues. And I was neglecting again, it was more control thing, it wasn't a money thing because we're not making money. Right, so.   Eve: [00:48:24] Right, but they can bring grants to the table that you can't as a for-profit developer, right?   Avra: [00:48:31] But the reason why I don't put myself in a non-for-profit space is because I know, I see a lot of the people, in non-for-profit space and it's not non-for-profit, OK? It's actually, I call it, so, I'm in the no-profit space. So, I'm like, so I won't put on a non-for-profit space because everybody pays themselves salaries and things. We don't pay. We don't pay ourselves.   Eve: [00:48:53] Well, that's right.   Avra: [00:48:54] So the CDC came in and they've been great because they helped, you know, that was the thing. I said, well, as long as everybody understands nobody's getting paid, I'm happy to have a community organization. And I said, so they have ownership, so certainly down the line this, you know, we have a 30-year covenant and down the line there will be some value there. But I thought that it would have been great if, even instead of the CDC or in addition to the CDC, what if everybody in the community, so I get a grant from this CRA. What if every family that lived in that community all got a piece of the project? Instead of this CDC?   Eve: [00:49:37] Yeah, I've thought about this a lot. I've actually thought that, you know, in a poor community, wouldn't it be fantastic if there were even a foundation that matched investments made, or to increase the value to people who invest, you know, maybe even 100 dollars?   Avra: [00:49:54] Yes. So anyway, we got a three-million-dollar grant, just so you know. But I mean the three-million-dollar grant, and you'll see and, you'll like to see the math in our open source, the three-million-dollar grant will save the residents eight million dollars in rental cost over the 30 years. So, that's a huge benefit to the tenants with subsidized rents but if everybody in the community was given, let's say, a thousand-dollar ownership, assigned a thousand-dollar ownership, right? I mean, as long as I don't have to deal with, you know, a thousand investors, you know, I'm happy to have them own a piece of the project. You know, as long as me as a developer I can do what I do, you know? So, any time there's a grant made into a project, why isn't that grant, which is community dollars, community dollars, taxpayer dollars, why not have that grant be a crowdfund investment?   Eve: [00:50:57] Well, it can be. I just think people aren't quite there yet.   Avra: [00:51:00] Well, let's do it.   Eve: [00:51:01] Yeah. I'd love to do it. I've thought about raising a pot of funds for a community, for example, where someone, maybe you partner with a community development financial institution or a community bank, and someone manages the money, but it's programmatically distributed in the community as well. So now you have, maybe not just your project improving the community, but you're benefiting other people directly. Let's just say you're below a certain income and you need your roof replaced, you can get a loan for zero percent.   Avra: [00:51:38] Miami does a lot of that. I have to say, there is a lot of things we do. America Build does that. We have these twenty-thousand-dollar grants. If people know where to look that is made available.   Eve: [00:51:51] I know. But I'm thinking really community specific, you know. You pick a community that you're working and you, kind of, really try to build it up and make sure that people who are not wealthy in that community come along for the ride when developers do make investments and the community is improved. So, I mean, it could happen in any number of ways but, you know, we all think about what happens to people who are left behind, right? So, there's something there. I'm not exactly sure what it looks like precisely, but I have tools in my toolkit, these SEC regulations that I understand very well that could be deployed in that manner. Absolutely.   Avra: [00:52:34] Yeah. I think there's something there and I think, so, you know, we should talk about that Eve because I'd like to explore that. I think that, I think there's the political will to do it in Miami. I think there's enough. Again, you know, the thing is, is if we do one, right, we do one project and it works, it becomes the model.   Eve: [00:52:57] Yes, absolutely.   Avra: [00:52:59] So our study, the one that we did for Vagabond Group Consulting, that open source, has become sort of a case study. You know, I get calls from all over the country. People.   Eve: [00:53:10] Yeah. That's very important.   [00:53:12] You know, and that's what we need to solve some of these problems we need the transparency. We need to have conversations like you and I are having. And we all need to share and figure out best practices. We need to find a solution and it's in the developer's best interest that we find these solutions. I try to challenge some of my big developer friends and say, listen, guys, we need to be part of the solution here. This is really our, becomes our problem. You don't think it becomes your problem, but it does, because if the restaurant in your building, even if you don't want to do it for all the right reasons, you know, you should understand how it affects you, because if the restaurant in your building can't find employees because there's no place for them to live, you know, they're having that problem on Miami Beach and they're having trouble hiring people because nobody can afford to live on Miami Beach. So that affects your ability to rent your space. I mean, you know, so I tried to encourage that, show them even financially why this is in their best interest. That we all, we all don't do well unless we all do well, right? So, how do we incentivize developers to do that? There needs to be policies in place for that as well.   Avra: [00:54:26] In Miami, we have something where we, where developers can write a check. Like you're building a building and you write a check towards public benefits. Well, you know, make the developer build the affordable, do the public benefit. You know, sometimes writing a check is easier than doing the work.   Eve: [00:54:44] Yeah, no, I agree. Well, this has been absolutely fascinating and I'm going to be in touch soon. But we should wrap up and I really enjoyed talking to you, Avra.   Avra: [00:54:56] Yeah, this has been fun. I look forward to seeing your work. So, you have to send me some of your some of your work.   Eve: [00:55:04] I will.   Avra: [00:55:04] Share some stories.   Eve: [00:55:05] Thank you. Absolutely.   Eve: [00:55:13] That was Avra Jain, a wildly creative Miami developer. Avra and the Vagabond Group have built projects that range from converting a 100,000 square foot warehouse, to luxury loft condominiums in New York's Tribeca neighborhood, to the remake of The Vagabond from motel to hotel on Biscayne Boulevard. But Avra's passion lies squarely with the personal project portfolio she's building. The conversion of abandoned and historic motels into reimagined, affordable housing communities. She's leveraging her past success to tackle both the restoration of significant architecture and the making of affordable housing in a very unique way.   Eve: [00:55:59] You can find out more about impact real estate investing and access the show notes for today's episode at my website evepicker.com. While you're there, sign up for my newsletter to find out more about how to make money in real estate while building better cities.   Eve: [00:56:16] Thank you so much for spending your time with me today. And thank you, Avra, for sharing your thoughts. We'll talk again, too but for now, this is Eve Picker signing off to go make some change.  

EP:21 The $5 Dollar Dinner Mom, guest Erin Chase Julie Emerson: [00:00:00] Welcome to Debt-Proof Living with Mary Hunt. Today's episode is brought to you by Mvelopes.  That's M, like Mary, v-e-l-o-p-e-s. Mvelopes uses the tried and true envelope budget system all in one easy app. Give every dollar a purpose! Mvelopes.com. And now, Here's Mary!    Mary Hunt: [00:00:27]Hello, Everybody! I'm so happy  you're with me today. This is Debt-Proof Living with Mary Hunt. And this is very, very exciting because guess what? We have a guest . I'm so thrilled that Erin Chase is the $5 dinner mom is going to join us today. Welcome Erin!    Erin Chase: [00:00:47]Hello. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to chat today.   Mary Hunt: [00:00:53]This is great. I have followed you for so long. You won't believe it. But first I want to, I want to let my readers, my listeners know more about  Erin.  Erin Chase, she's known as the $5 Dinner Mom is -  I know, nobody can believe it. We're going to have to get into that with her. She says that she has a little problem. She cannot make a meal that costs more than $5. Even if she tries her brain just will no longer allow it. Through her websites and classes, $5dinners.com, $5mealplan, Grocery Budget Makeover, My Freeze Easy, My Efficient Kitchen, Electric Pressure Cooking 101. Erin now is on a mission to help us spend a whole lot less of our hard earned money on groceries. Erin is a Texas native graduate of Texas Christian University. You know, the TCU Horned Frogs. A few short months after graduation, she found herself-Whoa- in the Dominican Republic as a missionary and a high school teacher. She learned all she needed to know about meal planning and grocery shopping on a budget. All in a third world country using foreign currency. Back in the late summer of 2008, Aaron began couponing loving the challenge of coming up with meals that costs under $5, $5 for the entire meal. That's just not per person. And one night as she was cleaning up the dishes from dinner, she thought of this phrase $5 dinners. The first website was born. Now she and her husband and their four boys live in Texas. And when she's not couponing, grocery shopping or blogging. Erin enjoys date nights, training for and running half marathons, hanging out outside, reading and hanging out with her girlfriends. I'm so happy you're here, Erin. I can't wait to learn more. First. I have a little story to tell. I was sitting at my computer. I can almost tell you about the year. I'm not gonna, I might be a little bit off. But I was getting a lot of email, a lot of things popping up and there was this [00:03:00] TV chef named Rachel Ray, who popped up on my screen. I don't know why, but she had a guest on her show. And it was this amazing woman. Young girl actually looks just not the same as you look today. Exactly. She had her on her show and it was just the most amazing thing that she was confident that she could make dinners for $5, not just per person. And you blew Rachel Ray and her audience away. Now tell me, had you been doing this for a long time or was this kind of new for you?    Erin Chase: [00:03:40]Well, when I, first of all, I love that you caught that segment. They- I've been on Rachel's show twice. And the first time was in April of 2009 and I started $5 dinners in August of 2008. So it wasn't that long after. And they featured me in that first segment in a People Who Were Saving Money Across America. It was just, you know, random people. I just happened to have a blog that went with it and really how I ended up there is I just, she and, Whoopi Goldberg was a guest on her show. We're talking, you know, around the same time I started the blog, they were talking about, like a fat tax ,or something like that. Like insurance companies were going to charge people if they didn't lose weight. And like, this was, you know, 2008 and they were talking about how eating healthy was too expensive. And I was like, excuse me, I have a few things to say about that. So I wrote in on there, like. On their website, just like wrote into the, like, have me on your show. I wasn't, I mean, I maybe wanted to be on the show, but I didn't really know. And. Six months after. So that was, that would have been August. So it was not long.  I, we taped and it aired very quickly. So probably March, they called me and were like, Hey, we'd like what you have to say to me, like what you're doing, we're going to send a crew to your house. And I was like, wait, what? So yeah, there I was. And then I went back again to share some recipes from one of my cookbooks, a couple of years later when those were published.   Mary Hunt: [00:05:13]Well, that helped to launch your career. Definitely. But I'll tell you something, Erin, I have followed you. I am so excited that we may be able to do things together in the future for my audience, because you fill a niche that nobody else does. But now listen, I mean, you've got to be absolutely truthful with me here. You have four sons and a husband. Okay. Five male eaters and yourself, $5 for a dinner. Tell us what, what does that mean? Does that mean $5 for just, a one dish or is that, is that the meal? Explain that to us.    Erin Chase: [00:05:57]So I think that it's more of a different way of thinking about your groceries and a different way of thinking about how much you're spending on a  meal. So when I started $5 dinners, it was in 2008 and I had two very young boys. now those boys are teenagers. And they, you know, it was a little bit different now I would say I'm making six, seven, maybe $8 dinners. It just cause I need more protein to feed these people. But the idea is don't get hung up on the $5, but I want you to hang up on and I want you to dial in on is how much are you spending per meal and what can you do to reduce the overall meal costs? Right? So when $5dinners very first started, and I still try to go for these price points, but it really we'll get into this in a little bit, but the protein cost is really the most important cause that's generally the most expensive part of any meal. So $5 a breakdown of a $5 meal would be 2.50 a person for protein. A $1.50ish for veggies or fruit, and then $1ish [00:07:00] for starch and starch is generally whatever the carbs are. Let's say, if you're doing a, you know, kind of a food plate balanced meal, so starches are super cheap. I mean, you can do rice for four people for 20 cents, right? Like, or less even. So it really, if you're just keeping it very simple and that's what I want you to think about. I want you to think about. What can I do to reduce costs kind of around your plate, if you will? And the easiest to start with is the meat, the meat, because, and that's also the most expensive. So I think it's the most important to start with. And I think that's what I want you to do. I want you to say, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to think about my meals. I'm not going to spend more than maybe you need to do $10. Maybe it's $8. Like for me right now, it's eight, the max, but I try to get it closer to five or six. we, you know, it, I think it's all about balance too. So if you do have like a more expensive meal, we really love salmon. that's just one of, that's probably our favorite seafood across the [00:08:00] entire family. And so if I'm going to put salmon on the menu one week, then I'm also gonna do like a big old rice and beans that week as well. Does that make sense? So it kind of balances out that way too.    Mary Hunt: [00:08:17] I love this. And I have enough questions to ask you for a thousand more podcasts. I mean, my brain is just overflowing because not only do I have my own questions and what I want you to tell my audience, I have my email inbox that is just loaded with people who are hungry, no pun intended to learn how they can do better with their money.  And so I want them to know you want them to find you. We're going to do everything we can in our power going forward to make sure that they can do that. So I just have a couple of really fun questions for you. maybe not so fun, but they'll be fun for us. Tell us the details. Do you shop like once every year and get everything all at once or do you do it every day or every week? Do you have a plan? Do you go to many, many stores? Those are the, I'll stop it there.    Erin Chase: [00:09:18]I think you have to find the right cadence for yourself. And I don't want to say you have to do it this way. Cause I don't, there's lots of personalities and lots of scenarios. Some people live in the country and really can only get to a good store once a month kind of deal my personal shopping M.O. and it has been this way for almost the entire time of my $5 dinners  life is weekly shopping with one warehouse run. Which I've, I think, I have been a warehouse store member for maybe seven, eight, eight years now. One of those about every six weeks. So I'll go to the warehouse store every six weeks, maybe five. It kind of depends on this during this pandemic time, it's been a little bit more frequently, but then I'm getting less at the grocery store. I've kind of shifted it around a little bit with the whole stocking up sort of scenario that we're currently in. And, but typically I prefer to get groceries once a week, get the fresh produce.  Meat most of the time comes from a warehouse store, but then I'll sometimes mix it in from the grocery store. It really kinda depends on what's on sale and you know, how I'm doing freezer meals is what it really comes down to for me is when that, when it's happening. So really it's a, for me, it's a cycle of weekly meal planning mixed in with kind of a freezer meal set up once-ish a month. Every five, six weeks, depending on when I'm doing my warehouse store run. And so that's been my cadence because that works really well for me. Both my personality with my schedule with, the sales cycles and all of those things just kind of fit to that particular cadence. other, you know, depending on your situation, I we've heard a lot from people that the going once a week is not enough. And so we also recommend doing [00:11:00] like every four-ish days, every three to four days, so maybe twice a week shopping. and in that case, You would want to be really a lot more granular with what you're buying so that you don't start overbuying. Does that make sense? And so you just have to be really mindful about when you do make a change like this in the way that you're shopping for food, being mindful that it's, it's working for you and you're not overspending. And it's kinda not working against you, if you will. And you know, we, I personally experienced that this last couple of months with having to shift. both budget dollars and the way I shop with the whole stocking up thing and not going out to eat anymore. And all those different things that's kind of shifted around, but it was very mindful of that shift happening. And I'm very mindful that that shifts it's already shifting back to my typical cadence. And so, I really think you've just got to consider those different factors and make your food dollars and your time shopping, whether that's planning and putting in a grocery pickup order, or you're getting into the store and buzzing through it, as fast as you can, you know, with your mask on and your sanitizer in hand, you know, like whatever it is but just being very mindful of the way that you are spending your food dollars.    Julie Emerson:  [00:12:36]Let's take a quick break for just a minute. Okay. Hi, I'm Julie. Producer a Debt Proof Living with Mary Hunt. You know, many of us have the experience in our lives of living paycheck to paycheck. Many people. I know it well, have a difficult time following a budget. But not managing our money as a leading cause of stress in our lives.  That's why Mvelopes created a simple, affordable envelope budgeting program that just works. Mvelopes helps you take control of your future by giving every dollar a purpose, every dollar. A purpose. People who use envelope, see monthly savings of 10% of their spending within six weeks of getting started and they report less anxiety.  And currently Mvelopes is extending their free trial to 60 days for all of their subscriptions. So there's never been a better time to start on a new path. Just click the link in the show notes and sign up today. Risk-free. Okay. Now let's get back to our conversation.     Mary Hunt: [00:13:41] You know, you mentioned that the pandemic and. it, it has changed our lives, in, in lots of ways. And I know that you lost your father recently. you've been through a lot. You had, I think you had some housing issues, right? Didn't your house flood or something, you know, it's, it's, it's easy to stick to all these plans when life goes, as we plan. But I'm just thinking how wonderful it is. And I, I want to ask you the impact that your, that this whole thing, where you have your money in control and you're doing all that. Did, Did that make things easier? I mean, I just want to know how, how do you get to really, really tough times without just throwing it all up in there as that can't do this anymore, you know? I can't stand this budgeting thing anymore. I mean, how have you gotten through this?    Erin Chase:[00:14:36] Well, what, Oh, goodness. Then where were we? How long do we have? yeah, we have had a very rough six months. our house flooded, well, six months ago this week, and then I lost my dad unexpectedly a couple months after that. And then the pandemic hit the following month. And so it was, it's just been a very, grief-ridden on multiple levels. You know, the loss, we didn't lose anything in our house per se, but just the loss of routine and the loss of Just being, we had to move into a rental home. So being somewhere else, you know, that's that. And then of course, grief from losing my dad. Has just it's, that's still obviously going on and then of course the grief of just losing our, our lives, everybody, what, what, however it, the pandemic affected you, everybody was affected in some way. And I think that, in some ways, you know, the very first thing that I did when the whole pandemic thing hit was what are we not spending money on now? That's the very first thing I wrote down. Like maybe the first weekend or so. And I finally cued in of, like how things are changing. Things are changing very fast. What are we not spending money on? We're not going out to eat. We're not buzzing through drive-throughs we're not picking up, a snack at the gas station, like all these different things. I wasn't going to the gym. And so that was the first thing, that I did. And I think that what ultimately it comes down to, you know, both on the, on the money level and on the, just like get me through the day level. really is two things is, is grabbing the silver lining, whatever that may be. So with our house, the silver lining was, I got a pretty much a whole new house. mostly covered by insurance. We did a couple of new upgrades, but it was very clear to me very quickly that despite there was water everywhere and like rugs were soaked and gross. I could still see that we would be getting a new house out of this, you know, and I, with, with, with my dad, Restored not restored. There were never any bad relationships, but just renewed friendships and relationships with my siblings and family members. Such a gift. Even despite all of the, the grief in, in the, it was very dramatic and traumatic, the way that it all happened so quickly and unexpectedly. So I think that even in the midst of the trial, let's say there’s— you've got to, you've got to grab the silver linings and so, you know, pandemic it's. Okay, now I have more time to spend with my kids. Like we have two teenagers, you know, teenagers got it. They get a bad rap, but it's been such a gift getting to spend time with them in a way that I, that, that even just actually not long ago, I thought, okay, we are going to have a driver soon. And I remember as soon as I started driving, I was like, BYE!  I got places to go and people to see. Right? And so I just kept thinking, I've only got a couple months. Left with this kid before he's really setting into that independence business. And so I think that, you know, I, I sit in the feelings and I sit in the grief a lot. There's a lot of resting. There's a lot of stillness that happens. but I think that in all of that, being able to focus on the positive and be able to grab onto the, the things that I'm really grateful for. And being able to see the positives, even in the night. Oh, there were many times where I wanted to throw my hands up, but the kids having to do school at home and you know, all the trying to work. And, but I saw this is an opportunity that I need to redefine my work schedule and I re redefined my entire work week. I've never worked weekends. Ever. No, thank you. I'm good. I don't want to work the weekends. I have worked every single weekend since spring break week. Well, since the pandemic started, but that's because I wasn't working in the mornings and I have shifted around.  And so I think it's being able to recognize and be willing to adapt and change quickly. And then of course, kind of grabbing it and focusing onto the silver lining. So I don't know that that has a whole lot to do with money. But I think that it, when we're in a hard time, when we're in an emergency situation, right, we just moved back into her house. There was a hailstorm five days after we moved into our house. We have to get another new roof. We just got a new roof four years ago. So it's just like, okay, alright. But there's, you know, other plans that we had with, with our house and with our finances. Hold! Hold, please. We got to get a new roof first.  And so, you know, you just, you just have to be, I don't know, kinda gotta go with the punches and got to make tough decisions and got to wait on things. and also grateful for, you know, our contingency fund, and grateful for, you know, my husband and I both work from home on the internet. I've been affected a little bit, but grateful to not have had a job loss. I'm grateful to my husband's in business. He lost a few in person events and classes, but really, he's been able to just shift his focus too. To the other kind of side of his business that wasn't, you know, dealing with live in person. So it's, it's really, yeah. I guess all of that,    Mary Hunt: [00:20:33]I couldn't agree with you more Erin, and, and while maybe, you know, your, your face, you teach about food and budgeting and all that kind of thing. And I'm kind of similar, you know, the whole thing about money. I have come to believe that money is so important to us because it's very important to God. I think it's absolutely true that he that's how God cares for us. He doesn't drop the clothes out of sky and you know, the food doesn't show up on the front step.  I mean, the conduit is God. He sends money into our lives, and asks us to be good stewards of it. And. For what you have gone through is, is horrific. But I think that because you know how to plan and that you are prepared and, and you haven't spent every single nickel and face the pandemic just out of despair. That it's coming through. But, and I think for all of us, I think everyone listening to me, we've all gone through this. And I think that it's very much like mourning. I have not faced in the past few weeks, which you are, but I think there are stages of grief. And for myself, I know I was, I was devastated when they shut everything down and my grandkids could go to school anymore. And it was so sad. I mean, I wept tears of just sobbing. What has happened? And then, and then I go through, you know, I'm sorry to say, but I think it's part of it. I've gone to a real angry stage as well.    Julie Emerson: [00:22:07] Now I have a quick question for you, Erin. One of the things that the quarantine has given us is a lot more time with our family and a lot more time to do projects with each other and to really spend time together. [00:20:38] And if we could just talk a little bit about what's coming up for you and what moms and grandmas and dads and grandpas or aunts and uncles can do with their kids in the kitchen that would be— a we'd love to hear it. So can you tell us more?      Erin Chase: [00:22:35] Yeah. So the week of spring break, March 9th, 10th, 11, I don't know, somewhere in there. when the  whole, you know, quarantine was being talked about and hadn't really started yet, I was at the gym and I kept thinking. If school gets canceled, what am I going to do with my boys? That's I mean, I was on the treadmill for half an hour and I couldn't stop thinking about it. And right towards the end of my run, I was like-kids cooking show live on Facebook. And I was like, okay. So I get home and I am actually leaving to go with my friend to their. ranch, river house, for the weekend of spring break.  We've done that for many years and I was like, I better put something about this on Facebook. So, you know, because we're going to start on Monday because by that point in the afternoon, our school had just announced that they were canceled. So I put it on Facebook. Fun fact. There's no wifi or cell service at the ranch. So I had no idea what was going to happen. So I put it, I put the recipe list. I had written it down on a piece of paper. My husband is driving. I'm making a Canva image on  my phone and I posted it right before we lost, like cell service. And so the next afternoon, my friend and I walked down to the neighbors where they have wifi and I checked in and I was like, Oh, okay, we're going to have a couple of people with us on Monday. So then I posted like an ingredient list real quick. And I'm like, Texting Lauren, like Help! We got to get this out! Like, go, go, go. So anyways, the kids and I did cooking lessons, we did four weeks of 20 lessons, plus the freezer cooking session over in March and then into the end of April and really, you know, It was just such a gift to us. And it's been such a gift to other people. Like I haven't cooked lunch since then. Nothing they're home all the time. They make their own lunches. Most of the time make their own breakfast. Sometimes I jump in there cause it's fun to be all together there in the morning in the kitchen. And really, you know, it's taught them so much. And it's been, you know, I love to cook. I'm a food blogger. I'm here to, I am here for it! but it's also nice to equip them and to kind of work myself out of a job. So we did all of those lessons and decided probably about halfway through,  that I wanted this to be longer than just through this, this quarantine. I wanted it to be longer. So I, I changed it from, you know, school cancellation kids, cooking lessons to whisk kid, which is a play on whisk and whiz. So I want you to be, I want your kids to be whizzes in the kitchen and I want to help them cultivate kind of a lifelong love of cooking and feeding themselves and really just starting with. Recipes that are, both kid-friendly and budget friendly and simple to make, but also have kind of cooking strategies that would apply to other types of recipes, you know, like a skillet meal, when you know how to make a pasta skillet meal, which is kind of like a homemade sort of Hamburger Helper, you  can make dozens, hundreds of different things with just that strategy. So that's, that's what I want to do. So we turn that into a curriculum in a, in a workbook and a guidebook. That we have with stickers, which I'm super excited for the stickers! I know I'm such a nerd and certificates for completion. And so really, you know, it's got everything you need recipes, the guided videos, the shopping lists, and the videos are essentially I'm teaching my boys in my kitchen in the same way as if you I'm also teaching your child in your kitchen.  It's, it's filmed and taught in that way. So all you gotta do is get the ingredients, which you probably have a lot of them already. And then just let, let me teach them, you know, while you're kind of watching from the corner. So that's the idea behind WhizKid, which I'm super excited about. It has been, I'm actually going to have my boys. They only, I worked with one boy at a time. And so they learned certain things with me and I'm going to have them go through this summer, the other things that they didn't learn yet. So they'll get their whole complete go at it with everything. And, you know, it's still very unknown. At least the time of we're recording this, what school's going to look like in the fall. And so it's this isn't. You know, this is meant to be a tool that can help you any time of year, not just the summer, not just in a quarantine, not just when school's canceled. but it is, it is something that, you know, will enrich your kids in your life, with, with, doing the lessons.   Julie Emerson: [00:27:15]Yeah. We're looking forward to it.   Mary Hunt: [00:27:18]I’m so thankful that you shared that with us. And, and again, our hearts go out to you for what you have been through, but oh my goodness. The growth and the fact that you've got four young men and a husband there with you and, what God is going to do in their lives is just fantastic. So I know that we've just barely scratched the surface. We've talked about the big picture things. I hope we can do this again. And as I said, I hope that we can do a lot of things. I [00:26:00] want my listeners to know that Erin has a prolific, wealth, I guess it would be called a, I don't know a bank of intellectual, one wonderfulness, where she teaches at her recipes. Oh my goodness. If we could all just learn to cook as well, and to spend as little, it would just impact our lives so much, especially going forward. Because I'm not going to hide the fact that I truly believe we are headed for some, some time, years of inflation. I mean, now, that you can't print the kind of money our company, our country has printed that had to help us get through all of this without that having a longterm effect. So. We are blessed to know ahead of time. We've got to learn to be frugal. We got to learn how to do everything for less to cook at home. And the queen of this is, is Erin Chase, the $5 dinner mom. So thank you so much, Erin. We're going to put into the show notes below all of her contacts, how you can learn more about Erin, how you can start doing so much better. Stick with me. Stick close because we're all in this together and we're going to save time and money every single day.    Erin Chase:[00:28:56] Thank you for having me. It's a joy to get to share with you guys. And I look forward to more.    Mary Hunt: [00:29:01]Thank you, Erin.    Julie Emerson: [00:29:05] Debt-Proof Living with Mary Hunt was created and hosted by, Mary Hunt. Produced by Julie Emerson, with Harold Hunt, Executive Producer. Save time. Save money. Every Day.  Make it easy on yourself! Become part of the community and subscribe for free at www.everydaycheapskate.com. That's where you will find all the ways you can follow Mary, Everyday Cheapskate, and Debt-Proof Living. Thanks for listening!   

Well, we are in our summer series entitled "Love the Commandment" and we'll begin this morning by showing you four images. Each of these are related but slightly different but all will help illustrate where we are going this morning. The first is a picture that will trigger PTSD in some. I think almost every parent at some point in their child's development tries to get their kid to learn some musical instrument. Perhaps you have been on the receiving end of this cruel and unusual punishment. Every musician must go through it. There are some really lame moments of rote learning. There are zero rewards. You have to drill the flashcards into the memory banks and it's horribly painful and laborious. But once you do it, you are able to read music. And when you can read music, you can play songs. And that is really enjoyable. And when you can play songs, you can participate in bands or orchestras. And that is even more enjoyable. And now when you listen to songs, you can appreciate them more. And every level of musical proficiency that is achieved releases you to enjoy in new ways what you thought you previously enjoyed but only mildly enjoyed by comparison to your new perspective. You see, musical pleasure is always available. The piano is right there. The potential exists. But only a few have their minds trained in such a way that they can take advantage of it. Untrained minds/souls are not in the right shape to receive that kind of enjoyment. Here's another example: This is a hand-written copy of Romance of the Three Kingdoms and is considered the greatest Chinese novel of all time. Now, what if someone handed this to you and just started raving about it. I mean they were so electric and gushing with enthusiasm. All this thrilling adventure, intrigue, and beautiful character development is right here, ready to be enjoyed. Now read it for yourself. Problem: I don't read Chinese. You see your mind and soul are not in the right shape to receive it. Or how about this one. On several top ten lists of most famous paintings or most beautiful paintings, this bad boy shows up, Van Gogh's Starry Night. Some of you, because you have been trained to appreciate art, look at this and marvel in ecstasy. When I look at this, I think, "That's pretty good, for a kindergartener." If you were to lay it down next to 50 other paintings I'd vote this one last. I'm not skilled in art criticism. My eyes are not trained to notice and appreciate. I don't have the categories of thought to see ideas in art. In fact, Van Gogh himself rebukes me: Apparently, I cannot see and I have not been a very good student. He's totally mocking me here as an obtuse, thick-lidded brick. Again, my mind and soul are not in the right shape to receive it. A final example. This was voted the most beautiful equation in the world by a top group of mathematicians and physicists. There may be only a few in the room who could even identify it much less appreciate it. Physicist Jon Butterworth of University College London who spent his entire life trying to understand the laws by which the material world operates, said, "I love the Dirac equation because it combines elegant mathematics with huge physical consequences." I'm not a scientist but apparently, this equation combines quantum physics (how big stuff moves) with particle physics (how small stuff moves) and predicted things like antimatter which is the mirror image of all known particles. And apparently using things like particle accelerators, they've discovered the Higgs Boson and other such crazy things. Even with that explanation, you just can't appreciate it. For most, our mind and soul are not in the right shape to receive it. Now, that introduction was to make this point: - Is God more beautiful than the most amazing painting in the world? Yes. - Is he God more complicated than the craziest formula in the world? Yes. - Is he more elegant than the most marvelous musical masterpiece? Yes. - Is there a bit of a foreign language that you need to be learned to understand God? Yes. Then certainly, if it takes some shaping to appreciate these lesser things, these aspects of his creation, it will take significantly more shaping for us to be able to appreciate and see him in his beauty, complexity, singularity. If we can readily admit that we are not in the right shape to run a marathon or read a Sanskrit or Ugaritic text or not in the right shape to digest a chemistry formula, shouldn't we be even more ready to admit that there's no possible way we even have the categories of thought to appreciate the God who made all those things? It is pretty arrogant to assume that we are currently in spiritual shape to appreciate an infinite God. Now certainly, the Scriptures speak to the principal of our unfitness for spiritual realities. Let's not forget them! Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3:2, What happens if you try to feed a baby solid food? He chokes and throws it up. Why? Because his body isn't sufficiently developed. The problem isn't with the food. The food is really amazing. Strawberries, prime rib, artichokes, asparagus, mangos, grapes. A baby could die if he chokes on a grape or olive! He needs more practice swallowing. He needs to develop teeth. His bacteria in his gut needs to develop. His body needs to develop in its ability to metabolize. Great food awaits after he has matured. And in a similar way, there are all these spiritual delicacies that are way better than the milk we are drinking but because of spiritual immaturity, we can't handle it yet. The author of Hebrews uses the same word picture. You can see the idea. Let's just admit it this morning. We are out of shape. And because we are not in the right shape, we cannot receive the beauty of God. There are prerequisites and categories of thought necessary for appreciating and enjoying and digesting spiritual truth. So all this was to set us up so that we can understand where we are in our cycle If you've been here for the last three weeks, you'll recognize this chart. This chart serves us in describing a cycle that is always at work in our hearts to either create or deepen love our deconstruct or remove love. So thus far we've looked at the quadrant of belief and the quadrant of pursuit. Just as a reminder of how this works. We begin by believing a truth claim that affects our fulfillment. We believe that this thing out there that I do not yet possess is somehow objectively fulfilling and has the capability of fulfilling me. Let just use the Chinese novel as an example. You believe that this book will be a very enjoyable read based on the testimony of your friend who has read it. So that's the belief quadrant. But the problem is that I'm here and the object of fulfillment is over there. So that represents the pursuit quadrant. Pursuit is all about closing the gap. You can't read the Chinese novel if it's in a library in China. So you have to go get it. You have to get yourself into the right location. So you get on an airplane. You get an UBER. You drive to the ancient manuscript library. Now you have the book, but you still can't read it. The pleasure isn't yet unlocked. You aren't in the right shape to receive it. This is the point of the third quadrant, with the cultivate commands. These are pursuit commands of a different species. The cultivation commands are not about getting you into the right location. They are about getting you into the right shape. And the more in shape you are, the more enjoyment you can extract. You could imagine someone with a rudimentary Chinese education, a conversational Chinese education, and a scholarly Chinese education all experiencing varying levels of fulfillment while reading this novel. So the cultivation commands of the Bible are the largest and most diverse set of commands. They are commands that shape us: serve, sing, worship, pray, speak, tell, love, obey, enjoy, be. These commands tell us ways we are to be and usually describe other things we are not to be. They usually tell us ways we are to behave and other ways we are not to behave. Refrain, do not be, do not love, abhor, put off. Honestly, these are the commands that if you obeyed them all, you'd be a very moral person. They relate to behavior, how you treat other people, how you speak, what you do with your body, etc. Now again, these are commands that should be obeyed. And why? What's the point of obedience? The commands shape us. This is the misunderstanding of the moralist. These commands force us into unnatural positions, positions we have never experienced, positions that feel totally foreign and bizarre to our typical habits and instincts, but once we are in that position and practiced in that position we suddenly understand what it feels like to be happy. We are finally in the right shape to be fulfilled. I learned to play golf as an adult, and if you've shared in this experience, it's the most unnatural thing in the world. The one thing everyone shares in common as a beginner golfer is that you are guaranteed to do it wrong. You can see what a good golf swing looks like but you have no idea what it feels like. - So your friend is telling you to keep your left arm straight. - Swing path like this. - Finish like this. And all these commands are forcing my body into the most freakish, unnatural positions but then all of a sudden one day it happens where you flush a ball and the light clicks on! Ah, that's what it feels like. You'd never have that experience without first submitting yourself to the unnatural positions. But here's what's even cooler. Now future swings are not so much trying to obey commands, but they are mentally recalling what that good swing felt like. You've had an experience that now can be recalled in the mind. The obedience was required to create the experience. And now the experience drives future attempts. So all the cultivation commands of the Bible are commands that get us into the right shape to receive the goodness of God. They are commands that help us learn the foreign language of God, learn the physics behind the formulas of God, learn the artistic categories so we can appreciate the beauty of God. Obedience to the cultivation commands shapes us so that we can behold and be fulfilled by God. - The fact is, our eyes need to be re-calibrated. We are focused here and missing what's here. - Our ears need to be tuned to a different frequency. - Our interpretation algorithm is all jacked up. So that's what the cultivation commands are for but the problem is it doesn't feel this way. It doesn't feel like we need this kind of recalibration. Now, let's compare our analogies for a moment. We can look at one page of a Chinese novel and realize we are not in the right shape to receive whatever that thing is. Clearly, if I'm going to extract the enjoyment of that story, I've got some learning to do. Compare that to Van Gogh's Starry Night. Because I'm not skilled in appreciating art, it's very easy for me to be dismissive of what's here. I can say to myself, "I know exactly what I'm seeing and I recognize all these elements. A house, lights, hills, moon, clouds. Yep, I understand everything that I need to know and it's not amazing." So I'm moving on. This is much more what it's like when we approach God. - Yeah, I see what God is offering. - I get the basic idea of religion. - I get the concept of an all-powerful God. - I see what God is saying, but it doesn't do much for me. I'm not attracted to God. Moving on. Now the reason I say that is to make this point: you will have the most success in obeying the cultivation commands of the Bible if you believe with strong conviction, you are not in the right shape. In the case of the artwork, if you really believe that the problem is not the artwork- the problem is with you who can't appreciate the artwork- then you will begin to learn art in anticipation that one day your mind will be large enough to take it in. And in a similar way, if you really believe that Jesus Christ is the source of fulfillment but you are not in spiritual shape to benefit from all he has to offer, then you will get after it. If you believe the problem with my disinterest in Jesus is a problem with my spiritual unreadiness and spiritual unfitness then I'm going to become very eager and very obedient to these soul cultivation commands. Conversely, if you believe that Jesus is genuinely uninteresting, then the last thing you are going to do is submit yourself to a set of cultivation commands issued from an uninteresting guy. So what are these commands? There's no way we can visit all the cultivation commands in the Scriptures. So rather than try to list them all, we are going to observe two of the main things these cultivation commands teach us. We will answer the question: - What aspect of our being is transformed such that we are able to take in God more fully? - What liability is removed when we obey the cultivation commands? Now here's the idea: when we obey the cultivation commands, the Holy Spirit is able to help us see and appreciate spiritual realities. Obeying the cultivation commands invites the Spirit to help us see. Now it's so important to see this in the text itself. Get your nose in the Bible and see this. Now earlier we read 1 Corinthians 3 which is God explaining to us that there is much that God is holding back. There's this truckload of spiritual benefit that could be ours but we are unfitness for spiritual realities. Let's just refresh what we read: And so here Paul is calling us out as babies. Steak and wine over here. A loaf of french bread and cheese over here. Strawberries and rhubarb pie and apple pie are all here. And your mouth is watering. And you say, "Give it to me!" But you are all babies. You are all so immature, I'm going to give you a bottle of milk. When I hear that I say, "Well, I don't want milk. What's the problem?" In what way am I a baby? What's this spiritual liability that is so inhibiting? Well in the next verse he tells us! Man, this is gold. Don't let this pass you by. There is so much spiritual content that awaits you but the problem is that jealousy and strife and disunity among you. Does this not describe our country? Jealousy and strife. Let's make sure as we see this in our church we deal with it or we have no hope of ever maturing. Acting in the flesh and destroying unity are among the most significant inhibitors to being able to digest spiritual things. Why? Because in doing this, we take off our spiritual glasses. You see, if we need spiritual eyes to see spiritual things then we need the Spirit of God. The problem of not being able to appreciate God is that we lack the Spirit of God. Look at how it is said at the end of chapter 2 right before this section we just read. The Spirit of God is the lens we need. Do you see how clear this is? We can never hope to understand God without the Spirit of God. He's like the telescope or microscope that pulls in entire worlds previously invisible. He's like the infrared camera that helps us see an entire spectrum of reality that's always existed but we could never see. So if we want to have any chance of seeing God's beauty, appreciating his complexity, loving his intricacies and simplicities, we will need the Spirit of God. Do you see that? The Spirit of God is required. And how do we involve the Holy Spirit? Well here's a hint: not by disobeying. By loving the cultivation commands. By obeying. The Scriptures speak of quenching the Spirit (1 Thess 5:19), grieving the Spirit (Ephesians 4:30). So clearly sin is a Spirit killer. Now you might be tempted to try and flip that around and say if sin is a Spirit killer than obedience is a prerequisite to get the help of the Holy Spirit. Absolutely incorrect. So typical of the way we think. No, the Holy Spirit, whether you are believer or unbeliever, is always trying to help and disobedience pushes that help away. The only prerequisite, if you even want to call it that, is don't push him away. Listen to how Stephen says it in Acts 7 when speaking to the religious leaders. After laying out God's sovereign, redemptive plan of salvation, he turns to them, looks them in the face, and says, What is the Spirit doing in this verse? Trying to persuade, trying to empower, trying to change the heart, trying to help. The Spirit is always trying to help; disobedience is the spiritual stiff arm. It's the resistance mechanism. Galatians 5:17 says, "The flesh sets its desire against the Spirit." Picture the Spirit of God as throwing you a life preserver ring over and over again and sin is pushing it away. It's ignoring it. So when we obey the cultivation commands, we allow the Spirit of God to do the work he's wanting and trying to always do. He helps us to see spiritually discerned things. This is one of the ways in which we are most significantly scarred as fallen people. We are simply unable to tell what is good and what is bad. The fact that we cannot do it is bad enough. But there's something even worse. Most of us think we are really good at discerning what is good and bad when in reality we are really bad at it. We are all like that tone-deaf person who thinks they are really good at singing, but they lack the sense organ to self-evaluate accurately. We are spiritually tone-deaf and we think, "Oh yeah, I absolutely know what is good and what is bad." But we are deceived. Satan is known as the deceiver and plays of this spiritual liability. His entire job description could be boiled down to this: make what is not good look good. In the garden, Satan is described as the most crafty of all the created order. Second Corinthians 11:3 says that "Satan deceived Eve with his craftiness." How did he succeed? Think about it. Somehow he made disobeying God look like a good idea! Like, the worst idea in the world would be to disobey the sovereign Creator of all things. How in the world did Satan make that appear like a good idea? Somehow he did it. That's the point of deception. Satan is the great deceiver. In Revelation 12:9 he's called the dragon, the serpent of old who is called the devil, who deceives the whole world. The best deceivers present something to you in such a way that it looks really, really good, really, really innocent, really, really beautiful but in reality, it is actually hideous, monstrous, and pure evil. The ultimate example I think is Satan himself. After speaking about the deception of false teachers he says, So you're walking along and you think, oh my goodness, I just saw an angel. What could be purer than that? That's really good, an angel of light. What could be more innocent? What could be more disarming than an angel? What could be more beautiful and pure than an angel? He's here to help me. And so you open your heart to him. And yet, the reality is, it's Satan's goal to destroy. Now that feels hopeless. How can I ever avoid such trickery? There is hope because no deception is perfect. If it was perfect it would be a replica, not a deception. All deceptions have variations. There's always a slight difference. There's always the smallest little tip-off. Something just doesn't feel right. Picture a worm on a fish hook. It deceives most fish. But the giant 28-inch trout hanging out at the bottom of the largest hole says, "Hold on. That doesn't look quite right. It's not wiggling totally naturally. I think something's off." And even though he's really hungry he stands back. Then the young trout in his haste and inexperience gobbles it up and gets fried up for dinner. Now here's the point: obedience in the cultivation commands trains you to identify good and evil. It helps you identify the pure and push away things that look good but in reality, are poisonous and deadly. What looks like good is often not but how can you know? How do you get good at identifying those nuances and slight differences? How do we avoid being tricked? Look how this is specifically called out in Hebrews 5. Do you see the idea here? The idea is that by obeying the cultivation commands, but constantly doing good things, you will be able to discern between actual good things and things that appear good but are actually just illusions. By constantly doing, interacting, and obeying what is good, you begin to have an automatic sense of what is good. You are able to sort and distinguish automatically. And it does so by constantly helping you to handle the good. I have spent a lot of time handling screws and bolts and nuts in my life. And I can tell you just by picking up a screw what the pitch of the screw is. That's a 1/4-20. That one's a 10/24. I can look at a hex head and say, "That's a 7/16 socket. That's a 1/2 socket." Others of you who have spent a lot of time with music can listen to a E note played on a guitar and say, "That's a little flat or sharp." Others of you who have spent a lot of time painting can identify a color a million miles away, "That's burnt sienna." This is the idea. By doing truly good things, over and over again, you learn to identify the counterfeits. You see the slight differences, the things that appear to be good but are evil. By filling your mind with good thoughts over and over again, you learn to identify a bad thought, something that only appears good but will actually corrode your soul. Obedience in the cultivation commands, helps you acquire the taste for the divine. So what types of cultivation commands must we obey to invite the Spirit to alter our view of reality? What type of cultivation commands can we obey that will train us through constant handling to be able to discern between good and evil? Probably my favorite passage to illustrate this is Romans 12. Chapters 1-12 is Paul telling us all these true things about what Christ has done for us and who we are in Christ and then when you get to chapter 12, there's this incredibly long section of imperatives. There's a list of commands that just make your head spin. And it keeps going. I won't read it all, but doesn't that feel a little overwhelming. Is Paul a moralist here? He's just trying to get me to obey externally but doesn't care about the heart. Not it at all. Paul is saying, "You can't change the heart without the Spirit of God. But man, you're resisting the Holy Spirit who wants to help you." This is Paul saying, straighten the left arm, accelerate through the ball, hit down on the ball. Make a wider arc. Your swing path needs to go from inside to out. Keep your head still. Utilize your core. And all of a sudden, as we submit to these commands we find that we flush it. Instead of our flesh fighting and resisting the Spirit, the Spirit is now at work transforming our sight and giving us new values and new levels of appreciation. It's a magical moment where we just experience what it's like to be a Christian living under the influence of the Spirit of God. And by obeying these commands we find ourselves truly tasting goodness so that evil becomes obvious. We develop an instinct for good and now desire it and that good heals us. So I'd encourage you, if you want a place to start in the cultivation commands, write these down this week and just try to do them. Force yourself into these unnatural positions, not so that you can earn God's favor. You have God's favor in Christ. Force yourself into these unnatural positions so you can get into the right shape to understand a God who has made every good thing and has saved you. Now as we close, we should remind ourselves of the power of the choice. We should pause and think of the commands of the Bible as a choose your own adventure story. C.S. Lewis said: Choices shape us. Our choices change us. Do you believe that? But that shaping takes time. Either for good or for evil, either way, it takes time. To serve something means you submit to the process. Consider going to a gym. Sure you believe that it will help. You pursue it. You actually close the proximity gap. You get off the couch, you drive to the gym. And you actually work out. Now what? You look in the mirror and everything is the same. Something is happening that you can't see. It's slow. But it's happening. That choice that you made to cultivate is changing you. And what is really changing at the deepest level, is the object of your affection, your perception of what has worth and value. Here's the call from the message today. Submit to that process. Submit to it and your love will change! When I was in high school, I liked to play video games. But now I never play video games. I prefer other things. Here's the thing: of the things I prefer to do now, there is not a single one of them that I enjoyed the first time I tried it. Reading, exercise, hobbies. All of them had to be learned. But now I prefer these things way over video games not because video games have gotten less interesting (they've actually become way more interesting), but because of the fact that other things have eclipsed them. But I had to serve them, I had to be shaped to receive their gifts and benefit. Now, friends, how much more with Jesus Christ? We are not slaves to our own disposition. We can change what we love. How? By serving the Lord. By submitting ourselves to these soul shaping cultivation commands of the Bible. Listen, your choices change you. How will you choose to be shaped? Commandments represent something you control. - You can't control world politics. - You can't control your spouse. - You can't control your kids. But you can control your choices. And choices made in a direction over time are very powerful. God says that when we obey, the mystery of God's sovereignty meets us there. Work out your salvation for it is God who is at work. Let us obey with excitement and change what we love.

Mason welcomes Sarah Greenfield onto the podcast today to wax lyrical on the wonders of poo! Sarah is a registered dietitian, functional medicine practitioner and absolute poo aficionado. As someone who has personally struggled with digestive issues for the better part of her life, Sarah knows just how vulnerable and overwhelming it can feel to take the reins of your health and make long lasting change. It is Sarah’s deep desire, and mission to assist those suffering from health and digestive issues to heal from the inside out. "I truly believe that your poop is the direct reflection and a perfect way to measure what's going on internally." -  Sarah Greenfield Mason and Sarah discuss: How monitoring your poo's can help you learn the language of your health. What the ideal poo looks like. The importance of identifying dietary irritants and bacterial dysbiosis when working to heal digestive issues. The gut/nervous and endocrine (hormone) system connection. The perils of diet dogma, how extreme diets impair digestive capacity. High fat diets as a source of pro-inflammatory bacteria. To float or not to float? What it means if your poo sinks or swims. Lifestyle, sleep and stress as important markers for digestive health. The impact macro and micro nutrients have on microbiome diversity.   Who is Sarah Greenfield? Sarah Greenfield is a registered dietitian with a background in functional medicine living in Los Angeles where she launched the Fearless Fig - Sarah's program for spreading gut health awareness and wellness solutions. From the TEDx stage to interviews with NBC’s Lester Holt, Buzzfeed, and Men’s Health, Sarah’s fearless approach to health is captivating audiences across the globe and changing how we all live a fearless life.   Resources: Sarah's Website Sarah's Instagram Sarah's Facebook Sarah's Courses     Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast?   A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We’d also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or  check us out on Stitcher :)! Plus  we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Mason:   (00:01) Sarah, thanks so much for joining me.   Sarah:  (00:03) Yeah, I'm excited.   Mason:  (00:04) Me too, Fearless Fig. Is there something about the fig and its digestive prowess that made that your title?   Sarah:   (00:16) Well, kind of. It's like a yes and no. I like alliterations. I was like, "Oh, Fearless Fig, that kind if goes together." But also when I moved to California was the first time I actually had a fig and I ate so many of them because I was like, "These are the most delicious things I've ever had," then I had horrible digestive issues afterwards because they're so fibrous and I just, I ate way too many. I think it's kind of funny in retrospect that I'm like, "Yeah, [crosstalk 00:00:41]."   Mason:  (00:41) I get you. I'm a sucker for alliteration as well. I'm like-   Sarah:  (00:44) Love it.   Mason:  (00:46) ... "What else is that fearless feijoa?" Another word for a Kiwi. Otherwise, yeah, fig's good. We're going to go and talk about poo quite a bit. I really like it. I've been sharing with the crew here and there as much as we can get off leaning on practitioners consistently, and start building that real folky know how, that we can watch our own selves and our own expressions, our own poos, but I haven't elaborated too much. I'm just like, "Hey, guys, keep on just watching your poo and you're going to see what feedback you're getting from any dietary swings, or if you're dialling in the diet in a particular way."   Mason:  (01:24) I'm really excited to go and just get a bit of like, navigation through that landscape when we're ... Is there a technical term for poo watching or poo observing that we can, or maybe we can coin one, poo pervery?   Sarah:  (01:39) I like that. I don't think I have one. I always go back to learning the language of your health, because I truly believe that your poop is the direct reflection and a perfect way to measure what's going on internally, because we don't have a lot of that data that we see on a regular basis. We have snot, that doesn't really tell us too much. But when you dive into poop, that's really a huge language of your health.   Mason:  (02:05) Such an immediate feedback as well. You're right, because we've got expressions in our skin, with our hydration, with our wees, but the poo digestively it's our anchor for what's consisting ... With so much coming out at the moment making sure that we're eating correctly, yes for ourselves and our mitochondria, but eating in a way ... basically eating for our microbiota. That's something ... People are starting to see that, looking at your shit is literally your way to bypass the shit of either dietary dogma and just aligning yourself, because theoretically based on testimonials or what in your head makes sense or morally what makes sense, I'm going to make that my diet.   Mason:  (02:57) You can free yourself from that and actually watch what's going on and by watching what's coming out of you. Let's dive into that. What does that ... Yes, you've said what it means to ... You can actually know yourself a little bit more, but let's start looking at this as in the whole practise how we can get some ... find our feet a little bit more.   Sarah:  (03:18) Yeah, looking at it as number one and I think just bringing ourselves back to this idea that our body's always trying to give us clues when something's off, and we tend to push them away until we're into a disease state. Getting back to this idea of connecting to optimising wellness, and not waiting until it's so far along that it's a bigger issue. But really just starting to say like, "Okay, what can I start to tune into?" The poop is right there. I always start by just assessing ... I'm not telling people to face down in the toilet for 20 minutes, but just take a look back, there's a couple of key things that you can really look for, that can clue you into what's going on.   Sarah:  (03:56) First and foremost, ideal poo is usually a question people ask me about and that is pretty well formed, it comes out easily. You don't want to be straining, you don't want to be sitting on the toilet for almost really any longer than it would take you to pee. It should be a really quick process where you have the urge to go, it comes out, it's well formed, it doesn't make a mess in the toilet bowl, you have minimal cleanup. That's a good poop. When we start to see things like more of like a soft serve consistency that can indicate that things are not being processed as well. To me I start to think about, "Okay, well is there irritation?   Sarah:  (04:31) Is there inflammation going on in the digestive tract? Are you eating things that maybe are irritating?" When it's off that ...   Mason:  (04:37) Is that including a big streaking on the bowl, that kind of thing?   Sarah:  (04:40) Yeah, and if it's consistent, because we also have to understand, you can have a weird poop every, once in a while and it's not a big deal. It's just when that becomes your norm and it's messy all the time and it's streaking all the time that that's something you want to tune into. I've done so much. I know we talked about testing and not necessarily wanting to go back to testing. But having done all this testing, I know that when those things start to kind of creep up, we know something's out of whack. That usually goes back to, "All right, what are you eating? Is it inflaming your gut? Is there irritation? Is that consistently happening?   Sarah:  (05:15) Why is it not formed?" Thinking about, are you getting enough fibre? Do you have enough bulk in your stool? Think about your diet. We tend to be busy, overlook our diet, go for convenience foods, go for things that are not fueling the microbiome. That's one thing. Another thing that I [crosstalk 00:05:33]-   Mason:  (05:33) Can I ask on streaking?   Sarah:  (05:34) Yeah.   Mason:  (05:34) Yeah, and just to be clear as well, I love the fact that we can test what's going on in the gut as well. It's just nice to be able to then take that and embody it, so through the testing we can actually get really insightful about what's going on, on a bacterial level and inflammation level, right?   Sarah:  (05:50) Absolutely.   Mason:  (05:51) With the streaking, just for someone, because we're not on here long, we could probably talk for probably five hours about this, about the specifics, but are there particular ... Is it macronutrient commonality that you're going into excessively if you're seeing a lot of streaky or loose stool? Or is it more in that camp where what you're doing, we're going to have to look for what you're doing which is generally inflaming you? We have to go and look for what's in the diet that's causing inflammation.   Sarah:  (06:18) Yeah, typically I go for what's causing inflammation. When we want to look at micronutrients or macronutrient breakdown and that's not functioning well, there's other things to look for. But when you're seeing this consistent, loose stool, I'm always thinking, "Okay, well, where's the irritation coming from?" Is it an irritation caused by something you're eating that's aggravating your immune system and causing inflammation? Or is it just years and years of digestive gut abuse, where now your bacterial balance is out of whack and when you look at it from a stool test or something like that, you see a higher level of inflammatory bacteria?   Sarah:  (06:59) That's what really fascinating. A lot of times, I work with so many people who have digestive issues and just can see these patterns, that that's something you absolutely want to clue into, because it means that there's just probably some dysbiosis or irritation.   Mason:  (07:13) Do you find that there are particular factors more likely to contribute to the creation of those inflammatory bacteria?   Sarah:  (07:23) Yes. Typically what I find is people who have had history of prolonged antibiotic use, or they went through something recently, where they were on antibiotics for a long period of time or proton pump inhibitors. A lot of times people will have issues with acid reflux and the solution from a conventional perspective is to say, "Okay, well, here's some proton pump inhibitors that will decrease the acidity. It'll cure that acid reflux," and just go be on them for months, six months at a time, a year. I've seen people on proton pump inhibitors for years and that's just not okay, because if you're on those types of medications that are decreasing your stomach acidity, it's going to have the same impact as an antibiotic over ...   Sarah:  (08:07) There's been studies where they've looked at six months. If you're on that proton pump inhibitor, it's going to have that same negative impact on your microbiome, and then you'll start to see things like pro-inflammatory bacteria growing up because they're a little bit more resilient than our good bacteria.   Mason:  (08:21) In that process, because something I kind of ... I love the theory of this and then every now and then I get, which is like this whole big Yin time that we've got going on at the moment, we're going inward and I feel I am anyway, and it's actually going into winter here. I get to go through that process internally and really feel into where I'm like, bacterially or, in my tissue where I'm hitting a snag. I don't know there if there's anything you want to, if you want to take us through the journey of poo formation and creation and ... Just nerd out on that a little bit.   Sarah:  (08:59) Yeah, well it starts really ... It's a mental process, because the way we break down and degrade our foods starts with our awareness of our food when we sit down and eat. There's a whole mental aspect that happens where if you are distracted, if you're eating your food, watching TV, doing a call, working, it's going to impact the way you're able to actually degrade and break down nutrients and ultimately absorb them. When our stress levels higher, that's impacting also the diversity of our gut. Really, when you think about poo formation, it comes down to what type of environment are you creating for yourself when you sit down and eat a meal?   Sarah:  (09:38) Our food is the foundation of our health. It's not only just what we're eating, but it's the way that we're able to then process it. That's what I think about first and then we also think about, what is the actual construct of our meal? Are we eating things that are really extreme? There's a lot of extreme dieting happening right now. Especially the ketogenic diet is a really big one out here in the United States. I hate that diet for many reasons, because of the microbiome impact it has. But when you're going extreme, when you're eating these extreme ways, that's negatively impacting and throwing off the balance of our microbiome.   Sarah:  (10:17) You want to look at the food that you're consuming, and make sure that it is balanced, that you have adequate macronutrients or carbohydrates, protein, fat, because that's influencing the balance and integrity of your microbiome, which also impacts hormone status. If you're eating this standard American diet or standard Australian diet as I've heard it referred to as well, that's going to throw off your hormone balance, which impacts digestion, which impacts your gut microbiome. All very interconnected. I think about it in that context as well. Then as you get to ingesting, if your stress is higher, you're not going to have enough enzymes to break things down.   Sarah:  (11:00) You're not going to be able to extract nutrients. You're going to have an inability to absorb certain things. Then if you're not feeding your microbiome well from a prebiotic fibre standpoint, phytonutrients also the colours of our food or feeding the microbiome, then you're not going to be making certain compounds as effectively. We make neurotransmitters in our gut. We make vitamin B, vitamin K or different types of B vitamins, I should say. We make hormones. All of these things are impacted even from just that moment that you sit down and the intention you put into your food, and then ultimately, we're going to be able to see, "Well, how is that coming out when you're pooping?" Yeah, I just get lost in it.   Mason:  (11:43) No, I feel you. I'll get lost out there with you as well. I love that. I want to just talk about the keto diet. We talk a lot about dogma, and I talk a lot about dogmatic diets quite often being useful for a particular time, where you can extract the insight, maybe you're disconnecting from that SAD diet or whatever it is, or coming home to yourself a little bit more and seeing how that food does affect you. But then it's in that bridging period when you know, "All right, it's time to take what I need and then drop that label," and that rule, all the rule based eating and the dogma and the morality or whatever it is, and that tribalism which is good to an extent, and then move towards what's real for you with your own identity, not relying on that.   Mason:  (12:30) We've talked a lot about it in veganism, and ketogenic comes up again and again. Whenever I talk to people focused on the digestive system, the keto diet starts getting really slammed. I just want to make sure everyone's remembering it's like, it might be really beautiful and useful. There might be elements that you might still continue to resonate with and you embody, but we're talking about, set yourself to this system and then don't listen to the signs of your body that it's time to change. In that, what is it about the keto diet? We're talking high fat, relatively high protein, but very fat fueled, I think is that what you're referring to?   Sarah:  (13:06) Yeah.   Mason:  (13:06) And then no carbs. Can you tell us about your interpretation of what's happening on that type of diet to the gut?   Sarah:  (13:15) Yeah. The way that I see it and the way I look at it, and I appreciate your prefacing out with or prefacing it saying, our bodies are shifting and changing. While something might feel good for a certain period of time, it's just when we get attached to these things as the only way to eat and keto, what that will do oftentimes, in people that have digestive issues is initially it'll feel really good because we're taking out all of the fermentable carbohydrates. We're taking out all of the prebiotics. We're taking out all of these things that feed the bacteria in the gut that sometimes can get out of balance and cause digestive issues. But what we're then doing is we're introducing more protein.   Sarah:  (13:52) We're introducing more saturated fat, and saturated fat can actually bind to certain endotoxins. Now we have, we always have certain endotoxins in our gut just based on gram-negative, gram-positive bacteria, gram-negative bacteria. They're in our gut. They're part of our ecosystem, but when they're higher, we have higher levels of this LPS. What that does is it creates permeability. It creates a leakiness in the gut. When we eat saturated fat, when we're eating higher saturated fat, we're feeding that pro-inflammatory bacteria, and then saturated fat will bind with LPS and make it more easily absorbable versus something like fibre, which binds with LPS and helps it stay in the digestive tract and then ultimately be eliminated. There's a lot ...   Mason:  (14:39) What's LPS mean?   Sarah:  (14:40) LPS is lipopolysaccharides ...   Mason:  (14:42) That's right.   Sarah:  (14:42) ... it's essentially ... Yeah, it's in the cell wall of all gram-negative bacteria. When you look at the actual ecosystem of the gut, there's about, I think it's about 35% of our normal gut microbiome is a phylum called bacteroides, which is gram-negative. They do make up a huge population of our gut. It's just we want to keep that in balance. Most people when they're experiencing digestive issues, when they're extreme dieting, when they're following the keto diet, they will throw that balance off even further.   Mason:  (15:15) I think we've talked about it on the podcast before is that you're especially getting just fatty greasy poo's in that point?   Sarah:  (15:21) Yeah, so you can see it manifest in that way for sure. You can see just the fat coming out, those shiny poos. Poops that float can also be an indication that you have too much fat, you're not able to break it down. Then ultimately, it can lead into these more loose streaky, hard to clean up poops that we talked about because that's a direct way to see potential inflammation in the body. That's essentially what you're kind of swinging towards when you're on that ketogenic diet.   Mason:  (15:49) Okay, so float, to float or not to float? Is there a swing that you like to see and sometimes we're float and sometimes we're not? What is that actually showing about where we're at digestively?   Sarah:  (16:03) Yeah, so good question, because it's not like a one size fits all. It's not like if your poop floats, oh-oh.   Mason:  (16:12) Yeah, if you don't sink you think.   Sarah:  (16:12) Yeah, it's not necessarily a bad thing if your poop's floating and you have a very high fibre diet, because with the fibre, you're going to get more gas actually trapped in the poop and it's going to float. If you're like, "Oh, I follow a really high fibre diet, that's probably why my poop floats," because in Ayurvedic Medicine, they say a floating poop is ideal. In functional medicine, we look at a floating poop as fat malabsorption essentially. You're not breaking down fat effectively. If you're in more of this SAD diet style or you're under a lot of stress, or if you're having acid reflux, and you have this floating poop, that's probably something to look into, because that's showcasing to me at least that you have a malabsorption with fat and you're not breaking down fat effectively.   Mason:  (17:00) When we are sinking, what is that an indicator of where our poops at? What's sinking us?   Sarah:  (17:06) Ideally, if it's sinking, I always look at that as a good sign, because that means that you have the proper ability to break down fat. You're breaking down things well. Essentially, again, if it's not a super high fibre diet, that's a good place to be. Most people don't have floating poops because of too much fibre. At least people that I see are not getting that much fibre, but ideally you do want it to sink. Then the other issue that you would want to be on the lookout for is if it's sinking, but you're still seeing pieces of food that you can identify in your poop. The common ones that I see that we shouldn't be able to identify are things like carrots, tomato skins, lettuce, rice, things like that we shouldn't be able to identify, corn ...   Sarah:  (17:49) Corn is a pass, black quinoa, sesame seeds, those are going to be a little bit harder for the body to break down, flax seeds, but the vegetables, things like that, you shouldn't be able to see that in your poop. That can also indicate that there's some malabsorption and digestive issues.   Mason:  (18:06) If you're doing a little bit of black quinoa or something like that and corn and you're having a little look and you've completely digested it, you're like, "Man, my Agni fire is like rocking right now."   Sarah:  (18:19) "I'm on it."   Mason:  (18:19) Yeah. There is nothing getting through this cauldron of my digestive system. Okay, that's good to know because ... I appreciate, we're just getting little tidbits and tips for looking at what's going on and how it's working internally. We're looking at our poo. We're realising whatever we're doing, whether we're in SAD diet, keto, extreme in one direction or another, we're not completely digesting. We're saying the tomato skins, we're floating, we're streaky. Where do we start? Because I assume there's a different journey, there's a little bit of like you know, for lack of a better term for poopoing of fibre, excessive fibre diets here and there, whether that's just on a healing journey.   Mason:  (19:09) What's that process of bridging back? Where are we starting? I assume there's going to be an inclusion of prebiotics and fibres there in that process. What does that bridging journey and it's going to have to be simplified, because it's very bio individual? But yeah, what's that journey look like?   Sarah:  (19:29) Yeah, so fibre is kind of ... When you can't tolerate high amounts of fibre, that's the first indication that something is off in your microbiome, because we should be able to break these down. But what happens a lot of times is the bacteria from our gut will move from the large intestines up into our small intestines, and that creates a lot of pain, a lot of gas, a lot of bloating, and that's when we start to be able to not break down what we call FODMAP foods or fermentable carbohydrates. That's the first indication. There does have to be when you're dealing with digestive issues, there is a period of elimination, of pulling back on certain foods that you should be able to digest, but at this point in time, you just can't, your body can't handle it.   Sarah:  (20:11) We do have to go through a phase of looking at, "All right, what can you tolerate? How do we start to heal the body and rebalance the microbiome?" Even fermented foods in many cases, if you have a yeast overgrowth, if you have this bacterial overgrowth, and you're trying to take probiotics and eat fermented foods, it's going to cause you to feel like crap. That's, I think a lot of times where people get confused where they're like, "Well, I'm following all of the ideals of what a healthy diet would be. I'm eating more fibre. I'm eating more fermented foods. I'm eating more plant based foods and I feel like crap."   Sarah:  (20:43) That's the place to tune into to understand like, "Okay, can your body actually handle it at this point?"   Mason:  (20:49) There's so many questions bubbling up all at once. I just want to step back into extreme diets. We've covered keto. Are there any others that you feel to talk about the implications of? We kind of the celery thing, which isn't necessarily about celery. Before we go on and talk about, I want to talk about some of your superstar fibres and prebiotics and those kinds of things that you really champion and see generally have a place in the healthy poo diet. What are some of these other little signs and implications that we can learn from these extreme diets that maybe we're tilting in one direction too much?   Mason:  (21:27) I guess, celery is like, let's just say that falls into juicing, lots of cold foods, perhaps lots of raw foods, which is familiar for me because years ago raw food was my entry there. Let's talk about that a little bit.   Sarah:  (21:43) Well, that world is really tough on people with digestive issues, just because raw takes a lot of heat. it takes a lot of enzymes, it takes a lot of power to break it down, so for people that are imbalanced in their gut, it's a tough place to go to just that raw. Then a lot of the fibres as well can be really challenging. It's really ... Any of these extreme diets are really tough. Even veganism for a certain period of time can throw people off because they're eating ... You look at the staples of a vegan diet and it's so high in the fermentable carbohydrates, avocado, garlic, onions, greens in some cases. Dandelion greens have a lot of good prebiotic, so when we're eating really vegan, and also it's just carb heavy more so.   Sarah:  (22:34) That can really throw people off into a place where they're all of a sudden digestively they can't handle it. Then also the paleo diet because paleo is taking away a huge source of complex carbohydrates. It's taking away beans. All these things are really critical to feeding and diversifying the gut. I think what I've been really understanding is that so many people have digestive imbalances, and a lot of these diets are taking out key things that the body can't process, but should be able to, and masking the digestive issue and just pushing it off until it becomes something different. That's my like ... what I get concerned about.   Mason:  (23:10) Yeah. The concern's great. It's like just to know ... For people to realise that, things are going so good in one area as you said, you can go on that vegan, especially you go to Bali, you get on the vegan diet, lots of acai bowls, and juices, and salads, and perhaps you're doing like a bit of raw kale and these kinds of things. Could be good for a time but then quite often, we start getting back that bloating feeling. From what I can tell it's kind of like a diarrhoea that it's going to be produced from that type of diet, right?   Sarah:  (23:47) Yeah, yeah. The other thing that I think just the idea of going to Bali and being on a retreat and really immersing yourself in a different lifestyle, for a time being and feeling really good, the other thing is I always like to remind people is that, the gut doesn't work in isolation. It's not, just like anything in our body doesn't function in isolation, which is where I think conventional medicine sometimes can miss the mark, because you're going to the cardiologist for your heart and you're going to the endocrinologist for your hormones, and the gastroenterologist for your gut, which is great.   Sarah:  (24:18) They're very complex systems, but they all work together, and that idea of how does this all come back and function together is oftentimes overlooked in a wellness and healing journey. Because when you're in Bali, when you're changing your routine, when you're participating in more yoga and slowing down, you're shifting your entire hormonal makeup. You're shifting the way that your body is experiencing chemically and responding to stress, and that impacts the digestion, that impacts hormones. The one thing I will always like to remind people is we can get really freaking granular into this.   Sarah:  (24:52) We can look at the individual bacteria in your poop and we can look at every element of what you're eating, but there's still this larger picture of lifestyle and sleep and stress, and how all that plays a huge role in this really complex system as well.   Mason:  (25:08) You bring up a really great point. It's like, who are we attributing success to here? Are we completely attributing it to the switch to keto, paleo, a big one to the fasting with all the juices and the cold bowls, and yet I still have these digestive issues? What's going on? It was so good for me, but I'm getting this blowback. We have a lot of young women coming to us going, "Look, I ..." Behind closed doors, especially lots of big Instagram accounts that they have this certain brand identity. They've been enmeshed with their stage persona and they need to up keep that and they're like, "But I don't have my period," crazy bloating, diarrhoea, always cold, but they can't stop because there's a fear that if I stop that diet, which gave me the healing is going to give back all my issues.   Mason:  (26:08) You're right; in conjunction is all of a sudden the deep relaxation, the hydration, the sunbathing and what that does. Maybe talk to us about that, that link between the nervous system and the gastrointestinal tract.   Sarah:  (26:23) Oh my god, it's everything.   Mason:  (26:26) [inaudible 00:26:26] right.   Sarah:  (26:28) We have this big nerve running down the back of our neck called the vagal nerve or the vagus nerve, and that I like to refer to as our gut brain superhighway. Our brain and our gut are constantly in communication. These two things need to be talking to each other to essentially function. Like I said, the neurotransmitters that are made in the gut, they're influenced by inflammation in the gut, by irritation, by leakiness, permeability. The way that we approach it in our mindset is, directly going down to our gut and influencing everything that's happening. When people can manage and navigate stress more effectively, everything changes.   Sarah:  (27:07) The more stressed out you are and I see this time and time again, where I know if I'm working with someone and they're having significant digestive issues, I know that their stress level is also going to be mega, mega elevated or their sleeps impacted or something's going on that's keeping them out of balance, or there was some emotional trauma that can come up and present in the gut as well. This idea that, we can fix one thing or we can just take the supplement or we can just do the diet without addressing the other areas, the stress is so huge, because we have stress in so many different capacities. Stress, we have perceived stress, which is, I have all these emails or I have these followers I have to upkeep this persona.   Sarah:  (27:49) That's perceived stress, which is affecting our brain. Our HPA access, our hypothalamus pituitary adrenal gland is kicking off, and now we have this surge in cortisol which is that impacting our sleep, which is impacting our hormones, which is impacting our gut. It's all very interconnected. Then we have stress from not eating enough calories throughout the day or over exercising, which ... I'm in LA, I see this quite frequently, but kind of the picture you painted, I don't have my period, I'm gaining weight, I'm bloated, I have diarrhoea, what's going on? I'm doing all the things.   Sarah:  (28:25) You look at, "Okay, well," perceived stress, movement based stress, caloric intake stress, and then toxin load and is your body actually able to process and remove toxins? Or are those another form of stress that are burdening your system? Yeah, stress plays a huge role. I can't ever pick a favourite and say, "Stress is the one to manage if you're going to pick one," but it's so integral in the conversation that it cannot be overlooked and expect to be healed, or that your guts going to function.   Mason:  (28:59) In context of the Yang and the searching for where I'm going to get this new saviour especially, it's pervasive in LA.   Sarah:  (29:08) Oh yeah.   Mason:  (29:12) I love LA, and I love that it's this big mixing pot and bring in a lot of Western philosophy and same with Silicon Valley, just like these explorations of what we can bring in next to diversify and bring more harmony to our Western culture. But, of course, in such a yang world, you get stuck in chasing that shiny thing ... I'm doing all the right things as you said, and then in reflecting of that, is that Yin state that's almost boring. It is definitely just in context of looking for something that's going to save you, it seems.   Mason:  (29:52) There, what you're saying seems boring and too simple, but more and more I'm definitely getting it at the moment. I've had to clip myself on the ear with all this that's going on in the world and this going internally, and then bringing the family together to the house. You can't deny the consistent beauty in that sleep, in that approaching life in a parasympathetic sense, just maintaining hydration, a harmonious diet where you know, your poo's reflecting the state of health. How do you communicate this? You're in the middle of ... You've gone out of the frying pan from wherever you are, I'm sure into the fire of LA.   Sarah:  (30:33) Yes.   Mason:  (30:33) How are you communicating this while still appealing to creating the shiny thing, that the moths will come to?   Sarah:  (30:43) Yeah, well, I mean, exactly. I really tend to look at people that are frustrated. When I talk about ... Because I'm coming, I'm not working with someone that's like, "I've just been experiencing bloating." I'm coming in and saying, "Have you been struggling with your health for years, and all the information that you got is not pointing you in a direction where you feel better?" What I'm looking for and I'm wanting to support people in, is this idea of long term health and longevity and sustainability. If you're looking for a quick fix, if you're looking ... "I just want to fix my bloating and move on. Give me the supplements. Tell me exactly what to eat.   Sarah:  (31:20) Tell me what to do. Tell me what my macronutrient balance should be." I'm not the right practitioner for you, because I'm really looking at, "All right, how do I support you and go on this journey with you?" I work with most of my clients for six months just to start with, and then we'll go on longer for a year because health is not, it's not a one sided quick fix thing. It's really about the exploration of the mind and how you approach it and your beliefs around your health. Then the physiological aspect and how is your body responding to this and what are you carrying on, or what are you holding on to and how is your body showing you this.   Sarah:  (31:56) To me health is really if you want to go deeper and you want to get internal, and you really want to say, "Okay, how do I create something that is sustainable?" I understand that health is an ongoing journey. It's not linear. It's not ever over. I think that's a hard thing for people to hear sometimes, because it's like, "How long will it take you to decrease my bloating and fix my bloating?" That's a tough question, because it's not always going to happen in a systematic way. Then a lot of times, once you overcome something that has been a burden on you, you can then see something else that's a challenge. It's like, I'm a marathon runner so I always joke that every first time marathon runner, their goal is like, "I just want to cross the finish line," and I'm like, "Uh-huh (affirmative)."   Sarah:  (32:39) Then as soon as they get across that finish line, they have a time goal, and then all of a sudden it becomes about this shifting goal and that's in anything. Every time you hit a goal, you raise the standard, you raise the bar, and that's the same exact pattern I see in our health.   Mason:  (32:54) Yeah, it's like sometimes that pause to reflect on, "Wow, my bloating is pretty much nonexistent and I didn't even take time to ..." My sound boy just fell off the wall. Great timing. It's like, "I haven't even stopped to acknowledge how far I've come and how much I'm producing this harmony within my gut through the shifts in diet." Your right it's like, "Wow what's next? What's wrong with me next? What other thing have I got in me that I need to detoxify and optimise?" Yeah, great point. What you said about macronutrients, we can't live forever with every meal having different percentages of different macronutrients. That's not sustainable over 20 years.   Mason:  (33:41) But with that, what do you see as your ... What are these beautiful foods that you really resonate with in your own diet, in your clients diet that you see really tighten up these fearless fig faeces?   Sarah:  (33:59) Fearless fig faeces. All right, I got to write that down and change that. For me, it's just really about thinking, once you get to a place where you can tolerate things, it's thinking about diversity. So my motto is the more diverse your diet, the more diverse your gut. If you can think about, getting 40 different types of whole foods in your diet per week, that's a good place to be in. I don't mean like, you could do like a red apple, a green apple, brown rice, red rice, black rice, and that's diversity and that's phytonutrients and that's colour, and that's feeding all different bacteria. The gut microbiome when you look at it is so ... We're just starting to really scratch the surface of the research I feel in what is going on in our gut microbiome.   Sarah:  (34:43) The way that it's interacting, the symbiosis between other bacterial organisms, between everything is just starting to be explored. At least at this point, finding just the more variety in your diet is going to help. I like the idea of, when I tell people I don't like measuring macronutrients, but if you want to go for a goal ... I always say, half your plate is bright, colourful vegetables. A quarter of that is protein, whether or not that's meat based or plant based. Then we want to do quarter of the plate half a cup type thing of some form of complex carbohydrates, quinoa, resistant starches like cooled white rice, cooled white potatoes.   Sarah:  (35:27) That really feeds and fuels the microbiome and then some good source of fat as well. That's what I think is going to make a fearless fig fece an ideal.   Mason:  (35:39) I just want to ask about, because when I talk to digestive experts, when people are looking at the blue zones and et cetera, the beans and the lentils and legumes are starting to come back into, probably find this harmony which I've struggled with a little bit. A little bit just because I didn't enjoy them in my early days and went more raw, trying to go off more large scale agricultural crops, the anti nutrient kind of thing. Then trying to work in more with an ancestral diet and style, but I've ... I'm really opening up to that. Well, we live in a different world and I'm trying to just make sure that I don't have any prejudice, and I'm just finding what works and doesn't for my family. Where do they fit in? Have you had a little journey there with beans and legumes yourself?   Sarah:  (36:31) Oh yeah.   Mason:  (36:34) [inaudible 00:36:34].   Sarah:  (36:34) Yeah, well, for me, I had a digestive journey, which is why I'm probably in the position that I'm in, because I was having such awful digestive issues and I was getting no clarity on the why. It was just like, "Take this out. Take this out." But I didn't understand why my body was imbalanced and beans were the worst culprit. Beans really are like even in a healthy system, beans do typically tend to produce more gas. They have something called raffinose which is hard for our body to break down which causes more gas. But I think they are really, really beneficial part of our diet. They do feed you know those gramme-positive bacteria.   Sarah:  (37:13) Lactobacillus can feed off of certain legumes. Bifidobacteria is really good with black beans, those darker polyphenols feed that really well. I think it's looking at your ... You don't want to necessarily eat beans, all three meals, but incorporating them in a way where that can be your protein source for one of your meals, that's a great way to bring them in. Yeah, just looking again at variety and balance and moderation, and it doesn't have to be so extreme, which I know is it's really hard for people because we want to have that black and white rule, just eat this because there's so many variables within food and in our health.   Sarah:  (37:49) But I think that beans are such an important part of that picture of our microbiome, and also allow us to know that things are working well when you can tolerate them.   Mason:  (37:59) Yeah, I'm starting to open up a little bit and just see where they sit, how many times they sit in my diet, small amounts. I've said in another podcast just watching the gas, watching the farts that sometimes inevitably come and take it too far, or too little.   Sarah:  (38:18) Get back into them. But like also the way you prepare them like soaking them overnight, adding a little bit of you know acid to it, like apple cider vinegar or something like that can help pull some of the things that disrupt digestion out of it. Sprouting them is going to be another way to access a little bit more digestive enzymes and make them a little bit easier to break down. Just exploring the different capacities.   Mason:  (38:40) Coming out of cans, BPA free, organic beans in the brine, have been cooked, do you have a gauge on where they're at in the preparation cycle?   Sarah:  (39:00) I think there's going to be an ease to those than an accessibility, because a lot of people aren't going to spend hours and days boiling and prepping their beans. I still think there is a lot of good nutrition value in that. I always just say, if you're going to be using canned beans, make sure they're not loaded with sodium, and that you do want to rinse them, because you want to rinse off that non digestible, that raffinose. I still think that they're a perfectly great way to incorporate beans into your diet. If you have elevated digestive issues, I would then challenge you to do more soaking like I said, adding apple cider vinegar, even sprouted like sprouted mung beans are a really great thing that you can eat raw.   Sarah:  (39:39) That's a good way to incorporate it just because it has more digestive enzyme support, so it's going to help you break things down a little bit more efficiently, things like that. But I don't want to say that canned beans aren't great too, because I definitely do incorporate those a lot.   Mason:  (39:55) I'm just curious is that we get asked the question, I'm definitely ... I've just asked my former stepdad, Israeli guy, and I just remember him when I was a kid, him like soaking those red beans like overnight maybe for a little bit more, real long cooks and I just ... There was just something self regulating about it. There's something self regulating about going in and then preparing the beans for yourself that for me puts that cap, rather than just been able to go everyday, cool, bang, get the salad.   Mason:  (40:33) I just want to start bringing that home, so we're talking about like fibres, diversity, phytonutrient diversity coming through our vegetation. Just ... I guess it's one of those things we're going to be talking about it now, and you're going to be talking about it like 20 years from now, trying out these vegetables that are on the fringes of your awareness and hybridised and [inaudible 00:41:01], I guess like that is a huge staple. Then getting the beans, and then getting the fibres in, what kind of ... To bring us home, what kind of benefits?   Mason:  (41:14) Just a refresher. Maybe people hearing this for the first time. What kind of benefits are we seeing through assuming we've gone through a healing journey, and we can now integrate soluble and insoluble fibres through our diet? What kind of benefits and clean up and work is that doing to our digestive system, and they been shown in our poo?   Sarah:  (41:33) Yeah, well, if you're getting those good, solid poo's and everything is ideally sinking not always floating, but if you're getting that good poo and you also feel well, because everything that's presented externally in our body, like you had mentioned skin conditions, dehydration, that's usually a presentation of an imbalance in our gut. When we can go through that healing process and we can eat diversity and tolerate it, we're just seeing ... I'm just seeing ... It's incredible. The body is healing. You see so many things like hormone balance come back and women start to get their period again and skin rashes, clear up like eczema.   Sarah:  (42:12) I've seen that happen multiple times anxiety, depression. That's hugely caused by inflammation and bacterial imbalances and we talked about LPS. It's so many things and I think that's probably why I got so fascinated with the gut, because when we look at these things that we're dealing with fatigue, brain fog, all the things I mentioned, PCOS. A huge part of that is coming from an inflamed and imbalanced gut. When we can get our gut into a place where it's in harmony and in balance, we're seeing that spill over into every single area of our health.   Mason:  (42:45) So good. Final question. Do you take any fibre supplements? Do you ever do like a psyllium in the morning or anything or do you ... Are you normally just cruising with your diet?   Sarah:  (42:56) I don't typically tend to take in more fibre but I do use it in my practise. Especially when we're going through gut healing protocols, acacia fibre is one that's tolerated really, really well. If you're doing a cleanup, if you are ... I work with a lot of people with bacterial overgrowth, and so as we're removing some of those negative bacteria, I'll add it with acacia fibre because that actually helps to feed the bacteria a little bit and then make the medication or the supplement a little bit more effective. I like that. There's another one called Sunfiber, which is a great product.   Sarah:  (43:32) Those are the two that I usually work with because they're not as bloating as ... Sometimes psyllium husk can bloat people. I actually really like using psyllium seed, and it's something that I didn't find until I went to Australia, so I think you guys have it. But out here it's a little bit harder. We have psyllium husk but the seed is really effective and it has really good fibres in it.   Mason:  (43:55) So good. Thanks so much for coming on. Best place for people find you? I know Fearless Fig on Instagram is rocking away.   Sarah:  (44:04) Yeah, that's the best place to find me. I do tonnes of education there and then also my website fearlessfig.com. I have a whole poop guide where you can go and just look. You can download it and then it'll take you through how to look at your poop, what it means, what bacteria is associated with it. It really is that deeper dive into poop.   Mason:  (44:24) Yeah, great. Because we didn't really cover constipation, but I'd just like to bridge, maybe we did in talking about that nervous system and that vagal tone work there. Is that fair to say?   Sarah:  (44:35) Yeah, that's a huge, huge one. Also, if your vagus nerve is damaged and there's a lot of ways to repair that so like gagging. Not that I'm like, "Yeah, you should just gag yourself," but to improve vagal nerve tone, gagging, singing, gurgling those are all really great ways to do that. That can be associated with constipation. That's slowing down the motility. It's slowing down the nerve reactions that are happening. I think we indirectly talked about it all, but yeah if you want to dive into that more, I have that in the guide looking at the different levels of constipation, because the Bristol stool chart is the best, at least at this point the best way to evaluate and assess visually what your poop should look like.   Mason:  (45:19) Oh yeah. I forgot to ask about whether we're still enjoying Bristol, so that's ... all right, great.   Sarah:  (45:26) Yes, I love me a good Bristol stool chart.   Mason:  (45:30) Sweet Bristol stool chart up in the toilet, you have all you guests really think about. The other thing ... I'm sorry. I know. It's like I keep on bringing things up.   Sarah:  (45:37) That's okay.   Mason:  (45:38) You guys have, in the US you have good poo observation decks in the toilet. It's a bit wider. The waters up higher, there's more surface area. Here, it's really ... It's quite like a 10 centimetre like-   Sarah:  (45:52) It is.   Mason:  (45:53) You know what I mean?   Sarah:  (45:53) I noticed that. Yes, because I actually was in Australia the end of last year. I was working at, I was in Tasmania actually studying with a microbiome restoration specialist.   Mason:  (46:05) What's his name? I think Dan Sipple, who's a, he's a regular on our podcast. I think he goes and studies with this guy as well. What's his name?   Sarah:  (46:12) Jason Hawrelak.   Mason:  (46:13) I think so. What's his book, Eating for your Microbiome or something?   Sarah:  (46:18) Maybe. Yeah. He's fantastic. I actually, literally went to Australia for a month because I just emailed him, and I was like, "Can I come observe your practice?"   Mason:  (46:28) [crosstalk 00:46:28].   Sarah:  (46:29) Yeah, so was just so much fun. But I did notice because we talked a lot about understanding bowel transit time and looking at your poop. I had a really hard time looking at my poop there because it was such a deep, the toilet was just like a deep vessel of like, "Oh, it is harder to see that."   Mason:  (46:46) Sometimes you go for a wipe and you drop it and you're "No, no. I've covered it up." Where as in like, being in the States you got all this place to pop the paper without ruining the observation. Anyway, I think that's something that I'm going to like, when I'm renovating I'm going to look to get like a-   Sarah:  (47:01) A shelf. Well, actually, the fact that you bring that up, there are toilets in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands in some areas, that are not the older areas, and they have actual shelf toilets, where before it even goes in the water, you poop on this flat space and then it flushes down.   Mason:  (47:18) South America as well.   Sarah:  (47:19) That's something I've been ... I'm like, "I got to find out more about that."   Mason:  (47:23) Yeah. I remember specifically in South America being like, it's really close, which prevents this splashback as well, which I really like that kind of [inaudible 00:47:32].   Sarah:  (47:33) It probably makes it stink a little bit more, but for science that's all good.   Mason:  (47:38) It's all in the name of science so we like it. Awesome. Thanks so much for coming on and chatting. It's been really great.   Sarah:  (47:45) Yeah, thank you for having me.   Mason:  (47:46) Hey, have a beautiful birth.   Sarah:  (47:48) Thank you so much. Yeah, hopefully he'll come soon.   Mason:  (47:52) Yeah, no, just keep walking around and enjoying your time and nature and turning that vagus nerve, and I'm sure it'll be smooth transition.   Sarah:  (48:04) Thank you.   Mason:  (48:05) Thanks guys. We'll put all the show notes and the chat and everything ... We'll put everything in the show notes rather, so you can go and check that out and download that guide. Thank you so much Sarah.   Sarah:  (48:14) Thank you

Digging deeper into recent news from and about Dexcom. Stacey talks to Chief Technology Officer Jake Leach about the news that competitor Abbott has received approval for it's Libre 2 CGM. What does that mean for the marketplace? She also asks Jake about G6 sensor issues, data gathering and more. Check out Stacey's new book: The World's Worst Diabetes Mom! Dexcom statement on data and privacy: Patient safety is a top priority at Dexcom, and we design our products to be as safe and secure as possible, as the data that comes into our system from CGM devices is extremely important for patients and physicians in understanding and improving diabetes management. Dexcom works with government agencies, industry partners and security researchers to apply current best security practices for medical devices to help ensure the integrity and availability of our systems. Our terms of data use are laid out for patients to consent or opt-out when they first set up a Dexcom account, so they know exactly how their data could be used and who will have access to it. In order for healthcare providers to access patient data, each patient must approve the sharing of their data to the healthcare provider through the CLARITY app. Another way patients can opt-out of sharing any of their data is by using the dedicated Dexcom receiver to view their glucose levels instead of a smart device. Join the Diabetes Connections Facebook Group! Sign up for our newsletter here ----- Use this link to get one free download and one free month of Audible, available to Diabetes Connections listeners! ----- Get the App and listen to Diabetes Connections wherever you go! Click here for iPhone      Click here for Android   Episode Transcription: Stacey Simms  0:00 Diabetes Connections is brought to you by One Drop created for people with diabetes by people who have diabetes and by Dexcom take control of your diabetes and live life to the fullest with Dexcom.   Announcer  0:16 This is Diabetes Connections with Stacey Simms.   Stacey Simms  0:22 Welcome to a bonus episode of Diabetes Connections. So glad to have you along as always. A bit of an unusual situation this week in the very last episode, and hopefully you've heard it. I spoke to Dexcom CEO Kevin Sayer. we taped that episode before the ADA conference actually took place. You know, the time shifting nature of podcasting. we taped these interviews ahead of time and then a couple of days or a week later, generally, the interviews air. A a couple of days after taping that interview, the FDA approved Abbott's Libre2 and this is a different CGM is able to continue transmit glucose data every minute. And users can now set the system to send alarms when their glucose is too high or too low. And previously, you had to scan the sensor in order to get any kind of glucose reads. So that is a big change, and frankly, more direct competition to Dexcom. I have reached out to Abbott in the hopes of learning more and asking them any questions that you may have Dexcom though, immediately reached back out to me and asked if we wanted to talk more about CGM and how they stack up in the marketplace. Now, I am not going to pass up the opportunity to ask more of your questions. And that's why we have sort of a Dexcom double feature this week. My usual disclaimer Dexcom as you have heard, and longtime listeners know Dexcom is a sponsor of this show. That means they pay me to have a commercial in the show. That sponsorship gets them a commercial, it does not get them any kind of approval over content. And so what does that mean? It means I don't send them all the questions. I have of time, we don't plan out what we're going to say. I hope you know, as you've listened that I don't hold back on questions and criticism from them. But we do have that relationship. And it's really important that you you know it right because we were doing news interviews here. And this interview is with Dexcom CTO, Jake Leach. I will link up more information at the episode homepage. And as always, there is a transcript. So here is my interview with Dexcom’s chief technical officer. Jake, thank you for jumping on and spending some time with me and my listeners. We always appreciate learning more about what's going on at Dexcom. So thank you.   Jake Leach  2:36 It's a pleasure to be here. Stacey. Thanks for having me.   Stacey Simms  2:38 Absolutely. So I just talked to Kevin Sayer. We did kind of a high level, you know what's new, what's next? How are things going? Talking about the G7? It he's of changes that have happened to the G6 COVID delays, that sort of thing. My listeners had a bunch of questions as this is the backdrop of course of the Libre news that came out Abbott's Libre 2 have got approval for use of the United States. The number one question that my listeners had was, can they talk about the price difference? I don't know if that's a CTO level question.   Jake Leach  3:11 Yeah, as much as you know, I'm involved in it. We basically, when we think about the cost of the product, the most important thing to be thinking about is making sure people have access to it. So insurance coverage, we feel really good about the fact that 98% of the private insurance companies do cover the product, as well as Medicare started covers it. And in states, many Medicaid systems do also cover the product as insurance. That's where we focus our time is really on on that. And we very few of our customers actually pay cash for the product. The vast majority of everybody gets it through insurance coverage.   Stacey Simms  3:48 When I look at the Libre, and full disclosure here, my husband has type two diabetes and he uses the Libre and Benny my son has used the Dexcom since 2013. Now, wow, yeah, it's funny to think about how much time has gone by. But one of the things I look at with the G7 coming and the you know, the bit that we know about it is that it will be much more like the Libre in terms of the sensor and transmitter in one. Can you speak to that in terms of the G7 in terms of size, insertion, that sort of thing?   Jake Leach  4:25 Yeah, so the G7 is, as you pointed out as an integrated sensor all in one, so it's the wearable device that goes on the body includes both the sensor, the transmitter, as well as the electronics inside the wearable that are both monitoring the center and then taking that signal and sending it via Bluetooth to the different integrated display devices whether that's a mobile phone, so a smartphone with an app on it, Android or iOS, or a insulin pump for automated insulin delivery systems. Other display devices, we have our receiver that is our proprietary handheld, some people really like that as their way to access the information. So our goal is to make it as interoperable as possible, which is one of the key important points about IC GM is that it's interoperable device   Stacey Simms  5:16 you And with that, I always get hung up on it. Because when I heard about interoperability A few years ago, in my head, it seemed like, Okay, well, I could switch out my pump, or I could switch out my sensor, I could use a different brand with this thing and kind of mix and match. And of course, insurance for most of us is the biggest problem for getting different devices. But it doesn't really work like that, does it? I mean, if a Dexcom g seven works with say, Omnipod five horizon, and with a T slim X to control IQ, people aren't really going to be able to just switch out devices like that and use the same sensor, are they?   Jake Leach  5:51 Yeah, as usual, it's more complicated as you look at it under the hood. But the key thing about the integration is that systems have to be designed To be able to be integrated. And so one of the big moves that we made when we transitioned between Gen four, and Gen five, and then subsequently Gen six, and as well as Gen seven, we moved to Bluetooth technology, which is a much more readily available technology within the display devices. So we moved to that. And when we did that, we designed an architecture that the intelligence of the system is all on the the wearable. So all the glucose calculations, all the information that you need is actually on the little transmitter device in G6, and will be in G seven as well. And so that is the device that can be accessed by multiple displays. If you think about it, you can use your mobile phone and the whole share feature that comes along with our mobile system, the remote monitoring feature, you can use that and at the same time, you can use a tandem controller to pump doing automated insulin delivery. And so the system is really designed to have that type of integration where you've got the right information in the right places and makes it interoperable. The systems have to be designed To be connected, for example, horizon five Omnipod five, the system that is in development by insolate is being designed to be integrated with both G6, that's what they're doing their studies with as well as G seven. So you have to do the design work and do the testing to ensure that it operates safely. But interoperability is a great thing. But it isn't as simple as just pulling and pulling everything it has to be designed and tested.   Stacey Simms  7:22 Yeah, it was interesting. I in my head, I always had it as well, this, you know, I can mix and match, I can figure out what I want. But when I talk to technical people, they always kind of smile at that because they understand more of the intricacies, I think of what it takes within the technology to make that kind of stuff happen. Whereas as the user, I just want to hokey pokey it around and use what I want. But we'll see as it goes down the road. Some other G7 basics that my listeners asked was, will the G7 have a shorter warm up and does it have a lower MARD? Is it more accurate than G6?   Jake Leach  7:55 Great questions. The warm up time is designed to be shorter than g6. And so we're As we're landing exactly how much shorter it's going to be, but it's definitely going to be a faster warmup. Also, the mard is the average difference between the sensor and the reference measurements that we measured the performance of the device and so on. That way, we want to ensure that we hit those iCGM standards. And so I think G7 definitely has the opportunity to perform better, but it definitely will meet those CGM standards, which are rigorous and important to ensure the product performs accurately throughout its life.   Stacey Simms  8:30 Can you give me a hint on the warm up? Is it going to be more an hour and 45 minutes or more?   Jake Leach  8:35 No, no, no, it's gonna be It'll be an hour or less.   Stacey Simms  8:40 You know, just had to double check on that.   Jake Leach  8:42 Yeah, no games there. We're just we're still trying to dial in exactly what's going to be to ensure we you know, the system has to be accurate. Second, it starts up but we do value short warmup time because we know how important it is when you know you're without the sensor data for that warmup period. So you want to make sure it starts up as fast as possible.   Stacey Simms  8:59 Yeah, it's interesting too. Because I'm probably an outlier but previous to we use the control IQ system with tandem previous to using that the two hour warmup really didn't bother me too much. I mean, it was only two hours especially if you came from like we did seven years with no CGM. It's really did not seem to be that big a deal. But now that we're using this algorithm, and the pump relies on the Dexcom data, two hours just seems like way too long to be without it.   Jake Leach  9:27 I agree. Really interesting.   Stacey Simms  9:29 Speaking of wear time, we've been very fortunate. Again, as I said, we've used Dexcom for a long time we do not really have a lot of issues knock on wood with it. He's of sensitivity which Kevin mentioned in his in our interview together, we went over that, but also with where time, but a lot of my listeners wanted me to ask if you are really checking into the people who can and there are many who can never seem to make it to 10 days on a sensor. Right who really was it whether it's because they have a young  child or the body chemistry for whatever reason, it does seem to be an issue that many people can't get the full life out of a sensor.   Jake Leach  10:07 Can you address that? I know you're looking at it.   Jake Leach  10:09 Yeah, yeah, I've got, of course. So a couple things there. There's quite a few things we've done over time. And we continue to research on this. There's two aspects to sensor longevity. One of them is how long the sensor can remain accurate. And so within our device, we have algorithms that are checking the performance of the sensor at all times. And so there are times when we detect that that sensor signal is not accurate and not meeting the CGM standard. And so we we actually shut it off and that's when you get on the display, you get the sensor failed signal. That's basically we detected that that sensor is not working properly, and it's not going to return to functioning based on the data that we're seeing from it. As you mentioned, most people are able to get 10 days out of the sensor particularly now that we've made some changes with the adhesive as well. But there are some people who don't and with those folks, we often spend some extra time with our tech support, and kind of walk through what their issues are. And there's quite a few things that can be done to help sensors last longer. I mentioned the adhesive, we recently updated our adhesive, we've added an overlay. that's optional, people can ask if you have access to the clear adhesive that goes over the top of the white one that comes with the product. And so we're looking at lots of different ways. Because what we found is everybody's a little different in terms of what their needs are and what works for them. And so we're trying to do is have as many options that we can to make the sensors stay on and heared. And it's really that's our philosophy around sensor longevity is if I really wanted to I could I could run a study and claim that G6 goes 15 days because I know the performance would meet that the problem is not all the centers would last that long. And so what we're really after is making sure all the sensors, as many as we can get out to the labeled timeframe, not just some of them. And I think that's one of the key differences that you'll see over time between different CGM companies is we're very focused on a high level liability, you're never going to get 100%. You know, sensors will come off and they'll get knocked off. It's a challenge. But it's one that we're very focused on trying to ensure that we can have the highest flow reliability possible.   Stacey Simms  12:12 Let me just follow up on that, because sensor sticking is one thing, right? I mean, I know that that's an issue in everybody's skin is different. And you have the overlays now, and the adhesive does seem to be sticking better to many people. Butwhat about people who have no trouble getting the adhesive to stick in the wire to stay in, but get recurrent sensor failure? Are there any best practices for people who seem to get that over and over again,   Jake Leach  12:36 there are and it's actually often comes down to, you know, sensor placement and you know, the sensors indicated for abdominal use. And so, we often instruct folks to try at different locations. We've also, if someone's really having repeated challenges and where they're getting those sensor failures, we do have specific capability with our tech support to work with that customer and look at their data and To help determine exactly what is going on, there's a number of things to we tend to see, that happens when people are more dehydrated. So you know, kind of making sure they're well hydrated and drinking water. But if someone's having consistent problems all the time, then we really want them to reach out to us and talk to our tech support. And we can get someone who is experienced, but you know that those types of issues to talk to them and look at their data and help work through it.   Stacey Simms  13:22 I don't mean to harp on it. But I've just, and I'm, I know, you may not be the right person to try to pin down on this, so forgive me, but I'm thinking like, Is it an insertion thing is it I mean, we've, anecdotally, the community has said, drink water, stick in the fattest place you possibly can maybe rock the sensor a little when you're inserting it so it doesn't go as deeply in like it's more shallow. I'm just curious with all the data that you will collect in these phone calls. If there's any, like I said, a best practice that would help or if it's just you know, you've got to talk to your local rep, maybe get an in person or zoom call lesson or talk to tech support, but you know, just a more concrete business advice, I think would be so helpful.   Jake Leach  14:01 Yeah, I think a lot of it does have to do with that insertion saying, like you said, you want to put it into a place where you've got good interstitial tissue. The other thing I've seen, too, is, um, you want to make sure that it's not at a place where you're going to compress the center a lot, you know, if it's under compression, you're not getting the same amount of perfusion there have glucose under the skin. And so that can also lead to issues. There is something recently that we've released in a product that has really solved a number of issues in that people were getting sensor failures during really high glucose excursions. We've sent some solved that problem with a new version of our transmitter that is now out in the market, almost everybody has that device. Now, it did make quite a dent in those we were detecting the algorithm was detecting that really high glucose as a potential issue. And over time, we've learned through looking at the data that that wasn't an actual issue until we were able to correct that in a recent version of the device. But yeah, it does come down to kind of working through sensor insertion and placement in Don't have data that validates, you know, some of those techniques that you mentioned that says it will work if you do these things. But we have heard from the community, and in our own times speaking with patients that it has been very helpful. And some of those concepts you just mentioned.   Stacey Simms  15:14 Jake, I'm sorry, can I ask you to clarify? It may have gone over my head. But when you were mentioning the newer transmitter that is out, can you just clarify what you meant by when it was reading very high blood glucose? And that was affecting the sensor? And then it sounded like you said, but that wasn't the case. Can you just clarify that?   Jake Leach  15:31 Yeah, sure. So what it was, was that during really high glucose excursions, the device was detecting a potential sensor failure where it wasn't the sensor failure. There's nothing wrong with the sensor. It was working. But you know, it's one of those things that once you once you get a product on the market, you learn more about it. And so we've made several iterations to the G6 even since it's been in the market for several years to improve it. And that is one of the cases that we saw patients running into, that we resolved with the newest version of the device is that it doesn't give The sensor error when when there was really high glucose excursion,   Jake Leach  16:03 and I'm just curious cuz it does sound like you've resolved it. What is really high glucose? Like over 400?   Jake Leach  16:10 Oh, well north of 4, 5, 6 hundred.   Stacey Simms Oh my goodness,   Jake Leach  16:14 yeah, we're really, really high glucose.   Stacey Simms  16:16 So if somebody has a teenager who's like bumped up to 250 and getting sensor failure, that's not the issue.   Jake Leach  16:21 That's not the issue. No, no, no, not in not in those,   Stacey Simms  16:24 because everybody has a different idea of really high glucose. So Thanks for clarifying.   Jake Leach  16:27 Yeah, that's a good thing to clarify. Because, like you mentioned,   Stacey Simms  16:32 you know, another question that my listeners had was about data. And we've talked a little bit here about some of the data that you collect. And I don't know if it's different internationally, but to speak about the data.   Jake Leach  16:43 Yeah, sure. Of course, first of all, data privacy is very important, both just fundamentally and philosophically as well as to be in compliance with all the global regulation we're seeing in this area of data privacy. There's a lot of advancements in the laws and regulate Around consent, and users granting access to their data, because in the end, it's the users data. We're just a steward of it. And so we take it very seriously. And so in our processes and our controls, that's how we proceed. So the data that comes into our systems from the CGM devices are used for things like share. So we provide the share system, the remote monitoring, that connectivity is super important. The data is also through that same system made available to the clarity application for use by the patients or customers or their physician. And then we also have that data in a safe lockdown repository that can be used by our tech support agents. If users are having track challenges, like we talked about tech support agents can actually log in and work with that user on their specific data. But   Stacey Simms  17:48 hey, it's Stacey jumping in here. I need to insert myself into the interview with the episode here because we hADAn audio issue right there and it was completely my fault. So apologies. Dexcom is going gonna give you a full statement on data and privacy, and I will link it up in the show notes. So Jake can kind of continue his thought that way and give you the full statement. One thing he said that I thought was very interesting though was if you are concerned about privacy and want to opt out, you can just use the receiver all by itself. They don't collect any data that way. But then you can't use clarity or share the information online with caregivers or your health team. But if you want to opt out, that is one way to do it and still use the Dexcom system. I did follow up the data question with one about transmitting data and why it's limited to certain devices. If you use a tandem pump like we do, for example, the transmitter can send data to your phone and to the to the mix to pump but then not also to the receiver.   Jake Leach  18:52 Yeah, the ad goes down into the specific engineering of the device deep down inside the wearable, for example to the transmitter producer. There's a battery in there. Every connection to a display device takes a Bluetooth communication channel. And so today, which is six, we support two channels, one for mobile phone and one for a medical device such as the insulin pump, or the Dexcom. receiver, it can support to have those connections to the med devices, because we need one available for a phone. We are looking in the future to allow multiple different types of devices you can imagine watches and other things. And so that technology is we're working the architecture of that. But the key there is that circuitry has to be low enough power that it doesn't use up the battery. We specifically designed G6 to be reliable for that 90 day period for the mere life. And so we couldn't put that system you can't support more than those two connection.   Stacey Simms  19:45 Yeah, practically speaking for us. It's plenty. I was just curious about the thinking behind it. And is that going to be the same thing with the Omnipod five? horizon? I'm laughing because I have to figure out how to say that Omnipod five. will it be the same thing Work goes phone and PDM or something, or is that a different setup altogether?   Jake Leach  20:04 It's a little different. But it's it with the G6 integration, G6 will support the Omnipod five as well as a mobile app like a G6 app. So it does support that. And as we look into the future towards things like g seven and future versions of G7, we are looking at architectures that could support even more display devices, more than just two.   Stacey Simms  20:24 And I'll hope to talk to Insulet in the future to get the specifics. But as I'm asking you this question, that sounds a little ridiculous, because where would it show up on the pod? I guess it would show up on a PDF if you use that instead of a phone.   Jake Leach  20:34 Yeah, I think one way to look at it for all of these automated insulin delivery systems is you want good communication between the algorithm that is doing all of the calculations for how much influence to deliver, you want a good connection between that and the glucose signal and the pump that's doing the delivery. That's part of the system engineering of the of the product and part of G6 was designed specifically for interoperability with so that it can support use cases like that   Stacey Simms  20:59 you mentioned To watch, I did talk to Kevin about this. So I'm sorry to bring it up again. But my listeners are really waiting for that direct to watch component. Can you speak to that from your perspective?   Jake Leach  21:11 Yeah, sure. So, you know, it's a it's a feature that we've been working on in development for for quite a while. And as we've worked through it, well, it turns out, you know, on our side, as well as on the leaves, Apple Watches is one of the one of the examples other than a significant amount of engineering. I think that we all underestimated when we first started talking about that product in the way that it interacts with the G7, as well as the phone app. And so we've been working with Apple closely know, over the last couple of years, actually, when when they announced this feature, it was really kind of a prototype feature. We started working with them closely on it, making quite a few updates on both sides to support that type of a feature. And so while we don't have any dates, where we're going to launch it, it's important feature that we know, adds flexibility to users lives and so we will continue to work on it. But at this point in time, we don't have a specific comment.   Stacey Simms  21:57 Yeah, I'm curious um, before I let you go here, DiabetesMine, which is a really great news source, if as you listen, you're not familiar, I always read them. I think they're fantastic. They recently, earlier this year, put out an article, headline “39 potential new continuous glucose monitors for diabetes,” as some of these are never going to happen. A lot of these are, you know, non invasive wearables that, you know, look at a headline, and we may never see again, but some of these are going to happen. Jake, I know you all are watching the competition. You know, I know that, you know, Dexcom has enjoyed a long time here of not having a lot of competition, especially the United States. I'll give you the floor. Are you guys ready to take on these companies?   Jake Leach  22:39 Absolutely. I think the just notion that there's that many different companies and working in this space is kind of validating the concept that continuous glucose monitoring is the standard of care for diabetes management and so perfectly comfortable with Mark people working in this space and we continue to drive forward all of our efforts on advancing the technologies, whether it The performance of the sensor the longevity of the sensor, particularly the ease of use, and the integration of our CGM with other devices. And you know from what we've seen, it's a very large opportunity. There's a lot of people who could benefit from CGM, so we're comfortable not being the only player. And we actually going to welcome expansion of CGM space across the globe with other companies as well as tech from   Jake Leach  23:23 Well, thank you so much for jumping on. I feel like I got a double feature of Dexcom this week. So thank you for the info. It's always great to catch up.   Jake Leach  23:29 I appreciate it. Stacey. Thanks for having me.   Jake Leach  23:37 You're listening to diabetes connections   Jake Leach  23:39 with Stacey Sims.   Stacey Simms  23:43 More information in the show notes as always, the episode homepage and there is a transcript there there are important links. Same thing if you're listening in a podcast app, you should be able to get to the show notes. But you know some apps are weird and they don't post links and Apple podcasts which is the most common one. Used as kind of bad for that sort of thing. So I always put it on the episode homepage, which you can find at Diabetes connections.com. And a little bit on that audio error if you're interested. I mean, here's some inside baseball. But here's basically what happened. Whenever I do a remote interview, and probably 90% of the interviews on this podcast are remote, right? We're not together, I do them generally through Skype. And my computer is set up so that it automatically records when a Skype call is placed. I have a backup recorder. For those of you who are technical and want to know it's an h5 zoom, and it's fabulous. But it's an external recorder that's plugged into the computer and has an SD card inside of it. So this call like a couple I've done recently, our zoom calls, my computer is not set up to automatically record and you know, everybody knows zoom by now if you're not the host, you don't have the power to record well 99% of the time, I asked the host to please record it on their end and then send it to me as a backup and I just roll the h5 zoom over here. forgot to ask them To hit record, there's always a PR person on these calls, you know, Jake doesn't have to worry about it, they'll take care of it. But I forgot to ask her to do that. So I'm rolling on my end, but they weren't rolling on there. And then and this has never happened before, the SD card was full. And it's a huge SD card. I don't know what the data is. I'm not going to pop it out. Now, look, but you know, I cleared out periodically, but probably only once every six months. And oh, my gosh, I completely forgot to do it. So it just clicked off and stopped recording. I share this with you. Because I mean, we're more than 300 episodes in right. We're close. You know me, I know some of you, but I thought you might appreciate it behind the scenes look at some of the nonsense that goes on here. I was able to stop the interview, ask them to start rolling and then restart. But we did lose that part, which I hate about the data. I have talked to Dexcom in the past about data. I will link up the specific interview where I talked to them about that. And I will link up the statement that they gave me after the fact I asked them to email me some information about that. But you know, hey, we're not perfect around here and we don't pretend to be the next Episode shouldn't be an interview with tandem. if things work out. We're still in the process of moving some things around with ADA and breaking news, we always like to do the best we can. So tandem should be up next, please join the Facebook group Diabetes Connections, the group to stay up to date. And that's the best way to get your questions into these interviews. When I have something like this, I always ask and you guys are amazing at getting me great questions and letting me know what you want to talk about. So I appreciate that very much. Thank you as always to my editor john Buchanan's from audio editing solutions. And thank you very much for listening. I'm Stacey Simms. I'll see you back here next week. Until then, be kind to yourself, even if your SD card is full. Benny 26:45 Diabetes Connections is a production of Stacey Simms media. All rights reserved. All wrongs avenged   Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Welcome! Craig discusses how your DNS is being hijacked by new browser protocols known as DNS over HTTPS (DoH.) For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Read More: Using The New Chrome Secure DNS Settings To Browse Privately Is Easy --- Automated Machine Generated Transcript: Far too many ISP are watching where we're going and even changing our location, that URL you type in might not take you where you think you should be going. [00:00:17] Hi everybody. Craig Peterson here. Thanks for joining me. We're here every week with all kinds of great information, keeping up to date on the latest in technology. And of course. Because I'm a security guy, a lot about security, and that's kinda what we're going to talk about right now. We all have internet service providers, whoever they are. [00:00:40]In fact, the internet service providers even have internet service providers because they have to connect with other networks in order to get you where you want to go online. It's a strange world out there. And one of the things that the internet does and frankly has to do in order to get you to that location you want to go, is it uses something called the domain name system. [00:01:07] Oh, you might call it the domain name service as well. But the idea behind this is to allow you to type in a URL or click on a link and that link then takes you to the correct site. Now you might be wondering what's this all about, I'm not going to get into the guts of the internet. That's not what I do. [00:01:29] That's not my job. That's not going to affect me. Oh, my, it does because the domain name service was designed many years ago to solve a problem, but it did not consider another problem that was being created in his stead. What we've ended up with is. You guessed it, another problem, the DNS system allows you to type in that I address. [00:01:58] And then it goes to your internet service provider and says, Hey, I want to go to google.com. Give me the address. And then. The internet service provider goes and talks upstream, finally finds out what the address for Google is. It's just like if you sent a piece of email and you addressed it to Craig Peterson in the Northeast United States, now it might get to me because some of these postal workers are very driven and they really want to help out. [00:02:27] Right. But what are the odds that mail would actually end up in my mailbox? You know, not very good. Is it, so you have. To have a street address or maybe appeal, box number to send that true that to, maybe a rural route number as well. Who knows? Right? Depends on where you're at. If you're overseas, a military duty it's even different, but on the internet, Everything has to come down to these numbers. [00:02:53] It's called the internet protocol, IPV four, and IPV six. Now you don't have to know all of that because all you have to do is type in google.com. Right. We already established that as an easy way to get to Google. However, Behind the scenes what's happening is that some of these internet service providers are actually intercepting your computer's requests to get to Google. [00:03:21] And then what they're doing with that intercept is changing it sometimes. So they'll look and see, is there a site called google.com? Oh no, there's not. All right. Great. Yes. So then they send you to yet another site that's not Google. And they try and upsell you there'll be Ads all over it. There may be their own little search engine thing. [00:03:44] That's come up on the screen that allows you to hopefully find the real google.com. On top of it all, not only are these internet service providers who were paying by the way, not only are they intercepting our DNS requests, but frequently they are also being intercepted by the bad guys. Here's what's happening there. [00:04:09] You have a router in your home, a router in your small business. Now that router is where all of your data goes to. And from the internet now, obviously in bigger businesses, we'll set up multiple routers, multiple sites. We'll probably run a protocol called BGP that lets me route everything in between. [00:04:30] Right? So if we have a failure, we can failover and everything just continues on. It's just wonderful. But in all of these cases, that router is a central point for all of your data going out to the internet. So what happens when a bad guy gains control of that router? And we're seeing this happen more and more now, because when was the last time you went ahead and made a change to the firmware on your router on that firewall box? [00:05:06] Right? It probably never, most of us never touch it. We buy it, we set it and we forget it. Right. We, Ron Popeil the thing. But that's not what we need to be doing in this day and age this day and age, we're looking at the internet of things. We're looking at hundreds, maybe thousands, ultimately, of pieces of hardware in our homes. [00:05:29] It's going to be embedded in our clothing. It's already in some of the shoes we have purses. We have. All of those devices need updates. Now that's one of the reasons we advise people to get rid of those big-box retail devices that they have like a link SIS box or who knows what, and that they're using at the network edge. [00:05:54] We advise them to get something that's way more professional that has longterm support for it. And, you know, for my clients, we always use it. The Cisco gear. There's a whole new line that we've had great success with called them. Rocky go, you can look it up online. I'd be glad to help you with that. And then the next sec pop from that is Rocky. [00:06:16] And then you get into the Cisco, but here's what's happening. You have not updated the firmware in your router slash firewall. Now, many times you cannot update the firmware because it is out of revision. So you bought this hardware three, four or five, six years ago as we were working just fine. Has given you the wifi. [00:06:41] Everything is just hunky Dory. It's wonderful. And you've never thought twice about changing that firmware. And in fact, the manufacturer hasn't bothered to release updates to fix the latest, major bug security problem in their firmware. So do you see where I'm going here now? Here's what happens if you put all of this into a pot, let's stir it up. [00:07:04] I know it's a little confusing, but here's what comes out in the end. When we take it out of the oven, the bad guys, they update the firmware. On your rudder slash firewall. That's a worst-case scenario. They actually updated and they set it up to send all of their data to Russia. All of your data, I should say to Russia or China, but what we're seeing right now is a DNS attack where they are routing all of your intranet DNS requests to them and their server. So here's what happened. Imagine you're sitting in front of your computer and you type in your bank, maybe it's TD bank.com, bank of america.com. Whatever it is. Remember your browser does not know how to get to TD bank. It doesn't know how to get to the Bank of America. [00:07:58] So what does it do? It then sends a request out to the internet saying, Hey, what's the internet address for TD bank what's happened now? Is it sends a packet out to the internet? Hopefully to your internet service provider, but it gets intercepted. And now that packet goes to the bad guys and the bad guys say, Oh, TD bank. [00:08:26] Yeah. Yeah. There, you know that part of town you never wanted to go into, you know, on the other side of the tracks where it's kind of dark and greasy and yeah. There's a lot of muggings and stuff. That's where TD bank is. Oh yeah. Go over there. So they will return the wrong address for TD bank. And now your browser ends up on their website, could even be a dark web website and all of your data, everything you're typing in is now being captured by them. [00:08:58] So we have now both Firefox and Chrome who are doing something called HTTPS. DNS over HTTPS is, of course, is encryption. So it is now sending the requests for DNS encrypted end to end. That is great for consumers, usually. However, It does break security systems. So both Google and Mozilla have jumped on board here a little prematurely, but that's what's happening right now with your DNS. [00:09:37] And what you should do is going to be based on your environment and what you're doing. Check people tell you, Hey, stick around. We're going to talk about insider threats. I bet you didn't know how prevalent they are and how they're occurring. You're listening to Craig Peterson.com. Stick around. We'll be right back. --- More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson For questions, call or text: 855-385-5553

Welcome back to the fuel your legacy podcast each week we expose the faulty foundational mindsets of the past and rebuild the newer, stronger foundation essential in creating your meaningful legacy. We've got a lot of work to do. So let's get started. As much as you like this podcast, I'm certain that you're going to love the book that I just released on Amazon, fuel your legacy, the nine pillars to build a meaningful legacy. I wrote this to share with you the experiences that I had while I was identifying my identity, how I began to create my meaningful legacy and how you can create yours. You're gonna find this book on Kindle, Amazon and as always on my website, samknickerbocker.comWelcome back to fuel your legacy. And today we have another incredible guest I love bringing on people from all different walks of life, people who have accomplished different things and are really focused On, on different aspects, they're bringing their light their love to the world in different ways fulfilling and sharing with other people. Billy Bross is someone you're gonna want to go follow him on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, these places, but he, he loves just helping online education companies and course creators break through the noise and fill their programs with committed high quality content and students students, right so part of its getting the students in part it's making sure their contents ready for that. He left a really great career honestly in renewable energy industry to go full time into his side hustle, his heart, his hobbies and ultimately his passion. So that's what I love about the people that I'm bringing on is that they've made that transition, and they're able to give us a light and knowledge as far as how we can make that transition in our own mind. He also runs a home and online home beer brewing school, so if you've ever wondered how to make Your own bruise and go check him out, he's awesome. Okay, so with that, I'm going to turn the time over to him, but I want him to be able to share his story and why he made the transition, how he made it, and how did he know when it was the right time to take that leap, quit his promising career and jump in full time to what he loves doing. So. Billy, thank you for being on here. I'm excited to hear your thoughts and and what we can do to become are following your footsteps. Awesome. Hey, thanks for having me, Samuel. And yeah, if anyone needs a good beer brewing recipe, then I'm your guy hit me up. Are you a craft beer fan?I actually don't drink alcohol at all. But I have family members who do and I know a lot of people who do.It wasn't a we'll talk about the business. It was a lot of fun, although it wasn't the healthiest business to run.Yeah, so thanks for having me again. And yeah, so you know, I I'm not the typical entrepreneur Am I very much like school, and a lot of entrepreneurs you hear dropped out of high school, or they kind of bash college and say, just get out there and start selling stuff and growing businesses. I actually liked learning and that's a theme that you're gonna hear from me. I love education. I'm very curious. I've always loved learning new topics. I remember in fifth grade, I was really into reading Popular Science Magazine. I would only read two parts, I would read the very front and the very back. And the front, they always had the section called what's new, and it's about all the cool new typical technology fields. And then in the back, it was always a classified section. And they're always like these really like kind of interesting, quirky ads. And I was I was like, wow, that's, that's kind of cool. You can build a helicopter, and then you can fly around. You can like buy a DIY kit on how to do that. That's really interesting. So I've always been interested in both science and art. So in business and creating new ventures, so I went through, went through all of high school, went through college, and then I went to grad school and got my MBA. So I took the very traditional path. But when I got that first job, which was a great career, I'll go into that. When I sat down the very first day at that desk after that, my boss remember, he gave me a tour of the office and everything and then finally sat me down and I was like, Okay, now this is assuming I don't do anything. And I just say the past, this is my life. I'm gonna be at this desk an awful lot. And I was excited to be there. But at the same time, I said to myself, this ain't gonna last too long. And so it wasn't too long after that, that I started on the side because I had this free time during nights and weekends, I started a beer brewing blog. So got really into brewing craft beer in college, really geeked out on like I do with a lot of things and decided to start writing about it and posting homebrewing tips and videos and things like that. So eventually, that was what allowed me to this was six years later jumpship when I was finally ready to leave that job and that career, I had this side hustle going, as you mentioned, and that was what enabled me to really forge my own path.That's awesome. So I'm curious. Because I mean, I know you say you're a proponent of education, and, and schooling, where would you I mean, do you feel like there's a line between schooling and education?Is there well, you can certainly have education without depends on what type of schooling you're talking about. And I think there certainly is a place for traditional education. But I think the whole I know the whole industry is getting disrupted right now. And I and I work with because I I work with online educators now online experts, teachers, teacher entrepreneurs, who are working in these areas. Well, for example, I have one on my school I'm working with and they teach artists. So digital artists, mainly people who do concept art for movies and video games. And traditionally, they would have to go to a university to get these skills and pay $100,000. And then they're not guaranteed anything afterwards, not guaranteed income or jobs. And now you have this online school, who I'm helping, and they help these artists they do it through $500,000. Sometimes a little bit higher price courses are still premium price for online but much cheaper than $100,000 for a traditional University. And the best part is these course creators are practitioners in their field. So they're in the trenches, they're, they're working in this area, and so they can tell their students how to succeed not just in their craft, but in the business side of their craft, which is so important. And now they're even starting to pass on jobs to their students as well. So, you know, there's certain there's certainly, there are places for traditional education. I mean, you wanna become a lawyer, you want to become a doctor certain fields like that engineering, but for, for some of these other fields, that's not necessarily the best path.And I think I think, for my cuz of how you caviar, like oh, I'm not one of those entrepreneurs that bags on it. I think that most for my experience, I all I do pretty much is an interview entrepreneurs of some sort CEOs, people who are successful in business or on the other side, mother's father, and just like, I guess I do interview a wide range of people. But I think most of the entrepreneurs that I interview there, although I would consider myself in this category, I bagged on traditional education, to a degree, but only to the extent of, I think that you could go get the same or better education from an online course. With somebody who is still practicing in the industry, and has some real life experience over going to a college, where that may or may not be the case, as far as crack practicing, and as you said, you pay now you walk away with $100,000 either spent money or debt with no guarantee of a job. And so, I think that's where, at least from my experience of talking to people, that's where most of the if you want to call it animosity comes from in that conversation. It's not that they think that to become a doctor, you shouldn't go have somebody practice and teach you that. But even even with that, being a doctor, being a lawyer, I hope not true, but I would say even with that, there's a lot of people who have gone through all of that education, formal education to get their degrees and in the process, they found that they actually are better able to serve clients or patients by you. Using methods that aren't necessarily taught in school, but to be able to use those methods, they have to have the credentials. And then they end up going off and doing functional medicine, which they could have done. They just want to have the licenses to do so without the formal education. So it's an interesting balance. I think education is everywhere. I don't think you should go fail.I shouldn't. How do I say that?I think failure is essential. Okay. I think we should be willing to fail, but fail different than the people in the past. Like if you're going through and you're making all the same mistakes that everybody else made. You didn't learn anything. Yeah, you know, guys like my point you need to go and create your own.Like, take and this is what this is one good thing that I think I gained from public like from my college years that I don't, I don't Where I would have got this otherwise, sure there's places, but how to conduct effective research is a very, like, if there's nothing else you learn. That's a pretty dang good thing to learn. So you can actually read medical journals and say, Okay, what exactly like how are these samples done? What's it? How are they using statistics? How are they doctoring statistics, not just medically, but business wise, if you're walking into a business and they lie, whereas $4 million company and you're like, Okay, and you have $10,000 extra every month, because your operating costs are like you're barely surviving doesn't matter that you're making $4 million of revenue, if 3,000,900 you know, whatever, if it's all going out in expenses. You're, you're struggling, right, one bad month and you guys full, that's different than somebody who's netting $4 million every year, you know, so, being able to read, statistics read and be able to research stuff i think is important. In in that so something I feel like I'd be Effective from there when you're helping somebody build effective content. What does that look like?Well, the important thing is to always start with the audience. So a lot of this is a trap that a lot of and I fell into this trap, too, that a lot of experts and people are just subject matter experts, people who know a lot about their topic. They become obsessed with the topic, and obsessed with the content. But it's that whole set hole, if you build it, they will come thing not being true. When it comes to selling education online. A lot of people think it is though. So you want to start you want to find products and content for your audience, not customers or an audience for your content. And there's a big difference there. So the most important thing is to focus on what is the problem to be solved, or what is the thing that they want, and then try to in as few steps as possible. That's a big mistake, too. You don't want to over people are overwhelmed with information. You don't want to just dump a bunch of insight PDFs on their lap. So you want to get them from really our noun to that endpoint and as a efficient manner as possible.I agree. And so with that, just because you're you have helped over 500 companies accomplish this. How do you address it? I guess if it's online, when you're doing online courses, how what percentage of these online courses have an active teacher, somebody who's involves teaching in it, and how much what percentage is just recorded content, like an online course is recorded, and they're gonna buy it and pay whatever and it was made once intellectual property and they resell it multiple times without updating? Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah. So so it's shifted over the years. So it's very different than how it was when I first got started in 2009 2010, where it was a lot more self paced, more on demand more of a separation between the teacher and the students. And now what we're seeing is The model that we like that we see working in that we teach is more so that other end of the spectrum, or more closely resembles a true college class or college semester, where you're taking people in, you're taking them through as a group, we often call it call it a cohort, kind of nerdy term, as we call it. And, and it can be 100% live teaching, it can be pre recorded, plus maybe some office hours or some support calls. But usually, there is some, I think, going forward, the way of the future is there's got to be some kind of support some kind of live interaction, because if not, I mean, the, the, the numbers right there. I mean, the lesson is right there in the data, and that only one to 3% of people actually complete online courses as just as terrible. It's terrible all the way around. It's terrible for the students. It's terrible for the teachers as well, any entrepreneurs because, you know, most of a business's revenue should be coming from repeat customers. Because the most expensive thing you can do Doing a business's get a new customer. So if they're not if they're failing at that initial product, initial product is not working for them. What are the chances that they come back for more?I agree. Have you add sure you have in this space heard of lightspeed, VT said again? Have you heard of lightspeed vt it rings a bell I'm not too familiar with it though. Brad Lea is the creator CEO of the of the service, I would highly recommend looking it up his his service what I like about his service, and this is not necessarily a plug for him, but why not? You're listening. You want to create an online course, why not plug for guy he's awesome. Um, but it's a very interactive so unlike a typical video course where it's like, you use watch it hope they watch the help they got out of it inside of the video. There's a lot of interactive things, you can click on. And it's like building a sales funnel. But in video course form, so like, I could be having this conversation and then say and what's what level was your income? I'm, I'm fine. And so that makes sense, right? What level is your income 50,000, whatever. So they're gonna have three options they pop up after me and based on which button they push, then they're going to hear different content from me based on where their level of knowledge is at, or it's going to relocate them back to where they need to hear, hear what I just said. So they can so we can contest comprehension contest, make sure that the people are getting what they need because you may have somebody who's taking an elective class or taking a course just because like they need the basics but they already understand half of the what the content and most courses and make you go through the same like the same path. And so they're they're only getting, like everybody's getting the same cookie cutter information rather than saying okay, I want to buy this course on so Media, for lack of a better word, right? There's people who don't even know that on social media, you should have all of your profile pictures be the same across social media, you should have all of your banner pictures be basically identical, you should have all of your your descriptions about who you are like there's, that's like step one, before you get started on marketing before we get started I that have uniformity, like that's important. So that person, maybe that's where they're at? Well, the other person may already have all that done already have been paying for ads for a while, but just needs to know how to write more effective copy, right. And so for that person, they can go through and get the first half of the course done, still get credit for whatever, but they get the first half of the course done super fast, because they have advanced through that they already know it. And then they can move on to the part that they actually want to do faster versus having a course where they're bored for the first half of the semester lose interest before they actually get the content that they wanted and then they don't complete it. So anyways, it's a personalized learning paths. No, those are excellent. Yeah, and it's a, it's one of the cool things you can do with online education technology. And it's a great way to increase results. So I love that. I'll check that out.Yeah, he's said he would be actually a good. He's super, super cool. If you reach out to him on Instagram. He's in. He's in Vegas. And he doesn't do interviews unless you come to his office. So that's a thing there, but he would be a great person, I think, for you to be on his podcast.Cool. Yeah. That was my mom go to Vegas. Yeah.Yeah, no, it's uh, and he's super chill. And he also I shouldn't say loves beer, but he drinks beer. So you'd have to be able to contact or like, my kind of guy.Yeah. Um, anyways, so So let's talk about this. When did you I mean, you got out of your working your corporate gig. You've got out of beer, I mean, creation, I guess craft beer education. So was that really That the transition from like, how did you transition from your corporate job to teaching people how to create educational, like content?Yeah, good question. Yeah. So so I left the full time job in the, in the renewable energy industry to run this beer website. And so fortunately, you know, again, I'm not the traditional entrepreneur, a lot of entrepreneurs were just like, jumped ship, I wanted to have money in my savings account, I want to have a decent amount of consistent income coming from that website. So I got to that point where I felt really confident that I could cut the cord with a full time job and have a viable business. And unfortunately, that happened, but it was really more of a springboard that website into where I am now. My intention really wasn't to be the beer guy my whole life. That was just a cool project that I was working on and I want to be experienced doing it and of course, wanting to use it to leave my job. But I really missed working with with other things. People on teams and collaborators, really smart people like I was doing. I didn't, I didn't have that anymore when I was running the beer website. So So I started joining these online forums and communities and meeting other people like myself in all different niches. And even though a lot of them were beyond me, they still I can still notice things in their business gaps, especially in their marketing, where I would say, hey, if you just move this thing over here, or just do this or get this page up, it could really explode your growth. And so more and more of them start to reach out and I started doing some consulting on the side. And that eventually became my main passion, helping people like myself who had the subject matter expertise, but didn't have the the business expertise or the marketing expertise to get it out there. And because I had learned that and I had this traditional business background, that combination of skills, put me in a good position to help them grow their business, and that's what led me to where I am today. So I sold the the beer website actually a few years ago. So that's now in someone else's hands. But but he's doing a good job with it. We're still in communication.Good hopefully hopefully turned to pretty penny that Scott. That's awesome building websites, I didn't know how like that I don't have anything that gets a ton of traffic. But you can just like go by URLs and or domain names. And if you put something on there and get a little bit of traffic and like build up the name on Google like you can that's a way that's a form of investing right there it's kind of interesting business model but it's it's cool to see like how much what I paid for my my domains and then how much they've increased in value since I've put content on their websites and add things pushed to them create a connection. So it's a cool it's a cool thing to see. So I'm curious. I liked the way you said this, I guess is you had a bigger goal and so many people they think, Oh, I'm I'm in this business. For me. I work in finance, right? My objective is not it is my objective. is financial but I'm in finance because of the the bigger goal, right? The bigger goal for me being in finance is to help people with well, as they understand how money works, then they it decreases statistically decreases causes of depression, anxiety, suicide, domestic violence, malnutrition. And those instances decrease when there's higher income, or at least understanding how money works in a home. And so although I work in finance, that's not my main gig, my main gig is what it produces. At the end. I think that's important for people to understand, especially when they're trying to identify well, do I jump ship? Do I go do my own thing? Or what is it exactly that you're jumping ship from and to? I think that's a huge, huge, huge question to be answered. Before you quit your day job before you go anywhere. What exactly are you jumping to? And as Billy said he wasn't jumping to the beer company to become the beer guy. That wasn't as objective. He saw that as a project as a current way of expressing himself in, in other forms of creation. And I think that's important because so many people will get fixated on a certain thing. And they'll say, Well, I don't know anything. I only know how to be a mom, I only know how to garden. I only know how to create videos, I only know how to make beer, right? And so they don't see their value outside of the task that they're doing. And this holds people back. So many people back even in their corporate jobs, because they think I'm only good for what I'm being paid for. Instead of recognizing that the value that they're adding to that company is so much more than the tasks that they're fulfilling. And if they were just to go market, just the value that they're adding, personally, they could probably increase your income, even if they didn't want to change what they're doing. They could take that out of a corporate And go perform those tasks by themselves and be able to create the same or more income more regularly and be in more control of their income. So that's a huge thing. And then understanding that this happens. I would say this happened to me as well, especially with this podcast. Like just kind of the the germination of this podcast is I was doing Facebook videos about different topics. Facebook Lives, I did them every day for I think a month did a month of Facebook lies every day. And what I found was people were reaching out to me and saying, Man, I would love to listen to all of your content, but I can't leave Facebook on all the time. You should turn it into a podcast. I was like, Oh, I never think about that. But I'll turn into a podcast then. And so so so many times, think about what are you complimented on the most? What What do people compliment you on? What do you think? What do people say? And if I Just think like that. Or if I could just do that, what is the most common thing that people say about you in that context? And then reach out to Billy and say, Hey, Billy, how do I turn this into a course? Yeah, I turn this into an online course. Because clearly if there's enough people who recognize my gift, even though I don't recognize my guests, how do I make this gift? able to reach more people? And how do I monetize it? Right? How many times does that happen to you, where you have somebody who comes to you who wants to create a course isn't quite sure exactly how to do it. They know their audience, they know what they what they're trying to teach, but they just have no idea how to monetize it, how to make it effective for their end consumer.Oh, it happens all the time. Yeah, it happens all the time. And and I'll tell you what I tell them because the wrong way to go about it is to go disappear into your basement for nine months and go record some amazing video course. It's been a ton of fun. On software and lighting and microphones and all that stuff, editing, distribution, and just to find out that no one really wants the topic, no one really wants what's being offered. So, this is good news. This is good news because you don't need to put so much pressure on yourself to have something completely polished and dialed in. The way to do it, especially now going going forward is to take that audience first approach, like I talked about, start to build a following get in the trenches with your audience, hop on the phone with them even I've talked to dozens of my customers and email subscribers when I was running that beer brewing website, not selling anything, just hopping on the phone and just asking questions. And look, I was part of my market. I was brewing up a storm. So I but I still my mind was blown all the time. And I was surprised by the things that people would say and what their problems were. So don't fall into that curse of knowledge. You know, where you think that you know it all. The market will tell you and you'll often be surprised. And then just get something out there. Just get something out there. Take an iterative approach. And this is really my approach to to life, you know, and the value that I provide. And like what you were asking earlier. I mean, I see myself in a really strong point of leverage for two reasons. One is I think personal growth is the most important thing in the world. And one of the ways that we can solve a lot of the problems that we have in the world, yes, there are a lot of problems with society and the economy and all that. But if everyone really focused on themselves, and focused on if I focused on making myself better tomorrow than I am today, and I did that consistently, every single day, if everyone did that, we'd be in a really, really good position. And one of the ways to do that is through education, through online learning online courses, and it doesn't matter what niche you're in. What tends to happen if a person is improving in one area, even if it's something sort of like insignificant by most standards, like brewing beer, people don't think that's entirely a life changing thing. But it is and I would see how my students would come in and they would fall in love with this hobby. And that passion would exist. from them, and it would spread to their family, their wife, their kids, they would all see it. And next thing you know, everything in the household is uplifted. Right. So that's one leverage point working directly with them. But I took a step back and said, Okay, let me work with the entrepreneurs and the teachers, the teacher entrepreneurs who serve them. And now we get into, so now I'm able to help them reach more people. So improve this collective personal growth going on throughout the world. And also, I'm a big believer in small businesses, they really are the engine of the economy. So that's I love working with entrepreneurs. Now, they're the innovators, they're the job providers are the ones paying a whole lot of our tax dollars. So that's what gives me a lot of fulfillment. I see myself really in a great place of leverage and aligns with my values. The main one being personal growth.Yeah. And I think that that's the key is identifying what isyour personal value and how are you aligning yourself with your personal value, I think once so I have a I have a my journal, a journal that I created. But it's called the nine pillars to build a meaningful legacy. And the focus is identifying who why why would it be important for you to actually exceed or succeed in life in general. And it's part of a grander process of identifying your identity. And as you said, your your values for me my core values are candor, integrity, and gratitude. Those are like more important than just about anything else. And when I really analyze who I am, without any fear of judgment for not saying God or saying family or whatever, without any fear of judgment of anybody else, what am I personally internally committed to more than anything else in my life, and it's those three those three values and so I built my business I built everything I do in my life down to my marriage, my children, my everything, based on those three values and all of these need to be present in everything I do. I'm not interested. And when you're looking at jumping ship or going something new again, Be aware of what you're leaving and what and where you're going. Because I'm sure I want you to tell me some failure stories of people who have done this what I'm about to describe, hopefully, some, if you don't, that's amazing, but I think you probably will, but people who they, they were doing this, I decided to create this course or education, out of desperation, because rather than running towards what they were passionate about, and running towards what they love doing, they were running away from what they didn't like doing. And that distinction is huge. just choosing to try it, try and create as, as you would say, try and create a product that you can sell just because you don't like what you're doing right now. Your current, your current work. That is not the way to move forward. It's not I think it has a short lifespan. You're not going to be a long lasting educator or innovator anything but if you are passionate about something and you're running towards what you like, you're gonna have different results. So tell me a story of where you've had Somebody who is running from something rather than towards something.Yeah,well, I can give you my own example. Sure, sure.Yeah. So when I, when I made that transition from running the beer site to doing consulting full time, I was doing some service provider work. So I wasn't just consulting, I was also helping people build and maintain their Facebook ad campaigns and the natural path. And so I eventually pulled back from that because the natural path if you start doing that is to grow an agency. You know, so you start to look at Okay, how can I get more clients? How can I do a better job with this and you're just gonna wind up in that agency playground. Turns out I didn't really didn't want to run an agency. It just, it doesn't align with what I enjoy doing. It's not me, much more of a strategist, much more of an architect. I don't want a big team or anything like that. It just didn't match up with the lifestyle that I wanted. And I always start with the lifestyle and reverse engineer that So I started to go down that path, but then quickly pulled back because I had that feeling like and yeah, I can deliver value here. But this isn't, this isn't my zone of genius. So a lot of my life has been like that testing different things, seeing how it feels. Sometimes you just have to write like, I didn't know what that that day to day was like, it looked good on paper, running an agency getting a lot of clients. But when I was actually in the trenches of it, I said, No, I don't feel so hot. Let me go back this other direction.Yeah, I think that's that's huge. Being able to dig, like to determine and decipher between that What are you running from something you write to something and making sure you're running to something that you love and that you're going to bring the light and Joy to the world not just from what you don't like because it's just barely I haven't seen it pan out very well for many people. And it's good that you were able to recognize that before you got too deep into something you hated and decided to. You never know happens honestly. So I'm curious when you did make the jump though. What was your? Did you Who are your biggest naysayers saying no, don't do that. Why give? Why are you giving up this great job? Tell us the story of your biggest naysayers and how you overcame them.I have been really fortunate in that I've always had a tremendous support system. I really can't think of one person I'm close to. I can't even think of one person who said, You're dumb. Don't do that. Don't leave that full time job. It's great. Everyone was just like a really great cheerleader. Just Hell yeah. Billy, go for it. So I've never had anyone say that, fortunately. But I have had haters, you know, running. You wouldn't believe that running a beer website. You get haters, like, I remember I was. I was, uh, I did some videos about a beer cocktail and some British one. And I guess they're very strict about how they make these beer, beer cocktails where you mix two beers together a beer and some other kind of a silly thing. But people will get on YouTube get really upset and passionate about pretty trivial things. So I'll get flamed in the comments if I made the recipe wrong or something And then and then I would have people just generally upset that I would sell information. A lot of people just see that as a big No, no. How could you possibly sell this, especially in a niche, like an enthusiast niche? You know, the beer market? People are a little bit touchy about that. So, so yeah, I certainly had my fair share of haters, but but no one no one saying, hey, you shouldn't be doing that as a career or a business fortunately.Right? So how so? How did you overcome that? Because there's people who, maybe they have support in their career, but when they see those comments online, when they see that the haters, they're like, Oh, no, am I doing something wrong? Maybe I should adjust my my approach my market like maybe, maybe I should change maybe I get doing whatever I'm doing. So how did you learn to just let that roll off of you or not give it any credence? Like how did you move past that and say, Look, I'm doing me you do you and you don't want to do it, whatever. If you want to post crappy things, that's fine, too. Whatever.Yeah. So a big Part of it was looking to mentors. So looking to people who either mentors I knew personally or mentors from a distance I just followed online, who were a few steps ahead of me, or many steps ahead of me and had way more haters than me and seeing them talk about it. I remember I think it was a roommate safety, if you know who he is heard of him? Yeah. And he had his own version of Have you seen mean tweets against what he's called Jimmy Fallon, one of those late nights? Yeah. President Obama will be on there reading all the mean tweets about him and he makes it funny. So Remi did something like that, I think was him and maybe James altucher. And they're reading all the tweets. It was like this funny, they're sitting around the fireplace drinking whiskey or something, and reading some of the hit the April comments on their YouTube videos. So I've Oh, I'm a big fan of humor. So I used humor to approach it and just kind of have to laugh at them. You know, it's silly, right? And I don't take it personally. And I realized that they only see they only see a sliver of me and my personality. Right, like they saw maybe just the first three minutes of that YouTube video and that's all they know about me. Right? So I have a lot of empathy.I think I love that. I think that and that's really the whole purpose of my book or one of the major purposes of my book is exactly that. How do you like gain perspective of what's really happening? So often in our world today, we get sucked into like, Oh, this is such a big deal on Facebook. It's like no, like, literally in two days, nobody's gonna remember this thread even happened. We've got it got to keep in perspective there, how much they know about you. It's not an attack on you. It's an attack on their perception of, of what's happening, which is entirely different than on you. So I love that what would you say your your secret? If you have like a specific habit, mindset or behavior that you have participated in regularly to build your legacy? What would you say that is and how could we adopt that into our lives?Yeah, so it's really I'm a big fan of positive habits. So having a strict morning routine. Having a strict nighttime routine? And then and then self reflection. Am I improving? Going back to what I said earlier? Am I a better person than I was yesterday? Am I smarter than I was yesterday? Am I more skilled in this area than I was yesterday? And if you just do that day in and day out, I forgot the exact numbers are. But I think if you if you improve 1% each day after 70 days, then you're twice as good as you were before. That's been the biggest thing for me again, personal growth.Yeah, no, I love that. It's awesome. So how could we support you if we wanted to get in touch with you? Let's say we have a course that we want to create. Or we'd like to maybe take part and see what see what courses you helped to create and just take part in some of those that you've already helped create for other people. Do you have a list of all the companies you've worked with? And so we'd go cruising back. Oh, yeah, he's helped dessert. I'd like that type, of course. And where do we get in touch with that and how do we get more involved with what you're doing?Yeah. So nice and simple, best ways to get around. My website Billy bras calm b i ll y VR OSS calm. And yeah, there's a bunch of case studies on there. And you can see a lot of the courses that I've worked with and a lot of the niches that I've worked in, you can hop on my email newsletter, I send out a almost daily email newsletter. I'm a huge fan of email marketing as a channel. I just think it's the most intimate, personal way to communicate but I do it very differently than how most people do it. So So yeah, that's that's a very popular.Okay, cool. So here's the here's the last two sections on my podcast are some of my favorite. So this this second last section is called legacy on rapid fire kind of like a game show. But there's, there's no right or wrong answers. But there's five questions. And we're looking for one word, one sentence answers. I may ask you to clarify any one answer at any given time.Fair enough. Let's do it.Awesome. So legacy on rapidfire number one, what do you believe is holding you back from reaching the new Next level of your legacy.Hmm.sorting the great opportunities from the good opportunities. That's the constant challenge.That is and what have you found to help you in that endeavor?There's actually I actually have a really tactical thing that I use. It's a formula that I've discovered by Brendon Burchard. And I can't remember the little complicated, but you essentially look at everything that goes into an opportunity, the resources, the time, the money, the sanity, that you need to invest into it, and see if the payoff. So the financial payoff, the doors that it opens and how it fits into your lifestyle, how those balance out, it's kind of like a scale. So it's not perfect, but it's a good framework to use to evaluate opportunities highly recommended. No, that's awesome. I agree that you have tohave some formula of determining how You spend your time and where you spend your time. And I talked about it from a perspective of, you've got to become the CEO of your own life. And that's the CEOs job to determine like, hey, which contracts we're getting in? How are we increasing the value to our shareholders, if it doesn't weigh in the favor of increasing the value to our shareholders, now worth my time, and, and being able to hold that standard to yourself and for others, it's a nice school concept. I love it. It'll be a book one day, but like that might be a course before it becomes a book. I'll see. So what do you think the hardest thing you've ever accomplished has been to this point,running a marathon?I haven't done that. So I will, that I would tend toseegoes to the head and then like 10 or 11 years old, and had no not no intention of running this half marathon. On, but my, we were all showing up. We all showed up to support my family and my older sister who had been training while she was warming up that day, she pulled a muscle or something so she couldn't run. And so she's like, Well, does anybody else want to and I was like, I have two or three other brothers who are running. So I, you know, like sketcher Skechers. The shoes had like a leather, almost like nice, classy leather. Skechers shoes. That's what I had on. And I was like, y'all run? Why not? So I ended up running this half marathon in Skechers shoes. I was like 10 or 11. I was like, That will never happen again. So I haven't ever thought to brave another half marathon and

This week, the How to Launch a Book series continues with everyone’s favorite: book launching on social media. Twitter. Instagram. Canva. PicMonkey. Crello. Pinterest. Linked In. Head blowing up yet? We talk about planning your launch social media, how to use social media and image-creating apps to share and promote and why you shouldn’t feel one bit like you’re talking about your book too much when you’re launching it into the world.We also fall apart a bit, here and there, because these are falling apart times, and we feel it.#AmReadingKJ: Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia OwensJess: The Secret History by Donna TarttHow to Be an AntiRacist by Ibram X KendiMiddlesex by Jeffrey EugenidesSarina: Pale Rider Laura SpinneyDon’t forget to check in with our sponsor, Author Accelerator. They’ve got a special book coaching class happening in June on coaching historical fiction, which I would love to be a fly on the wall for—as well as introductory and master classes on book coaching, and, as always, the ability to match you with just the right book coach to help you move your work forward.As for us—we send out a MiniSode or a Writer Top Five every Monday to our supporters. Your support pays for the production and transcription of the podcast, and is the reason why, this week, you don’t also hear my conversation with the child who walked in while we’re recording. Also why there’s music and a fun opening. Because we hired a professional, because it’s good to do these things right. So thanks for chipping in—and if you’d like to join us, click the button.KJ Dell'Antonia 0:01 Hey writers, it's KJ. This week we are continuing our book launch series and Sarina is schooling me on getting all my social media ready for a fiction launch. At our sponsor, Author Accelerator, they're offering some different schooling this month, June of 2020 with classes in book coaching. There are introductory classes, master classes, and (this fascinates me) a special class this month on coaching historical fiction. I love that they're getting so specific, and I would love to listen in on that one. If you're intrigued find out more at authoraccelerator.com. Is it recording?Jess Lahey 0:40 Now it's recording. KJ Dell'Antonia 0:43 This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone and try to remember what I'm supposed to be doing.Jess Lahey 0:47 Alright, let's start over.KJ Dell'Antonia 0:48 Awkward pause. I'm gonna rustle some papers. Okay, now one, two, three. Hi, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia and this is #AmWriting, the podcast about writing all the things, short things, long things, fiction, nonfiction, essays, book proposals, pitches. In short, this is, as I say every week, the podcast about settling down and getting your writing work done.Jess Lahey 1:18 This is Jess Lahey I am the author of The Gift of Failure and the forthcoming The Addiction Inoculation. And you can find my work at the New York Times, and the Washington Post, and The Atlantic, and various other spots.Sarina Bowen 1:29 I'm Sarina Bowen, the author of 35 romance novels and the most recent one is called Sure Shot.KJ Dell'Antonia 1:35 I am KJ Dell'Antonia, author of the novel The Chickens Sisters coming out July of 2020 and the book How to Be a Happier Parent out in paperback now, as well as the former editor of the Motherlode blog and column at the New York Times where I am still a contributor. That's who we are. And this week, we're continuing our how to launch a book series, in which we sort of try to cover all the different arenas of things that you can get ready for before your book launches. We've done Amazon, Bookbub, and Goodreads. We've done websites. And now we're going to turn our attention to social media.Sarina Bowen 2:22 That beast called social media.Jess Lahey 2:24 Such a powerful tool sometimes. Well, and I know for a fact that when I talk to authors who are sort of contemplating the social media sort of for the first time in a professional context, they're just so overwhelmed. They're like, do I have to do all of it? So Sarina, do we have to do all of it? Do we have to do Pinterest, and Instagram, and Facebook, and do we have to be good at all of it? Because that's the thing that seems to overwhelm authors.Sarina Bowen 2:52 Absolutely. You will find it overwhelming because it is overwhelming and you don't have to do it all. You absolutely have my permission not to do all of it. So, of course, everybody has their favorites. So you really need to ask yourself two questions. And Jess, you've been super articulate about this, too. Like, the two questions really are, which platform is your favorite or which platform makes you hate it the least? And the corollary question, which is almost as important, which platform is your people?Jess Lahey 3:45 Yeah, where's your audience?Sarina Bowen 3:47 Yeah. And you and I have discovered that our answers to this question are like 180 degrees different, whereas you talk to educators all the time on Twitter, and my audience is really on Facebook and Instagram.Jess Lahey 4:04 Yep. How did you figure that out? I mean, for me, it was fairly obvious from the get go because I think I started learning about personal learning networks and realizing, oh, that's where all the teachers were. And I was using it for teaching. But then, of course, when I started writing something that was about teaching, it was sort of a natural fit for me. But did you have to go looking and sort of figuring out where all those people were for you?Sarina Bowen 4:28 I really did have to pay attention because there are a lot of authors on Twitter. But at one point, somebody said to me, Twitter is where I go to talk to other authors. But I reached my readers on Facebook and I thought, okay, well, that feels a little bit familiar. But I'm a really analytical person and I like data. So of course, I've been using all of these sites, at least partly, for kind of a long time. And I realized that my Squarespace website (and every website does this in some capacity, you just have to find it, but it has really good data about this) it's called traffic sources is the page that I look at. And under social media in the last 30 days, you can see, or maybe I'm at seven days here. But over some period of recent time, I have gotten 816 clicks from Facebook, 158 clicks from Goodreads, and 78 clicks from Twitter, and 18 clicks from Pinterest. So that tells a really clear story immediately about what's working. And of course, we post fewer links on Instagram and my Instagram shows up on this other page because I use a program for this and I'm getting like 200 off Instagram.Jess Lahey 5:54 Wait, what do you mean when you say that your Instagram is showing up on another page and use an app for that?Sarina Bowen 6:01 Well, let's let's just dive right into Instagram because lots of authors love it. So anyway, what I was trying to say is that you, you can be given permission to cut one of these out if you can see in hard numbers where people are finding you. And of course, a lot of the links that I post on social media do not lead back to my website. So this is just a little subset. But I still find it quite telling and it gave me permission to walk away from Twitter without really looking back and I actually changed my account there. It says now that it's a Sarina Bowen update account infrequently monitored, because I'm not part of the conversation. And it basically says, this is a promo account, you know, do with that what you will, I don't expect to have a grand, wonderful following there, because I have chosen not to pursue it.Jess Lahey 6:57 You know, it's really interesting. I have a column up in TweetDeck - one for you and one for KJ, because I like to keep tabs on what people are saying about my peeps. And occasionally I'll find stuff before you guys see it. But what I often see are cross posts from Goodreads with a tweet saying what percentage they are through him via Goodreads. And it's really clear that people are letting Goodreads cross post to Twitter for them. And that's the majority of what I see from readers regarding your books, which was a really interesting realization to me that it's sort of not that the readers are necessarily there, but that they're letting Goodreads cross post for them.Sarina Bowen 7:39 Yeah. And can we just back up to the part where you said you have a column on TweetDeck, but that column is a special thing. That's a search column, right?Jess Lahey 7:48 Right, right. Meaning I have a search column with quotes around your full name and a column for you on @SarinaBowenUpdates or whatever your handle is. Just because I like to just know what's happening with my people. Sarina Bowen 8:05 That's amazing. Jess Lahey 8:08 It's fun, I like to see what people are reading of your stuff. And you know, it's always fun to report back that when people are saying nice things.Sarina Bowen 8:15 You know what, at one point I had a column like that. But I found that I didn't always want to know all the things that were showing up there. Jess Lahey 8:26 That's probably true. I've seen some things that I didn't necessarily want to see. But that's also how I found out about that thing where I was my one of my essays was on the SAT, because people weren't tagging my handle on Twitter, they were just saying mean things, and making memes about me using my name and sometimes misspelling it, but either way, that's how I found out that I was on the SAT and that all the high schoolers in the country hated me that year.Sarina Bowen 9:05 We're still on Twitter, so let's let's finish Twitter because I want to know something that I'm not good at on Twitter because like I said, I don't use it that much. But how do you use hashtags to find your audience?Jess Lahey 9:19 Well, it depends. I use hashtags on Twitter for education stuff, simply because they're chats that happen, like more chats than I can even tell you. If you do a Google search on education hashtag Twitter chats you will get this table that has hundreds of Twitter chats. So occasionally, I'll use them for things like you know, I need a particular book for kid a particular age and then I'll hashtag a couple of reading or teaching literacy hashtags, but I actually don't use hashtags very often on Twitter. It's not so much my jam.KJ Dell'Antonia 10:03 It's not like Instagram, there's not a lot of room for them. You just use a hashtag, unless you're joking.Jess Lahey 10:10 There are exceptions, though. I mean, like if a big education conference is going on, I'll throw up a column for that education conference and follow people at that conference so that I can see what's going on, and find out what people are talking about, and things like that. But for the most part, yeah, I don't really use hashtags. I don't use hashtags the way people use hashtags in Instagram. It seems to be a bigger deal in Instagram than it is on Twitter, at least for me, that may not be the case for everyone. But definitely for me, hashtags are not as much a thing on Twitter.KJ Dell'Antonia 10:42 I think that the reason to use them on Twitter tends to be because your being part of a conversation is around a hashtag. So it's often political, but not always. I mean, that's why. Whereas on Instagram, because people rarely reshare because Instagram makes it hard, I will follow certain hashtags. And then from those hashtags, I might find new accounts to follow. Because for example, I'm actively looking to follow people who write about the kinds of books that I write. So I follow a hashtag for that. I don't do that in Twitter for a lot of reasons. One of which is that I just don't go on Twitter anymore.Jess Lahey 11:30 I absolutely just misspoke though. Because in looking for this new audience for the new book, I actually do have a list around people in recovery and then I also do have a column for hashtag recovery or hashtag sobriety or hashtag sober so that I misspoke. Because I don't know the audience as well in the recovery world as I do in the education world, I do occasionally go mining and looking around just to see who's who, who's talking about what, who's reputable, who's not, sort of who's in the conversation, and those hashtags can occasionally help me access that.KJ Dell'Antonia 12:09 And I think the thing for Twitter is that if you're a nonfiction author, especially, but it probably works in fiction as well, is that you can end up in a conversation with an expert that you might want to reach or a fellow author that you might want to reach because if they're putting out a tweet, and you reply to it, it's just different, then they might tweet back. And because they're actually actively on there, well depending on whether or not they've scheduled their tweets, but usually the kind of thing you'd reply to isn't that, so there's an opportunity for connection there that's a little bit different, but I don't know. It's sort of more general. It's not a lot to do with launching your book. Jess Lahey 12:57 Well, for me though, the one thing I do though is if I find someone who's in my demographic squarely, someone who I really am interested in following on Twitter, and who I think really follow some interesting people, whether it's recovery or education, I will go through who they follow and sort of say, oh, look, there's some people I don't follow and follow those people. So that can be really useful too, if you're new to a field. Going and looking. For example, if you were really interested in like COVID stuff, and PPE, there's this woman, Dr. Megan Ranney, who's out there in the media a lot and Megan would be a great person to go follow and then look at who she follows because she probably follows a really reputable group of people within that field. So that's a really great thing to do, too. For example, if you were writing your first novel, and it happened to be a women's fiction novel, go look to see who like Jennifer Wiener or KJ Dell'Antonia or Jodi Picoult, who do they follow? And obviously, there might be some interesting people for you to follow in there as well. So that's been really useful for me.KJ Dell'Antonia 14:05 But to specifically bring us back to book launches, I will say one thing that I did on Twitter with my nonfiction book launch, and I think Jess may have done some of the same thing, is to tweet everyone I quote in the book. So when I was launching my nonfiction, I prepared in advance a bunch of tweets that were like, 'Thanks for your help with How to Be a Happier Parent, Jessica Lahey, it's out now.' They were a little better than that and I had those all revved up and ready to go and either scheduled or not, so that's a way to let people that were helpful to you know, so that hopefully they will share. So that's one way to use Twitter. And another way is to ask other people to tweet for you.Jess Lahey 14:50 Right. And, you know, our groups of friends can be relied on to really boost us if we need them. But it's been really fun watching for a friend. Like when Catherine Newman's book was first up on Amazon, and you know, it'll be out by the time this podcast goes up. She did that. She said, I want to thank @JessLahey for supporting me in this book by blurbing it and blah, blah, blah. And that sort of reminds me, oh, yeah, I really support this book I want to help. So you're right, that's a really good way to do it as well.KJ Dell'Antonia 15:25 Right. And so then another thing that you can do within Twitter is to create tweets about the book that people that are on your email list could send out. And if you go to share link generator, you can write a tweet that then you can create a link and you can put it in an email, you can put it in a blog post, you can put it on almost anywhere and say click to tweet. And if someone clicks that, then their tweet pops up, it's editable. So what I do with that, is I send it out to a bunch of people that I know, but maybe my email list, maybe my launch team, maybe just 20 people that I have collected, and I say, it would be awesome for me if you would tweet about the book. Here, I've made it easy. Click here, and you get an editable tweet about the book with all the links. And the person clicks. And it says, 'Hey, I'm so excited to welcome KJ's new book, The Chicken Sisters into the world.', and they can change that too. You know, 'I've read this and I love it' or 'I hated this I never want to hear from this author ever again'. You know, they can change it to anything that they want. But it's already there. And it has the links and it makes life so much easier. And I always kind of boggle at people who don't. People who just send me an email and say would you mind tweeting about the book? To do that I have to go find the link, and then I have to think of something to say, and I have to go on Twitter, I mean, there's like four steps in there. Whereas with share link generator, you can make it a one click deal. It also works for Facebook, but we're not on Facebook yet.Jess Lahey 17:09 All right, are we done with Twitter?Sarina Bowen 17:11 I would like to propose one last thought on Twitter that's actually applicable to all of the platforms we're discussing today. Which is that by the time any author gets to her launch day, she feels as though she has been talking about nothing except her book since the beginning of time. And she is a little bit sick of herself and the whole topic. But I would just like to say that Twitter specifically has a sort of short half life of each tweet. And even if you feel you've been discussing your book way too much, launch day is not the moment to change your behavior. Like it's the one day when everyone will forgive you for talking about your book launch a whole lot. So you know, hang tight and put out yet another tweet about your book on that launch day because that is your moment. And not that many people will see that tweet, even if you are sick of yourself.KJ Dell'Antonia 18:14 And to save yourself the agony of spending your launch day writing 10 different tweets about your book. Write him ahead of time. I mean, then you've got them. I've got a Google spreadsheet going in which I'm just dumping possible posts or make the images that you're going to use have them all ready and just know what you're going to put out there so that you don't have to generate it while you're sort of feeling that 'Oh my God, I've been talking about this forever.'Jess Lahey 18:54 This week coming I believe is my copy edited manuscript and I have scheduled for when that has to go back in and then I'll have another date coming when I'll hopefully get my galley proofs. And my plan is to go to those looking at my copy edits with a highlighter so that I can highlight a few tweetable, Instagram-able, quotable things that I can make Canva cards for from the get go. Because I'm probably not gonna want to go through the manuscript to the fine tooth comb again, after I do it for all these edit things. So why not do both at the same time?KJ Dell'Antonia 19:30 I did that with the novel as well.Jess Lahey 19:34 So smart...KJ Dell'Antonia 19:35 Sarina, you do something a little different. You do sort of the 'Here's what you can expect to find', which I always think is really fun, which I am also doing now.Sarina Bowen 19:49 Well, Jess mentioned Canva cards, and let's just spend a minute on Canva, because it's a really useful tool of mine. Canva is a graphic design program at least that's what it calls itself. And there are many there's one called Crello there's several versions of this beast, PicMonkey, lots of places where you can use templates and make cute designs fairly easily even if you're not a Photoshop human. But what I love about Canva specifically, and I actually have the paid version of it, is not only is it good at designing stuff, but it will save it for you for later. So when I'm feeling it in terms of promoting my book, and I'm not sick of myself on a particular day, I can go into Canva and mess around with things like quotes from the book, or thank you for your support, or anything that has to do with that design. And you can actually make pages each Canva document, you can just duplicate the thing you made, and delete the quote and put in a new one. So it's really good at sort of holding your design brain in one spot.KJ Dell'Antonia 21:10 And you can resize it for something else. So you can duplicate it and then resize it into Twitter size, or Facebook size, or LinkedIn size, or Instagram story size, instead of Instagram post size.Sarina Bowen 21:25 Right. I think the resizing is part of the paid portion, or at least it used to be, but that was definitely something that I enjoyed getting after I became a whatever it's called pro member. It's not very expensive either. It's like, the whole year costs $200 or something like that. So Canva is definitely a great tool for when you're switching from Twitter to Facebook or you want to play around with a checklist. Those checklists you were just talking about that I make are also wonderful in Canva. And another thing I do if you have chapters in the book that you're launching, and those chapters have titles, I like to make countdown chapter titles because as you hurtle through that month towards your book launch, it's great to be newsy. And so I will make let's say, chapter eight of my book is called, 'Is that really a duck?' I will make a Canva card that says in eight days I will bring you chapter eight, 'Is that really a duck?' And then the next day, I'll have one to post that says, in seven days, I can bring you chapter seven, 'The duck went fishing', and on and on because I've taken the trouble to give my chapters funny titles or informational ones, and it just gives you something newsy to put out into the world as you count down to your terrifying book launch.KJ Dell'Antonia 23:04 I did that with nonfiction, too. I did it with How To Be a Happier Parent and it was fun and it was helpful and it was just it just felt like something to say. And I made little cards, and it kept me busy, and gave me something to say. Jess Lahey 23:25 I just want to underline this whole planning ahead thing, because if you are waiting until the very end to think about doing these things, you're going to just be so overwhelmed. So the clear message here is be thinking about text, tidbits, strategies, things you want to do ahead of time so that you're not overwhelming yourself the week of pub date.Sarina Bowen 23:45 Definitely.Jess Lahey 23:46 Because that would be insane.KJ Dell'Antonia 23:48 And let's talk a little about the goal of all of this. It's not going to sell millions of books, you're only probably reaching... So when you ask other people to share on social media, you're reaching their followers and when you're sharing you're mostly reaching your own followers and some retweets. But I think something important to remember is that people need to see the book more than once, usually before they head over and click and buy. And sometimes they don't even remember where they saw it or how they saw it, it just becomes familiar because you've posted a lot of imagery around it. But you haven't made it annoying, you've made it fun, you've made it entertaining. So when people see that title, when they're surfing a book site, or hopefully in a bookstore, it makes them go 'Oh yeah, I've been thinking about that one.' Jess Lahey 24:44 I definitely hear that a lot that you know, we've talked about this before, that it's the repetition and sometimes it's the second, third, or fourth time that someone says 'Oh yeah, that book that I meant to buy the first time I heard about it, but didn't.' KJ Dell'Antonia 24:57 So to some extent, that all means that if you don't do it during launch week is just an excuse to do it. If you don't do it during launch week, fine, the next week do something different, create a bunch of things, and start putting your book out there. We don't need to panic if we don't get it all out there on launch day.Jess Lahey 25:24 You know, what's so interesting about the social media thing too, is that there have been all kinds of attempts, there was that thunderclap thing that was a couple years ago where you'd ask people a favor to all tweet and post something to social media the same exact time and I don't think that that had any kind of effect and it was a huge amount of effort. And it sounded like you were getting something done, but I don't know that it actually had any major effect. So when we talk about these things that you're supposed to do on social media or that you could do on social media, we're not saying that you have to do all of these things and they're going to have a major impact on book sales. But every little bit, you know, can help. And as we always like to say, we don't want to get six months out from book release and say to ourselves, 'Oh, I could have done that other thing. I wanted to be able to say, we did all the things that were under our control that we could do to help our book do well on launch day. But that thunderclap thing was very weird, I think anyway.Sarina Bowen 26:26 It was an attempt to make virality happen where it wasn't destined to.Jess Lahey 26:33 Exactly, to force a lot of noise all at the same time in the hopes that it would catch fire. And I don't know, I just mixed metaphors. But I don't know that that was a particularly effective thing to do. And I like to be sparing and what I ask other people to do to help me out and being a part of something like that wasn't something I was particularly interested in.Sarina Bowen 26:54 Right. I don't think I once participated, but it was an interesting experiment.Jess Lahey 27:00 Alright, anything else that you want to add to this discussion about Twitter or Instagram?KJ Dell'Antonia 27:07 We didn't do Instagram...Sarina Bowen 27:09 We should do Instagram, which is growing faster than the other services that we've been talking about. Jess Lahey 27:17 Sorry, in my head I kind of thought we had sort of done Instagram because in my head I associate Canva with Instagram, so mentally I had gone there. So my apologies. Sarina, Instagram. Sarina Bowen 27:59 Instagram is a platform where sharing doesn't really happen very often. So you kind of have this one moment to put something visual and beautiful in front of people and hope that it sticks with them. But discovery on Instagram also works a little differently than it does on other platforms, which is that hashtags really matter on Instagram. So, before you are launching your book, you want to figure out what hashtags people are using who are looking at books like yours and I have a little collection of these I keep it handy.Jess Lahey 28:42 There's a lot of them for authors and writers and books on Instagram. There's a ton of them, so good for you having a list.Sarina Bowen 28:50 Well, I have several lists, honestly. So if I'm talking about my own book that's coming, I will use bookaddict, booknerd, bookworm, booklove, booklover, contemporaryromance, romancereads, IGreads, oneclick, alwaysreading, you get the idea. There's a lot of these.KJ Dell'Antonia 29:08 And let me guess that you have a list that is pastable. Sarina Bowen 29:11 Oh, yes.KJ Dell'Antonia 29:12 So where do you keep that? Sarina Bowen 29:14 I happen to keep it in notes, that little yellow app on all things Apple that is just really handy. But you could use Google Keep for this, you could use any program that you keep handy. KJ Dell'Antonia 29:26 I use Evernote and I have thought about using Keystrokes. Because since Instagram really requires that you use the phone. You know, you can't post to Instagram except on a phone. So if you go (in an iPhone, at least) into general, and you go to keyboard, you go to text replacement. You can make a series of letters and put them all in there and then when you type that series of letters they will all pop up. Sarina Bowen 31:00 KJ taught me this nifty trick because actually I use it on Instagram too, which is that I have thank you and some longer phrases for thank you spelled out in German, French, Italian, and Portuguese, because Instagram is a really international platform. And at least half the tags that people are using for me on Instagram are in German, honestly. God bless German instagramers. So I have three different German phrases saved in those Keystrokes that I apply when somebody takes some beautiful picture of my German book and tags me in the post so that I can be thankful without writing danka, danka, danka, danka all day long.Jess Lahey 31:50 Yeah, that's really brilliant. And I'm actually going to need your help because I got tagged in a couple of things that I needed a Portuguese thank you for and I didn't have it. So that's really smart and really thoughtful. Sarina Bowen 32:06 So, that whole keystroke thing and being made to create stuff on your phone is kind of a drag. Thanks, Instagram, you can actually hack your way around this by installing a Chrome plug-in that fools your Instagram into thinking you're on a mobile device when you're not...But my current setup is that I probably have the picture on my phone anyway because I use an iPad to create a lot of imagery, and then I type whatever I want onto my notes on a laptop, and then I just open it on my phone, and copy and paste, or I rely on Bluetooth to copy from one device and paste into another. Because I am never, ever composing an Instagram caption on my phone, my thumb's are not that good at typing, it's just not happening. So there are several ways to keep your Instagram feed looking good. And you don't need to do that. Like you don't need to become obsessive about the beauty of your Instagram feed. But, there are moments when I want to kind of work hard on this. So I have an app called Preview that I use to look at what the grid will look like before I post and some people use one called Planoly. And there's also Later which is a posting to Instagram app. And if you change your Instagram to a business account, you will be allowed to schedule via some of these third party things so that it could post automatically. I don't actually do that, I don't need to post Instagram so often that scheduling is super helpful for me. But I know that a lot of people like to do it that way.Jess Lahey 34:13 But if you want to see a beautiful Instagram account, go check out Sarina Bowen's Instagram account. The gold standard seems to be what some book bloggers and some romance readers in particular seem to do for the authors that they love, and the people who create these gorgeous Instagram posts for you just blow me away. I'm amazed by the kind of artful creations that your readers create, and that you create for your books. They're really beautiful.Sarina Bowen 34:45 They blow me away, too. KJ Dell'Antonia 34:47 Well, you can use those when someone else makes a beautiful image of your book or just makes an image of your book because my goodness, thank you very much. You can do a couple of things. You can post it to your story, which is only polite I think and quite common, but you can also use an app that will allow you to repost and in this case I use Repost. And if you're using an app like that, then when somebody else posts about the book, you can take their post and use it in your feed. Thus, you know, adding to your number of images that you have without you're having to create an image which is really cool. And there's the opportunity to sort of say, you know, thanks bookstagrammar for writing this lovely thing about my book, and then you can share the lovely thing.Jess Lahey 35:38 What's always weird is when someone thanks me for posting something beautiful they made about my book to my story, and I'm always like, 'Oh my gosh, thank you. This is the most beautiful thing ever. And it's such an incredible honor to be able to repost that.' So it's a wonderful, it's also just a great way to sort of connect with readers. I love it.Sarina Bowen 35:56 Repost and those apps also will copy the entire caption that the other person wrote...KJ Dell'Antonia 36:04 Including the hashtags.Sarina Bowen 36:07 Yeah, exactly. So that not only are you assured an easy way of giving credit to the person who created that thing, but it's very easy to share. So because we never want to get into trouble and have any creator think that we've stolen their work for our own. KJ Dell'Antonia 36:28 Yeah, that's the nice thing about using the app instead of screenshotting it, is that it makes it very clear where you got it. And it's just socially acceptable.Sarina Bowen 36:38 Yep. My other trick for working ahead on Instagram is that I don't commonly have more than a small handful of paperback arcs to give away ahead of the launch. So I went to Moo and I made a bunch of these beautiful five by seven postcards. Like I'll do like 150 five by seven postcards of the book cover. And I will mail them all over the world because like I said, Instagramers are very international. And then I will see those postcards pop up all over Instagram during launch as well. And they cost a lot less than a paperback arc and it's honestly really about the shipping, I can put $1.15 stamp on one of these cards and send it all the way to Australia, whereas shipping a book to Australia costs $25. KJ Dell'Antonia 37:38 And that sort of gets around you know, if you want to be sharing arcs, they can be digital, but there is something that people can take a picture of, which is really nice. People love having something to take a picture. I love having something to take a picture of. I don't do LinkedIn, but I have some friends that do it really well. And so I'm just gonna ask them when my book comes out will you post this on LinkedIn, please? But if you are a business writer, you probably should be.Sarina Bowen 38:22 Definitely.Jess Lahey 38:24 Absolutely. The business world is very much about LinkedIn. And you know, I will post things there but I actually don't see a ton of interaction with the stuff that I post there. So it's often an afterthought for me. Alright. Can we talk about what we've been reading? Pretty pretty, please. Sarina Bowen 38:53 Absolutely. Has anyone been able to read?KJ Dell'Antonia 39:00 I will note before we talk about what we've been reading that we didn't talk about Facebook.Jess Lahey 39:05 I think that's a whole long discussion in itself. I mean, that's just me, mainly because I hear Sarina talking about the stuff that she does there. And she's on a whole other level with Facebook and I sort of have the feeling that that's its own episode in and of itself.KJ Dell'Antonia 39:23 Okey dokey. There we go. Stay tuned. We got one more book launch thing to go. Jess Lahey 39:34 KJ you have been doing a beautiful, beautiful job, by the way, speaking of Instagram of talking about what you've been reading, and you've really done a great job of doing these capsule reviews of books, and you've sort of set a standard, I think, for me anyway for understanding how to do a really quick review of a book. So I just wanted to tell you that I have been appreciating those a lot.KJ Dell'Antonia 39:56 Why thank you, I'm actually planning to up that game. So, I've been creating a whole list of books that I want to make sure get shared. This is partly just the the whole let's help make book book launches still work. So I've got a whole great list of books that I want to share with people that are either books that I recommend and here's why, or books that I have had an arc of, or books that I'm super anxious to read. And I've been putting together ways to do that. So yeah, I've been having fun. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

What can you do to be more productive, efficient, effective, and get stuff done while working from home during the COVID-19 crisis? No matter how much work you do or get done, there’s always more to do. Today’s guest is Thanh Pham from Asian Efficiency, which has helped more than 15,000 clients worldwide. Also, Thanh hosts a growing and flourishing podcast called, The Productivity Show. You’ll Learn... [01:53] Asian Efficiency: Positive stereotype and memorable name for company. [02:55] Thanh turns hobby of documenting productivity processes into a business. [03:47] Groundhog Day: Businesses operating from home lose time and progress. [05:06] Work/Life Balance: Nothing going on, no way to work, long days, and no variety. [06:33] Planning: Take it to the next level via different dimensions, contingency options. [07:23] Productive vs. Interruptive: Seek clarity to set one goal a day to accomplish. [09:10] Sense of Momentum: What you want and why it matters should drive your life. [12:15] Structure/Strategy: Create own schedule, design ideal day, and set cutoff time. [14:57] Five Whys: Identify root cause and motivation. Money, freedom, flexibility? [17:55] Energy vs. Time: Don’t do everything, do what you like and others do the rest. [25:44] Ideal Day: Map it out the night before to start the next day right away. [27:08] Do’s and Don’ts: Don't eat at your desk; do step away from your office or home. [32:05] What keeps you up at night? Entrepreneurs are known for worrying too much. [34:40] Chinese Proverb: The palest ink is better than the best memory. [35:41] Analog vs. Digital: What’s the difference? Depends on personal preference. Tweetables Restore order in your life to gain a sense of relief and energy to help you recover. “Whenever we're working from home, one of the most important things is to plan our day. That's such a simple thing that we can do, but most of us kind of skip that process.” “Set one goal a day. If you accomplish just one goal a day, no matter how big or small, you had a productive day.” “If we don't have energy, if we don't have any of that when we're starting our day, it's just so much more challenging to be productive.” Resources Asian Efficiency The Productivity Show The ONE Thing by Gary Keller Oura Ring Evernote OmniFocus Jira Mont Blanc Pens DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive DoorGrow Website Score Quiz DoorGrow Cold Leads Calculator Transcript Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow Hackers, to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you’re crazy for doing it, you think they’re crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high-trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and their owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I’m your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let’s get into the show. I have a special guest with me today. Just down the street in Austin hanging out. This is Thanh Pham. What's up, Thanh? Thanh: Hey, Jason. Good to be here. Thanks for having me and I'm super excited to chat with you here today about productivity and anything that we can do to be more productive. Jason: All right. Did I say your name right? Thanh: Yeah, you did. First time, first attempt, 100% correct. Jason: I thought I did, but I thought I would make sure. I'm really excited to have you. You have a great sense of humor. We're chatting it up before the show and your company is called Asian Efficiency, right? Is this correct? Asian Efficiency? Thanh: That is correct. That is a positive stereotype that we have going on here in most of America and the Western world so I thought, “You know what? That's such a funny name. Such a name that sticks out and is memorable.” So we started off as a joke in a way because I just want to document my journey of being more productive. I remember one time I was staying at a house in Miami with some friends, all fellow entrepreneurs. We went out for one night, then we had a few drinks. We had a great time, then the next morning I was being productive in getting stuff done; waking up really early. By the time it was noon, I was done with my day and everyone else was waking up really late. I said, “Oh my gosh, Thanh. You're so productive. That's some Asian efficiency right there,” and that's when the name was born. Jason: So this almost became a theme around you or a nickname attached to you before it was a business. Thanh: Yeah. Honestly, it just started as a hobby. I just wanted to document how I did things as I was learning about productivity and how to be efficient, be effective, managing my time better, and I just started to blog about this back in the day in 2011. After a while, it just started to grow and took a life of its own after about six months. Then people kept asking me, “Thanh, this is so helpful. I'm learning so much. I would love to hire you. Do you have any courses or products?” And I said, “Actually I don't. But that's a great idea.” I accidentally turned this into a business, and now, almost nine years later, we helped over 15,000 clients all over the world. We have a podcast that's growing and flourishing, and just continuously impacting people, people that are listening here today as well. Jason: Awesome. Our topic today is productivity while working from home, which a lot of people are doing right now. Due to the Coronavirus, COVID-19, a lot of people are on lockdown. A lot of people have been stuck at home. Businesses are operating, some are still operating, but they're doing it from home, and a lot of people are joking right now. The big joke is it's all one big day that's been running forever. Everybody feels like there's no difference between one week to the next. The month has gone on for three months now. We're kind of losing a sense of time, it seems to be the theme, and things just keep repeating so we lose a sense of because everything seems so similar each day and we're lacking variety in our day to day, it feels like we're not making any progress I think, maybe subconsciously as well. What are you doing to stay out of that Groundhog’s Day sort of movie type of scenario in your own mind, cognitively? Thanh: I think one of the interesting things that are happening now is some of those are working more than others and some of those are going the complete opposite route. We don't have a job. There's nothing going on and there's no way for us to work. In either spectrum, it feels like days are so long as a result because as you said there's no variety. It's nice to be able to go to work and then come home relax and do nothing. When we miss one or the other, it feels like we're completely out of balance or some of us are just working all the time. If you've been working from home for a while, then you're just working more now because there's nothing else to do. You can't leave your home. You can't go anywhere so you just work more. For those who don't have a job right now, or not working as much, or can't work, you are stuck as well. You can't do anything else but stay at home and relax and do relaxing activities. Jason: And binge Netflix. Thanh: And binge Netflix, yeah. I've watched so many shows. Money Heist was one of my favorite ones that I just finished. A great show, watch that one. Jason: I just went through that too. My girlfriend and I were watching that one and it was good. Thanh: Oh my gosh. Season Four, that really got me. But that's a whole completely different podcast. Jason: I wasn’t mad at the cliff hanger left at the ending though. My girlfriend was upset and I was like, “No, that makes me excited about the next season.” Thanh: [...], you just have to watch it whenever you have time. Jason: I'm sure the character, the professor, you'll get excited about. He's got everything planned out. He's incredibly efficient and he always finds a way to make things work. It seems like when nothing else seems like it'll be possible, he finds some [...] Thanh: I thought I was a planner until I saw this character. Then this guy takes planning to a whole nother level because I thought planning a vacation was great, fun, and easy, then this guy takes planning of the robbery to five different dimensions, so you go whoa, this is crazy. Jason: Right. He's got all the contingency plans. He's got names for all of them and something happens, he's like, “No problem. We're just going to bust out plan C,” and they just pop it out and everybody knows what to do. Thanh: That's a beautiful thing and when we're working from home we can take the same approach. Whenever we're working from home, one of the most important things is to plan our day. That's such a simple thing that we can do, but most of us kind of skip that process. If you're listening to this and you feel like most of your days are unstructured or you go about your day and you feel like, “Man, I wish I was more productive,” or, “I wish I had that one particular thing done.” I know many of you who are listening probably find it very challenging to schedule stuff. You want to say, “You know what? I want to work on this particular task, or call this particular tenant or client at 11,” and then something comes up. A fire, someone calls you, you got an important email, you're on call the whole time, you have an email client open, interruptions coming all the time, you feel like you're on edge, and it makes it very difficult to focus. It makes it very difficult to concentrate and have focus blocks where you're actually working and doing stuff. When you're in that kind of situation, one thing I've found is when you're trying to work with people who have that interrupt-driven day, one of the best ways you can approach that is to set one goal a day. If you accomplish just one goal a day, no matter how big or small, you had a productive day because the rest of your day is typically driven by interruptions and things you have to deal with anyway. But if you can make progress on one goal, or one big outcome, or one big task, that's a really productive day, so let's aim for that. Jason: That reminds me of Gary Keller's The ONE Thing. He's got his one thing question which is, “What's the one thing that, by doing it, everything else will become irrelevant or easier?” That one thing question, so maybe that's something the listeners can ask themselves. What's that one thing that if I do this, it's going to get me a sense of momentum today? It's going to make me feel like I've done something. I've accomplished something. I moved the needle just slightly on my goals. Thanh: I think a great reframe to add on top of that to help people because one of the things I see people struggle with is, “Jason, I have five million things I have to do and they all have to be done. How do I pick one thing to work on?” Oftentimes, we ask ourselves that question. It's a sign that you don't have any clarity about your goal or the destination you want to go towards. So, when you don't have that, everything feels equally important and whenever you get that sense when everything is equally important, that's a sure sign that you don't have clarity about what your goal is or what your destination is. I want to challenge you as a listener to say, “Hey, what is the goal that I'm trying to accomplish?” Because once you know what that is, prioritizing or finding the one thing or the few things you have to do becomes so much easier. As an example, if you're publishing a book, that is your big goal for the year, then if you have a to-do list that says I need to redo my finances, organize my closet and write chapter two. One of those three sounds more appealing because it's aligned to a goal which is just writing chapter two. That doesn't mean redoing your finances and organizing the closet is not important, they are important, but they're not, in relationship to the goal, important enough for you to prioritize over something else. Once you have absolute clarity about the goal, this is what I'm trying to accomplish, you start to notice that certain tasks on your to-do list stand out because they will help you get you closer to your goal. That makes prioritizing them really easy and that makes it easy for you to say, “Okay, this is the one thing or maybe the two things I have to do today, and if I do that then I had a really productive day.” Jason: I love that. I think some of the coaches I've worked with in the past, one of their big questions would always be to ask what do you want? What do you want? That first gut reaction deep down that we're going to respond to that. What do you want in your business? What do you want I think is really important because it's very easy I think for us to just end up becoming a slave to our business or doing things for other people. I think a simple question of what do you want, then the follow-up question was always why does that matter? Because if it doesn't matter, we're not really going to do it. There has to be a why behind it especially if that’s work, if it's painful, if it's difficult. So what do you want and why does it matter. Really, that ultimately should be driving our business. It should be driving our life. All these things are vehicles to serve as. They're all vehicles to make us happier, or more fulfilled, or give us a sense of momentum. Let's get into some specifics. People are listening and are like, “Thanh, I've got my one goal but how do I create this structure for my day that you've talked about? How do I do this?” Thanh: If you're working from home, one of the best things you can do is to create a schedule for yourself because after working from home since 2009, I've consulted so many clients over the years. There's a lot of different strategies out there when it comes to being productive and trying to be efficient working from home, but the one strategy that I see that is most effective for most people is creating your own schedule. You want to design your ideal day and one of the biggest things that you want to pay attention to is that again, one, you want to have one big goal for today especially for people who are listening to this who are interrupt-driven schedule, you want to create that. Then the second thing is you want to make sure that you have the cutoff time for when you stop working as well. I know that's going to sound crazy for a lot of property managers and you go, “Thanh, I can't do that. I'm on call 24/7 and I need to be reachable whenever people contact me.” I totally get that, but if you want to have some sense of balance in your life or if you feel like you're always on call, you're tired of being that way, you want to then start creating some systematic solution around that so that if people do call you after a certain time, it's still being handled. When I'm working with a lot of owners and operators, their main fear is, “Man, if I stop working after six. I'm going to lose a lot of business. I'm going to get a lot of complaints.” Those are rightfully so in the beginning, I would say, but what if you could hire someone to be able to work even part-time to deal with stuff outside of your normal office hours? To be able to handle that request and things that people need so that you don't have to do that. You can pay someone else to be able to do the things that need to be done while you have time for yourself. As you're growing your business and have specific boundaries for yourself, it makes it easier for you to have that work-life balance because most of us who are entrepreneurs and are working all the time, after a while we get so tired. One of the main reasons businesses stop existing or quit is because the owner is tired. They're just like, I'm so done with— Jason: They’re burned out. Thanh: Yeah, they have this burnout. So we want to create boundaries. We want to create systems in place so that we don't have to work all the time. When we do work, we can work on the things we have passion about or we're really good about, that are in alignment with what you were talking about earlier which I love is the whole why thing. If you've never done that exercise, it's called the five whys. Basically you ask yourself why five times, you start to come down to the root cause, the root motivation for you why you started this business. Oftentimes it's not because you wanted to make more money even though that was I'm sure a strong motivator for a lot of people. Oftentimes, it comes down to having your own freedom in your life. Having a flexible schedule. Having quality time with your family and friends. Once you really connect with that, you start to realize I don't have to work 18 hours a day. I can accomplish everything I need in six, or seven, or eight, and the rest of the time I can spend it with my family because that's why I started my business. To be able to spend time with them, not necessarily work more until midnight fixing stuff or trying to attend to tenants, even though that is important. Someone else can do that as well and get paid for it. You employ someone and that's a beautiful thing too. Jason: I think ultimately when we boil anything down, it comes down to usually a feeling that we want to have. Somebody just says I really want a Tesla, or I want to drive. I want this car. When you really boil it down, people always want what we think we will feel when we have that. How would it feel to have a business that runs itself or I had the freedom, the time? Ultimately, it boils down to some sort of feeling that we want to have. Then if you work it backward, once you figure it out, once you get to that bedrock why, then the question is can I have this why without that? Or is there a faster vehicle or a way to get to that in that? If I just want to feel powerful, are there other things I can do to feel powerful besides what I was thinking about how to look this one certain way? One coaching or program that I went through, this phrase they always drove into us was, “It doesn't have to look a certain way.” They recognize it. Everybody always gets so attached to things looking a certain way. We want a specific outcome and we want to get there in a specific way. It has to look this way. No, no, no. It has to be like this. Sometimes we end up becoming control freaks and I'm sure sometimes productivity can become a control freakish mode for people to get into. They're micromanaging every second. They're doing too much. Planning everything out in so much detail that they kill all the life and spirit of their life, fun. Ultimately, that could lead the burnout, unless people really just thrive on that situation. I'm a big fan of energy management over time management. Spending your time doing the things you really enjoy like you're talking about and that's going to help you avoid getting burnout because if I'm doing the things that I love, I can work crazy amounts of hours in a week because I love it. I'm not getting burned out on it. I'm far less likely to get tired. People aren't going to annoy me or frustrate me in those situations because I feel alive. I feel like I'm doing something that brings me joy, life, and momentum. I think ultimately everybody needs to find that in their business because I think the great secret that nobody talks about is that as a business owner, you don't have to do all the stuff people say a business owner has to do. You can do whatever you want. If you want to be the receptionist in your company, you can be the receptionist. It's your choice. It's your company. If you want to do accounting and you love that, you can do the accounting. If you want to do customer service, you can do that being the business owner. Let's go to the cutoff time. I really like this idea. I like this idea because there are so many beliefs that prevent us from stopping and cutting it off. I had a job working for an internet service provider and I started managing their support department after being there for a short period of time, then I was moving up and then I was just underneath the two owners. I was working really crazy long hours. I had to commute sometimes during that job, like two hours because I was driving into LA (Los Angeles), and traffic was crazy. And then driving out. S.o I would just stay even later and I was working, working, working. The thing I realized is that no matter how much work I did there was always more. There's never an end to finishing all work that could or possibly will be done. There's no exact stopping point that you'll eventually find that all the work you need to do as a business owner or even just as an employee is done. But creating a healthy stopping point when it hits this time, I'm going to stop my day and pick it up again tomorrow. It's always going to be there waiting for you. It's still there and what I find is, is it the Pareto principle? It is the idea that if you constraint your time to a certain limit, “I'm going to be done by five o'clock. Five o'clock I'm cutting it off.” What happens is you start to become more productive because you start to innovate. You start to be creative. You're forced to constraint and because of that constraint, you have now to innovate. Without a constraint, it could be endless. You give somebody in your team an endless amount of time to do something, they can take weeks. You're like, “No, I need this done by Friday.” Then they start to innovate. “It's not possible the way I currently do it to get done by Friday. Okay, what can we do to change that?” Every week you can have this done. Then, you start to get innovative. I think there are secret benefits to doing that cutoff time that psychologically feel backward but we're going to become more productive as a result of creating that cutoff time. Do you agree? Thanh: I one hundred percent agree because there are actually multiple benefits to setting that cutoff time. You mentioned one [...] of them right there which is like setting a deadline first. We know that there's nothing better than having a really good deadline that forces you to get a lot of things done in a shorter period of time. Having that cutoff time every single day is like having a deadline every day for yourself to say, “Okay, I need to get all of these work done before a specific time,” and if we don't have that, then we take up the whole day and even more than that to get the things done that we need to get done. That goes back to what you're saying early like Parkinson's Law. Something takes up as much time as we give it to. If we say, “I want to have this done in two weeks,” it can be done and if you tell yourself it can be done in one year, it will be done in one year. It's just a matter of how much time we give ourselves to get something done. By having a daily cutoff time, by forcing ourselves to do the things that need to be done, especially if you focus on one or two major things like the one thing or the two smaller things and say, “Okay, I need to have this done before five,” then you will find ways like you said to get it done. The other big benefit of that is that when you have that balance to say, “Okay, after five I'm going to stop working,” you can then go to bed earlier. You can enjoy time with your family. You can spend time with your kids or you can do some personal hobbies. You can run some errands. You can do all these different things that restore order in your life. They give you a sense of relief. They give you a sense of energy to help you recover. Guess what? You're going to show up as a better owner, as a better property manager the next day because if you're sleeping well, you're eating right, you have the time to do all the things you need to do, you're going to show up the next day feeling refreshed and having more energy. Like we talked about and like you mentioned earlier, energy is such an important factor. It's such an important currency for productivity and when we have the energy to focus and do the things we need to do, we are so much more productive than without it. It's like if you have really nice sports cars sitting in your garage, you're the perfect driver. You know exactly how to drive it. You know every single feature, but the car has no gas. Guess what? You're not going to go anywhere even if you have the right tools, you know exactly what you need to do, you have no gas? Guess what? You're not going to drive that thing anywhere. It's the same thing for us. If we don't have energy. If we don't have any of that when we're starting our day, it's just so much more challenging to be productive. Then we have to caffeinate. We have to drink more coffee or tea getting ourselves ready. That's not a success [...] for us to be able to focus and be productive for the rest of our lives. We want to be able to start our day, get things done that need to be done, and have the energy to focus and do the best work that we're paid to do, essentially. By introducing that cutoff time, it has so many benefits that come with that. Just think about all the benefits that come with having more energy. Sleeping better, running the errands you need to get done. Having that sense of order in place because you can do all these different things. It makes it so much easier and makes you so much happier as well. That's going to be reflected in your work you do the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that. Jason: I think ultimately what all of these creates is presence. It allows us to be more present or more there when we need to be there. If a property manager is communicating with a tenant, they need to be on when things get difficult or sticky. They need to be on with an owner and they need to cognitively have the ability to make decisions, and move quickly, and think. All of this gives us power. It gives us power when we're able to be more present because if you're tired, you're not present, not nearly. If you're cognitively burned out, then you're almost in a situation that is painful that you're forcing yourself to do something. Forcing your body to do something that is uncomfortable. You're done and you keep going. Let's go back to the idea of this ideal day. How do we create a map for our ideal day? When do you do this? Thanh: Ideally, you want to plan your ideal day the night before. That's something that is such a simple habit that I teach and very few people actually do. But once they do it and follow through with it, they start to know this huge productivity jumps because it allows you to start your day right away, as soon as you're done with your morning routine or you're sitting down on your desk instead of just starting your day where you're scrambling, trying to figure out what to do. Also, the other benefit that comes with planning your day the night before is that you can go to bed knowing that everything is being addressed and is going to be addressed the next day as well. You can feel relaxed and not stressed out as much because you know anything that needs to be addressed needs to be done the next day, so you can sleep a lot better. It has so many energy benefits as we talked about earlier. Planning your day the night before is one of the first things I would recommend people do. The second thing is to have one big goal. One big win for the day, then the third thing is the cutoff time. You have those three pieces in place, plan it the night before, one big goal, and having a cutoff time. You will have an ideal day figured out for yourself. If you're working from home, one of the things I would also recommend that you don't eat at your desk. Actually leave your office or your home. This applies also if you're working on an office because most of us are just sitting at our office or desk the whole day and we get so burned out by just looking at a screen, being on Zoom meetings, or being on the phone the whole time that it's actually nice to be able to step away. Go for lunch for an hour and go for a walk. By the time you come back, get outside. Get some sunlight, some vitamin D and you feel so much better. Your mood is elevated. You have a new sense of urgency, a new sense of energy. Stepping away from your desk to have lunch, as simple as that sounds, will make a big difference. I was working with this coaching client. He had all these big goals and we were committed for a three-month engagement. The only thing we did is I told him to go for an hour-and-a-half every single day because he was working at a big bank. He was super busy. He felt like he just had to work 80 hours a week. The only difference that we truly implemented was just going out for lunch because it's like a mid-day reset for him. I gave him a new sense of energy, a resurgence of focus. He was able to work from going to 80 hours to 55 hours, which was a huge improvement for him. The only change was because he had a longer lunch and is going outside. Going out for lunch away from his office. As a result, he was just more focused, had more energy, and knew exactly what he needed to do. He had more time to think about stuff. So, instead of just sitting there all day at his desk feeling lethargic and just sitting there for the sake of sitting there, he wasn't actually truly productive. Again, plan your day the night before, have one big win, set a cutoff time, then definitely go out for lunch outside of your home and office. Jason: I love it. It's like breaking up your day into two chunks to tackle. It's a lot easier than doing an eight-hour chunk. The night before, why not do planning in the morning? Maybe you can touch on that. Some people do this. They get up in the morning. They sit down. They're like, “I'm going to plan out my day,” and they do it in the morning. Advantages? Disadvantages? What are your thoughts? I'm sure you've had clients doing that. Thanh: Yeah, I've done both for many years. Planned the night before and I also planned the morning of. One thing I found is if you're somebody who is a morning person, you have the energy you have in the morning, then planning the night before gives you the most benefit because you can just start your day right away and just use your energy and focus on the important task that needs to be done. You just get started right away. You're not wasting time or energy planning something. You already did that the night before. If you're a morning person, then I would say that's the way to go. I would say for a majority of people that applies too, even if you're not a morning person. Even if you're somebody who starts a little bit later, let's say 10, 11, or 12. It's still beneficial to plan the night before because you can go to bed knowing that, "Okay, I have an idea what to do." Also, there's the sense that once we know what we need to do the next day when we go to bed we can just feel assured that we're going to do this, but also, our brain will start thinking about how do we solve this particular task or problem or knowing exactly what we need to do the next day. That's very powerful as well whereas if you plan the day off or the morning of, often it's easy to get distracted, or to have an excuse for something, or just continue to lay on the bed a little bit longer because we wanted to. Because there's no sense of urgency or clarity about, "Okay. I need to do this today," because that planning process still hasn't come up. I think for many reasons and for many people planning the night before is more of a preference, ideal, something that you will make a habit of because I do think it has much more impact. But if you're somebody who doesn't' really get started until two or three o'clock in the afternoon, then I'd say it's okay to do it in the morning because you're not going to be as focused anyway. Those are some of the pros and cons, but if I were to work with a client, I would always recommend doing it the night before. Jason: I like the idea you touched on there that if you do your planning the night before, you're then allowing your subconscious to work out a lot of the details. A lot of entrepreneurs operate based on their gut, their intuition. It's things that they're subconscious, or deep down are coming up for them, or they’re figuring out. I think that gives them more of an opportunity to use that supercomputer that our subconscious mind is. That makes a lot of sense. I'm going to play around on that. That sounds cool. You always hear the phrase, “What keeps you up at night?” Entrepreneurs are notoriously known for being kept up at night because they're worried about something or working on something. Maybe just the act of offloading everything at the end of the day and saying this is going to be a plan for tomorrow, instead of leaving it there feeling like you need to work on it, that's going to allow your subconscious to work on it, but also create the space so that you can get good rest and you aren't kept up worrying about things. It'll allow you to lower that anxiety or that pressure, noise, or that stress that every entrepreneur tends to carry. Thanh: Yeah, that's why I always recommend that people journal at night as well because when we have so many thoughts before we go to bed, it's just so hard to fall asleep. I've been really geeking out on this even further because I have an Oura ring, one of those fitness trackers, and one thing I've [...] is that when I journal and I put all my thoughts away, my REM sleep goes up significantly. REM sleep is when [...] frustration for our brain, for our mental health, and when I don’t journal, the number of minutes of REM sleep goes down quite a bit. I think it's really because when our brain is occupied with all these different things, it cannot actually relax as much because there's just so much going on. But when we journal and put it on paper, put it away from our head and actually put it on paper, our brain can relax knowing that we don't' have to use this as memory or store anything. It's on paper. It's there. If we need it, we can access it. We don't have to worry or stress about it. You can actually focus on recovery while we're sleeping. It also helps you to sleep better. You feel less stressed when you do that. It's a nice winding down routine for you as well to decompress and just destress. I like to journal in the morning as well just to reflect and think. Also at night before I go to bed just to honestly put my stray thoughts away. If I wanted to do something, or I had a particular task, or I had an idea that I don't want to lose, just write it down real quick. It's out of your head and as you know, our memories are terrible. I've had so many ideas and then go, “Oh, what was the thing I was thinking about? That was such a brilliant idea.” Or I had a catchphrase and I was like, “Oh, I should use that on my podcast or marketing copy. Oh my gosh. I forgot what that was. I wish I had written that down.” Our memory is as not strong so it's always a good idea to write stuff down as quickly as possible especially before you— Jason: [...] about the palest ink? Thanh: That I don't know. Jason: It's the palest ink. I'm being Asian Efficiency now. It's my turn. There's this Chinese proverb that the palest ink is better than the best memory, or something like that. Thanh: Oh, I've never heard of that. I might have to borrow that from you. Jason: You could look it up. I don't know who said it, maybe it was Confucious, he says everything. But anyway the faintest ink is better than even the best memory because it's there, it’s tangible, it can't be forgotten, We know our brains are not really great at accuracy or remember things, so I love that idea. Related to that, Mr. Asian Efficiency, how do you feel about typing versus writing? Because what you're saying is writing in my journal, writing in my journal. Are you actually writing or it sounds like it can be more digital, nerdy, tech, whatever way of typing everything. A lot of people are, “Type it all. Type this note. I'll type it on my phone. Type, type, type.” Do you find there is any difference? Are the things you feel like writing is better suited for? Do you write anything? How does this work for you? Thanh: I think this whole analog versus digital is an interesting conversation for many people. What I have seen in my own personal life and amongst thousands of our clients is that there's no one best way to do something. It's really a personal preference. You can have a paper to-do list, or a physical planner where you write your to-do list, or you can have a digital one. I tend to prefer to use a digital planner myself, but when I'm writing notes down or journal, I usually like to do it on paper. There are scientific studies that show if you write something down, you tend to remember better. Your retention is a little bit better. There's some value in that as well. You also need to look at the functionality, utility value that comes with that because you leave a piece of paper at home, you can't really access it anywhere whereas if it's something in the Cloud or Evernote. If I write it down on my computer or write it down on my phone, I always have it with me whenever I need to. I like to have a combination of both so for example my to-do list is digital, I use OmniFocus as an app for that. Then in my company we use something like Jira, a project management tool. For notes and just storing ideas and just random stuff I use Evernote. That's on my phone and also on my computer and available on the web. That's an easy way to access stuff very quickly too. But when it comes to journaling, I like to have a physical planner. I use something like a five-minute planner or just a self journal which is a physical planner. I use it every single night and every morning to either plan my day, to think about stuff, or to just write down and just put some thoughts down or ideas that I have. Whenever I am traveling, I'm also carrying one with me. If I don't have it with me, then I'll store it in Evernote real quick. Most of the time, I like to use something physical because it allows me to disconnect from my computer. I'm sitting behind my computer most of the days and when I'm sitting there, I'm just not as creative because I'm associating computers and screens with work. Sometimes, if I want to be creative, I have to actually step away from that to be able to go to my whiteboard. That's another tool that I use which is physical or pen and paper-ish. Just go to my whiteboard and start mind mapping, brainstorming ideas, or creating a quick list of things I need to do or want to remember because I can be so much more creative when I'm away from my computer. The same thing with pen and paper. Sometimes, if I'm doing thinking questions for myself then I say, “Thanh, what will it take to double my business over the next six months?” That’s a simple question that I ask myself. If I do that behind my computer, I get easily distracted. There's notification popping up. “Oh, let me just quickly check this email. Someone's messaging me on Slack or Microsoft Teams. Oh my gosh, I'm getting so distracted,” whereas if I'm away and I have my favorite beverage. I'm sitting at a nice coffee shop or something, I see beautiful people walking around, there's a nice atmosphere, and I'm just sitting there and thinking, there's a different level of engagement, commitment, and clarity that I get from doing that. I like to use a combination of both. Again, there's no perfect solution for everyone. There's no one-size-fits-all, and a lot of times people have to figure out on their own what they prefer and also depending on their lifestyle, but I think everyone can benefit from digital and paper. Jason: Yeah. Like every podcast episode, I'm writing down notes. This is just this episode, that's page one. I'm already on page two. Thoughts as they come to me, things I need to do, like I just wrote down I need a cool box for my mic like you have because I don't have that. That's kind of cool. I'm always thinking and the brain is always going, so writing things down (for me) is a big deal. I use all kinds of digital stuff to keep track of things. Keep track of tasks, keep track of what my team is doing, tons of software and my business so I get it. Then even on my iPad, I have an iPad with an Apple pencil so I can write on that and it's digital. There are a whole plethora of different ways. I guess ultimately it's what works for you. What's going to actually help you feel creative, feel the momentum, and get your thoughts out. I do think there's magic in writing. As nerdy, as digital, and tech-savvy as I am, I think there's magic in writing. They found that even when you write stuff out, if you lose your main writing limb and you start writing with your other hand, your handwriting will eventually be exactly the same once you get used to it again. Handwriting analysis, if you geek out on some of those stuff, is actually like brainwriting. It's like a brain to paper. I think there's some magic in writing that I think there's also something therapeutic about writing for me that I just don't get by typing something. Thanh: Absolutely. I have a beautiful pen that was gifted to me. Someone gifted me a Mont Blanc pen and the really funny story about that is like four or five years ago when I got this gift. Someone gave me this pen and when I got this pen, back in the day I didn't know anything about pens so I'm like, “Wow. Okay, this is a nice gesture.” So I put that pen away. I didn't really think much of it and a few months later, one of my employees comes here and says, “Thanh, is that a Mont Blanc pen?” and I go, “I have no idea. What does that even mean?” He says, “Oh my gosh, this pen is like $700, Thanh. Did you not realize that?” I was like, “No, but let me use it because it's so expensive.” That's when I started using my pen and that's when I realized wow this is really actually a beautiful pen. The weight of the pen, the way you hold it, then I actually started writing down stuff a lot more as a result of that. As you said, it's kind of a therapeutic thing. It's a beautiful tool that I have that I like to use. It's really smooth and sits nicely in my hand. Because I'm away from my computer, there's no crazy stuff going on. There's a lot to that. If you make it really enjoyable for yourself where it's a therapeutic fun thing for you, you have tools that you use that you enjoy, then it makes it really easy and fun. Something that I always talk about in my podcast is called minimalist luxury. How can you have very few things, but the thing you do own or the best quality that you can afford is absolutely the best thing that you want to own and have? For example, having one really nice pen allows you to do so many cool things with that. Writing a contract, or agreement, or journaling every single day. It's a fun process for you because you love to use that pen or maybe it's a really nice jacket that you love to wear and anytime you wear it, you feel so much more confident. Going back to that feeling that you want, that you're looking for, it's like if you want to feel powerful you wear that particular jacket. There's one jacket that I have, anytime I wear it I feel so powerful. It's my favorite jacket and every time I go to speak, that's the one I always like to wear because I associate it with being powerful. Jason: I think I saw the post on your Instagram or your Facebook. Your power jacket, does it have a little shield on it? Thanh: Exactly, yeah. All these different things that we can buy and there's not many things that we need, but the few things that we need or want to make sure it's the best one that you can afford because oftentimes it will last longer. It's better quality. You'll enjoy using it more. That's something I learned from using that pen because I don't want to use any other pen, that's the one pen I want to use and every time I want to use it I feel so happy using it. Jason: Yeah. Thanh, we can probably talk about this stuff for hours. We can go on and on and I'm sure there's lots of stuff that you can share and teach people. Maybe we should wrap this up. How can people learn more and what things do you teach or share at your company? Thanh: Absolutely. Thank you first and foremost for serving your listeners and audience. If people want to find out more about me and what we do at Asian Efficiency, we have a podcast called The Productivity Show; it’s the number one podcast on iTunes. Also, you can go to asianefficiency.com. You can find anything there about productivity, being efficient, automation, what kind of tools to use. There's so much free content there that I would love to share with people, so just go to asianefficiency.com and we'll take care of you there. Jason: Awesome, alright. Thanh, it's been great having you here on the DoorGrow Show. I appreciate you being here. Thanh: Thank you. Jason: All right. We will let Thanh go. Check his stuff out. Really cool guy. Anybody that is focused on something as much as he has, has some really cool ideas to share and it's fun to have people like that on. If you are a property management entrepreneur, and you're wanting to add doors, you are wanting a better website, a better presence, you are wanting branding that makes you feel confident to look good when you go showcase your business to other people, helps you improve your sales, whatever you're looking to do for your property management business so that you can improve your growth, we can help over DoorGrow. Check us out. Go to doorgrow.com and we look forward to having you as a client and supporting you in your growth. We love our clients. We have some amazing, awesome clients. Check us out at doorgrow.com and be sure to join our community at doorgrowclub.com and that's it for today. Until next time, everyone, to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone. You just listened to the DoorGrow Show. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet, in the DoorGrow Club. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead, content, social, direct mail, and they still struggle to grow. At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge in getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today’s episode on our blog at doorgrow.com. To get notified of future events and news, subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow hacking your business and your life.

 If you're feeling extraordinary stress because of events in the news, you're not alone. This week, Stacey talks to Dr. Mark Heyman about simple things people with diabetes can do to manage better (and give themselves a break). Dr. Heyman is a diabetes psychologist and the Founder and Director of the Center for Diabetes and Mental Health. He was diagnosed with type 1 while in college. Check out Stacey's new book: The World's Worst Diabetes Mom! In Tell Me Something Good – parents going an extra mile to make their kids feel included and a big challenge ends but we'll talk about "T1D 24/7" This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please contact your health care provider. Join the Diabetes Connections Facebook Group! More information on mental health and diabetes: ADA Behavioral Diabetes Institute  ----- Sign up for our newsletter here ----- Use this link to get one free download and one free month of Audible, available to Diabetes Connections listeners! ----- Get the App and listen to Diabetes Connections wherever you go! Click here for iPhone      Click here for Android Episode Transcription Stacey Simms  0:00 Diabetes Connections is brought to you by One Drop created for people with diabetes by people who have diabetes, and by Dexcom, take control of your diabetes and live life to the fullest with Dexcom.   Announcer  0:17 This is Diabetes Connections with Stacey Simms.   Stacey Simms  0:22 This week, let's talk about stress. And let's talk about the not so great effect it can have on diabetes. Now you're in a cycle of not just physical issues, but emotional ones, including guilt.   Mark Heyman  0:35 The guilt comes from I think a lot of times people feeling different or still don't. They're all alone, and that everybody else with diabetes is doing great. And I'm the one who is having trouble.   Stacey Simms  0:46 Dr. Mark Kaman is a diabetes psychologist and founder of director of the Center for diabetes and mental health he was diagnosed with type one in college, we're going to talk about some simple things we can try to do to manage the stress that these days Seems to be unrelenting in Tell me something good parents going an extra mile to make their kids feel included and a big challenge ends This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please contact your health care provider. Welcome to another week of the show. I’m your host, Stacey Simms, really glad to have you along. If you are new, we aim to educate and inspire about type 1 diabetes by sharing stories of connection. My son was diagnosed with type one right before he turned to he is now 15. I don't have diabetes, but I have a background in broadcasting and local radio and television news and that is how you get the podcast. This is not the show that I thought I would be doing this week like many podcasters I have an editorial calendar I don't always stick to it, obviously. But I have things planned out and I have interviews that are you know in the can waiting to be aired, but I thought this was a really good Subject to talk about right now. Because as I just said, I don't live with diabetes, but boy, we are all living with stress. And I thought, what are some things we can do to figure out how to better live with diabetes or with you know, whatever your health issues might be, everybody has something, I have my own autoimmune disease, how can we just take care of ourselves in a time where this news, as I said, just seems to be unrelenting? So I put in post in a Facebook group Diabetes Connections of the group, which I hope you're in, by the way, if you're not, please join it. You know, I was really worried about her everybody was holding up. And so we talked about self care. And we had a really nice thread of comments. Of course, that's still there in the group. If you haven't seen it yet, take a look at your own, maybe get some advice from it. But I also I decided to call in the experts, and I very much appreciate Dr. Heyman jumping on with me. We hadn't talked before. He was more than willing, and I'm sure we'll have him back on again, and I'll get to his interview in just a minute. But first Diabetes Connections is brought to you by One Drop and One Drop is diabetes management for the 21st century. One Drop was designed by people with diabetes. For people with diabetes. One Drops glucose meter looks nothing like a medical device. It's sleek, it's compact, it seamlessly integrates with the award winning One Drop mobile app, sync all your other health apps to One Drop to keep track of the big picture and easily see health trends. And with a One Drop subscription you get unlimited test strips and lancets delivered right to your door. Every One Drop plan also includes access to your own certified diabetes coach have questions but don't feel like waiting for your next doctor visit. Your personal coach is always there to help go to Diabetes connections.com and click on the One Drop logo to learn more. My guest this week is Dr. Mark Heyman. He is a diabetes psychologist and a CDE and the founder and director of the Center for diabetes and mental health Mark was diagnosed in college right before I mean immediately to weeks before he had a long planned trip to Paris, and he talks about that we get to that at the end of the interview, and I asked him a little bit about his diagnosis story. But I wanted to talk to mark about how we can handle the mental load that has just been relentless all of this year, I'll come back at the end of the interview and just tell you a little bit more about how I've been handling things I've done some things I think are good. And some things I know haven't really been helping, but we'll talk about that after the interview. Here's my talk with Dr. Mark Heyman. Dr. Heyman, thank you so much for joining me. I'm so eager to hear what you have to say. And I know you're busy. So thanks for jumping on.   Mark Heyman  4:37 Thanks for having me, Stacey. Appreciate it. How are you doing?   Stacey Simms  4:41 I know, that probably wasn't the first question you expected as the psychologist but, you know,   Mark Heyman  4:45 how are you doing these days? You know, I'm hanging in there. It's you know, I think that it's a strange time to be a psychologist as well as to just be someone living in this world. You know, we're, you know, we're all kind of trying to process the news on a daily basis. And, you know, I have A 16 month old middle daughter, so trying to take care of her and juggle my work and childcare and kind of all of the stress there. So I think overall, I'm doing pretty well, but definitely am feeling the stress and stress of what's going on with COVID. And with the rise and with the the unrest that's happening right now. So thank you for asking,   Stacey Simms  5:20 Oh, my goodness. Well, it is, as you say, it's such an extraordinary time. And there's really no words left anymore. It's such a cliche, right? We all get those emails in these challenging times in these extraordinary times. But as you said, we've had this COVID situation for months now. It's sort of built on low boil, and I think we kind of learned to live with it in the background. And then of course, the events of this past week. Protests, riots, questioning a lot of people, even if they're not physically doing things and leaving the house, trying to figure out, you know, where do I stand? What do I want to say? We're all on high alert. Where are you telling people that you're speaking to to, to kind of I don't want to say Step back, necessarily, but maybe break it off into smaller bites, what do we do?   Mark Heyman  6:05 Yeah, I think there's a couple of things that we can do. The first is recognize that everything that we're feeling right now is normal, that anybody else in that same situation would be feeling would be feeling unsettled and unrest, feeling stressed about, you know, what's going on in the world right now. I think oftentimes, we have these situations where we feel we're feeling something and we feel guilty for feeling it, I shouldn't feel stressed, I shouldn't feel I shouldn't feel x. And I think that taking a step back and recognizing that, you know, these feelings are really normal. The next thing is really to talk to other people and to be able to vent to have some have a sounding board table to get your feelings out. Because that doesn't necessarily make the feelings go away, doesn't make them better. But certainly to be able to share about other people and get get affirmation and get validation for those feelings, is a super helpful thing that we can do as a way of processing And then also taking a step back. And, you know, recognizing that Yeah, the world is in a in a tough spot right now. But also, we don't have to over engage with what's happening. We have we taking a step back and taking a break from social media sometimes just that taking a break from the news can be a really helpful thing to give yourself some perspective. So that when you dive back in and learn about what's what's going on in your car, take start thinking about what you might be able to do to help the situation. You can see that from a fresh perspective.   Stacey Simms  7:33 Yeah, I think especially in a time right now we are we are being challenged to pay attention. And you know, and I can only come to this through the lens of what I have, which is a white suburban mom, right? You know, we're being challenged, pay attention. You know, learn, speak up, let other people know what you're thinking. But that doesn't mean be on twitter. 24 seven, that doesn't mean you have to watch all of the news is that what I'm kind of hearing you say   Mark Heyman  8:01 Yeah, I think that one thing that we think is that if we that we want to be in control, not necessarily of the situation, but certainly be in control of our feelings and be in control of our, our environment. And I think that one one thing that one way that people try to get control over those things, is they do something called over engage, they engage with the news, and they end they get involved with it, because they feel like the more that they know that and the more that they see the the ever changing landscape, the more control they'll have. And I think that that's a it's a certainly a valid point. But there's also some of the downside to that. Because Because as you're following Twitter, you know, constantly, it's stressful, and you're constantly looking for the changes, and that's stressful. And the reality is, is that on a minute by minute basis, nothing's changed. Nothing's changed in a sense that is going to really probably change what you do or how you react and so yeah, take take a step back and and recognize But over an aging doesn't actually help with your stress and sometimes they can actually make your stress worse and you know, increase it as well.   Stacey Simms  9:11 All right, let's bring diabetes into this because that's really you know, this is all about here on Diabetes Connections. And I don't live with diabetes, but I am I'll be honest I'm worried maybe it's a mom thing and I see the people in my Facebook group and I'm we're part of this larger community you live with type one. I mean, stress is bad for anybody but on top of type one diabetes. I'm gonna sound like a hypocrite because I was talking to this with my husband last night and he was pointed out I live with an autoimmune condition. I have ulcerative colitis laughing at me like why are you worried about diabetes you have to take care of yourself to which I really not, I'm not eating great. I'm not exercising like I normally do. So again, bringing back the focus to diabetes, but I guess any chronic condition you live with type one. Are you feeling more stressed? On top of diabetes   Mark Heyman  10:02 Yeah, I definitely am. I'm definitely feeling more stressed because I mean for lots of reasons one is that you know, I you know, I'm a stress eater so when you know when I when I'm stressed out and when I'm around food like that's that's one of my coping mechanisms for better or for worse and so that doesn't do great things for my blood sugar's also just stress in general is definitely impacting my blood sugar's but I'm seeing you know a lot more variations than I had before as well as sleep certainly my sleep isn't great because of the stress right now and when when out sleep while my blood sugar's definitely are hot running higher which makes me not feel great but also makes me more frustrated. So you know I'm a I work with people with diabetes and help them manage their stress. I certainly have a lot of those same stresses and so it can be a challenging a challenging thing to balance. One thing that I've done to really, really kind of helped myself is a couple of things one I had been really intentional about exercising. Luckily, I have a little bit of flexibility in my schedule and so I'm able to exercise on most days and I find that starting my day off that exercising helps my blood sugar's and also helps my stress. Also just cutting myself some slack and being kind to myself around my blood sugar's recognizing that, you know, I'm doing everything that I can to manage them the best that I can. And sometimes they're not gonna cooperate. And that's true anytime, but especially to when we're in a time of stress, where with all these other variables going on, just, you know, being kind yourself and giving yourself some grace and some slack can be really helpful and recognizing the time will pass. And that that will that may be a time where we can be much more intentional about our diabetes management, but also, it'll be smoother sailing, hopefully, because the stress won't be a compounding variable there.   Stacey Simms  11:53 Well, and that's such a great point because I was going to ask you and you pretty much answered it, but you know, when when someone With with tight diabetes control or someone who really is trying to manage Well, you know, if they have a very stressful time like this and their management, I'm gonna put this in air quotes, you know, slip. So you're seeing higher numbers or more variation. And then I think a lot of people have have guilt on top of as well. How do you deal with the guilt and not blame yourself? You mentioned trying to like dial back and see the bigger picture, it's not gonna last forever. Is that one of the things you'd recommend?   Mark Heyman  12:29 Yeah, I also think that, you know, connect with the community, whether that's on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or in real life you can and recognizing that everybody else is going through the same thing and everybody else is having, you know, more erratic blood sugars right now. It's really valuable because the guilt comes from I think a lot of times people feeling different or feeling like they're all alone, and that everybody else with diabetes is doing great. And I'm the one who is having trouble and that's why I try to be really Open about you know, the challenges that I have with my blood sugar's like with like with my patients off kind of take out my phone and show them my CGM graph and show them that my blood sugar's are nowhere near perfect, because it makes them feel like you know, it takes some of that thing of that guilt away of recognizing that Yeah, I can certainly make better choices sometimes. But diabetes has a mind of its own and being okay with riding those waves is is critical for our mental health. Because if your only metric of success is keeping your blood sugar between those lines, and yet the only way you can not have stress in your in your diabetes life is by having perfect blood sugar's you're setting yourself up for failure. So we need to have a different way of looking at it.   Stacey Simms  13:45 Every once in a while mark, I'm just I'm stopped. I I can't even imagine what it is like to to live with type one just so much that you have to do and I have somebody you know, I have my kid in my house that I've we've accepted for 13 and a half years and everyone's While I keep thinking, gosh, it is really such a burden. But that's neither here nor there. You know, but just to hear you put it like that. I'll probably take all of that out.   Mark Heyman  14:08 But the way, let me say something there is, I actually try, I actually encourage people not to use that word Burg, because it kind of becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. You say diabetes is hard. It's such a burden. And you're right, I'm not gonna argue with you there. But then you, but then we won't talk about how big of a burden it is. It kind of gets it makes it it snowballs and grows and becomes bigger. And I think that when we say, you know, we have all of these things going on, we have diabetes, and COVID, and the George Floyd and all of all of these confounding things. And we say in diabetes becomes even bigger, a bigger burden. It's almost like this expectation that it should be, and sometimes it is, sometimes it's not, but we don't want to have people get to a point where they say, Well, I had diabetes and therefore this automatically means that you know, You want to I always give people the space to be able to, you know, see whether it's a burden or not, but not automatically assume that's going to be.   Stacey Simms  15:08 I love that. And I'm always working on being better at language. And I really appreciate that. You know, it's, it's, it's one of these things where, you know, you want to help and every once in a while, you know, you really, I slip on that, so I appreciate it. Um, but, but Okay, so but let's keep going on that right. Okay, so I'm a caregiver, I guess a little bit less so because my son is 15. And it's like when he was two when I was doing everything with him. Any advice for me, in addition to not standing around saying this must be such a burden for you? How can I upload, right? I mean, which he's doing great. He's got his own way to manage stress. We're talking a lot. He does exercise quite a bit, which has been really helpful. He's connected with friends, but as a parent or caregiver or spouse, any advice for us so that we're not putting more stress And the person we're trying to help.   Mark Heyman  16:02 Yeah, I think I think take a step back and recognize that you know, that he has it, he's got this taken care of and that you're certainly there to help him in whatever way that you can. But from what you're telling me, it sounds like he's doing really well, doing really well without responsibility. And so, and you know, when you're in, but certainly kind of the same thing about, you know, over engaging on Twitter around the protests right now. I think that over engaging with your son around diabetes, especially when there's not a whole lot you can do right now. I mean, because you're doing really well. That's add stress to you. And so if you're able to kind of take a step back, take a step back and not over engage with it doesn't aggravate him, but also gives you some space to recognize and also gives you space to recognize that but also see that he's doing well and give you the confidence that you need to continue to get that debt back because as she grows up and it goes to college Sunday Jimmy great scope for you to have.   Stacey Simms  17:02 We're working on it.   Mark Heyman  17:05 It's a never ending process.   Stacey Simms  17:08 That's great advice. Um, what are some small changes that you might encourage people living with diabetes in these crazy times to do?   Mark Heyman  17:18 Yeah, so a couple of things that I would recommend, I mean, just like just a simple tip is, you know, one of the things that is that people have really struggled with, that I've been talking to, over the past three months when we've been in quarantine is kind of the routine has been pulled out from under them, so they don't have to go into work anymore, they may not be able to go to their favorite restaurant or go to the gym. And so and diabetes can actually be a great grounding tool, because, you know, diabetes takes routine. And so making it so keeping keeping your diabetes or TF right now can be really helpful one for your management, of course, but also your mental health because if you know that every morning, going to check your blood sugar, change your CGM site every Thursday or whatever that was Is it can kind of give you some some grounding with it within your day. That's number one. Number two is do your best to stick to a fixed irregular diet. Especially, I mean, I know that this is a little bit late coming, you know, two or three months into this. But, you know, we talked about people who are who have really are having a hard time with blood sugars because they're home now and there have been a food all around them and so finding ways to kind of to to keep on eating healthy to the best of your ability and in a way to help you manager manage your blood sugar's can really, obviously make your blood sugar's more stable, but also help you manage the stress around those blood sugars. And then the third thing and this is one of my favorite tools that I that I use all the time I use it personally it also I also recommend to my patients to use is mindfulness. And what mindfulness is, if you don't not not familiar with it is being aware of your experience in the present moment without judging it. So You know, right now I feel stressed. And just recognizing Yeah, I feel stressed. You're not judging it, nothing, nothing good about it by being stressed. It just is. Right now I can tell you right now my blood, my blood sugar is 253. So I'm on the higher side. And I could I could look at that and say, I can't believe it's that high. It's, you know, I'm, I must have done something wrong. I'm an awful person with diabetes, and I just can't manage my diabetes, right? Or I can look at my blood sugar mindfully and say, Okay, well, I'm gonna look, my blood sugar's to 33. That's neither good nor bad. I feel a little frustrated with that. But that feeling of being a good or bad and just be able to recognize what you experience, because if you're able to do that, it gives you a little bit of distance from it, and doesn't let you get wrapped up in the story of what you know. What does that 253 mean about me? What is that frustration mean about me what is you know, whatever I'm experiencing mean about me because we all experience things all the time. We have thoughts and feelings and bloodsuckers, then You know, whatever all the time and be able to recognize that notice them without putting a story behind them can be really, really helpful. I think that's really also helpful for what's going on in the world. You know, recognizing your emotions and your thoughts and recognizing that those are normal experiences, but you don't the judge, you know, if you feel sad, if you feel angry, that is what you feel. And that's okay. So I'm a big fan of mindfulness. I could talk about it all day long. It really diabetes. But I think it's a really, really helpful tool, especially when things are overwhelming like they are right now.   Stacey Simms  20:39 I'm trying to remember I read it, but I read somewhere recently, and it's exactly what you're saying is you know, when you are feeling out of control, and you're feeling very emotional and you're feeling angry or sad or stressed, you know, to kind of breathe into it, and let yourself feel it. And that was a revelation to me. It has helped me so much it just kind of calmed me down to hear that that was okay to do. And I guess that is a bit of mindfulness.   Mark Heyman  21:05 Well, exactly, because because humans don't like to feel uncomfortable about anything. We don't like to feel physically uncomfortable. We don't like to feel emotionally uncomfortable. And so our go to strategy with those things is avoidance. We avoid, you know, you could think about doing your life you know, you want to have you have to have a difficult conversation with your husband or your kid and you put that off, you avoid it because you don't want to do it because it's not you're not going to feel good. If you go to the dentist and take them for granted. Because definitely not going to get and what would happen if you recognize that you're scared to go to the dentist or that you're that you're uncomfortable having a conversation, but you do it anyway. And notice the thoughts and feelings that you have when that happens, but you don't judge them. You just notice them and say right now I'm feeling really nervous. And that's okay because that's that's that's what anybody in my situation would feel. It doesn't mean anything about me. It just means that I feel nervous. And doesn't mean that comfortable. But it's just a recognition of what my experience is right now.   Stacey Simms  22:09 I don't know if you can answer this, and I'm a little uncomfortable asking, but I think we should talk about it. You and I are not. We're not people of color. Yeah. And so I don't want to say I don't want to try to put myself in somebody else's shoes like that. But I cannot imagine the stress right now. In the not only in that community, but in the diabetes community for people of color. Yeah, I mean, you because we can say, you know, turn off the news or be careful about this. But I think it is to the point right now, where many people and again, I'm probably saying something stupid here. So please forgive me. This is my perspective from where I sit right now. But you know, you can't turn it off. It's part of who you are. I'm wondering if you have any advice, perhaps for that community?   Mark Heyman  22:54 Yeah. Yeah. I don't think that I mean, I would be the only advice that I have, and I'm not sure this is great advice is to keep to keep talking. I think that I, what I've seen on this in the social media community is with people of color as well as people, you know, people, other people in the community, it's a lot of support, and a lot of like, and a lot of one of one, one, a lot of wanting to listen. And I certainly want to listen, I want to understand better because I know I don't understand, and I can't understand and I really want to try, but but I and it's going to help me to understand better if people of color in the diabetes community, continue speaking, and continue letting me letting us know what they want us to hear. Because I'm all ears.   Stacey Simms  23:49 We mentioned a few small changes that you might be able to make any big changes that you'd like to see people kind of work their way up to.   Mark Heyman  23:57 I think that can mean continued. This is a general But continuing to learn to learn about these issues and just continue and continue to have a thirst for knowledge and understanding around them, I think that I'm at that's, I think that's the best thing that we can do right now. And then really the most effective thing because that will hopefully not trickle but really expanding into bigger changes that we can all be a part of, and that we can all be we can all be helpful with. But I think that for our mental health, I really think that small changes are the best way of going about this, and then really trying to taking one day at a time and one one change at a time. You know, change is the big changes are so overwhelming, and they oftentimes feel impossible. And so breaking them down into smaller changes, just like we've been talking about with you know, maybe a bigger goal in mind. So maybe the question is not necessarily what what are the big changes but what are the bigger goals that we have for our mental health around diabetes, for diabetes management for our, for our inclusion, and what are the small changes that we can make that are moving us towards that goal. And certainly I can't tell you or anybody else what their what your goal should be. But I think that I think that defining that goal and really taking some time to think about that can be helpful in in helping you to define the small things that you need to make in order to get there.   Stacey Simms  25:27 Before I let you go, and maybe I should have started here since it's our first time talking. Let's talk a little bit about your diabetes story because you were diagnosed in college, right?   Mark Heyman  25:36 I was it was 21 years ago on Monday. So I was I just celebrated or just memories I should say my guy ever my 21st I aversary on Monday.   Unknown Speaker  25:47 Correct is beer. Sorry about that.   Unknown Speaker  25:50 Legal?   Mark Heyman  25:53 Exactly. Yeah. So I was 21 when I was diagnosed that it was the end of my third year of college. I was at UCLA and No, I was for the for probably a month before I was diagnosed I was getting I was not feeling well and just kind of getting progressively sicker and sicker was all over the, in the typical symptoms. The problem was is I had this dream of going to France. I've been studying French for a long time. And I got I got an internship at the US Embassy in Paris for that summer. And I was, and I really didn't want to go the doctor because I was scared that they were telling me something was wrong, and I couldn't go to France. And so I put off going to the doctor for a long time. I couldn't tell you how long but it was a you know, something a couple of weeks. And finally got to a point where I just I was walking to class one day, last week on June the first 1999. And I couldn't go anymore. I'm like, I have to, I got something's got to change here. So I ended up going to the Student Health Center and I took a finger stick and it's at high. And I was like, well we know high, medium, low. By Tapi, that bad and the doctor has struck me in a chair and said Don't move. So we call the paramedics and they stopped me to a gurney. And the problem is that I was at UCLA and UCLA the Student Health Center is as at one end of the quad of a quad, but there was no road access. So the the angels had to park across the other end of the quad. And I had to be wheeled across the entire quad in front of, you know, the entire school to go to, you know, into the journey to go to the hospital. So once you tell you Medical Center, and we've diagnosed there, the next day, I had an appointment with my new endocrinologist and Peters was on call that day. And so she was she became my endocrinologist and spent a couple hours with me the next day and teaching me about diabetes and you know, giving me insulin and she's at the edge like, you know, there's other questions I can answer for you is like, well, I'm supposed to go to France in two weeks. Without hesitation like Well, of course your vote. So I want to tear it to each actor by diagnosis. I want to prepare us. I had no clue what I was doing. I would email her every couple of days my blood sugar's, but like it was, I mean, on the one hand, it was the best thing that could happen to me. It gave me the confidence that I needed to know that diabetes was not gonna stop me from doing anything. On the other hand, I was flying blind. And I survived. I was just fine, but it makes for a good story.   Stacey Simms  28:27 It's a great story. Wow. And how was the How was the internship? diabetes aside? Are you glad you went?   Mark Heyman  28:34 Oh, yeah, it was awesome. I mean, the internship was, you know, it was it was government work. hope we'll put it that way. Like I got, I got to live in Paris for the summer and you had a awesome apartment, the middle of the city and got to go and travel all around. And it was it was unbelievable.   Stacey Simms  28:51 Sounds like a once in a lifetime. I'm so glad you were able to go. Yeah. And then how did you decide that you wanted to work in the field that you Now, I mean, how do you get from being diagnosed in college to, you know, helping other people with diabetes with their mental health?   Mark Heyman  29:07 That's a funny story. So I kind of towards the end. So I majored in political science in college. And so as I was leaving college, after my diagnosis, I realized I didn't want to be a lawyer or didn't do, I didn't want to pursue anything kind of in that realm. And I came to the conclusion that I wanted to go into psychology, and a part of me wanted to do something diabetes related. I didn't, I was lucky that when I was first diagnosed, I was I was doing okay, psychologically, I didn't have a whole lot of big challenges other than kind of the normal diagnosis stuff. But I was really interested in you know, how this affects other people. So I did some research, and realized I wanted to become a psychologist, but not specifically around diabetes. However, to get into graduate school in psychology, it's really competitive. And I use a story. And so diabetes him like a good story to tell about how I wonder what people with diabetes and so I took That story, not really thinking that would ever come true. And it kind of did. I went to and I did research in diabetes, I saw patients who had diabetes, and I realized Not only do I love doing it, but it's also a huge need. And so, you know, I love it. It's a lot of fun, and it's really challenging. But I feel like I can use my own personal and professional experience to really make a big impact in people's lives. It's wonderful.   Unknown Speaker  30:27 Okay, and I have to ask you, you said you have a toddler. You have a baby.   Mark Heyman  30:31 Yeah, I have. I have a 17 month old. Yeah, it's wonderful. I was born last January, and now she's, she's walking and she's just starting to talk. And it's so cute, but it's a lot of work. Oh, that's fun.   Stacey Simms  30:43 have you all been, you know, at home for the last couple of months together?   Mark Heyman  30:47 We have. Yeah. So even though we had childcare we had my parents are in town here. So my parents were helping us out a couple days a week and we had some nanny help. But once this all happened, we kind of isolated ourselves entered just now getting back into letting my parents take care of her again. So, which is a great relief. But it's been, it's been a lot of fun and a great blessing to be able to spend time with her over the past couple months, but it's also it's taken a toll on, you know, my work and my I mean, my ability to do work that I need to be doing. So it'll be good to when we can get back into a more normal routine, hopefully real soon   Stacey Simms  31:25 as we start to wrap this up, you know, we've we've kind of, I guess we've scratched the surface on managing stress and diabetes, it really is a never ending issue, is it?   Mark Heyman  31:34 No, it's not. I think that we have I think that we have a lot more questions and answers here. You know, especially both both with Russell diabetes, as well as, how do we live it live in this kind of crazy world we're in right now, as well as living in this crazy world with diabetes. And so, you know, I wish that I had all the answers, but I think that we need to keep asking the questions because without the questions, we're not going to get any answers.   Stacey Simms  31:59 Mark, thank you so much. Spend some time with me. I'd love to have you back on to answer maybe some listener questions and go through more of this. But thank you so much for your time.   Mark Heyman  32:06 Oh, you're so very welcome. Thanks, Stacey.   Unknown Speaker  32:13 You're listening to Diabetes Connections with Stacey Sims.   Stacey Simms  32:19 I'll link up some more resources about mental health and diabetes, including Mark's website. And I said I was going to talk a little bit about some things I've been doing. I'll tell you the best thing that I have been doing to manage this stress is walking my dog. I walk my dog just about every day, and we don't walk particularly quickly. Boy, she would love it if I would run with her. I'm not a runner. And we are very, very fortunate to live near Greenway. So I'm able to escape. It feels like an escape, I promise. I mean, it's just green, and it's usually pretty quiet. It's getting very hot here. I'm in Charlotte, North Carolina. And most people who walk and run do it very early in the day or later at night. I don't mind it so much and I'll go out you know, 1011 o'clock in the morning. They have the place to myself. I'm careful with my doggie and we make sure she has water and all that stuff. Don't worry about her. But walking the dog listening to podcasts, sometimes listening to nothing really helps. And on those walks, I do not listen to news. I do not listen to news podcasts. I do not listen to serious issues. I listen to stupid comedy podcasts, like Game of Thrones podcasts, and some other fun ones. You know, pop the group, maybe we'll make a podcast list of things to listen to when you want to distract yourself. Another thing I do that I do think helps is about half an hour before I go to bed. I try to do an hour but I'm kidding myself. About half an hour is I disconnect from Twitter and Facebook. I'm in bed, you know it's late. I'm seeing so much later than I was before this, you know, it's almost midnight, but I'll stop looking at the news. If I'm not really ready to go to sleep. I'll read a book for a little while or I'll play Solitaire on my phone. But I'm done. Sometimes I cheat. I mean, sometimes gosh, there's been nights you know, especially last week where I just I felt like things were changing moment by moment and I needed to see and I know that wasn't healthy, but I couldn't help it. I needed to know that was tough, but I know a lot of you feel the same way. And then the things I'm doing that are not so good as I'm definitely eating more junk and eating more than I was before. That was the worst for me. Honestly, back in April, I think April, I kind of felt like, ah, who cares, we're going to be indoors forever. No one's gonna see me again. And I'm just gonna wallow in this and I eat a lot of really bad junk food. And I've been drinking more alcohol, which is really unusual for me. And you'll laugh. I mean, drinking more alcohol means I'm drinking like once or twice during the week. I usually have like one or two drinks on the weekend. And that's it. But those are things that I've noticed that I'm doing because I'm stressed out. But doing this podcast helps me immensely hearing your stories. Being able to tell some stories and having something to do right. Having something to work on is really valuable. So let's get back to it. Tell me something good. I love that in just a moment. But first Diabetes Connections is brought to you by Dexcom. And we started with Dexcom back in the olden days before share. Yeah, in 2013. When Benny started using the Dexcom share it. So trust me when I say using the share and follow apps makes a big difference. Benny and I set parameters about when I'm going to talk to him about diabetes, how long to wait, all that kind of stuff. But it helps us talk and worry about diabetes less. If he's at a sleep over or away on a trip when things are back to normal. It gives me so much peace of mind. It also helps if I need to troubleshoot with him. And this is what I love. We can see what's been happening over the last 24 hours and not just at one moment. The alerts and alarms that we set help us from keeping the highs from getting too high, and help us jump on those before there a big issue. Internet connectivity is required to access separate Dexcom follow up to learn more, go to Diabetes Connections.com and click on the Dexcom logo.   And tell me something good this week, I was scrolling through Facebook. I'm in a ton of diabetes groups and I mute all of them because otherwise it looks like diabetes book to me, right? It's everything. It's relentless. So I mute the groups and then I will Want to see stuff? I go back and look, I saw this in a Dexcom group and it really caught my eye. I will post the picture of it in our Facebook group for Diabetes Connections. So Dan writes, my seven year old was feeling crappy about being diagnosed and wearing a sensor. So I did what needed to be done and made him feel better with my permanent sensor. Just the outline color to come. His reaction was priceless. And yes, I cried. And this is an amazing tattoo. It's a I mean, it takes up his entire upper arm like elbow to shoulder and it's an octopus, which I'm assuming he already had. And then the sensor is kind of in the octopuses. tentacles. tentacles. That's right, right. So it looks it just looks amazing. And then people in the group, of course, started chiming in with, you know, with really positive comments for him, but also, you know, hey, I have a tattoo or I have this idea. And people started talking about diabetes tattoos. And then somebody said, which was what I was thinking because it does CG six on it. What are you gonna do when you're on the g7 in a few months, and Dan said, I don't know. Maybe another tattoo Somebody else said no, that octopus has seven more tentacles, just put it there. And I guess he's gonna come back and show the truly finished product. But it to me it looks finished already, but I guess there's color coming so hopefully we'll do a revisit and we'll show you the finished tattoo then and a follow up and I guess kind of a wrap up to something that I shared. I think I only shared this on social media, the diabetes family connection, the T1D 24/7 challenge. This was for the entire month of May. And the diabetes family connection puts on different programs they put on the diabetes camp in my area. These are the guys behind Project 50 and 50. Last summer were two guys with type one summited the highest peak in all 50 states in 50 days. And while there was a an injury and an accident, they did finish and so it was pretty incredible stuff. But their 2024 seven was a challenge that asks people to move every day for the month of May. They said you know no days off for managing T1D no days off during this Challenge. And there were some rules and interesting little things that of course, they want the people to maintain social distancing. And it was a fundraiser as well, they had a Spotify playlist. One of my favorite things about this is the warnings we all got because this playlist was not moderated for explicit lyrics. As I said, these are the guys who put in our diabetes camp. So a lot of parents on their list. We appreciate that heads up you guys. So congratulations to the diabetes family connection for a really big and well done fundraiser. I'm sure they'll be doing more like this and some of them are in our Facebook groups. So we will continue to spread the word. If you have a Tell me something good story, let me know email me Stacey at Diabetes connections.com or, you know, just give me a shout out on social media and we will get it on the show because it's my favorite part of every week. So tell me something good. If you're listening as the show was first released later this week, the American Diabetes Association Scientific Sessions is going to be kicking off this is the atheist conference for the a DA and it is their first virtual experience. What does that mean for you and me? Probably not much. I have never been to the scientific sessions I was thinking about going this year. But of course, it did not happen. But this is the time when a lot of studies come out. This is when a lot of the companies that we all follow release big news. So please stay tuned. I'm going to try to follow as much as I can on social media. We do have shows planned in the weeks to come with everybody that you would expect. I'm really excited to be able to share some of these studies. Some of these things are embargoed. But after the Scientific Sessions, I would say probably by next week, this time, I think we'll all have a better idea of where the study's on technology stand, and probably one or two surprises because every year something pops out from this thing that's either a breakthrough study or something that didn't work out and completely stopped or you know, somebody from outside the ADA scientific session says, Look at me over here, so we'll see what happens. But I hope you'll follow along. I'll do as much as I can to give you the information now, and then go in depth with the newsmakers As they come on the show in the weeks to come, thank you to my editor john bukenas from audio editing solutions. Thank you for listening. I hope you got something valuable out of today's show. I hope you'll continue to engage and let me know if I can help what you need what you want to hear. You know, I made fun kind of earlier in the show about these are challenging and difficult times. You know, man, they really are and we need each other more than ever. Thanks for being here. I'm Stacey Simms. I'll see you back here next week. And until then, be kind to yourself.   Unknown Speaker  40:34 Diabetes Connections is a production of Stacey Sims media. All rights reserved. All rights avenged   Transcribed by https://otter.ai

On this episode of Friends in Recovery Podcast, the crew explores the topics of grief and recovery.   Jersey Ed’s Podcast Pick of the Week: The Grief Girl Podcast hosted by Kristi Hugstad    From the host: “I'm here today on a mission. And that mission is to help abolish the stigma of mental illness, depression, suicide, and addiction. The Grief Girl will pull back the curtain and help start conversations about topics that no one wants to have. Because I'm an advocate for all of those suffering a loss of any kind, not just death, as we grieve all kinds of losses. Relationships, health, career, trust, identity, addiction.” https://www.thegriefgirl.com/tgg-podcast.html Call our hotline and leave us a message! 617-379-1163 The Friends in Recovery Podcast is brought to you by Genesis House Recovery (800-737-0933) and produced by Sweets Productions in Beverly, Massachusetts. Inquiries and interested speakers can reach us at help@friendsinrecoverypodcast.com.   Reach out to the Podfather - Mike Miles, MSW - at Therapy Services in Chelmsford, Massachusetts at 978-459-4884.    There are many ways to help someone that is suffering from addiction. There are professionals here to help you from staging an intervention to getting counseling as a family member and anything in between. If you or a loved one needs help, reach out to our panel at help@friendsinrecoverypodcast.com.   National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1-800-273-8255   The Friends in Recovery Podcast is powered by your Likes, Follows, Subscribes, and Shares! YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClK5BmDlUlVdKb9fLrkOnCQ/?sub_confirmation=1 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/friends-in-recovery-addiction-recovery-podcast/id1345665776 Facebook: www.facebook.com/friendsinrecoverypodcast/ Podbean:https://addictionrecovery.podbean.com/ Website: https://www.genesishouse.net/podcasts/friends-in-recovery/   #podcasts #mentalhealth #addiction #SUD #dualdiagnosis #recovery #addictionrecovery #addictiontreatment #rehab #genesishouse #genesishouserecovery #friendsinrecoverypodcast  #sweetsproductions #jerseyed #mikemiles #thepodfather #detox #mentalhealth #AA #NA #alcoholicsanonymous #narcoticsanonymous #longtermrecovery #recoveryispossible #wedorecover #theaddictionarypodcast #changeispossible #anxiety #fear #overcominganxiety #grief #depression 

Welcome back to the fuel your legacy podcast each week, we expose the faulty foundational mindsets of the past and rebuild a newer, stronger foundation essential in creating your meaningful legacy. We've got a lot of work to do. So let's get started. As much as you like this podcast, I'm certain that you're going to love the book that I just released on Amazon, fuel your legacy, the nine pillars to build a meaningful legacy. I wrote this to share with you the experiences that I had while I was identifying my identity, how I began to create my meaningful legacy and how you can create yours. You're going to find this book on kindle amazon and as always on my website, Samknickerbocker.com.I got a question for you. I'd love to heargo for so I was in one of your podcasts and it's you can only book the nine pillars of actually building meaningful legacy. Okay, so this is a book but you said something in that podcast about you were struggling with your identity.True talk to me about about struggling with my dad. Yeah, yeah. So where was the words?Okay, so I love this one turned on you. So my identity I so I had she had to go back to who my identity what what my identity is now is very similar to what it always has been from before so zero to four years old. I peg that for I don't actually know what age I was. But I was in between four and six. I'm fairly common. I was in between four and six, but seven to 11 kids I didn't really know or honestly I don't remember ever. Anybody feeling. I don't remember feeling love or attention or even real, beyond like bossing me around recognition that I was alive. That sounds terrible. And I'm not condemning anybody. That was my perception of what was going on. Okay, but I have an identity. I do remember not feeling valued and So my identity struggled. And then I went to my grandpa's house, we were taking a trip to the dump. We're driving home with little Ford Ranger pickup red Ford Ranger pickup windows down radio on our driving home. It's just him and I. And he reached over turns on the radio, puts his hand on my knee and says, Sam, you have a voice that's very pleasant to listen to. If you could be a leader one day, maybe even on the radio. And for whatever reason, I again, I don't know how old I was, but for whatever reason, internally, like there's a part of me that feels like I internally knew what it meant to have a radio voice and I was like, I'm better looking than that. I kind of took offense to it initially. Because I was like, what, but also, that was the first time I felt somebody loved me cared about me had recognized a gift inside of me. And so my whole lifethat's Since in my whole life but growing up, I had this identity of a leader that I was a leader and that people have a commanding voice and that people are gonna listen to me. So to produce one degree or another, I developed my voice into that presence. Along the way, though, it kind of got lost because I thought that I was protecting my family. When I had taken my mom, she was a stand pusher in the house, and I became the enforcer in the house. And so in my mind, I was protecting my family from greater abuse. And in their mind, I had become the abuser. And they were just describing me as they were as my mom. And so my identity wasn't really in question there was what came out was that how other people viewed me and my identity were a misalignment. And that's huge because so you can't see this on screen. But I have a viewer to draw this out. I'll explain to you I have a building that I now coach people on, and that is the bottom level is your legacy to answer this question, how do I want to be remembered into it? Two years from now, I want to be remembered as a leader, I want to be remembered as somebody who changes lives for the better helps them overcome anxiety, depression, suicide, domestic violence, have the confidence to get out of that. And second is your core values. So you have your, your legacy, how you want to be remembered, then you have your core values, and you could switch those around if you want to. I just think legacy for my structure makes sense. So you have your, like, I'm building like a Greek building here, just so you know. So you can draw it out, right? So I have legacy core values. My core values are candor, integrity, and gratitude. Be just insanely happy about whatever's going on in life and accept it as it is love it. And share love integrity, do what you say you're going to do when you say you're gonna do it. The reality about integrity. I'm going to quote Lewis house here and I love his concept here. It's like a straight line integrity is a straight line. Nobody has perfect integrity. Okay, nobody has perfect integrity. My objective is to cross that line as as often as possible. Okay. don't profess to be perfect or have perfect integrity. My goal is to cross the line of integrity as well as frequently as possible. Okay? So you're not so far off of one side. Yeah. So I'm not like way out of integrity somewhere. Like if I, if I screw up, let's get back online. And let's admit that I screwed up, you know. But the fact is, while I screwed up, I was out of integrity. That's one of my core values. So. So that's my commitment there with integrity and candor, I just say whatever the heck I want to say. And if you don't like it, I'm confident as coming from a position of love. Now, if you feel differently, that's unfortunate. Let's talk about it. I'm never here to hurt you. But I'm definitely here to speak and say, say my perspective. I'm not even saying my perspectives, right. But if I feel like somebody's limiting what I can say, then I don't feel in integrity. So then this is in misalignment. So I'm building my legacy of how I want to be remembered. I have my core values, then I have fulfillment, what really fulfills Sam and that's an important thing. I actually just came out with another journal talking about It's called the fulfillment journal. And in it you write down what are your three main objectives for the day? What are you grateful for? And then how are you going to experience fulfillment today? And who are you going to serve? And then at the end of the day, you journal about how did you experience fulfillment that day, maybe it was different than you thought. But again, my goal is to help you become a creator. So I hope they're my goal is that they're similar. And then the next section is in the future. How will you experience more fulfillment? Right, so you're projecting more positivity in the future, not saying that your fulfillment that you experienced was not good enough. It was it was fantastic, and how can I make it better in the future? So you're again reprogramming or hypnotizing, whatever you want to say, you're doing that to yourself? So that's fulfillment. fulfillment is what everybody's searching for happiness, fulfillment, peace, you can use a lot of different words to describe it. For me, it's fulfillment. Okay. And then you have it. That's the three layers. Then you have your pillars of your thing, your pillars, our faith. fitness, finance and fun in each of those areas, how do you experience fulfillment? And how are you actively engaged in those and, and these are building up my identity. So this, this is going somewhere. So, each of these pillars in that fulfillment journal, I have you write for 10 minutes, don't take your pen off the page. I mean, not saying you have to use cursor, you can take around the page, but write for 10 minutes on each of those sections, what fulfills you that month? And then scheduling how you're going to experience fulfillment on a daily basis. But are those that are those goals? And those ways? Who fulfilment are they in alignment with your how you want to be remembered? Are they in alignment with your core values? Are they in alignment with how you experience fulfillment? If they are great? If they're not, then you're out of alignment with your identity, in my perspective, my coaching, okay, and I want you to be living in more of your truth in alignment. Now, the question is, how do you test if you're in alignment?Based on a feeling I guess, right You think but no. Because what's the again, the in the chi as I'm the ultimate goal is fulfillment, okay? But also there's a legacy. So in a chasm, you start in one place, you go up to the ultimate important thing, and then you go back out to a similar thing in the chasms. So like in Christ, you have Christ repentance, or you have faith, repentance, baptism, or whatever, and then Christ and then what does baptism create in your life? What changes state change does it create? What does repentance do? And why should we have faith? Right? So it kind of goes out back into the same principle? Well, the way you test if your leg if you're actually living your legacy is if people see that you're actually living your legacy. Right? If there's there has to be some level of accountability. somebody's calling you calling you and saying, Hey, what did you accomplish? Where are you going? Are you getting closer to your legacy or not? Right? And so the the capstone of this building is what are my results? How our lives actually being changed, and how am I being perceived in the world? Because you can't live your life one way and say, Oh, my legacy is going to be this charitable person, but you're living a life of non charity, you're living a life of selfishness. But when you die, you hope people remember this selfless charitable person. It's out of alignment. So, so this is my building that I built for people and help them walk through the steps to build for me, I had to do that with first identifying how do I want to be remembered? And second, who am I? What am my core values more than anything? To do that really effectively, you have to let go of your ego, you have to let go of judgment. You have to let go of everybody, your wife, your kids or like, family is not the most important thing to you. But family's important to me. I'm not saying family's not important. But candor, integrity, and gratitude, way more important than family to me. They don't have to be that to you. But like, for me, you have to be willing to say no judgement. I don't care. Like if you think that the fact that God's not more important to me than me being able to be honest with myself. Like, I don't care what you think about that, I have to be able to get to that point where I can be honest with what my core values are. And I have to be honest with what actually fulfills me, and not somebody else's perspective, what should fulfill me if you're fulfilled by video games, and your wife thinks that you should be fulfilled by spending time with her. If you put spending time with her fulfills you, but inside you know, it doesn't fulfill you, then you're being a liar. You're you can't be in alignment in that situation. So for me, being brutally honest with myself in those scenarios was important. So let me get back to the story. I'm sitting there with my brother, while he's wrestled me down to the ground at this point, because he heard me controlling one last sentence What happened? So he came in wrestle me down and said, after he, after I stopped fighting, and he had helped me down there for long enough. And he said, Look, Sam, this is how people feel. This is their experience of you. They feel this emotionally and energetically restricted when you walk into a room. While he's holding me to where I can't physically move now, so what? I'm your Savior, I'm helping you I'm doing right because my identity was so one of love and service, and now it's being rejected. The heck this isn't right. And that, but as I started to see the effects of what I had done, I completely changed like that one experience completely changed the way I operate in the world entirely. What's interesting is, even though it took me I mean, years of kind of oppressive leadership in my house, I would say within months of every time I asked somebody to do something, I said, Look, I want one. Well, a few things. One, I'm not going to ask you to do something that doesn't need to be done. Fair enough. I know I'd be out right? Because nobody believes you right after you're an oppressor. Nobody believes you're a nice guy. Just FYI, change doesn't happen overnight might happen inside of you, but other people actually it used to change. So so one moment ask you to do something that doesn't need to be done. If I asked you to do it, you can say, No, I won't beat you up, I won't force you to do it. If you say no to me, okay, I need you to know that they didn't believe me the first little bit, but after they had some experience, then they believe me. And and three, if if I asked you to do something, and you say, No, I will get up immediately and go do it. Because I'm only asking you to do it because it needs to be done.So again, I had to realign with myself with leadership with understanding what I like, what role I was playing, and getting back to my identity as a leader. And when I did that, it took a few months, but then, rather than me having to ask people to do stuff all the time, they would volunteer. They would say, I can do this right, because it changed the motivation from fear to love. And I believe identity is love. I don't care who you are. I don't generally say this, but because I think it's important for you to identify Find yourself. But I believe that everybody's identity is love. God is love. Okay, she believed the scriptures taken literally for a second. God is love. We are God, we are all in one, he's in us, we're in Him, we are all love, the very act of anything short of love towards yourself or someone else is a breaching of that, that identity and you no longer get to live in love. And so when I change that, I just love people and there was a lot more compassionate, more understanding. So that's why I say my identity is the fuel your legacy nine pillars to build a meaningful legacy. It goes through the nine pillars, which one is like haters, your supporters, your team, your country, your faith, all these different nine them, I forget what they are, but they're just journaling aspect. So there's some anecdotal information there but then the journaling aspect These three questions. Who are those people? Who are your haters? Who are the people who love you? Who are the people who support you? Who are your team? Right? Who are they? How will their life be better? If you live in alignment to your true self? that's crucial, especially when you're talking about your haters, because they're like, why would I want to benefit them? Because they are part of you. If you are all love, you ship you helping them heal themselves is ultimately you helping heal you. If you're part of love, that's my perspective. And so, how is your life gonna be better? And then what can you do today to move towards that ideal? It's something you do multiple times, not like you do it once and you're done. It's a constant meditation of how, how will my actions affect other people for the better if I choose to live in alignment with myself? Rather than focusing on all the things they're going to say that about me? How is this going to benefit them if I can get Give them the confidence. Hey, look, I know Sam, I know he's not perfect. I know, he sometimes doubts himself, but he went and accomplished this great thing. I probably could do it too, right? That's the best case scenario of you being a leader and sticking your head up, and doing something that's unpopular, that people aren't going to like or whatever. And they're gonna like it because they don't believe that they can do it. And the more that they don't believe that they can do it, the more reason you have to go show them that they can, from a place of love and compassion, to help them believe in themselves, not to prove them wrong, not to rub it in their note their face or whatever. It's the motivation of, if I can do this, then you can do it. So even though you don't believe in me, that's fine. I'm going to go show you that as possible so that you can believe in yourself a little bit more. Wow. And all that started because when you were four to six, somebody put their hand on your knee and said you can become you have a good voice, you're gonna voice in your ear later and I was committed. I'm gonna be a public speaker. I'm gonna be a public speaker. And along the way, guess what people told me No, that's terrible. Like, you're always gonna be on the road, your family won't be with you. They took all the things in the book. And so that's why I switched from being a public speaker to a one on one speaker and psychology. And then I was like, I don't really like this as much. I want to be a public speaker, because there's a little bit thing about Sam. He does have an ego, and he does like being recognized. And he does love hearing people share his name. It's great. And I'm not ashamed of it. You know, like, I wish that you could experience the same joy. I feel up on the stage, right? So I'm not ashamed of who I am. There's an aspect of me that likes that. And so, and I'm okay with it. It's not this. I don't think it's purely a self aggrandizing thing. But it sure is awesome. And until you do it, you won't ever know how awesome it is. So don't knock it till you try it.I've been on stage in like six weeks now. And it's like,I know it's weird. Yeah, I gotta entertain somebody. Yeah. So says that's a great question. Thanks for asking. I don't know that I could share it. Share that onpodcast for.Thanks for joining us. If what you heard today resonates with you please like, comment and share on social media tag me and if you do give me a shout out I'll give you a shout out on the next episode. Thanks to all those who've left a review. It helps spread the message of what it takes to build a legacy that lasts and we'll catch you next time on fuel your legacy.

On the thirteenth installment of our See It to Be It podcast series, Amy C. Waninger speaks with Traci Adedeji, the AIO program lead at AIPSO and president elect of the Rhode Island Chapter of the CPCU Society, in a wide-ranging interview about her unique role, her unconventional journey into the insurance industry, and so much more. Traci espouses the importance of establishing mentoring relationships at work and shares some advice on how to foster a very strong professional network on LinkedIn. Check the links in the show notes to connect with her and find out more about the CPCU Society!Connect with Traci on LinkedIn.http://bit.ly/2T9giYRFind out more about the CPCU Society on their website. They're also on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. Links in order, beginning with their website:https://bit.ly/3cWpbh7https://bit.ly/3giUQeGhttps://bit.ly/2WUwfFuhttps://bit.ly/3e6nON4Find out how the CDC suggests you wash your hands by clicking here or below.https://bit.ly/2Ug4l5KHelp food banks respond to COVID-19. Learn more at FeedingAmerica.org:https://bit.ly/2WD73UkCheck out our website.https://bit.ly/living-corporateTRANSCRIPTZach: What's up, y'all? It's Zach Nunn. Now, listen here. Y'all know what we're trying to do. We're trying to build, inspire, encourage, empower, all on a platform that affirms black and brown experiences in corporate America. And it's interesting because as I came up just kind of coming into myself as a professional, I didn't see a lot of people that looked like me in consulting. I didn't see a lot of people that looked like me in human resources either. But when I would come across someone who looked like me doing something I wanted to do, it gave me encouragement. It gave me a stronger sense of hope that I could do it too, and so it's with that that we're really excited to talk to y'all about and bring you another entry, actually, into our See It to Be It series. So the next thing you're gonna hear is an interview between Amy C. Waninger, a guest on the show, a member of the team, and the author of Network Beyond Bias, and a leader who just happens to be an ethnic minority. In fact, yo, Sound Man, give me some air horns right HERE for my leaders. [he complies] Yo, and give me some more air horns right HERE [he complies again] for the See It to Be It series. So catch y'all next time. I know you're gonna enjoy this. Peace.Amy: Hi, Traci. Thank you so much for joining me today.Traci: Oh, it's my pleasure. I'm honored that you asked me to join you.Amy: Well, I am excited, because you and I have worked together before on committees and projects, but never in the same company, although we are at least in part in the same industry, in the insurance industry. And so I was wondering if you could tell me just a little bit--because your job title is program manager, but a lot of people who are not in a project management space or in a corporate space with a lot of projects may not understand what a program manager does, so can we just start there with kind of what is that job?Traci: Okay. So technically it's "program lead." I work for AIPSO, which is not an insurance company, but we provide services to the insurance industry. So the easiest example that I can offer for what we do would be let's say that in the state of Rhode Island, most--every state actually has a mechanism to handle what's called residual market business for automobile insurance, because in just about every state you have to have automobile insurance to be able to drive. So what happens is that, you know, if Allstate writes 40% of all of the standard automobile business in a state, the state will say, "Well, you also have to write 40% of the residual market business in that state," and--Amy: And the residual market is typically, like, really high-risk drivers that couldn't get insurance other ways, right?Traci: Essentially--exactly, people who are unable to get insurance through the standard market for a variety of reasons. So what Allstate might say is, "We know we have to write this business, but we really don't want to program our systems to handle this business. We don't want to hire people to handle this business that's underwritten and processed a little bit differently than our standard business, so what we're gonna do is we're gonna hire AIPSO or a company like AIPSO to handle it on our behalf." So that's probably the cleanest example I can give of what we do. There's some variations on the ways those different mechanisms work, but that's probably the clearest example. As the program lead, my responsibility is a little bit of underwriting, a little bit of program or project work. If we have to implement changes in the system, I'd be involved in the business requirements and working with the technical folks to make sure that our systems can accomodate what it is that we need to do from an underwriting and processing perspective.Amy: Thank you for that. I appreciate that. So how did you get involved in the insurance industry? Because I'm guessing, based on all of the people I've talked to in the insurance industry, that when you were 5 years old and, you know, you went to a family event and Grandma said, "And Traci, what do you want to be when you grow up?" You probably didn't say, "I want to be an insurance program lead." [both laugh]Traci: You are absolutely correct, although I do love insurance so much that I think we have to get to a point where, especially little brown boys and girls say, "We want to work in insurance." I was--I'm 54 years old. I'll be 55 in April. And when I was 16 years old, I was a teen mom, and when I was 17 years old I had another baby. So here I am, two children, college dropout, and my parents said, "You gotta get a job. You gotta do something to take care of your babies." So I got a job working at an insurance agency as a file clerk, and one day everybody was busy, the phone rang, I answered the phone, and it was a very simple call that I was able to answer because I had been listening to the people who were customer service representatives, so I just handled the call. I got promoted to customer service [?], and this was in 1984, and just worked my way up. I went from working on the agency side of the business to the company side of the business, as an assistant underwriter to an underwriter to an underwriting manager in different companies around the New York City area. In 2007, I thought I was in love, [laughs] and actually left the industry and moved from the New York City area to Rochester, New York. That relationship and the business that we were trying to build together in a different industry didn't work out, and I had to get a job, and insurance was all I knew at that point, 'cause at that point I had worked in the industry for over 20 years. So I came to Amica in Rochester, moved to Rhode Island, and, you know, Amica is an amazing place to work. I was very happy working there, but I got a call one day from a recruiter--that's what happens when, you know, people have your information out there when you're networking, and the gentleman said, "I've got this position I'm trying to fill. Do you know anyone who would be interested?" And when I looked at it, it looked like it was the perfect storm of everything that I'd learned to do in all of the different positions that I'd had in insurance. So I went on to interview and I said to myself, "Okay, I really don't want to leave Amica [?], but, you know, this is a really cool opportunity." So I had a number in my mind. I said, "Okay, if they come back at that number, that's gonna be the universe telling me that this job is for me." I interviewed on a Wednesday, and on Friday I got an offer at the exact number that I had in my mind.Amy: That's amazing. So I always tell people, "When a recruiter calls, answer, because you never know what's waiting on the other side of the phone for you," and if not for you, then someone that you know, right? You may think, "Oh, I have no interest in that whatsoever, but I know someone," and if you can connect those two people, you've just created something amazing for someone else.Traci: Exactly, which was also the relationship with that recruiter, because if you then get to the point where you legitimately are looking for a position, they're gonna remember how you helped them out when they were trying to place folks and they're gonna do their best for you.Amy: Absolutely. And sometimes you even get a little referral bonus out of it if you--[both laugh] if you, you know, send them to somebody that they can place. So I've had that work out for me too. I was never expecting it, but when it happened it was always nice. So you've already told me about the different types of positions that you've held in the industry, but, you know, you came into this industry kind of by chance, right? You just happened to get a job at an agency. What has been the biggest surprise to you about working in insurance that you didn't realize as someone from outside?Traci: This is something that I've known for a while, but I think the thing that solidfied my interest in insurance and was my "a-ha" moment was when I started studying insurance, when I started studying--I actually started studying for my CPCU, which is, as you know, a professional designation in the industry. I started studying for my designation in 1992, and in studying insurance I came to have an appreciation for first of all how important insurance is, but also how diverse the industry is. Pretty much any discipline that you would be interested in studying, there is a job for you in the insurance industry, and that is I think the coolest thing about insurance.Amy: Yeah, I had a similar experience. So I came into the insurance industry as an IT professional. That was my background. No insurance background whatsoever, but I just happened to be a consultant that got placed at an insurance company, and when I then later got hired by the insurance company, somebody told me about the CPCU designation, which--it stands for Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter. It's a professional designation that requires 8 courses to complete. You have to pass some tests, which thank goodness they're multiple choice now. They used to be blue book.Traci: [laughs] Yeah, I remember the books.Amy: No, thank you. I wouldn't have done it. I would've been too scared. But anyway, I started studying because, you know, I wanted to prove myself in this industry, and I wanted to frankly get the bonus that came with getting the designation that my employer offered at that time, and I was amazed by the scope of the insurance industry and the mission of the insurance industry, and when people ask me "Why do you love insurance?" And, you know, my focus of my company is not insurance-specific, although maybe it will be someday, but I think insurance is so fascinating because it does two things. It makes all economic investment possible. There's no part of the economy that insurance is not affected by or that it affects, right? I mean, every single transaction that happens is backed somewhere by an insurer. And the other thing we do in the insurance industry is we're there when people need us most. I mean, on somebody's worst day, we're there to help in, you know, ways that we can to make them whole and get them back on their feet, and I can't even imagine a more meaningful industry than that. So if somebody who has maybe never considered the insurance industry before and wants to learn more about the kinds of jobs available and how to get in--you know, how to kind of break into this industry, where would you recommend that they go?Traci: I would recommend that they get in touch with the local chapter of CPCU. I would also recommend that they get in touch with professional insurance agents and brokers, because they have professional organizations. Depending on where they are in their career, I would, you know, for example, if they're a high school or college student who's interested in the industry, I would look at internships with companies, with insurance companies. So those would be my suggestions. I do also know that through professional organizations, those of us who are invested enough in the industry and in our careers to be a part of these organizations have a tendency to be pretty generous people, so it would be pretty easy to even get a one-on-one informal, or even formal, mentoring relationship with someone who is in the industry that could offer some guidance.Amy: That's a great idea, and I know that there are a number of formal programs, but like you said, LinkedIn is a great way to just connect with someone if you have a target company in mind and you want to learn more about it. Most people are open to a phone call or at least exchanging emails and, you know, seeing what they can do to help. That is true. So, you know, the insurance industry has a reputation--and I won't say whether I feel that this is deserved or not, and you know exactly where I'm going--but the insurance industry has this reputation for being stale, pale, and male, and it's all a bunch of old white men, and that's it, right? And I know a lot of different industries suffer from this stigma, but for people who are maybe not older or white or men, what resources have you found that can help them kind of find their place in the industry, feel connected to others, feel a sense of community so that we can retain that talent in this industry and not lose it to somebody else?Traci: For me, I think back to a company that I worked for in 1990, and that was where I really got my start as an insurance professional and learned the most about the industry, but it's also where I recognized that at that particular company, in 1990, the early '90s, if I wasn't a white man with a degree from the right school, there was a very distinct feeling on how far I was going to progress in my career, and that was why I ended up leaving the company. I think that we--you know, it's great to join organizations, but I'm a grassroots kind of chick. I think that it is important to give back to each other, whether it's women, whether it's people of color. It's, like, whatever commonality you have with someone, if you see someone that's struggling or you see someone who's where you were previously in your career, you have a responsibility to reach out to that person and to offer them guidance if they're receptive to it. I'm the type of person that I have no qualms about reaching out to other women, to women of color, to just form those informal mentoring relationships, even if it's just "Let's have lunch once a month." There's people I don't even work with anymore. It just might be, like, an email or a LinkedIn message every now and then. So I think there's great value in forming those types of relationships. Yes, it's professional, but I think that if it's sort of a little more casual where you bond with that person and feel comfortable speaking with them, they're gonna be able to really guide you in a meaningful way.Amy: So that leads me right into my next question, which is I've noticed about you that you have a very strong professional network. I mean, you know everybody it seems like. [both laugh] And not all the same kind of people. Like, you really know people up and down the hierarchy. You know people across the industry, and when we were together at a conference last year I was just so impressed by the span of the network that you have, and so I was wondering what's your approach or what are your tips to networking and how do you stay connected with so many people with such limited time?Traci: LinkedIn makes it easy, because I can be on my computer at, I don't know, 2:00 in the morning when I wake up and can't sleep, and I can pop in and see what people have posted. I don't even have to tell you I absolutely adore your content, and every single thing you post I read and I share, you know, because I just find a lot of value in what you post, and I do the same for other people who are a part of my network. As far as I guess connecting with people, my advice would be ask. It's simply to ask. There's a woman who worked at a previous company, and she was pretty high up, you know, in the food chain if you will, and we didn't really--I mean, we had casually and in passing at work spoke, but it's not like we had a relationship. She ended up leaving the company, and I had no qualms about sending her a connection request on LinkedIn. I said, "Well, the worst that could happen is that she won't accept it, and if she says no I'm no worse off than I was before." I think that everyone has something to offer, regardless of their discipline, regardless of their position or title. I think that a lot of times we don't make those connections because we pre-judge and make assumptions. So I think that you just ask. Amy: That's good advice: So I have a friend in the speaking industry who says, "Every time you ask you risk getting a yes," and I really like that, and so I tried to kind of shore up my nerve to ask more, because I would not mind risking getting a yes.Traci: Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, I tell people this. I am by nature a pretty shy and reserved person. I grew up as the kid who got teased a lot in school and, you know, that whole thing, so not a lot of self-confidence in my younger years, but when you get to a point where you've got kids to feed and you recognize that the higher you achieve in your career the more money you're gonna make, you kind of put that to the side, you put your game face on, and you make what magic happen you need to make happen, and what happens is that as you practice that, even if you say to yourself "I'm gonna try to connect with one new person this week at work," "I'm gonna try to make a connection with one person who I've not had a connection with previously." The more you do it the more comfortable it becomes and the more confident you are in doing it.Amy: That is absolutely true, and I think a lot of people see networking as something very fake and forced and inauthentic, and they don't feel good about it, right? It kind of leaves, like, an icky, like, feeling about it, and when you approach it from, you know, almost gamifying it--I've done that in the past, right? "I'm gonna meet three people today. I'm gonna help three people with something," whether it's, you know, I'm gonna carry somebody's bag or I'm gonna hold open a door and say hello. Like, something, and so I think sometimes just kind of reframing how we think about networking can make a huge difference in our behaviors and our attitudes and ultimately in our results.Traci: Right. You actually said something that I think is very important, that networking and connecting with people if you treat it as "What can you do for that person?" versus "What can I get from that person?" Because people know when you're being fake. People know when you, you know, just have your hand out or you're looking for something, but we need to first of all not undervalue ourselves and recognize that we each bring something unique, but there's only one me. Nobody else brings exactly what I bring in this combination, and we have to recognize that that has value and that other people will see that value, and if we focus on "What can we offer others, even if it's a small kindness?" You know, those things, the universe will bring those things back to you.Amy: Absolutely. So I know that in addition to your day job you also volunteer with the CPCU Society's diversity and inclusion committee, and I know what a time commitment that is because I'm on the committee as well, but can you tell me how and why you got involved?Traci: I got involved because I was asked. [?]. I was new to Rhode Island, and I actually got--I'm on the board of the local chapter [?], and I was moving to Rhode Island. I said, "I don't know anyone. I want to, you know, meet folks, so joining this organization would be a great way to make friends and immerse myself even more deeply in my industry." So my request to volunteer resulted in me being asked to be on the board, and my relationship with David resulted in him asking if I was interested in being on the diversity committee. And it's a lot of work, but I think that it is important. I think the idea of diversity and inclusion has evolved so much over the years. When a lot of people hear diversity, you know, they think racial diversity, they think gender diversity, but there are so many other types of diversity, and it really I think is about making sure that there are opportunities for everyone, but I think it's also toward being a catalyst for the mindset that needs to happen so that opportunities are there for everyone automatically. We don't have to say, you know, "Oh, we have to go out and make sure that we have a person of color," there's a person of color because we just organically created a culture and a society with people of color in our community, so of course they're gonna have a role in our company, in our organization.Amy: Absolutely. And I tell people, "If you look around and you don't see someone's group represented, it's because you've got work to do to make people feel welcome and make people feel comfortable there." The responsibility is not on others to seek you out, right? And so, you know, I'm thrilled to be a part of the diversity and inclusion committee because I see that what's coming for us in terms of our talent, right, we have so many people on the verge of retirement in the insurance industry, and we just don't have the groundswell of interest among people, you know, that we need to replace all of that knowledge and all of that talent, and so I think, you know, we're gonna have to get beyond the "certain people from certain schools" and, you know, really reach out broadly and show people what we've got and why we're such a good place to have a career.Traci: Right. I think it's about building the excitement about the industry. You know, insurance isn't sexy to most people, and I think that, you know, the work that we do, particularly with the CPCU Society and the diversity and inclusion committee, is to educate the public about the excitement. Like, it's kind of our job to get them excited about insurance and to show them what next level opportunities there are. It's not just sitting behind a desk in a blue suit and white shirt and red tie. [both laugh]Amy: Absolutely true. So I wanted to ask you too about role models. Do you have any professional role models, and if so, what about them inspires you? Traci: So there's a woman--the woman that I mentioned that used to work with me, and I consider her a role model. So a few things about her that resonated with me... first of all, she's very tall like I am. [laughs] And that's something that it took a lot of years for me to overcome, because there's a tendency when you're quite tall to not want to intimidate people, so you tend to kind of--you slump a little, you try to make yourself small. So it takes a courage to just be, to stand up and just be who you are and recognize that you're putting that in your mind about, you know, your stature intimidates people, but she had such a grace about her and just a way of connecting with people. I don't know. She just had influence. She had such presence and influence, and that is something that I admire greatly and something that I work toward emulating.Amy: That's wonderful. Thank you for sharing that. So I hear men a lot of times will talk about "tall privilege," right? So if you're a tall man, and the statistics bear this out, tall men make more money than short men. They get promoted to higher positions. Like, we revere tall men in our society. Tall women have a different set of characteristics ascribed to them, and I am--I am not blessed with height. I'm only 5'3", but I can--you know, I can imagine how that might play out and how that might affect the way you show up. And, you know, if you're trying to make yourself smaller physically, you're probably also trying to minimize your presence in a room and minimize your contribution and not call attention to yourself and not let the best of you thrive in an environment. Traci: Actually it's interesting, 'cause I had a conversation with someone probably about six weeks ago about the idea that as a very tall not petite woman of color, if I am annoyed at work or if I feel very passionately about something, I feel that I don't have the luxury of being as vocal as someone who is not of my stature and my pigmentation, because it's perceived differently. Amy: If you're vocal about a frustration, I would imagine that the word that comes back to you is "angry" or "aggressive." If I get upset about something, if I'm frustrated and I express my frustration, I'm [BLEEP], right? I'm not angry 'cause I'm white and I'm not aggressive 'cause I'm short, but I'm [BLEEP] or I'm overreacting or I'm sensitive, right? And so I think that we all kind of operate in these constraints of words that are going to be used to describe us to kind of keep us in check, 'cause I don't like it when people say that I'm being sensitive. It's like, "No, I'm not being sensitive. You're being a jerk." But--[both laugh] that's not on me. So I can understand how that would be a struggle. So what advice do you have for young people of color in navigating those kinds of interactions? Because you want people to be, I'm guessing--I mean, we want people to show up authentically, right, but we don't want to lay a trap for people who the moment they speak up and advocate for themselves they get labeled in a way that's damaging to their careers.Traci: I can tell you what's worked for me. I think--to your point, it is important that you be who you are. So I'm 5'10". I'm gonna wear my four-inch heels because that's what I want to wear. If I think that something is not right, I am going to speak up about it. What I try to do is--and I'm just gonna say it, because I don't want to suggest that anyone be manipulative, but in a business setting, okay, what I do is I say to myself, "What is it that I want to get out of this exchange?" And, you know, know who my audience is and know what I need to say and how I need to say it to get what I need out of this interaction. You know, and I'm not talking about things where, like, I don't know, I'm being discriminated against or harassed or something like that, 'cause that's a whole different--and that's, thank God, never happened to me to my knowledge, but that's a whole other kind of conversation, but just an every day--you know, your boss has said something that you didn't like, or you've been assigned something that you don't think you should have to do or something to that affect. I think that it's important to always conduct yourself professionally. I think it's also important to separate your feelings from what the situation is, because just like the other person has their biases and this whole set of ideas and backgrounds that's influencing their behavior, so do we, and we have to recognize, like, the things that we're sensitive about. We have to recognize how we might have contributed to that situation, and we need to present our case in a constructive way. And it's interesting, because I have a 25-year-old daughter who's going through this at work right now, and what I've encouraged her to do is, you know, write down what you want to say. Ask your boss for a meeting, and even if you need to have that piece of paper in front of you, make your point. You know, if you feel a certain way, rather than saying, "You, you, you, you, you make me feel, you did, you, you, you," I would turn that around and say, "When you say or do, I perceive it as," because what you're then doing is you're taking ownership of your feelings and you're very clearly drawing that path from "This is what happened, this is how I felt, and this is how I responded to it. What are we gonna do now to fix it?"Amy: Mm-hmm. And so really what you're describing is emotional intelligence, and, you know, in my experience I've found that I am the most emotionally intelligent when I am the least represented in the room, and I am probably the least emotionally intelligent when I am most represented in the room, and so I try--once I recognized that about myself, I try very hard to think about the dynamics of a meeting or the dynamics of a conversation and "Do I need to kind of practice some of those skills because I'm dominating and maybe running over someone who doesn't feel safe to speak up with me?" Right? And so I think that if we can all do our part, right, to recognize when maybe we've got a little bit more influence or a little bit more social power and kind of back off a little bit and make some space.Traci: Yeah, and there's actually power in being able to do that I think, right? I think that when your peers see you navigate let's say a contentious situation, you know, if everybody's on 15 on a scale of 1 to 10 and you're on maybe 7 and bring everybody down to where it can be resolved, then people are gonna look at you as a change agent, if you will. So I just think that that's powerful.Amy: Yeah, absolutely. And that's leadership, right? Leadership is getting everybody to a better place together. So no, I think that's great. In the time that we have left, I'd like to ask you to finish my sentence. First is "I feel included when ______."Traci: I feel included when I am able to express myself.Amy: Oh, I like that. And then the second part is "When I feel included, I ______."Traci: When I feel included, I'm able to include others.Amy: I love that. I love having people answer this, because everybody answers differently, and it's always powerful. So Traci feels included when she's allowed to express herself, and when she feels included, she is able to include others, and I don't know that there's anything more powerful than that, to be able to widen that circle and bring others in. So that's fantastic. Traci, thank you so much for your time today.Traci: Oh, it was my pleasure. I appreciate you so much.Amy: Oh, thank you very much.

Welcome back to the fuel your legacy podcast each week we expose the faulty foundational mindsets of the past and rebuild the newer, stronger foundation essential in creating your meaningful legacy. We've got a lot of work to do. So let's get started.As much as you like this podcast, I'm certain that you're going to love the book that I just released on Amazon, fuel your legacy, the nine pillars to build a meaningful legacy. I wrote this to share with you the experiences that I had while I was identifying my identity, how I began to create my meaningful legacy and how you can create yours. You're gonna find this book on Kindle, Amazon and as always on my website, Sam Knickerbocker calm.Welcome back to do your legacy. today. We have a great friend of mine on Sean Christiansen and I actually met him at an event that I was speaking at and I hadbeen in contact with a few different people who have done similar things hypnosis, and neuro linguistic programming I've actually participated in as a client and learned how to do certain levels of it for for my clients in that. So when Imet him, I was like, I want to one, I have them on my podcast because we need more hypnotists on our podcast, but to want to know, kind of the ins and outs there. So we've met a few times, and I'm just excited to have bring him now to you. So you can share one of the benefits, how this has helped him and kind of where he sees this going for his life and then the future and how it's connected to his latency. Fair enough. Sure. Yeah. Sounds good. Awesome. Well, with that, john, go ahead and share with us your history and feel free to take as long as you need, right. Short of don't take don't take forever actually. But yeah, take take some time and let us know exactly. The storyline of how you came to where you are and became who you are today. Okay, cool. SoSo, I guess it starts back in high school when I was studying psychology in high school, I was studying at Dixie High School at St. George. And I was studying hypnosis, studied psychology. And in one of the classes, we had hypnotist, come to our class. And he said, you can cut therapy into a third of the time, because you get to the root of the problem. I thought, Oh my gosh, that's so cool. That's what I want to do. So I started studying hypnosis and everything that I read was right. He said that you can get through the problems. At the time. I thought that's what I that's definitely what I want to do. So I became a hypnotherapist. First out of high school. I was reading as many books as I could. And then I went to an academy up in Salt Lake called the academy for life management where I studied hypnotism and became a certified hypnotherapist, which is what we could call ourselves back at that time in 2003. It was illegal to call yourself a hypnotherapist. Now it's not unless you have a mental health certification. Anyway, so I went to school became certified, I opened up an office called the Alpine hypnosis center andHello, and I opened that in 2003. And I did that there until about 2017 I must say, back in 2004 I became a stage hypnotist. I started washing station with this and thought that is really cool. That's what I want to do. So I joined this hypnotist up in Salt Lake for a couple years, mentored under him, started doing my own shows. And then I rebranded myself as was called the hypno hick. So, that's kind of a fun, fun little thing. And so I've kept that name for for, gosh, 15 years now. So anyway, so yeah, I've I was, I've been hypnotic for a long time. And in the meantime of that, I suppose still was doing one on one sessions with clients and got really interested in forensics hypnosis, so I started studying forensics hypnosis got certified in that in 2014. I also became certified as an instructor for the National Guild of hypnotists, where I can certify other people to become hypnotist as well. So that's kind ofbackstory in the meantime of all of that I've always wanted to be a public speaker. So that's kind of what I'm doing now. That's my next goal in life is, is to start doing those and doing retreats and, and workshops and all that kind of stuff. That's incredible. So I'm curious what and because I also says psychology and I thinkit's fast it's just fascinating really that we bothhad a similar goal How can we do this faster? So when when I was going through a psychology school, I was like, this does not sound fun, like sitting there listening to people's problems over and over and over.Not resolving them what and it just that's what it seems like to me most therapists do. Don't take offense if you're a therapist. I'm not trying to brag on you. But that's just that's my experience. I am I think there's value there. I went to therapists for many years of my life and I think that there's nothing wrong with going to a therapist for that purpose. ButThere does come a point in time where you maybe want something more effective or to actually heal that trauma. Why do you think it is? Because most people are going to hear about hypnotherapy or hypnosis at some point during psychology classes as part of education. Why do you think some people will gravitate towards another be right now? I don't want to do that. If it's that much more effective, why is it not being more widely used? I think we will have a big fear about what hypnosis is, and a misconception of what it is and what it can do.I was actually talking to a master psychologist who is out of Salt Lake who's now a hypnotist. And what he was taught to do was, they have to diagnose the problem, right? That's their big job is okay, you're telling me your issues. I've got to diagnose something, because they work in this corporation where a psychiatrist cannot prescribe medication. And so now it says, Oh, this is going to take seven or 10 years to get over. Where hypnosis is not like that hypnosis is let's get you in. My goal is to help you go out and beyond.Your own for this one for three, four or five sessions, and we're done.So I think that there's just kind of that that old mentality of, Oh, this is going to take a long time you've been diagnosed with this issue so that we're gonna talk about it. As far as in class or in high school, I don't know why some people gravitate towards it. And some people don't I, I just want I just knew that's what I want to do. So there was there was no question. That's fascinating. So with this diagnosis, saying this is, I mean, there's so many layers deep here, and depends on how deep we want it to go. How political we want to go. Sure. I'm not saying we have to go all that all the way down the rabbit hole, but I think it's a good rabbit hole to at least acknowledge, and that isthe concept of diagnosis. So they're one of the things that I found in psychology that,again, don't take offense to these examples. These are super stereotypical, I understand that. But it's like a girl cop. Right? A female cop has something to prove that she's tough enough that she's able to do it in the military to a femaleleaders in the military, they've got something to prove that they can be just as good as a man in those roles. And in the, in the medical industry. For a long time, like, almost centuries, psychology was looked at as like quack medicine, like crack science, it wasn't actually science. And so, from my perspective, this is just my own education. And what I saw, there was this push inside of the psychologydepartments and field to push towards a more quote unquote, scientific based, they were diagnosed with this, this was the problem, right? Way of recording things so that they could be accepted by the grid, greater medical community, because they just weren't getting accepted. And so, to me, it seems like theif you're worried about being accepted as like a medical doctor and having the credentials not that, then it almost it lives.You in the ability to really use all of yourtools because only certain tools are looked at as effective from the medical journey perspective, especially when it comes to diagnosis, which then turns into psychiatry, which then turns into pharmaceuticals, which then turns into where the money is coming, which is whyif you want to get paid, I mean, I know a lot of psychologists don't get paid very much, because they don't get paid very much unless they have pharma behind them. That's right, this again, this is my experience.So you can crucify me online or whatever you want to do, but like this is it this is my belief system from what I studied. I was I went to school for psychology to sound like I didn't participate to one degree or another in this. This is just was my observation and ultimately why I left because I wanted to find out how do I help somebody faster thanthis diagnosis. Now you have a DD and you're ruined for the rest of your life like nowRight, what percentage of the population doesn't have a DD? What's wrong with it? It's a Okay, how can we use that to benefit a person and look at it as a gift rather than not? That's my perspective. But I found after going through psychology, neuro psychology, biochemistry, and which I want to get into some levels of that when it comes to like, why hypnosis works, but down to Sociology, for me, I found the most effective way to shortcut somebody so was to not have it become a problem and teach them how money works. Because, statistically, most of the social issues that therapists are seeing their clients for our result of lack of money, or our co existence in a home where there's lack of money, understanding how money works, it's a cause but that's hard to prove. But high correlation, high correlation between the two. And so that's why I'm in finance. You You have the same objective, how do we shortcut this successful healing of this, and you went into hypnosis and there wereWhat are your thoughts though on on from that perspective, why they why they're pushing for diagnosis. I think it's just how it's been done forever since Freud is like we, we just want to do this. And so they're just following the tradition. That's the way grandfather and great grandfather and everybody else before then did it. So that's all they really know. Except for I believe that the insurance companies and the pharmaceuticals are working together to make this all happen. Soso so again, from my perspective, again, going to the psychologists that I went to therapists, isn't kind of the objective, that this is the irony that I find in the industry, and it probably happens in my life all the time. So you can call me out on as well, but like the objective of a good therapist, from my perspective, okay, I can use this word a lot in the sentence. From my perspective, the objective of the therapist is to help me see a new perspective. Like they're professionals, hopefully at helping me see a new perspective of an event.And yet, it seems so hard for them to accept a different perspective on their life. It'sIt's a weird irony I don't understand like you go and try and talk to a therapist about them right now. That's not how it works. Like,you're so closed off that you're the only way that it could be right? How Why should I trust you to educate me on a new perspective of my life, when you can't even see a different perspective on your own life? I think that's a huge, huge, huge issue is people who become therapists do it for either the money or because they think you're gonna help people, right? Problem is, is they don't go through their own crap growing up and going through their own stuff. So how can they help somebody if they've never been through it? So people become a famous psychologist that they don't have their own family. So exactly what we're saying is they don't have their own stuff together. Right. So I do believe that people need to go through their own stuff. That's what makes a really good therapist. Yeah, I hundred percent agree. That's That's interesting. So now I'm curious and maybe you have the answer. MaybeI think you would, but at what point like what changed in society that you used to be able to call your self and hypnotherapist, but now you can't unless you have extra credentials. So what changed? Why did they start making a distinction? Again, because this is the separation between the quack and the credential. So what what changed in our economy and society in medical environment that demanded that change? So, the big talk about it is that the psychologists and psychiatrists were upset that they were calling themselves therapists when we haven't gone to as much schooling as they did. So why can you call yourself a therapist if you go to hypnosis?That's the biggest reason is they don't want to compete with us. We can help people change so fast to get there. Now we're taking their clients. It could be a conspiracy theory as to why that's happening. I don't know. But that's that's what I've heard. And that makes sense to me. Well, somebody wise once said, The ultimate Sufis that simplicity is the ultimate sophistication sometimesI think you can tell somebody that truth right now can't be that easy. Probably is that easy. I want to believe something that's stupid, simple and like, oh, that actually like, that's a logical it's an idiotic move, but it's logical like that, that makes sense based on human emotion based on ego based on these principles of like humanity. That actually makes sense. Now us trying to explain all these other justifications of why we did something that sounds like a big chain of justification so that you don't know why we did it. We're that's what that sounds like. So that's funny. So with all of your education, and what have you found to be the most enjoyable part of hypnosisso two parts of the business right so that the therapeutic side or the healing side or the whatever you want to call it side, right, the one on one client side and then I also have the the comedy stage hypnosis and they both have benefits for two completely different reasons. One is I love entertaining. That's been my whole background is I love entertaining people and I love to create an experience for people. So that's actuallyThe new business couldn't call the shots versus an experience because that's what I want to create.And that's enjoyable to make people laugh. But then you have the other side, which is when you're helping somebody to overcome something. And the cool thing about hypnosis, you can see instant change, or they wait, they open their eyes. They're like, Oh my gosh, that makes so much sense. And so they just had this instant gratification. Now, here's an example. I worked with a 12 year old wrestler, and he was competing or comparing himself to his brothers. So he was doing kind of poorly in wrestling, he hadn't even won a match. And so I worked with him one session, and I got a message from just a little while ago saying, Hey, man, thank you very much for helping me I took second statefor wrestling so so those kind of things you can't you can't get by working the nine to five Walmart job, right? With my groceries or whatever, right? And maybe, if that's your if that's how you receive fulfillment, sure, I'll challenge you on everything.I think there's right or wrong butYeah, I think that that's where are you getting your format and so from you for you, you get your fulfillment from being able tohear those success stories of like, how much somebody changed or how much that success happened or in the form of laughter, enjoyment, and almost a relaxation, and letting go of characters, the things that stress us out on our own basis. Sure. Yeah. That's awesome. For me, it's very similar. I come to work. And I love seeing somebody who's like, super depressed about their financial situation. Because I'm confident most of the time that by the time I'm done working with them, they're gonna be smiling and like, now I know where I'm going. Now. That's an exciting thing. I love it that that Penny drop is the same that I experienced when I was on a church mission. teaching about Jesus Christ isn't the same moment because the same is ultimately in my mind. It's the same transformation, whether we're talking about Christ, or whether we're talking about money, or whether we're talking about health or success, but it's the it's the recognition that that you are wortha better life. That's the recognition and once you recognize that you're worth better life because of you. That's the penny that stops whether that's your worth a better life. So you believe in Jesus Christ, you work better lives, you spend your money more intentionally, you're worth a better life. Because you're no longer comparing your your success to your brothers and wrestling. It's your worth something. And once they recognize that they have worth that once that Penny drops, that's a beautiful thing for me. In my experiences, it's a really good way to look at it like that.I think so, too.I'll pat myself on the back for that one. Yeah, um, sowhat were your biggest naysayers when you're going through this process of getting educated on on hypnosis and how that works and building a career out of it? What were your Who are your biggest naysayers and how did you overcome them? And I would say, Who are your naysayers today? Because I'm sure that happens. People every time you get on stage, I don't believe in hypnosis. There's always somebody in every crowd that way. So howDo you deal with Mesa Arizona? Gotcha. Okay, so back to when I first started hypnosis in Utah, right was your against the commandments? Yes.Right against the Book of Mormon right so so there's there was a lot of issues when I first got started in this and i would i would come up against a lot of walls but there was that burning. I gotta do this I know it's helpful people are just have a lack of education of what hypnosis is right? hypnotism sounds like mysticism which sounds like whatever else, right? So so people are assuming that it's this stuff that you can't do. But there's a whole scientific principle behind hypnosis. Once people learn that it's like, oh my gosh, this makes a lot of sense. And so we go in and out of it all the time, right seven times a day worried at most instruments, or longer or at least, and it's different for every hypnotist. But yeah, we spend a lot of our time in a state of hypnosis, right or a trance. So anyway, so once they're educated, it helps. The biggest problem is back in the day90s prior to the 90s, and then early 2000s is the stage hypnotists were very, very dark, and I'm in control of you, blah, blah, blah, right? So I wanted to give it a different feel. And so once I started empowering people from the stage that opened up a whole new realm, a lot of artists are doing that now. Because now it's like, oh, this is a power thing. And no, it's not crazy weird. So that's helped open the doors for me to be able to do a lot of schools and fairs and corporate events, because I get a good feeling. Right? So that's kind of shifted the mentality. I'm not saying I did it by myself, because the whole the whole community kind of kind of shifted at that at that time. So that's the first that's the first part. My biggest naysayer was my mom. She I was working in the corporate world, I manage restaurants and before I became a hypnotist, I was a flight attendant. So I did that for for six years. I did not know that about him. So when I knew things, so I was flying a lot and I started doing shows and so I would have to call in sick so I could go do it.Show. And so I kept doing that. Well, the CEO of the company, I actually hypnotized their sister, and help help them lose weight and it worked. And so I called the CEO of the airlines. And I said, Hey, I are the airline that your work. Yes, I intentionally skipping out. Yes, yes, yes. So I called her and I said, Hey, just so you know, I'm at this point in my life, and I really want to do this. I just don't know if I can do it full time. I don't want to do I'm out of sick time. I have no more love. And she was so cool. She says, Why don't you take the month of August off and see how it goes and will keep your keep your stats, secure insurance, all that kind of stuff. And then if it works, great, then you can quit. And if not, then you come back and super cool. So I did. And it was like the next couple of days. I got phone calls. I ended up booking seven fares that year. And so I called her back and I said, Yeah, I gotta quit. So I wouldn't finish the month of September. Often I was in 2006. And then I quit airlines and so on.So it's kind of funny, because think about it now because now you're like 15 fairs a year in August, but it was seven was like the big thing. So I was super excited than ever before. That's so cool, I think. So I want to go back to something you said, because I think this matters in literally every aspect of our life. And that is that the objective matters. And if you recall, we said it was looked down upon primarily because people were doing they're toying with it, unfortunately, often.stuff is is ridiculed and thought against before it becomes widely accepted. Andno, often, often, often, often, the initial adopters of a new thing, are people who are out there and maybe don't always have the best intentions, it is what it is sure. Once it becomes more widely accepted, then we start seeing people come in to a field with better intentions and say, Okay, how can we use this better and, and that's just what you described.people out there who are using different forms of language and programming with hypnosis, hypnosis, I'm happy to explain what hypnosis is from the, the, the medical perspective here in second, like the actual what's going on scientifically. But once you understand and it was more widely understood what is actually happening, then we can have more application of the principle because now we're understanding the principle we're not just a few people doing random things, but we we understand that principle we can control, there's more control, because now we can see actually results from principle. And then we can start using it for good. And you have the opportunity to do that with literally anything in your life. If you're a mom, if you're folding clothes, if you have children, you've got to be able to reframe things. It's got it's the same thing, the same things happening the same process, same scientific thing is happening. You it would be in your best interest to learn how to reframe things in a positive, helpful loving light serving lightbecause that's thehelps you accomplish more in life and gain greater persuasion and influence around those around you. So I love that the idea of just changing something, Nick, that was previously negative, and making it positive gossip, I have a friend, go check out his web site at his website, but definitely Facebook. But his his brand is called gossip for good, likegossip is just sharing information. It's just going on and talking about things that you've heard about that may or may not actually be true.But you can gossip about other people and negative things and judgment and kind of condemnation. You can gossip about all that or you can go gossip about all the good things that are happening in life. It's up to you what you choose to gossip about gossip is not inherently bad. It's what you choose gossip about. Yep, exactly. And so now, it doesn't last very long. So when we got to 30 minutes, but um, soAnyways, go ahead and explain more of like the scientific because I think there's going to be people on here like, Oh yeah, the church still says it's bad to be hypnotized.And it's just a lack of clarity of what hypnotism is. And unfortunately, it'sit's highly emotionally attached words to stuff that actually isn't there. So then they hear the word hypnosis, hypnosis or hypnotist, and they react to the word because of all the meaning that they've attached to it over their lifetime rather than what is reality. So they're living off in their own fictitious Fantasyland which, if you're happy, there areno business falling out, but you're going to listen to this, don't judgethis until you actually know what it is I would be my my invitation to you. So go ahead and explain what that is and what's actually happening for scientific, more scientific level. So the basis of hypnosis, the long definition is hypnosis is an altered state of consciousness.While you bypass the critical factor of thinking so that you become hyper suggestible. What does that mean? So we'll break down the three parts being in an altered state of consciousness, altered state of consciousness. Basically they hook the little electrodes up to your brain but the EEG machine, they can measure your brainwave cycles, just like a heartbeat. They mentioned the brainwave cycle. So the first brainwave cycle in consciousness is called a beta brainwave state. And just to be clear, just, this is all electrical impulses, correct? Yes. Okay, just so just so you guys know, this is electricity. He didn't come up with this hypnosis didn't come up with this. We found a way to label it and we terminate. We use the term hypnosis to define this process. dewpoint Okay. Okay, so now, in that beta brainwave state, we're paying attention, somebody megahertz, I don't know the exact megahertz or how many cycles it's going per minute or whatever that is, I don't know that. But basically, it's moving pretty fast. So then you start paying attention to something and then you enter into what's called an altered state of consciousness. So the first level would be called health.A brainwave state or what is called Daydream, right? In normal terms, when you're driving down the street, or you're doing the dishes, and all sudden you kind of go away. The subconscious mind takes over it does an activity that constantly starts to think about something else, you enter the Daydream state. That's the first level of hypnosis or an altered state of consciousness. When you talk to yourself, you're also in that same brainwave state. Then you enter into another dependency a little bit deeper called a theta brainwave state theta is more like when you're driving down the street, you go past your ex, and you don't know where you've been for 10 minutes, or you're reading a book and you get to the bottom of page completely forget what you just read. That's another state. Right? Then you have delta which is a little bit deeper. And this is more likeit's more like when you get phone call him tonight, you talk to somebody hang up the phone and you need to remember who you talk to. or teenagers nowadays that wake up one morning that texted somebody the night before with texting. So this amnesia starts to happen in that in that brainwave state. These are all normal natural states. This isn't just hypnosis, this is normal activity. Sure, then you have the deeper level.Which is called somnambulists, some symbolism is when you can kind of fool with the senses. That's when we can lessen pain. Or if you watch a state show, you can have somebody eating I know that he gets an apple, they have zero physiological signs, what's going on. So that's that's kind of a deeper level. Now there's all sorts of levels in between those states. Those are just the basics of how the brain was working. Now in hypnosis, there's four basically four ways how to get somebody into that trance. Okay? So that's the altered state of consciousness. Now what happens you start to bypass the critical factor thinking critical factor thing is your program. basically telling you who you are, who you are, or who you are, who you aren't what you can what you can do. Soif I'm working with a weight loss client, everybody knows that it takes two things to lose weight, which is diet and exercise, right? If I change my diet, eat less exercise more like burn more calories, and I consume I should lose weight. That's the theory right now. I'm gonna say there's everybody thinks they know that or they know that and it's not true.And and then we get wound up in it. Yeah, but yeah, But sir, I really likeChocolate cake or Yeah, but I like cookies were Yeah, but it's the holidays are Yep. But mom, here's where the programming comes in. Yeah. But mom always said I gotta finish my claim because they're starving kids wherethey're starving kids in Africa or Ethiopia. Right?Right. So So then we have that programming based on that. And then that's where hypnosis comes in. We put them in an altered state of consciousness to reprogram that.Well, people think that in that state, you can become have mind control, right? It is not mind control, because you still have that moral and ethical code that no matter how deep and endless you go, I can't break that. You can be conditioned, granted rights. For those of you who are really studying this stuff, you can be conditioned for mind control, but just hypnosis of itself cannot create mind control for you to do something you would want to do spike Have you into deep levels of hypnosis and I said I want you to go rob a bank he didn't want to.Now I think I think that again, this is just from my experience, so you have different experience. Fantastic for you. Mostpeople that I know who don't like it gnosis from a,from a religious context. They don't like it because from their perspective, you're surrendering control of your bodyand you should be in control and they have this deep religious belief thatthe whole purpose of this planet is to gain control of our body, and I would actually 100% agree with them from the whole purpose of this plan is to be in control of your body. Learning to control your body is another conversation though. How many things did somebody else have to show you before you learned how to do it? Did somebody help you tie your shoes? Did somebody help you put your clothes on somebody help you learn how to put your underwear on, or put your glasses on or brush your teeth all those things somebody did for you to you.Before you ever did them for yourself and you changing your diaper pro baby learning how to eat all these things. Somebody else did those for you before you can do it for yourself. SoYou are going to abide by double leaf that allowing anyone else to control your body is a grave sin and a rejection of your your holy people that you follow for me, for me, it's Jesus Christ. And it's all right for me, I don't say that blasphemous Lee, I'm trying to give you permission to believe whatever you want, right? I have deep beliefs as well. But if you're gonna abide by that, then we have to be able to apply principles across the board. So stop taking care of your children, stop helping them do anything, stop driving them around, stop doing anything for them, that's not in them choosing to do it and see how well you like life. I think you're going to quickly agree that sometimes it's better to have somebody show how to do something first or to be taught how to do something. Definitely don't send your kids to school. You wouldn't want that. Okay, so like, the reality isa good hypnosis, good hypnotist that I that I've seen. They are helping you there.are facilitating somethingby your choosing. They're facilitating it. Right? They aren't walking around hypnotizing people without. It's not like Disney where he's like, watch this clock.Okay, that's what's going on guys. So, one you are choosing into an experience to learn something to better yourself, number one, number two, once you understand how a lot of this stuff is,well, can you once you understood it, and you've practiced it, how difficult is it for you to use principles? Maybe not full on hypnotize yourself, but use principles of hypnosis, in your everyday life? All the time.myself as well. So the point the point of that question is,this isn't about somebody else, always doing this. Good hypnotism is about teaching and educating you how to do this yourself for yourself. It's about gaining more control of your body until you understand this. You'reare actually in the control of everybody else who understands this and is doing this with your media, your music, your TV, your books, it talks about mass hypnosis across the planet. It's happening. And if you aren't aware of it,it's only hurting you and your family. Right? So in with what you do you do a lot of finance stuff, right? So people who are let's say they're stuck at a $45,000 a year $30,000 fixed as much doesn't matter. Remember, right. So now they are programmed to think that's how much they make, right? So let's use $40,000 a year in example, somebody a $40,000 a year employee salesman, let's use a salesman for example.Their picture their internal dialogue, their thought process is that $40,000 a year right so that first three quarters they could kick tail and really make that that money, but their program is on $40,000. So now the last quarter, they start to tail off and that's what they make the next for that year is 40,000. Or the opposite is true. They may struggle for the first two or three quarters or whatever of the year.And then all of a sudden they'll ask you to kick it in gear again. And guess what? They're back at 40,000 it's the pictures they create in their money to self hypnosis, it's the exact same thing we're doing. So when we get stuck in that back to your control statement is they feel out of control. I don't know how to control this. I don't know how to change this smokers weight loss. I don't know how to fix this, or I need somebody else to help me get over that because the blind spot is right and proper ourselves. So you're exactly right. It is self hypnosis and we do it all the time. So let's uh, I love joining two forms, I thought and forcing them like just smashing them together. And religion as an easy one to because it's so especially in our society. It's so ingrained and everywhere I go, I'm not religious. I'm atheist, dude, that's a religion. In case you didn't know you have faith that nobody's there watching and nobody cares. Like, just because you've chosen to have faith in the non existence of being itself faith. So Ihate to burst your bubble, but youYou're just as religious as the rest of us just with a different religion, okay? football can be a religion, eating could be religion, religion is almost synonymous with ritualistic behavior. And there you go with a little theology. That's religion, but that's over simplistic as well. But with this, what is the contrast for this or this synonymous ism of prayer, daily prayer or repentance and meditation slash hypnosis?Hmm, good question. Um,the second part of the meditation hypnosis, a lot of people don't think they're the same. And they are the brainwaves are the exact same. The difference is in meditation, you're trying to clear your mind with hypnosis, you're going to same brainwave states, you're just giving yourself something to think about and focus on. That's the only difference right? You're giving yourself suggestions and safe access for us in hypnosis, religion and prayer. I've not done the studies. My guess is the brainwaves going to the same alpha or beta or theta brainwaveState right? You're you're creating visualization when you're asking Heavenly Father to to do something for us or to pray toGod just right so so let's say people ask people go to Heavenly Father and they and they ask for things. So it's like asking like this big Santa Claus in the sky asking for stuff. That's what a lot of people think of God as good as he can be in every day. I'm very, very, very spiritual. I connect with God on a daily basis and chat with him all the time. So you can be doing that when you're doing the dishes to plug yourself in and talk to talk to God. I'm so what's the difference between the two between prayer and meditation hypnosis? I don't know that there really is because you're still creating visualizations come from the subconscious mind. And just just, again, keep in mind that you have a conversation with me and we're actually talking about me trying to help you believe in God. This this comes out very differently. I'm just to help I have a healthy amount of skepticism, and I'm okay. Changing there.Yes, okay, so keep in mind that that's the position I'm coming from, don't be offended, like, oh God, Sam does believe in God. Now he does. But from my perspective,prayer could also be identical to what he said, from the perspective of when he was describing hypnosis and surpassing your critical thinking. The moment that you give up control, give up your critical thinking aspect and say, Look, I obviously can't figure this out my critical thinking no longer can accomplish whatever it needs to accomplish. I'm going to sidestep my critical thinking, put all of my faith in God. Okay, now we're going to this more perfect version of ourselves,which is ultimately our subconscious, our, or I would say, our value system, right? The part that doesn't really get hypnotized our morals values, we're going to our idealistic morals and values and asking our version of what our idealistic morals and values are to suggest what behavior we should continue to perform. And it's the same processwe're eliminating critical thinking by using a placeholder of God or Jesus Christ or Allah or whatever you call him, Jehovah, whatever you call them. Buddha, you can call whatever you want, okay? But it's it's a, it's a sidestep of critical thinking going into something that for all intents and purposes, nobody's been able to empirically prove that this person exists. So we're sidestepping that with the intention of connecting deeper with our subconscious and our AI, our morals and our values so we can become better and change our habits change our circumstances change our reality. That's my death. Like, if I was to define prayer, that's what I think is happening from a more scientific explanation.I think it's the same. You're self hypnotizing yourself, every time you're praying. Ideally, that's deep dude. And if you're not praying, and here's theHere's the worst part about it. If you decide well I don't need prayer and you get rid of prayer then what are you doing to better yourself? How At what point in your day are you self hypnotizing yourself to be better if you're if you decide you don't believe in God?What What else are you using to sidestep the critical thinking portion of your, your being?That's thosethat maybe I just want to do that as a way my mind thinks. And I think it's important because knowing that gives you so much more power to create, it gives you so much more power to determine what it is that you actually want out of life. And, and again, move past a lot of this crap that we hold ourselves accountable for, which is why we have anxiety, depression, all these things we're holding on to stuff that's really not ours to hold on to.And, yeah, what you, you say if you get rid of prayer to better youTwo litres of water for who? For what reason? There's no point right? What is better because there's no good or bad if you're not believing in,in higher power. So from what society says it's good and bad now. Yeah, I said, See, I don't know, I still think I still think there's a best of me and me as based on how good How good how successful on my at Korea, okay, so this goes back to a deeper religious belief that I hold that the purpose of this planet is to become like an infinite creator. Now you can call him God, you can call him whatever. But our purpose on this planet, as far as I'm concerned, is to learn how to create the way we saw other people creating.And if that's my goal, then although there's no good or bad again, it's just like hypnosis. You could use the principle for a good outcome or a bad outcome. The goal is how good are you at creating intentionallybecause that isIf any promise is real, that we are going to become like God, and thenwe got to learn how to become like God at some point. And that's what this whole thing is for. That's my this No, this is not my religious beliefs, right? So, but anyways, I think that that's what we're doing here. So learning how to create is the good or bad it's how effective are you it's not necessarily is what you're creating good or bad it's how effective are you at creating it. And the Enlightenment comes with recognize being being willing to accept that everything that is happening right now you are creating and then changing inputs to create better sure create more things that are going to serve you or give you the outcomes that you want. You may create that something gives you the outcome you thought you wanted and find out man I really didn't want that outcome that happens. Well, it's sometimes you know, we're bettering as a hypnotist, it helps us to become a better version of themselves. Sometimes the spouse isn't on board with that. I've helped themFemales become very self confident. The spouse doesn't like that all the time. And one lady got a divorce if that wasn't the reason she came, but she's happy with herself. It caused a bad thing in both of their eyes, but not really because she's, she's happy, she's better thankful. And I agree I'm not I'm not one to like.

PHP Internals News: Episode 54: Magic Method Signatures London, UK Thursday, May 21st 2020, 09:17 BST In this episode of "PHP Internals News" I chat with Gabriel Caruso (Twitter, GitHub, LinkedIn) about the "Ensure correct signatures of magic methods" RFC. The RSS feed for this podcast is https://derickrethans.nl/feed-phpinternalsnews.xml, you can download this episode's MP3 file, and it's available on Spotify and iTunes. There is a dedicated website: https://phpinternals.news Transcript Derick Rethans 0:16 Hi, I'm Derick, and this is PHP internals news, a weekly podcast dedicated to demystifying the development of the PHP language. This is Episode 54. Today I'm talking with Gabriel Caruso about his ensure correct signatures of magic methods RFC. Hello Gabriel, would you please introduce yourself? Gabriel Caruso 0:37 Hello Derick and hello to everyone as well. My name is Gabriel. I'm from Brazil, but I'm currently in the Netherlands. I'm working in a company called Usabila, which is basically a feedback company. Yeah, let's talk about this new RFC for PHP eight. Derick Rethans 0:52 Yes, well, starting off at PHP eight. Somebody told me that you also have some other roles to play with PHP eight. Gabriel Caruso 0:59 Yeah, I think last week I received the news that I'm going to be the new release manager together with Sara. We're going to basically take care of PHP eight, ensuring that we have new versions, every month that we have stable versions every month free of bugs, we know that it's not going to happen. Derick Rethans 1:17 That's why there's a release cycle with alphas and betas. Gabriel Caruso 1:20 Yeah. Derick Rethans 1:21 I've been through this exactly a year early, of course, because I'm doing a seven four releases. Gabriel Caruso 1:25 Oh, nice. Yeah. So I'm gonna ask a lot of questions for you. Derick Rethans 1:29 Oh, that's, that's fine. It's also the role of the current latest release manager to actually kickstart the process of getting the PHP, in this case, PHP eight release managers elected. Previously, there were only very few people that wanted to do it. So in for the seven four releases it was Peter and me. But in your case, there were four people that wanted to do it, which meant that for the first time I can ever remember we actually had to hold some form of election process for it. That didn't go as planned because we ended up having a tie twice, which was interesting. So we had to run a run off election for the second person between you and Ben Ramsey, that's going to go continuing for you for the next three and a half years likely. Gabriel Caruso 2:11 Yep. Derick Rethans 2:12 So good luck with that. Gabriel Caruso 2:13 Thank you. Thank you very much. Derick Rethans 2:15 In any case, let's get back to the RFC that we actually wanted to talk about today, which is the ensure correct signatures of magic methods RFC. What are these magic methods? Gabriel Caruso 2:24 So PHP, let's say out of the box, gives the user some magic methods that every single class have it. We can use that those methods for anything, but basically, what magic methods are are just methods that are called by PHP when a given action happens to the class. So for example, if a class is being constructed, then the construct magic method is going to be called. If I'm calling serialize function, then the magic method serialize as per PHP seven four or PHP eight. I don't remember, so this is basically what magic methods are, are methods that PHP hook into the classes and then once a certain action happened with the class, then PHP is going to call those magic methods in something magic, so to speak is going to happen. Derick Rethans 3:13 And other options are like underscore underscore get, and underscore underscore set. Gabriel Caruso 3:17 We have, we have a lot. Derick Rethans 3:19 Exactly, what do people tend to use these magic methods for? Gabriel Caruso 3:22 So that's something interesting. As the magic method is called by a number of actions we can use, for example, for let's let's get the example of ORM for example, Doctrine or Eloquent or whatever one. Let's say I'm a maintainer of that library. I don't know what fields do you have in your database. So when I'm porting, when I'm doing the translation, what it can do is map in a property, all those columns and values that I have in the database. And then when you instantiate your entity and you try to access a variable that is does not exist, then we're going to go to a magic method in this case is get, as I said, and I'm going to say okay, is not set in the class, but is mapped in the entity that I have. So this is one case, we also have the case for testing your you have, for example, the famous PHP Unit test framework, every time that a test case is called with all those methods is starting in with test, the call magic method is invoked. And then you can perform whatever action you have. You also have middlewares and the examples go go even further Derick Rethans 4:32 In the title of RFC you have the word signature, what is the signature? Gabriel Caruso 4:37 All the attributes that our method can have. So for example, the name of a method is its signature, what does it return? What parameters does it take? And also what modifiers so for example, is it static or not? Is it public, private or protected? So all this information together in usually is one line in PHP. So for example, private static MyMethod, that receives a string and returns a Boolean. There you go. This is the signature of my method Derick Rethans 5:06 Because some of these magic methods have been in PHP for a long long time. Back in the time where we didn't have argument types or return types or perhaps not even static. All the way back from the past PHP hasn't really done anything with signatures because they've simply didn't exist. At the moment which signature checks this PHP already do? Gabriel Caruso 5:26 I don't remember a by the RFC but I think was introduced together with the scalar type RFC. But only constructors and destructors until PHP seven four, those two only magic methods were being checked. If they have none return type, not even void, just no return type. But in PHP eight, we're gonna have the new stringable interface and then every single toString magic method. If it is typed, this is very important if it is typed it needs to be a string and these are the only from the 17 that we have only three in PHP 8 are being checked. Derick Rethans 6:01 PHP seven four. Gabriel Caruso 6:02 Yeah, in PHP seven four only two and then PHP eight, we have the new toString. Derick Rethans 6:07 But this RFC suggesting to change that of course. Gabriel Caruso 6:10 yeah. Derick Rethans 6:11 What's the reason why you want to extend these checks to the other magic methods? Gabriel Caruso 6:14 That brings me back how I figured out that. I was looking at some bugs, because we have the https://bugs.php.net, where we centralized all the bugs of PHP. Then there is a bug report explaining in complaining exactly about that. Like, I can't hide my magic method. Back in the days I can say, for example, that my tostring method is going to return an integer or a Boolean. That makes no sense. And then I was like, yeah, makes makes no sense. We need to fix that out and then I start to search how do we type that? How what types do we have and then I was like, we can't in PHP eight, because this is going to be a new major version. So we are allowed to at least vote for do that. We can check if someone is using types, we can check those types. We are not going to force, we are not going to require, we're not going to evaluate even run static analysis. Nope, we're going to simply check. Okay. Are you saying that this get magic method is going to return anything? Okay, that's okay. Oh, but I want to my guess is that you specifically return a string. That's also okay. As to how to pronounce that liskov mistook principle, right? Derick Rethans 6:36 The liskov substitution principle. Gabriel Caruso 7:26 Yeah. And so this is what we're going to basically do with this RFC, there's going to be voted. We're going to simply check if you're using the right types, because, in my opinion, magic methods are a foundation in PHP. As we have theses methods across different code bases across different projects from different behaviours, at least when I'm looking at that code. Okay, I'm looking at this magic method. I know what parameters does it take. I know what return does it have. This is worth less tab to the bug are trying to understand what is happening. Because today maybe I'm debugging a toString method there is return an integer. And I'm like, okay, this is the bug, it's supposed to return a string. But once you ensure those all those signatures, is one less bug that we're gonna have in production. Derick Rethans 8:17 When are these signatures being ensured? Gabriel Caruso 8:19 It's not at compile time because he does not have a compile time. But he's when the Zend machine is compiling the code, we have a very specific method that is checking all the modifiers. So for example, the signature that we mentioned before so all the magic methods needs to be public. This has been checked, for example, they callStatic magic method needs to be static. So this has also been checked. And then I'm extending how do we check for signatures for param types and also for return types. So during compilation of the Zend VM. Derick Rethans 8:52 Taking as example callStatic in the RFC, I see that the name has to be a string and the arguments has to be an array. What happens if you use a different type there? Gabriel Caruso 9:01 So nowadays if you use a different type that's allowed. So if you say there, you're going to receive an integer, and you're going to receive a string. This is allowed today. And this is what I mentioned about when you are debugging or analyze different code bases, you're going to be like why in the documentation says that we need to receive a string and an array, and there's this specific code base is receiving a string and an integer. So this is what kinds of mismatch I want to avoid. Of course, when using types, because we also know that PHP in some projects does not use types. And that's perfectly fine. If you're not using types, I'm not going to ask you, hey, you need to type those magic methods. Well, what I'm going to do is okay, you're using types and I need to make sure they're using right otherwise this is going to be a mess. Derick Rethans 9:47 If you type it; say use an integer for the name of underscore underscore get, will give you a warning or a compile error, or parse error? What what kind of feedback which you get back from that? Gabriel Caruso 9:59 While you are running your code, as soon as that class get referenced, we're going to check. Is not when is initiated, when is not when is called, as soon as I think the autoload detects that class is gonna parse, is going to identify, and then is going to compile and during the compile time that we mentioned. We're going to identify that. So it's going to be early in the stages. Perhaps as soon as you run something or you would upset me, you're going to have that feedback saying: hey, this is not compatible with what we are expecting. Derick Rethans 10:32 Is that a warning or type error? Gabriel Caruso 10:34 It's going to be a fatal error, because this is what we are constantly returning with the destructors and constructors. Derick Rethans 10:41 Yeah, we alluded to mixed already a little bit and the RFC mentioned mixed a few times, of course mixes in the type and PHP yet. So what do you want to do about that? Gabriel Caruso 10:51 Today we are 11th of May of 2020. Right now we have an RFC voting in PHP to introduce the mixed type. I'm not going to say if I agree or disagree, it's being voted. If that RFC gets accepted then I have already talked with the authors of the that RFC, I'm going to wait until they merge into master. I'm going to rebase and readapt to my RFC, to have those mixed types. And there we go PHP eight probably can have mixed, and probably can already have the usage of mixed in the magic methods. So either No, I'm gonna need to wait for the end of their RFC. If it's approved, there go I need to rebase my PR. In the other case, we are going to keep as comments because we can't ensure that in the compile time with the VM. Derick Rethans 11:41 At the moment, it looks like that vote will and in May 21. The current votes are 35 to six for passing. So it looks like that will go through Unknown Speaker 11:50 And then I need to rush because we have the upcoming feature freeze of PHP eight. So I need to make sure that I start to vote and implement my RFC before that time. Derick Rethans 12:00 Feature freeze should be by the end of July. So I think you have plenty of ime pfor that. And of course you have a release manager, you can make an exception. That's how that works. Usually adding extra checks will have impact to existing code. Is there much impact to existing code here as well? Gabriel Caruso 12:18 That was the interest question that I made myself. Okay, I'm going to touch the magic methods of PHP. I'm going to break some code in an issue identified those breaking changes in an each map in the RFC. How do I map across many projects, many libraries, many PHP codes out there? How do I do that? I remember that Nikita back in his RFC about the parenthesis origin, like how do we present this ordering and yada yada yada. He made a script, where he went through I think was the top thousand or top 10,000 packages. On packagist, that is the official composer package provider and he identified everything, and ask myself how he did that. And actually was very easy. He just cloned other repositories. He instantiate a new PHP parser instance that is his magic parser. That is behind PHP Stan, is behind psalm, is behind a lot of infection, a lot of big projects, where you analyze the code. So you have a code base where you can analyze and say: Do I have magic methods wrong? And then I run this script, identify, I think six or seven types that were not perfect. Three of them. I have already submitted a request because we're in PHP Unit and I said to Sebastian: hey, this actually is not right. Because I'm proposing this RFC, he was like: Okay, perfect, let's merge it. And the other cases are the cases that I mentioned. For example, with get. Get, you need to return mixed but by the LSP, you can nail down to an integer or a string. So there you go, at least in the top 10,000 packages of composer is not going to be a breaking change. But of course, it's going to be breaking change for people that I can't map. So this is why it's mentioned the RFC that if you're using types with magic methods wrong, we're going to warn you. Derick Rethans 14:13 But at least it's an easy thing to check for. Because even running all your files through PHP minus L should catch it. Gabriel Caruso 14:20 Yeah, there you go. Derick Rethans 14:22 So it's a very easy to check for something. You provided a link to Nikita's script where he checks for those ternairies, do you have a version of your own script available as well? Gabriel Caruso 14:33 That's interesting. I thought the RFC was updated. So I'm going to update the RFC, because I do have the script locally. Derick Rethans 14:39 Then I can link to it for the podcast as well. Gabriel Caruso 14:41 Okay, perfect. Derick Rethans 14:42 In the future, are you thinking of extending checks to a few more things? Gabriel Caruso 14:46 So this is something that I fought about this RFC, like how much you want to break and explode people's code. And I think starting with checking types in the signature is the first step. The next step is to actually check the return type. We do that with toString. So for example, although you have type right for maybe, some logic or something is wrong, you're returning an integer. There is a check before the actual type saying you're supposed to return a string you're return an integer. And actually, there is a check in the magic method saying this magic method was supposed to return a string. I think is gonna break even more code because then it's something that I can't measure. So I was like: Okay, let's first start with types and then we can give it next step that is: okay, inside this method, what is being returned, okay, is something different from the signature: explode. You're returning something that I was not supposed to return. But this is not a fight that I'm going to pick. So I leave it up for the next major version of PHP or whatever. Derick Rethans 15:49 Wouldn't PHP's strict versus weak type mechanism already catch these things. So from debugInfo, if you would type that as returning an array, and then you end up returning an object, which is not necessarily wrong, just not what you expected. PHP's return type checking mechanism should already catch that for you. Gabriel Caruso 16:13 If you have a magic method typed. If it's not typed, so we can say that some efforts do have that check. And then we're going to expand when we don't have types in the signature. Derick Rethans 16:24 That's clear now. Do you have anything else to add? Gabriel Caruso 16:27 The only thing that I want to add that is, I have created another RFC, and this is something that I always tell everyone that is easy to do; is not impossible. Anyone can go there, identify a bug or catch a bug report and then try to fix it. And this is what I'm doing. Like I'll do them to release many of PHP eight. I'm also fixing bugs, improving documentation and everything else. This is something that I try to do and share with everyone. So everyone can also be the next one contributor to the to PHP and it's evolution. Derick Rethans 16:57 This RFC isn't out for voting yet. You set you want to sort of wait until mixed gets passed or not. What's the reception been so far? Gabriel Caruso 17:05 So I asked a couple of key members of the PHP community, both internal and external people. They agree, they said that the right approach is to first check for the signature, because if someone is already using types, that project is type friendly, so we can at least play with that. But if someone is not typing, then this is a bigger fight. And then we're going to talk about that in the future. Derick Rethans 17:29 Thank you, Gabriel for taking the time this morning to talk to me. I've learned a few more things about this RFC, so that's always good to know. And again, congratulations of being the PHP eight release manager together with Sara. Gabriel Caruso 17:41 Thank you very much. Also thank you for inviting me for this new podcast is amazing. Always listen to all these famous people of PHP that talked with you. And I'm like, Whoa, Derick has invited me this is going to be so much fun. Thank you very much. Derick Rethans 17:55 Thanks for listening to this installment of PHP internals news, the weekly podcast dedicated to demystify the development of the PHP language, I maintain a Patreon account for supporters of this podcast, as well as the Xdebug debugging tool. You can sign up for Patreon at https://drck.me/patreon. If you have comments or suggestions, feel free to email them to Dderick@phpinternals.news. Thank you for listening, and I'll see you next week. Show Notes RFC`: Ensure correct signatures of magic methods Credits Music: Chipper Doodle v2 — Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) — Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

Episode 158: If You Dig Yourself a Hole You Can Still Get Out Today, I want to talk about failure and putting ourselves down if we don't have this magical number, goal, or label that makes us feel worthy or successful.  When I was younger I did not have a great mindset around money and didn't know how to manage it well, and therefore my credit score was pretty crappy and I had loads of debt. Luckily I have learned from my past mistakes, my money management skills are way better than they used to be, and I am living in alignment with my financial goals. I got myself out of that hole! And let me tell you - it feels so much better. So why am I sharing about this? Because I'm just a human having a human experience. If I can help someone else by sharing my own experiences and my own mistakes, then that's what I'm here to do. It is never my intention to make anyone else feel uninformed or less than, but to help them learn from my past experiences. Just know this: even if you've dug yourself a hole - whether it's financial or otherwise - you can always get out. Don't give up. Ask for help. Learn from your mistakes. Set goals for your future. Make a plan to achieve those goals and stick to it.  Imagine how damn good that will feel! Follow me on social @sausha.davis or on saushadavis.com and let me know what you think of this episode!

Madeleine Albright was in her early 20s when she wrote in an essay, "I am obsolete." She'd just become a mother to twins, and since graduating college had moved several times for her husband's jobs in journalism—a career field that she too had wanted to enter. "All of a sudden these things that I thought I was going to be able to do, I couldn't do," she told me. "Everything...was different than I had thought."  It was her eventual divorce two decades later that Secretary Albright says put her on the path to becoming U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, and Secretary of State under President Bill Clinton. Since leaving that position in 2001 in her mid-60s, she's stayed plenty busy⁠—launching consulting and investment firms, and continuing to teach at Georgetown. But when I talked with her recently, she'd been self-isolating at home for weeks. "Because I'm in my eighties, and because of what's going on with the virus, all of a sudden I'm beginning to feel obsolete again," she told me. "I have been fighting gravity. That’s what I’ve been doing." 

Hello everybody, and Happy Tuesday to you! Welcome into the most ridiculous, and yet profoundly titled episode of the Bible Reading Podcast. If the end of the world happens today, or a cure for coronavirus is announced, or World War 3 begins between the Bulgarians and the elite warriors of Burkina Faso, and you're wondering why in the world I'm not commenting on that in the intro...it's because I'm recording this episode early on Monday morning - I think it is the first time I've recorded two episodes in one day, but after 135 episodes, they all sort of run together in my mind. Today's Bible readings consist of Numbers 21 (our SECOND straight day with Numbers as the focus passage!), plus: Psalms 60-61, Isaiah 10:5-34, and James 4. Our focus question of the day is not quite as outrageous as it sounds because Jesus HIMSELF makes the comparison between Him and the Bronze snake on a pole of Numbers 21 - so, let's go read that passage (warning if you are scared of snakes) and also Jesus' reference to that story in John 3, and then discuss what it all means. 14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. John 3:14-15 Because I'm about to head out for a short road trip to Colorado, I'm going to be leaning into my preacher friends a little more over these next couple of episodes, and today that is great news for you, because our old friend Tim Keller is going to help us understand why Jesus is comparing Himself to the bronze snake, and this is an incredible message. On every truck, plaque, uniform, building that has anything to do with medicine (hospitals, doctors, the medical) you will see an insignia with a serpent, usually coiled around a pole. It’s called the caduceus. It is the symbol of healing. It’s one of the very oldest symbols of healing we know. You’ve seen it thousands of times in your life. Do you know what it points to? Do you know what all of the medical facilities of this entire country are referring to? They’re referring to the incident which we’ve just read that is one of the most bizarre incidents anywhere in the Bible. It’s a story, as we read, about an episode in the life of the children of Israel in which they began to really complain against God, to impute evil motives to God, to be very unhappy with the way in which God was treating them. God responds by sending into their midst a plague of poisonous serpents, snakes, that bite the Israelites. They begin to die. They pray. God hears the prayer, and he says to Moses, “Here’s how I’m going to cure them. Put a bronze serpent on a pole.” (The poles in all of the symbols are really a cross without a little top piece. It’s a “T.” A cross without a top piece and one or two snakes entangled, intertwined, coiled around it.) “Put it up so anyone who looks at it will be healed of their disease.” If you look at that, if we didn’t have any other interpretation of that, it would really be a very confusing story. First of all, God looks vindictive. The people are bellyaching. They’re complaining. They’re unhappy with the manna he gave them. They’re unhappy with the desert situation. God sends these poisonous serpents, so he looks vindictive. Secondly, he looks impulsive and indecisive, because he seems to change his mind. They pray, and then he says, “Okay. I’ll heal you.” Thirdly, he seems petty and idiosyncratic. This is God! Can’t he say, “You’re healed”? What’s with the bronze serpent? How weird to make them look on the very thing that was killing them in order to save them. If you read the whole thing, you say, “It seems to mean nothing. It doesn’t make much sense.” Except that Jesus Christ points back, and because Jesus Christ said this and showed the meaning of it, that’s the reason why this symbol is emblazoned on all the medical technology and places of medicine and healing in the world. He said, “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.” Then he says the famous verse, “For God so loved the world …” Whenever you see a hospital, whenever you see an EMS truck or something and you see the snake around the pole, do you think right away, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life”? You should, because that’s what it means. You say, “Well, okay. How does it mean it?” What Jesus is saying, what Numbers is saying, what God is saying in the incident and, therefore, indirectly, of course, what every single one of those insignias is saying is there is only one disease that can really kill you. There is only one disease that really can kill you and that disease has one and only one remedy. Let’s look at the disease, which, of course, is sin, and let’s look at the remedy, which, of course, is the Son of Man lifted up. God has to show them there is a provision. God says, “Put a bronze snake up on a pole.” What does that mean? If there had only been one snake and the snake was sort of slithering around and biting people and they were getting sick and then it was going away, everybody would be upset. What would they do? The only way anybody could rest and be at peace again would be if some hunter came in to find the snake. As the hunter was going in, everybody was scared. You had to watch where you were going and all that. What if the hunter caught the snake, crushed the snake, and destroyed it? The only way to bring hope back to the camp … What would the hunter do? You know what they would do. You’d lift the snake up on the pole with which you killed it. You smack a snake, and then you lift it up. In fact, the smartest thing to do with a snake, as you know, is not to hold it like this but to put it up with pinchers. You would walk through the camp and say, “I got it!” To hold a snake up on a pole means it’s dead. It’s gone. It’s been destroyed. It’s been captured. Everybody would look and say, “We have hope again.” What God is saying to the Israelites, not to us, by putting that up is, “I am the One who healeth thee. I am the One who can stop the snakes and heal you of the poison. I am the hunter. I have the power. I am the One who puts the snake up on the pole. Look to me, not to the snake so much. To look to the snake is to look to me. Look to me in my power. Look to me in my mercy and you’ll be healed.” That’s what they did. What he was saying was, “I am the One who heals you. Have hope in me.” But Jesus goes further and says, “Let me tell you what it really meant. As the snake in the wilderness was lifted up, so I will be lifted up.” The first thing it means is Jesus will die. A lifted-up snake was a dead snake. A lifted-up snake was a crushed snake. A lifted-up snake was a snake that had been smitten. For Jesus Christ to be lifted up did not just simply mean he went up the steps or something. He says, “As the snake in the wilderness was lifted up, I will be lifted up,” which means, “I will die. I will be smitten. I will be crushed.” But it goes beyond that. He doesn’t just say, “I’m going to die.” Here’s what he says. He’s not just saying he will die, but he says, “I will die as the Serpent.” What is the Serpent? The Serpent is the sin. The Serpent is Satan. The Serpent is not just Satan. It represents the whole thing. It represents the evil that fell into our hearts. It represents the seed of the Serpent in us. It represents the mistrust of God, the rebelliousness, and the thirst. It represents all the things sin is and all the things sin deserves. Therefore, when Jesus says, “I will be lifted up as the Serpent, I will be struck, I will be destroyed, I will die, but I won’t just die. I will die as the Serpent. I will die in the place of the Serpent …” You notice in 2 Corinthians 5, Paul does not say, “God made Jesus Christ sinful.” Of course, he couldn’t have made Jesus Christ sinful. If Jesus Christ had been sinful, if he had become selfish and wicked and as picky as we are, he would never have gone to the cross. He never would have loved us to the end. What it says is, “God made him sin who knew no sin that we might become the righteousness of God in him.” It doesn’t say he made him sinful. He made him sin. It doesn’t mean he made him a Serpent. He made him as a Serpent. He treated him as the Serpent should be treated. He treated him as sin should be treated. Now you know why, when Jesus was on the cross, and what he meant when he said, “I thirst.” Do you remember that? “I thirst.” It wasn’t just a physical thirst. He was taking upon himself hell. Do you know what hell is? Do you remember the parable of Lazarus and the rich man? Do you remember the place where the rich man goes to hell? It says he was burning up with thirst, and he prayed to Father Abraham, “I see Lazarus up there in heaven. Could he come and cool my tongue?” He prays the prayer of thirst. It’s not because of fire. Don’t you see? Hell is a place where you are finally cast away from God. The thirst that begins here (the picky, picky, picky that begins here) has now become a raging fire. That’s all. Your conscience that is bothered here becomes a roaring lion. Your inability to find love here becomes an absolute, raging forest fire. That’s what hell is. It’s the insatiability of spiritual thirst. A tremendous emptiness that makes you unhappy with everything here, but it’s nothing compared to what will happen when you finally get your way. What sin wants is to get away from God so you can be completely your own boss. When that finally happens, that little teeny bit of thirst will become a raging fire. That is what fell on Jesus. Jesus Christ took exactly what we would have experienced in hell forever. He got the fever. He got the convulsions. He got the raging thirst. He got the unquenchable fire. He said, “I thirst.” It all fell on him. Why? Because, of course, it says in Isaiah, “… with his stripes we are healed.” He heals all our sins, and he carries all our diseases. C. You just look. As the snake in the desert was lifted up, so the Son of Man will be lifted up. How do you get saved by the snake? You just look. You don’t walk up to it and sort of rub it three times. You don’t go over to it and bow down three times. You don’t pray a sinner’s prayer in front of it. All you do is look. Years ago, there was a guy named Charles Spurgeon who became a great Baptist preacher, but he was under agony in his soul. He was pretty sure he was a sinful person. He didn’t know how God could accept him. He went, because of a snowstorm, into a tiny, little primitive Methodist chapel, and the minister couldn’t get there because of the snowstorm. Some poor deacon got up and had to preach. There were only four people present. He opened his text up, and he’d never preached a sermon before. The text was from Isaiah 45. It said, “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am [a righteous] God [and a Savior] and there is none else.” He got up and said, “Do you see what this is saying? You don’t do anything in order to be saved. You just have to look. You don’t say, ‘Oh, I need to work up to you in love.’ To look is to admit you have no loyalty in love. You don’t have to walk over to God. You don’t have to jump hoops to God. All you have to do is look. You have to admit he’s done everything necessary for you. You just have to look and see that he has saved you.” Spurgeon began to say, “Wait a minute! I don’t have to do? I just have to look? I just have to believe? I just have to receive?” Because there were only four people in the service, finally the deacon looked down and he saw only one visitor. He said, “Young man, you look miserable, and you’re going to stay miserable until you obey my text.” At that point, Spurgeon suddenly realized he had been running and jumping and somersaulting, and all God wanted him to do was look and to admit he couldn’t save himself. That’s how sin is remedied. Timothy J. Keller, The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive (New York City: Redeemer Presbyterian Church, 2013).

Hello everybody, and Happy Tuesday to you! Welcome into the most ridiculous, and yet profoundly titled episode of the Bible Reading Podcast. If the end of the world happens today, or a cure for coronavirus is announced, or World War 3 begins between the Bulgarians and the elite warriors of Burkina Faso, and you're wondering why in the world I'm not commenting on that in the intro...it's because I'm recording this episode early on Monday morning - I think it is the first time I've recorded two episodes in one day, but after 135 episodes, they all sort of run together in my mind. Today's Bible readings consist of Numbers 21 (our SECOND straight day with Numbers as the focus passage!), plus: Psalms 60-61, Isaiah 10:5-34, and James 4. Our focus question of the day is not quite as outrageous as it sounds because Jesus HIMSELF makes the comparison between Him and the Bronze snake on a pole of Numbers 21 - so, let's go read that passage (warning if you are scared of snakes) and also Jesus' reference to that story in John 3, and then discuss what it all means. 14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. John 3:14-15 Because I'm about to head out for a short road trip to Colorado, I'm going to be leaning into my preacher friends a little more over these next couple of episodes, and today that is great news for you, because our old friend Tim Keller is going to help us understand why Jesus is comparing Himself to the bronze snake, and this is an incredible message. On every truck, plaque, uniform, building that has anything to do with medicine (hospitals, doctors, the medical) you will see an insignia with a serpent, usually coiled around a pole. It’s called the caduceus. It is the symbol of healing. It’s one of the very oldest symbols of healing we know. You’ve seen it thousands of times in your life. Do you know what it points to? Do you know what all of the medical facilities of this entire country are referring to? They’re referring to the incident which we’ve just read that is one of the most bizarre incidents anywhere in the Bible. It’s a story, as we read, about an episode in the life of the children of Israel in which they began to really complain against God, to impute evil motives to God, to be very unhappy with the way in which God was treating them. God responds by sending into their midst a plague of poisonous serpents, snakes, that bite the Israelites. They begin to die. They pray. God hears the prayer, and he says to Moses, “Here’s how I’m going to cure them. Put a bronze serpent on a pole.” (The poles in all of the symbols are really a cross without a little top piece. It’s a “T.” A cross without a top piece and one or two snakes entangled, intertwined, coiled around it.) “Put it up so anyone who looks at it will be healed of their disease.” If you look at that, if we didn’t have any other interpretation of that, it would really be a very confusing story. First of all, God looks vindictive. The people are bellyaching. They’re complaining. They’re unhappy with the manna he gave them. They’re unhappy with the desert situation. God sends these poisonous serpents, so he looks vindictive. Secondly, he looks impulsive and indecisive, because he seems to change his mind. They pray, and then he says, “Okay. I’ll heal you.” Thirdly, he seems petty and idiosyncratic. This is God! Can’t he say, “You’re healed”? What’s with the bronze serpent? How weird to make them look on the very thing that was killing them in order to save them. If you read the whole thing, you say, “It seems to mean nothing. It doesn’t make much sense.” Except that Jesus Christ points back, and because Jesus Christ said this and showed the meaning of it, that’s the reason why this symbol is emblazoned on all the medical technology and places of medicine and healing in the world. He said, “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.” Then he says the famous verse, “For God so loved the world …” Whenever you see a hospital, whenever you see an EMS truck or something and you see the snake around the pole, do you think right away, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life”? You should, because that’s what it means. You say, “Well, okay. How does it mean it?” What Jesus is saying, what Numbers is saying, what God is saying in the incident and, therefore, indirectly, of course, what every single one of those insignias is saying is there is only one disease that can really kill you. There is only one disease that really can kill you and that disease has one and only one remedy. Let’s look at the disease, which, of course, is sin, and let’s look at the remedy, which, of course, is the Son of Man lifted up. God has to show them there is a provision. God says, “Put a bronze snake up on a pole.” What does that mean? If there had only been one snake and the snake was sort of slithering around and biting people and they were getting sick and then it was going away, everybody would be upset. What would they do? The only way anybody could rest and be at peace again would be if some hunter came in to find the snake. As the hunter was going in, everybody was scared. You had to watch where you were going and all that. What if the hunter caught the snake, crushed the snake, and destroyed it? The only way to bring hope back to the camp … What would the hunter do? You know what they would do. You’d lift the snake up on the pole with which you killed it. You smack a snake, and then you lift it up. In fact, the smartest thing to do with a snake, as you know, is not to hold it like this but to put it up with pinchers. You would walk through the camp and say, “I got it!” To hold a snake up on a pole means it’s dead. It’s gone. It’s been destroyed. It’s been captured. Everybody would look and say, “We have hope again.” What God is saying to the Israelites, not to us, by putting that up is, “I am the One who healeth thee. I am the One who can stop the snakes and heal you of the poison. I am the hunter. I have the power. I am the One who puts the snake up on the pole. Look to me, not to the snake so much. To look to the snake is to look to me. Look to me in my power. Look to me in my mercy and you’ll be healed.” That’s what they did. What he was saying was, “I am the One who heals you. Have hope in me.” But Jesus goes further and says, “Let me tell you what it really meant. As the snake in the wilderness was lifted up, so I will be lifted up.” The first thing it means is Jesus will die. A lifted-up snake was a dead snake. A lifted-up snake was a crushed snake. A lifted-up snake was a snake that had been smitten. For Jesus Christ to be lifted up did not just simply mean he went up the steps or something. He says, “As the snake in the wilderness was lifted up, I will be lifted up,” which means, “I will die. I will be smitten. I will be crushed.” But it goes beyond that. He doesn’t just say, “I’m going to die.” Here’s what he says. He’s not just saying he will die, but he says, “I will die as the Serpent.” What is the Serpent? The Serpent is the sin. The Serpent is Satan. The Serpent is not just Satan. It represents the whole thing. It represents the evil that fell into our hearts. It represents the seed of the Serpent in us. It represents the mistrust of God, the rebelliousness, and the thirst. It represents all the things sin is and all the things sin deserves. Therefore, when Jesus says, “I will be lifted up as the Serpent, I will be struck, I will be destroyed, I will die, but I won’t just die. I will die as the Serpent. I will die in the place of the Serpent …” You notice in 2 Corinthians 5, Paul does not say, “God made Jesus Christ sinful.” Of course, he couldn’t have made Jesus Christ sinful. If Jesus Christ had been sinful, if he had become selfish and wicked and as picky as we are, he would never have gone to the cross. He never would have loved us to the end. What it says is, “God made him sin who knew no sin that we might become the righteousness of God in him.” It doesn’t say he made him sinful. He made him sin. It doesn’t mean he made him a Serpent. He made him as a Serpent. He treated him as the Serpent should be treated. He treated him as sin should be treated. Now you know why, when Jesus was on the cross, and what he meant when he said, “I thirst.” Do you remember that? “I thirst.” It wasn’t just a physical thirst. He was taking upon himself hell. Do you know what hell is? Do you remember the parable of Lazarus and the rich man? Do you remember the place where the rich man goes to hell? It says he was burning up with thirst, and he prayed to Father Abraham, “I see Lazarus up there in heaven. Could he come and cool my tongue?” He prays the prayer of thirst. It’s not because of fire. Don’t you see? Hell is a place where you are finally cast away from God. The thirst that begins here (the picky, picky, picky that begins here) has now become a raging fire. That’s all. Your conscience that is bothered here becomes a roaring lion. Your inability to find love here becomes an absolute, raging forest fire. That’s what hell is. It’s the insatiability of spiritual thirst. A tremendous emptiness that makes you unhappy with everything here, but it’s nothing compared to what will happen when you finally get your way. What sin wants is to get away from God so you can be completely your own boss. When that finally happens, that little teeny bit of thirst will become a raging fire. That is what fell on Jesus. Jesus Christ took exactly what we would have experienced in hell forever. He got the fever. He got the convulsions. He got the raging thirst. He got the unquenchable fire. He said, “I thirst.” It all fell on him. Why? Because, of course, it says in Isaiah, “… with his stripes we are healed.” He heals all our sins, and he carries all our diseases. C. You just look. As the snake in the desert was lifted up, so the Son of Man will be lifted up. How do you get saved by the snake? You just look. You don’t walk up to it and sort of rub it three times. You don’t go over to it and bow down three times. You don’t pray a sinner’s prayer in front of it. All you do is look. Years ago, there was a guy named Charles Spurgeon who became a great Baptist preacher, but he was under agony in his soul. He was pretty sure he was a sinful person. He didn’t know how God could accept him. He went, because of a snowstorm, into a tiny, little primitive Methodist chapel, and the minister couldn’t get there because of the snowstorm. Some poor deacon got up and had to preach. There were only four people present. He opened his text up, and he’d never preached a sermon before. The text was from Isaiah 45. It said, “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am [a righteous] God [and a Savior] and there is none else.” He got up and said, “Do you see what this is saying? You don’t do anything in order to be saved. You just have to look. You don’t say, ‘Oh, I need to work up to you in love.’ To look is to admit you have no loyalty in love. You don’t have to walk over to God. You don’t have to jump hoops to God. All you have to do is look. You have to admit he’s done everything necessary for you. You just have to look and see that he has saved you.” Spurgeon began to say, “Wait a minute! I don’t have to do? I just have to look? I just have to believe? I just have to receive?” Because there were only four people in the service, finally the deacon looked down and he saw only one visitor. He said, “Young man, you look miserable, and you’re going to stay miserable until you obey my text.” At that point, Spurgeon suddenly realized he had been running and jumping and somersaulting, and all God wanted him to do was look and to admit he couldn’t save himself. That’s how sin is remedied. Timothy J. Keller, The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive (New York City: Redeemer Presbyterian Church, 2013).

We're switching up the roles on today's pod folks! Our SuperFeast mamma and papa, Tahnee and Mason, take the guest seat as Oni Blecher from the Pregnancy, Birth and Beyond podcast takes the mic to explore reproductive health, the family culture and pregnancy preparation with our fearless leaders. Mason and Tahnee absolutely loved offering their insights in this beautiful conversation, we just had to share it with ya'll. Mason and Tahnee explore: Reproductive health from the Taoist perspective. Reproductive health as an equal responsibility between BOTH the male and female. Preconception planning. Health sovereignty and personal culture. Tips on how to cleanse and prepare the body for conception. The tonic herbs, medicinal mushroom and minerals suitable for preconception. Developing personal and family culture, inviting in sustainable practices that can be carried forward long-term over the lifespan. Children's immune health.   Who are Mason Taylor and Tahnee McCrossin? Mason Taylor: Mason’s energy and intent for a long and happy life is infectious. A health educator at heart, he continues to pioneer the way for potent health and a robust personal practice. An avid sharer, connector, inspirer and philosophiser, Mason wakes up with a smile on his face, knowing that tonic herbs are changing lives. Mason is also the SuperFeast founder, daddy to Aiya and partner to Tahnee (General Manager at SuperFeast). Tahnee McCrossin: Tahnee is a self proclaimed nerd, with a love of the human body, it’s language and its stories. A cup of tonic tea and a human interaction with Tahnee is a gift! A beautiful Yin Yoga teacher and Chi Ne Tsang practitioner, Tahnee loves going head first into the realms of tradition, yogic philosophy, the organ systems, herbalism and hard-hitting research. Tahnee is the General Manager at SuperFeast, mumma to reishi-baby Aiya and partner to Mason (founder of SuperFeast).   Resources: Nourishing Her Yin Event Video The Brighton Baby book Pregnancy Preparation SuperFeast Podcast Episode Pregnancy Health SuperFeast Podcast Episode   Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast?   A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We’d also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or check us out on Stitcher :)! Plus we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Oni:   (00:00) I'm going to be interviewing Mason and Tahnee of SuperFeast, an ever-growing health initiative based around a variation of adaptogens, medicinal mushrooms, and blends that allow support for the body to return to harmony and thrive. The SuperFeast vision looks at the individual in regards to understanding best practice for educating and spreading the wisdoms of ancient traditions and medicines. Mason and Tahnee have also recently started their own journey in parenthood.   Oni:  (00:25) Look forward to chatting to this synergistic couple for their individual and collective knowledge on attitudes towards health, but particularly preconception health, reproductive health, and looking at the individual, and how social and cultural pressures influence our health-related decision-making processes. We are also excited to hear about their experiences in parenthood and how this new role for them has influenced their own attitudes toward everything in their life. Welcome.   Tahnee:  (00:52) Thanks for having us.   Mason:   (00:53) Thank you.   Oni:  (00:53) Yay. It's so nice to have both of you here. I know that you are not strangers to vocally sharing your wisdoms. You host talks and also have your podcast, and blog-related information. But there's thousands of things I could ask you. I'll have to narrow it down today.   Oni:  (01:11) Well, I want to start with reproductive health and it's such a huge topic, particularly with rising dysfunction around reproductive health. It sounds basic, but what is reproductive health to both of you, or either of you?   Mason:  (01:25) Pretty huge topic. Tahns and I, we've been working together about four years now. I tapped out of being a yoga teacher early on, but Tahnee, being a yoga teacher, her work went into Taoism and my work primarily being in Taoist Tonic herbalism. There's where we connected in our philosophy when it came to reproductive health. In the context of Taoist Tonic Herbs and Taoism in general, there's Three Treasures within the body that we're wanting to tonify through our everyday life, through our lifestyle and through our herbs, Jing, Qi, Shen.   Mason:  (01:56) And we can go a little bit more into those, but that baseline... Think about the analogy of a candle. Jing is like the wax of your candle, and that's associated with your physicality, your skeletal system, but also your reproductive health. And in that reproductive health association, you're associating with the ability to reproduce cells, and heal tissue and heal from trauma, so on and so forth.   Mason:  (02:17) And so, when we're talking about reproductive health, it's not something isolated. It's part of something that's going to be... Yes, it can be sexual reproductive health, but it's also going to spill over into your ability to actually stay physically robust within your foundations up until 80, 90, 100 years old. So, you don't get into that, burn through your telomeres, and your cells lack the ability to reproduce cells, and enter into that death cycle, really nice and early.   Mason:  (02:41) That's where we talk about when you're in your 20s and 30s, and have low reproductive health, yes, you can just be like, okay, well I can deal with that later. I don't want to get pregnant right now. But when you're associating with it, being one of your reproductive health, being associated with one of your treasures, and one of the ideas, in life in general, but we connected from that Taoist philosophy is guarding your Treasures and tonifying, building your treasures.   Mason:  (03:03) You can see that you can't, like in the West, compartmentalise reproductive health and be like, that's fine, don't really need that now anyway, or it's not really that important. Whereas we're like, it's one of the most important things because if the wax of your candle starts... If you're leaking your Jing, and so, therefore, you're not building any wax. You're burning through it faster than you... Than is responsible, or sustainable for your lifestyle. And then, we know, you see that Western flow where people go in lifestyle, you're heading down a route you're getting more reliant on external institutions, drugs, surgeries, that kind of thing.   Mason:  (03:36) Where the path that we like, is one of health sovereignty. It's a longterm conversation. Whereas you take a little bit more responsibility for that, including your reproductive health. That's associated with your Jing, your genetic potential, your lower back strength, your bone strength, your capacity maintain bone marrow, so on and so forth. And so, reproductive health is just a part of who you are.   Tahnee:  (03:58) And building on that. If you think about every cell in the body needing to reproduce multiple times a day, sometimes multiple times a minute or a second. That's what the Taoists identified as one of the roles of Jing, was the reproductive health of the entire body.   Tahnee:  (04:11) So, we really look at this ability to produce healthy cells. This ability to produce a healthy reproductive cell in your body, so an egg or a sperm. These are things that are essential markers of health. So we look at it as like a report card. It's like, if you don't have a great sperm count, if you aren't having a healthy menstrual cycle with no pain and if you're not ovulating and these things, then you're actually... There's something going on that you need to have a look at. And we look at that as in a really holistic way.   Tahnee:  (04:38) It's not that necessarily there's something wrong with you in inverted comma's but it's like that would be a sign or call. From the body that that is something that needs to be addressed and we have such a high stress lifestyle, such a high stress culture. Women are given hormonal birth control very young, men are exercising a lot these days. We've got this culture of activity and athleticism, which we didn't really have historically. If you look back until around the sort of 70s and 80s that we first started to get this physical culture come through and the impact that has on people's bodies when they're working out all the time. It's interesting stuff to have a look at. So a lot of the time we see people that are on really strict diets, they end up with reproductive issues or people that are overworking their bodies and their physiology and they tend to be the ones that maybe in their 20's like Mase said, they'll get away with it because they still have quite a lot of energy.   Tahnee:  (05:30) They can drink the coffee and take the supplements and do the things, but as they slide into the 30's and 40's it starts to catch up and a lot of the time people choose to have children a lot later as well. So you can end up in your 30's and 40's with out anything left in the bank to actually carry a healthy pregnancy through. I study a lot with my acupuncturist who work on how to help people with their fertility journeys and it's not just women, it's the men as well. And I think really tend to focus on women when we talk about reproductive health. But that's something I'm quite passionate about. The men have to take responsibility too. And the amount of times I've spoken to women who are doing the cleanses and taking the herbs and eating all the right foods and their partners are like, I don't want a bar of it.   Tahnee:  (06:13) I think as, as a culture, if we could start to expand the conversation to say, look, reproductive health is everyone's responsibility and if we want a healthy species, if we want to really be the most amazing potentiated humans as we grow and develop, which is what our culture really needs, especially with all the stuff going on politically and socially at the moment. It's on us to create healthy children and that's where this passion for preconception really comes through with us as well. Because we're not just talking about reproductive health as having healthy periods and stuff, it's also this responsibility that if you do choose to have children that you are giving them the best possible start.   Mason:  (06:48) There's a lot to that in terms of men being able to just go bypass going, I'll support you by getting healthy as well. And I'm not one for extremism, so if you're like a lot of the people are like right "I'm going to start preparing for pregnancy" and all of a sudden it becomes this obsession where anything you deem subconsciously as unhealthy, you need to cut out and rararara. But it's just about the direction that you want to go and you want to go into a direction of genetic potential. One that's not leaking Jing, and so men, when we say pregnancy preparation, we don't need to be obsessive, we need to realize that it isn't just like, oh this is just going to be for support. You can get your sperm health rocking and the unification of the parent's Jing is what's going to have a huge contribution basically to the primordial gene of that kid. And so the foundation of that kid.   Tahnee:  (07:32) It's their inheritance. One of the great analogies of Chinese Medicine with this is you might inherit a great car from your parents or you might inherit a bomb. And so we want to try and give them...   Mason:  (07:45) I think the woman has a great responsibility in terms of like housing,an environment where the liver is rocking and so you can handle hormonal fluctuations and you're going to be processing toxicity. You've got a microbiota that's actually going to be... That's another inheritance of the child, making sure that the microbiome is absolutely rocking so your passing that onto the child. Yes, a lot's on the woman but theres lots on the man as well. And you want to be healthy if you're going to be surviving and thriving through those initial years as well.   Oni:  (08:08) What a great a conversation to have with both of you. I wish that you conceived me, in a way. Because I'm sure you probably really looked after yourself.   Tahnee:  (08:19) We're focusing on reproductive and preconception health, but also the wider ideologies around health and how we need to really focus on our individual physiologies and biologies before we start applying these grand perspectives of what people should do or what we should do, what we shouldn't do, and looking at reproductive health as reproducing yourself as the best selves with your cells as time goes on throughout your whole life.   Oni:  (08:46) What do you advise when people are thinking about preconception health regardless if they're soon to conceive?   Tahnee:  (08:54) We typically do hear from a lot of people who are in the early stages of starting to think about a family for the first time. And I think a lot of the time people don't give themselves enough time, so they sort of think, oh, I've met someone and I want to have a baby. And obviously life happens and sometimes we just get pregnant. These kinds of things. And I don't think we should ever be ashamed of ourselves, I've heard from people, they're like, oh my gosh, I didn't do any cleansing before I conceived. And it's like, well that's not always necessary. We definitely, for ourselves, talked a lot about this idea of conscious conception and trying to at least prepare our bodies in a way that they were... Be like having guests over. You want to like get the house looking good and tidy it up and all that thing.   Tahnee:  (09:35) And I think it's the same with... That's how I thought about it with getting pregnant, having my daughter living inside of my body, I wanted to be in a quite a good state of health for that process. And obviously Mason was aware of his roles in that as well. So we worked with a book called the Brighton Baby, which is written by a naturopathic doctor in the States and he outlines this like two year plan, which is really great. So for anyone who's a little bit older and probably closer to having children, that would be something I'd recommend getting a hold of because it really does outline quite comprehensively all these different ways in which you can prepare your body and different tests you can have to ensure you don't have really high heavy metals and these kinds of things because children do take that stuff from our bodies.   Tahnee:  (10:16) So the things that you know you can do just to as a precaution, and that's something we've seen, when you look at the prevalence of things like ADHD and autism and these kinds of things, it's like, well, is this coming from this accumulation of these kind of toxins in the diet? Which is possible because we're eating more of these foods and exposing ourselves to more of these things. So we just think, hedge your bets, you're better off starting, in the best place possible. And then also we think if you're a bit younger you can start to really... Because a woman start to get really in tune with your cycle and start to be more conscious of your period isn't this curse. It's this actual really epic thing that happens in your body every month that has an emotional and spiritual component as well as a physical component. And as men to learn to be more respectful of that flow in women's lives and to really take the time to understand what's going on.   Tahnee:  (11:07) We have such a stigma around menstration in our culture and it's shifting slowly. I think a lot of the younger girls I talk to are a lot more aware of that, but people are so... This idea of sovereignty is really important because you have to take some responsibility. You can't expect a healthcare system to catch you. You can't expect that if you can't get pregnant, you're just going to go and do IVF. I know those are options, but they should be an absolute last case resort in our opinion. We believe in public health care and we believe that that should be available to everyone. But we also believe the individual needs to take responsibility. And so that really looks like... For sure have fun and do things and explore your life and don't be a martyr. That's not what we're trying to say.   Tahnee:  (11:45) But health really is about moderation. It's about getting into the rhythms of nature. So summertime here it's like everyone's feeling a little bit more energetic, a bit more party vibe. Everyone wants to be outside and that's fine. Like in Chinese Medicine, this is the time to do it because it's summer time, we're meant to be expressing ourselves. We're meant to be engaging and enjoying life. Then in winter time we should be sleeping more and resting more and taking more time to be internal and inward focused. And these transitions occur in all of us all the time as well. So we have a circadian rhythm and we're like the birds. We want to be up with the sun and down with the sun and we really push the limits of that in our culture. And we could talk about that all day long, the lights that we choose to use in our homes and all of this stuff.   Tahnee:  (12:27) But whatever curiosity has grabbed you, whether it's diet or whether it's culture or whether it's creating a home that's a sanctuary. Start to look at these things. And this idea of a personal culture is something that we're really passionate about at SuperFeast.   Mason:  (12:39) Brighton Baby was the book that Tahns just referenced. And I think in saying that we worked with a... I feel like it was more like we were looking at it and going, oh yeah, that makes sense. That's good. And what Tahns wasn't mentioning is that she'd had 10 years of healing, like in pretty serious gut stuff. 10 years of liver...   Tahnee:  (12:54) And emotional stuff.   Mason:  (12:55) Yeah. And emotional. And liver cleansing, parasite cleansing for myself. I can go into some of the cleansers, but that had been a big run up. And so basically it wasn't just a... Two years, it's almost a little bit of a rush to be like... Especially to know you're going to be... And there's a little bit unrealistic because you're going to have to go into a huge phase where you're going to have to completely and somewhat unrealistically, like a bandaid, you're going to have to change the direction of your life and your personal culture is going to look completely different.   Mason:  (13:21) And that might be necessary and it's worth it if you're going to be having a baby. However, is that really the context of... You're going to be going and creating a family, we're creating this family culture, we're creating this personal culture and that, in that that talks to the ideological aspects that come in, especially if you are... This area we get to explore cleansing our body and cleansing our spirit or ignighting our spirit, I don't know if our spirit needs a cleanse. But, definitely our emotional selves. In that we become susceptible to ideologies, especially if we go from the point where we've been eating really crappy food and we've been in really crappy relationships and then there's room for extremism to kind of like sneak in, in the preparation stage or if you do get pregnant and all of a sudden you have to kick back and oppose the the unhealthy culture or who you were before in your obsession with getting healthy and protecting your child.   Mason:  (14:10) And it's not the good thing to cleanse, but it's a better thing for you to start thinking about the creation of your personal culture and your family culture. Now hopefully a bit more void of ideology and then the necessity for obsession, exclusion in because you've decided to go and get healthy. So I think that's a real huge one because a lot of people who get into and say, we will look at Brighton Baby preparations. It's just a little bit of, you go on a series of anti-parasitic cleanse, get the viruses out of your body. That's going to have a lot to do with clearing your body of bad calcium and sediment build ups. Which has a lot to do with taking these kinds of things you get into the Msm's, methylsulfonylmethane's, zeolites and possibly taking hydrogen, maybe fulvic acids and these kinds of things which are going to be able to get in and hopefully dissolve these pockets of calcium which are gunking up within organs, within arteries, within joint tissue, within...That's what you think of when you think of arthritis. That's like what I mean by a bad calcium. That's going to be a huge part of the initial part of the cleanse.   Mason:  (15:06) Underneath that you're going to see a housing of viral loads and nano bacteria. It's also going to be that calcium can be mixed in with fungal loads and this is really fun. I guess because I was someone that dove really, really deep in. And you could see I probably did have that orthorexia session of I've gotta be constantly on one of these protocols because there's parasites in me. I'm gonna like... Myself all the time just going into an unhealthy ideological reliance on that as what I do. But at the same time, when you're clearing out those bad calciums, you're going to be maybe hitting some antifungals at the same time, really going to be getting onto like the, the Pau D'arco tea's, Amazonian Lapacho tree, that's the back of that tree, getting into the antivirals like Cat's Claw [inaudible 00:00:15:48].   Mason:  (15:49) And there's many other Western herbs Astragalus's and medicinal mushrooms. Well you're going to start actually doing some deep clearing and at the same time, maybe that's a time to work with a naturopath or someone to see if you actually have parasites or fungal loads or things going on with your microbiome. Then from there you want to start getting in and doing a little bit of all the time you want to be reseeding the gut health and maybe getting in and doing those liver cleanse and getting onto those liver herbs. That's like the next somewhat step. Doing a little bit of a Kidney upgrade. That's going to have a lot to do with your Jing and make sure that you're sleeping. Make sure you're thoroughly hydrated, getting off municipal water, getting a really good filter. Ideally getting onto good spring water. I'd much prefer people getting onto a spring water and that's a huge part of it. Making sure that you're getting into the sun, getting sun onto your reproductive organs thouroughly.   Mason:  (16:32) And these are all things you can start inviting, not with obsession. You can integrate them into who you are and what you're doing already. Rather than just taking that external cleansing identity that's obsessed with health and making that who you are. Because a lot of people here are deficient in Jing, deficient in personal identity. Therefore they start identifying externally with that, with that ideology.   Oni:  (16:51) What I'm hearing from both of you is that to look at what is coming back to nature for you, not just for whatever is trendy at the time. Instead of going, oh what in that ideology suits me? Who am I and then what suits me and then finding things that resonate potentially different traditions. Individual health, and looking in insight instead of looking outside from the shame perspective of something's wrong with me. I need to fix through obsessive health ideologies and getting to learn, what your health identity, but what your identity and spiritual identity is. So Mason, you've got some things to say.   Mason:  (17:29) Basically I like banging on about this topic I can get very excited about the potential you have for cleansing your body. I'm someone that quite often I'll follow the shiny thing, the shiny thing being these idealistic, perfect bodies to bring through these magical little spirits, but a lot of that, they're not truly great, but at the same time does lend itself, one to become a boring person if you get obsessed and a boring couple. But at the same time, what I'm basically driving home here is to not let these... When you're going into cleansing as with Tonic Herbalism, I try and pull these things off pedestals as soon as I can and I'm someone that can talk... people telling me I'm a really good salesman and say I can sell ice to the eskimo's but I can't if I'm not really invested in something, but I also have the vested interest to make sure that these... Integrating something like medicinal mushrooms or tonic herbs or whatever it is, and to someone's local cleansing practices, we want to make sure that it isn't just being sold with this beautiful shiny language, but we're actually able to take it off a pedestal, talk about, get very realistic about what our expectations are when we're integrating these things and make sure that it gets merged with our own intention for our own lives and our own family.   Mason:  (18:39) So it doesn't just come a thing on a list and ambiguous external thing that we should do in order to be right or in order to be valid. In terms of being good parents in our preparation. So I like to add these caveats that when you like, whether it's just yourself or your partner, whoever it is, when you are going down the route of cleansing your body and making sure that you are, you're creating a lifestyle that's going to lead towards real healthy and vibrant self. Make sure that you're not just doing something external and not just following some ideology or diet. Make sure that you are considering the fact that you are creating a family culture, that you have a personal culture and what you do needs to be part of a pattern of what you're going to be doing for many decades.   Mason:  (19:21) For now, not just something extreme that you're going to do now in order to make everything okay. It needs to be very sustainable, right? So think about the diet, oh I'm never drinking again or I'm only going to eat this from now on. Can you do this realistically for the next 50 years? And can you do it within the context of the priority being creating a super beautiful, loving environment, family culture, making sure that you're taking you away from connecting with your partner because that's going to be like one of the most important things. So just make sure that that doesn't create a wedge. Make sure you get your priorities right and just make sure that it merges into your own family culture and not a family culture that's going to be like Instagramable. You know, you can feel this bubble of intention when you're adding things into that family culture.   Mason:  (20:04) Remember that you need to be able to do this for the next 50 years, 40 years, 20 years, whatever it's going to be. So is what you're bringing in and inviting in to your culture, which isn't... This is possibly what you're going to be handing down the way you do things, your intention, the way you cleanse your body, the way you think about food, the way you think about other particular foods. Are they good? Are they bad? Do you really want that to be a part of your culture or do you want maybe greater nuance in how you talk about diet? Do you want extreme rights and wrongs? No. You want just to be able to have beautiful ongoing conversations without extremism and thinking you need to be doing that because that's what you're maybe going to be passing onto your children.   Mason:  (20:39) That's what you maybe pass onto your nieces and nephews if you're not having children. So you may be very precious about that and make sure that you can maintain being excited or doing this thing for the next few decades. Otherwise it's very short term and when you get involved in little short term, things like that, short term diet, short term cleansers, you're burning through your gas, you're burning through your Jing and you're ultimately going to lead. It's not a sustainable way to begin to lead more towards a path of degeneration anyway, which takes away from that land like that potential longevity intention and healthy intention you had to begin with.   Tahnee:  (21:07) And that's what reproductive health is. It's not degeneration, it's regeneration. So it's about ability to regrow the body. Does that, like what I think people forget all the time is like the doctor doesn't heal you. A herb doesn't heal you. No one can heal you. Your body heals itself and you really just have to get out of the way. The block to that healing, which can be physical, it can be emotional, it can be spiritual. Like I'm a huge fan of Seth Godin and he talks a lot about how from a very young age, our children are taught to be obedient. They're taught to look for what other people want them to say as the right answer instead of coming up with their own right answer. Like we can't trust you to know. So you have to find what other people want you to notice that you can be right.   Tahnee:  (21:47) You know, and then you'll be validated and then you'll be approved. And so we do this, people like us and do things like this, right? So we join a club and we become a whatever kind of club you want to join. But you say that a lot in this area where if someone doesn't agree 100% with you, then they get ostracized from the group. And so the complexity and the times when you know we aren't perfect and cause that's human life, right? But we also have to accept that if we want to be sovereign, if we want to be healthy, if we want to like be balanced, we need to actually do the work inside. And that's work for me. A lot of the meditation and yoga practices have been super powerful because I started to realise that yeah, a lot of the ideas of who I was and what I could and couldn't do weren't mine.   Tahnee:  (22:29) They were created by culture they created by family or by even just my own rebellion or response to my life. And so when I started to really examine that stuff, we had a beautiful birth at home. I felt very strong, very powerful through my pregnancy. If I was me 10 years before that, I wouldn't have had the same experience because I'd had so much personal growth in those 10 years that the 30 year old me was able to have that experience that the 20 year old may wouldn't have had, and I remember saying like, I'll take drugs. I don't want to feel anything. I'm afraid of pain. And then I started doing Yin Yoga and I learned to feel pain and then I realized that pain wasn't even pain. It was sensation and sensation was interesting and there was this tapestry of feeling going on in there and oh.   Tahnee:  (23:10) It's actually connected to my feelings and my emotions and dotted auditors when we can really start to grow internally, then a lot of the external stuff just falls away.   Oni:  (23:19) So reframing through experiential learning, I guess.   Tahnee:  (23:22) Yes, which is exactly what you know. If you go and listen to Seth Godin's work on education, it's all around. Don't teach people to look for the answer, teach them to ask interesting questions.   Oni:  (23:32) Okay, perfect. We've covered a range of topics, reproductive health, integrated into overall health attitudes and how to approach preconception, not just in the idea that we'll creating children, but also how to give birth to ourselves over and over again through cell health and regeneration. And I want to ask you too about your own journey in Parenthood and how potentially some of your attitudes have been challenged in that journey or enhanced or expanded. And what was that like for you two?   Tahnee:  (24:05) It definitely had a bit of an idea of what I thought I was going to be like when I was pregnant, which was like vegetarian and all of these things because I was vegetarian for 14 years and then for a few years I to [inaudible 00:24:21] struggled to really integrate it into my life even though I think my body really thrives, eating it, but mentally I had a lot of trouble. My acupuncturist would say that I was addicted to that ideology and I think to a degree that was true. Like this idea for me of what it meant. And even I think the fear of death and participating in death and comfort around death. When I was probably 28 or 29 I did this meditation retreat in Thailand a Tantric one, and we spent quite a bit of time doing death meditations and that was a huge realisation for me of how much I was afraid of that and avoiding experiences with death.   Tahnee:  (25:00) And so I actually found eating meat a lot easier after doing that because I was like, oh, you know, I feel like I'm really part of this natural cycle and I'm studying Taoism, you know, it's so integrated with the earth and humans are this bridge between heaven and earth were supposed to be able to anchor us spirit into this physical body on this plane. It's not about ascension and about leaving this body, it's about actually being here in a spiritual form, but through the physicality of the body. And so I think those kinds of ideas in my late 20's really helped me to transition into Parenthood. And I think my intuition was so strong, like so strong that my daughter came through to us, to me in meditation, she, I knew her name, I knew she was a girl. I was getting all these amazing insight.   Tahnee:  (25:45) But then I was also getting eat meat. I'm going to compartmentalise and put that over there and I'm going to let go. Oh, this stuff's interesting. And I could really feel how my rational mind was interfering with my intuitive knowing self. And I could feel that in birth, I could feel like these waves where if my mind kicked in and was starting to think about the physiology a lot about the body from studying yoga. And I would think, oh my gosh, like there's a bend in my pelvis. Like, why has there been to my pelvis? I have to get a baby through this bend. And then I would get out of that. I need to like my intuitive knowing, which is like, of course this is fine course. Like I felt connected to every woman ever through this incredible portal of birth.   Tahnee:  (26:22) And so I think for me it's really been a lot to do with trusting my intuition and her body's wisdom. Like she'll get a fever and we just let it burn. We let it break and then she changes. You look at Steiner's work and he talks a lot about how illness is like an upgrade for children. It reboots their immune systems and teaches their bodies how to respond and, and she goes through this huge developmental leaps off to these things. So I had to really let go of this idea of like, oh my God, she has a favor. I'm a bad mom. She's sick. And being like, this is really important for her and my job is to support her. So I take time off, I stay home with her, I coddle her until she breaks and then she's fine again. So things like that I think I've really leaned into more and the trust in the body's wisdom and that we don't have to know all the answers mentally that it's just like a lot of the time it's holding space.   Mason:  (27:12) I think you've just knocked it on the head. The main thing that's that's come up. I mean I probably respect the change that occurs in life now more than ever. I don't think I was like a know it als necessarily. I knew everything about parenting until I become a parent. I thought I was going to get that. Those, I think it's definitely been humbling so I'm definitely going with the flow a little bit more made in order to show up the great dad for me anyway, the amount of time more than beforehand. I need to make sure that I've compartmentalised in my life start like a little bit of time for myself so that then I can create more space within the family unit as well so that things can flow a little bit more. Because before that like we were hustling big time.   Mason:  (27:52) I mean we were on before we had Aiya and so to change gears was a bit of a big deal sometimes. Yeah, that's like that's been a harsh lesson here and there in order to find that nice balance between a business that's growing nicely and requiring a lot of energy and then yourself and your own personal practice, your a meditative practice or whatever it is. It's pretty huge. I'm very dynamic in nature. I feel like respecting the fact that I can't just be like okay, in this hour I will meditate in this way and in this area. Like I need space in order to tune into where I am at within for that week or for that phase of my life or for that day. And so the biggest thing I've realised is that I really need to know myself, when you've got the intensity of like, especially now like a toddler, I haven't got a you've got a three year old and right now she's going through something and she needs a lot of space.   Mason:  (28:45) And if I'm not creating a little bit of space for myself, if Tahnee and I are communicating and creating space like space in our relationship, which can be difficult when you've got like 20 business babies and they need time and we've sort of stopped showing up with our family. And so on a practical note and in terms of our family culture, i've started to try and get a little bit more savage with like our time and this is the most important thing and it's, it's my space, our space, space for the baby.   Tahnee:  (29:12) And that goes back to looking after the culture that you mentioned that you're creating. And speaking of which, and thank you so much for joining us. Both of you are so generous with what not only right now today, but through all of your resources. So what are some of your best resources that you can clue us into now?   Mason:  (29:28) Well, in regards to pregnancy preparation, Tahnee and I have a podcast that goes for two hours. We were pregnant when we filmed it. So that's on superfeast.com.au. You can just, if you type in pregnancy, it'll pop up that pregnancy prep and we have... It's called healthy pregnancy is another two hour podcast episode that we did just after we've given birth to Aiya we go through everything that we did, supplementation, Tahnee's exercise routines and all those which just looked like a lot of walking and spaciousness.   Mason:  (29:54) Anyway, a lot of stuff on our pregnancy and then postpartum and birth.   Oni:  (29:59) And that's through your website, SuperFeast?   Mason:  (30:01) All the other super phase podcasts. You can just try and get that on the super face podcast on iTunes type in pregnancy and they should pop up.   Oni:  (30:08) We're so grateful for you, Tahnee, Mason for coming on today and sharing your growing wisdom.   Mason:  (30:13) Thanks for having us.   Oni:  (30:14) And we hope you've enjoyed this episode today on pregnancy, birth and beyond. Tune in next week for more information inspiration, bringing us full circle. You can find our show on iTunes, Spreaker and the usual social media under pregnancy, birth and beyond, and our website at ppmedia.org

Today we've got James Newbury on the show. James is an absolute legend in the CrossFit community, he was awarded Australia's fittest man in 2017 and has consistently reached new levels of physical excellence throughout his career. James takes a soulful and holistic approach to fitness and athleticism catering his movement programs and classes to serve his wider community. James is passionate about longevity in body and in mind, and places a huge emphasis on the power of intentional rest and recovery, especially when training hard. James shines a light on the potency of an embodied physical practice, for anyone out there who is into CrossFit or curious about it, tuning into today's chat is an absolute must.   Mason and James discuss: The practice of CrossFit. The importance of mindset and sustainable training. Exercise/movement as preparation for life. James' cycling accident and the natural measures he used to accelerate his recovery. The power of recovery in general, one of James’ favourite sayings is "recover harder than you work out". Longevity in fitness and in life itself. Using visualisation as a performance strategy. James' top recovery practices. James' favourite herbs, foods and supplements. The potency of nose breathing.   Who is James Newbury ? With a background in semi professional Rugby League James Newbury has dabbled in many sports, eventually finding his true passion in CrossFit. In 2013 James founded Adelaide specialist gym, Soul65. From here James has excelled in CrossFit competitions across the sport and is currently the 27th fittest man in the world. James has competed at the CrossFit Pacific Regionals for the past 5 years finishing 1st in 2017 earning him the title of 'Australia's Fittest Man'.   Resources: James Instagram James Facebook James Website James' Gym   Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast? A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We’d also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or check us out on Stitcher :)! Plus we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Mason: (00:00) James, thanks for being here, man.   James Newbury: (00:02) Hey, how you doing?   Mason: (00:03) Yeah, I'm cruising. How you doing down there?   James Newbury: (00:06) I'm good. I'm good. The weather is actually perfect today. It's about 20 degrees and not a cloud in the sky, not a breath of wind, it's perfect.   Mason: (00:14) Yeah, nice one, man. We're cruising on here with the fires on the border in Byron. It's one of those weird days because we had got a little bit of rain the other day so the smoke's cleared. I think unlike Sydney's kind of coping the smoke today. But for us, it just seems like this perfect, cloudless day at the moment.   James Newbury: (00:42) Oh, man. I've been seeing all the news about the fires. So devastating. Hopefully it's under control.   Mason: (00:43) I don't think it's getting there. We've kind of got like nothing compared to what's going on outside of Port Macquarie, I think we've got like 6000 hectares on fire at the back here. Which is still significant enough. Anyway, enough on that for now. What was your rugby league background? I obviously forgot to ask you.   James Newbury: (01:04) I started playing rugby league back when I was about 11 or 12. I got into it a little bit late.   Mason: (01:11) Me too. That's about when I started.   James Newbury: (01:16) I was born in the Blue Mountains down in Sydney and then I moved to Adelaide when I was probably eight years old. And then I got hooked on it after doing a school carnival. And I was just like, wow, this is so cool. You get to tackle other kids and you're allowed to do it. At that time, I was like, oh, whatever I could do to get out of day school, like any type of sport, I would just be like, yeah, let's go do this. And then I got really hooked on it. Back for my age when I was playing, everyone caught up to me eventually and overtook me. But at that time, I was fairly fast for a young kid. And then as everyone hit puberty, they kind of all caught up to me and go faster than me. But back then, that was kind of like my strength. So I really enjoyed playing football because at that age you kind of just run around everybody.   James Newbury: (02:06) Basically from there, I just got really hooked on that and I played up until I was about 21. I moved to Brisbane, I played in Brisbane for a little while. I moved to Sydney when I was like 19, played in Sydney for a little while. And yeah, during my teens, played a lot of state carnivals. I got picked in a couple of affiliated states, Australian teams, which was really cool. So like under 15 and under 18 Australian team. That was my thing for probably almost eight or nine years. Absolutely loved it. And yeah, after that, during one of the preseasons of football, that's when I found CrossFit. So, that kind of just moved a different path.   Mason: (02:50) And then you just deviated for the reason, just like that was what you were enjoying. So you went that direction?   James Newbury: (02:55) Yeah, exactly. I really liked the fact that with CrossFit, being an individual sport, you kind of got out what you put in. So if you trained really hard and you had some decent athletic ability already, you would win the competition, it's just as simple as that, it was so black and white. Whereas with football, you could do all the training you liked, you could put as much effort in. But then at the end of the day, it really came down to the coach whether they wanted to pick you in the team for that week or not pick you at all. So it wasn't a biased or it wasn't someone else's choice. It was really like if I wanted to train and train hard every day and make sure I recovered well and I was competing optimally, you'd reap the benefits at the end of the competition and you'd take first place or take second place or whatever it may be.   Mason: (03:50) You've been like my kind of initiation into like understanding CrossFit a little bit more. I think it's been about two years we've been chatting on Instagram. We never actually tuned in but you've been on the tonic herbs, which has always been to my delight. CrossFit beyond the cliche edges, you generally hear about the people doing it poorly. It's like with health, it's like with anything, it's like with herbalism and adaptogens, it's like with veganism it's like with us, trippers, we're into detoxification. There's always those people on the edges doing it without a centredness and doing it within a complete system but kind of can give the rest of it a bad name. That's kind of been like in the beginning, it was just, busted shoulders was what I heard, Crossfit being a physio's best friend.   James Newbury: (04:46) Yeah. Don't worry. I hear it all the time. It's pretty normal. And I guess like, the idea behind it is, I guess, for a lot of people, they get so hooked on this thing that they've fallen in love with so quickly that all they want to do is progress and get better so fast. Whereas that's not always the best thing. It's like when someone starts eating a better diet, they're just, all they want to do is talk about it and tell their friends and just go crazy and it becomes this like compulsive, obsessive thing that they just can't shut up about. And then when they get hooked on that and they see a little bit of result, they just run with it and they run with it so fast that usually they don't spend the time going through all the steps and processes to really figure out what they're doing. And that's usually when they push themselves enough to cause an injury.   James Newbury: (05:36) So, I think it comes down to at the end of the day, the coach that's coaching them, giving them recommendations and guiding them through that process and doing it well. I was lucky enough to have a great coach in the beginning to hold me back when I needed to be held back it needed to be held back or tell me to work on this more. And for a lot of people it's just like, and for a coach, especially if someone goes and opens a gym and because that's what I want to do and that's like their passion is like I want to open a gym and that's what I want to do, I want to help people, if they have clients that are seeing really quick fast results and it's putting a smile on their face, all they want to do is encourage that more.   James Newbury: (06:14) They get caught up in just feeding these people, quick, fast results. But really, all they're really doing is training bad patterns of movement and then at the end of the day, the people do end up hurt. But I think their intentions in the beginning are quite good but they also need to take a step back and have a look at how they're actually helping progress their clients.   James Newbury: (06:36) So, it's kind of a double-edged thing here. It's like, I really want to help, but what they're doing sometimes isn't the best. These days, I think the coaching is getting better and better. So, I do understand where the stigma comes from.   Mason: (06:51) Well, I mean, as I said, it's so interesting talking about it because you know that that's the reality and because you can see it's the exact same conversation that happens around dietary stuff. And people get hooked real quick. If you keep on going in that short gratification kind of period, you're going to be generally working off cues and rule based kind of like, and it's the same with yoga as well. You see people just like rip their bodies apart with yoga when they're going based on the cue, hang on, that's my Slack ticking along. That's me, everybody, non stop working.   Mason: (07:26) But you can see everyone go based on, it's like an Ashtanga first series, I haven't really ever done it myself but you've seen bodies come out and be like, you need to achieve these patterns of movement in order to progress to the second stage of movement, whatever it is. And although there's lots of beautiful people and coaches and teachers training people on how to do that responsibly, of course, it gets diluted very quickly when there's business involved and when there's like Instagram involved and all those kinds of things.   Mason: (07:55) So it's fascinating to hear that the same is happening in CrossFit where people are just obviously going to the gain or going to master the movement, but perhaps their physiology doesn't want to do that movement in that way. So, when you talk about there being that good coach that spaciousness between just getting the smile on your dial and then sustainably using CrossFit, I guess we're talking about training in general as well when it comes to yourself. Is CrossFit like across the board like triathlon?   James Newbury: (08:28) These days it is because I guess if you go to an everyday local CrossFit competition, you probably just get the standard in the gym style deadlifts and muscle ups and pull ups and handstands and things of that nature. Whereas when you go to say bigger comps and they have the ability to go outside the box a bit more, you'll get the open water swims and you'll get the paddle boards and you get stand up paddles and you'll get maybe some mountain biking or trail running or triathlon style things or even like obstacle courses and things like that. So yeah, it's very broad in general. But basically, it's just work capacity across anything.   James Newbury: (09:13) So, whatever gets your body moving in a measured scenario in terms of work capacity, whether it's moving a ton of bricks from A to B or running from A to B, then jumping in the water and swimming from A to B, basically work capacity, whatever it is, whether it's lifting weights from ground overhead or doing a pull up from full extension of the arms to chin over bar. It's just trying to get your body to move in as many different combinations as possible and doing it as time efficient as possible. That's kind of the key is just trying to use your entire base of fitness, whatever it is.   James Newbury: (09:49) So, for me, getting ready for competitions that might be international, people are trying to broaden the spectrum of how much we can test. I think the more that they do that, the better athlete they'll find. So yeah, chucking in triathlons or long distance running into a mix of maybe pulling a very heavy deadlift or heavy clean and jerk, that's going to find the most broad athlete who can achieve them the most tasks to the best ability.   Mason: (10:19) I get the appeal of that. Like anything, that just sounds fun to be testing yourself on so many, like in such a wide array. And as well, at times when, I can tell, if much of our training gets ambiguous and doesn't become task-oriented or we don't have the ability to drive ourselves towards a goal, having just simply, just being able to time that effort is again, sounds fun.   James Newbury: (10:46) Yeah, it totally is. And I think as soon as you put a timer on something, it's just like people automatically just get this natural feeling of their little bit of competitiveness just gets activated and makes them work a little bit harder sometimes. And sometimes it's great and then other times there's a time and a place just to go about the movements and do just a movement satisfaction, movement conditioning, movement skill progression.   James Newbury: (11:15) So, there are days where I might feel a little bit burned or I might feel like I'm not really with it at the moment to push to a particular capacity. So I can go out and I can just trod it out just nice and easy. It gets me in a mindset that you don't always have to be firing it at a million percent, which is probably the idea that a lot of CrossFitters get is you got to go hard all the time or it's not really the case.   Mason: (11:40) Yeah man, you got to be kicking goals every single second of the day and achieving, otherwise there's no point unless you're just nailing your PB. How do you communicate that because I guess that's the essence of what you were talking about in the difference between a responsible coach that's actually teaching sustainable training. I imagine sustainable training comes into like, if you're going, from what I can tell, the idea of CrossFit is staying optimized athletically for the long term. We're talking about decades. So what are those key things that you're teaching or principles that you're teaching in the gym or for mindset to get people back in that frame?   James Newbury: (12:26) With my gym, so we recently just kind of had a bit of a restructure on how we like to sort of, I guess, program things. My gym is named Soul. And what we do there is we try and look at health in its entirety as much as possible. So looking at balance. We found that getting someone to come in after work after probably a busy, hectic, stressful day at work, and then putting them through a crazy, hectic, stressful class workout where they're lifting weights and running around and heightening them even more and then sending them on their way to go home and and hopefully they go home and have a really nutritious meal and stretch and fall asleep. Well, that's usually not the case.   James Newbury: (13:17) So, we identified that being an issue and we knew that every different person that came in probably needed something different to the next person. So, what we tried to do is figure out an array of classes that could cater for everyone on any particular day. So we run strength and conditioning classes, we also run stretch classes, we run a low impact, low intensity class. We do some bike classes as well where they don't have to lift weights, it's basically just biking. We also do some specific only weightlifting classes. So, people can make it a choice on what I want to train for the day instead of just coming in and always getting strength and conditioning, strength and conditioning, strength and conditioning every day.   James Newbury: (14:01) So, if someone comes in and not feeling up to doing strength and conditioning class, they can choose a stretch class instead and they can sit down for 60 minutes and just do a nice relaxed passive stretch that's going to help bring them back to a really nice relaxed, parasympathetic nervous system instead of heightening them even more after a heightening day, and then trying to just zone out and sleep because I know not everyone's going to go home and do breath work before they go to bed and down regulate before they try and sleep.   James Newbury: (14:32) It's really about trying to find balance and that's what we're doing with Soul as much as possible. We have some fantastic coaches there that love to program and love to program progression for people for longevity, rather than programming, trying to make everybody an elite athlete, which is, in my eyes, most of the people that come into the gym, they want to be able to function throughout their day really, really well. They want to be able to play with their kids, they want to be able to hike on the weekends, they want to be able to go wakeboarding behind a boat if they so choose to. It's just preparation for life. And if they do choose to go down the path where they want to compete and push themselves a little more, we can cater for that too.   James Newbury: (15:17) But to be honest, people either just want to do local competitions and have some fun with some friends and do it in a partnership or a team environments. So, we also cater for that too. So it's really just trying to be as wholesome as possible. And not only that but in terms of balanced health, we also looked at the mental side of things as well. So getting someone to come in and putting their headphones in for the whole session is not our idea of mental health. We think interaction and social settings are really good place that they can get a more wholesome health approach. So we created the coffee bar and smoothie bar so people can come and train with a group of friends and then hang out and stay and chat and be social for a period of time. And so instead of just coming into their 45 or 60 minute class and then getting on their way, they can come in, they can do the 60 minute class and they can hang out for 20, 25 minutes and just chew the fat for a while.   Mason: (16:18) That piece is one of the, you said about like getting functional so you can just play with your kids. That's sometimes the hardest thing when you're coming from a programmed young mindset about just fucking killing it physically all the time. And then still, like, of course, that's like functionally, I do want to be able to play with my kids, but it was just as a secondary adjunct. I've been using that as a primary focus. And my training, the holistic nature of my training has opened up big time. Once I get in, my crawling on the ground, when I was doing that to be functional, I just couldn't get the consistency. But thinking about crawling like a goanna after Aiya on the beach for 10 minutes, 15 minutes, I'm like, oh, now we're talking.   James Newbury: (17:22) It's so hard. If I was to go out and try and bear crawl up the street, give me 50 meters and you're already in a world of pain. It's functional. It does help you and it teaches you good movement patterns and gets you sweaty. It's good for the body, good for the soul. So I think that type of stuff is fantastic.   James Newbury: (17:43) And then your kids also, they're learning everything just through, they're just absorbing it all day long, they're just soaking it all up. And if they can see that you're being active and getting outside and finding sunshine and walking around barefoot, they'll do the same thing. It's good for them.   Mason: (18:01) You've got a real good ethos. I don't know whether I've just noticed a little bit more but on Instagram you've been, and maybe after.. I know we haven't told everyone that we were meant to talk like two weeks ago, three weeks ago. You happen to-   James Newbury: (18:15) I fell off my bike.   Mason: (18:16) You have a couple pf fractures in your spine and punctured your lung, just that little chestnut. I was just saying how I didn't really talk to everyone about the fact that you had, your fracture your spine and you puncture in your lung. I think that was like the day before we were meant to talk so your partner sent me a beautiful picture of you laid up with your neck brace on. And then saying, he's really sorry, he was going to jump on and still do the podcast, but I think he should have a little bit of a rest. I was like, man, you're a badass.   James Newbury: (18:55) I was like saying to Kayla, I was like, "Oh, no, I've got to get on this podcast with Mason. I've got to get on." And she's like, "You can't talk, you can't sit up, you're not allowed to do anything." I'm just like, "We'll figure it out." And she's like, "Maybe we'll just try and reschedule for next week or the week after." I'm so glad you could do that. That was great.   Mason: (19:13) Yeah, yeah, yeah. We can do that. You were on your bike? Were you mountain biking or off road?   James Newbury: (19:19) Yeah. So basically, I was mountain biking with three other friends, and we had three bikes and there was four of us. And basically, when we got to the bottom of the run, we would just swap someone out and then the next group of three would go up and come down and do a run, come back. Yeah, I was just coming down a run and I just took a corner just too fast, I just overshot the corner and lost my front wheel in some loose dirt. And there was just this medium-sized to small tree just with a thick stump on the bottom and I kind of just went over the handlebars and basically just kind of speared, javelin this tree with my head. And as I hit the tree, I kind of rolled my back into the tree into a branch. The branch kind of got me in the back a bit.   James Newbury: (20:12) I never lost consciousness or anything like that, I just kind of hit the deck and I was out of breath. I was like, oh, I've just winded myself pretty bad. One of my mates came around the corner after me and he was like, "Oh, no," I was like, "I'm good, I'm good, you just need to give me a minute, I just need to catch my breath." I was pretty out of breath, couldn't breathe. I ended up walking back to the car, once I got up eventually, I ended up walking back to the car and the guys were like, probably should take you to the hospital. It was about a maybe a 2k walk and then we sat in the emergency for about 90 minutes before they saw me.   James Newbury: (20:49) I ended up having a punctured lung, slightly collapsed, I had a minor pneumothorax. I broke the seventh and eighth rib, and then I had two spinal process fractures in T2, T3. So that kind of pulled me out of finishing off a competition I was doing at the time for CrossFit. And then I thought it was going to really impact, I've got an Ironman in a couple of weeks now which I'm going to compete in. So that's kind of where I was sort of at the time, like we didn't know the extent of the injuries, but they're just like you can't really do too much for four to six weeks. And I was just like, oh well, watch how fast I heal this. And yeah, so we've kind of just gone from there and that's basically when Kayla touched base and then you sent me some goodies to help me out healing up.   Mason: (21:38) Oh yeah, I'll always send you the goodies. I don't know if it was just because that injury was there but on your Instagram, I think you've always been bent this way, but you were talking about the natural healers, you were talking about getting barefoot and sunshine and hydration. So yeah, like obviously, we've been talking about those at the gym. Have you found yourself heightening, the time you're spending having conversations with people? Because your Instagram is pretty huge, you've got like a big following there and I imagine on the ground with the students as well.   James Newbury: (22:12) Yeah. Yeah. My idea of recovery may be somewhat different to I guess maybe mainstream. I really enjoy trying things regardless of whether people think they have merit or whether Western medicine thinks it's going to be a great thing to do or has no merit. I'm just like, well, it makes me feel really good so I'm going to keep doing it. Those things compiled with jumping in the float tank and getting outside and getting sunshine every day and getting barefoot on some grass or going down the beach and getting in the ocean and doing those types of things and doing breath work and meditation and getting cold and having cold showers. I think all those things really add up to better recovery and faster recovery. And I do try and promote that as much as possible through my socials where I can.   James Newbury: (23:11) I do a thing like I do every so often, I'll put up a post that's either a workout or work in. The work in is basically the balance part of the working out and trying to bring yourself back to parasympathetic because if we're always just in that fight or flight, I feel like you get burned out and I've been in there before, I've burned myself out a couple of times pretty bad and gets you to the point where you don't want to train, you don't want to work, you don't really want to do anything. And anything that makes you happy, you don't want to do anymore and it's just like, well, that's not fun.   James Newbury: (23:40) So how can I train really hard, get great results, but then also recover and not get to that point again. I've found by doing all these things and treating my body with fantastic food and making sure I do get out and get into nature as much as possible and becoming as centred as I can, that has really helped regardless of whether they do tests on whether earthing helps you, makes me feel amazing. I would recommend it to absolutely anybody.   James Newbury: (24:12) And to be honest, when I hurt my back and hurt my ribs, I was just like, I'm going to prove that all this stuff really, really works, and it doesn't come down to just already being somewhat fit. I think the food and then the protocols that I've followed have really helped me heal. I was pretty well, within two weeks after, I was like still doing like five hour triathlons after the break. So, that's good two weeks. And then I did a two and a half week checkup and all the bones were already healed.   James Newbury: (24:45) It was a pretty fast turnaround in terms of the healing process. I'm excited to kind of tell that story a little bit more because if I can do it, then everybody else could maybe take just one thing that they could do and add to their lifestyle to make them feel a little bit better and that's what it's all about.   Mason: (25:04) Yeah, man. I mean, grounding, there's that old, the Taoists, well actually, the Taoists would say, they'd watch the deer with the break, go and find the Eucommia Bark tree, that's why we send you the Eucommia Bark and the deer would be at the back of the Eucommia tree. And then it'd be that and water. Just basically like fast for a while but just sit on the earth and just get that negative electron, negative ion charge running through the body. It's like the ultimate antiinflammatory that allows the body to be inflamed where it needs to. And then you're soaking up the sun. It's one of the absolute trippiest thing that there's no sun therapy, Helio therapy in a hospital setting.   James Newbury: (25:47) It's crazy.   Mason: (25:48) It's crazy. I mean, in fact, we go, you've got a break, let's cover it up. Cast it up so that no sun whatsoever can get through there and you can't get any slight mobilisation. You can't get any Chi there. I get it, we're not talking about running off and being like an absolute anarchist and against any kind of modern medicine, but no inclusion of these things which as you kind of said and you're going to go focus on, I think you said, the six best doctors, you're going to focus on, your movement, your breath, your nutrition, the sun, connecting to the earth. These things which are just naturally going to heal us.   Mason: (26:28) It's cool because I'm sure you've seen, you can't take for granted that people know about this, these simple ideas. Maybe have bought into the cultural idea that you can really, they're fun fluffy conversations until shit hits the fan and no, you can't talk about sunlight, earthing, when in real injury circumstances, we need the institutions to heal you then. That's that fear there of going into it but that's when they're actually super relevant.   Mason: (26:56) And look at you, you're saying, you know what, I was kind of somewhat fit. I think in your bio, I don't know if it's up to date, currently 27 fittest in the world.   James Newbury: (27:08) Yeah. Yeah. I think it definitely does help for sure. But I also, I do really think that like, if all your cells are invigorated and they're in a space where they can heal you instead of trying to fight off everything else that you're trying to put into your body or that your body's absorbing and they have the ability to do pretty wonderful things, and if we can just allow them to do their job like, they'll be time efficient. It's just that I think they have to look at worst case scenario when they say, hey, you probably can't really do anything for six to eight weeks, they're usually talking about maybe someone who is hampering the process of healing because of potentially the way they eat or the lifestyle that they live.   James Newbury: (27:55) But I know for me, what I want to make me feel happy is I want to be able to, if I want to go on a snow trip and go snowboarding, I want to be able to just pick up and go. I don't want to have to be in a state where I have to prepare for that. Or if I want to go hike up to base camp, I don't want to have to spend the next two years preparing for that, like I know I'm good to go like whenever. I like always being in that point where I can just say I'm going to go kite surfing today or I'm going to go mountain biking or I'm going to go hiking or whatever it is, or surfing.   Mason: (28:28) Man, I love that, I really love that intention. I don't talk about that as much anymore with that general preparedness of just being able to pick up and go at it after life. Our focus here, like at SuperFeast, the focus is like, as we've grown is teaching people how preparedness is kind of on the other side of things as well. As you go along in life, you might get sick, someone close to you might get sick. People are going to die, you're going to lose money. Shit's going to hit the fan. And so there's that other side of it, which I think is nice that you bring up this be prepared to go out and just get after life and just have an absolute ball, because I'm with you on that, I just want to be like, Woody Harrelson says in that Zombie Land movie, he's like, "Does a lion stretch before it goes out?" Just like I'm ready.   Mason: (29:18) And then on the other side of it is that you're prepared for the hardships that life's going to throw at you and you're going to be able to cop that and the chin and learn from that as well and integrate with that.   Mason: (29:29) So, with your, recovery is obviously, your whole, again, in the bio, it's like the one thing you thought to have there as a quote is recover harder than you work out. All these things we're talking about, that's what's happening. That obviously comes to the intention of you were saying is coming at life from a parasympathetic place, which I think it definitely flies in the face of where the majority of the fitness industry is coming from. Even with long distance running, it's probably one of the most like, you know, it can be for most people just one of the most adrenalising things that they can do for their body.   Mason: (30:18) So, what other specific practices, mind shifts that you've had to have that allows you to come at this from a recovery perspective, parasympathetic perspective when you are dealing with some various serious competition, and you got a very competitive nature?   James Newbury: (30:42) I guess there's a time and a place where, I try and take everything as calm as I can and just try and be as relaxed as I can all the time. But there's a time and a place where I can jump into fight or flight where if I'm at competition because I love competing, I love getting out there and expressing fitness in a competition setting. I always have. I've got a brother who is only 11 months older than me so I've spent a lot of time just competing with him. So I just continued on just doing competition. And then over the years of just pushing and pushing and pushing and trying to make it to the top of the sport, basically, I found myself burning out a lot.   James Newbury: (31:31) And then I remember finishing a competition and just being like, I just don't want to train. I just feel just really wrecked and then I didn't end up training for quite some time. I took a few months just to not do too much and eventually found the fire again. It really pushed me into a position where it's like, okay, I really need to stop paying attention more to my recovery.   James Newbury: (31:55) I would, at the time, think I was eating really well and I thought, yeah, I'm doing recovery. I'm jumping in an ice bath from time to time and doing that style of thing. But then I started introducing things that would really help me just relax and become a little bit more centered and work on my mental game a little bit more, because everybody can train really hard but when it comes to recovery, I guess some people look at it as the boring stuff but I love it. Jumping in a float tank for three or four hours and just soaking up the magnesium is fantastic and just being with yourself and your mind and disconnecting from social media and unplugging from your phone and emails and things like that is a really good way just to get back to square one instead of being just on the go just like hustling all the time.   James Newbury: (32:46) I know people are just like, you got to hustle, got to hustle. But if you just don't take the time to really get centered and get good sleep and do all the things that our bodies are supposed to do, eventually, you'll get to a point where you hit a roadblock and you'll have to take a few months or a year off doing what you're doing because you're just so burnt out. I've been there, took a few months off, and it's like, well, training makes me feel good, recovery makes me feel even better.   James Newbury: (33:14) So how can I get these guys to work together and also still be really good at what I do. And you can, you totally can. You can do all these things and still be at the top of your sport, you don't need to just crush yourself into the ground every session and wreck your body along the way. And then go and compete one year at the top of the level and then just fly off the radar after that and never be seen again because you're so burnt out trying to get there. It's longevity. So it's just figuring out ways to increase longevity in whatever you do.   James Newbury: (33:49) I think the things that I've discovered and probably will continue to discover as I go on are going to help me more and more to do that. And if I can spread it around and help someone else do the same thing, that's what I'm all about. It's about the experience and how much I can help someone else find extra happiness or find a better way of living that's going to make them happy.   Mason: (34:11) Man, it's really exciting. I feel like it's a really exciting time to hear you're at that level of competition and you're someone which I really relate to. I love the aggro in me when it gets to, when I get into some hardcore competitive setting. I've been able to like go further and further and further into that aspect of myself with the comfort of knowing that I'm not going to be lost in it when I come outside of that appropriate setting.   Mason: (34:43) So, I love hearing, this is kind of like this is really weird because I feel I did burn myself out with the go. And you can subconsciously bring up, for me, bit of shame that I did that in pursuit of something which was in an isolated sense seemed superficial but isn't if it has its appropriate setting and it sits within its appropriate holistic culture. And then a bit fearful or judgmental towards myself. And it takes a while to come back out of the shell. It's a good thing I feel like I am getting in this conversation again, that real resolution with that part of myself because it's a shame to lose that. It's a joy to express yourself physically and it's a joy as well to have it be within like this harmonious system. Yeah, man, credit to you because I feel like, especially the Instagram version, the fitness world really needs to see that, and you're non stop with sharing stories and all that, I really enjoy it.   Mason: (35:49) But with the recovery, can you run us through little aspects, practices, even if they're principles of recovery and they're not like specifics that are like super lighting you up at the moment, sorry, that was a super hard word for me, lighting you up.   James Newbury: (36:07) That's cool. At the moment, like I've got some recovery things that I'd love to do, every day at the moment, I'm in my sauna. So, I get into an infrared sauna every day. I have a full spectrum sauna so I'm getting near emitted far infrared light. That's something that really invigorates me. I'm trying to do that each morning and then I do it after my training session. So, lots of benefits have been shown in some studies especially with heat shock protein release and wound healing which is why I've been getting in there sometimes twice a day just with my back and my ribs and my lungs.   Mason: (36:44) So good man. We are huge fans of saunas. We've got one here in our office as well. I just had one this morning too.   James Newbury: (36:50) It's the best. It's so good. And it's good because you can do a few things while you're in there too. You can train yourself to relax and be as parasympathetic as possible in a stressed environment. You can also do some breathing practices to help oxygenate the system while you're putting yourself under that heat stress. It also is good heat adaption if I'm going to compete in a setting that's hotter than where I am at the moment. So, I'd always prefer to train in a hotter environment than a cooler environment just for that fact.   James Newbury: (37:24) So that's another thing I really love about the sauna. I've also been doing post-sauna always a cold shower. And then usually after trainings also once I finish cold showers. So that's something else I've been really enjoying and it's a very easy thing to do is just jump in your shower, 60 seconds, only cold. And then try and do it without showing too much emotional stress about it. It's another really good tool just to help you train that brain a little bit more and jumping into a freezing cold shower. It's very invigorating. Like honestly, if you haven't tried it recently, just give it a go because you'll get out and you feel like you've just been reborn. It's the best.   Mason: (38:05) It's a good time to do it in summer when the pipes aren't freezing cold themselves. And so it's a good ease in. And then when winter comes around, keep it up.   James Newbury: (38:15) Yeah, exactly, keep it up because you do actually build resilience towards the cold over time. So, the more you do it, the less effects it actually gives you, the less stressful effects it actually gives you. So, that really helps. But it also has been shown to be really good hormone production and testosterone and things like that for both male and female. So, that's another really good thing especially if you're training and doing other bits and pieces or you're working really hard and stress levels are high, sometimes it can play a bit of a, take a bit of a toll on those. So yeah, cold showers have been amazing.   James Newbury: (38:46) Also sunlight, everyday sunlight as much as possible. Even if it's cloudy, get outside and expose as much skin to the sun as you can. Obviously don't go and get burnt and go roast yourself out in the sun. But getting some exposure to the sun every day. And usually around that 10AM is usually good, 10 to 11AM, I've been finding is ideal because you can also do it without sunglasses on and getting a little bit of sun into the eyes, which is also great as well. So, I think that has been really, really important. And also like just connecting as we said before, earthing grounding and getting down the beach and into the ocean and planting your feet on proper earth is a really good thing.   James Newbury: (39:28) I've found it's been really helpful in terms of pain with my back. The doctor is just like, what's your pain scale, I'm just like, I'm literally at zero. And this was like a week after the accident, it was like, I'm at a zero. If I do anything stupid like try and reverse parallel park my car and I have to twist around, yeah, that hurts. But in day to day activities, even after seven days, I was in like zero pain but I was walking around barefoot most of the time. So, that was a big thing.   James Newbury: (39:57) And then just quality water as well. We're in Adelaide so usually water quality isn't the greatest here anyway, but regardless of where I go, I always try and find if I can just local natural spring. So making sure I've got-   Mason: (40:13) You go out to the spring?   James Newbury: (40:16) Well I don't actually get to go out but we have a local spring just here. So, getting that local spring water is what I like to do and just try and make sure that it hasn't been sat in plastic and imported from millions of miles away and it's been treated and things like that. So getting quality water. I don't think I've had a glass of tap water in, I can't even think, maybe five or six years.   Mason: (40:42) Man, right on. I'm so happy you said that. We're big spring water drinkers as well. I was just thinking about it this morning, everyone is like, drink spring water as well, we have Neverfail. And I'm like anything associated with Coca Cola company, Pepsi company is not anywhere near the, it's not a spring water, it's going to be a well water. And nothing's going to beat that that transformational water that's levitating up out of the earth out of the spring. And it's still super cold and just charged far out.   James Newbury: (41:15) And passed over to rocks and you've got minerals. I think a lot of people are missing out on those minerals. I pretty much put-   Mason: (41:26) Where's the spring down there? Is it a secret spring?   James Newbury: (41:28) No, Lofty. Lofty. We've got Adelaide Hills. Have you been to Adelaide before?   Mason: (41:33) Yeah, but I only came to the city of Churches last year for like two talks really quick. I'm coming back next year. So I'm going to have to tune in and we'll go spring hunting.   James Newbury: (41:44) There's plenty of cool places up in the hills. Plenty of flowing water so no doubt we'll be able to find some, easy.   Mason: (41:51) Man, yeah, I'm with you. That as a healer, again, it's underrated. If you can get on some actually charged living spring water, which is, I know it's a challenge for a lot of people but don't give up. There's findaspring.com where you can go and get your springs, or just keep on tuning in with people in the local area to try and get that water that's the closest to, never been a tap water and as close to out of the ground on its own accord and then bang, over and into your life. Tough to do today.   James Newbury: (42:22) Makes you feel better, that's for sure. The instant that I have something, and I know like I'll go to the extent of even cooking, if I cook my rice, I'll cook it in the spring water too. So, the instant that I have something that has been cooked in just regular water, I'll instantly taste it. And I'll be like, I can taste it. It's not the best. That type of stuff goes a long way to integrating the body to heal as much as possible and to making yourself feel good.   James Newbury: (42:51) Floating is another big one for me. I floated since 2012. I've got my own float tank which is great at my gym, which I, pretty much we have probably five or six people every day using our float tank. And that was something that I really enjoyed trying to get out there for a lot of people to have a go and it's just a good way for people to disconnect yourself. People are so connected to work and phones and technology which is, this is a great place to just relieve yourself of that. Soaking in the magnesium, laying back, taking all the weight out of your joints or your connective tissues, and then just being in silence and darkness and no sensory input. You can take the time to breathe and to relax in there and you're never interrupted, completely silent. It's just fantastic.   James Newbury: (43:40) I've done a couple of overnight floats in there and they're absolutely amazing. So staying in for like seven, eight hours is absolutely brilliant. You come out feeling like a newborn baby.   James Newbury: (43:51) So yeah, so it was basically jumping into the float tank, laying in the magnesium, de-weighting all your joints and connective tissues. You can sit in there and visualize certain things. So l spent some time in there visualising my back healing, I spent some time visualising my lungs doing what they needed to do to come back together and the new thorax dissipating and picturing my ribs going back in place. I even do this for competition too all the time. I think the power of visualisation is so good because you can basically learn particular movement patterns just through visualising without putting your body under the stress at the same time. I'm not saying it's better or worse or anything like that, but it's just time to visualise that muscle up or time to visualise that triathlon you're about to do or visualise even having a good day or getting something done at work or nailing a presentation you're about to do or a talk you're about to do.   James Newbury: (44:50) You can go through it in a float tank, uninterrupted, no stimulus from anywhere else and you can go through it back to front. I usually jump in the float tank for about a week every day prior to a competition and I just go through the competition in my head for 30, 40 minutes and think about the events and think about how I'm going to feel and what it's going to smell like feel what type of heat we're going to get. And then how the workouts are going to affect me.   James Newbury: (45:17) And then by the time I get out there, I've already done it 100 times. So, I kind of know what to expect. Nothing is making me over exert my thought strategy. I already knew it was going to kind of hurt at this point and get really uncomfortable at this point. So I think that visualisation thing really does make particular tasks that we have to do every day just a little bit easier to overcome instead of putting a lot of pressure on yourself to now first time, you can do it 100 times in the float tank before you actually do it in real life.   Mason: (45:50) Yeah, nice one. What I like about float tanks and visualisation with them, it's like a lot of the time people think visualisation is just like speculation and fingers crossed, I'm going to make up the outcome. And then yeah, fingers crossed, that's the outcome that I get. But when you're training so much or when you're doing something like a float tank where you can actually get a perception of your body and the way your body works, when you're visualising, you're visualising through experience of I know how I work, I know how I train, I know my shoulder works in kind of like, you know, when I'm going for a muscle up. And you can almost problem solve in that scenario and see where your limits arethrough your experience of knowing yourself in the way you're training your body, you can feel exactly how you're going to overcome little hurdles.   James Newbury: (46:42) Exactly. I think that's the coolest thing about it. You're basically putting yourself in a scenario where you don't ever get to be in that type of situation where you're not contactable or you don't have anything that's actually stimulating your brain other than your own brain. It's pretty cool.   Mason: (47:08) So, to bring us home, I want to ask three kind of quick favorites. Like some favorite foods, or the way you're getting your food and your nutrition in, or whether it's a meal or an ingredient, just some favorites you're loving at the moment for your optimization. Any particular supplements that you really love. I know you like the ATP guys I haven't tried this stuff but I know they're pretty good. A lot of people put ATP and SuperFeast stuff together a lot.   James Newbury: (47:40) They go hand in hand really well.   Mason: (47:41) Good to know. I think everyone would probably be like keen to know which of the tonic herbs you're really enjoying long term.   James Newbury: (47:50) Yeah, totally. So firstly, my go to, I guess one of my favorite things is like, I kind of love making power bowl. And this power bowl is kind of like the old school avocado mousse, but I just chuck a whole bunch of extra stuff in there. With that, its basically avocado, banana, I put a little bit of dark organic maple in there. Always a little bit of Himalayan salt or sea salt. Then with that, I just add a ton of berries, sometimes some hemp seeds. Always put a little bit of collagen in there too, collagen protein. And then I add in some maca and cacao and that's pretty much me good to go. I've got a bit of a bit of fat, a bit of carb, a bit of protein and then a ton of antioxidants, vitamins and minerals. And then at the moment, since the back, I have been chucking Eucommia bark and I've also been chucking in the Deer Antler too.   Mason: (48:55) Yeah, sweet. They're good just regenerating herbs to have in the protocol anyway. Well, we might as well stay on the herbs. I know it's been like, I mean, in the beginning it was just kind of like, I think I just kind of sent you some, but, I'm sure you've kind of gained a little bit of relationship, but I think it's like the Cordyceps and the Astragalus, I think they're especially the two I keep on sending.   James Newbury: (49:20) Yes. The Cordyceps, I love the quadriceps. Well, I love the Astragalus too. But the Astragalus I guess is so good to me just in terms of really fortifying that immune system and something that I punish a lot of the time just with high volumes of training. If we're training five to six hours a day, five days a week, having the Astragalus just really fortifies the immune system, helps the blood. But the Cordyceps in particular I found to be really beneficial, especially for that high end aerobic work. So, helping the blood carry oxygen really well, helping the lungs, helping that transfer of oxygen through the lungs into the capillaries, the Cordyceps has been a really big bonus.   James Newbury: (50:11) And that's probably my favorite, to be honest, I would say the Cordyceps is something that I'll always keep as a staple, just in terms of aerobic function, like high end aerobic function. Especially now that I really love triathlon stuff at the moment, just having a blast doing that. So, that's been really good. But then I guess in terms of healing and joints and cartilage and connective tissue and bone fortification, that Eucommia bark and the antler has been fantastic. I'm really loving that too. If I had to pick one, try the Cordyceps.   Mason: (50:49) Because I'm going.. Because I've got a kelpie now as well, so I'm running on the beach. And you know what I'm doing as well, you reminded me of, I used to do a lot of barefoot extended running and trained myself to do so breathing through my nose the entire time. And so, I've been watching you. You had some people come in and train you, kind of retrain you, get your nose breathing rocking. And then you have the like, "I rocked that triathlon, I started breathing through the nose, this is me looking like super composed", and then you kind of like haggard it at the end breathing out of your mouth.   James Newbury: (51:24) With the nose breathing, it definitely helps keeping you relaxed and composed as much as possible. We had a CrossFit Games has been a few years ago, it was a marathon road and I did that all through the nose. It just kept me really relaxed, kept me in an aerobics state. Helped me uptake oxygen a little bit better. It got me through the 42k's on the rower without kind of burning out and cramping up and things like that. So, I think learning how to breathe through the nose is really good. When I first started I got to about 130 beats a minute, which isn't all that hard to me and it was really hard to continue through the noise but now I can take it up to like 90% of my heart rate all through the nose and still be quite composed.   Mason: (52:04) That's some serious stuff. The nose breathing, combine that with a bit of Cordyceps. And just on the Cordyceps because I've been really thinking about this, just how it can help with them in an athletic performance. And that helps as well. I like using Cordyceps in these instances and then in geriatrics, just like whenever you get like an elderly person like want one herb, I'm like Cordyceps, absolutely. It's like full Jing, Kidney, Adrenal optimisation and then full lung blood invigoration as well.   Mason: (52:34) But I've been trying for people like you were like playing around with them, I tried around the Cordyceps Militaris which is a different strain. It's quite effective but not as effective as the CS4, that's the one we have, a liquid ferment of the Cordyceps, a little bit of a strain and you probably know the quadriceps, the fourth strain that took off original caterpillar parasitic fungus. And they fermented that. But then, the other thing I've kind of realised because a bunch of people try out Cordyceps compared to others. And I was like, I know ours is a good strain and good practices, but I really kind of delved a little bit deeper into the broth we're using for the fermentation, and it's like a full secret traditional broth recipe that we're using.   Mason: (53:25) I remember tuning into that, but that just kind of clicked my remembrance of that's why it's like a real badass Cordyceps, it's a bit different to the other CS4's. So I'm all over that as well.   Mason: (53:38) And then finally, any other little just, good supplements that you're frothing on?   James Newbury: (53:44) I really like especially if people have a ton of gut issues or anything like that, I really love the ATP GutRight. That's just a bunch of, it's just plants, it's all real food. It's just basically blended up plants and barks and things like that that just create a nice friendly gut environment for your bacteria. They basically help keep the balance. Instead of just adding more and more and more probiotics which is kind of what you get from, like your prebiotics you get from food and it just helps create bacteria cultures in the gut. This trying to help level them out a little bit more.   James Newbury: (54:21) I guess in terms of like other little things that I think have really helped increase immunity and helps to get the most out of your food, the GutRight is something I would really have a crack at.   Mason: (54:34) I love it so much. Where can people get in touch with you? I definitely recommend your Instagram. But you got a website and all that stuff as well?   James Newbury: (54:44) So, probably the best place would, if they wanted to get in touch and have a chat, definitely through Instagram is completely fun. That would be probably the best place. I always check it and I get back to everyone that writes through me there. I do have a website but it's kind of like a programming website. I do little bits of working in practices and athletic training stuff. And that's on ultrainstinct.com.   Mason: (55:08) Ultra instinct?   James Newbury: (55:09) Ultrainstinctathlete.com. Yup.   Mason: (55:13) And this is James Newbury on Instagram?   James Newbury: (55:17) Yep.   Mason: (55:19) What about your gym? Is it just Soul 365 fitness?   James Newbury: (55:24) Yeah. So the website for the gym, we're in Adelaide, and it is soul365.com.au. So if you ever come past, we have a sauna, float tank and you can come work out and train and relax, have a coffee or have a smoothie.   Mason: (55:39) All right, that's cool. I'm always needing things to fall into place before I go on my next tour. I've got a new talk that I'm going to be doing. We'll slot that in, I'll leave a couple extra days so we can go get some spring water as well.   James Newbury: (55:53) So good.   Mason: (55:54) Cool. I'm going to come over sauna and the float and do all the things. Man, thanks so much for coming on and just good luck with everything as always. Seems like you're having fun, which is you don't need too much luck when you're having a ball doing it. You've got the triathlon coming up, and oh no, sorry, not triathlon, Ironman you said, right?   James Newbury: (56:14) Yep. Ironman, two weeks.   Mason: (56:16) Two weeks you got an Ironman. And any other, are you out of competition for this season?   James Newbury: (56:21) So then after that, we're going straight to Bali, we're doing a fasting retreat, seven days. So we'll do that. And then we get back into competition next year.   Mason: (56:30) Cool, man. Have fun fasting man, I hope to have a chat about that one aswell, that's a whole nother kettle of fish. Obviously, you're big on recovery. Naturally you're going to give yourself some time for your digestion your metabolism to chill out and for your body to go do some deep repairs.   James Newbury: (56:49) I know. I know. I can't wait. It's going to be epic.   Mason: (56:52) Enjoy, man.   James Newbury: (56:53) Thanks dude. Take it easy.

This is Part 2 of a 2 part series recorded in a live radio show called El Sassa, about How Businesses Will Change after Covid 19 Coronavirus.  Radio and podcast host Sassa and I discuss the current impacts of Coronavirus in our business communities, the government loans and what business owners are facing waiting for that….how services like Uber and Lyft or hair and nail salons might transform.  Very importantly, how to decide what to do next in your business – such as how to decide – what businesses are thriving right now, how to deal with fear and the fear of failure and finding strength from trying and finding successes when you don’t quit.  I talk about digital solutions that you can try if you want to succeed in a new area of competency. Sassa: Let's talk about this loan, this government funds there, the loans that people are supposed to be receiving. Can you just tell me what do you think about these big change like route Roots Steakhouse, Del Frisco, Popbelly, I could keep going for a couple of... Getting 40,000,000 20,000,000 10,000,000. How do you feel about that? You got small businesses like yours and mine's and many other small little businesses that we actually went out of business waiting on this. I mean, what do you think about that? I mean, do you think that things are going to be different on this new second role that they're doing? Well, I think absolutely that... My full understanding, I found out first about it for my CPA, she sent an email out to me, my business and several other of her clients that are small businesses and said, "Hey, just so you know, you can apply for this loan. Which actually isn't a loan because, it doesn't have to be paid back. But it's being called... Everyone knows what it means. It is money that's given to you to help your business survive and pay your employees." So it was intended for the small businesses and the mid-sized businesses, not the huge revenue making businesses. So if that was the intention, then there should have been check boxes. I can't remember every question- They should have separated. Right? I think they should have allocated them differently. Because I mean, they get public help already probably, because of the... They trade in the public. But again, one of them gave the money back, so that was this hamburgers chain, I think fast food restaurant. Shark, I think it's called. Oh, Shake Shack. Okay. Yeah. They gave the $10,000,000 back. So that's good because they say, "You know what, I'm giving it back." Yeah. But you gave it back because you got another loan from the equity partners here. If they were not giving it, you probably would have kept it. And you know what, you have enough money. You have 100 stores in the whole United States to be able to survive. Small businesses who've saved all their lives' savings, they pretty much lost everything. They have to restart. That doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to get back in business and running 100% the first day it opens. Correct? Well, another thing about a large business with a lot of revenue and capital is preparation for emergency or I forget what the word is for this that we're in, but there were data models that showed that Bill Gates predicted this in a TED Talk a few years ago that this was the number one thing that we had to worry about. Instead, our global economy and business world was focused on cyber terror and cyber construction, obstruction rather of privacy and privacy now is taking off. I'm not saying that it's massively important, but unfortunately we overlooked that this was coming. I do believe that the larger businesses, because they have more revenue, they should be able to allocate and prepare better. Just like a lot of them haven't done a great job at customer experience satisfaction because they're not transforming in the digital world fast enough to meet consumers needs. I talk like that because I come from Forrester Research of six years and I know this is true because I sat in the meetings and heard the executives of these gigantic companies talk about it. I'm not saying it's easy, but I do believe that the larger businesses with more revenue should be able to prepare better for if something goes wrong and there is a disaster of some sort, whether it's environmental, economic, technical, war, whatever it is to have some runway with being able to stay afloat. Whereas the small businesses don't have that cashflow or they would be a large business, right? So, the small and mid-sized businesses are trying to get to levels where they can save more and invest more in things that can keep them going when there is a disaster. That's try. I'm going to tell you maybe, if there's 15 businesses that are striving during COVID-19, Coronavirus. So I'm going to share some of them for you, so you know this and you can share this with your audience as well. Cleaning services, one. Delivery services, grocery stores, liquor and wine stores. I don't know how, but liquor... I guess people are still drinking. Go open a liquor store and get happy, right? Meal prep, delivery services, [inaudible 00:36:05], good companies, things like that. Game makers and sellers like gaming, I guess kids are at home, they want to play video games more now. Fitness equipment companies. I don't know how fitness companies, maybe they're not selling to gyms anymore, maybe selling them to the home. Landscaping and Carey, you're right about that. Landscaping because I need to still cut my grass. Because even though COVID-19 is here, I can't let my house look all busted. That one is good. Bread baking company. So if you like to bake and you like to do cookies and baking and all that stuff, might be a good one to get into. Helping Americans relieve the stress by eating some cookies, it always helps. All right? Coffee subscription companies, go drink... I've been drinking more coffee this COVID-19, so that might be going. Gardening, I've been home a lot so I've been doing a lot of my garden stuff. Mask makers, there's a lot of people who are doing masks out there, maybe get into that. Tele-health. So those are some of the businesses that are striving in this industry. Yeah. So, we talk about how many businesses are going to be affected, how much my business got hit and how I'm restructuring. How I'm doing everything different. How I'm going to move my office now from a home base office until I get back in my feet, maybe by the end of the year or the beginning of next year. Hopefully by then I should be back to normal and I can probably look back into a different location and continue. But if I like that the way we said it, maybe I'll stay there. I mean, I'll save me rent and maybe I could use that money for a good vacation once airlines start traveling and start doing things back again. But this is the time for restructuring. This is the time for you to save a lot of money and cutting things that you don't need. This is the time for you to start thinking, brainstorming, how to get back, how to restart, how to just... Think about how when you started, when you first opened your business. Like man, you were a one man shop, think about it that way, man. "I'm a one man shop. I got to go fight this battle and I got to go out there and do a lot." Yes, you probably weren't used to doing it because you had help so many years. But go out there and think with that mentality because you know what? It's kind of like you knew how to do the business before, you knew how to do the product, you knew how to sell the product and you were teaching all these other people. So that way that could be your team, pretty much rebuilt your team. That's what I'm thinking. I don't know what you think about that girl. Yeah. I think it's partly personality. Because with personality, you have your interests, things that you're just plain not interested in. I'm interested in so many things, but I am not interested in learning how electronics, how to connect wires to make my lights work. Once my husband tried to explain that to me and he's like, "You love to learn. Why don't you want to learn this?" And I said, "I don't know, but I don't care. I don't like electric." Yeah. So I think people need to be honest with themselves because yeah, you got to do what you gotta do to get through this, but don't pivot into something that you cannot stand or that doesn't really interest you because few months down the road you're going to be miserable. The other thing is, I've noticed like with people with COVID and with quarantine is that some people are like, "Gosh, I feel more relaxed than ever. I feel stressed in a different way." And then other people, like my mom, she texts me the day that they came out and said that Georgia is opening up this Friday and Monday and she was ecstatic and I was like, "I'm not really going to be ecstatic yet because I kind of got to see what this is going to mean and everything." I had to see more information and she's just chomping at the bit to get out. So I think that's part of it. I don't know if I answered your question. No, no. You did. You know what? I know that the mayor over there in Atlanta doesn't want to open. Right? Because, she's still concerned about that. She's still thinking that- That's right. There's a possibility that you guys can get a big wave and coming back and getting more infections and things like that, which I am under the impression that we're doing it too fast. But I understand people are complaining that, "We need the economy, we need our jobs, we need our work, we need this, we need that." But I think we can always make money in life, but we can never make our life again. We only live once. That's right. It's a balance. Exactly. And you know what? Any government can probably redo an economy, can restructure, can do this. You can go out there and you can start a new business. You can actually start a new job. You can actually rebuild somewhere or the other. But your life is once, once you're gone, you're gone. There's no way coming back. Now, if you know a place where you can go and come back or something that makes you go and come back, let me know, because I'd love to know that. Right? But we have to take it seriously. And that's what people are not doing. Oh, yeah. What do you think about that? I think we need to be really smart and listen to the experts. Listen to the scientists and form our own decision around how our lives are. People have different situations and it's not easy. It's a lot to decide on and things are changing so fast. It's like, "Okay, what's going to happen today?" And there's a lot of uncertainty. But this is still new. But I think too, the other huge thing is mindset and attitude. I think I touched on this before about some business owners kind of freezing or not knowing what to do or people that have lost their jobs and they're like, "I'm not going to apply for anything because I just don't know what to do and I don't know where to go and I don't know when this is going to be over." But I believe in doing it scared. Someone asked me the other day, "What if I start a YouTube channel and I fail?" And I said, "Well then you..."- They're failing already because they're thinking about failure already. Right? Exactly. And I liked how he was being transparent with me and the real reason why he was hesitating. But this is really what he wanted to do. But then this fear of failure was perking up and preventing him from taking action. I said, "You know what? When you have small failures." You hear all the people that become self-made millionaires and billionaires say, "I failed too. But what I did was I kept going and I learned from my failures and I kept going." I feel like I finally am... I'm a young agency, just two years old in June. I look back just two years ago or even a year ago and I say, "Gosh, if I wouldn't have tried this and I wouldn't have put deadlines on myself." While I was doing it scared because I didn't always know everything that I was doing. I was figuring it out as I went that I wouldn't be where I am today and I have so much further to go in my goals. Unbelievably, I put so much pressure on myself but I do feel like I've finally kind of come full circle with knowing what that feels like and I can just... Any listeners out there that are hesitating because of fear with the unknown in your business, hone in on something that interests you and something that you would... If you look and you say, "If I were successful I would be so happy." And just do it scared. Lean on people that you can ask questions of and consume as much information and just start, keep going. That's my take. I'm gonna follow up with yours as well. People who say, "Man, I don't want to apply because this and that." You pay so many years of this, it's probably time now they give you something back. This is the time when you need it the most is a great opportunity for you to say, "You know what, I pay this as an American." You pay this, you get it back. Go out there and you need it. Don't come out there and try to feel like, "Oh, I'm scared or I'm embarrassed." Girl, you need it. You need to feed your kids, your family, your husband or your wife. You need to survive in this time. Two, failure... And we pay this. I mean, I paid it. You paid it. Everybody's paid this. I mean, they've taken it out of us. It's time for us to get back from the system what you put into the system. That's the way it should be in some way when this situations happen. This is a time for you to be able to... That's what it's there for. Whenever you need help, be there for me, lean on me. The other thing about failure, when you start to think failure already, like you say girl, you're already coming with that negativity. That's what you're going to attract and that's what you're going to start thinking. That's what you're going to start believing and that's what you're going to start bringing. So what you need to start thinking is a way with negativity, whether you go ahead, either be successful or not, you're going to give it your best because you're going to be the best at it as you can. You're probably not going to be an expert at the beginning because you don't know as much, but that's why God gave us something and that's why He gave us a mouth. Ask questions. That's why you have friends like you and I, you can text messages and I'm here to help anybody on podcasting or helping them how to get started on a podcast and things like that. Because remember, I am a firm believer that all the good deeds you do in this life continue and carry on with you to the afterlife. Okay. I agree. So if you do bad deed, you're going to continue and pay them over there. So let me tell you something. My life, I see this, I'm a firm believer, as a good... I'm Catholic, by the way, for a lot of folks that don't know this, as a good Catholic, a Christian believer as well, I feel I'm here to help. That's what God has sent me into this world, to help others and love others for who they are and help them in the time of need. So if you need me, I'm here. I'm a brother, I'm a friend, I'm here to help. So if we will all think this way, we can all help each other and not have envy and not have jealousy and not try to be better than you in this and that. If we all work together as a team, we will be not only a better country, but we will also be a better world a better humanity, for the whole world. So, listened to you to because I like what you say, they have to go ahead and give it their best and work at it. I think that's good. The YouTube channel, podcasting and all this stuff. A lot of people, sometimes they don't even get the support from their husband or their wife. This might be a time for you to say, "You know what, I'm going to do it and I'm going to show the world I could do it." Am I right on that? Oh yeah. Amen. I feel so bad for people that don't have support from their family. Because I'm fortunate and so thankful that I do. But I think about that. I try to be full of gratitude for that, wake up in the morning and write down the things that I have gratitude for. Everyone can have gratitude for something. I think too thinking, being conscious of your self-talk. If you find yourself saying these things in your head to yourself, being able to catch yourself and then turning it into a positive even if you don't yet believe it. I learned this because I learned how to sell. I've been a salesman most of my career and in technology and I learned from Mary Kay that old fashion company where you put- Hey, Mary Kay has made a lot of money for a lot of people. My mom started with Mary Kay and she used to make a little bit of money, believe me. But it was a lot of time consuming. I learned so much about sales. I didn't care anything about makeup. Isn't that funny? But I learned about sales and then I moved on to technology and that's what I love. Every time I think about Mary Kay girl, I think about the cream Royal jelly, I think, oh, what was it called? That one day my mom will always sell, her friends would come over and she would always sell it to them. The cleanser. Yeah. They're a great company. Really great company. Great company, yes. But they taught me to write down positive affirmations on sticky notes. Some people are opposed to sticky notes because they get lost and whatnot. But write on something, put it on your bathroom mirror, put it on your refrigerator. Just a few positive affirmation. So when you catch yourself saying these negative thoughts, that you revert right back and you say it to yourself, if you can out loud, that's even better. But speaking of giving and being Christian and everything, I am too. It reminded me of this company of... I'm very close to their family. It's called Perillo Motors out of Chicago and it's Perillo... They sell BMWs, luxury vehicles all kinds of... Six different lines of automobiles that they sell. Well, of course sales of automobiles have gone down and manufacturers have decreased production and whatnot. Well, what they decided to do was to give back to their community by... There's a suffering pizza store there that has two locations. And the pizza owner, store owner, restaurant owner was suffering saying, "I don't know what I'm going to do. I might close." So they decided to offer through their service center, the dealership, sterilizing the cars. So people come in, they pay $25 to have their car sterilized, which people need right now because they can get back in their car from wherever they are and they're worried about how long the virus might live in their car. And then they're taking that $25, buying pizzas from the pizza shop owner and then taking the pizza, actually delivering it to the frontline medical personnel at the hospitals. Awesome man. Awesome. Great. And who doesn't love pizza? Everybody loves pizza. So it's a great cause. It's just like a win-win-win, and I think people will even go in and get their car sterilized if they probably think, "Well, my car's fine, but they'll probably do it anyway if they have 25 extra dollars." Right? That's right. And Carey, the reason why I share, I'm here to help anyone in my life because that's my path. I think that's what the Lord wants me to do is help people and that's what I'm going to finish my life doing, continue. Because a lot of people who don't know how I got into radio station, how I got into podcasting. How did I get into this? When I went to school at the University of Houston for business, I own an insurance company, very successful one here in Texas. How did I change everything and went into this? Well, in the insurance industry I needed to sell more and more and more. So, I needed to promote myself. I had to go do advertisement at radio stations and this and that. It would cost me money. Univision was killing me, $800 a week. You can imagine the numbers a month, a year and every day. That was only for 30 minutes once a week, not even every day. So I started thinking saying, "Hey, you know what, I might need to go ahead and do this on my own." So finally, I met someone who would say, "Hey, I could put a studio for you. I could put a radio for you, this and that." I said, "You know what, I'm investing my money into this because it's pretty much my marketing money that I'm doing." Well, to make a long story shorter, he left me two years later by myself. Just want you guys to know this. I would come in here to the studio, sit and I would just look at the video camera and I would just talk because he would work everything. I would just pretty much sit and just talk and never learned nothing, never knew anything. I saw so many cables. I saw so many things and I never paid attention. I don't need to know this because he's here. Well, one day someone came, offered him more money, this and this and that, took him from me and then he never taught me nothing in my life. I asked him, "Can you teach me?" He said, "No, I'm gone." He left. People have bad heart. So how did I get into this? Well, I learned it on my own, everybody. I learned it on my own. I came, I was stressed. There were days I would come and say, "Man, how am I going to turn this thing on? What am I going to press? Nothing. What about if I mess up this and people are not listening to me? What about this?" And I would press the stuff and the radio will go down. So one day I went into Guitar Center and the gentleman that was selling products saw me all stressed out and I said, "I need to buy maybe this. I've been reading on and this and that." He goes, "Man, you know what Sassa? You're a good guy, man? I like you. Ever since you've been coming here, you've been showing me how to love." I said, "Man, I appreciate that. Johnny." He says, "What's wrong with you?" I said, "Man, this happened to me, this and that." He goes, "Man, you know what Sassa, if you give me till Thursday man, I'm off and I can come in and look at your studio, look at your station and I can help you and see what you... And I could teach you." Wow. I said, "You would?" He goes, "Yes man, I'm here to help man and I want to help you. I know you're stressed." He came, he put things together, he spent time, he showed me, he did everything and he taught me everything. He left this studio running like a multimillion dollar radio station. Okay? Really good. And guess what? That's how I learned everybody. So when you start thinking about fear already, fear brings to you, fear comes to you. You will have hurdles in your new venture you're going do from now on after COVID-19. You will have a street with many rocks and you have to maybe jump on more, you know this and that and curve and this, but never give up and there will always be... I mean, I get chills because the Lord is telling me to share this with you and I'm telling you, you will always have some angel that will come into your life because remember, continue practicing your good deeds. He will help you. The angel will come and help you. They will always be angels out there. They will leave you and give you a hand and say, "Man, I'm here to help." That's why you don't give up. You continue fighting. Today our radio station is listened to all over the world, Elsassa Radio. You could download the app. It's a radio E-L-S-A-S-S-A Radio. Elsassa Radio and you can also check our website. It's elsassaradio.com and I learned in that way. That's how I got into this. Never in my life, I imagined I would be doing this. Never went to school for this and now we have what? An app. We have a new website coming in, entertainment and we just continue sharing this. And just to show you the powerful... How this does. How do you and I meet? On Instagram. Correct? Yeah. And here we're doing this podcast. That's an amen. God bless that conversation. That's how I started testing. I wanted to share this and I wanted to tell you, you have a friend in me, just like your audience has a friend of me and my audience have a friend as well. So my positive feedback from me to them and to you is, you are a warrior, you are a fighter and you are the most valuable thing to you. Never give up. Remember, you can do this. You can. That's right. I love that. That's beautiful. And likewise, Sassa you have a lifetime friend in me and I do believe that we were, God made us born perfect and it's just we're the ones that don't see ourselves as perfect in God's eyes. But we are. If you really listen to what you're here for and what you are good at and what you're great at and how you're special, that can just really evolve into things in your life that open up as major blessings. Thank you girl. You know what? I know we're getting to the end of this hour. I really had a great, great time doing this podcast. We need to do this more often. Me too. Maybe have an idea of might pop out of this and we might be starting to do this, consistently and I like that because you know what, I need ATL coming out of the way H-town together, making this for people that need us right now. I love it. I want to tell you, stay safe. Uh, take care of your family. Hope one day I get a chance to see you and meet you and hug you, once everything is gone, Coronavirus is gone for good. That's right. I tell you what's going to happen to me, as soon as this COVID-19 is done, I'm actually going to take a little vacation back to my place where I'm from originally. Go to the beach and I'm going to just drink me a margarita and say, "Thank God this is over." Because it's so stressful for everybody, that everybody just needs a relief in some way or the other. But again, keep being a fighter. Keep doing what you're doing. I love your podcast. You do an amazing job. Not only are you a beautiful woman from the outside, but you are a beautiful angel, beautiful person in your heart inside. I want to thank you for giving me this opportunity to do this with you today. I loved it. I had a good time and we will continue working together. I think I just want to go ahead and say hello to everybody that was listening to us. We lost her for a minute, but you know what? We want to go ahead and say goodbye and see you, till the next one. El Sassa Radio, with you. Don't forget, follow me on Instagram Elsassa37. Chao chao Be good.

All right, to have that flow and fluidity within your talk, you must slow it down and avoid using big words to create that flow. Because I'm getting more voice messages and people wanting grades in their speaking segments, I've realized that some of you speed up, which then results in you fumbling over your speech and forgetting what you were going to say next. This can all be avoided. Tune into the podcast/video!Premium Business English Podcast: https://www.mocha.fm/creator/thearseniobuckshowPronunciation Course Phase III: https://www.udemy.com/share/102DYQ/Pronunciation Course Phase II: https://www.udemy.com/share/102wQS/Pronunciation Course Phase 1: https://www.udemy.com/course/arsenios-american-esl-pronunciation-phase-1/?referralCode=8C3941AAFB58102377C4Book A Call With Me: https://calendly.com/arseniobuck/15minPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/arseniosesllearningPodcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7hdzplWx6xB8mhwDJYiP6fPodcast on ListenNote: https://www.listennotes.com/c/778cf3cfd2564ba5b01f693bfebc96de/arsenio-s-esl-podcast/Podcast on CastBox: https://castbox.fm/channel/Arsenio's-ESL-Podcast-id1251433?country=usFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/Arseniobuck/?ref=bookmarksYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIzp4EdbJVMhhSnq_0u4ntAWebsite: https://thearseniobuckshow.com/Q & A: ArsenioBuck@icloud.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arsenio-buck-9692a6119/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thearseniobuckshow/?hl=enBuzz sprout: https://www.buzzsprout.com/165390Twitter - https://twitter.com/arseniobuckshow?l...Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/arseniosesllearning)

So things have been hairy the last couple of weeks, eh? I'm currently back to work part time, but also have about 30 chicken eggs incubating, five hatched, and some duck eggs on the way (because my drake is either a fat hen or just not into the ladies, so we don't get fertile eggs from our ducks. Also, another friend is giving me some Brahma eggs to incubate. That's a really enormous chicken, if you're not into the poultry lingo. If you're not following me on Instagram (instagram.com/twomomsdaydrinking) or Twitter, (@2mddpodcast), you should, because I'm posting videos and pictures of our little farm almost every day, and lots of them are of brand new baby chickens. So if you like to go "awwwwww, squee," you should hit me up on social media. Anyhow, I've taken a week off from editing and this week wanted to instead share with you an episode of Michael Hsu's podcast, on which I did a guest appearance last month. Michael reached out to me after I posted on a podcasting forum asking what everyone's numbers were looking like in early March. Everyone experienced a huge downturn in listeners and downloads, and I disclosed that I was feeling a significant amount of imposter syndrome as a result. Michael invited me to try a session of his intergenerational healing approach to dealing with issues like the ones I have every day (Anxiety Girl - Able to Leap to the Worst Conclusion at a Moment's Notice). I'm also notorious for trouncing all therapists' attempts to make me do things that make me feel like I'm performing, or being hokey, or generally going along willingly with their plans whatsoever. My old therapists would probably barf if they could hear this. Because difficult. I can't help it, it's just how I am. I warned Michael before taking him up on his offer that I'm basically Chandler Bing and tend to deflect all efforts at seriousness or intimacy with inappropriate and slightly offensive humor. Michael is brave. He had me on on anyway. This was a fun opportunity to lean into an interpersonal interaction I'm VERY uncomfortable with, and his story during the final half of the episode is fun to listen to. I've always been keenly aware of how my parents' and grandparents' issues inform my own issues, both growing up and now, during what people insist is my adulthood (regardless of whether or not I choose to act like an adult). This was a great opportunity to have my own thoughts on my family's generational issues reflected back to me, and I wound up with some new ideas. It was super awkward. Because I'm super awkward, not because he is. His content is interesting, and he's a fascinating guy with a cool story of his own. He's said he'd love to guest on my show as well sometime, but with the current climate being what it is we just haven't been able to hash out a schedule to do a remote interview, but he just had a baby with his wife 6 months ago and said he'd love to discuss some of the "emotional crapola" that comes up when we have kids. Especially our first kids. So. For this week check out my episode with Michael, and then listen to other ones. Because it's cool hearing people's stories through the lens of his unique method of intergenerational healing. I'll be back next week with a new episode of my own for you. Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/twomomsdaydrinking)

For most of us, online church is set to be the new normal for the foreseeable future. It's time to settle in. And it's also time for us to take a serious look at what we're producing right now for online church (especially if you're a smaller church) and ask - does it make sense to just reproduce what we would normally do for an in-person Sunday service and publish that online? Or could there be something more meaningful, effective, and affordable for this season? Because I'm leaning toward the latter. And that's what this video is for. Find the full transcript, show notes, and video version here: https://prochur.ch/3b7zJsV

Hey guys! In today's episode of the podcast I have host of "The Candid Confidence Podcast" on the show, Leah Pardee. "How do I get outside my comfort zone? How do I find my purpose? How do I get out of imposter syndrome?" It's these questions and so much more that we answer today with Leah. Leah Pardee is a Confidence Coach, blogger, podcaster, and the face of her brand Candid Confidence. She teaches you how to ditch self-doubt and overcome overthinking so you can believe in yourself and your big dreams. After spending years in the corporate sales world, Leah developed a passion for combining mindset work with mindfulness practices to create a life both free and fearless. Her mission is to help thousands of women do the same through her coaching, courses and podcast. Popular Quotes: [00:12:47] - [00:12:52] “it sounds easier than it is, but it's like you have to just go out there and start doing things for them to become easier.” [00:13:39] - [00:13:57] “Your brain's always going to want to keep you in that comfort zone. So it's just a practice of choosing to step outside of that comfort zone and deliberately making that choice, moving through that little awkward phase of your brain, telling you don't do that. And then seeing that nothing crazy actually happen. Nothing bad actually happened.” [00:32:28] - [00:33:17] “But I really, really feel like if people feel weird selling right now because of the corona virus, because people are suddenly losing their jobs and you know, in a country like America are, quote, going to be poor, we'll go around the globe. There's billions of people, you know, who don't know where their next meal is coming from before Corona virus. It's always been there. There's always been tragedy. There's always been heartbreak. There's those things just can't keep you from selling because to put money into the economy, to encourage others to do that, to to spread your light, to encourage others to do the same. That's all positive stuff. And you can't you really just can't let other people's situations hold you back from shining your light. And because a lot of people that really will hold them back.” [00:34:03] - [00:35:05] “I think that really starts with going back to why I'm going to your purpose. And you don't have to be selling something life altering in order to have a meaningful purpose behind it. You could be selling jewelry or clothes or makeup and you have a purpose why you do that thing. It brings somebody joy. Right. People need those things. People want those things. People are looking for those things that make people more confident, whatever. So you really need to get dig deep. And I always recommend doing it with a journal and journaling on what is my purpose for selling this thing. What is the outcome that people get when they purchase this from me? How do I make them feel? You know, what are the feelings that they get to have? Because I'm selling this thing. Why is it important? Essentially, because once you can get down into it, why is it important to be selling this thing? Then there's not feeling bad about it, right? You're not forcing anyone. Most people listening probably aren't forcing anyone to buy something. Right. You're really not tricking anyone into some weird contract, I hope, or anything like that.”  [00:35:47] - [00:35:51] “Because when you have a bigger purpose behind it, nothing else really matters.” [00:37:40] - [00:38:18] “I think imposter syndrome is so interesting. One thing that really helped me and continues to help me is, you know, people like you and people like, you know, anyone. Anyone who's a famous author or a famous actress or anybody. They still tell the stories and they still feel those ways, too. Right. So I think like hearing those stories is really helpful, reminding yourself that this is something everyone feels. It's just human nature. I mean, again, that's just some brain giving you reasons to stop doing the uncomfortable thing and to stay in the area of safety and that safety net. So just remembering that it's something everyone faces.” [00:48:37] - [00:48:59] “I really am a recovering workaholic, like so much in the Hustle Road and like you award like a badge of honor. Right. But I think that also can really play into imposter syndrome because like deep down, I feel like it wasn't the first one in the office and the loss of leave. Was I good enough? Right. That was like what made me feel enough in that didn't need to be there. To be enough.” [00:58:17] - [00:58:59] “Yeah, I think it's a it's a very good opportunity that we have right now to practice being in the moment, being in the moment and looking for the things we seek for granted. Like, again, people write like little things like, you know, just to just think about, well, the things I've been taking for granted and to think about, you know, just gratitude differently. I feel like that's part of what's helped me create a positive shift is just sinking into that. And like you said, like I've been doing face some happy hours with my group of roommates from college that I haven't seen. I see them just for like weddings because they don't live around here. But we never used to do that. Right. We could have done that before. But now all of a sudden, we have a reason. Do it or something.” [01:06:01] - [01:06:15] “I mean, I really would just tell them you are so, so, so much more fucking capable than you realize. And the minute that you own that and you believe that and you can make yourself believe that that is the minute that it's all going to start working for you.” If you want to get in touch with Leah her website is www.candidconfidence.com Her Instagram is also: @candid.confidence And her membership program is The Mindful Academy And if you'd like to get the most recent updates on me, Cait, you can find me hanging out at @sheshungryco on IG

Introduction: 1 Peter 2:24 - He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. Deuteronomy 21:22-23 - And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God. I Live Dead to Sin (1 Pet 2:24): Because I recognize how Disgusting sin is. Because that's not who I am Anymore . Because I'm absorbed with another Passion . Luke 9:23-24 - And he said to all, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it." 1 Peter 2:24 - He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin... Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANKHint: Highlight blanks above for answers!

The pain, grief, discomfort, and vulnerability that can arise throughout the wedding process can actually be doorways into joy if we are willing to let them in. Sheryl Paul speaks about her book "The Conscious Bride" which addresses the MANY feelings that can arise around a wedding for everyone involved. Music by Terry Hughes Inspired to create something for yourself? Visit https://ever-changing.net/ Links: Sheryl Paul's work: https://conscious-transitions.com The Conscious Bride: https://conscious-transitions.com/books ---- Full Transcript Paul: I'm always interested in what's not being talked about what people are experiencing, but are trying to stuff away, trying to sequester, trying to sweep into the corner under the rug... when all that does is create shame and all that does is create anxiety. Sheryl Paul has a unique ability to see the invisible, to see what has been silenced. Her book "The Conscious Bride" has been helping couples prepare for marriage for 20 years - and prepare in a very specific way. Her work helps couples create room for all of the emotions that come with transition, not just the picture perfect ones. Funny thing is, that allows for even more joy. Join me for a conversation with Sheryl Paul. This is Shame Piñata. I’m Colleen Thomas. Welcome to Shame Piñata, where we talk about creating rites of passage for real-life transitions. When I got engaged six years ago, a good friend of mine gave me a book called "The Conscious Bride". Now, I'm not a reader, as my husband will tell you, but I devoured this book. I loved it because it touched on the shadow, the stuff we don't talk about, the stuff that gets in our way when we want to feel one way but actually feel a myriad of other ways all at the same time. It named the shadow that hovers over the wedding: the attachment, the fear, the uncertainty, the hidden power-struggles and the grief that lies beneath them, and that a big part of stepping into a new life is letting go of the old one - and not just for the couple. The Conscious Bride gave me permission to feel all the ways, and it helped me create room for everyone else to feel all the ways too so, ultimately, we could all process the transition without getting into weird fights about random things. I was so happy to have a chance to speak with Sheryl Paul. Thomas: So what led you to write this book? Paul: So, I was in a master's program around that time. I was at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, which I don't know if you're familiar with, but it has a very strong Jungian focus. And I had always been interested in rites of passages and I had a deep sense that there was a lot that was not being talked about around the wedding. And I started to interview women and I did a lot of interviews, especially when it came time to write the book, which came from my master's thesis. So it started out as as a thesis and then evolve into a book. And I started to see that there was a big gap in the cultural conversation around around transitions in general. All transitions are bypassed and overlooked, but particularly the wedding and then in particular, how much focus there is on the joy and the perfection and everything has to be blissful and ecstatic from the moment of the proposal into the first year of the wedding, and there was just no conversation happening about the shadow, about the death experience, about what women (and men) are actually experiencing quite a bit of a time. And, you know, the more I researched and the more I looked and the more I spoke, the more it became quite clear to me that just that again, that there was a real gap in the conversation around this pivotal rite of passage, one of our few ceremonies that we still invoke in the culture. And yet it's done in such a way where we really gloss over the element of a transition, of the reality that when you are in transition, you are in a death experience, you are in a liminal zone, you are between identities, you are letting go, you are grieving. And we only expect people to feel joyful. It creates a lot of anxiety and it creates even more chaos than there naturally would be around an event like this. Because I'm feeling sad, because I have a sense of loss, because I feel like a part of me is dying, because I'm not over-the-moon ecstatic... something must be wrong with me, or with my partner, or with the decision to get married - something's wrong. And it's an incredibly deep sigh of relief to the soul to know that nothing is wrong. In fact, the more you let those difficult feelings in, the more you will open to the joy; that the pain and the grief and the discomfort and vulnerability are the doorways into the joy, into what we are expected to see all and into what we hope to feel. And what I started to say earlier was that that the wedding more than any other transition, I think, has (probably being pregnant becoming a mother comes close) carries a very strong cultural expectation of unilateral joy and it is supported in a big way by the wedding industry that sells perfection and sells joy. So it's a it's very big money behind selling us the bill of goods by selling us this message that you are supposed to be joyful and the way to do that is to create a perfect event. Thomas: How do you work with someone if they're just starting to realize that they don't have to only feel joyful? Paul: So, I tell them to read my book. And, you know, it's really the first part it's about re educating people to understand all of the normal and necessary feelings that accompany this transition. And once they understand that everything they're feeling is normal and necessary, they can start to let it in and and feel it, feel the grief, feel the loss, feel the vulnerability, feel the loneliness. These are all normal feelings that accompany transitions. So once we give ourselves permission to feel without that overlay of "because I'm feeling this it means there's something wrong" everything changes from there. We don't then have to misassign meaning to the feelings and to think, "Because I'm feeling sad, it means I'm making mistake." No, it has nothing to do with that. You're feeling sad because you are in a rite of passage. You're feeling sad because you are in the death experience, letting go of this identity, this primary identity as single person, as daughter, and shifting into an entirely new stage of life, a new identity. And there is no way to go through that without feeling grief. Thomas: You spend a good portion of the book talking about how the bride is separating from the father/father figure and the mother/mother figure and the friends. Can you say more about that process? Paul: Yes, so it can go a few different ways. If the bride is very close to her father, that's one set of emotions and experiences where there is tends to be a lot of grief, a lot of crying, really good, medicinal, necessary crying to make that separation process... and to make it more effective to make it more complete to make it more conscious. Again, in the naming, to say, I am separating from my dad, I am no longer going to be... Yes, I'm his daughter, but not in the same way, not as my primary identity. That my new partner is going to be number one and I'm transferring allegiance. So, that's one example of one way that it can go if if someone's very close to their father. If somebody doesn't have a close relationship with their father or there is no father figure in their life, that's a different kind of grief of the loss of not having had that or never having had that. The same as somebody has passed away. If somebody who's getting married and their mother's no longer alive. You know, that's, that's one way that grief can come through, as opposed to a mother who is very much alive and very much involved. And then there's a separation. There's, there's a loosening of cords that is required. Thomas: I'm curious as you're speaking how this applies, I'm sure it's very different, but how it applies to folks who were older when they get married, or maybe a second marriage. Paul: It can be different, it can be similar. It depends. It depends on a lot of factors. But regardless of the age, especially if it's a first marriage and you're getting married at 40, you're still letting go of a massive identity. And in some ways, it's even more of a letting go because of all of those years that you spent as a non-married person. And so there's a lot of grieving, a lot of shedding of the independence, the separateness, all of the control that you have when you are a non-married person, that every inch of your life is your own: your home, your space, how you spend your time, how you organize your weekend, it's all yours. And so that is its own massive death experience for somebody who marries later, you know, and who has had that many more years than someone who's 22 if you're 42, that's a lot of years of being the sole architect of your life. Thomas: So you work with people around transitions, all kinds of transitions now, and I'm curious if ceremony plays a part in that with them. Paul: I'm a big fan of ceremony. Because my work is largely over the internet. I'm not the one doing the ceremony with them. I would love to be that person, but I'm not. But I always encourage people to create ceremony and create rituals. And so, you know, if it's somebody getting married... and I've had a lot more men come my way, by the way, since I wrote The Conscious Bride. And I'm thinking of some right now who are in one of my small coaching groups. And he's getting married on Saturday, and I won't, I won't share the specifics, but it's... because it's his story. But it's really beautiful to witness men in their transitional process and the rituals that they come up with because I encourage people to find their own rituals that are meaningful to them. Ways to acknowledge the end of you know, in his sake, his bachelorhood that that time in his life is over. And so he has been sharing these incredibly potent rituals that have come to him for ways of recognizing that that time in his life is over. And what ritual does is, as you know, is it, it concretizes, it makes it and embodies what's happening, so that it brings it out of just that realm of talking about it and it sends it into a realm that we can't see with our five senses, but very much exists and yet calls on the five senses to help transmute the experience into another form. And so rituals help us cross over that sometimes very scary divide that just looks like a big, cavernous, empty space, crossing from one identity to a new identity, from one stage of life to the next. And without the rituals we are... we're pretty lost and so, you know, again, as I, as I said earlier, the wedding is one of the few ceremonies that we have, which comes with ritual. A lot of people tend to minimize or diminish the ceremonial aspect because they're so focused on the party and the reception, you know, that's where all of the energy goes. When really, it's the ceremony that has so much power to carry us over the divide between one stage and the next. Thomas: And that's something I'm trying to encourage and put seeds out in the world for as well, that people take that the ritual, the ceremony of the marriage, the wedding and they, they feel free to do it their way so that it's powerful and is as powerful and meaningful for the couple as possible. Paul: Yes, yes! And I think we are at this extraordinary time in our world where we have freedom to do that, where we are breaking out of the traditions that have gone stale and revitalizing them with personal meaning of what is meaningful for you. And there may be long-standing time-honored traditions that are still meaningful. And I'm by no means one to throw everything out that we've come from, because many of those rituals are gorgeous and meaningful - but only if they're meaningful for the individual, right? Only if they land in a place where something inside of you says yes, right? That helps me, that bolsters me, that comforts me. Right? So, you know, whether it's at a Jewish wedding standing under the Chuppah, you know, it's just this beautiful symbol of, of our new home and and this, you know, long standing tradition... if that's meaningful to somebody great. If it's not, then it really.. it's not going to do anything for you on a spiritual level. I shared with Sheryl that before my wedding, I created self-commitment ceremony for myself. And in that ceremony I presenced all of my Ancestral grandmothers with the acknowledgement of how important marriage might have been for them, how much of a survival tool. I did this because women’s standing in society has evolved so much even since my mother's generation, but yet we are still connected to our Ancestral legacy and felt like a really important thing to me. Paul: That's incredibly beautiful that you did that and so powerful and it's probably the number one fear that comes up for women that I'm working with in their pre-wedding time in their engagement, is the fear of what does marriage mean? And does it mean that that I am beholden to this person now and I lose all sense of self and I become boring and frumpy and... This is this is the legacy. This is what we've been handed, right? This is what it has meant for thousands and thousands of years is that for women, marriage has meant really the death of self: I exist, to take care of the man and to take care of the children and that's it. And so there's this very deep ancestral legacy that we have to consciously break with and recognize that we are so lucky and we are so blessed to be on this new threshold, that we get to redefine what marriage means for us. And we only can really know that after we've taken the leap, because on the other side, on the first side, on the engagement side, it just all looks and sounds so scary to most women. And you know, that's why I have so many exercises in The Conscious Bride, more-so I think in The Conscious Bride's Wedding Planner, on what does it mean to be a wife? What does that mean to you? What does the word wife connote? When you think of wife, what is the connotation for you? And it's very rare that someone's going to say, "Oh, I see this rad, sexy woman, you know, like, doing like, the dance on the rooftops." Like, no, that's not usually what we think of when we hear the word wife. But it could be. More and more we are redefining that. And we are seeing that. And so I tell people, but look out into the world today and find those those models of marriage where you see a woman who is doing her life fully, you know, and yes, maybe she's also a mother and she's, you know, loves being married and she's fully committed to her path and and making her offerings, and doing her work in the world. Right? Separate from wife and mother. So, yeah, I love, I love that I love what you share. I love what you did. I think that is not only powerful, but essential on that ceremonial ritual level to recognize what we've come from. Thomas: I'm just so happy and honored to have the chance to talk to you after, after all this time of really, really, really appreciating your book and your wisdom. Paul: Yeah, thank you, Colleen. It means a great deal to me to have the opportunity to share Sheryl's wisdom with you. I hope that you are able to use it or pass it along to a friend. Here's one final bit of wisdom, a quote from The Conscious Bride. "A marriage is a rite of passage no matter when it occurs, and the woman must still pass through the phases of her transformation. She must die, she must sit in the unknown, and then she will be reborn." Sheryl Paul is the author of The Conscious Bride and The Conscious Bride's Wedding Planner. Her website contains a plethora of resources for addressing life transitions. Learn more about Sheryl and her work at https://conscious-transitions.com/ Our music is by Terry Hughes. If you like the show, please take a minute to review it on Apple Podcasts. Learn more at shamepinata.com. I’m Colleen Thomas. Thanks for listening.

As we’ve seen with the impacts of COVID-19, it’s now become necessary for the spirits industry to adopt technology and delivery services to stay alive. Cory Rellas, the CEO of Drizly, was on the forefront of this years ago. This podcast dives into their business model and how they are helping stores build a digital infrastructure to sell their goods online and get it into the hands of consumers faster. We hit on all kinds of topics such as their competitors in the market, what shipping laws could mean for Drizly, and if there is an opportunity to extend this business model into cannabis. Show Partners: The University of Louisville has an online Distilled Spirits Business Certificate that focuses on the business side of the spirits industry. Learn more at uofl.me/bourbonpursuit. Barrell Craft Spirits works with distilleries from all over the world to source and blend the best ingredients into America’s most curious cask strength whiskies. Learn more at BarrellBourbon.com. Receive $25 off your first order at RackHouse Whiskey Club with code "Pursuit". Visit RackhouseWhiskeyClub.com. Show Notes: This week’s Above the Char with Fred Minnick talks about the power of packaging. What is Drizly? How did you come up with this idea? What's the timeline? What was the state of the industry when you got started? What were the challenges? Why did you go through New York early on? What is your big selling point to retail locations? Any pricing restrictions to prevent gouging? Talk about pricing transparency. How are you using the data you are acquiring? Are you sharing the data? Do you have a CRM? How are the products delivered to the consumer? How are you dealing with competition? Are you all interested in getting bought out? What's the end game? What happens if shipping laws change? What is your best selling bourbon? What are the top 5 selling spirit categories? What's your favorite bourbon? How do you work with brands? What needs to change to get more people buy alcohol online? Are you lobbying at all? Is there an opportunity with cannabis? What would the perfect alcohol market look like? What's the latest trend? 0:00 To be the best, you have to learn from the best. Louisville and the surrounding regions are home to many of the most storied companies and innovative startups in the distilled spirits industry. And there's no better place to learn the business of the distilled spirits industry than from a university located in its epicenter. The University of Louisville has partnered with industry experts to offer the distilled spirits business certificate, a six course program designed to accelerate your success in this booming industry. Oh, it's all online. get signed up to make your next career move at U of l.me slash bourbon pursuit. 0:36 I'd go with vodka. I'd actually go with bourbon, rum, tequila, although I think our tequila selection has been incredibly high end and what we're actually selling which is kind of interesting. And then I'll check for you here in a second on a fifth. I don't think I know the fifth off the top of my head. 0:54 You said it wrong. It goes bourbon bourbon, bourbon, bourbon bourbon 0:58 right brown, brown, brown brown. At 1:01 least that's what we want to hear. 1:03 I heard there the his mic cut out there when he said another word I don't. 1:21 What's going on everybody? It's Episode 248 of bourbon pursuit. I'm one of your hosts Kenny. We just got just a little bit of news to run through. And as you can guess most of it relates to COVID-19. Pennsylvania State run liquor stores are reopening, but only with online and shipped to home orders. Until further notice. Customers can purchase up to six bottles per transaction from a reduced catalog from thousand top selling wines and spirits from the website. All orders must be shipped to home or non store addresses, and only one order per address will be fulfilled per day. This is possibly in reaction to the losses now being seen by the government in an article Hosted by Trib live.com. For the two weeks of not operating, the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board has lost an estimated $91 million in revenue, or around six and a half million dollars per day. quite staggering numbers. And the Virginia ABC has announced that for a limited period of time Virginia distilleries are authorized to ship their spirits to consumers and licensees in Virginia. Now, there's some legal mumbo jumbo about addendums to these distillery store agreements, but it's another big win for consumers and for these distilleries to help everyone get through this period, you can get more information on shipping, including a full list of all 45 Virginia distilleries on the Virginia ABC website. figures released by data analysts IWA ASR have found that for the week ending in March 22 of 2020, that total beverage alcohol sales grew by 40% in value and 33% volume compared to the same period in 2019. And this is to account for the stockpiling that we've seen during COVID-19 Spirits available in one liter one and a half and 1.75 formats have outpaced smaller variants, and the Ws are noted that the larger size formats and value brands tend to benefit from panic buying, as people look to stock their home with as much as possible in the light of a lockdown. According to IWC, or whiskey brands like wild turkey Crown Royal jack daniels bullet and Maker's Mark have been the ones that have seen this most increased purchasing. Alright, now on to something not about the Coronavirus Buffalo Trace distillery continues its exploration into oak tree varietals with the release of its old charter oak Tinker PIN code. This species of oak is native to the Midwest United States. These large Chica Pin Oak trees are often found in parks and larger States after the Chica pin barrels were filled with Buffalo Trace mash number one they were then aged for nine years before being bottled at 93 proof of a suggested retail price is going to be a $70 MSRP and like all other releases in this series, supplies will be limited. And the chicken folk bourbon will be available in limited quantities starting in April. Now today's episode is one that I'm personally really excited about. I'm like a broken record on here preaching how the spirits industry needs a digital revolution. As we've seen with the impacts of COVID-19, it's now become a necessity for this industry to even stay alive. And Cory rellis, the CEO of drizzly, he was on the forefront of this years ago. And this podcast dives into how he even thought of the idea into their business model and how they're how they're actually helping stores build a digital infrastructure to sell their goods online, and get it into the hands of consumers faster. We hit on all kinds of topics such as their competitors in the market, what shipping laws could actually mean for drizzly. And is there an opportunity to even extend this business model into cannabis. Now if you haven't noticed yet, we are doing lots of impromptu live streams that help give you some more entertainment during this time. We've done virtual happy hours with our patrons Our community, late night blind tastings and more. So make sure that you're subscribed to our YouTube channel to get the notifications and also, consider joining Patreon. We're doing zoom meetings to help connect our community. And we'd love to have you there. Check it out. patreon.com slash bourbon pursuit. Also, don't forget to catch Fred MiniK on his live streams every single day at one o'clock and nine o'clock pm eastern time. They've been highly entertaining and educational. enjoy today's episode. Stay safe. Stay inside. Here's Joe from barrel bourbon. And then you've got Fred minich with above the char. 5:36 Hey everyone, Joe here again. We work with distilleries from all over the world to source and blend the best ingredients into America's most curious cask strength whiskies. lift your spirits with barrel bourbon. 5:50 I'm Fred minich. And this is above the char this past week. I'm just telling you, my brain has been suffering. I've been working so hard on I've been doing two live streams a day on YouTube. I've been writing a lot for Forbes, I've been blogging as much as I possibly can. And I hit a wall I hit a wall where I had no ideas left me none in the tank. And I want to thank every single one of you who responded to my query on Twitter, where I simply asked Can you please give me some ideas for above the char? I got so many great ones. I'm going to start with this one from the whiskey stop. It's at the whiskey stop on Twitter. And he wants me to talk about the power of packaging. A unique shape of the bottle. Does it have a twist top a synthetic cork, maybe natural cork a great or unusual label? Did it influence your purchase was a good did it suck? Did the packaging work? its magic on you. What a brilliant question and what a time Hundred like truth is that packaging matters. Oh my God does packaging matter. And let me tell you if you overthink packaging, you will fail and that is where you fail. Most of all when it comes to packaging, what I have noticed is is that many people try to target women and they do it with like a like a fluffy pink or they've got some kind of like special dressing on there and they have like rainbow colors, and women rejected every single time. Another one is when someone tries to be overly fancy, they get like a crystal, a major crystal top, a really fancy label, and then they fill it with like two year old MGP whiskey 7:49 adds a big fail. 7:51 So the packaging always has to match what's inside the bottle and the packaging cannot overstate Something so the overselling is the case of a brand that went too far with trying to attract women. And the whiskey not matching would be the decanter or the bottle that had shit whiskey in it. And the bottle was just stunning. And I've always believed that to me, you can measure a bottle by what is fascinating it or the closure. I am such a fan of natural cork you can read my cover story and bourbon plus magazine to get an idea of like, what goes into making court but I am really connected to the earth and I love I love the sustainability aspect of cork. And when I hear that pop when I pull the bottle next to my ears and I go that is an undeniable sound that makes my mouth water and makes me want a sip. A screw top doesn't do that. Lot of the synthetic corks are like stuck in there like they don't make that same sound. And the glass tops that are starting to become more popular. I could never get those things off. I have to pry them off with the damn, you know, butter knife. To me it all starts with with a good cork on the top. Now people can argue all day long of the merits of cork, but I'm just here to tell you I know what I like. And I like hearing this sound every time I open a bottle. And that's this week's above the char. Hey, listen, I'm bound to continue to run out of ideas with this Coronavirus stuff going on. Because I'm not stopping. I am driving content every single day. So hit me up on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or YouTube and give me some ideas for above the char I'll select my favorite and read it in the next episode. Next week, cheers. 10:05 Welcome back to another episode of bourbon pursuit, the official podcast of bourbon, Kenny Ryan and Fred in our virtual hangout space. And today we are talking about a topic that we know far or should say, we know all too well, you know, when we talked about this on the roundtables, we talked about it, you know, with distributors, we talked about what is the future consumption and delivery of alcohol really going to look like for the the mass market and we look at, you know, coming from a tech industry myself, we try to figure out, like, how can we get, you know, our product into the hands of consumers faster than anyone else. And what we're gonna be talking about today is really talking to a company that's on the forefront of all this. And when we look at this, it's not only just being able to get in the hands of consumers, but you can get it in less than an hour sometimes. So I think it's gonna be a really cool conversation of how we really dive into this. So Fred, and Ryan I mean, you know, we've we've talked about shipping before, but have you all have y'all ever had a service delivered bottles to you yet? 11:08 No, not yet. But I'm super excited to learn about it. I'm fortunate I live like a half mile from a liquor store so we can get it pretty easy. But yeah, I mean, the liquor industry moves at a snail's pace. So you know, there's a lot of friction points and getting bottles delivered to your house and I've had plenty of bottles delivered to my house just not legally. But I would like to make it legal so yeah, I'm really excited to talk to them about this today. 11:36 Yeah, I've had I've had quite a bit sent to me I also you know, being being a personality on the spirits network, they regularly send me stuff and they you know, that's part of their, their whole thing is that you join and you get to be become a Club member, and they ship barrel pics and stuff to you. 11:56 And so let's go ahead introduce our guests today. So today, we Have Cory rellis Cory is the CEO of drizzly, you might have seen him or the app, you've seen probably their logo and a lot of liquor stores are the ones that deliver bottles from liquor stores to your doorstep. So Cory, welcome to the show. 12:15 Thanks for having me, guys. 12:16 So was that a decent elevator pitch? Or do you have a better one? That's usually us. 12:21 It's a common misconception. So I would actually like to give you my elevator pitch. 12:25 Please do please do. Yes. 12:27 Yeah. So So actually, drizzly was formed a lot with a lot of knowledge around the regulations that you guys have been discussing. I know we're going to talk about that further. So I'll put that in the back for a minute now, but the model is actually different than people think we don't do delivery. And really what drizzly prides itself on is digitizing the inventory of local liquor stores, so that a consumer can come online, shop across their stores and find a larger selection, comparison pricing and ultimately get that delivered to them. But the delivery is done by either the retailer themselves or Third parties, that door dashes Postmates shifts to the world. And so we're really a tech middleman empowering the three tiers, but not necessarily changing the status quo. 13:10 Cool. So it's kind of like a an Open Table kind of concept for liquor stores, maybe you're kind of looking at what's available and can then kind of pick and choose that way. 13:20 Yeah, that's not a bad comparison. And Ryan, you were saying you live next to a liquor store. And I think that's really drizzly, his opportunity is not necessarily to replace the liquor store, but to provide an experience you couldn't get by going to any one liquor store. And that goes again, back to selection, to transparency of pricing to the surface and multiple stores being able to get to you when and where you want it. 13:40 And so I kind of want to roll back the hands of time here and kind of learn more about you so kind of talk us through, you know, where did Where did spirits become or is this just like an idea you had and you said, like, Hey, this is fun. Like, this is a this is an opportunity that's, that's basically ripe for disruption. Like, what What got to the point of like you getting here and saying like, okay, cool, like this is gonna be a good venture to kind of go through. 14:07 Yeah, it's a it's a less sexy story than you might imagine. And it started with regulation. So going all the way back to my cousin Nick, Nick rellis, and then co founder, Justin Robinson. And it was born out of trying to figure out why alcohol was only 2% online, or even one and a half percent online. When you saw grocery, when you saw a restaurant, we saw electronics and clothing, all these other verticals are coming online at a rapid rate. And we started to think about why that is with alcohol. And regulation became the clear component of this whole piece. And so we started digging into the legal code. I mean, truthfully, looking not only at the repeal and the prohibition, but also state by state liquor codes and trying to understand how does this model need to work for alcohol? How can a tech platform both empower the industry but not be a part of the industry and still be an unlicensed entity within it? And then the third piece is, how do you carve your moat? How do you be more than deliberate because you know, when we start projecting the 10 years down the road, that's a commodity at the end of the day and so we need to be better than going to the liquor store and elevate the status or I'm sorry, elevate the physical liquor stores to do something that couldn't do in the physical world. 15:11 Alright, so I don't know if he really answered my question there because I really want to figure out more about you right like Matt 15:17 Boyd. All of those Kenny. 15:19 Bad we want to get to know a little about you, right? I mean, like, like, we're like so where'd you go to school? Like Where'd it Where'd this really kind of like, really spawn from? 15:27 sure my road was a little bit sideways. I grew up in Texas. And I would say that I'm a big bourbon fan for that reason grew up loving bourbon actually, but was a soccer player at Notre Dame spent five years there had a fifth year for soccer and wanted to play professionally after school. But a couple ACLs later, had to give up that dream and ultimately had done an internship after my first injury, kind of preparing just in case it didn't work out in the long run, and took a job out here in Boston at Bain Capital. They're credited affiliates, sanctity advisors. And that's when I started to get to know businesses a little bit better. I started to get to know regulated industries incredibly well, I was dealing with coal and steel and some pretty, pretty old industries at the end of the day. And then the three of us that I was mentioning, started just kicking around ideas. And so this was a big jump for me, I was in, you know, kind of the standard finance track at that point, thinking about what the next couple of years looked like, whether it be business school, or continuing doing what I was doing. And it felt like the right time to jump it felt like the right collection of folks to try something new with and a little bit of naivete got us to the final to the finish line and push us over the edge 16:40 to like your own little incubator, if you will. 16:43 We had a bunch of ideas. They were all terrible. So 16:47 we struck out on a few. This one became, I mean, really, the passion of the other two guys is what got me to believe and then the more we dug in, the more we really peel back the onion, the more we knew something was here, not just as a small thing. company but something that could really turn into something as a larger platform. 17:03 Give us a timeline behind this what was you know, when when did the light bulb light bulb go off? 17:10 Yeah, so 2012 the light bulb was starting to go off with the text of why can't you get alcohol delivered? And the response was you can you idiot. And so that started down the rabbit hole of when you get called out to some extent, what do you have to do? You have to take the next step and figure it out. And so that's when we started researching the liquor code. And it's funny how things work in Boston being a good microcosm of this project. One question you get and put in touch with the next guy who you can then ask the next question to and it starts to unfold unto itself. And it's not necessarily we saw some grand vision of what alcohol e commerce would look like and what drizzly has now become, but the next step was always apparent if you're willing to take the time. So 2012 was the idea. 2013 was the very first iteration and we've evolved since then. But bringing one liquor store online. Learning about consumers and what they're looking for what e commerce was. And then in the last three years, our models really accelerated. 18:07 So walk us through like the state of the industry, then when you guys are getting like what it were liquor stores doing as far as inventory or trying to do online sales, what was kind of the State of the Union when you guys got it started? 18:19 I wouldn't say it's too different now. We're moving it forward, but begrudgingly, I'd say for some of them. So what was fascinating about the current landscape delivery did happen, but it didn't happen in the paradigm in which we have now moved it towards which you could call liquor store. You didn't necessarily know it was on their shelves, but you could say, you know, I'm having 10 people over for a party, I'd like to place a $500 order split between a couple things, can you make some recommendations, so there wasn't transparency into what you could buy nor the price behind it. And you had to have big orders at the store is going to take the time, but delivery did happen to some extent. On the other side. Ecommerce within this space was just like not even on the radar for regulators or legislators. So you're talking about prohibition being repealed, that is still a lot of the framework and the intent behind the laws that are written. And so there was nothing to comment on e commerce at that point. And one of the first things we did I mean, this is the time of Uber, right? The cars are moving around you at the touch of a button, the world's changing because you have a phone in your pocket. And we're sitting here thinking, Okay, well, how does it need to look for alcohol? And unlike Uber, we couldn't just get into a city try to stoke up consumer demand, and then ask the regulations to be changed. That's just not the way this industry works. We had to go the other way. And so one of the first things we did was go to New York State, the Liquor Authority, they're the SLS. And we asked for a declaratory ruling relative to our model to basically say, not only we elite, not only are we legal, but we're three tier compliant, and we're doing things so aboveboard, that the SLA is willing to bless our model going forward and so that was actually the first moment where became not just a hobby, but very real and something that we thought we could then Take a run with. 20:01 So you you kind of said, All right, we need to sit down, look at the laws and figure out how we can sort of navigate these choppy waters. I would imagine when we've we've talked about all the time, anytime you try to put any kind of disruption into this marketplace that there is you're going to be hit hard with a lot of people that are lobbying against you. What were some of those like early conversations, you remember having people that are like this will never work like you're not going to get it to fly. 20:29 I have a hard time remembering ones that weren't like that, to be honest. So I can speak to the other side easier. Most of it was doubt that this is a very slow industry to change. And you have pretty significant entities that control pieces of the supply chain, and if they're not on board, you're not going to have success on a macro scale and other slices of it. That can work. You could do direct to consumer wine, you could do shipping, there's different pieces of it. But on a macro scale of trying to bring the physical footprint of alcohol online. We needed a few things to go right one was New York. And Funny enough, the the woman, Jackie flute, who blessed our model, as the general counsel for the New York State Liquor Authority is now on our team. And she was kind of the veteran in the space when she put her stamp of approval that meant a lot to the industry. The second one was the wholesalers, the wine and spirits, wholesalers of America and powerful group of people and in terms of their lobbying prowess in their space within the industry, and we got them on board as a three tier compliant model that can move forward the consumer experience in a way that they could get behind. So that was that was a big piece of it as well. 21:33 So you talked about being going above and beyond what the authorities there were, what were some of those things that kind of helps sell New Yorker where they were like gave you that that blessing? 21:44 Well, I think transparency is the first thing and not only transparency, communication, but transparency of the supply chain and what consumers purchasing what bottles from what retailer and if you can track all of that which obviously tech can do and can really enable that process. That is a leg up for many Anything that's happening in delivery today, connect. The second one was, we came with an offering for ID verification through delivery. That was again, not only transparent, but did it in such a way that they could have confidence that under age was not going to be a problem within this business model. And then I think the third part was just being very descriptive on how the flow of funds work. And then also what drizzly is and what just isn't, I think there's a line that needs to get drawn as to what is a retailer's job and competencies. And when you encroach on those too far, you start to erode the license that they have worked hard and in need to live up to, relative to what a software platform is doing on the other side. So it was more just a lot of learning and explaining who we are and how we do it. 22:45 So I know that the liquor laws are they're different everywhere. I mean, every state is different. You've got to navigate that everywhere you're trying to launch. And so when I think of New York, one of the things that I know of at least in New York, and who knows if at least There's plenty of stores that actually have websites in New York. And they can deliver within New York as well, like they can run through UPS, FedEx or whatever it is. So what was the idea of going through something like New York first, that might already have some sort of system set up like this versus something like Texas, right, which is a huge market, but has a lot more regulation versus something like DC, which is really like the Wild West? 23:26 Yeah, there's a few things to pick apart there. So we actually got off the ground in terms of our model in Boston. And then we went to New York to get the model blessed one because of their size and then to the regulatory credibility when they put their stamp on something. But what was unique about Massachusetts in one of those fortuitous things that happens. It is a an incredibly regulatory driven market for alcohol. So if you're compliant here, you've almost kind of fit the lowest common denominator for the rest of the states. And you can roll it out from there. So I think that was a big fortuitous bounce in our direction at the beginning. The second thing We learned from a consumer side of things, every state is so different, and how consumers buy alcohol. Because of the regulations in New York, as you're mentioning, you have a wine and spirits store and a beer store, you have a license cap so that you don't have chains. But you have a ton of independence, which is obviously very different than Texas or California, where you have a bevmo or some of these larger chains out there. So the consumer experience really needed to adapt on where you are, and who you're going to be working with on the retail side, the East Coast was set up pretty pretty darn effectively for us because we could work with independence, learn how to bring on a smaller shop make a real difference in their business. And then as we rolled out to larger cities and states, we were more ready. We were more ready to have conversations with some of the bigger retailers. 24:45 Yeah, I think that's one of the things that we should most most people that are in the retail market should really start looking at is how do you become a little bit more competitive in today's market and just being on the corner and relying on your neighbors to kind of keep you in business might not be able to thing that's gonna keep you floating for much longer. So when you go and you have these conversations, or at least in the very beginning, I'm sure you have a whole team that have these conversations now with liquor stores around the country, what's your what's your big selling point to them to say like, hey, like we can bring your inventory online? Do you integrate with like their existing POS? Or does it say like, Hey, you need to have a new POS system that that we we run and manage, like, how does all that work? 25:28 There's a lot to it. But you appeal to them first as a consumer, and you start to think about other industries and how they've come online. And where do you buy airline tickets? Where do you buy hotels? How do you buy or how do you shop? for clothes online aggregator model and starting to get them thinking about this is going to happen in the space. It's not a matter of if it's a matter of when and so you appeal to them on a consumer level to start. The next thing you're really dealing with is fear. You're dealing with fear of competition, you're dealing with fear of transparency of pricing, and that's how far back this industry goes. As you know, they still believe That people can't get their prices if they wanted to walk in, it gets a little irrational. But then you can speak to them around numbers now. And this is obviously changed over seven years. But you can talk to him about incremental consumers that they wouldn't have been able to serve otherwise. And we have data behind that. You can talk to him about how a marketplace actually elevates to the experience to the point where multiple stores are able to succeed at a level that if you were the only one doing delivery in this area, we wouldn't be able to get those consumers to not only come and check out the site, but also come back and shop from you in the future. And then the last thing is, is we need to be more than just the consumer marketplace. And so when you're talking about point of sale systems, we need to be to elevate and help them generate more profit from their in store business, that things there's things like the catalog and the accuracy of what's on their shelves and how they actually think about that there's data on consumer trends and what they want to put on their shelves at what price at what time. So there's a lot of things as a tech company that we have access to the can really elevate their entire business and it's a whole package that when you work with drizzly makes you a better retailer. 27:01 So you brought up up pricing. One thing that we've noticed a trend in liquor retailers is there's a lot of price gouging. Do you have any restrictions or anything like that with the retailers you work with that you set them within like a 27:18 close to the MSRP or anything like that? 27:21 And it's a good question. So in some states, the price in store is legally mandated to be the price online. And I could give it's a couple states, it's not the majority by any means. So that one takes care of itself. But our job is really to bring their in store experience online and the way they want to do it. Our approach to price gouging is not necessarily to give them mandates on what to price it or to keep it in certain things is to insert competition. It's to have a marketplace to keep them honest to the point where if you are going to try to price things 40 50% up because they're rare and Other people that have that same item, they're obviously not going to purchase yours. And so it really just gets back to an efficient marketplace idea and making sure that consumers are the arbiter of what's successful and not regulations or drizzly or someone else. 28:14 And so to kind of like tackle or shall I say, like, tack onto that one a little bit. When we think about pricing, we've actually had KL we've had a spirits on the show, because we kind of talked about like, what does it look like to be in an online first kind of market? Right? Like, like, that's gonna be the new consumer drive. That's the new demand. If If Amazon's next whatever's coming next, if it's drizzly next, whatever, it's going to be like that online marketplaces really where people are going to go for. And so the other thing about the pricing aspect is this is like when you put your prices online, you're creating this level transparency, because you know exactly like what somebody's charging for a 750 ml in early times versus what somebody else is charging. Does that ever like Upset any retailers? And they're like, Wait a second, like, how are they able to charge less than I can like, what's their? What's their distributor? charging them versus what they're charging me? Do you get caught any of those kind of situations? 29:12 There's definitely yes, I mean, transparency introduces more knowledge into the marketplace for sure. Are we introduced to that conversation? Not necessarily. But I'll tell you one of the biggest learnings from early days it drizzly from switching from a single store experience. I am shopping from the store across the street, who I've been brought online through drizzly to a marketplace where I'm shopping by brand first and then drizzle is telling you the best way to access that product, whether it be selection, you can only get it at one place, price delivery, all those different things. And so what's come out of that though, one store may price something as a margin builder. Another one actually may price price it as a loss leader, and the various strategies within those retailers really come to fruition when you break down those physical barriers and put all of those things on one page together, so it's not necessarily that, hey, I'm getting a worse deal from my distributor. But it starts to highlight what someone does in store online in a much, much more transparent way. And you compete a little differently online. And so it started to me an education of this is how I went in store helped me win online. And there's usually an avenue to do that. That's the bigger conversation more so than I'm getting gouged by my distributor. 30:24 Yeah, that was 30:25 actually going to be my question how, as a liquor store, do you compete online, it kind of reminds me of the car business, you know, like the car industry used to have to rely on a salesman and try to whittle them down and beat them down to get the you know, the most fair price but now everybody knows the price What can a store do to compete? You know, if if you guys are and what parameters are you kind of determining that makes a store better or worse for someone? 30:50 Sure. And it's one of those things when you when you come on a jersey you're going to see a bunch of information and that's really where where I think we can win in the long run. Is asymmetric access to information and that includes price. That includes delivery times, that includes your selection, whether it be longtail wines, or high end and rare Bourbons. And so highlighting that is a big piece of it. And then you start to think about other people that are starting to focus in this industry. I mean, grocery, for example, is starting to come online for alcohol in a bigger way, total wine is being very aggressive. They are feeling independence or feeling that distinctly in the cities that we're seeing that, but there are advantages to being an independent liquor store location, for example, you have access to consumers within 2030 or 40 minutes that a total one could never get to in that timeframe. Not necessarily selling private label. Private Label online is a little bit more difficult. And so what of your selection, do you want to highlight? What are your higher margin products? And how do we highlight those to the consumers you're willing to speak to, and then also providing them tools. Again, going back to this data conversation, there's not a whole lot informing what they put on their shelves except for that stuff. salesmen walking in drizzly can bring transparency to that as well. What are consumers in this area buying? What are the trends? How should you think about pricing it? And how do you build that into an overall larger strategy to have a successful business and in a rapidly changing environment, which we're seeing, depending on which city different rates, but it's happening. 32:17 So you brought up data, you bring in a datum, and we are in the age of big data where we are dominated by it. Tell talk, walk us through, like how you use that data? Do you sell it to the to the suppliers? Do you feed it into like a market research hub? How are you using the data you're acquiring at point of sale? 32:40 Almost all of the data we acquire, we are using to inform our own offering. And so it's simply commerce things like how do we construct a better flow to increase conversion your likelihood to hit checkout? How do we start moving shelves around in what is effectively a digital liquor store to be more personalized to you So that the next time you come back in, we're more apt to show you the right product at the right time at the right price. That's really what we use the data for. Going back to retailers and brands, we can aggregate it and anonymize it and give them larger trends that could be cut down by geography, but never anything that's highlighting a particular store or a particular consumer more. So just highlighting a different slice of the market. And one of the interesting things about the alcohol industry is you have your Nielsen's and your IR eyes and some of the bigger data providers who have a interesting offering within the alcohol space. But they're big gaps, the independent liquor store market where you don't have receipt data, or you don't have consistency of point of sale systems. Those are not places so New York has an entire market. Those are not places that people have great insight to and drizzly through its 350 retailers that we partner with in New York City can start to really build transparency into a market that is otherwise been only aggregated into depletion data. So Other things. So there's an aggregated view for the external partners. For us internally, it's how do we create a better ecommerce experience? 34:06 Because that thread can be 34:07 actually, you know, it's fascinating. 34:09 There's a lot to take in, right. 34:11 I used to cover retail, I used to be the tech writer for the National Retail Federation's magazine stores, and I felt myself going back to the old days. Listen to you talk there. And follow up on that data is that, you know, we don't really a lot of the a lot of the numbers that are that are out there that are public. They kind of like you're saying, like the Nielsen numbers. They're not really complete. So my question to you is like, why don't you guys release these numbers? Why don't you make them public? Since you probably do have the best database of sales numbers of anybody out there? 34:54 There are more craft distilleries popping up around the country now, more than ever before. So how do you find The best stories and the best flavors will rack house whiskey club is a whiskey of the Month Club and they're on a mission to uncover the best flavors and stories that craft distilleries across the US have to offer rack houses box ship out every two months to 39 states across the US and rack houses April box, they're featuring a distillery that makes us Seattle craft, Texas heritage and Scottish know how rack house whiskey club is shipping out to whiskies from two bar spirits located near downtown Seattle, including their straight bourbon, go to rack house whiskey club calm to check it out and try some for yourself. Use code pursuit for $25 off your first box. 35:42 My question to you is like, why don't you guys release these numbers? Why don't you make them public and you probably do have the best database of sales numbers of anybody out there. 35:53 You're hitting on a great thing. And we actually do believe in the democratization of our data just because we think it's going to make all of us Better, including the consumer experience. So we released something a long time ago called the data distillery. We are thinking about how to do this in a larger way, not only for trend data, but again, how do we create something that becomes a backbone for the industry so that we are sharing data? Not because I think some people think you by holding on to it, you're more valuable. Our view is by using it to make the industry more effective, the consumers will win, which is ultimately what we're all about. One, one quick anecdote. I mean, we see trends earlier, our average consumer is millennial, older millennial 30 to 34 years old, 5050, male, female, and these are folks who are trendsetters. These are social people. And so, Rosie a couple of years ago, I mean, seltzer took off about eight months online before it did on, you know, in the physical world. So it's just one of those things where we can really inform based on the trendsetters that purchase on our platform brands and how they should be thinking about the world and then a larger play as to what you're saying Fred around, using data to benefit the industry. 36:59 Fred, you Actually, you know, and you kind of cover my question, but I guess as a liquor store owner, do I have, you know, do I have the same access to that data? Is every single store within your system? Or is it store specific or regional specific? And like, from a CR is do you have a CRM base as well with drizzly for the retailer? 37:20 We do we do. So if you're a drizzly retailer, we have a tool that's actually just culturally retailer and that gives you access to all of your sales data, all of the customers that are purchasing from you. And then also an aggregated view on some of these consumer trends and thoughts around the inventory, you should be stocking. So that is absolutely part of being a partner with drizzly and a CRM side. We're obviously aggregating eyeballs on our site. We're aggregating consumers and want to speak to them in an intelligent way. A piece of what we're doing in 2020 is starting to take our technology and utilizing that to allow retailers to do this themselves. So you can imagine white labeled websites that Allow them to merchandise their own products more effectively and almost have control of their own website by utilizing drizzly assets. And you can start to see where that would go in terms of CRM capability, the ability to talk to their consumers in a more discreet way versus the aggregator marketplace that is drizzly. So there's a lot within that, but yes, I can see us more and more powering some of their ecommerce needs, not only to benefit us, but I think it's a necessity for the market to benefit consumers. 38:26 I also think it's a necessity to because of course it for me, it always comes back to tech. And, you know, you go and you look at some websites, and I mean, some of them are just they're just archaic, right? You know, a lot of liquor stores, these mom and pop shops that try to build a website, there's a flash banner on it, you know, whatever it is. And, you know, that's why, you know, at least not in this particular segment, but this is why a lot of people that are creating their own businesses, they look at things like Shopify because it makes their you know their system a lot easier. I mean, or is that like one of the big selling points that you have for just lead a lot of these retailers is like, let's Let's take you at least to the 2020. Now, 39:03 yeah, that's a great point. So it wasn't when we started, to be honest, we thought more about how to aggregate consumer demand in our marketplace. And so that's a little bit different. That's almost like the Amazon side of things of will collect the eyeballs, we'll build the technology. And we're going to utilize your physical shelf space. On the other side, the selling point there is just incremental consumers incremental profit, so that that works. On the other side, there's so much we can do to look like Shopify to be a platform, which is an entirely different business model, but one that we really think we can enable the hundred thousand independent retailers out there to serve customers, and I keep saying customers because despite everything else that goes on within our business, we talk a lot about internally, the reason for our existence, our purpose behind everything is to to be there for the moments that matter and the people who create them and yes, we sell alcohol and help people transact online. But we're there to actually provide a better consumer experience and allow them the time and the freedom and To find that right bottle at the right price, I mean, we all know how cool that can be. So, it all comes back to democratizing what we do to the benefit of the end consumer. 40:10 Well, first off, hats off for trying to make change, positive change in this world. That's always outdated. That's we know, it's we know, it's insanely difficult to actually do. But I think there's one aspect that you know, we kind of want to touch on as well because it is a it is a part of the drizzly system and no, it's not just you know, basically creating the catalog for for what the consumer sees, but there there is a component of actually how it is delivered to the end consumer. So kind of touched on a little bit about you know, you said the post mates the, that sort of model of like, how does it once once a transaction happens online, at what point is drizzly done with it, and it's either on the retailer, it's on whomever, to get that into the hands of the consumer. 40:57 So when someone hits check out What we have done is send that order through a gateway to the merchant of record, which is the retailer itself. So just one data point there. If you're shopping from ABC liquors, that is the merchant of record on your credit card drizzly is not within that flow of funds at any point. What we do do on the other side is build the technology so that if the retailer wants to do the delivery, they have the ability to do that it almost is like the Uber driver app to some extent for this space. And that's about 92% of our orders. So most of this is retailer delivery using our technology, and we are providing the customer support throughout the entire experience until the bottle has received at its location. The third parties are interesting just because delivery is such a inexpensive piece of this whole thing and they've added scale and efficiency in a way that you almost need multiple categories, multiple verticals to do and you can imagine a mom and pop getting frustrated on a seven 7pm Friday. Too many orders coming from drizzly too many people internally It would be nice to be able to have a courier of some sort. So that's what we built in. They're all tech based, we have full visibility into when it reaches the consumers hands inclusive of ID verification. So we're always a part of it. And at the same time, we're not the ones physically handing the bottle off. 42:16 So you're like a almost like a marketplace, right? As for getting those together? I mean, is I mean, is it really like you're popping out? And it's like saying, like, okay, like Uber Eats, post mates doordash, like, whoever is going to answer this, like, come and pick this thing up. 42:29 We don't put it out to bid per se but we do work with most of the partners you just said. But that was also an idea to be honest. And there's people who have created that, we found that having one option per store is a little bit better just because you get used to who they are and do things in a in a bit simpler way. 42:44 And so I guess a another question that I kind of want to actually go ahead and because it's I'm sure it's a the business side of this. So go ahead and answer it is 42:51 actually a business side. So you talked about how you kind of laid the framework for this whole really, for what is an is an new category that's kind of changing the space and now you got competition. You got all kinds of people coming on board, minibar and a few others. So how do you? How do you how do you deal with that? How do you, you you have to compete with him at individual retailers? Do you guys share retailers? How does that work with your competition? 43:21 Well, Fred, I mean, going back to 2013 when we Magneto got back in the stone age's. Exactly. I felt like I got some grit. Now, that was pretty good. In 2013, when we kind of announced the model, there were about 50 meters out there, minibar absolutely being one of them and have a lot of respect for what they've done. That phase isn't necessarily over at any time, but the big boys are now here. And so we're actually thinking about competition, not necessarily for just alcohol specific, but the logistics firms. I mean, Uber Eats has tried to do alcohol delivery. 10 different times instacart has prioritized alcohol and e commerce. Why Walmart and grocers are starting to think about how to do this in a bigger way, total wine. So you can imagine that there's, we almost need to find a way to succeed. And this is what we talked about a lot internally. In 567 years, every bottle on every shelf could be transacted online and sent to a consumer, whether it be delivery pickup or shipping. And in that world, how does your business model succeed? And that's really where it just has been built for. Not necessarily the me twos today that are, you know, predominantly just about delivery and convenience, within that 44:32 value proposition. At what point do you stop, you know, you're talking about some pretty big names and they're trying to get in the space? what point do you stop competing and just start? You can't beat them join them in that regard, is that the end goal? Seems like with most tech companies, they want to get absorbed or bought out, you know, at some point have an exit strategy. 44:51 Yeah, I mean, there's always there's always thoughts on the next strategy, but to be honest, we're being built for the long haul and alcohol is a bit a bit you I mean, there is a moat, from regulation that comes from embracing them, rather than trying to knock down these laws. Now, if tomorrow, the Three cheers went away, and it looked a lot more like selling electronics online, I might have a different tune as to about where we fit in the long run. But I do think we can stick out a place here for the long term. And a lot of that comes back to kind of this underpinning of how do you take regulation and code that into your technology? And then also, how do you take a mom and pop an entirely fragmented retail base, and then aggregate that in such a way using your catalog, your tech that we know where every bottle is in the country, its price and how to get it to a consumer, what you build on top of that within your product experience? Just kind of opens up the world to you and I just think that's something entirely differentiated and difficult to replicate. All that being said, not looking to sell by any means today, but it's obviously something you sit up a little straighter when Amazon gets into your space. 45:58 Yeah, I would imagine so. Yeah, I mean, I think I think Amazon might have been one of the big names that, you know, people are gonna recognize and you know, they're they're definitely trying to get into the space as well. And so, you know, another question that that kind of follows along with that is the when we start looking at, you know, Amazon, you start looking at instacart, and all these different kinds of companies that are trying to get into it. And if you kind of said something like, if the three tier system is goes down tomorrow, like what what would that really mean for you all? And if basically, this gets democratized to the point that it is just like, buying and you know, buying an electronic off Amazon like, What? What is that? Is that truly like gaming or a game over? I mean, are you really reliant on the three tier system to to make this happen? 46:47 At this point? No, but I think two things become obvious. Right now brands are about as far away that you can be from a consumer when you're a big CPG right. So they are unbelievable storytellers and brand builders from The awareness message side of things. But it's not like Procter and Gamble and Walmart, where you have co located offices and you're trying to figure out where to put things on shelves and incentive basis. And you know, you're buying shelf space and tap space and the rest. That doesn't happen well, at least not legally, at least today. And if that goes away, then the way brands work with retailers changes overnight. And drizzly has a value proposition there, but it does need to shift pretty significantly. The other side of the coin though, is we almost need to plan for the three tiers to go away because drizzly successful, when the product experience, the consumer experience is so good that they no longer need to go to the store. And that goes back to not just the selection and the availability and the transparency of price, but then packaging it in such a way that again, almost guided shopping or personalization to where you almost feel like you're missing out if you're not going to Jersey because you've learned so much about your product. There's a crazy stat we just learned that you know 40 45% of our consumers Unless you're using Drupal as a discovery tool, and not necessarily transacting on the platform, I think that's fascinating. I think that's something that we can really lean into to drive value for the consumers at the end of the day. And again, I think that's one of those unique things that regulation be damned, we can do better than anyone else. 48:16 And how does your game change if shipping laws are broken down? Now, let's say the three tier system still there, and it's great. However, now that you know, New York and shipped to California, Wisconsin, you can go to Florida, and liquor stores can now compete, you know, across state lines, like what is that? What does that do for your business? 48:37 I think it'd be a little bit of the Wild West to start, I think you're going to start to see the macro or the larger chains, assert price dominance because they can then start to think of their business on a national scale versus distributor, distributor and state by state. I think we could really take advantage of that world to be honest again, I keep beating on the same point but if we know what's in 40,000 stores We should be able to surface all of the items at the best price possible for you almost kind of this notion of tell us what you want, we'll figure out the best way for you to get it. And I think that's one in which we would really succeed. Shipping is not a huge piece of our business today. But that speaks to the use case, we're going after more so than the consumer demand inherent within shipping. So I think we could really take advantage of it. It would, it would require a little bit of adaptation and how we do things. 49:24 All right, I want to jump back into some data stuff. This is I think this is some fun. This will be fun for you. What is your best selling bourbon based on your data? 49:36 It's a little different than you might think. It's a brand that we've done a lot of work with, to try to figure out how it resonates with the millennial consumer but bullet bourbon was our largest brand in 2019. 49:48 Bigger than it's a 49:49 popular brand, 49:50 but it's you know, it's not it's not necessarily makers, or Jim are some of these other ones. So yeah, 49:55 still a top 10 bourbon from a sales perspective. Now what are The top five selling spirits so like from a categorical perspective 50:06 category spirits are the spirit themselves. 50:09 The so the know the category spirits so like tequila ROM bourbon like what what's your top five there? 50:16 I might get this wrong but we'll see here I'd go with vodka. I'd actually go with bourbon, rum, tequila, although I think our tequila selections been incredibly high end and what we're actually selling which is kind of interesting. And then I'll check for you here in a second on a fifth. I don't think I know the fifth off the top of my head. 50:37 You said it wrong. It's goes bourbon, bourbon, bourbon, bourbon, bourbon, 50:41 right. brown brown, brown brown. 50:44 At least that's what we want to hear. 50:45 Well, I didn't I heard there the his mic cut out there when he said another word I don't 50:53 bleep me out but it's funny I've I've sworn on this and I didn't hear any negative reaction. Now I say anything other than bourbon. And there we go. 51:00 Yeah you get around Fred that's that's the type of banter you're gonna get out of it and so you know as we kind of want to like ask a question because we really didn't ask it in the very top of this because you said you were a bourbon fan like what's what's what's kind of like your go to you got some favorites cuz I see behind you you got a Coors Light came behind there I figured figured we could I mean you're in the you're in the spirits business like let's let's get some bourbon on those shelves back there. 51:25 Oh don't worry we do have that this is just one of the rooms 51:29 well so I like to play nice because we work with a bunch of different brands in their businesses. I'm a big Booker's fan I love 100 proof Booker's over a glass device when I go home. I'd say that's more of a Friday night drink than anything else. But that's probably my go to if I'm if I'm opening something on the regular. 51:47 What do you mean by by working with brands? Like what is what does that mean to you? Well, 51:52 I think there's two things. The first would be on the data side. So these are folks who are looking to learn about consumer trends, figure out how their business brands are resonating with consumers. And it's less even about the online spend. It's taking those learnings and apply it to the offline. And again, massive media budgets and trying to make them even 1% more efficient by learning about the online consumer in depth. That's a big piece of it. The second piece is, shirtsleeves, the fastest growing company in the fastest growing channel for alcohol. So to that extent, they are trying to figure out how they're going to win online. Knowing that in five years 10 12% of all alcohol is going to be sold online. So drizzly can be almost a test and learn area for them. You can speak to consumers in a personalized way. You could sell advertising, we haven't done much of that to date. But all of these things are basically a lab for them to figure out how their brands can come online, and either keep or grow their market share versus the physical world. 52:49 So what was that you say? 10 to 12% is what it's going to be in the future. 52:53 Yeah, if you look at some of the larger data providers, they're projecting 13 $14 billion in 2023. Slightly less ambitious than that. But you're seeing this industry come online at 40 50% year over year, which is significant, we do think it's gonna be the fastest growing CPG over the next three to five years. 53:11 So what what do you all need to do to try to position yourselves to say like, we can grow this beyond 10 to 12%? Like how, how do we change the minds of the consumer to say, like, Oh, we can we can get this to 20 to 25%? Like, what do you think has to change in the culture to try and get people to start buying more online? 53:32 I think you're actually hitting at it pretty good there, which is awareness. Not many people know that you're allowed to buy alcohol online. And even if you do, there hasn't been a way to do so that should take away from going to the local liquor store. I mean, that's, that's a behavior that's worked for decades and decades. And so to break that behavior, you need to build something that is not one or two times more effective than going to the store but 10 X and really, that's where the product offering needs. to elevate the purchasing to where I don't need to leave my home, or if I did, I need to at least see what's online to really inform my experience in a way that I could never get on store. So it's a combination of awareness, and then a product offering that is just so superior going to the store, that they're going to order it online. Again, utilizing that store, though, 54:18 for sure. And I don't know, I mean, I guess there is there is also something about, you know, being a consumer going to the store, looking at it holding in your hand. And maybe, maybe that'll just become a thing of the past. Like, what do you what do you try to do to try to like counteract, like, some arguments like that? I mean, but then again, there's also like, Alright, well, you know, people used to love to have the feel of holding a newspaper in their hand, but nobody really does that a lot anymore, either. Can I still read the newspaper? I gotta be honest, physical core. You're killing me, man. Like you're young. You're young and hip, man. You shouldn't be reading a newspaper. 54:54 no and no one I know we call me hip, but that's all right. I wrote for newspapers for a long time. DDS. to bash on them, I mean, for God's sake, 55:03 there isn't. There's a key word in there that was it was wrong. 55:08 Yeah, but to your to your larger point, I don't want to necessarily be in a world where you can't feel a physical bottle where you can't go look at it, I want to lean into that. And so while the physical store might need to change, I hope it still exists. And I do think it should exist, but in a little bit different format. Instead of trying to have 5000 or 10,000 items on your shelves, and trying to have that inventory in that working capital and play that game. I'd love to see a world where you can almost have a retailer that has an e commerce DNA from day one. And then they have the experiential side of going in being able to taste products being an elevated experience knowing that on the back end, you can get any of those products delivered to you shipped to you or walk away with them from a warehouse around the corner. So they almost become showrooms informed by the DNA of e commerce versus having to compete in the current way of doing things today. 56:00 So So drizzly has been very active on the, you know, on the on the trade front. Where what do you do from a legislative perspective? Dr. You do you guys have a lobby firm that you're spending time in DC Do you do lobby in every state that you're in? Talk us through that particular process from the government perspective. 56:23 It's a core competency of ours. It's really what we were built on. So we have an internal team composed of General Counsel who has industry affairs experience, and then also the woman I mentioned Jackie fluke, who was on the New York State Liquor Authority, and they're really quarterbacking state by state, both almost legal protection side of things, and then an advocacy side for what we believe to be the best way to bring this industry online. We have lobbyists in every state that there is legislation moving we're in those rooms and our real thesis here is the engagement is important because I mean, we spend all day thinking about content tumors and the intersection of their needs and desires with a controlled and regulated substance. We want to be a part of that. And we think we can actually help doing so. So that actually speaks to something else we're doing, which is taking our platform into the cannabis world in the near future as well. 57:16 Oh, that's I think you hit on a pretty good topic there because we've we've actually covered on the podcast before what's the effect of cannabis and the, the, you know, this the distilled spirits market? What do you kind of see is the cannabis market kind of being an opportunity? 57:30 Well, I think it's a massive opportunity. And we started, you know, talking about market size. Alcohol is 130 billion dollars sold off premise each year 2% online. So you can do that math. We think cannabis is going to be a 30, maybe $35 billion legal market within five to seven years. But you're talking 40%, maybe even 50% online. It's a different consumer behavior, and there's no ingrained I know how to go to a store and there's no kind of behavior you need to break off, there's actually a stigma from going to a store. So all of that coming together, we think is a great opportunity. We do think it needs to be informed by alcohol legislation and the know how behind bringing alcohol online, it's just it needs to be treated with respect as a category. And that's one of the things we think we can really bring to that conversation. 58:22 Okay, so I have a request for your cannabis stuff, your delivery, you need to have guys on with backpacks on bicycles. Doing the deliveries through through town. 58:35 You mean like the movie half 58:36 but yeah, exactly. 58:40 Yeah, that's not gonna. 58:43 That wouldn't make it right. A legal team. 58:45 Yeah, no, you definitely wouldn't. But you could absolutely work beside me because I come up with these ideas all day long and get shot down. So it's good. I mean, it 58:54 is another thing that you know, even with the cannabis market, I mean, if you're, if you're always engrained in these legal discussions. Do you find it like fascinating that the legalization of cannabis and the l

Do you have a coach to help guide you to grow your property management business? If you want to excel at what you're doing, you must have somebody who's playing a bigger game than you. Today, Jason Hull and Jon Ray of DoorGrow continue their discussion on premature expansion in property management. Besides putting planning and process documentation systems into place to be more efficient, they focus on the third system: Communication (internal and external).  You’ll Learn... [01:33] Interruptions and Inefficiency: Every interruption costs 18 minutes of productivity.  [02:13] Pay to Play: Learn from coaches how to protect and guard against interruptions. [02:40] Cut the Slack: Chat tool that creates interruptions and crushes team productivity.  [03:15] Under-Communication: Creates interruptions that prevent momentum and flow. [04:07] Communication System: Only involve those internally that need to know, and find ways to improve external client communication. [06:01] Organizational Structure: Clear line of communication for delegation. [08:15] Who does what? Pair effective visionary with brilliant operator to get things done. [18:18] Sales solves all problems—not always true. Growth feeds business. [19:25] Get things in place, and then it's not premature. [21:00] Jack of All Trades, Master of None: Entrepreneurs find opportunity everywhere.  [25:34] DoorGrow OS: Consolidate systems, processes, professionals to be successful. [31:10] Three Currencies: Growth involves time, money, and effort. Tweetables Every interruption costs about 18 minutes of productivity for one team member.  Under-Communication: Creates as many interruptions that prevent momentum and flow. Every team member you add lowers your pressure and noise. Every team member you add makes your job and life easier.  Get things in place, and then it's not premature. Resources Intercom Help Scout Voxer Process Street Jason Fried of Basecamp Warren Buffett Slack Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS)/Traction Mastering the Rockefeller Habits: What You Must Do to Increase the Value of Your Growing Firm HireSmartVAs Anequim with Mexican VAs DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive DoorGrow Website Score Quiz DoorGrow Cold Leads Calculator Transcript Jon: I have worked with coaches for the past 20 years. I believe in them wholeheartedly. If you're going to excel at what you're doing, you have to have somebody who's playing a bigger game than you. Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow Hackers, to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you’re crazy for doing it, you think they’re crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high-trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and their owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I’m your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let’s get into the show. I’m hanging out here with someone else from DoorGrow, Jon Ray. Jon: Yeah. Thanks for having me. Jason: The third system that's necessary so that you can avoid premature expansion is you need an internal communication system. If you're still operating on sneakernet, or constant interruptions like sneakernet as they walk into your office all the time and interrupt you, then you're operating really inefficiently. Every interruption costs you about 18 minutes of productivity for one team member. If one team member interrupts another team member that's 18 minutes times 2. I don't know what that is, but it's more than a half-hour. Jon: Thirty-six minutes. Jason: Too many minutes, like 40 minutes down the drain because two people decided to talk to each other, or one person interrupted somebody else. You have to protect and guard against interruptions. All of this stuff is stuff that has to be learned. It's stuff that I've had to pay lots of money to learn from different coaches.  I had met with Jason Freed, the creator of Basecamp, and hung out with me on a call like this for 90 minutes. He cut my staffing costs in half overnight. We're high tech. We were using all kinds of technology. He pointed out how we are using this chat tool that had group rings. It was causing everybody to interrupt everybody all the time. Everybody feels like they had to read everything. It made our entire business completely inefficient. The software was Slack for those of you that are big Slack fans. Slack was absolutely killing and crushing our productivity as a team. It is basically an endless diarrhea without context or stream of information for every single project. Everyone on the team felt like they had to read every single thing. Jon: One of the things that entrepreneurs are aware of is that when a team is under communicated, that's not a good thing. But there's this idea that maybe over-communication is the way to go. That's actually just as bad, if not as bad, because it creates so many interruptions that then prevent people from finding the momentum and flow that allows them to be most efficient. Jason: The reason it costs you 18 minutes of productivity is because that's about how long after somebody that causes interruption, regardless of how much time they're spending with you. They might spend 15 minutes with you, and then it's 18 minutes. It takes time to get back into the flow. What was I doing? How do I rebuild this house of cards that I was building before Steve came in from finance and interrupted everything? There needs to be an internal communication system that works effectively for the team that only involves the people that need to know or deal with a certain thing at a certain given time, rather than everybody needing to see everything. If you're a control freak as an entrepreneur, and you need to know everything, and see everything, you're probably the biggest bottleneck in the company. You need a planning system, you need a process and documentation system, you need an internal communication system. The other system that you need is you need an external communication system. You need a client communication system that makes it easy. We use Intercom. Some people will use HubScout. You also might use your property management software in some ways for this. You might have phones, but you have to clearly have an effective client communication system. That's something we're always working on improving is client communication. We use Voxer internally as a team, and some of my coaching clients will use that as well. We've got a lot of tools that we use to increase communication, but most of it is one-on-one. It's not causing big group interruptions or situations like that. Jon: An important thing to reference here—when it comes to creating the right communication systems—is that there has to be clear lines for delegation. Part of your process documentation needs to be letting each employee at each level and in each role understand what type of tasks are appropriate to delegate up to you and what needs to be delegated down. Jason: All that comes with the process documentation, but planning helps with that a lot at that system, and then you need an internal communication system. As part of that, that's kind of the organizational structure. There needs to be a clear line of communication where somebody reports to somebody. I was talking with a property manager the other day. They had their part of another business. What she said is that this other business that she's a part of—outside of a property management business—that there are three bosses. Over one department there's two managers. I said, “Well, how did the team members know which one to go to?” I said, “Are they very different personality-wise? Do they get different answers?” She's like, “Absolutely.” So then, how do they know which one to go to? There's so much confusion in this entity. She could see it. Me hearing about it just made my skin crawl because I was like, “I would feel so crazy and uncomfortable because it sounds like a nightmare.” There's all this infighting and politics and all the stuff going on because nobody has any clarity. People don't even know. She said somebody got promoted in this business and everybody said, “Hey, congratulations.” There was a celebration. Jon: I’m going to take this time and just pause you. I know that there are people out there that are saying, “This sounds like a lot of work. I'm already too stressed out.” There's so much resistance to putting in this work. What we're talking about is do you want to win at a new level of the maze? Do you want to be a high achiever? Because if you're satisfied with being in this mediocre average zone of success, then maybe you don't need all of this. If you ever want to get to a level where you're dominating your local marketplace, and you're running a business that isn't just growing but is growing comfortably, these things are mandatory, right? Jason: Yeah. I can empathize with that strongly. The little story—just to wrap it—was everybody was congratulating this person. They were asking him, “Cool. What are you going to do now?” He said, “I don't know. I’ll figure it out as I go, I guess.”  Anyway, let's go back to the question. What was the question again? Sorry, I have to finish the thread. Jon: There's so much resistance around showing up and having to actually do all of this stuff. Maybe you can talk about why it's important to push through that resistance, or how to do that? Then why ultimately, the short term resistance and discomfort leads to a more comfortable, more profitable, and more fun business down the line? Jason: I just would rather kill the resistance. Here's what I realized. I had a ton of resistance. When I started working with some of the best operational companies, ­­I was working with probably the best operational coach that might exist in the business world. I had already studied traction, and EoS (end of sale), and I'd heard of the Rockefeller Habits, and scaling up, and I went to this thing called warrior. There are other systems out there similar to the 90-day year. All these planning systems have some commonalities between them, which I sort of outlined when we discussed the planning system. I felt a ton of anxiety when I was going and learning this stuff. You want to know why? Because I'm not the person that should be doing that stuff. That kind of stuff is stuff that operationally minded people love. I can geek out on a system like I could see the genius in it, but me doing it, and me implementing it, me running meetings, I'm not the person to do that. Most CEOs and entrepreneurs are the worst to run team meetings, to manage their team, to manage operations, to manage operational processes. That's why you'll see almost any visionary—that's really effective—paired up with some sort of person that's operationally brilliant. It gives them the freedom to create ideas, create a vision. The operator helps them make that stuff come true and happen. Jon: If I'm a property manager and I'm still in that first sandtrap, and maybe I'm not even doing more than a quarter-million a year in revenue, and I don't really have the budget to bring these people on. Can you talk about what it would look like to start thinking about a hiring trajectory and mapping out some of the milestones of how I can get to this place? Jason: This is a learned process to know clearly where your time is going, how you're the biggest bottleneck in the business, what needs to happen next? This is stuff that we teach, but it's a process. There's a system for knowing exactly what you need next to take the business to the next level. It's part of the stuff that we teach clients.  Ultimately, for those that maybe they’re the lower level like, “I can't hire a COO. I can't hire an operational manager. I can't even hire an operations assistant yet.” Maybe they just get a personal assistant, executive assistant, somebody that loves planning. They love process. They love documenting things. They love systems. They geek out on these things. They like calendars and spreadsheets. They'd love to color coordinate sock drawers. Their closet is organized. Their desk is spotless. These are not typical visionary entrepreneur personality types that are high-driven types of people. If you are not that personality type—now on property management, you do get some operationally-minded people, but they might not also be the driver. They may need to get a BDM (business development manager) in the business. Somebody that's out there crushing it, and closing deals, and aggressive because maybe they're that operationally-minded person. That's why I think every business needs to be built around you, the entrepreneur, but if you're hearing this and you're getting anxious. You're like, “All these systems, all this stuff,” and you're overwhelmed. That probably means you're not the operations-minded person. The operations person, they probably have some of these, and they get excited about that. Those property managers are the ones that are like, “I can't grow yet. We're working on all of our systems and processes first,” and they have 10 doors. They're documenting everything and getting everything dialed in and then you have the opposite. You have to figure out which type are you? The other thing to point out is this stuff doesn't make your life crazier, and it doesn't make your life more chaotic, and it doesn't feel it's not more work. Because when you start to get these things implemented, and you're offloading, and you're systemizing, and you have planning, and you have vision, your team can actually help you do all of this. Every team member you add actually lowers your pressure and noise. Every team member I've added to the team has made my job and life easier. I'm doing less. Every day I'm doing less. Every new person—I brought you on—I’m doing less. What that allows me to do is to do more of the things that I really should be doing, the things that I'd really love, the things that really make me feel alive. I'm to the point now that I enjoy doing sales, but you've taken that off my plate, and you're taking some of the marketing stuff off my plate. I enjoy doing marketing, but there are things that I now want to do more than those things. As you build out your team—the very first person you need usually is an assistant, very first person. Hopefully, that's a person that you can grow into the role of being an operations assistant, an operations manager, maybe a COO of your company at some point if they’re brilliant and effective enough. Because that's going to lower your pressure significantly, and they're going to help you get all of this stuff dialed in and implemented. Jon: I know a lot of people have hired somebody at $10 an hour to be a personal assistant. They've had a bad experience, or that person just didn't really do what they were supposed to do. Is there some way to think about bringing on a personal assistant where that's actually going to be a successful relationship? Jason: Oh man. We've had people in the show like HireSmartVAs and Anequim with the Mexican VAs. If you're not an expert, and you don't know how to answer that question, and you want to just get a virtual assistant like those, or a great assistant we've had on the show—if you want a US-based assistant, you need help. Because you don't know how to identify these people. The mistake we make as entrepreneurs is we tend to hire people we like or that are like us. That's not the person you usually need. You usually need a person that's somewhat your opposite that can balance you out, and handle the things, and take things off your plate that gives you more pressure noise. We have a process we take people through to identify that so that you can build up the ultimate job description for your dream team member. The silliest thing I ever hear—and I mentioned this in some of the system shows—is when an entrepreneur starts asking around, “What do you have your assistant do?” That's like walking around the grocery store asking people, “Hey, what do you eat? What are you having for dinner?” Because they have no clarity. You're not ready to hire. It's not what they can do, it's what do you need? You have to get really clear on what do you not enjoy? What drains you? What's sapping your energy? What is that has alignment with you personally? That's one of the things we get people really strong clarity on is who they are, what they should and shouldn't be doing, so the business can be built around the entrepreneur instead of built around somebody else's system, or somebody else's process. This is my major problem with traction and some of these other systems. It’s building according to somebody's ideal system, which ironically is a system that requires some special coach that's super expensive that you have to do it that one exact way. You need this thing called an integrator that is only one that can do it. Jon: I was going to say I think the people that I see who are the worst at delegation are really nice people. Because really nice people hate asking other people to do stuff that they don't want to do themselves. The misconception there is that other people like the same type of work that you like. You can always find somebody who loves to do the things that you hate to do. That's how you should be thinking about hiring. Let me find somebody that I can bring on as an assistant who can start to help me offload all the things I don't want to do, but they love doing those things. Jason: The biggest mistake we can make as an entrepreneur in our business—when it comes to team members—is to assume that our team members think the way we do. Almost none of them do. They're very different. Otherwise, they'd be entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs are just different. My team members love being told what to do each day and having clear ideas of what to do. Me, I want freedom and I want autonomy. There are huge differences. You need to recognize that the stuff that you hate doing, somebody loves doing that. I don't like calendars. I don't like staring at spreadsheets all day. I don't like doing graphic design in front of a computer all day. Can I do these? Can I enjoy them sometimes? Yes, but that doesn't mean that that's my best use in the business or in life and that I want to do that. My team members that love those things, they love those things. They could do that every day. That's just fun for them. I don't ever have to motivate them. That's how I know I've gotten somebody in the right position because they love doing what they're doing. Without getting too far off-track—because we could do a whole episode just on hiring, planning, whatever. Jon: How does all this tie back into premature expansion and whether or not I as a property manager am ready to expand? Jason: The one other system we didn't mention is you need a sales process and system. You need some growth system that's feeding the business. This might be the most important. Some say sales solves all problems. Not totally true, but without sales, you don't have a business. There's no revenue. You can't pay your team members. Things get scary. You can't pay your mortgage, or rent, or whatever you’re doing, you can't pay the lease on your building. Sales have to be happening. Bit growth has to be happening in the business. All of these things go together. You need all these different systems in order to work. If you have all these systems, then you almost have a franchise model in which you can open up another office, or a new location, expand into a new market. Ultimately, you're going to want to keep as much as possible—probably centralized—to lower operational costs, to reduce redundancies, and get what you need to support that new location. Then you know, all right, this is not premature. We've thought this out. The baby is ready to be born. This is all set up. The reason I call premature expansion because there's nothing premature that is usually considered positive. Anything that's premature—whatever you can think of—is usually a bad thing. I wanted people to understand it's too early, it's too early. You don't have things in place. Get the things in place, and then it's not premature. Does that mean you're going to learn? Yeah, you're still going to learn. Are there going to be mistakes? Absolutely. Is it going to be messy sometimes? Sure, but that's running a business. Perfect businesses don't exist. That's part of just what's going to happen. If you're dealing with that, the idea of starting this new location expanding everything else and everything else is already a mess, you're just pouring gasoline on a fire that's already there and it's just getting worse. Jon: These processes and systems really give you a leverage that allows you to be really successful in a lot of different styles of expansion. Whether that's opening another office, or acquiring something. The best investors in the world—like Warren Buffett—are essentially people who are really good at systems and processes. When they go and acquire a business that's in chaos, they know that they can immediately implement the right systems, processes, and management team, and that business will become profitable very quickly. It puts you in a position where you have a huge competitive advantage over anybody who's just bootstrapping it or shooting from the hip. Jason: Another form of premature expansion is death by opportunity. Entrepreneurs, we see opportunities everywhere. You know you're the opportunist type of property manager or entrepreneur business owner if you are like, “We can start a roofing company. Let's start a maintenance company and we could serve these other companies. Let's do roofing. Let's get a house cleaning business. Let's do carpet cleaning.” I know business owners that they have new property management, and they have seven or eight other businesses. Jon: It's like the jack of all trades, master of none. Jason: Some of them can be good. They can build out teams, they can have things really well dialed in. If you learn to do it for one—like you we're saying—you can do this for all of these businesses and make sure that it's going well. But if one's a mess, you're just adding more problems and making it more challenging. What it does is it dilutes focus. Focus is one of the key ingredients for making money. If you want to make a certain amount of money, and you're like, “Well, let's add more services.” You would think that would add more money. What it usually does for most entrepreneurs is it just dilutes what they can already do. It just divides that up and it becomes more and more challenging. It's a lot easier to make a million dollars in one company than a million dollars to 10 annually. That's another form of premature expansion. That all comes back to the planning system. The planning system, and our vision, and goals as a company give me constraints as an entrepreneur and as a visionary. I'm like, “We could do this and we could do that.” My team is like, “We can't. We've got all these goals that we’re working towards. We've got this, we got this. Maybe we can make room for that next quarter or next year.” This protects them from the grenade when I come back from the conference and I have all these ideas and want to change everything. They'll say, “I can see that I don't want to lose sight of what we have going already and destroy that momentum. I want to achieve these objectives. It's going to get us money. It's going to get us making a difference. All these things that I want. We need to keep that going. Then we can figure out where that can fit in.” It just allows us to not just go through the buffet line, throw a ton of stuff on a plate, and then end up not being able to utilize even half of it. Jon: Once everything that you're talking about—the communication systems, the processes, the systems—once all that's in place, it also gives your staff and your employees a mechanism for delivering feedback to you, even if that's uncomfortable feedback. Almost always—maybe not almost always, but at least in the businesses that I've run as a high-level manager—the employees who are actually doing the operations a lot of the time have really solid ideas on how to make things more efficient, but they feel afraid of communicating those up. By opening up those channels of communication and making it so that it's not uncomfortable for a lower-level employee to give a great idea and have that idea be received, you can actually empower your team to fix a lot of the inefficiencies. Jason: Here's a real simple thing that I thought of that you can recognize if you're ready for premature expansion. If you are the one running all your team meetings, and you're the first to speak in all those meetings, you're already losing. Have you noticed that I'm not running the meetings, and everyone asks me what I think less? “Hey, are you stuck on anything?” I'm the last one to go. Because it's so easy for us as entrepreneurs to say, “Hey, here's my idea. Everyone should do this.” Then when you ask your team members they're going to go, “Yeah, what the boss says. He pays me. That sounds like a good idea. I'll go with what he says. That's the safest answer.” Jon: Growth in all levels—personally and it when it's directly related to revenue—means that there has to be an integration of discomfort sometimes. The proper communication levels mitigate and buffer the discomfort that employees have for communicating good ideas. Oftentimes, the people on the ground level are the ones most capable of finding the thing that's going to work for your current team dynamic. Jason: This is something we've been thinking about a while. We run our business using a system that we called DoorGrow OS that I feel like is one of the most brilliant planning systems out there. It's a consolidation of several different planning systems, operational coaches I've worked with, having brilliant operators on my team. It's something I built out even software-wise that we use internally as a team. You've just started to get a taste of this. There's clarity. There's communication. Everyone knows what they're doing. We're hitting targets, and goals, and objectives each week. The momentum is strong. This is how we grew 300% in a year. Jon: It's a really interesting way of running a team. I've run a lot of teams that have a lot of branches underneath the management. This just provides a level of efficiency and oversight that still makes upward and downward communication very feasible and very easy. Maybe at some point, I'll convince you to share that system with the rest of the world, but right now, it's been really interesting for me to understand some of those principles and see how the years and years of working with all these coaches have been baked into some of these ideas and the things that you're identifying as the ways to know whether what you're doing is premature expansion or actually profitable growth. I don't know if you have anything else on your list, but I know that we're starting to get a little bit long. Maybe we could just recap what we’ve talked about. I'll turn it over to you for any final words of how somebody can take what we spoke about in this podcast and make it actionable. For somebody who has nodded their head to at least one or two of the things that you said during this podcast, what should be their next step for starting to figure out how they can start to tweak the knobs and levers of their business in order to be more in line with what will actually make them successful? Jason: Every business owner is doing the best they can with what they know. Every person on the planet really is doing the best they can with the limited access to knowledge and resources they currently possess. If you knew better, you would do better. There's a lot of things I don't know. There's a lot of things that I can't see. My best feedback is—you've probably heard a lot of ideas on this recording. Maybe you were nodding your head, but ultimately, if you feel stuck, or you don't feel like you're going as fast as you want, or you don't feel like your company's in momentum, then you need help. You need to reach out. That's one of the scariest things for us to do as entrepreneurs, but I do it. I have coaches that I pay. I go and I get help. If I don't know something, I hire a coach. I've got an event I’m planning on going to in March to learn something that I feel like I'm weak at in the business. Normally I would hand up to other team members but something I've avoided that I need to know more about. You need to have enough vulnerability to recognize that you can't do it all on your own. You're not Atlas holding the entire globe on your back. You need to get support.  If you don't feel like you have support, if you don't feel like you have somebody in your corner, if you feel like you're the smartest person in the room in your company, and everybody's just going to say yes to whatever you throw at them, there's a big problem. You've got big blind spots. You need to reach out. You need to get help. That could be us at DoorGrow. Set up a call with us, reach out. We can help you identify some of the blind spots, some of the leaks, some of the inefficiencies, and get you into a high state of momentum. We start in those five core functions at the very beginning. Jon: I want to just mention—because I can feel that somebody just had some resistance to, “You can't do it on your own. You need a coach.” That almost sounds too salesy. Maybe we could alter that statement and soften it for that person who feels resistance to that because you could do it on your own. You could go to the bookstore. You could buy all the books. You could read through them all. You could slowly implement things, and see what works, and what doesn't work, and it would take you forever, or you can work with a coach and collapse time. For people who are looking to collapse time, that's when it becomes incredibly valuable to work with somebody who's already done all of that research and extracted the best practices, split testing all the ideas and figured out what works. Now, you can have a roadmap for how to get to success in the quickest way possible instead of having to trial and error your way down the road. Jason: I am a big fan of trial and error, but I do also like collapsing time. My coaches have helped me collapse time dramatically. I was that guy. I was for many years. I was the guy that thought I could watch another Youtube video, or read another book, and I could figure out on my own. It took a ton of time. You have to recognize there are at least three currencies. If you want growth, it involves time, it's going to involve money, and it's going to involve focus, or energy, or work, or effort, whatever you want to call it. Those could probably be broken up even further, but you've got these three currencies. If you use all three and invest all three you can grow faster. If you decide, “I'm not going to invest money. I don’t want to go hire a coach. I don't want to pay DoorGrow. I don’t want to go spend money on this.” Then you can go buy cheap things like books, and watch free YouTube videos, and get a lot of some good stuff. Some stuff that's leading you the wrong way but you don't know. They're experts so maybe they'll be telling the truth. You try it out. Then what ends up happening is it's just going to take infinitely more time. That was my challenge. I spent a massive amount of time. It was painful. When I finally started to invest serious money towards the best that I could afford at the time, I collapsed time dramatically, and I always made that money back. Not even just made it back. I made it back monthly. I was making more than I paid the coach. That's almost been my experience with every coach. I've got so many coaches that I paid $5000 a month. It gets ridiculous, but do I make more of that in a month? Absolutely. Jon: One of the things that I hear on the calls is if someone isn't seriously setting goals for their business, it feels to me like it's because they're afraid that they're not going to hit them. If they don't say them out loud then they don't have to suffer the defeat of not hitting it. One of the reasons to work with a coach is to have the accountability and the hand-holding required to get you over that resistance and that hump so that you can actually start hitting those numbers. The first time that you hit one of the goals that you set, you get addicted to it. You want to keep hitting goals, but because people have set so many goals in the past and then failed at hitting them, they don't set goals anymore. Jason: They don’t trust themselves. Jon: One of the things that a good coach can do is get you back in alignment with your goals so that you recognize that that vision is possible to hit. That's part of that collapsing time. There's a ton of great business books out there, there's a ton of great niche courses out there. You can throw money into a million different ways to “grow your business,” but if you're not looking at your business holistically, and you're just looking to fix the symptom with some kind of a band-aid, you're never going to be an A-player in anything that you're doing. There's an opportunity to level up by working with a coach—whether that's DoorGrow or somebody else. I have worked with coaches for the past 20 years. I believe in them wholeheartedly. If you're going to excel at what you're doing, you have to have somebody who's playing a bigger game than you. Jason: That's very true. I agree. Let's end on that note. Jon, I appreciate you and hanging out with you again. Those that are watching, make sure to—if you're watching this on Youtube—subscribe, like us. If you're hearing this in iTunes, please, be sure to leave us some feedback. We want to hear your real feedback there. Leave us a review. That helps us out. Jon: I’m also going to say before this goes out. Join us in the Facebook group because this can be an ongoing conversation that we have in the Facebook group. We have so many stellar examples of property managers who are doing all the right things there. You can interface with them, you can interface with the people on our team, and you can tell us what's working, not working in your business. Then if you disagree with everything that we just said, we invite you to come and have that conversation as well. Because any type of conversation whether you're praising what we're doing or trying to chip it down with an ax is going to allow us to grow, and iterate, and become better. We want to have you in that group. Jason: Well said. Until next time, everybody. To our mutual growth. Bye, everyone. You just listened to the DoorGrow Show. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet, in the DoorGrow Club. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead, content, social, direct mail, and they still struggle to grow. At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge in getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today’s episode on our blog at doorgrow.com. To get notified of future events and news, subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow hacking your business and your life.

Sarah Wilson is on the pod with Tahnee today and just quietly the whole SF crew are pretty stoked about it. Many of you may recognise Sarah as "that I quit sugar lady", after all she pioneered the movement and has written and published many books on the subject. In 2018 Sarah sold the I Quit Sugar franchise and gave all the proceeds to charity, a legendary act considering the success the movement has had globally. Sarah is a journalist and activist at heart, spending a lot of her time avidly researching and seeking the truth, sharing her insights with absolute fervour through her books, media appearances, blog and social media platforms. Sarah's expertise and main areas of interest surround the issues of mental health, the environment and sustainability, politics and healthcare. Sarah is someone who "gives a shit", a deeply passionate soul on a quest to save what's left of the planet for generations to come. Sarah's approach is accessible, community minded and no fuss. Today we have the pleasure of discussing the theme's in her latest book, First We Make The Beast Beautiful, a personal text exploring anxiety and bipolar disease through lens of spirituality and philosophy.   "fight for rightness" - Sarah Wilson   Sarah and Tahnee explore: Anxiety and mental health, the highs, the lows, the gifts. Loneliness. Collective despair "we're in the middle of a human despair crisis, and it's completely understandable. We're all avoiding talking about it in that language because we're just not ready yet." Carrying what Sarah calls "radical hope" in your heart in these globally turbulent times. "I was like, what's the point of just feeling good myself when the planet's burning, you know? I need to get out there" The inextricable nature of politics and spirituality. The plight of the individual, where neoliberalism fails us and the importance of community. The corona virus and the toilet paper crises. Sarah's daily non negotiable's, think movement, meditation, real food and like minded community. Why walking is such an effective tool against anxiety. Non-consumerism and travelling light. The one thing Sarah does hoard - personal letters and postcards!   Who is Sarah Wilson? Sarah Wilson is a multi-New York Times bestselling and #1 Amazon bestselling author. A former journalist and editor of Cosmopolitan Australia, Sarah also hosted the first series of MasterChef Australia, the most watched show in Australian television. Sarah founded the I Quit Sugar Movement and has published 15 sugar-free cookbooks which sell in 131 countries. Sarah's latest cookbook, Simplicious Flow, is the world’s first zero-waste cookbook. Sarah's international bestselling book, First We Make The Beast Beautiful, reframes anxiety and bipolar disease through a philosophical and spiritual lens and has become both a #1 Amazon bestseller and New York Times bestseller. Sarah ranks as one of the top 200 most influential authors in the world (2017 and 2018) and has a combined digital audience of 3 million. Sarah closed the IQuitSugar.com digital business in 2018 and gave all funds to her charity trust. She know builds projects to assist both those in need and combat creeping individualism. Sarah is a foster carer and vocal anti-consumerist, hiking enthusiast and rides her bike everywhere. Her next book will be published in Australia and the US August 2020.   Resources: Sarah's Blog Sarah's Books First We Make The Beast Beautiful Sarah's Instagram Sarah's Facebook   Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast? A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We’d also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or check us out on Stitcher :)! Plus we're on Spotify! We got you covered on all bases ;P Check Out The Transcript Here:   Tahnee:  (00:00) Hi, everybody, and welcome to the SuperFeast podcast. Today, I'm here with Sarah Wilson. We're all big fans of Sarah at SuperFeast. I'm really excited to have her on the podcast. She has done so many things in her life, which is just such a beautiful kind of offering from her sharings on her blog and social media, all the way through to her published books. Many of you will know her from the I Quit Sugar franchise, but she was one of the youngest editors of Cosmo, if not the youngest editor. You can correct me on that later, Sarah. Tahnee:  (00:32) And she's also written this incredible book, First, We Make the Beast Beautiful, which has been going around our office for about a year now, and we've all really enjoyed reading it and getting into Sarah's wisdom around a lot of the mental health issues that people are struggling with these days. She's also been writing another book, so we'll hear about that in the podcast today, but I just wanted to say thank you for taking the time. We know how busy you are. It's great to have you here. Sarah Wilson:  (00:57) And she's also written this incredible book, First, We Make the Beast Beautiful, which has been going around our office for about a year now, and we've all really enjoyed reading it and getting into Sarah's wisdom around a lot of the mental health issues that people are struggling with these days. She's also been writing another book, so we'll hear about that in the podcast today, but I just wanted to say thank you for taking the time. We know how busy you are. It's great to have you here. Tahnee:  (01:15) Yeah. And, I mean, we've got two copies between about ... Well, there's 20 staff in our team, but like we've been going one upstairs, one downstairs. [crosstalk 00:01:25]. Sarah Wilson:  (01:25) Well, I hope there's lots of notes and turned over pages [crosstalk 00:01:28]. Tahnee:   (01:28) ...marks and notes as they read it, and it's really nice to read other people's takeaways, and, yeah, it's been a really nice little journey.. Sarah Wilson:  (01:35) Oh, I love that. Tahnee:   (01:37) It sort of brings me to how relatable your story is, really. Even though many of us haven't officially been diagnosed with anything or haven't had anything since we were quite young. I was diagnosed with depression at 17, but I decided to try other things, rather than medication. But many of us really related to what you were talking about, and I think it's so easy to kind of label people with labels and diagnoses with something, but when you really look at the humanness of that experience of the things that you really describe so beautifully, the fear, and the suffering, and the closing in of the walls, and just the uncertainty and the inability to be with that uncertainty, especially when we're young, I think there was something really potent about that, that we've all connected to, even though...   Sarah Wilson:  (02:27) Yeah. I think also anyone I speak to with depression or anxiety in whatever form it takes, everyone at the core feels that, even if they've been diagnosed with some pretty extreme so called mental disorders, they still feel that there is something more going on than just some chemical imbalance in the brain. And, of course, the science now shows that, that theory, which our generation grew up with, that it's a serotonin imbalance, therefore it requires medication produced by a pharmaceutical company, we feel that that's a dissatisfying end to the debate or to the issue, in part because medication doesn't always fix the issue, in fact in the main part it doesn't, but also I think deep down, we know there's something more going on. Sarah Wilson:  (03:18) And so, yeah, the book, as you know, is more of a philosophical and spiritual journey through anxiety, and it actually goes beyond seeing it as a problem, but seeing it as, as I call it in the book, a superpower. And it can become a superpower when we can sit with it and see its beauty, hence the title of the book, First You Make the Beast Beautiful, because it has been something in our evolution that serves a really important purpose, that the poets, the scientists, the world leaders, the top world leaders, shamans, spiritual leaders throughout history we now know displayed what we would now call mental disorders, predominantly bi-polar and OCD. And I think it's really good for all of us to actually go, "Ah, there's actually a purpose behind this, and if we see what the purpose is, we can start to then attend to the deeper purpose that our anxiety is alerting us to."   Sarah Wilson:  (04:19) And then that becomes a far more, gosh, nourishing, beautiful journey to be on, rather than, "Oh, I've got to find a better psychiatrist or a better drug, because this last one isn't working."   Tahnee:   (04:29) Well, it just becomes a self perpetuating prophecy with the medication that people aren't ... Also, that's what I really appreciated was you didn't posset that there was a solution, but that it was kind of this tapestry of weaving that each individual really had to do on their own to really fight the things that nourish and support them. And we live in a culture that is, in many ways, creating these symptoms in us, but we have to take responsibility for our own relationship with that, I think, and I think when you look at your journey, I can really see that, like, how you've come through all these different kind of, I guess, milestones that people would consider to be, on paper, really amazing. And obviously not to undermine them, they are amazing, but when look at what really makes a person happy, some of these things are not that, you know?   Sarah Wilson:  (05:18) Yeah. Tahnee:   (05:19) Yeah. Would you say that's been, I guess, something that's, I guess, had to become relevant for you as you've [crosstalk 00:05:25] just keep pairing away the things that are just not serving you to be you? Sarah Wilson:  (05:32) That's right. It's often about ... There's a couple of things. I mean, I think in the main, I felt terribly lonely, and I say this really early in the book. A friend to me, "Why on earth are you writing this book?" And I said, "Because I'm bored and lonely." And I was. I was bored of the discussions that were being had, that I had to either avoid or I was sort of reduced to in and around my anxiety, and I was also lonely in it because we weren't talking the juicy stuff that sat down at that deeper level, and even just talking about it is a salve, having deep conversations. I think we get anxious because we're not having these conversations, these meaningful conversations.   Sarah Wilson:  (06:11) So to your point about these so-called successes I've had in my career, I suppose I can see that they came out of my anxiety, so there's the flip side that I've been highly productive because I've had this yearning forward, this outward search, and I've constantly been seeking a better way to do things, a more nourishing life, and that's kind of led me on to these various projects. So I can really be grateful for that, but now, as I'm in my mid to late 40s and working out where everything sits, I can now see that all the decisions I now make about my career are just becoming easier and easier because I now know what is at my heart that I'm searching for. I've got a much better understanding of it. And I've heard a lot of people, after they've read Beast, they've gone, "Gosh, I now know what decisions I've got to make. I know now how to make those decisions."   Sarah Wilson:  (07:13) And as you know, Tahnee, in the book, I talk about how one of the worst thing about anxiety is that we get anxious about being anxious. Mostly because we don't have a dialogue around anxiety, right? We're told that we shouldn't be anxious, right? So we get anxious that we're anxious because we're somehow failing at life. Then we get anxious about being anxious about being anxious and we go down this horrible spiral. And my thing is, you know, what, do anxiety once. Do it once, move on. Sarah Wilson:  (07:39) And that's one of the, yeah, the salves that form that tapestry, as you put it, of solutions and ways of looking at things. There's no one thing, but there's a lovely conversation we can have, where gradually, and you'll remember from the book, I talk about it being a big knotted ball of wool. We don't necessarily find the end of that knotted ball of wool and we magically pull it and all unfurls into a nice strand that our life can that travel along. We just loosen that ball of wool so that we don't get so cluttered and anxious and tense. We just loosen it. We provide gaps and oxygen in and around it all. And so, yeah, I'm sort of really butchering your tapestry metaphor here by turning it into a knotted ball of wool, but I'm sure the listeners get the point.   Tahnee:   (08:31) Well, I'm imagining a loose weave kind of knit right now. Sarah Wilson:  (08:34) Yeah, thank you. Tahnee:   (08:36) But I think you mentioned that, like, "Sitting with your triggers," was the quote you used in the book, and I guess I've done a lot of yoga, so that's my background, being yoga teacher and stuff, and one of the big teachings and gifts for me, and one of my teachers describes it as widening your bandwidth, it's like you never can hold more volume, and so, yeah, the anxiety's moving through, but you can kind of feel it as this huge cone of energy, but you don't have to resist it, which I think is worse than actually [crosstalk 00:09:06]. Sarah Wilson:  (09:06) Yeah. Well, it can be there and you can have a great life, so we take broader bandwidth, and that's why a lot of the solutions, I'd say roughly half of the exercises and solutions I put forward, and nothing's as definitive as a solution, but you know what I mean, some of techniques to experiment with- Tahnee:   (09:24) Practical [crosstalk 00:09:25]. Sarah Wilson:  (09:25) ... are about expanding that bandwidth, so that you can hold the anxiety when it comes, and then the other half are things to do when anxiety strikes, so what you can do when you're in the middle of one of those and- Tahnee:   (09:40) If you don't have the head space to- Sarah Wilson:  (09:43) Yeah, yeah. Tahnee:   (09:45) ... put ... Yeah. Yeah, and I guess when you talk about that, coming back to that superpower metaphor, which I think, again, is a really powerful one, I tend to hear when I speak to people, and, I guess, being in the unique situation of hearing all of our staff, talking about their experiences reading it, a lot of them are quite sensitive people who went to uni and tried to get careers in Sydney, and realised that that was working for them and couldn't really understand why they were suffering on a mental and physical level. Tahnee:   (10:14) And they've tried moving out to Byron and Mullum, and trying to decompress and unwind, but they fall into a lot of the similar patterns and habits here, even though the pressure isn't there for them and, yeah, it's a really tricky one to go, "Okay, well, I am a sensitive person. I have to have certain types of boundaries on my time and my energy, but these are things that make me great at my work," because, seriously, these people are amazing at what they do because they have that sensitivity and- Sarah Wilson:  (10:42) Yes, that's right. Tahnee:   (10:43) ... you're able to translate that human experience because you have such a depth of feeling. But comes with its own pros and cons, right? Sarah Wilson:  (10:52) That's right. That's right. And that's why we can have better conversations about that so that we actually feel comfortable with it all. When we feel comfortable about something, the beast becomes less scary, and then we start to reframe it as a beautiful thing. Tahnee:   (11:04) And so what about ... Obviously right now, there's a lot of fear in the media and these times are really interesting, I guess, is- Sarah Wilson:  (11:13) That's one way of putting it, yes. Tahnee:   (11:15) Yeah, and, I mean, you're on social media a lot, well, not a lot, but you're there, you have a presence and you're sharing a really strong message. Do you find that awareness of what's going on creates more anxiety for you now, or do you have ways of managing that now that you've gotten a bit more mature in your approach? Sarah Wilson:  (11:34) Yeah. Look, it's a combination. As you mentioned, I'm writing my next book, and, as of yesterday, I've been able to give the title of it out publicly. It's called This One Wild Precious Life, which I hope gives a bit of an indication of what the book's about. But it's essentially a soul's journey through all these nebulous things that we're having to cope with, predominantly the climate crisis, which is incredibly anxiety inducing. So in some ways, Beast looked at our anxiety as an inward journey, it was our own personal anxiety. This next book goes outwards. It goes out into the world to what I call our collective despair. You know, we're in the middle of a human despair crisis, and it's completely understandable. We're all avoiding talking about it in that language because we're just not ready yet. Sarah Wilson:  (12:23) But, yeah, I think that the journey I went on with First, You Make the Beast Beautiful certainly prepared me for this. It got me pretty solid. And, look, after the book came out, after the Beast came out, I've got to say my life has changed. It was a bit like writing a whole series of books about sugar, right? I could never walk down the street again eating a Magnum ice cream, you know? It was just like it kind of set up the guard rails for my own wellbeing. But ditto, with this anxiety book, it really forced me to go down into the stuff I was writing about because I really wanted it to be a legit sort of pathway for people. I had to go there first, and it really built new muscles in my own brain. Sarah Wilson:  (13:10) So, yeah, I came out of it much stronger, much more philosophical, but also the conversations I had with people were just so nourishing. It was exactly what I wanted. It delivered what I needed, personally, which was a better conversation. So, yes, going into this topic, it certainly has steeled me for things, however, this book, which has taken three years to research. I've been researching it and writing ir now solidly for three years. And that in itself has taken me to even a deeper level of maturity. And you used that word, maturity. It's absolutely apt. It's been a process of really growing up. Growing up in that real sort of soul way. That hero's journey. Joseph Campbell's Hero. The warrior. Sarah Wilson:  (13:56) And I've got to say, it's a very female kind of warrior energy, which I've had to channel. I've had no choice because I've been talking to climate experts around the world. I've been really embedded in a climate debate and the activism and all of that kind of thing, and you can't unsee this shit, right? Once you've learnt the reality of it and you've accepted this is the science, this is categorically as real as it gets, you can't unsee it, and so you've got to find better ways to cope with it. Pathways in your brain that enable you to keep waking up every day with, what I call, radical hope in your heart.   Sarah Wilson:  (14:40) So, yes, the hardship, the harshness, the devastation, the despair, the shame, the guilt, everything that I've been feeling, I've gone through it, past through it, and it's made me even stronger and more resilient. And I'm hoping that when people read this next book, when it comes out in late June, that they'll feel they'll benefit in the same way because that's what we're needing right now. So, yeah, it's been the next chapter in things, and it's been very much about ... It's like the parable of the monk that goes and meditates in the mountain for years on end, and then suddenly goes, "What's the point of this? I've got to come down from the mountain and bring the wisdom into the village." Tahnee:   (15:21) Yeah, love it. Sarah Wilson:  (15:21) Yeah. And that's where I arrived, and I was like, "What's the point of just feeling good myself when the planet's burning, you know? I need to get out there, and even if [inaudible 00:15:32] with my anxiety and I've still got all the bloody baggage and the stuff following me around, I've got to get on with some- Tahnee:   (15:39) Something right? Sarah Wilson:  (15:40) Yeah, yeah, exactly. Tahnee:   (15:42) And so, I mean, when you're talking about these shame feelings and that, because that's a really common thing, I think, that causes paralysis in people, and it kind of comes back to the advice similarly really to what you talk about with anxiety and these other sort of mind disorders, I suppose, that people are diagnosed with these days. It's this same idea of almost the permission and the willingness to enter into that space of feeling those things, but not letting them become us, or letting us become them, I suppose. It sort of reminds me of the meditative and yoga traditions where they talk about that you've got the contents of the mind and then you've got consciousness, and they're not the same, and it's a [inaudible 00:16:26] to separate them out a little bit, like you're saying, create that breathing room and space around them so that we can feel that, yeah, we're all apart of what's going on, we've all participated in the creation of this problem and we can- Sarah Wilson:  (16:38) Yeah, I think that dialogue is a really great one during times of peace, but I would say that we are in a time of emergency, and I suppose a lot of my message is about taking that spiritual yogic kind of tradition, that thinking about not being your emotions, witnessing it, et cetera, et cetera, not getting caught up in that dialogue, which is, it's a wonderful skillset to practise for everyday living. However, I would say it needs to be ratcheted up a notch or 50, so we're [inaudible 00:17:15] this today. And this is something that I actually do explore in my next book, that spiritual traditions have always adjusted in times of crisis, and what they've done is got quite political and also moved the journey out into the world, and that's kind of almost the rally call that I'm putting to the wellness community that, yeah, was appropriate for us all to do a fair bit of self care there, sort ourselves out, but, hey, even if you're not quite ready, get out on the road and be of service because the planet needs us right now.   Sarah Wilson:  (17:46) So that's something that I actually really am mindful of. And it can sound a little bit harsh, but I think the times demand it, that we've got to actually stop thinking about our own wellbeing, we've got to start to think more collectively at the moment, and- Tahnee:   (18:03) What does that look like for you then? Because that was kind of the point of my question. If someone's paralysed by their own feelings and they're afraid to feel them and they haven't developed a capacity really to go, "Okay, it's okay to feel that. I can still do something." [crosstalk 00:18:16]. Sarah Wilson:  (18:16) Yeah. Well, you've almost answered that in some ways because I think that even if you haven't developed the capacities perfectly, and, look, either have I, there's never an end point in this bloody of the journey, it's kind of the point. But, no, it's actually one of the things I've found is that activism or getting engaged, being of service to others, even if it's just the next door neighbor's dog, it really doesn't matter. Being engaged and of service is actually one of the best, would you believe, fixers for anxiety because- Tahnee:   (18:51) Like the altruism studies and stuff. Sarah Wilson:  (18:53) That's right. You can now steer some of that energy towards something bigger than yourself, and quite often, what actually creates our anxiety is a sense of what's this all about? Surely this is about something bigger, you know? And all of sudden, we've been granted exactly that, a thing bigger than ourselves that we need to attend to. So I think that that's something that is ... I think that's actually a really great way for us to see things. You might not be ready, but it doesn't matter. Get out there and help, and that will actually get us, get you there at an individual level. It's kind of a two birds, one stone thing. Tahnee:   (19:31) Yeah, and I guess no action is too small, right? Is that what you're saying? Like, if anyone had any inkling to get off their seat and do something, go and do it, and just follow that. Sarah Wilson:  (19:41) Yeah. And I think when you're depressed or you're anxious, quite often what happens is we can actually descend into a state of inaction and numbness because we get overwhelmed, and my book actually tries to walk through all of that with the reader so that they can not let that sort of overwhelm them and send them into the numbness. But I totally grant that it can be difficult, but I also think that ... Nietzsche said that when we have a why, we can handle any how. And I think that once we grasp the idea that our why is to really fight for the planet, fight for the life that we cherish, we find that the how just comes. We get motivated.   Sarah Wilson:  (20:30) But, yeah, look, I take your point that when we're struggling personally, it can be very easy to descend into overwhelm and numbness, and the guilt can get too much, the shame, it's just all too much. It's a bit like ... It's an evolutionary response. We either fight or we flee, or we freeze when things get tough. But I think there is a call to arms, and I think that it's getting louder, and I think it's actually going to be a great thing. For those of us who've had that itchy feeling, we're not attending to the right things in life. I actually think that's at the core of many people's anxiety, is a sense that this is just not right. We're not living the life we're meant to be. Tahnee:   (21:15) [crosstalk 00:21:15] humans when you go to countries that aren't as developed as the ones we live in are just that, it's community, and it's connection, it's these things that don't really have anything to do with how much crap you have and what's on your Instagram profile or whatever, and I think ... But that's something I get really stuck on in the ... For example, when the bushfires were happening, I arranged a food drive here, and people were sending me the most ridiculous things, saying, "Oh, why are you sending them bottled water? It's plastic, it's bad for the environment all this stuff. And I was like, "Look, there are all these people with no food, they have no clean water, I'm going to send it to them. Shut up. Just go away." Sarah Wilson:  (21:53) Yeah. I think what we do is we also grasp onto absolutes in times of fear, and it is very much a reminder of how much we need really solid, good, visionary leadership in times of crisis, and, unfortunately, in much of the Western world, we don't have that. We still haven't transitioned from a period of, in the vedic tradition, and some of your listeners would be aware of this. There's this idea of you have a period of creation, and then you have periods of maintenance, and then you have periods of destruction, and we've been in a period of maintenance. Pretty much, stability, financially, the world has gradually improved in way ways. Globally, there's been a fair bit of maintenance, but eventually, that comes to an end and we go into a period of destruction. Sarah Wilson:  (22:48) And that happens across all species, across all lifeforms throughout history, and we need to adjust to that, and we haven't adjusted yet. We're still in that maintenance, she'll be all right kind of phrase, and our leaders aren't actually going, "No, you know what? This is an emergency." We're going to have to kind of lift and ... And it's sort of what we did during various war eras, right? Countries mobilised. There were posters everywhere, there was propaganda, governments did everything they could to get the world onboard. Now, whether we think war is great or not, it's part of the cycle of life and it happened, and we needed to mobilise one way or another.   Sarah Wilson:  (23:32) If everybody sat at home went, "Oh, I'm not going to do the rations. Somebody else can do that." Or if we didn't have a leader who went, "Hey, we're going to have to all tighten the belts, go onboard, do what we can, support this war effort because we've all signed up to it and it is for the greater good," we'd be in all kinds of trouble today. So that's what we need from our leaders. So it is really hard. At the individual level, we've got to engage and really fire up, and in some ways, shelve our own personal stuff briefly so that we can attend to a greater good, which in the end, actually attends to the original anxiety, you know? It's actually a wonderful thing. Sarah Wilson:  (24:10) And, look, just to give you some statistics on this, during the London blitz, for instance, in World War II, the admissions into mental wards and also suicide rates dropped to virtually zero. And the theory that's been postulated is that the country was all mobilising together. There was a sense of the collectives that everybody was able to tap into. And, as I say, everybody had a why bigger than themselves. And I think that's really interesting, and those statistics played out around the world. People's depression, anxiety, would you believe, also suicide rates just dropped because people were getting on with something else, something bigger, something collective, something very tribal. Tahnee:   (24:58) Mm. So that's the call, that we use whatever kind of soil we have to start to build this ground swell, I suppose, of momentum towards [crosstalk 00:25:07]. Sarah Wilson:  (25:07) Yeah. And I actually think a lot of us have been waiting for this. Tahnee:   (25:10) Yeah. [inaudible 00:25:11] at this stage from the top down. Like, it's just that's... Sarah Wilson:  (25:14) No. Tahnee:   (25:15) I'm not waiting for that to happen. Sarah Wilson:  (25:17) No, please don't. And I've always taken that approach, Tahnee, with sugar. Don't sit around waiting for governments and junk food companies to suddenly go, "Oh, yeah, sugar's not that great, let's change." Just start shopping differently, start cooking and eating differently. And so that was something that was really motivating me, gosh, all those years ago now, eight years ago, when I decided to start the I Quit Sugar movement. It's like, God, everybody was sick of waiting for someone else to do it, let's do it ourselves. Tahnee:   (25:44) Yeah. So this is an interesting dilemma then that lands for me when we talk about these movements because they create product and they create challenges, and I've read all this crazy stuff about [inaudible 00:25:57] travels the world, and does this and blah, blah, and I've heard certain criticism of yourself for making books and products and all [inaudible 00:26:06]. It's like [crosstalk 00:26:07]. Sarah Wilson:  (26:06) Mm. You can't send plastic bottles to people who have no other way of getting water, yes. Tahnee:   (26:10) No. Interesting kind of mentality that we have to ... Like you said, it's criticism and paralysis instead of action that can ... I mean, even on the flip side of that, it's also this kind of way of avoiding ... Like, wellness industry, for me, is such a great example because it's like rather than address the fact that don't you feel okay, which has probably got more to do with what you're exposed to, how much rest you get, the food you're eating, the kinds of things you're consuming through your senses, more even so than through your mouth. But, I don't know, buy a product, buy a spray, buy a cream.. Sarah Wilson:  (26:50) Oh, yes, the outward [crosstalk 00:26:53]. Yeah, that's right. Buy [inaudible 00:26:54] to the solutions. Tahnee:   (26:56) And it's part of this climate ... I mean, I'm conscious of it with our business. We're bringing products from China. The Chinese herbs, I believe in them, but at the same time, I'm like, "Why don't I have an Australian tradition to draw from? Why don't I have wisdom from our 60,000 year old medicine tradition. Sarah Wilson:  (27:12) Yeah. Tahnee:   (27:14) It's a tricky one and I think about it every day. We obviously do what we can. We have a sustainability officer and we work really hard to do everything we can to make it a sustainable as possible but- Sarah Wilson:  (27:24) It's so tricky, and I love that you are bold enough to own it and actually call out some of the uglier, probably, examples of what you have to confront as a business owner. And I think that's one of the best things we can do, first and foremost, is kind of own the ugliness of it, and then we can actually start talking real solutions and being far more compassionate with each other. Look, I face it as well. I had my father on the weekend going, "Oh, well, Sarah, you fly places. You wrote this book and you went overseas to do some of your research." And I said, "Yep, I totally get it, and you're absolutely right. And I feel grimy about it." Sarah Wilson:  (28:09) And this not by way of my own personal justification, but more as I think this is the discussion we feel collectively we need to have is that we live in this world, we are all of this world, and even if we're being very virtuous, and I'm sure, like yourself, you do all kinds of other practises and make sacrifices to ameliorate some of your carbon footprint. I don't own a car. I walk everywhere or rid my bike everywhere. I very much focus on having zero food waste in my orbit. Sarah Wilson:  (28:42) So there's various things I do, but, equally, and there's families, people out there, we all have our thing where we're unable to shift it. Some families obviously can't get rid of their car because life it set up around schools, especially up where you live, schools are 20 kilometres away, pretty much everything's 20 kilometres away. So that's got to be borne in mind. We live in this world, this world was created by us all, and we need to be forgiving of that. And I've got a phrase that I've worked to and over the summer a lot of people were going, "What do we do? What's one solution?" And it kind of plays into what you were saying earlier. We think that we can just go and buy a solution off the shelf, that somebody's magically going to come along with the fix and, oh, well, let's all go and buy it and we'll all be good. And that's a neoliberal system, right? Tahnee:   (29:33) Yeah, sure is. Sarah Wilson:  (29:38) And it's a lot more complex than that. It requires uproot of a systemic change, et cetera, et cetera. But what I have said to people, instead of a one size fits all salve that we can all talk to is we do everything we can. Now, everything that you can do or one of your listeners can do is going to look different to everything I can do, but it's very different to saying, "Oh, we do our bit," or, "I do my bit to make a bit of a difference." That's not going to be good enough. The only thing that's going to cut it is that we do everything that we can do. And so I can't decide what that is. It's a very much moral assessment we're all going to have to make, and if we are starting to discuss this issue through a moral lens, through an ethical lens, through a spiritual lens, we can start to make those decisions for ourselves. Sarah Wilson:  (30:27) At the moment, we don't have any dialogue around it. We only have the dialogue of, "Oh, we buy our way to green consumption," or, "We just feel really guilty about it and," I don't know, "go and play a video game, or get outraged on Twitter and flick through Netflix," you know what I mean? So I think, yeah, I mean, we live in this world, we all do. We've got to be forgiving of that, but we must do everything we can and we will start to feel enlivened, and of best service, and least anxious when we do everything we can. Tahnee:   (31:08) And that really makes me think of the dharma of each of us having something unique and powerful we can [crosstalk 00:31:15] without needing it to be like anybody else's. Like, I can do certain things that you can't do and vice versa, and we'll each make our unique ... And I guess if we're talking tapestry again, we all have to contribute ... Or even a jigsaw puzzle's maybe a better analogy, but we all have to [crosstalk 00:31:30]. Sarah Wilson:  (31:30) Yeah. Pema Chodron's got a really lovely ... And I know you're a big fan of her work. She's got a lovely phrase, which I like, which is, "Start where you are." She doesn't [inaudible 00:31:41] to be more complex than, simply, if you're a school teacher, start making the changes within your area of expertise and just start tomorrow with your kids in your class. If you are a stay at home dad, start where you are. And she actually uses that phrase to say, "Start where you are with your pain point." So, say, if you're lonely, or if you're anxious or whatever it is, that is your fractured space from which to grow and go to your edge, you know? Tahnee:   (32:17) [inaudible 00:32:17]. Sarah Wilson:  (32:18) Yeah. And so not only does it fulfil my kind of mantra, which is, "Come on, don't use excuses, let's fire up," but it also means that it gets rid of that overwhelming feeling, that, "Oh, God, I've got to somehow start up a charity and I've got to be perfectly happy and settled in my life before I can be of service." Nope. It's actually you're going to be of best service when you're a hot mess, you know? A hot mess struggling with it all and you start to ask the interesting questions, you know? And I think that that is actually a really relieving kind of way of looking at things.   Tahnee:   (32:58) When I think you've been an entrepreneur, and this is something that I get really frustrated with in these entrepreneury, hacky kind of circles because I'm like [crosstalk 00:33:05] of business and stuff that these strategies work really well for climate crisis. Like, I'm a mum, I run a business, I have no idea what I'm doing half the time, every project feels too big and overwhelming. I just show up every day and do something, and it all gets done, you know? And it's every single one of us can bring that same kind of like ... Anytime you start a business, you have no idea what's going to happen. It's a complete gamble. It's a complete risk. You probably, 90% of the time, fall flat on your face. It's cool. Sarah Wilson:  (33:32) Yeah. I'd love to see some of these life hackers with their podcasts on how to be as productive as all hell and making the rest of us feel as though we're somehow failing. I'd love to see them return some of their beautiful truisms towards the climate movement. But, anyway, that's a separate discussion. Tahnee:   (33:50) But, no, I think, yeah, look, that's something I think about a lot because we're all in this betterment culture, and I think especially being where both of us have come through, you know, you've come through fashion as well, and the wellness industry, and it's like it's all about being better, but it's in this really narrow kind of sphere. And it's the same with business. It's like, "Oh, I'm a really good business person," and something I love, Ken Wilber talks about lines of development and this opportunity we all have to develop along multiple strands, instead of just being super great in one area. And I see a lot of the skills people are developing could be really powerful. Sarah Wilson:  (34:27) I agree. I went on a podcast with Russell Brand, and he was asking me [crosstalk 00:34:31]. Tahnee:   (34:31) He's living Mullumbimby and we're all chasing him everywhere. Sarah Wilson:  (34:31) I know. I know he's up that way. But I did a podcast with him over in London a little while back, and he was asking me a bit about all of this. We were talking about a similar subject. And I was just sort of saying one of my frustrations is that the wellness/spiritual community often sort of say, "Oh, look, I'm not into politics. I don't get involved in it. I don't read the newspaper and- Tahnee:   (34:56) Gandhi! Sarah Wilson:  (34:57) Yes, I know. Yes, one word, Gandhi, or Jesus, or, you know? The spiritual has always been political. Always. We have spiritual uprisings when the political situation is so dire, nothing but spiritual tradition can lead the way. And this is something ... I mean, I basically believe, right now, if you're a yoga teacher or you're a meditation instructor or whatever, this is your moment. Tahnee:   (35:29) Totally, yeah. Sarah Wilson:  (35:30) And it's not the time to run from it and go and buy another pair of leggings that leach microplastics into the ocean, or wear a T-shirt into your class that says, "There is no planet B," while drinking a green smoothie from a disposable cup, you know? It's like the time to lead by example and to live out all the teachings that Buddha or the vedic tradition have taught us, you know? This is it. This is our moment. So that's something that I'm very frustrated with, is I don't see that kind of rally call catching on. Tahnee:   (36:10) But I think it's a really easy thing to bypass. Sarah Wilson:  (36:13) Mm-hmm (affirmative). Tahnee:   (36:13) The Gita's a great example, which is actually, maybe argumentatively, but its kind of what Christ's teachings were based on, and this idea of you have to go to war for what is right, you know? This character is asked by Krishna to go to war and to fight the demons. And this a spiritual text. It's one of the most famous [crosstalk 00:36:38]. And it's- Sarah Wilson:  (36:38) Yeah. We've cherry picked all the bits that we like. Tahnee:   (36:42) [crosstalk 00:36:42]. Sarah Wilson:  (36:43) We've cherry picked all the dreamy rainbows and unicorns, right, and we've left aside the stuff that is the real meaty stuff of every spiritual tradition, which is fight for rightness, you know? So, look, we're on the same page here, and it's taken me a while to work out that that's what's been going on, that we all sit there and we meditate and we go to yoga to feel really at one with our bodies. Well, hang on, what about being at one with the planet, and each other, and the oneness of life, you know? And that's what we've kind of literally, as you say, bypassed it. We've cherry picked spiritualism to the point that all that's left is this kind of numbed out, dreamy, spiritual goddessy type Narnia, you know? Tahnee:   (37:39) Don't get me started on that crap, but anyway.... Point about ... Because this is something that comes up for me a lot around what I hear and what I see, and it's this all is love, and, I mean, God bless where I live, but Byron Shire is... Sarah Wilson:  (37:53) Oh, yeah. I used to live up there. I lived up that was for a year and a half. Tahnee:   (37:56) Oh, yeah, you lived in the shed, I remember. Sarah Wilson:  (37:58) Yes, the army shed. Yeah, just outside Byron. Tahnee:   (38:00) I did a [inaudible 00:38:00] up here, actually, because he used to write about riding to the farmers market... Sarah Wilson:  (38:04) Yeah, that's it. Tahnee:   (38:06) Yeah, but that idea, I think, where we haven't actually had an experience of that, but we talk about these things as if we believe them, which is fine, that's a pathway to experiencing them, I think, but that's when this altruism and stuff comes in. It's like if you go and do karma yoga, if you are of service to people, if you ... Like, Gandhi, he had one robe for winter, one robe for summer, he walked everywhere. All he did was give, and give, and give, and it was one of the most transformative lifetimes of any human, and that's being one with everything, you know? It's like being really able to give yourself freely, and that's what all these traditions teach. They say clear out all the bullshit, so you can actually be non-judgmental and be non-critical, and do what you need to do in life, which that's the call for all of us, I think, and-   Sarah Wilson:  (39:02) That's right, that's right. And I think it's hard for people listening, perhaps, to go, "Oh, gosh, I kind of agree with this in my heart and I agree with it in principle." It's a really hard thing to know what it is that's stopping us from behaving that way, and my one answer to that is the neoliberal system. We've got a system which has basically put the individual on the pedestal, and whenever you're on a pedestal, it's also very easy to be knocked down, so as soon as things go wrong, whether it's the coronavirus, whether it's the climate, whatever it might be, all of a sudden, well, responsibility's on us, right? We as individuals have to fix it because that's the neoliberal model. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, just work harder. Sarah Wilson:  (39:54) Now, that works all very well when things are going well, but when things go wrong, all of a sudden, we can't cope on our own like this. It's just too much. We need the collective, we need to come together, and that's where the neoliberalism fails us. So that's another area that we need to start discussing. We need to start seeing that we're all caught up in these cycles. We all get caught up in not being able to go to yoga until we have the right pair of yoga leggings, and the right water bottle, and the right this, and the right that, and we think, as you said, we keep buying our way. We go and do another course and pay for somebody else to tell us what the answer is, and that's a discussion we need to really, really have, is pull apart that thinking. Sarah Wilson:  (40:38) And it's a big one, and, as I say, it took me three years to write this book. Trying to unpack it all and then reduce it from several hundred thousand words down to a readable length. So, yeah, I think we should not underestimate what a whopping great topic this is, but, hey, how much fun is it to pull it apart? Tahnee:   (40:59) Well, and think the place you're taking it from is that soul journey is kind of connecting in a different ... I mean, I haven't read the new book, obviously, but I can feel that there's a sense of if we bring it into our inner space and our inner truth and we can all connect on that level, then it takes us out of that kind of ego individual, like me over here protecting what's mine kind of thing, which is-   Sarah Wilson:  (41:24) Oh, yeah. We're so bored of that as well. Tahnee:   (41:26) Yeah. And, I mean, that just keeps sort of ... Like, I'm even watching with all the coronavirus stuff and just the way first there was all the racism, and now we're kind of in this, you know, I guess every day is an unknown at the moment, but you can just feel how people ... Like, people fighting over toilet paper in the aisles and [crosstalk 00:41:43] supermarket [crosstalk 00:41:43]. Sarah Wilson:  (41:43) Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's no better symbol, is there? There's no better symbol for what we're talking about than people reacting to their very valid fear and overwhelm, and the lack of leadership and guidance on all of this, the lack of community coming togetherness. Then the idea of running out and thinking that we can solve it by having more toilet ... I really don't know what toilet paper's going to do, you know? And, honestly- Tahnee:   (42:14) I haven't been able to work that one out of like ... And the whole [inaudible 00:42:16] like chickpeas or, I don't know, like, something [crosstalk 00:42:18]. Sarah Wilson:  (42:18) I know, I know. Spaghetti or something. But it does show just how fragmented we are, how disconnected we are, how out of whack we are when we go and do this, you know? I mean, we're buying toilet paper because other people are buying toilet paper and it's sort of everybody out for themselves, dog eat dog. That's what we've resorted to, and it's really disappointing us because that isn't the entirety of our nature. There is an element of our nature that is that, but throughout history, we've had community leaders, spiritual guidance that has actually veered us away from our worst tendencies in that way, mostly to keep us alive. We need the tribe, you know? Sarah Wilson:  (43:03) I mean, a virus is the perfect example, right? We need the tribe to come together, and we need to all agree that we're going to wash our hands and cover our mouths when we cough. Tahnee:   (43:13) Yeah. And [inaudible 00:43:15] and all the basic stuff, yeah. Sarah Wilson:  (43:16) Yeah. So we need to, as individuals, do these things, so that the collective can be saved, and we are not used to doing that. We're used to just making sure we're okay by buying toilet paper. Tahnee:   (43:26) Well, [inaudible 00:43:26], there's this sense that people are waiting for it to be fixed, you know? Like, I've been talking to people as I go around town and stuff, and like, "Oh, it'll get sorted out soon." I'm like, "By who? By us?" Because we're the ones that are going to have to sort it out. And I feel it's analogist to the climate crisis. It's like all the bushfires are gone now. Like, we've had months of rain, which has been great for the dams and everything, but I'm like, "It's not over. We can't pretend now that [crosstalk 00:43:51] rain and it's done. It's like we've got to keep remembering that these things ... I mean, I've been going to ... I did environment science at university when I was ... So I'm 35. When I was 18 I started. And it's like we were going to rallies and chaining ourselves to trees and stuff then, and it's like nothing has changed. We're in a worse situation, if anything [inaudible 00:44:10]. And it's just like, until everyone collectively starts to wake up, I guess, is ... Sarah Wilson:  (44:19) Yeah. Tahnee:   (44:19) Yeah. I'm curious though when you look at self care. Because this is something, when I was talking about the fact that I was going to interview you, people were kind of curious because you've obviously done a lot with food and kind of, I guess, wellness stuff, like you had that great series in the Sunday Mail, I think it was, with all the interviews with- Sarah Wilson:  (44:40) A Sunday magazine, in the Sun Herald and so on, yeah. Tahnee:   (44:46) Yeah. And I remember reading that actually and I was really enjoying it, but, yeah, you kind of have been walking around in this area for a while [inaudible 00:44:53]. So do you have tenets of self care that you do use [crosstalk 00:44:59] products. Sarah Wilson:  (45:00) Yeah, I do. I do have a few non-negotiables. As you say, I've been in the how to make your life better kind of space pretty much my entire career, one way or another. But, yeah, I guess I have drilled down to some stuff that actually works across all realms, business, health, and also life. Yeah, making the planet stick around for another couple of generations. But, yeah, so what works for me, and the great news is they're pretty much free, all of them. Free. Sarah Wilson:  (45:30) It goes against the neoliberal model, but there you go, should we be surprised? So, for me ... And they're all backed with science and very substantial science. So the first thing would be I have a morning routine, in part because stuff I do in the morning sets me up for the day, but it's also about omitting decisions. So decision making happens in the same part of the brain that controls anxiety, and if we overtax our decision making part of the brain, we get anxious, and so that's why you hear about all these life hackers who wear the same outfit and have the same boring breakfast every day. It's so that they don't have to make those kinds of decisions in the morning in particular. Sarah Wilson:  (46:07) So, for me, my morning routine also includes exercise in the morning. I've got a whole range of health complaints, which are able to be managed by getting oxygen through my lungs and just moving my body. So I'm not a fitness nut by any stretch, but I exercise every single day. And then, of course, I walk or ride. I'm just moving all day, every day. I meditate for 20 minutes, and I don't confess to be a good meditator. I'm very vocal on being a crap meditator, but that in itself is a practise, like never ever be scared [crosstalk 00:46:41]. Tahnee:   (46:41) [crosstalk 00:46:41] a good mediator. Sarah Wilson:  (46:42) Oh, I never believe anyone who says they are. Tahnee:   (46:46) [crosstalk 00:46:46] oh, it's still very hard. Sarah Wilson:  (46:47) Yeah, that's right. And the whole point is become, actually ... The whole point of mediation is to take that nice stillness into the rest of your life. Well, when you're a shit meditator, basically you're constantly having to bring yourself back to the breath or the mantra, more so than a good meditator, and so that sort of muscle of coming back, coming back to yourself, coming back to the truth, coming back to the oneness, you have to practise that far more, and so that muscle gets really quite developed. So that's one of the benefits of being a bad mediator. Sarah Wilson:  (47:20) So I do those things. Not eating sugar is really non-negotiable as well from a whole range of points of view. It's a great through line to simple, effective eating. When you don't eat sugar, you don't eat processed food because 80, 90% of processed food contains added sugar. So essentially means you've got to buy real food and you've got to cook it, and when you do that, you're a lot more engaged in things like food waste, making sure that you buy good quality ingredients. You cut out all the other crap, bad oils, et cetera. And so it just kind of is a win, win, win, and it cascades. Sarah Wilson:  (48:00) So in terms of having a one thing that you can do, cutting out sugar is a really great way of doing it. I still eat sugar, but it sort of manages to sit within what are considered the world guidelines, six teaspoons of added sugar a day. My body, naturally, that's what it can handle, and if I go over that, I've trained my body now that it reacts. It goes, "Nup, this is not great," you know? So that would be definitely part of it. I guess more recently, I've had to also have practises about being round good people, and by good people, I actually do mean people who are active in the climate movement because I find it very difficult if I'm around people who don't want to wake up.   Sarah Wilson:  (48:50) Now, my work is about being in the mainstream having these conversations, and so, for me, it's kind of particular. I do need to be around a tribe who know the language, who can support me in my feelings and we can talk at that level. And that is really important for anybody in the activist space or any kind of space where you're talking about tricky stuff. Yeah, they would be the ... Oh, and the other big one is going into nature. So, for me, I mean, there's been countless studies, something like 40,000 studies to show the effect of just walking among trees. So all kinds of things.   Sarah Wilson:  (49:31) My favourite studies point to the fact that, firstly, walking goes at the same pace as discerning thought, and I think a lot of our culture's ills comes from the fact that we don't think reflectively. And then, also, the walking mechanism, again, developed in the same old, really gnarly, fusty part of the brain that controls anxiety. So when you walk, it actually can modulate and it can shut down anxiety. So the left, right motion actually distracts us away from anxiety, and anyone who's a regular walker, I mean, knows that the anxiety just dissipates straight away. Sarah Wilson:  (50:12) So, yeah, walking, but walking in nature are things that I do daily, and then weekly or fortnightly, I make sure I get out to a forest and just bush land around Sydney or wherever I am in the world, I just get out and walk. And all of those practises are free. They're readily available, and, what do you know? They also stop you from shopping. Whenever you're out hiking on a Sunday, you can't go to a mall. Tahnee:   (50:41) Because I love your green shorts as an analogy for, you know- Sarah Wilson:  (50:45) Yeah, a symbol. Tahnee:   (50:46) Yeah, like we don't ... Yeah, sorry, [inaudible 00:50:49] a symbol for we don't do a lot of things. Like, I teach yoga and I teach once a week, but I wear the same outfit every week. I'm like, "Why do I need a wardrobe of yoga clothes?" Sarah Wilson:  (50:56) Good. That's what's called being a leader, a spiritual leader is. I mean, it's just ... Sarah Wilson:  (51:02) Yeah, look, the green shorts is laziness. I mean, I live a life- Tahnee:   (51:06) [crosstalk 00:51:06] the stuff and, yeah. Sarah Wilson:  (51:09) Yeah. I mean, it's not like I go out and think, "I'm going to have a ... I mean, somebody bought me those green shorts 11 years ago, and I don't see any point in having other shorts, so, yeah. Tahnee:   (51:21) I mean, when you travel, are you travelling light in general anyway with luggage? Sarah Wilson:  (51:26) Yeah. Well, for eight years I travelled with one bag. I lived out of one bag, permanently. Tahnee:   (51:32) I remember you saying in the book, yeah. Sarah Wilson:  (51:34) Yeah. And then it soon reduced itself down to final six months of having a carry on bag, so this was about 15 kilos, and so I still just manage to live as light as that. I mean, it's very addictive, and once you realise you don't need certain things, you start to go, "Well, do I need this or do I need that?" And as I started to wear things out or use things up, I really questioned whether I needed a ... I mean, I've never owned a handbag in my life. I don't believe I need one, so I just haven't bought one. Tahnee:   (52:08) [crosstalk 00:52:08]. Sarah Wilson:  (52:08) I mean, I was the editor of Cosmo and didn't have a handbag, it is possible. So, yeah, and then I just realised I didn't need a car. I was happier riding my bike. A bike, especially in Sydney, is faster, it's more efficient, and I get my exercise in at the same time. So, yeah, it just sort of evolved as a way of ... I mean, I looked at things critically and went, "Do I really need that? Does it," in that sort of Maria Kondo way, "Does it bring me joy?" And most cases it didn't. I just kind of looked at it and went, "Oh, that's just something I've got to store somewhere or find a way to use," you know? Tahnee:   (52:52) So my final question is do you have any little secret things that you hoard? I'm a book hoarder. Sarah Wilson:  (52:57) Oh, okay. What do I hoard? I'm just looking- Tahnee:   (53:02) [crosstalk 00:53:02] that you just haven't been able to shed? Sarah Wilson:  (53:06) Oh, I'll tell you the one thing that I've carried with me all along is I've got this big box and it's got every single letter and postcard that anyone has ever written to me. So I've got stuff from my grandparents when I was five or six, and, yeah, it's quite lovely. I sometimes sit down and I just go through letters my great grandmother wrote to me, and I've got a little card that my nieces and nephews have written, and I suppose, yeah, I've always kept those things. That would probably be it. But, yeah, even with books, I pass them on, everything gets passed on, and I'm that sort of in, absorb, out, share is my motto, yeah. Tahnee:   (53:53) Well, we're really grateful for all the sharing you do because it's been really inspiring to all of us, and- Sarah Wilson:  (53:59) Oh, thank you. Tahnee:   (54:00) I'm going to wrap it up there just because I'm aware of your time. You're still on book deadline. But, yeah, I mean, I know many people will be interested. If you do want to see the green shorts, I realise some people will be like, "What are you talking about?" So [inaudible 00:54:12] Sarah's Instagram and I'm pretty sure they're on her blog as well. And, yeah, so people can find you there at sarahwilson.com, and- Sarah Wilson:  (54:20) Yeah, sarahwilson.com, and then I think if you just type in Sarah Wilson:  to Instagram, it comes up. Tahnee:   (54:26) Yeah, we'll link to everything in the show notes. Do you have specific websites for the beast or anything like that, or are they just [crosstalk 00:54:35]. Sarah Wilson:  (54:34) Oh, everything, you can find it all through sarahwilson.com. There's a books page and you can buy the books, the e-books and so on, and soon enough you'll be able to pre order my next book. Not quite yet, but soon for Australia. It comes out in the US in October. And it'll come out in the UK shortly after that. Tahnee:   (54:55) Okay, great. So we'll put links to all those as they go live. Sarah Wilson:  (54:57) Oh, thank you. Tahnee:   (54:58) Yeah, well, people tend to listen over years, we've learnt. It's quite exciting. And, yeah, I just wanted to say thank you so much for sharing. I feel like that was a really, for me, inspiring conversation, and kind of- Sarah Wilson:  (55:11) Thank you. Tahnee:   (55:11) Yeah. Sarah Wilson:  (55:12) Yeah, no, I enjoyed it, too, and, look, I also very much enjoy your SuperFeast products. I think those products are wonderful. Tahnee:   (55:19) Oh, thanks, yeah. We'll hopefully, one day, have the Australian versions, too. We'll see [crosstalk 00:55:26] unravels. Sarah Wilson:  (55:26) [crosstalk 00:55:26]. Tahnee:   (55:26) I want to quote Seth Godin, "make a ruckus, everybody". If you've found any of this inspiring, please feel free to connect to Sarah and myself, and we will [crosstalk 00:55:34] out there in the world. Sarah Wilson:  (55:36) Yeah. Fire up and be of service. Tahnee:   (55:39) Thanks, Sarah, so long. Sarah Wilson:  (55:40) My pleasure. We'll speak soon, Tahnee. Thank you.

**Sorry for the poor audio recording we had an issue in the studio that has been fixed** - WYM Crew Summary: The lads are talking with a special guest this episode to help explain what Ehlers-Danlos is and like to live with with Adrienne Clements. Listen in and share comments below or call them in! We love to hear from you WYMPs! ***Don't forget you can call and leave a message swearing up a shit storm for the foul-mouthed philanthropists! Calls will be aired on future episodes. Here's the number: 985-265-7726*** In the Studio: Dan Ken Critter Special Guest - Adrienne Clements Cocktail du Jour: Bijou Quote du Jour: Thor - "Does this look like a sippy cup? No, it's a fucking juice box! Because I'm not a fucking child!" Lucas - "So rude..." Thor and Lucas - Good Boys Charity: Ehlers-Danlos Society - www.ehlers-danlos.com/ Links: Patreon - www.patreon.com/WatchYourMouthPodcast Facebook – www.facebook.com/wympodcast Twitter – twitter.com/wymshow – @wymshow iTunes – itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/watch…d1065059804?mt=2 Sound Cloud –@watchyourmouthpodcast Stitcher – www.stitcher.com/podcast/watch-your-mouth-podcast Spreaker – www.spreaker.com/show/watch-your-mouth-podcast Merchandise – www.cafepress.com/wymmerch Brought to you by KDC Productions, LLC

Since we’re all stuck at home, here's some cooking advice to help you through. Chef Mark Allison has three boys.. one of whom was diagnosed with type 1 as a baby. He has tips and tricks for us.. starting with: just get started. Mark teaches healthy cooking but isn’t above eating smores with his three sons. Check out Stacey's new book: The World's Worst Diabetes Mom! Mark currently works with the Cabarrus County Health Alliance teaching needed home cooking skills. He’s been the Director of Culinary Nutrition for the Dole Nutrition Institute and he spent many years teaching classical chefs at the Dean of Culinary Arts Education at Johnson & Wales University in Charlotte. Join the Diabetes Connections Facebook Group! Mark has a new book out Let's Be Smart About Diabetes: A cookbook to help control blood sugar while getting the family back around the kitchen table In Tell Me Something Good – a lot of mac and cheese and a lot of help for someone who has always been giving it. Talk about paying it forward… and back. Sign up for our newsletter here ----- Use this link to get one free download and one free month of Audible, available to Diabetes Connections listeners! ----- Get the App and listen to Diabetes Connections wherever you go! Click here for iPhone      Click here for Android Episode Transcript (Rough transcription, has not been edited) Stacey Simms  0:00 Diabetes Connections is brought to you by one drop created for people with diabetes by people who have diabetes by real good foods, real food you feel good about eating and by dexcom take control of your diabetes and live life to the fullest with dexcom.   Unknown Speaker  0:20 This is diabetes connections with Stacey Sims.   Stacey Simms  0:26 This week, how are you eating these days? Some kitchen and cooking advice to help us through Chef Mark Allison knows his way around the kitchen with a family he has three boys one of whom was diagnosed with type one as a baby. As a professional chef teacher. He says just get started   Chef Mark Allison  0:45 getting in that kitchen and making something over the next 30 or 40 minutes and then sitting down eating the food but actually having a conversation instead of everybody upstairs playing Xbox or some kind of games. You're actually in one room. Communicate it and you make them so think that hopefully everybody's going to enjoy.   Stacey Simms  1:03 You'll hear Mark's unique story. He and his wife moved to Alaska for an international program back in 1999. And their 14 month old son was diagnosed shortly after that in Tell me something good. A little bit of help for someone who's been giving a lot of it, talk about paying it forward and back, and a lot of mac and cheese. This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please contact your health care provider. Welcome to another week of diabetes connections we aim to educate and inspire by sharing stories of connection and in this time, it is so important to stay connected. On this week's show. We are not going to be talking specifically about the corona virus. Rather, this is a show that will maybe inspire you or help you to get in the kitchen at this time when we are all first in our house and I don't know about you, but I've been Looking more than ever, but maybe to look at things a little bit differently, get your kids involved, try something new. I was so excited to talk to Mark Ellis. And we've known each other for a long time. And I've been trying to get him on the show. And it's just one of those. You know, the beauty is in the timing sometimes, because maybe this episode will kind of give you a fun day and some fun ideas to try at a time when boy, we do need a little bit of fun, and a little bit of inspiration. So there will be more information about Mark's cookbook. Let's be smart about diabetes a little bit later on. And I would urge you if you're not already in the Facebook group to please join that it is diabetes connections, the group because I'm going to be putting some of the recipes and notes that he gave me into the Facebook group, I cannot put them in the show notes. It's just a format thing. So I apologize for that. They will not be on the episode homepage, but they will be in posts in the Facebook group. So head on over there to that. And just another quick note before we get started. Thank you to everybody who continues to buy my book, the world's First diabetes mom, if you need a laugh in these times, maybe it's there for you. I've heard from people who are really enjoying it right now who have the audio book to who maybe didn't have time to listen before, although I mostly listen to audiobooks in my car. So my audio book and podcasts consumption, frankly, is way down right now. Because I'm at home, I'm not commuting. I'm not driving anywhere. But I do listen when I clean and do laundry and stuff like that. So maybe that's it. But thanks again, the world's worst diabetes mom is available at Amazon. It is in paperback, Kindle and audiobook. You could also buy it over at diabetes, connections calm but frankly, Amazon's probably the easiest right now. And I was so happy to be involved in the children with diabetes virtual conference that happened recently. I bet you can still find that online. I was able to take my world's worst diabetes mom presentation for them. Of course, as you know, like many of you, I was planning to go to lots of diabetes conferences in the last month and this spring and it's all on hold right now. So a little bit of online goodness. For you, I will also link up the children with diabetes conference which had tons of presentations in it. I think it's going to be a real resource going forward for a lot of people so I'm thrilled that they did that. All right Mark Ellison coming up in just a moment but first diabetes Connections is brought to you by real good foods. We got a sample of the real good foods ice cream. They sent it to us a Benny and I did a Facebook Live. I think it's almost three weeks ago now. Wow. About what we thought our reactions and I gotta tell you, I have been enjoying the real good ice cream since then. It is so delicious. It is a lower sugar ice cream that tastes like ice cream. You have probably had ice creams that are lower carb that tastes kind of chunky and chalky. And there isn't none of that I sat down. I shouldn't say this. I ate almost the entire pint of the mint chocolate chip. I stopped myself but it was going there. So check them out. You can find out more at really good foods calm. They ship. Yes, they're the grocery store for you. Right now I know a lot of you and us included group looking at home delivery, and you can find all of their stuff online. They'll deliver it for you some great shipping deals as well. Just go to diabetes, connections comm and click on the real good foods logo.   My guest this week is a terrific chef, who as you know here teaches healthy cooking, but isn't above eating s'mores with his three sons. Mark Allison works with the cabarrus County Health Alliance, a local county to me here in North Carolina teaching needed home cooking skills. He has been the director of culinary nutrition for the dole nutrition Institute, and he spent many years teaching classical chefs as the Dean of culinary arts education at Johnson and Wales University here in Charlotte. Yes, Johnson Wales does have a campus here in Charlotte. One of Mark's sons was diagnosed with type one as a baby and his wife was diagnosed with stage four cancer in 2008. Now she did pass away But as you'll hear it His wife was able to live longer than anybody expected her to, which he says really made him a believer in the power of a plant based diet to fight disease and prolong life. Mark has a new book out called Let's be smart about diabetes, a cookbook to help control blood sugar while getting the family back around the kitchen table. We are putting recipes in the Facebook group, as I said, and of course links in the show notes. Here's my talk with Chef Mark. Allison. Mark, thank you so much for making some time for me. I know you've got all your boys home. And while we're not, I guess we're not doing much these days. It still seems like the time is filling up. But thanks for being here. I appreciate it.   Chef Mark Allison  6:40 They see You're very welcome. And it's a pleasure to be on your show. Thank you very much.   Stacey Simms  6:43 I'm excited to talk to you. We've known each other for a long time. I was thinking I think we met possibly the Johnson and Wales cooking competition of some kind where I was an extremely unqualified judge.   Chef Mark Allison  6:59 The good old days here In the good old days, Yes, I remember you there and you were totally qualified for the position to be church exceptionally well because I enjoy eating.   Stacey Simms  7:11 So there you go   Chef Mark Allison  7:12 to nature, you know, in my opinion chef is fitted very nicely into my lifestyle, because I love to eat. I love it.   Stacey Simms  7:19 Well, you know, I want to pick your brain as long as we have you to talk about how to try to eat well, as long as you know, we're all stuck at home. But let's talk about let's talk about diabetes. First, let's get your story out because I know everyone already hearing you knows that you are your native to North Carolina. That's a beautiful Southern accent that you   Chef Mark Allison  7:37 see I was born in Charleston, South Carolina. People get that mixed up all the time. I'm actually from a little town called at Newcastle upon Tyne which is in the northeast of England. And I grew up there and the place where the usually state calls from Newcastle on Newcastle brown ale on Newcastle soccer club whether the three things that people read knowing you're comfortable, but that's where I was born. I moved to South Wales and lived in South Wales for 10 years, traveled all over Europe and in 2004 landed in Charleston, South Carolina, lived there for yet then moved up to Charlotte and I've been in Charlotte now 15 years and absolutely love living in Charles. That's great.   Stacey Simms  8:20 All right, so but your your diabetes story your son's really starts in Alaska. Can you tell us that   Chef Mark Allison  8:26 I was one of 30 people fit by the Fulbright teachers Experience Program, which is a program that started after world war two to get the world together through education. And teachers apply and they are asked to go to different countries around the world. And I was asked to go to America and I thought Yes, this is going to be fabulous. being brought up in the 70s in the 80s. On Starsky and Hutch and streets of San Francisco. I naturally thought I was going to California, but I would have 500 teachers that apply to come to Europe, there was only one chef and he did not live in California. He actually lived in Anchorage, Alaska. And we actually turned down the position first because my wife said we are not taking a two year old and an eight month to Alaska. So we turned it down. And then Glen, the teacher rang me over to him and said, Look, can you do me a favor? This is the fourth year I have applied. And my daughter has won a four year scholarship at Oxford University and this is her last year. Can you please take the position so we can be with her for the last year that is in the UK. So we decided to move over that and we actually had an absolute fabulous year. But while we were living there, Matthew, my youngest son at the time, who was it month when we arrived, when you go to the age of 14 months, he became ill, and we took him to the doctors and the doctor said he just had a bad case of the flu, he'd be okay. And about a week later, he had lost a tremendous amount of weight. He was drinking a lot of fluids and just happened to be Tom My brother on the forum that weekend who is a type one diabetic and has been since the age of 15 years old. And he said, I think he may be a type one take him back to the doctor's. So we took Matthew back. And we had a young doctor, she was lovely lady. But she said, there's no way as a type one diabetic it normally it's going to be about seven or eight years old. He's only 14 months. And she just said, No, I'm not testing as blood. So of course, my wife who was there, like any mother has said, well, we're not leaving your office until you actually test his blood. So there was a bit of a standoff for about 30 minutes. And then she tested this blood and within 30 minutes, Matthew is in intensive care and he was there for the next seven years. And his blood sugar's were so far through the roof that we were told that we had left her office and went to him more than likely would have been in a coma that night. So we were exceptionally lucky. And the doctor from that stage could not do enough for us as he was at his bedside every day. And as you know, Life changes. So we decided to look at food as sort of medicine and changed all our eating habits for Matthew. So from the age of 14 month, Matthew has been on a really healthy diet, you know, just turned 22 in December, and he's in great shape, but he's at college at the minute, and he's doing exceptionally well. But that's where it all started back in 1999.   Stacey Simms  11:24 And I think it's worth repeating for people who are you who have children who are newer diagnosed or maybe have been newer diagnosed themselves. There really was this thinking because the same thing happened to us, Ben, he wasn't yet two years old. And they said, Yeah, under the age of two, it's Yeah, it'd be type one. There was this thinking and I don't know if it's just that they're getting better at it or there are more cases and infants and babies, but it has changed a lot thanks to people like you push an educated Oh my goodness.   Chef Mark Allison  11:51 You know, it is frightening. Because you've got your doctor and you just think they've got all the answers. And but something like Type One Diabetes is you know, in Now it's becoming more and more people become more and more aware. I remember when my brother was diagnosed that he was in hospital for six months because they were unsure of actually what it was. And the unfortunate thing for my brother, he was 15 at the time, so he was nearly an adult in England. And he was actually on a cancer Ward for six months, and was frightening with him was he was watching people that were dying around him. And unfortunately, that marked him for life. He is now nearly 60 and he's in good shape and he's healthy. But he still remembers them times where people were actually dying around them because they thought he didn't have diabetes for 30 years cancer at the time, but times have changed and I think it's a lot more easy to diagnose now. And we've got great doctors, people like that more fonder. Well, it's just amazing. I think now we can rely on the medical professionals to diagnose a lot quicker than what was said 20 years ago.   Stacey Simms  12:58 And when you're Your son and your brother must have had some interesting conversations about not only the difference of diagnosis, but the difference of treatments. I mean, I'm so your brother is doing well, because I can't imagine.   Chef Mark Allison  13:11 Well, my I can remember my mother have sterilized his syringe and needles every night. Because the other days, whether we're like the one inch long needles, and you could reuse them, and the syringe was reused, and he was getting injected twice a day, now he's on the pen. So you've worked a lot better for him, but I can remember those days and the previous thing, and testing was blurred and then cleaning the syringe and countless cops. It was a difficult time for my mother. I know that.   Stacey Simms  13:44 I feel you never want to say we're lucky with diabetes because it still stinks. Yeah, but also to make me grateful for insulin pumps and pens. My good.   Chef Mark Allison  13:54 Yeah, my back muscles just changed over to a new pump. The Omni pod and you know, he He's been on the pump for at least the last 12 years and what a difference others made. You know, we as parents, I'm sure you have the same feel a lot easier that he's on something that basically regulates everything. And as long as he tests his blood, he knows when he's either going to go low, go high. And these instruments these days are just amazing.   Stacey Simms  14:21 It really is. I feel really grateful. Yeah, let's jump in and let's talk about food. Because not only are you a renowned chef and a you know, an educator of other chefs, but now you work to educate the public which I just think is absolutely amazing because we need all the help we can get mark, as you well know. First of all, let me let you explain what it is that you do you work for the Harris County Health Alliance, which is a nearby you know, county to mine here in the Charlotte, North Carolina area. What do you do right now in terms of teaching the public   right back to mark answering Question, but first getting diabetes supplies is a pain. Not only the ordering and the picking up but also the arguing with insurance over what they say you need and what you really need. Make it easy with one drop. They offer personalized tester plants. Plus you get a Bluetooth glucose meter test strips lancets and your very own certified diabetes coach. Subscribe today to get test strips for less than $20 a month delivered right to your door. No prescriptions or co pays required. One less thing to worry about. not that surprising when you learn that the founder of one drop lubes with type one, they get it one drop, gorgeous gear supplies delivered to your door 24 seven access to your certified diabetes coach learn more go to diabetes connections comm and click on the one drop logo. Now back to mark and he is answering my question about teaching people the very basics.   Chef Mark Allison  15:55 I have a wonderful job and it's funny how I started the shop at 16 and I printed with French cuisine, and lots of thoughts, sugar and salt, and nobody counted calories or anything. And now I've went closer to being a healthy chef. And I tried to teach people how to improve their diets. So I work for the cabarrus Health Alliance, which is based in kannapolis. And my job is a fascinating job. And the fact that I go out to the general public, I go to schools and hospitals and churches, and I also do cooking classes at the cabarrus Health Alliance, and I try to teach people how to cook because if you think about it, Stacy, cooking is a life skill, but nobody knows how to cook these days. What I noticed just last week, when the food stores were out of canned goods and frozen goods, actually the produce section was still full. And my advice to anybody, especially at this time with the corona virus is eat healthy by eating as many fruits and vegetables as you possibly can because they're just packed full of vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals. So my job at the Cabal ourselves Lyons is basically trying to teach people how to cook and choose better food choices, and not so much processed food, not so much food that is packed with fat, sugar, salt, and try to get a healthy balance. You know, it doesn't all have to be healthy. But if you do choose healthy options, you'll feel better. Your health will improve and it'll fight off viruses.   Stacey Simms  17:23 So when we're all stuck at home and we have this mentality, which is this is very unique, obviously. Yeah, I mean unprecedented. But now that we're stuck at home, what would your advice be? Because I did the same thing I'll be honest with you when I went to the grocery store a couple of days ago, I picked up you know, some apples some oranges, but I wasn't I was thinking hunker down. Yeah, I bypassed a lot of the fresh fruits and vegetables now that it seems and again we're as we're recording this, it seems like the grocery stores are gonna be fine. There's no problem with supply. What What would you suggest we do next time we go to the store,   Chef Mark Allison  17:54 I would look at the air fresh produce and you know, start by Picking the fruits and vegetables that you like to eat. And then why not try something different? Something that you've seen before. But though you know what, I wonder what that tastes like, give it a try. You'll be amazed, I normally teach this in class where we'll have like a surprise ingredient. And part of the classes, everybody's going to try everything I make. And I might have a fresh fruit or vegetable and I chop it up and I pass it around. And it's amazing that nine times out of 10 everybody likes it. We've got these preconceived notions that we'll look at something think No, I don't think I like that for actually when you put it in your mouth and try it more than likely you're going to try something new and it's going to be interesting, then you're going to enjoy the test. So I would go around the fresh produce section and try something new, try something different. And I found the best way so especially with having three boys, if I wouldn't try something new with them. I normally just make a smoothie or soup because you can easily add something new and disguise it and they don't even know that they're in and then we told them that believe in something new. See, you know what, that wasn't too bad. Let's try it again. So I think it's all about experiment. And we've got the ideal time that you've just said, There. See, we're all cooped up at home. Why not get in the kitchen with the boys or girls, or family members and make something delicious to eat tonight? I've got to be honest, people tell me when they asked what I do for a living, I say, well, I've never worked a day in my life because I love what I do, which is I love food, and I love to cook. But our sound, it's the best way to make new friends. It's the best way to keep the family together, getting in that kitchen and making something over the next 30 or 40 minutes and then sitting down eating the food but actually having a conversation. Instead of everybody upstairs playing Xbox or some kind of games. You actually in one room communicate and you're making something that hopefully everybody's going to enjoy.   Stacey Simms  19:50 Alright, a lot of people listening are gonna say, Well, sure that sounds great. But I never learned to cook. I'm afraid to cook. My Stuff always comes out. Terrible. How can you start adults who really did not learn the skill?   Chef Mark Allison  20:05 You know what I was very lucky because when all my friends chose to do woodwork and metalwork, I was doing home economics. And as you can imagine, back in the 70s and 80s, that didn't go down too well with a lot of the guys, but you know what my thinking was, they see one instead of being locked up in a room with 19, sweaty guys, I was in an air conditioned room with 19 girls. And it worked out pretty good, because I found out very quickly two things. Everybody likes people who can cook and it's the best way to make friends. So I understand that a lot of people don't know how to cook. But actually, you can go online now and on YouTube, and you can learn practically any technique that you need. And I'll tell people all you really need to start with is a chopping board and a knife, and then find a recipe that you've always wanted to try. And you can easily download any recipe now from online or watch a YouTube video and cooking There's one of the simplest things you can ever learn. It's all about temperature control. It's either gonna be hot or cold. And if you can control the temperature you can make and eat anything you like. Wow.   Stacey Simms  21:11 Do you remember I'll put you on the spot here. Do you remember what you first taught your boys to make when they were little I pictured them standing on stools in the kitchen, you know, learning from dad,   Chef Mark Allison  21:21 and properly. And this isn't exactly healthy. And actually, we did this last night, we were sitting in the backyard having a fire pit and we all had smalls. So I'm guessing probably smalls are probably one of the very first recipes. I taught my boys. But I also taught them something very important. It's all about moderation. Whatever you make, have it in moderation. But my three boys all know how to cook, obviously, because they've been brought up by a chef. I tell people when I'm at work, I'll text my boys and be the dishwasher, prepare the vegetables, set the kitchen table, and then when I get home, all that's done, and then we get in the kitchen together and we cook dinner That night, but if I forget the text one day, believe it or not today, see, I get home and nothing has been done because boys are boys.   Stacey Simms  22:08 Oh, yeah, I've been there with both of my kids boys and girls. Yeah. Oh yeah, but you didn't send the text that's funny but I'm you know, it's good to know you're human. I think it's always more fun to know with the s'mores, right that you know, yeah. And food and it's fun to learn. And then you can use those skills. I don't know what quite what skills are making but you have to control the temperature.   Chef Mark Allison  22:33 Don't right. Yeah, that was our main skill. I think   Stacey Simms  22:36 that's an important one in the kitchen.   Chef Mark Allison  22:38 people. People ask me all the time, how do you make a healthy dessert mock and I'll say there's no such thing as a healthy dessert. So just enjoy whatever you're going to eat but have a smaller portion.   Stacey Simms  22:50 You're not free and substitutes and things like that.   Chef Mark Allison  22:53 I don't use any sugar free ingredients if I'm going to make something and add sugar and the sugar because normally Even if you make an a cake and asks for half a cup of sugar, when you consider that cake is going to divide a divided into eight or 10 portions, that half cup of sugar comes down to practically nothing. So I'd rather use the ingredients that are meant to be in a certain food items, then start trying to guess, well, if I put sugar free, I mean, it's going to work out the same because I'd rather just enjoy it the way it's meant to be, then try to mess around with it. That's the same with all these gluten free products and low in sugar products. You know, you're taking out one thing, but you're adding something else processed. And to me, you're far better off eating ingredients that you know, are ingredients that are more healthy than something that is a preservative or an additive or colorant.   Unknown Speaker  23:49 So tell us about your cookbook that you have out right   Chef Mark Allison  23:52 now. I brought out let's be smart about diabetes a few months ago and that actually started 2008 but that was the same year my wife was diagnosed with stage four cancer. So the book was shelved. And then when my wife passed away in 2015, I was approached by the American diabetic association to publish the book. And so they, they bought the rights to the book, but then they held on to it for two years. And then unfortunately, they laid off most of their editorial stuff, and said they were only going to publish well known authors, which I was not one of them. So they give me the full rights back. And so I just published that about six months ago. And it's all family recipes that we've used over the last 20 years with Matthew, all the recipes, believe makes a car very easy to use. You know, most of them take between 10 and 20 minutes, and the all healthiest there's nothing outrageous. I'm not asking anybody to buy superfoods. I don't believe in superfoods. I believe in it, eat an apple, that's probably the best food you can eat or a banana or if you had broccoli or cabbage. They don't have to be super foods. They're just packed Anyway with healthy vitamins and minerals and phytochemicals. So it's all based on practicality and what you can actually buy in your local store. And so this is packed full of soups and breakfast ideas, snacks, lunches, and meals for the kids and sort of healthy desserts.   Stacey Simms  25:17 I'd love to ask you and I, we didn't discuss this in advance, but would it be possible to grab a recipe or two from the book that you think might help people who are you know, stuck at home right now? Maybe dollar level or something that would keep and we could post that for the podcast audience?   Chef Mark Allison  25:32 Yeah, please do. Just choose whatever recipe you think is suitable. There's over 150 recipes in the book to choose from, and like I said, very easy to put together. And this could be the ideal time to grab a cookbook and try some of the recipes.   Stacey Simms  25:45 No doubt. All right. How do you stand on we've talked about you know, going to the produce section trying to buy fresh whenever possible. Where do you stand on canned and frozen ingredients?   Chef Mark Allison  25:55 Yeah, I'm a firm believer in fresh wood. If if you've got no option, then throw would be my next choice and then can't but if you're going to buy canned fruits or vegetables, make sure that they haven't got any added sugar.   Unknown Speaker  26:07 Yeah, you know what I saw in the supermarket recently forget added sugar. They were packed in Splenda, their sugar substitute in the quote for juice.   Chef Mark Allison  26:16 Yeah. Well, you know what people have got to make their own minds up on if they're going to use artificial sweeteners or not. I personally don't so you know, it's a choice you've got to make. But to tell the truth, if I've got the opportunity I always buy fresh because fresh normally isn't seasonal. So if you can buy seasonal fruits and vegetables, then they've got the best nutrient dense properties within them. They haven't been touched. Make sure that you wash your fruits and vegetables when you get them home and either eat them raw or add them to some kind of soup or lunch or dinner item. And to me that's the best way to keep yourself healthy. I'm a firm believer and my boys follow this practice as well. If you have half your plate, fruits and veggies But then you know, it's going to go too far wrong from being healthy and the idea with that's great advice.   Stacey Simms  27:05 Yeah, back to the the canned fruit though I gotta be honest with you and you don't have to you don't have to take a stand. But I was appalled to see canned fruit with Splenda added because the big packaging was like, you know, low in sugar, and I thought, Oh, good. Water or something. And I turned it over to look at the label. I was like Splenda, how much processing you have to go through to add that and I was like, uh, so I put that back. But in these, I know, people are worried right now, and many people may have purchased more canned and frozen goods than you ever really do. Looking at me. So we're all looking to try to do the best we can.   Chef Mark Allison  27:38 Yeah. And it's baby steps. It's baby steps. You know, you can kind of just turn your diet upside down because it's not gonna work. And I tell most people start with breakfast and just eat something healthier at breakfast and that's the ideal time to have a smoothie, you know, and you can Pocket full of vegetables, you know, cut back on the fruit so much, but ask or kale to smoothie out blueberries, but look at your your breakfast first and just change your breakfast for about a month, and then work on your lunch. And then finally work on your dinner. So, you know, if you just start slow, then your body becomes adjusted to it and you'll feel a lot more healthier.   Stacey Simms  28:17 What's your favorite movie?   Chef Mark Allison  28:18 Actually, when I used to be the director of culinary nutrition for the dog food company, I came up with a smoothie that obviously included bananas. It had almond milk, bananas and coffee. And that was a coffee fix up and the number of people that complimented that smoothie was unbelievable. But my favorite smoothies as always got blueberries and because blueberries are one of the best fruits you can eat for your memory as you get older and talk about with blueberries and spinach I use gave a banana and I use almond milk and a handful of almonds. And that saves me all the way through to lunch.   Stacey Simms  28:55 I liked spinach, mango and Domino.   Chef Mark Allison  28:58 That's Like mangoes my favorite fruit. Ah,   Stacey Simms  29:02 I'll tell you what, I use the frozen mango because it keeps it cold and gives it that exactly feel. But I was a big I was very reluctant to put anything green in a smoothie. I thought it was disgusting. I really did. I really did. And finally my husband convinced me and it's delicious. I'm shocked shocked. Yeah,   Chef Mark Allison  29:25 you can get your best and fishy and all that as spinach has got more protein than the average piece of meat weird for weird. So if you put four ounces of spinach in your smoothie, then that's got actually more protein than four ounces of beef. So probably I hit it right yeah. Spinach and spinach is one of the best foods in the world you can eat that as well as kale.   Stacey Simms  29:47 Yeah I'm still I'm not around to kale but maybe I'll try it all if I could. Finish I can try to   Chef Mark Allison  29:55 kill you can get away with in smoothie and solid j the like it are you doing   Stacey Simms  30:00 Exactly. All right, well, that's a great idea. Um, and then I know you said start with breakfast, move on to, and then ultimately do your dinners. But I have to ask for people who are listening who have younger kids, easy suggestions for dinners that the kids can help with? Is there anything that comes to mind that you did with your boys,   Chef Mark Allison  30:17 you know, you can always make your own chicken nuggets, that easy to make. In fact, there's a recipe in the book for that. But start with things that they actually like. And then just all the some of the ingredients to more healthy ingredients. Because most of the things you can buy in fast food outlets, or and most restaurants, you can replicate at home and make them a lot more healthier. It's just like anything. If you want to learn something, you'll take the time to learn. And to me, the good thing about coupon is it's a social event that actually gets people together. And it's a great way when my wife passed away five years ago, that was one of the things I insisted with my boys that every night we went in the kitchen now five years on We do exactly the same thing they were, they can't wait to get in the kitchen, see what we're going to eat that night. And usually they choose one of the evening meals during the week. And then we'll all muck in together all your sleeves up, we'll all cook together. And then again, I said, we actually sit down at the kitchen table and spend the next 30 to 90 minutes just having a conversation, which is fabulous. It's the highlight of my day.   Stacey Simms  31:22 I'll tell you what, it really is an amazing thing when you can get everybody away from their electronics sitting at the table. You know, we set we did that too. We set the table every night. Yeah. Even if we're bringing in, we do bring in occasionally, you know, it goes on the table, it comes out of the takeout.   Chef Mark Allison  31:39 What is social experience food is this food is one of the one things that will bring people together. And even if it doesn't turn out great. You can all have a laugh about it. And just try it again the next day. You know, nobody's gonna have a fight over a burnt pancake. You know, they you're just gonna laugh about it and say, You know what, I'm gonna cry better tomorrow.   Stacey Simms  31:58 You know, I'm glad to hear you say that because I I've been there many times. Before I let you go, you know, your life has been so interesting to be touched by type one diabetes in your family. And then of course, you've had that unbelievable experience with cancer and losing your wife and I'm so sorry, Mark, but now working with people who are honestly dependent on you to teach them better ways to manage health, whether it is diabetes, or trying to avoid complications from other illnesses. And I'm curious, you know, when you do meet with these people having, as you said, you started with, you know, French cuisine, fancy restaurants fancy chefs, now you're meeting with people who may not even understand how to fry an egg. You What was   Chef Mark Allison  32:39 that been like? Interesting.   Before, before I took this job, I was a culinary instructor for 20 years, so I could have dealt with a lot of people and different learning needs. And it all always comes back to the basics. If you can pick up the basics of anything that You'll be successful. So when you consider, I'm now working for the health department and I didn't realize these stocks until I actually started working for the health department. But 85% of all chronic diseases such as heart disease, type two diabetes, obviously not type one, and cancer are food related. And we live in an epidemic at the minute with the rise of type two diabetes, and the continuing rise of heart disease and cancer. And if people just realize that food is so important to prevent heart disease and cancer and type two diabetes, but also it's so important once you've got one of these diseases, to actually improve your immune system by eating healthy food, and the healthiest foods on the planet are fruits and vegetables, nuts, seeds, beans, seeds, and lean proteins and lean dairies. You've got to look at your food supply, try not to eat so much processed food because that's where all the additives are. That's where they put in the colorings the preservatives. You can't buy a loaf of bread that was moldy in a day. And now, you know that loaf of bread will stand there without gathering more for a week to two weeks. Now that isn't good. You know, actually, I just had fresh bread last night. I couldn't get any bread at the store yesterday. So I decided to get the flour out and I had some dry yeast. And making bread is so easy, it took less than five minutes. But just look at the food that you generally eat. And just try to you know, when you consider the rising costs of health insurance, every year, it goes up and up. And you will know because I know with Matthew's insulin and equipment for his pump, it just gets more and more expensive for free and, but if you're healthy, then look at that as being a lifesaver for you, as far as money is concerned, because if you can stay healthy and off prescription medication, you're gonna literally save thousands of dollars every year, and your life is gonna live longer, and you're going to enjoy life more. So A lot of it's all about prevention. But if you do have an illness, then really look at your diet, because the food, it's food is not medicine, but it can help in a way that will make you feel good about yourself and make you lose weight. And it'll keep you alive a lot longer if you pick the right food choices. And the right food choices are eat more fruits and vegetable.   Stacey Simms  35:22 Well, I really appreciate you spending some time with us. It's just always wonderful to talk with you. I'm glad your boys are doing well. Everybody's home now.   Chef Mark Allison  35:29 Everybody, so yeah, everybody. So James got led over school for the next two weeks, possibly more, who knows? Matthews at college, but he's at home at the minute and he's just doing everything online. And then unfortunately, my son who works in a restaurant, he just got laid off yesterday. But you know what, things could be a lot worse. We've just got to knuckle down and stay healthy and hopefully this virus hopefully will be gone in two or three weeks in the golf fleet. The nation can get back to normal. Yes, I hope so, too.   Stacey Simms  35:59 Mark, thank you so much for joining me, we will link up all the information about the book, we'll see how I can go about posting a recipe or two. And I'm just wishing you and your boys All the best. Thank you so much for talking with me.   Chef Mark Allison  36:10 Thank you for having me on the show and you and your family stay safe and stay healthy. And hopefully we'll catch you up with another diabetic conference.   Stacey Simms  36:19 Yeah, hopefully down the road and everything is rescheduled. I think the best thing is gonna be it's gonna be a very busy fall, I think.   Chef Mark Allison  36:25 I think   Unknown Speaker  36:32 you're listening to diabetes connections with Stacey Sims.   Stacey Simms  36:38 Lots more information at the episode homepage. And of course, as I mentioned, we'll put some of the recipes and other information Mark was very generous and giving me an excerpt from the book. I will put that in the Facebook group, diabetes connections, the group, I don't care what he says I am not trying to kill smoothie. I've been there done that. But for somebody like me, having a green smoothie is a big step. I do eat a lot of vegetables. But I never thought I'd like smoothie. But like I said, the spinach smoothie was great. So he just like he said, one new thing, one new thing. Try it, see if you like it. You know, I've tried to teach my kids, although my husband is a really good cook, and he's done a much better job of teaching the kids actual cooking skills, but I try to teach them that mistakes are okay, which is coming out of my mouth. I just realized that just sounds like everything else I say with diabetes. But I mean, it's my philosophy of cooking too, because I make a ton of mistakes and everything somehow tastes good. I mean, sure, I've burned things. The first book I wrote was, I can't cook but I know someone who can. Actually Mark has a recipe. That book is a wonderful recipe. The conceit of that book is that I can't cook so I went and asked all of my restaurant and Chef friends for recipes. And it was a big book for charity for jdrf. And it was a lot of fun, but I did write a whole bunch of kitchen disaster stories into that book. Yeah, I think my life philosophy is make all the mistakes. Hey, it's working out so far. Up next, tell me something good. But first diabetes Connections is brought to you by dexcom. We have been Using the dexcom g six since it came out almost two years ago is that possible? It is just amazing. The dexcom g six is FDA permitted for no finger sticks for calibration and diabetes treatment decisions. You do that to our warm up and then the number just pops up if you like us have used x come for a long time before that. It's really wild to see the number just kind of self populate. You just have to do a lot more finger sticks for calibration. We've been using the dexcom for a long time. It was six years this past December and it just keeps getting better. The G six has longer sensor were 10 days and the new sensor applicator is so much easier to use. And of course the alerts and alarms we can set them how we want if your glucose alerts and readings from the G six do not match symptoms or expectations. Use a blood glucose meter to make diabetes treatment decisions. To learn more, go to diabetes connections comm and click on that dexcom logo   and tell me something good this week. If you saw this post on social media you might have thought Stacy, you're telling me something good backgrounds are usually blue. Why was this one orange? Well, that's because my friends It featured mac and cheese. So let me tell you about Ty Gibbs. Ty is a swimmer at Henderson State University in Arkansas. He was diagnosed in 2017. It was actually very serious. He was being rushed to the hospital at the time. He was in intensive care. He spent time in the ICU, but his mom Cheryl says as he was rushed into the ICU, he was just starving. And he kept asking for mac and cheese over and over again every year since we celebrate with a ton of mac and cheese. So this tells me something good on social media the photo if you saw it was his teammates and friends celebrating his diversity with seven pounds of mac and cheese and a cake. You want to talk about a carb explosion? No, of course the celebration took place weeks ago. I believe this has And very early in March or maybe it was even in late February when they actually celebrated it before the social distancing was taking effect. But I really appreciate Cheryl sharing this story. I love the idea of celebrating with a mac and cheese. That would be something for my daughter more so than my son. When the kids are left to lane. They were asked to empty their dorm rooms of food. They weren't ordered to it was a food drive for people in New Orleans. And a lot of these kids like my daughter, most kids into lane are from far away. So a lot of them were jumping on planes or getting out of there and going long distances and didn't want to pack up everything in their dorm room. So the school organized a big food drive. And I tell you all this because my daughter donated her mac and cheese. I know she had other junk in her room that she didn't share with me but oh my gosh, she's definitely the mac and cheese lover in the family. So thanks, Ty and congratulations on your dire versary hopefully next year we can celebrate again we'll send you some mac and cheese to our other Tell me something good comes from Laura Bilodeau. A familiar name to many of you. She is the powerhouse, behind the friends for life conferences and so much more with children with diabetes. But recently, Laura found herself in the unusual situation of asking for help. She has connected thousands of people over the years. It's no exaggeration, the friends for life conference is 20 years old. And the children with diabetes organization is older than that. And I'm telling you, they have connected so many people to each other, for help for education for inspiration for friendships, including me, I've made so many friends there. But her son actually needed to help her adult son doesn't live with them, but with everything that was going on, came back home to Michigan a couple of weeks ago, and they were having trouble with diabetes supplies. They had been I'm not going to go through all the details. But like many of us, you know, they had insurance issues, somebody wasn't following through. The supply wasn't coming when it was supposed to come. And so they turn to the diabetes community for help. And as we always do, People reached out and so she posted a great picture about two weeks ago now almost that Mike Hoskins who's also been on the show is a great writer over a diabetes mine and his wife Susie. They met for coffee although they met you can see the picture. They're six feet apart each Zingerman's coffee roastery which was still open for takeout and this picture looks great. I bet that's a terrific coffee place. I'd love to check it out if I'm ever in town there but of course the big deal was that Michael was able to help her with the supplies that she needed. Is your community doing that we're having a lot of that here in the Charlotte area where people are just reaching out I already no surprise gave insulin to a friend of mine who's got an adult son who does not have insurance and is really struggling right now. So we were able to donate to them. I've got friends who had you know my Omni pod PDM knocked out and you know, they're going to get us a new one but does anybody have one in the meantime? Anybody spare sensor, little things like that goes such a long way. You know, I mean, they say little things. They They're really not when you come to rely on this stuff day to day could we go without except for the insulin? Of course, we would do finger pokes, we would use shots. But you know, you don't want to be without this technology once you have it. So way to go. Mike Hoskins way to go Laura Bilodeau, because it's tough to ask for help, especially when you've always been in the position of providing it. I'm so glad everybody got what they needed. All right, tell me something good. It's the best segment of the show each week. Tell me what you got. You can send it in Stacy at diabetes connections calm posted in the Facebook group. Or if I see it like I did, Laura, I'll just get your permission to share your story. But I really love when you send them in. So keep them coming and tell me something good.   Not too much to say here before I let you go. I do apologize for sort of the weirdness of the schedule. I always pride myself on every week the consistency of getting the show out there on Tuesdays and then those mini episodes I was doing on Thursdays foot, gosh, I feel I bet you feel the same. It's almost like time has been Meaning right now. Right? what day of the week? Is it? am I eating breakfast? Am I having cocktails? You know, it's just a crazy time right now. So I am giving myself the grace to put out episodes when they make sense. I am listening to podcasts right now when I am listening, that are entertaining and distract me. I'm listening to a lot of my Game of Thrones podcasts, a lot of my history podcasts, a lot of podcasts that make me laugh. So I'm not that concerned about getting my news up to date from podcasts. I hope an episode like this, you know, gave you 40 minutes or 50 minutes. I honestly don't know where that's going to come out to yet of distraction entertainment, something good to think about and a feeling that you're not alone. As we go forward in these weeks, I'm not sure just like everything else. I'm not sure what the podcast production schedule is gonna look like. Of course, I have my sponsors and I will do what is responsible and we'll get those episodes out. But I really liked connecting on zoom calls, Facebook Live, other things like that. So as with everything else after this is over We'll see what the podcast landscape looks like, right? I mean, who knows? I hope to keep doing this, but we shall see. We'll see where you all are. It's gonna be a long, long time before things go back to quote normal. And I don't know what that's going to look like. I do hope and expect that we will be in it together as we have been as the diabetes community always is. So please let me hear from you. Tell me what's on your mind. And I really appreciate you tuning in. As always, thank you to my editor john Pugh kennis of audio editing solutions. JOHN, I hope you're staying safe in Philadelphia and doing well and that your kids are alright as well. And thank you, as always for listening. Stay safe. I'll see you soon and more now than ever before. Be kind to yourself.   Unknown Speaker  45:50 Diabetes Connections is a production of Stacey Sims media. All rights reserved. All rounds avenged.   Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Open KitchenInspired Food For Casual GatheringsBy Susan Spungen Intro: Welcome to the number one cookbook podcast, Cookery by the Book with Suzy Chase. She's just a home cook in New York City sitting at her dining room table talking to cookbook authors.Susan Spungen: Hi, I'm Susan Spungen and I'm here to talk about my latest cookbook, Open Kitchen.Suzy Chase: So here in New York City we just ended week two of the coronavirus quarantine. In Open Kitchen you have some recipes scattered throughout the cookbook that you call projects. Since many of us have lots of time on our hands right now, I thought you could walk us through your French beef stew recipe on page 101, and I bet we have these ingredients on hand.Susan Spungen: So, yeah, personally I've been definitely stocking up on the basic mirepoix vegetables, which is onion, carrot, celery, because I want to be ready to make soups and stews at a moment's notice. And I've been actually buying mushrooms too. So even if you can't get fancy hen of the woods mushrooms from your farmer's market right now or anywhere else, any kind of mushrooms are great in this stew. And you just need to get your hands on a nice big chuck roast and you're ready to go to make this really comforting stew that even if you're not going to be serving it to guests, you can share it with your family and you could also divvy it up and freeze some for later, which is what I've been doing a lot of batch cooking lately.Suzy Chase: So I started making this, this morning and I don't have pearl onions. White onions are okay?Susan Spungen: Look, you can always make substitutions, especially in … Like this. It has to have that onion flavor in it, but if you don't have pearl onions or can't even get a bag of frozen pearl onions, then just chop up a white onion and put that in in the beginning.Suzy Chase: Could I use stew meat too?Susan Spungen: Yeah, you could. I wrote the recipe to cook the meat in larger pieces, like if you got one big chuck roast. But if you buy stew meat, that's the same cut of meat just cut in smaller pieces. Either one is fine, a big roast or cut into, I think, four pieces I have it in the recipe. Or you can just use stew meat.Susan Spungen: The reason I did it with a big chuck roast and bigger pieces is because I just found the final product to be moister and juicier while you still got the flavor into the sauce from searing three or four bigger pieces of meat and then you pull them apart at the end and the sauce sort of bathes all of those wonderful craggy surface areas with delicious sauce. If you can just get stew meat that works perfectly well. Because when you cook it for two-and-a-half, three hours, it will get tender no matter what.Suzy Chase: So talk a little bit about the demi-glace concentrate.Susan Spungen: Yeah, that's something I always have in my kitchen and I think it came from working at one point in my career with a couple of classically trained chefs. I learned how to actually make demi-glace from scratch in giant kettles full. And it's just a really invaluable ingredient, I think, for making flavorful sauces. There are so many things you can do without that, making a quick pan sauce, whatever, but demi-glace is when you've cooked down veal and beef bones for many, many hours, strained it, reduce it again. It's rather labor intensive although it could be a once a year project for anybody that likes doing those kind of things.Susan Spungen: You can get some really good high quality demi-glace concentrates and it's a very hard jelly, because that is from all the collagen from the bones, and it really adds … A big spoonful of that in something like the French beef stew, it just adds so much richness and flavor that would be hard to get otherwise because a canned beef stock or a box beef stock, you might as well not even … In my opinion, it's just salt water. It doesn't really have a lot of flavor and it's mostly salt. So I tend to avoid beef stock in a box.Suzy Chase: So just quickly going down the ingredients, I think everyone has these in their kitchen. It's beef, butter, olive oil, garlic, red wine, beef stock, bay leaves. So easy. So you've had a lot of practice making this dish both in your real life and professional life. Can you tell us the story behind the recipe?Susan Spungen: Well, I have had a lot of practice with boeuf bourguignon, which this is loosely based on the classic French recipe. I worked on a little move called Julie & Julia, and this was the recipe that we cooked the most throughout the three months that I worked on Julie & Julia. It just came up again and again and again in different scenes and it was just to me the quintessential Julia Child dish. And it's so delicious and so good that I didn't mind making it over and over again.Susan Spungen: I've tweaked it and perfected it and made it my own by making the … It's a little more vegetable heavy than the classic. I roast the vegetables on the side and throw them into the sauce at the end rather than stewing them along with the meat the whole time because I really like … It makes it a little more vegetable forward. I found when I eat this dish, I like the sauce and I like the vegetables. I don't really need to eat a lot of the meat and I'm not a huge meat eater, so I like it but I don't want to eat a big, big portion of it. That's why I've tried to balance out the meat with a little more vegetable.Suzy Chase: Did you ever meet Julia Child?Susan Spungen: I did. I did. Back in my Martha Stewart Living days, when she was working on a book and companion TV series called Baking with Julia, Martha Stewart was one of the people that she had come up to Cambridge, along with lots of other different pastry chefs from all over the country on different days. Our day came and, of course being the food editor, I was the one down in the basement making the wedding cake and Martha was on TV talking about it. But it was a great experience.Susan Spungen: Of course now to say that I've been in that kitchen that's now preserved in amber in the Smithsonian is cool. I had a real experience there with Julia and our shoot went over two days, so she actually cooked us dinner in her kitchen. We ate out on her patio, it was summertime. The night that we stayed over in Cambridge and then we went back and filmed the second day. That was pretty cool.Susan Spungen: I had met her at a couple of different events. I actually went to her 80th birthday celebration, which was a big deal at the Rainbow Room. That was when I had first started working at Martha Stewart Living. And then about 10 years later we did this book project with her. And then I met her a couple other times too, at the IACP Awards I remember seeing her. I got an award for the Martha Stewart's Hors d'Oeuvres Handbook, which I was the co-author of, and on my way up to the stage to accept the award, she said … Should I do my imitation? She said, "It's a wonderful book. I got it at Costco."Suzy Chase: Were those awards the year that they had them in San Antonio?Susan Spungen: No. I don't remember but I've never been to San Antonio so it wasn't there. I can't remember which city it was, it might have been Portland. I'd have to look. I think it was 1999 that we won that award. I'd have to go back and do research to know which city it was in, but it was not San Antonio.Suzy Chase: Because I think the year before I went to the IACP Awards in San Antonio, and she was there. The room just stopped. When she walked in everyone was like, "My God, Julia's here."Susan Spungen: Yeah, I think she was one of the founders of IACP. She used to go every year. And then I saw her out here once in the Hamptons for the James Beard Awards. So I think those are all the times that I had met her.Suzy Chase: I love it. So on your Instagram you wrote, "Some good things. I'm achieving my goal of eating dinner earlier and it's getting lighter later by the day. It's hard not to find one's self happy to feel spring coming despite this world we're living in right now. Cooking is truly getting me through all of this."Susan Spungen: The truth is I've been having … I've barely been enjoying cooking. I always enjoy cooking, that's why I've made it my career, but I have been … I think a lot of people who cook already especially have been finding a lot of solace in cooking right now. And it's just the act of cooking, it's not about cooking for others, although it probably is about cooking for whoever's in your household. But I know there are people who are quarantining alone who are enjoying cooking too.Susan Spungen: But I just find that I've had a few strategies that have been getting me through. Which is really just about cooking more than you need for any one particular meal. I've been cooking a big pot of beans and then I'll make a soup with some of the brothy beans that are there and maybe a chili or maybe just rice and beans or incorporate the beans into a salad, or I might freeze some of them. I'll cook more grain than I need, like freekeh, and then I'm really trying hard not to let anything go bad.Susan Spungen: So we've had some planned dinners and then we find ourselves with a surplus of already prepared ingredients so we do what we call scrounging, where we just put together meals based on what's in the fridge. My husband and I sometimes just eat different things. It's like, "Let's scrounge," and we each make our own thing. We're not going hungry that's for sure. Definitely eating less meat than I normally do even though we have meat.Susan Spungen: Tonight we're having fish. We're here in Long Island and the fish market was full of wonderful fresh fish, so that seems like a treat right now. They had gorgeous, gorgeous halibut from Nova Scotia today, so that's what we're having for dinner.Suzy Chase: I thank you for your cooking inspiration and take good care.Susan Spungen: Thank you. You too.Suzy Chase: Cooking makes you happy and it's a way you can make other people happy, but you didn't start out cooking. You first started out as an art student, then you moved on to become the dessert chef at Coco Pazzo on the Upper East Side, then founding food editor of Martha Stewart Living and I can't leave out culinary consultant on numerous movies, including Julie & Julia and Eat Pray Love. You've been called the queen of food. This cookbook is called Open Kitchen. What does Open Kitchen mean to you?Susan Spungen: Well, when I was coming up with what's the hook for this book, after going through a few different ideas, I settled on this concept of an open kitchen. I loved the double meaning of that phrase. I had just finished renovating … I should say building a new kitchen in a newly renovated home and of course we wanted a big beautiful open kitchen.Susan Spungen: I never really even had a very good kitchen before, so I really started entertaining in earnest when I had this home. Entertaining more in a more grownup way. And I realized that when you have this open kitchen space and your friends are literally walking right into it and most likely hanging out there while you're getting ready to eat dinner or lunch, whatever it may be, they can see everything you've been doing and working on. It made me want to get ahead even more than I already naturally did. And when I say get ahead I mean it's really about prepping and being ready. If there's something I can do a day ahead, I'm going to do it. If I can do it two days ahead I'm going to do it. So it just streamlines the cooking of the meal and also lessens the mess in the kitchen that everyone's going to walk into.Susan Spungen: And then the other side of that meaning is just having it be a place to welcome friends and family and guests into your home and wrap them up in nurturing food. It's an open kitchen in that sense as well.Suzy Chase: And this whole cookbook is all about your get ahead cooking philosophy.Susan Spungen: It is.Suzy Chase: So in the introduction you wrote, "A few years ago I came across the word sprezzatura."Susan Spungen: Yup, that's perfect.Suzy Chase: Really? My God. You wrote, "Not only did I love the way it sounded, I was intrigued by its translation which, simply put, means studied nonchalance." What is it about that word that caught your attention?Susan Spungen: Well, like I said, I just love the way it sounded, but when I heard what it meant I thought, that's exactly what I strive for when I cook. I don't want things that seem fussy but, at the same time, I am willing to put some work in and I think you have to be willing to put a little bit of work in when you make good food. Let's face it, you have to shop, you have to plan your menu, you have to cook the food and pay some attention to how you're doing that. But the more you do it, the better you get at it.Susan Spungen: And I want it to feel nonchalant even if I make something super delicious. Maybe it's an amazing dessert that I spent a little bit of time making, it's just sitting there on the counter during dinner and people can't … Their mouths are watering waiting for it. But they didn't see me executing that. So it just feels very nonchalant. What can I say? I really want it to always feel nonchalant and I also don't want my guests to feel put upon. That's why I want to be done in the kitchen. You'll never find people saying to me, "Can I help? Are you sure you don't need help?" I think people only say that when they see you struggling.Suzy Chase: Yeah, I love that. Because I'm always like, "She needs help."Susan Spungen: Yeah, exactly.Suzy Chase: So you hear about chefs and you hear about home cooks, but this is a new one for me, professional home cook. What sets the professional home cook apart from the ordinary cook, which is what I am?Susan Spungen: Right, well I'm glad you picked up on that because for years I worked in restaurants, I worked in catering, I still work as a food stylist and a recipe developer, but as a recipe developer I actually do work at home. So I have the skills of a professional but I have the mindset of a home cook. So it's just maybe kicking it up a notch. I create recipes for home cooks, but I'm doing it from a professional's point of view. So I really have to get inside the head of a home cook and realize what their limitations are, but also I want people to have something to aspire to. And, like I said right on the cover, I want people to be inspired.Susan Spungen: And that's what I keep hearing from people over and over again about this book, how they feel inspired. Of course that is so gratifying. I'm so happy to hear it. Because that's what I want to do. I'm not about solving your every day problems. I'm about making you want to really spread your wings and fly.Suzy Chase: Can you talk a little bit about how the book is organized?Susan Spungen: So I start with simple starters and they are, as I say, simple. Really, really easy low effort things that you can put out for people to nibble on while … We call them nibbles in our house. Some of them are make ahead, like the dukkah crostini. I actually have this dukkah, which is a spice and nut and seed blend on hand from another recipe, and I thought, wow, that would be so good in crostini, which are those skinny breadsticks. That's a wonderful recipe.Susan Spungen: That requires making ahead but there are other things that are super spontaneous, like grilled peas in the pod, edamame-style. You could buy a quart of English peas, the season is coming up really soon. I'm too lazy to shell peas myself so I just throw them on the grill in one of those grill baskets and char them and the peas inside don't need much cooking. And then people can just nibble on them, they just have a little olive oil and lemon zest and flaky salt on top.Susan Spungen: Or there's a beautiful avocado tahini dip which I put out with all kinds of raw or slightly pickled vegetables. I think you get the idea. That's simple starters.Susan Spungen: And then I break the centerpieces, which I think is something you should actually start with when you're planning a menu. What's the main event of the meal? I have centerpieces that are meat, poultry, fish and shellfish and then vegetarian or nearly. Because I don't like to leave out my vegetarian friends and my vegetarian readers because I know there are a lot of them. And I myself eat vegetarian part of the time because I enjoy it. The whole book is very vegetable forward. So the nearly vegetarian chapter might have a little thing you can remove, like a little bit of pancetta for flavor, still going to be great without it.Susan Spungen: And then I have salads, which I think as side dishes because I like to have a lot of room temperature things when I do a menu because it doesn't really matter if things are hot. So I love a salad as a side dish. And then I have a vegetable chapter, a starchy side chapter and then a really big and robust dessert chapter.Suzy Chase: So some Saturdays I wake up and think, all I want to do is spend the day in the kitchen cooking and listening to NPR. Tell us about your project recipes that are sprinkled throughout the cookbook.Susan Spungen: I like to warn people. I don't want people to think, wow, that is really a lot of work, I wasn't expecting that. So I wanted to label them as projects and also as people, like you said, they sometimes want to embrace a project. I would say that all in all the projects are things that are really great things that can be made almost completely ahead. It just breaks down that way. A lot of things that are easy are more last minute things, but a lot of the things that are projects are things that you can make a couple days ahead of time and then serve the last minute, like the French beef stew, which I just saw someone making the other day and they loved it.Susan Spungen: Osso buco sugo with orange gremolata, this is one of my absolute favorite things to make ahead. It's a braise so it takes a good couple hours and it has a veal osso buco, you could use beef shanks if you didn't want to use veal. It makes the most delightful pasta sauce. You can make this completely ahead of time. All you have to do is boil the pasta and make the gremolata at the last minute. The vegetable lasagna that I mentioned before is another project, but I think there's about five or six throughout the book and they're all centerpieces.Suzy Chase: You approach cooking with an artist's sensibility, layering flavors, textures and colors. And one section of this cookbook that might be the definition of that is your toast section. Like your cassoulet toast recipe, can you describe this?Susan Spungen: I really, from the very beginning, wanted to have this specific toast section and I wanted it laid out the way that you see it on a double page spread, so that you could see the … Be inspired by the array of things that you could do. Depending on how good a cook you are you might not need a recipe for some of these and they also might inspire recipes of your own.Susan Spungen: The cassoulet toast I'd say is one of the more complex of the toasts, because you actually have to cook something. And when I first approached the book I wanted to do a cassoulet recipe because I thought that's such a great make ahead wonderful winter dish. And then I realized there is just no way to really streamline a cassoulet without really compromising on what it is. I just thought, what if I took the flavors of cassoulet and made them into a delicious hearty toast? You just have to caramelize onions, that's the most complex part of it, and then you take can of big butter beans and then you buy a duck confit leg at the supermarket, which if you look for it it's usually there with the bacon. D'Artagnan makes a great one and a couple other ones. It's almost a real shortcut to the very delicious flavors of cassoulet. And you could serve this actually as a lunch with a green salad, it would be fantastic.Suzy Chase: In your go to pantry list on page 14, you included preserved lemons. I bought my first jar of preserved lemons a few weeks ago. So what is your favorite way to use preserved lemons in a dish?Susan Spungen: Yeah. I think also mentioned that I also love preserved lemon paste, which I think is even easier. Now what you have to remember is that preserved lemons are preserved with salt. So what you're getting is … You actually only use the rind. If you're getting a jar of whole preserved lemons, you don't actually use the pulp. Just scrape out the pulp, which is very almost nonexistent by the time they're preserved. The pip part has been salted and it takes three months to make them, that's why I don't make them myself, I buy them.Susan Spungen: They have a very strong flavor, a little bit like Indian lime pickle if you've ever had that as a condiment, similar. It's quite strong, you don't need a lot and you should always hold back on salting other parts of the dish until you've put them in because they contribute a lot of salt. So I like putting them into dressings and vinaigrettes. I love just a little bit of that preserved lemon paste in maybe a vinaigrette that you might put over fish. Because I love fish with something really zingy. Super zingy, salty, absolutely delicious.Suzy Chase: Over the weekend I made your recipe for clams with chorizo and smoked paprika on page 155. Can you describe this recipe?Susan Spungen: Sure, and thank you for giving me page numbers. Very helpful. I think I might have seen that on Instagram.Suzy Chase: Yes.Susan Spungen: Clams are something that people might walk past in the supermarket or the fish store, and don't underestimate them. Because when you cook clams they release this incredibly powerful flavorful broth that is a little bit of garlic, a little bit of white wine and some clams and you have a flavor bomb. Yeah, I cook this on the stove but I have also done the same thing on a gas grill or a live fire grill. If you have a big cast iron pan you could cook these outside on your grill.Susan Spungen: These are Portuguese flavors really, mixing the idea of a spicy sausage like chorizo with clams. That's a very Spanish and Portuguese flavor combo. And how many ingredients do we have here? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Eight ingredients, quite a short list. Some cherry tomatoes, they help break down into a delicious sauce, and then just grill or toast some yummy bread and you have a great meal that you can stick in the middle of the table and have a messy feast with a couple of friends.Suzy Chase: And you can dip your bread in that broth.Susan Spungen: So good. Or let me give you another idea, another way to serve this, put a big piece of bread in four bowls and then spoon this over and let people eat the clams and then eat that soaked bread. Delicious.Suzy Chase: My gosh, okay, I'm going to write that down. Now for my segment called My Favorite Cookbook. Aside from this cookbook, what is your all time favorite cookbook and why?Susan Spungen: Well, lately I've been thinking about some of the books that I've kept over the years and I don't know if it's definitely my only all-time favorite, but a book that had a big influence on me early in my career was a book called Cucina Fresca written by Evan Kleiman, who's now on the radio, and Viana La Place.Suzy Chase: I love her.Susan Spungen: Yeah, and they had a series of books but Cucina Fresca was the first. And it was a revelation to me at the time because the recipes were so straightforward and simple and they were really based on mostly Tuscan ideas, and that's a sensibility that really appeals to me where less is more and true farm to table cooking. It just always inspired me. It taught me how to be simple.Suzy Chase: Where can we find you on the web and social media?Susan Spungen: Well, my website is my name, so just type in susanspungen.com or just Susan Spungen, it should come right up, and that's S-P-U-N-G-E-N, I'm used to always spelling my name because it's a little hard to figure out. And on social media, same thing, @susanspungen on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, everything.Suzy Chase: Thanks so much for coming on Cookery by the Book podcast.Susan Spungen: Thanks for having me.Outro: Subscribe over on CookerybytheBook.com and thanks for listening to the number one cookbook podcast, Cookery by the Book.

Welcome back to the fuel your legacy podcast each week we expose the faulty foundational mindsets of the past and rebuild the newer, stronger foundation essential in creating your meaningful legacy. We've got a lot of work to do. So let's get started.As much as you liked this podcast, I'm certain that you're going to love the book that I just released on Amazon, fuel your legacy, the nine pillars to build a meaningful legacy. I wrote this to share with you the experiences that I had while I was identifying my identity, how I began to create my meaningful legacy and how you can create yours. You're going to find this book on kindle amazon and as always on my website, Sam Knickerbocker comwelcome back to the fuel your legacy podcast and this chick that we have on today. She is a rock star saw hermaking moves on social media and reached out to her because I thought she saidSomebody who aligns with me she has a similar audience as far as her message goesand we want to help the same group of people and so I brought her on here because she's your person and like she's helping you the same way that I would want to help you so that's why I brought her on here. Her name is Alyssa June Camacho amazing mother rock star. She's the founder is the founder of the female entrepreneur Empire. Okay, that's, that's who I like, I'm a man I get it. But that's how I talk to a lot of times. That's who I know is listening is that demographic, so I want to make sure that people get that opportunity. And then she's also an executive shareholder, and one of the fastest-growing tech companies order easy. So, um, she's just, she's just incredible. And trainer, public speaker, she holds events. She has a mastermind and just does tons and tons of things to add as much value to others as possible. Her mission is really to help female entrepreneurslead them with love to change the world by helping them become smarter business owners and lead large communities. And one thing that I like about her messaging is it's not like a massive company or a massive group of people, but it's a community, right? And in community, there's a familial connection between everybody in that how do you build a community, you'll hear the word tribe often, and the tribe is good. But I think communities better tribe is almost like, in, in a lot of cases, the word tribe Does you like to think? What do I associate with the word tribe? You think of like warring tribes, tribes that are at war with each other. And when you think of a community you don't think of like this community is pitted against that community. You think of community as people wanting to be inclusive, wanting to help people succeed and lift people. So I love the choice of words of try, of the community over try. So that's my little thing but go with it. And Alyssa, let us know a little bit about your story where you came from.what you were doing before you found your passion? How you found your passion? How'd you decide to make a total go for your passion? Alright, guys, they're ready. So okay, first I'd say it's Elisa. I know it's done, like Alyssa. Butthen you're gonna I like had friends calling me throughout high school so say my name wrong and even now the girls that are in our mastermind I get it wrong because they see it on Facebook more than they say it so there's good but um, but yes, so Oh my gosh, where did I start? So I guess I should tell you guys that in high school I did not fit in. Um, I was not your typical person. I was an outgoing, really optimistic bright, I guess personality so much that people thought I was like crazy. Like, they would ask them questions like, Are you crazy? Because I was always so like, hyper and excited about things. Um, and so I was like, cool. I don't want to go to college, which sounds dumb, but I was like, This is not my thing. Like I gotta find like, Where do I belong in the world. And so I didn't have a community. I think that the best community people, leaders come from a place of like wanting tobuild something where they feel like they truly belong because they understand people. And so, yeah, I just I guess I read it right out of high school, I've set a goal, I was like, I'm going to become a district manager by the age of 20. Because I'm going to make more money than all the people that went to college, I found the exam. So that was my drive. And so I did, I went to a few different companies. And I became a district manager, which so not as relevant but throughout that, I learned a lot about leadership and so many things. And one of the things that I wanted to do was make my teams like the absolute best and I heard this thing called personal development. And so I did start doing like personal development seminars, and I started like, getting into like all this like, whoo stuff. And I would take it back. And I would do like 15 meetings, and it was really cool and really fun. But then, to kind of speed the process along a few years into that. My husband and I went to a seminar and we were like, cool this thing called mentoring this thing called coaching, we're going to do coaching. And so like, you know, all the other thousand people at a seminar, like we're gonna do coaching, it's gonna be awesome. And so we've never done anything in business didn't have a registered business oranything whatsoever so awkward. And my husband calls me one day. And he's like, Hey babe, I think I'm going to quit. I think I want to quit my job. And I want to go pursue this coaching thing. Now mind you, we had zero clients at the time, we had no idea what coaching even was, we were taking, like one program to learn about it. Um, but we made enough money. So I guess I should tell you that like I was a district manager by the age of 20 had over 32 stores, like seriously crushed it. I mean, like when I say crush it like we took a district that was 127 out of 132 to 12 within six months. And so it was a really big hard like, push crash, like personal development, plus the actual business side of things. And we did well and so my husband's like, I'm going to quit and I'm over here thinking that's fine. I make enough money to sign a big deal will be fine. Well, a few weeks in that, you know, when you get that calling, this is gonna be different for most of you, I get the call and you know what you're supposed to do, but you're like, hesitant towards it. And like, I don't know if I want to do it. Um, yeah, so a few weeks and I was like, I should quit too. Like I should quit andAt the time, we had just bought a house, we had just had our first baby. So she was six months old. I just bought a new truck, like, I mean, our life was like, pretty, we were pretty stout making over six figures a year, doing pretty great. And we both were like, let's just quit our jobs within two weeks of each other. Because I thought he was like at home, figuring out the business, like I 100% thought that he was at home, doing all the things that he's supposed to be doing to make the business work, but anybody who's an entrepreneur knows, but your first two weeks of business is stressful. You don't know what to do, and you basically lay in bed and just don't do anything because you don't know where to go. And so that's kind of what was happening. I didn't realize that. So when I told him I wanted to quit. He was like, yeah, that's fine. Go ahead and quit. He was kind of hesitant, but he wasn't gonna tell me no because we don't ask her permission in our relationship. We just asked for support. And so I was like, Hey, I think I want to quit. We decided to quit. And like the first one, we made $50 and I was like, heck, yeah.Because here's the thing, somebody paid us. So I don't recommend that to everybody. But our concept was like if we just dive in and cut off option BWe will have no choice but to make this successful, which works for some personality. It's not for everybody, and you have to be willing to get it like 100%. So, in the first month, we made 50 bucks. Obviously, at that point, all of our bills are getting late. In the second month, we made $149. And we didn't have that three people showed up. That's awesome.One person bought 149 the next month, I started to play with social media a little bit and made like 450 bucks. And I kind of was like, yeah, that's not gonna work for us or truck was repossessed. I mean, I could tell you endless stories of things that we lost, going into bankruptcy, just crazy, crazy crap. And pretty much was that happening as I was like, No, I'm not doing this anymore. This is not the life I want to live in. So I dug deep took the business skills that I learned from being a district manager and made 18,000 the next month in cash received and don't I'm not gonna let you think the story was great from there because I didn't know how to maintain 18,000 I knew how to make it and I knew how to, but it was good. I mean, I made 2005 thousand, you know, and so we've kind of workedThis little jug for a while, which was fine. And people would be like, That's amazing. Lisa, we figured out how to get to about 8000 a little bit more than that consistently. And it was cool except for I got depressed. And that was annoying because I'm not a depressed person. And so I really, I'm an honest person. So when I say it was annoying, like I was annoyed. I was like, This is dumb. I'm not like, I'm a happy person, like, this shouldn't be happening to me. I finally figured out how to make our business successful, like what the front door and I was so frustrated. And I did. I told my husband, I'm mad. I'm taking three weeks off. I'm not doing anything, absolutely nothing for three weeks. And I said, I'm just going to just figure out me, so I took our mattress. This is kind of like all kinds of telefax but I took our mattress, and I moved it to the living room. And I slept in our living room for three weeks straight. And all I did for three weeks was figure out what I loved. like okay, at one point I was excited to do the entrepreneurship journey. Somehow along there. I got lost in my trying to figure out the money piece of it, trying to figure out how to just find clients.I wasn't doing what I was called to do. I was just doing whatever I could do to make money. And it just wasn't making me happy. And so I wrote down everything that made me happy. So I was obsessed with like, one direction.Sounds dumb, but I didn't know who they were before that, but then I like figured out who they were. And it was pretty cool. I was like, I watched every documentary on YouTube about them. Um, I learned that like, I love Starbucks, because I like classy things, and like fun and like, they just make you feel better when you wake up and you're like, rich enough to get like a $5 coffee.That was like a big deal. And I don't know, I just like started writing down all these things that I love music, people anything. And when I found out that the, towards the end of that three weeks, one direction, like I was so pumped in, I was like, I love one direction. And all of a sudden, like, I get to the end of the video and it's like, they're no longer a band, which was frustrating because I was coming out of depression. After all, there was a band that was so awesome. And I was I went to a concert that's gonna be great. And then to find out they were not a band, I was like back at square one and it sounds so dumb, but when you're depressed and your emotions are so they can justgo up or down so quick. And so from that, I was like, okay, so I have to figure out what direction is not there. I got to figure out what's going to replace that. So I started to ask the question, why? Why did I like one direction? Why do I like Starbucks? Why do I like things and ultimately what it came down to it with everything that I loved, I came down to basic things that were like really classy things that were adventurous, but the majority of it was things that had a team, things that involve a lot of other people. And when I asked myself if I could move anywhere and do anything, and what would I do? And I kind of created these four different lives for my brain, and I said, If I had four different things, what would I do? All of them came back down to helping female entrepreneurs, which I had heard before, I'd like to get that in my brain before but I wasn't expecting it because I was scared. I wasn't gonna make money doing that. And I had already worked so hard to be successful to that point. So it was like, I don't want to do that. And so when I realized that though, that like I loved the community, I love the team and that's really when you look back at my journey of when I was in high school, and I was on dance company and when I was, you know district managerTwo different companies. What I was doing was building a really powerful, strong community and really strong team leaders. And that's pretty much what I was doing. And so I realized I have the skill for this, I'm going to do it. So after that three weeks, I guess during the three weeks, I kind of got like, a huge business idea. And literally, after the three weeks are done, the very next week, I launched our business took two months to get up and going and ever since then, has just been, there's been ups and downs for sure. I didn't take a payout for the first few years. From that business. I only took apart other business, but I like figured out how to build a huge movement across the country in different states and things with lots of different events and so many amazing things because I just took the principle What do I love? Why do I love it? So let's kind of jump into entrepreneurship, truly, a bumpy road.Hey, I think most people have a bumpy road into entrepreneurship and unless you're like Trump and got a small loan of a million dollarsYeah, most people they struggle and I think that story is soit's so real andFrequent. People assume that when they're going to become an entrepreneur, well, I'm going to do it better and different, and it's not going to happen to me and I say more power to you. I hope you're right. I will support you. I'll pray for you all those things. But don't be shocked when you're not right. Right. Don't be shocked when you have the same experience or similar experience that everybody else has. Right, I had an I tried to avoid it. So far, as I've done pretty well. Like once I started my business, I haven't ever had to not have my business has gone bankrupt yet. I haven't done any of those things. So that's been good, but there has been harder months where you don't make any money or you lose money in a month and you're like, crap, these people wanted their money back stupid, you know. And one of the nice things for me coming from so I came from the door to door sales. So I already came from a position where your income was up and down your incomes not the same in sales almost ever, right? It's not like a consistent income. It goes upUp and down. And so I learned the skills of how to stick to Hey, this is my monthly cost of living, I'm going to stick to that. And all the extra is going to go into saving for when I didn't bring enough to cover my monthly cost of living now I'm covering that with the savings. And so I had a really good training process through that, to get into where I am now. And I've been in business for almost 10 years. So understanding that that aspect, though, is crucial when you're going to school to start a business how to float a bad month, is probably one of the biggest things that's not taught in, in finances or definitely, entrepreneurship is that you have to be putting money away for those bad months, especially in the beginning. Like the first year, you probably should have two years' worth of savings and you probably still will have enough for your first year to grow business and to live your normal life. So I love that. The other thing I want to pull out of her story isI think something that's crucial in our relationships, and it's often gone missing. And it's, I don't know if I would say it's hard, but it's something that if it's not already existed in your, in your relationship with whoever, whether it's your family members, because this is a boundary thing it has nothing kind of has to do with relationships, but it's a boundary thing. And that is, you don't ask for permission to achieve your dreams, you asked for support. And if they're not willing to give you support, then you have to have a way of saying, Well, my boundary says I only associate with people who give me support and have a boundary. Now that's difficult if you're married, and you got two or three kids. And now you want to introduce that into the conversation. It can be done, I want you to know it can be done, and there's a way to do it. And if you don't know how to do it, you're unsure about how to do it. Please call Elisa or myself calls, call one of us to call somebody who's had that conversation. There are ways to have that conversation and get the support of your spouse. Don't just go and be like, well, then you're we're getting divorced. If you don't, that's not what we're suggesting. All right. All right.Both of our intentions are to help you have a wonderful happy life in all areas, your life, marriage, family, everything. But it is important to understand the boundaries of, Hey, this is my life, I'm going to live it. I would love your support, I don't need your support for me to do what I'm going to do. I would like it if you're willing to offer it is a huge mindset shift that holds a lot of people back because they're embarrassed, they think, Oh, is he going to help you do this? And that's where you got to get to the point where Yes, you are going to help and you want that success to happen. So love that. And thenalso, the other thing, I have my people ask similar questions, but I've never asked them in this way. So I love that you mentioned this. I called it what do I love therapy?Okay, like that's an essential thing. I have people go through and identify what fulfills them. But honestly, if I wrote down what do I love, it's different it's a different scenario.Then the follow-up question that you didn't find out until after you'd already identified what you love, which I think this is crucial to go through a What do you love, really fall in love with it? And then ask this question. Why do I love it? We're recording this podcast? You guys aren't hearing this till probably April. But we're recording this on Valentine's Day. This is like the perfect day to be recording this podcast. Andit's interesting. Why do I love right? You probably know what you love about your spouse, you probably knowthat you love your kids or your significant others or your mom or your dad or whatever. But think about why do I love like what specifically? Why do I love them? What is it that they stand for? Who are they as a being? Why do I love them or what I'm doing it for work? I love that question. Why do I love what I love? Because that's an internal question that has nothing to do with them. It's all an internal question and helps you identify your identity a little bit better. So I love that and then the last thingI want to pull out here iskind of the ultimate stop of what stops and most people and that is you're scared of not making money through your passion and so you do what somebody told you you can do to make money rather than following your heart. And if there's one thing that anybody could get from this podcast, not just this episode, but as a whole, please follow your passion. And if you are worried about the financial confidence that's literally like, what fuel your legacy is, is about empowering people with the financial confidence to go and achieve create and build their meaningful legacy you could put passion in for legacy and you could put making money through financial confidence right but we have this is why I brought her on here. It's because our like literally our objectives are the same with different verbiage.I love I love that. And so it's just crazy. It's just a funny thing. When you see people and you know your message clear, clear enough, then you'll see other peopleare close or completely aligned with your message. And I believe it's incumbent upon you like you need to reach out to them and talk to them. Even if we were never able to get on her on the podcast, I still am happy that was able to have a conversation with her and that she was accessible through social media. Okay, so I love that. So question is, now that you kind of have decided to build this community, how long did it take for you to get to the point where you're, you are finally in the flow, I'm going to say in the flow of like, okay, we're, I'm starting to see my vision come to pass because there's a gap there where like, you're still holding your butt cheeks like, Oh, crap, what happens? You know, you know, but Butover time, it starts Come on, you're like, Oh, this Yeah, this is starting to shape up how I wanted it to. So how long do you think that was? Between Oh, crap moment and like, Okay, I'm starting to see my vision come to pass.So I'm a really fast mover and I'm

Quarantine Day 236: Finally, I made it to Canada. The trek was arduous, and I had nothing to keep me warm in the cold Dakota wilds except for a light jacket and my HWIDG Uncle Buck Signature Hat. It will be tough adapting to life in this new place. It's so bright, even at night, it seems they still have some form of electricity. People look at me with curious glances. Their culture in the apocalypse seems almost unchanged from what I can recall about the old ways. I can see no signs of quarantining or raiders or even a Thunderdome equivalent. My pipe rifle still stands at watch at all times. Except for now. Because I'm writing. Handlebreaker out.* Religious Interference* Self-Isolation* Plug-n-Play* People That Can't CookLike a Paladin's righteous tower shield, many use religion to protect themselves from the evils of the world. Or from working when expected. Or from responsibility. Or almost anything they want. Ain't that a stinker? Just because you kept your childhood imaginary friend, you get a boatload of ways to dodge work or taxes. Look, I don't mind religion. You should be able to worship whichever version of the same morality tales you want. Just don't be a dick and use it to interfere with your non-religious business.You can't force someone to self-isolate. That defeats the "self" part of the term. "Self" involves choice by a person to do something on their own. You can't self-flagellate someone, that's just you whipping them. It's all about choice. If I want to hurt myself because i'm sad, that's called self-harm. If you want to hurt me because you're mad, that's called assault.PLUG AND PLAY. IT'S 2020. YOUR THING HAS A UNIVERSAL STANDARD PORT. I SHOULD BE ABLE TO PLUG IT IN AND HAVE IT DO WHAT THE SAME KIND OF THING LITERALLY NEXT TO IT IS DOING.Some people can't cook, which means they're going to end up as apocalypse sex workers, selling their rumps and bumps for bags of soup and plates of tuna casserole. It's not hard people. If you can read, you can cook. Read the ingredient list, by at least that much of each thing, read the recipe, make sure you've got a working oven or saucepan or what not, and follow the instructions. Unless you are one of a truly inept kind that can make toast catch fire, anyone can do it!All this and more on this week’s episode! Don't forget to join us on DISCORD, and support us on PATREON, NEWPROJECT2 or by BUYING A SHIRT!

While the podcast is titled Dirt Talk, we barely touched on dirt in this episode and instead discussed life, religion, marriage, painful lessons, and leadership.Many people know Mikel Bowman as an extremely upbeat and inspirational mining industry leader, but it took a lot of pain and work to get to where he is today. We dive into his past only a few minutes in to talk about his mistakes early on, how he met his wife, and how he eventually found his way into Bible college.From there, he went on to become a counselor, and after a number of difficulties both personally and professionally, he knew he needed a major change. That's when he found the mining industry, which is where he's been ever since. He started by doing anything and everything he could, worked his way up to a driller, and today he's Turner Mining Group's, Chief Culture Guru."Yes, there was the motivation of wanting to be home with my wife and kids. Two, the stress of what had previously happened over the past seven years had deteriorated our marriage, and I knew and felt in my heart that I was going to lose my wife. And she was literally my best friend. I think on my deathbed, that would've been my biggest, most glaring mistake. That if I lost her, I lost everything.My drive is to want to do better and make me better. I don't get up in the morning and think, 'gee, my boss isn't looking at me this way, or I'll never progress because of my race or religion.' I think about, 'how do I punch yesterday's Mike Bowman in the gut and defeat him? How do I do better every day? How do I beat my own records?' Because I'm not competing against anyone but me."Learn more about Mikel and follow along with him at @mikelbowman243 on Instagram and @Mikel Bowman on LinkedIn!

We asked and you answered! Listeners sent in their audio to let us know what's going on in the diabetes community right now.  It's a tough and stressful time, but you're not alone. Listen to stories and thoughts from people from the US, Saudi Arabia(!) and of all different ages. Truly a time for Diabetes Connections. Want to send in your audio? Here's how - blog post  Check out Stacey's new book: The World's Worst Diabetes Mom! Join the Diabetes Connections Facebook Group! Sign up for our newsletter here ----- Use this link to get one free download and one free month of Audible, available to Diabetes Connections listeners! ----- Get the App and listen to Diabetes Connections wherever you go! Click here for iPhone      Click here for Android Episode Transcript: Stacey Simms  0:00 Diabetes Connections is brought to you by One Drop created for people with diabetes five people who have diabetes by Real Good Foods, real food you feel good about eating, and by Dexcom take control of your diabetes and live life to the fullest with Dexcom.   Unknown Speaker  0:20 This is diabetes connections with Stacey Sims.   Stacey Simms  0:26 How is everybody doing? I'm not exactly sure how to even start these episodes anymore. We're not really doing regular episodes, full episodes of Diabetes Connections. But I didn't want to wait until I'm doing a full episode or a regular episode to let you hear what is in this one. So hi, I'm your host Stacey Simms. You know that and just like probably the vast majority of you almost everybody listening. I'm home. I'm very, very grateful to be home with my family. My daughter came home from college and you know, my son's at home. school my husband often works at home. In fact, he almost always works from home unless he is traveling for business. So he's either on the road or in the house. And I'm so grateful that he hadn't been traveling a lot this year already. And you know, we're very fortunate that he can work from home. So what have we been doing? Well, I will share with you I may have mentioned this on a previous episode, we moved recently, just across town, not the best timing because I do have a house to sell now, but we will be fine. We will figure that out. But in the meantime we have a house just set up we have lots of things to unpack. We have lots to keep us busy. We spent yesterday cleaning the house we've been in for about 10 days. And we just did the regular type cleaning that you would do you know dusting laundry, that kind of stuff. I can't say it was a lot of fun, but it was certainly something to do and we realized we were missing a few things including a broom. Apparently our broom did not make it my husband said it was trashed on the way out of the old house. So add broom to the list of things that we are picked up at the grocery store when we had to go out the next time, it's kind of a weird thing to have in your grocery store list. But you know, we don't want to be running around town to different places. I don't even know what's open right now. Got our broom. So my husband who is the much more fastidious cleaner in the family was very happy with that. Our dog is very happy that we're all home. I think like most dogs right now, she's pretty confused as to why the heck everybody is in the house all the time and why we are walking her and living with her. My daughter and I have started doing yoga. we're grabbing a YouTube channel and just trying out some different yoga classes online. I've been taking yoga in person for about a year and a half. But I'm certainly not very good at it. But it's fun to do with my daughter. But our dog is super confused and she's coming in there with us and wondering why we're on the floor and was very concerned. But now she's calmed down. She just kind of lays there with us while we do yoga. And Benny I think like most 15 year old has been keeping really busy on his phone, facetiming all his friends. He was taking these long bike rides. Before everything got shut down, he was by himself. You know, he wasn't with other people. But he's staying home now. And I think that's why. So that's our situation. But I wanted to share more of your situation. And that's what this episode is all about. A few days ago, I put out a call I, you might have seen the graphic, I put it out on social media, and it said, stuck at home, share your voice. And I really wasn't sure if anybody would respond, right? I was trying to make it easy. Just use your phone and tell me what's going on in your world. I did put out a few prompts. I'll talk about that in a moment. But a bunch of people sent in their audio and that's what this episode is going to be just a short episode to share some other voices from the diabetes community. And then in a couple of days, I will be putting out another episode our next full regular episode, whatever I'm calling them these days. I'm excited about that because I was able to talk to just a great guy, a chef with a child with type one he's an adult child is type one now, but he was diagnosed very young and Mark Been a chef his whole career. And we talked about what are we cooking now that we're stuck at home? It was a really fun interview. And I'll be sharing that in just a couple of days. I don't know if you can hear it, but I feel like my voice is not that great right now. It is allergy season here. I mean, it's always terrible. And then, you know, I feel like if I'm coughing or sniffling, gosh, you know, I mean, I'm just home, there's nobody to look at me, give me a nasty look or worry about me, but it really is just just allergies right now. So I apologize if you're hearing any of that in my voice. And if you're going through it, you know exactly what I mean. We're just you know, we're all worried we're all on a bit of an edge. So rather than hear from me the whole time, let's get to the people who sent the audio in. Let me just set this up a little bit. Some of the audio here is great. Some of some of the audio here is as you would expect, you know, people just talking into their phones. There's some homes and some buzzing, that we were not able to take out and that's okay. I was just hoping for some real voices and some real feedback. back. So I do hope you'll listen. None of these clips are especially long, but I think they give really good insight into what we're all going through at the moment. So we are starting with Molly Johannes she was diagnosed 22 years ago. She lives in Massachusetts. I'm smiling because I have met Molly. I've been fortunate enough to be at events with her. She has a blog called hugging the cactus. And I mentioned I had put out some prompts and some questions. One of which was, what is it like knowing that so many people with diabetes are stuck at home right now? Here is Molly answering that question and more.   Molly  5:37 And I have to say that I'm finding it a lot more unifying than isolating. What I mean by that is, it's really nice to go on to all of my social media channels. And for the most part, I'm seeing a lot more positivity than negativity. A lot of people are coming up with different ways to stay entertained at home, whether that's going outdoors and enjoying nice weather when it's around. Or if it's staying inside and pursuing hobbies or spending more time as families, it makes a big difference. I think in my mindset just to see something other than the news, you know, certain social media sites, you kind of log on to them. And it's nothing but a barrage of like what's going on in the world right now. And while it is super important to stay informed, it's also important to focus on mental health. And I think that distractions are one way to kind of make sure that mental health is not ignored. It's really nice to just be able to talk to others and know that we're all feeling the same way right now. So with that said, I'd like to share some of the things that I'm doing to stay busy. So when I'm not working, I am lucky enough to work a job remotely. So that's something I'm very grateful for. So when I'm not working, I am watching TV, watching movies, you know, typical things like that, but then I'm also pursuing hobbies that I don't normally have enough time for, whether that's knitting or reading some new books or you know, just spending some more time I'm working on my blog, which is important to me. And I find that a lot of the times Monday through Friday, it's really hard for me to focus on certain aspects of managing my blog. But now that I'm, you know, spending a lot more time at home, I don't have a commute, things like that, it is nice to be able to work on it a little bit more. But besides that, I am just spending time with my dog making sure that I'm connecting with my friends, you know, all of my group chats, we're just kind of checking in with each other on a daily basis. And I'm thinking of doing a couple of other things to really just promote the feeling of togetherness. So with some of my friend groups, that's probably going to be a couple of virtual sleep overs that we've talked about. We're discussing certain movies that like we can watch together as a group. So that would be really fun. But I'm also thinking for the diabetes community. Like it might be really cool to do a virtual meetup slash Hangout, and I don't know I think I'm gonna look into that and hopefully come up with some dates that might work for people get a whole bunch of people on camera and maybe we can just get to know one another and play games you know, just things that will keep us going. That will Keep conversations going and reassure people that they're not alone right now. That's the big message that I think it's important to bear in mind. So yeah, with that said, Everyone, just stay healthy be well and don't forget to take care of yourselves and keep mental health a priority.   Stacey Simms  8:16 Thank you so much, Molly. It is great to hear from you. I really appreciate it. Okay, next is Doug. He is from Florida. He was diagnosed when he was 15 years old. He says he's 27 years into it. Now. He is currently finishing his dissertation he sent in his audio and this you'll understand why I'm saying this one. You hear him on March 17, which was the day of the Florida primary. So he talked a little bit about that. I did not include it all because it was very important to that date, but that's what he's talking about voting by mail. So thank you, Doug. And here's what he had to say.   Doug  8:52 I am doing fine. It just so happens that I am a bit of a socially awkward introvert Bert, and the kind of self isolation and social distancing policies that have been recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These are things that come quite naturally to me. I don't spend a lot of time in crowded environments and I'm not a touchy feely person. I hope you all will continue to stay safe, wash your hands, don't touch your face or other people in the future. And consider using some social distancing practices in your ordinary life outside of this type of pandemic situation. For example, mail your vote, mail your ballots, and I hope everyone out there is taking care of themselves. Stacey Simms  9:53 The next bit of audio came from Saudi Arabia. I was so surprised and really Just pleased to get this. So Sarah, who lives in Riyadh city, thank you so much for sending it in. She was diagnosed in 2004. And she makes a really good point about how everything around us seems to have changed except for diabetes,   Sarah  10:15 to all type one D nation. I'm so happy today that everyone can hear me through this podcast. I'm sada. I have been living with Type One Diabetes since 2004. And from Saudi Arabia, I live in Riyadh city. And currently we're living in a very, extremely and exceptional situation. The whole world literally is facing the same problem of a smooth, tiny virus that changes all our meanings of life. I've been questioning myself the last two days. What are the essential things in our life? What do I really want to do? If I don't have any plan today to go to, to study, or to go to visit, what's add stress to me is living with type one D has no No, no break. So I kept saying to myself, everything has stopped. We stopped education. And we have been learning now not really stopped education. I mean, we have stopped going to schools or universities, but we're learning now through virtually and everything we're doing now is virtual, except diabetes. Nothing has changed about it. Every day. I check my BG every day I monitor my CGM every day or every three days I changed my pump site. So everything has changed except my type one D So I looked at myself and I questioned myself, the way we deal with type one D really shapes big Big, big part of our lives and really need to make sure that the way we approach and you will type windy, really healthy, and guide us toward better control. And I'm so happy to share my thoughts with you guys. I was trying to be as much as continious. Thank you Stacy for this amazing opportunity. And I want to say thank you, everyone, and hope you stay safe and healthy. And thank you very much. Thank you, Sarah.   Stacey Simms  12:37 All right. This is Michael and a lot of you regular listeners who are also on Twitter probably know Michael without really knowing him because he's very active on Twitter. He's MTL 613 and when I heard him say that I was really excited because I we've been following each other for a long time now, but of course I've never heard him. He was diagnosed with type one at the age of 420 years. ago, he starts out by answering that question about knowing that the diabetes community is out there right now, even as we feel very much alone.   Michael  13:12 And I think that's a very important thing. Generally, for me even without, you know, this whole situation, to know that there are people out there who are going through the same or similar things that you're going through is very important to that you don't feel alone. And it's even more important now with this whole virus situation and, and a lot of people, myself included, are trying to stay home and avoid direct contact with other people. So being able to connect over social media and in different ways and to see that other people are doing the same things you're doing even now is even more important than usual.   Maddie  13:54 Hi, my name is Maddy. I'm from Arizona, and I'm 14 years old.   Mandy  13:59 Hi I'm Mandy from also Arizona. My daughter was diagnosed about a year and a half ago. So Maddie, what is one good thing about being home right now? I think   Maddie: 14:11 one good thing about being home right now is that it's easier to control my height a little bit better, and catch my lows. Because when you're at school, you're mainly focused on your work. And then you always hear though, beeps and alarms and then it freaks everyone out and embarrasses you while me. And so it's sort of nice to have it at home and we can control it and yeah, okay. What is one thing your parents do that actually helps you with diabetes? Well, um, they do of course, everything and I love them so much, but my main thing I guess is that my mom especially makes food that is easier on my blood sugar and dinners that coordinate with like, how Having good blood sugars, and it also helps our family in general because she has celiac. And that's hard to have, as you know, eating too and just keeping family healthy.   Mandy  15:13 Yeah, we are watching our carbs a little, a little bit. It helps both of us. Yeah, for sure, was a diabetes or community event canceled that you plan to attend. Tell us about it and what you were looking forward to.   Unknown Speaker  15:27 So one event that was cancelled was the jdrf walk. And I was diagnosed a year and a half ago. And one of the first things we did was go to the JRF talk. And it was just really nice to see that there are so many other people that you know, we're going through the same things as you and that I always love to see and I made a lot of friends and camp diabetes camp has really helped that and so I would be really missing out on seeing more of that, I guess.   Unknown Speaker  15:56 Yeah, but it hasn't been canceled, right? It's just it's a Virtual walk now.   Unknown Speaker  16:01 Yeah. So it was still having virtual walk and of course will still   Unknown Speaker  16:05 attend,   Unknown Speaker  16:06 but it's just different than, you know   Unknown Speaker  16:08 in person and we're waiting to hear about camp or keeping our fingers crossed cross cross capsule on. We'll see that was one of my favorite ever things and   Unknown Speaker  16:20 of course when you're newly diagnosed it's you get a first step in but it was just one of my amazing most amazing things that have ever experienced. So Absolutely.   Stacey Simms  16:32 Okay, thank you. Big thanks to Maddie and Mandy, I appreciate you sending that in. I am thrilled to hear that you are still cooking healthy and doing what you need to do. I'll be honest with you. We have a talk in my house the other day about eating and it was basically about how well we don't have a house full of junk food. But how we're not going to police each other because there's enough stress right now and if somebody wants to eat a big cheese knows, you can go ahead and eat a bag of Cheetos. I will say that Benny is probably eating the best out of all of us right now. He has some wrestling goals that he is still keeping an eye on and he's doing great. But the rest of us might be a little bit on the track to game the unknown about the freshman 15. But the quarantine with what goes with that. quarantine? 15? I don't know. I'll keep you posted on that. Big thanks to everybody who sent in their audio. I know that's not easy to do. You know, even if you're bored, and you think, Oh, this is gonna be a way to pass the time. It's still hard to open up your phone and press record and then just talk and share your thoughts and then hit send. You know, I get butterflies every time I do a podcast episode. So I can't imagine what it's like for everybody just kind of talking and sending their audio in big, big, big thank you. If you'd like to do this again, let me know I'll put out some different prompts. Because I'm so thrilled to always hear more stories in the diabetes community. Everybody's story deserves to be told. Everybody has something to say we can all learn from your experiences. So stuck at home, share your story. We'll keep doing this if you'd like. I really enjoy hearing from you. You can refer back to the original blog post for how to do this. It really is as easy as opening the voice memo app on your phone. Every phone has something like this, recording something quick and sending it in. As you listen. I know you've heard some different backgrounds there it is better to go to a quiet background if you possibly can. some suggestions, a closet is great. Your car is a great little studio, a bathroom, you know any place in your house that is kind of small and quiet. But we will take as you here, we will take what we get because to me the message is so much more important. And yeah, I cleaned all those up. I can edit those out and things like that. And john Buchanan, of course, my editor really does the magic there. So we want to hear from you. Maybe it's even just an activity With the kids for a few minutes, thank you so much for joining me for listening regular episodes different episodes more Facebook Lives Who the heck knows what we're going to do is we're all stuck here at home. But thanks for sharing your story. I'm Stacey Simms, and I'll see you back here for our next episode.   Benny  19:20 Diabetes Connections is a production of Stacey Sims media. All rights reserved. All rounds avenged   Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Well for those of you that are joining us, we are here in the warrior divas real talk for real women Facebook group and we are doing our show we're adapting to our ever changing society. We are being emotionally connected in a social distancing world so Today, I am excited about the show we have for you We but before we get started, I wanted to let you know that if you're watching this in the group, you can invite other people to join us in the group to watch it. comment in the comment section, give a little like a little love. Leave one of the emoticons if we make it happy, sad or mad, any of that in the in the group. And I want to welcome our guests today and just a few moments, they're gonna let us know a little bit about themselves. And then as we go through the show, you'll get to learn a little bit more about them. As I said, I'm Angie Monroe, I am the host of the show. This show airs every Tuesday from 11am to 1pm Central Standard Time on fishbowl radio network and then you can find it starting at 3pm on all the podcast social networking sites. So if you hear something you like today or or you really want somebody else listen to that's the great way to share it. Plus, it'll be here in the group as well. So We're going to start off we've got Stacey up in the top we've got Janet Stacey wave. Janet under Stacey. We've got misty right next to Stacey to Janet and then we got cam. I don't know how it's showing up on everybody. thing. I guess mine's a little bit different. So getting yelled away. So I want y'all to we're gonna start with Stacey and kind of go in that order. So Stacy if you will, kind of give us a who you are, what your occupation is, where you're located and what you're passionate about. My name is Stacey Penny when I am the owner of Alexander medical Spa in Hurst, Texas. I'm also very involved in the Chamber of Commerce. I'm on the board of directors. I'm also on the board of directors for central arts of Bedford and Hearst. I like being involved in the community. That's one of my passions. I love helping other people. I like to be involved in charities. I also am passionate about learning. And I like to learn from other people. I like to learn from books. And I like to learn from doing. And this is my first podcast so I'm learning right now. Awesome. All right, we have Janet Janet, tell us a little bit Hey, Shay break out and dance or when I was live that and you did that sway app yesterday, didn't you? Yes, I had 500 views as people actually think I can dance that good which is really awesome. Yeah, I can't really dance that good y'all. Okay, my name is Janet Manor and I live in the middle of nowhere Kansas. I used to live in Texas and I miss you guys miss all the Texas hair and all the beauty of Texas women. And not that I don't love my Kansas ladies, but I do miss Texas and and I am retired but I still passionate about helping People, I I take a lot of phone calls and do a lot of praying for people still people call me for that a lot. And I teach a Bible study class of about 25 women every Monday night. So that's I'm really passionate about studying the Bible. I have the time, most of the time now to do it. And so a very busy life up until this point. So it's been, it's a blessing to be able to sit and sit in word and he's, we just did James Bible study. And so he's prepared us for a time as this to consider it all joy to be in this trial. That's where we are. And as women and all the people that we love and care for are going to follow our lead. You're just really that's the truth and our families. So trying to keep it all joyful here, and it's not being unrealistic, but now's the time to shine. Ladies, now's the time to shine. So absolutely, absolutely. Misty, how about you? Hi, I missed you. I'm the owner of picture perfect brows and beauty and co founder of expanded woman. And you know, I, I'm located but for Texas By the way, and I'm super passionate about people, connecting others and also just empowering other women building confidence. Those are the things and I'm very woman centric as well. So I definitely think we aligned in that way, Angie. Absolutely. So Kim, Kim get started. Marcel reviver talk about her so much, but many of y'all have not ever really officially met her. So this is Kim. Hi, Kim. I'm Kim. And I'm in Grapevine, Texas. And um, I, for a long time have been a small business owner had a graphic design business out of my house. Really Long time since 2015, I've been doing ministry and biblical counseling with women and I graduated last November with my certification to be a biblical counselor. And so, out of that, hopefully a ministry is being birthed. But, you know, God had different plans for how 2020 is gonna go so I'm just my word for the year was restart. Um, I know that I'm still very passionate about women seeing women healed, broken hearts restored, just walking in freedom and and the path that God has for them. So that's my true passion and how that shows up and what that looks like kind of ebbs and flows. As I think I'm growing and maturing in the Lord, so we'll see what he has for next. Yeah, it's interesting because without planning it tonight, we ended up with two of the ladies on the show that have helped me with my external beauty. We got misty and Stacy that have helped me with the external beauty. And then Janet and Kim have helped me with my spiritual beauty over the last several years of my life, and I tell the story about mending the soul all the time and how much I hated that class but loved that class. And Janet's the one that kind of I brought it up to her one day and she goes you're in my class period, you know it's done now I was like, Okay, what did I get myself into? So and then all that you've seen growing with divas impact the magazine The the beautiful flyers and all the thing, the logo for warrior divas all of that has been done by Kim. So pm is the previous creative genius behind all of that. So Mary, and I just get to come up with great, crazy ideas and go, Hey, friends, let's have some fun. But so, you know, Kim has been on isolation a little bit longer than the rest of us. And I'll let her share a little bit about that as we go on. But we were just talking about what is the purpose of the show? What are we wanting to do with the show? And yes, I'm not touching my face. I'm touching my hair. So don't anybody freak out about Corona on me because I'm putting my hair in my house. But, you know, our biggest thing is we want to be somebody that shines a light. So we realized that when you are socially isolated, you don't need to be emotionally isolated. And so we're going to start doing more and more things like this inside the group. Just to have a fun way Friday night, we're going to have a pajama party inside the group everybody show up, we're going to open up the zoom live thing. Let everybody jump on, we'll have a little dance party on there, we'll do a whole bunch of fun stuff inside the group. With that, just because moms and women married single with kids without kids, we all just need to blow off steam at some point, right? Ah. So part of what we're wanting to be is shine that light, we're going to do that and a lot of spiritual ways. We're going to do that in a lot of emotional ways. We're going to do that in a lot of fun ways. So Friday night will be instead of a divas night out it will be a divas night in so you will start seeing us talking about that later on this week. And we'll do one of those each week until we're set free and then we'll start having divas nights out because we'll be building relationships behind the scenes. So somebody somebody had a post up the other day, one of the single people I know was talking said, Wait a minute, you mean I actually got to talk to somebody and get to know them first before I go on a real date. So we're going to take the opportunity to get to know you and we want to talk with, you know, the girls here, I want you to realize that it's not just me in this group. There's other amazing women in this group that can leave things up and talk with you and encourage you and inspire you. And that's what we're all here to do. So this morning, I shared in the group, the john Maxwell video about leadership, and I was live streaming watch parties in this group and another group and trying to leave the notes in there and I do have the notes I'll put them in the notes in a file here inside the group from that section once I get them cleaned up to where other people can kind of interpret my notes as I typed them up, but they're still a little wonky and You know, it was great because he was speaking to leaders. Now tomorrow, he's going to be talking and tomorrow and to say he's going to be talking, turning adversity into advantage. And we're going to kind of kick that off tonight talking about what we as women are thinking and doing and feeling, and, and all of that. So what I want you to know is, we're women here, we may be sitting in a somewhat good situation. I don't know everybody's situation here. But I do know all these women, I don't know all their stories. But I do know all these women. And I do know that they are women that lead with love, they leave with graciousness, they don't lead with fear, they lead with joy. And that's why I was so excited that they joined us on the show today. So as we get going, we're going to start off with emotional health. So first off, we're going to do a temperature check of everybody on the call. So how are you Feeling what's going on? For some of us, it's day one for some of us. What, 90 Kim? Boy? So, um, you know, let's start. Let's start with Kim. Since she's been the longest Kim, how are you feeling? I you know, I'm actually feeling really good. I think that, you know, my journey started on January 2 with my quadruple bypass. So, I think I went through some emotional shock that kind of first month, like, I came home from the hospital on the fifth. And physically, I did great. But emotionally there were some really tough days. The it's not fair. This shouldn't have happened to me, like, you know, this was just completely out of nowhere and I didn't fit the profile and you Still, so, for me, it was sort of having to deal with a lot of the I'm having to come to acceptance with what is my new normal, I had to come to the fact that, you know, I don't know what my future is gonna look like and I gotta be okay with that now, you know, I don't know how this is, is gonna go it's a progressive disease. So new normal looks totally different. And then just even changing everyday habits I have to work out I have to eat completely different. And so there was a lot of that morning I can't eat a cheeseburger and my pepperoni pizza with extra cheese anymore. Took me a month and you know, but then I started discovering new foods, and I learned that I kind of did like working out and You know, you start to accept some stuff and roll your eyes when you said that can you rolled your eyes? here's the here's the funny truth is, it is like ripping teeth out to get me to start working out like getting on the treadmill. But I can tell about eight minutes in. Like, I don't know if it's the dopa mean or what happens chemically but then I start liking it and my 20 minute workout I'm noticing is going 3035 40 minutes like I'm, I actually feel good I feel better. I it's, it really is starting to shift and that was something I didn't expect at all. And then I even started lifting weights this week. And that was completely something I never thought I would be here year was restart and so in every way I've had to restart So it is kind of neat that here God sort of prepared me because I haven't been leaving the house that much I was social isolating already cuz you know you're immunocompromised and healing and and really restricted on what you can do for a while so, you know, I think the Lord was like No Let's prepare her for the corona virus apocalypse just a few months so you know that's where where I'm at I think my husband thinks I'm insane cuz I have bought enough food for the apocalypse and then even like ordering online the dog snacks and dog food so he called it the dog Apocalypse Now as they are delivering that but we're good over here in grapevine. Good Yeah, yeah. So So misty. What about you what's going on in your world I know there's you. You've been doing a lot inside our community as well to take care of the emotional health of some of our community. Yes, there's there's an organization that our chamber has called leadership hgb. And you're a part of the class this year and y'all had a big event planned. The next one, I had to get scrapped because of everything that's going on. But your group in your class just pivoted so beautifully to really attend to what's going on in our community. So I want you to talk a little bit about how it affects you, but what you've been doing to help those around us. Sure, sure. So um, yesterday, you know, worse I'm a salon and permanent makeup company. So yesterday we find out that we had to close the shut down, so Okay, no more livelihood. Don't have the option of unemployment. So, you know, there's a little bit of that fear factor, but I've really been through this whole thing kind of tapped into books and motivational podcasts and things to just kind of get my mindset, right, because you know how that goes. But I refuse to let the devil get me and let him fill me the women are so I honestly feel way more calm than I thought I would, knowing, knowing what's going on. And it helps me to help other people during this time too. So our group has put together another group that basically, we currently call it Corona virus. Press help us here AGV. So for this whole ATV area, and let me tell you a little bit about the project that we started off with. There was a mirror a wall that was painted on next to a company where some Hispanic people owned it and somebody graffiti I hate Mexicans on the wall. So our proud our program was to create a mural, which we did. And it looks amazing. The mural is the map of the HTV area. And we painted over the I hate Mexican. And it just turned out to be so beautiful. Unfortunately, we don't get to show it off yet, but we will eventually. But it is a great reminder of all the community resources that are available in the area. So our secondary thing was to have community resource fair at the same time for the mural unveiling. So instead of doing that, and on this coronavirus, hgb we took it virtual since we cannot really be together. Um, and basically we set out you know, different resources for people what's available, we set up you know, grocery updates and activity websites and all the different things that our community could come together and we made it a needs profile, so we can help those and there's another side project to where we set up little news people Paper stands and put products in there like toilet paper and toothpaste and and just some resources for people to just grab if they need it and also where people can donate goods as well. So it's been really good to help kind of take my mind off that of what's going on around me and helping others. Well, let me see what what's the HTV stand for? GPS you list Bedford? Okay. I thought much better the three cities. Yeah. So it's kind of like our little suburb area. Yeah. Yep. I just want to make sure I knew that was Sam. Yeah. And one of the one of the beautiful parts of it is if you're talking and somebody asked a question about the corona virus or different things like that, they don't want a lot of speculation in the group. One of the rules is the group is to cite your cite your source. So we just we want to make sure that we're citing our sources at all times. So that right there is huge for turning that to for what they're doing, because, you know, everybody can go out there and speculate and do random what is a conspiracy theorist? A lot of that there there is a lot of that so and I think john even said it today he goes first off if the media is your source you need to get a different source World Health Organization to you know, CDC go to places and get get it straight, quote unquote, from the horse's mouth so yeah, so Janet, what about your world? How is things going in your world? I know you've got a little space between the all the normal most of the time Yeah, well, there's still lines that are Sam's and there's still lines in our stores and people are still hoarding the toilet paper. And so I our little group, we we set up in the basement and we social distance to each other enough, but we're making masks You know, the ladies can so I can't so but we're cutting. We're doing okay. I mean, I'm so grateful for the you know, we have our phones and we can still talk and have this group and zoom and Facebook each other and FaceTime each other. I mean, what, what would we you know, I'm so grateful. I'm so grateful for that because emotionally and you know, if it all goes down, we're all gonna, it's gonna be a little more difficult, but this way we can stay connected and so I'm grateful that we have that, you know, that's really good. As far as I can see, we're a bunch of can i say i'm not going to use curse words but really a bunch of really tough American women. And that's starting to come out we have this Christian toughness I don't even know the warrior divas perfect because I just see a bunch of Lady she's got it together. You know, they, you know, people are sick people are isolated, you know, but they're still just kind of keeping it together and I'm just really proud of the people that I know in my life. I know there's other people who are struggling financially lost jobs, and they're still, you know, just carrying on helping their neighbor. It's just incredible, really incredible to watch. So I'm blessed in that regard because all I see is good stuff. That's all I see. I don't see any nonsense yet. So I'm grateful I got tickled watching the Facebook means or something the other day one of the guys goes I don't even know why we still have farmers and all that stuff. Why don't they just go to the store and buy this stuff that they want from the store? And then somebody else's if we have to, if we have to hunt for our food, I don't even know where Doritos lives. And you know, I love the tongue and cheek of it, but it's because of that tongue in cheek. I've had people reach out to me and going Hey, could you tell me how do I make mac and cheese with ah crap. You know, they need to know how to make their Is what mac and cheese they know they've got the ingredients for it they just don't know how to put it all together so you know trying to be some of those women that has some of these answers together not just mean not just you yeah but you know how to be creative and like my guests on my leading moment show on Thursday said he goes Guess what? He goes the store still have plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables on the shelves, because everybody's buying all the junk food all the company. Now don't eat junk food. You can. Yeah, and then another thing he brought up that misty I was going to tell you might be I'll send you a picture for it. That might be a good thing to post in your group was if it's got the wick symbol on it, that the women and children that are eating off of that wick that's only the only cheese and milk and eggs and things that they can buy cereal that they can buy. So if you have a choice, choose something other than that, but don't wipe Yeah, the witnesses are limited. That sounds like that is just huge. So I've been repeating that and shouting that as often as I can. So I just I took a picture of one of the wick signs the other day and said we need to post about this and I have it That's good. So I'll send you the picture lets you post about it and then I'll share it in post about it too. So all right, Stacy. So you're kind of in the same boat that misty is in yesterday, six o'clock and a face to face interaction. And then you know, what, what are you going to be doing? How are you emotionally handling this pivot? Well, I had already made the decision on Thursday or Friday that I was going to close before before we were closed. Because I have employees that have children. I'm all of them. But most of my people because I'm an anti aging are older. They shouldn't be coming to see me. Some of them are secret still mentioned He's messaging me, Hey, I'm working from home, can you can you get that treatment done to my eyes and we won't tell anybody, you know, just show up at the office. I still have that going on, because people want still want to get their stuff done. But I mean, I'm a mom and I have four children, I really don't need to get sick, what are they gonna do without me. And in the grand scheme of things, I have a roof over my head, I have food, even if my my business falls apart, which it won't. And I need to be here for my kids and my family. They're the most important thing. So I had already chosen, but I have gone through many different emotions throughout the last couple of weeks. I was kind of in the know about certain things beforehand because my brother works for a city and he's in a director position. So he was telling me about closed downs before they were starting to be announced. And so I was wearing before everybody else and I feel good right now I feel the things that I feel are like, I'm excited that I'm going to get to see my kids. I'm a working mom. I'm a mom that has owned a business for almost 20 years. So I have been busy. This whole time. My kids don't see me as much as some other moms get to get to see their kids. My kids are very what they were asking yesterday, where are you home so early? You know, why did you What's going on? Why is mom here? And so I'm anxious to see what it's going to be like when I'm here the entire week with him because, you know, they, they don't they only have that when I'm on vacation. I'm anxious to see I'm anxious to cook food. You know, I because I own a spa. I come home later. So sometimes a lot of times our food is you know what Costco made that my husband gets put in the oven before I got here. So I'm excited about getting to make some things and getting to do some art projects. That's what I'm Putting my focus in. Now I know, I have a list of things that I can get done remotely, to move my business forward. But every time I think about my list, I also think about, I know that I'm going to be okay. What can I do to help people that are probably not going to be okay? Yeah, that's good. There's so many people that work in a restaurant that are paycheck to paycheck. You know, I have a business savings account. I can cover my bills for a while. at my office. My husband works from home. He we're not going to lose any income from him at all. So what can I do to help other people? That's what I've been thinking about. Yeah. But I, I mean, I'm my, my biggest fear is, I don't know how to not be busy. I know I was thinking the same thing. I think how do I think that problem So maybe I can figure out how to be busy doing more things that are fun. The other thing that I think all of us are going to figure out how to be busy at home organizing and whatever else we can think of. We should people like me and Missy who take care of people all day long. We don't take care of ourselves as much. Right? So we should probably think about doing some self care. Mm hmm. Already on that? Yeah. Are you? Mm hmm. No, I watched your list. I can say I can tell you that. I used to be super busy. And I'm not super busy. Now. As much as I was when I lived in Texas. Also, I've had six months of my husband being retired at home. How's that? Because I'm worried about two weeks in with my husband. And there is an adjustment and he's a I'm married to a really nice man. It's still an adjustment. So you will have those moments, right, honestly. And I just say, I'm gonna go in my room and be by myself, you know, I just take that time, but you learn to do other things when you're not busy working or taking care of kids, like, I still help with my grandkids too. So, you know, I'm trying to do art projects and find things. I mean, I've already raised my kids and I'm having to rethink how do I do all this care at home for these kids. And so, but the business that you have when you're outside working versus coming home, I will say it's an adjustment but you're you guys are creative women, and you're hard working and so you're going to find things to fill your time you think, Oh, I'm gonna retired and I'm not gonna be as busy. That's not true. You just find different things to do because you're productive and because you like helping and because you like doing, you will find other things to do. I mean, that's just, it's God's good that way. He does give us other things and God help us all might instead of hit water, you might have to have some wine and let's be honest Vodka, I'm just kidding. Really. wine, take yourself, take your bath. But you know, God's gonna give you what you need when you need it. I mean, it's amazing. So you think I'm gonna have all this free time no other people are gonna come and look to you for things they're gonna call you. They call you and come to you because they know they can't. And they know you're going to answer they know you're going to cry with them when they cry, and you're gonna laugh when they laugh. And they know that if they call you you'll answer Now, I'm not saying being emotionally available for everybody all the time, but you find new things to do is I guess the point, you know, and and what you said God will find what you need when you need it. So the past probably three or four months, I've been training a new employee and then my employee of nine or 10 years is moving on and it's been really difficult. I've been working six, seven days a week, so maybe this is what I needed. Trying to stay home a little. I think the Lord, the Lord's just sending an adjustment, you know, we've been prepared for this time, as a time we're all prepared for this time we've been placed here. It's not a coincidence that we're all women and Esther's at this time. And you know, you'll find your inner Esther, and you'll, you know, God's gonna put people in front of us, and he's going to give us what we need when we need it. And even if you're a single mom, and you ask for help, just ask for help, because this older ladies are willing to, you know, even if, you know, we, we can watch them on a park bench. We don't have to, we don't have to be in the same room with them. But we can actually watch a kid for an hour or whatever. I mean, you can do that outside. We don't you can, you know, you can do that. So that'll work. Well. And I think another thing that a lot of people don't think about is because we have had this happen in the middle of all the social technology we have you're really not as alone as you could have been. So we have a lot of resources to reach out to talk to ask questions. And you can do it in private message, you can do it over email, you can do it on a Facebook post, whatever it is. And we met I went to a event last fall, where they talked about it was last fall last summer sometime where they were talking about abusive relationships. And I'm going to bring it up during this part because we're about shifting to family dynamics. And, you know, I'm married to a great guy. We've been in business together for seven years. I had my own business before that, but he's had his plumbing business for seven years. So we've worked together. So being home alone together hasn't really sunk into us. And he's part of the essential forces so it he probably won't be home as much as some of the other ones. But on the other side of it, there are women that are trapped at home. home with their monster, there are children that are trapped at home with their monster. So my my point to all this is, is if you're a woman, and you're listening to this, and you're trapped in a situation like that, we are the women that are saying, you can reach out to us, we are the Oregon, saying you can reach out to us. We want you to get stronger. We want to help you get a plan together, we want to get you out of that situation. We will pull all of our resources together to help with that. But we have to know that's what you're involved in and what's what's going on. And we don't want to put you in a date a more dangerous situation while you're trying to get out of that situation. So we will help find ways to do that safely for you and everyone involved. So, again, that's a little side note, but I feel it's important because when we start talking a lot down, you know, that's, I mean holidays is when domestic violence calls go up. It's just Police statistics statistics see YouTube can be a professional speaker. It is a real life statistic that that's when they go up. So it's it's something that I'm not hearing any of the media talk about or any of the police departments talk about. I'm hearing about the police departments being exposed to things and police forces dwindling because of all this. So therefore, it behooves us as warrior divas to do what we can and do our part and be that resource for women. So Alright, so we're going to talk about families you know, we're kind of almost empty nesters. Now, every time we think we're empty nester, one bounce back. I don't know what it is for Allie and cannon and the twins live a little bit down the road but they were here yesterday and they and today doing laundry because their washer and dryers best. It's so kicked them all out of the house before we got on the call tonight and then set myself to a shop to do some what we call arts and crafts time. So mainly I just need a girl time. We all need Girl. Girl time we all get it. How are you? How are you planning to balance the family time with your work time or with your own? Your own sanity? Like Janet hiding in a closet. No, no. So who wants to go first on that one? Don't everybody speak it? Well, I will. And I don't really have I decided since today was my first like real day off in the quarantine and that I was gonna relax today and just enjoy the day with my family. And you know, we ran real quick to the salon. I grabbed all the essentials that I could do self care on myself. So when it's not podcasting I'm gonna do some micro needling and you know things to make myself feel better and look better to, why not? before you make before you make decisions, make sure we talk about the other procedures that we need to do because we need to put them in. Okay? Put them in the calendar. That's where I was going with this is I'm going to kind of create, you know, a plan each day, I'm like, we're gonna work out we're gonna, all those things I'm not doing right now. That's what we're getting. And I would really like to take the time, like even a family workout and you know, spend some more time doing yoga, which I haven't done in a really long time, but I enjoy. So and I get to do more cooking because I'd actually like cooking for my family and things like that. So all of those are, I'm kind of excited. I told my my kids yesterday, I was like, Hey, guys, I'm gonna be home for like, at least three weeks, you know, probably. And my younger son was like, yeah, you know, he really misses me but my older one is He's like, he could care less to be honest. He's like, I'm in my room playing video games with everyone else. So it's pretty much the same dynamic. I have a feeling that my, my spouse will be probably quarantined as of Monday I'm thinking because he works in Dallas County. And they've, you know, done the whole, what is it, um, shelter you have to stay in your, in your house, basically. So, um, I have a feeling they'll be closed on Monday. So then he'll be home and we're not used to seeing each other all the time, even though I love him and adore him. And we're probably gonna have to keep our space social distancing to know. Like you do your thing and go play watch your car shows and I'll go do my thing and work for a little bit. Because I plan on not stop working. I do have things in place for that. So maybe spend a few times a few hours a day working and a few few hours a day spending extra time with my family. The new normal right the new normal Yeah. Yeah. Well Scott actually started working from home last week. So with me being immunocompromised he had got special permission to already work from home once this kind of started blowing up the week before so um, we've had a week now to adjust and so I have you know, my office downstairs, we set him up, his office is upstairs and with the door he can shut and it's gone real well except, you know, the 10 year old who doesn't understand that you know, she's used to when Daddy's home he's played ad so he's fun dad. So he getting her to understand that daddy's actually working eight to five, Monday through Friday and and what those boundaries are kinda look at I think it's been a harder adjustment on Avery than it actually has. Me and Scott to be honest with you, um, one thing I thought was funny in our world is trying to leave God outside if it's sunny we we've gone for walks, we walked three days last week, we went outside and walked, walked to the park, trying to let her play and be a kid. You know, everyone's gone home school crazy. And we just decided, you know, she's gonna learn if she's not missing anything. You know, we did a couple of things, but we just sort of let her be at home and learn how to FaceTime friends like this, this whole environments different for her and I think it's harder on a nine year old, who's used to that consistent schedule. If I get up I go to school. I'm at school till this time and then I have my activities and then boom, it's like spring break, and then everything she does got canceled. So for us, I think it was just letting her have a week to just downshift and deal with that emotional impact without dumping. Now learn. Honor, you know, so I think this week will be an interesting week and how do we now sort of bring in to all this mix the homeschool thing and make sure she doesn't fall too behind? And I just don't intend on being too overbearing about it. And maybe I'm maybe I'm weird that way, but I figured she's ahead. She's smart. Let her just kind of enjoy what she can and do. I mean, do the things they're going to ask you to do but i'm not i'm just not I always said I was arts and crafts. Mom, not school mom. So, you know, like who which one of us can even teach Common Core math. Let's just be honest about that. Like, I can't. So there's only gonna be so much as a mom, I can do anyway because I know. I'm not trained as an educator. So I feel like you guys need to quit coughing I'm getting nervous now. Far away. We're social distance. We're good. All right. Yeah. Well, well, Stacy, what about your kids? You've got school aged kids as well. How are they have they hasn't even hit them yet that they don't have school. And yes, let me talk. You know, I have two sets of kids. So I have a kid that's 29 and 19. And then I have kids that are nine and eight. So and I'm still a mom to both sets. It's a kind of separate though, because the two the 29 and the 19 year old just moved in together in a tent. To an apartment in Bedford, they really like it. And so like I've been helping them I was there yesterday still unboxing stuff. They've been there a month but they have some boxes that they still haven't unlocked. And one of them I will not say which one was waiting for mommy to come by and not the younger one to help him get his stuff on. I mean I'm still momming them I'm still I'm telling them to stay home I brought some masks and some gloves and some Lysol to their apartment yesterday. It's two boys. So having to be mom still mom them even though they're older without being overbearing, and they have been staying home though I'm so excited for them. Because usually they don't listen. And I I kind of taught them the things that they need to do for cleaning. And if they do have to go somewhere like you're not supposed, like even touching the thing when you're done. Getting gas, you really shouldn't be touching that you need to put so that's why I bought brought them some gloves, throw the gloves away after you get your gas before you get in your car. So I have that situation. And then here at my house I have my two girls that are nine, about to be nine and eight and set I'm sorry, eight and seven right now. They have for the entire week. They have been doing homeschool. But kind of haphazardly, you know. They've been doing prodigy and Adventure Time and ABC mouse. But starting tomorrow, they go to a charter school international leadership of Texas. They're actually going to be doing the zoom meetings and they're with their teachers. And we had to do all the technology today. They both they both their school was giving out Chromebooks to the students that don't already have them. We have Chromebooks. They we got them for cursive missed last year. My husband's in it. He thought they needed to learn how to use a mouse. So he bought them Chromebooks. And so they're going to start their zoom meetings. I'm worried about my eight year old because she's dyslexic. And she really needs some extra care. But her dyslexic teacher is going to be on zoom meetings with her too. So I'm excited to see how it's gonna happen because I know it's a new normal for them, too. They have this charter school has 20 schools throughout Texas. So they're doing the zoom meetings with all the schools at the same time. I'm wondering how smooth it's going to do the first day we'll see. And I'm still going to be doing some work also. I'm still going to be on my computer. I have an internship program that I'm working on for the Chamber of Commerce. And then recently, we still have right you can we have time to work on that missing. And then Angie and I are also we are on the leadership Alumni Association, the same leadership class that misty is currently in. Angie and I have already been through the leadership program. And we are on this leadership, steering leadership alumni steering committee. So we're going to try to help put social media together helps steer our alumni helps steer our alumni, we can make sure that our alumni stay still engaged in the chamber after they've gone through leadership. We want our alumni to be leaders in the community. We want our alumni to be part of boards, board of directors in hcb area, and we want them to be the leader. So Angie and I are trying to figure out how to still work on that. A little foreign to them and and challenge them both a little bit. And so I'm going to be working on that and then I like I said, I don't know what I'm going to be doing here. busy. I don't I'm going to keep myself busy doing things I'm not sure how it's gonna go. It's It's my mind is like, do I set up a whole plan of all of these art projects that we're going to get done? Do I cook like so many meals? I haven't decided which things I want to be busy doing. I know. I'm going to figure out how to be busy though. Oh, yeah, yeah, I think we all figure that out really easily, don't we? Yeah, yes. What about you, Misty? Oh, how to how to figure out how to not be busy. Well, what about the kids? What are they doing and shifting through right now? How are they? How are they still on spring break. So they really are, and Burnsville has not figured out what they're doing yet. They're trying Monday, we're supposed to pick up Chromebooks for those who don't have access to social media or like tablets or internet and that type of thing. So we're we're just waiting for them to give us more direction. Right now they're just having a free for all to be honest with you. They're playing video games are eating all the snacks you know that a house in the home that have a 12 year old and a 17 year old boy and then a seven year old stepdaughter so she's here this weekend hanging out with us and that's really cool because normally we don't get to have her all weekend we only get to have our own Sundays and one one night during the week so this will be some extra time we can all spend with her too. Also, I just signed up enough to do the snap ology Lego daily challenge. You seen those but so he made the pirate ship today with his Lego so those are things trying to keep him busy, but they're bored already. I think. Yeah. Well Janet, you're kind of like me, you you've kind of moved on from the little kids at home but you also have grandkids that are around and I know I know Alyssa was doing homeschooling so but Alyssa is also expecting to So that's how I'm a baby in about eight weeks. Yeah, so you're gonna be probably doing some pitch hitting won't Yeah. So yeah, it's it's that new that grandma role which I have adult children, that's still the mean, which I can totally relate to. which is way, way more than I thought it would ever be. It's kind of interesting, but I will say it's just a blessing to have grandkids and we're expecting a new baby boy and I've been able to hear somebody come in here now that I'm talking about these grandkids. And I'm surprised they haven't come in yet. Honestly, I am too hot. And so I don't know. We're finding new things to do. I'm, I'm stealing all the ideas on Facebook and people are putting so many amazing ideas out there. We're doing all that we're just praying for some warm weather. So we can kind of get outside here in Kansas. It's still really cold. We have one nice day and then we have three or four bad days. So I'm waiting for that. But I think getting outside helps you guys. We're not we can get outside, we're allowed to go outside. It's like you can't get outside. I think sort of everybody doing the electronics, take a walk, do something get outside, it's healthy and mentally. And I know one of the small towns here, they were putting the bear the stuffed bears in the windows so that people could go around and find the bears the little kids, find the bears. But find something to do, you know, go on a scavenger hunt, and give them a list of things to go outside. outside. Is that your best bet for a while even if it's cold go outside. I mean, that's, we've missed having our kids outside, they're in school all day. You know, they go do things all day. Now you have an opportunity to kind of reset, like kimsey word, you know, reset, it was a reset, that we use that restart. We said, yeah. Yeah, we had to reset after 911 and we survived all that economically. And we you know, we lost a A lot of stuff after 911 My husband was a pilot that got, you know, furloughed and, you know, this too will all pass but go outside. I mean, family wise, mentally wise, you know, do something outside and you know, the sunshine is good for you the virus dies at 180 degrees I don't know. Right? It's vitamin D and vitamin C are anti viral and so mentally get out some put it on your list to go outside every day and take a walk, do what you have to do, but get them outside. I think it's important. Well, part of the arts and crafts Mike's doing is I bought a boat last summer that's my boat. It's not his boat. It's my boat. It's it can be ours but it's my boat. And so he was just doing some of the last minute touches to make sure it was boat ready because that's one thing we can do. We can go out on the lake we can go in that's socially distances you from quite a few people just being out on the lake. One of the other things that I'm glad you brought up the 911 thing because I've been thinking a lot about that this week. You know, there's a our kids Janet's and my kids and they see you've got one up there too. They were born. And they were in school when 911 happened, you know, so they, Janet and I have children that serve in our country and And me too. I'm a part of a military moms group that has paratroopers that are coming back to the states that are going straight into quarantine. They're not getting the big welcome home. They're not getting all of the pomp and circumstance that goes on with that they're going here's a tent and they're like, I just came from a tent. So the ones that go through the tent, they they're, they're putting them into isolation, barracks and things like that. But you know, Cody, my son is supposed To be leaving the country at some point this week, I was supposed to be in Orlando from Friday until this following this coming Friday, from last Friday till this coming Friday. And then I was going over to spend time with Cody at his duty station before he left the country for six months. And so I had to change tickets. And as I'm changing the tickets, I'm already having the emotions well up about 911. I came out of nowhere. And when the when the planes stopped flying, I didn't sleep for those three days. Because I was I've grown up in ulis. I'm so used to hearing the planes fly, that when the planes weren't flying, it was eerily deafening to me. Yeah, so when the first pilot took off from DFW Airport, I was one of them out there with the guy that had the big American flag and we were listening to the air traffic controllers, talk to the pilots and send them off. And, and so we knew when that happened that our world was forever changed. And we're already we've we immediately saw changes in how security was done and how things were handled security on the cockpit doors, TSA, all of that immediately changed. And one of my friends that's a writer and manages a lot of freelance writers for Thomas Nelson publishing, put out a suggestion the other day to start making notes of the things that you see that may be changing. And I thought that was a really good thing. So in the industry, you're in, in the in your child's life, what was something that was so normal, a week, a month last year, that is either not going to be around or something abnormal. Moving forward, we've been talking about putting Chromebooks and students hands in every student having a laptop or a tablet for years. And it takes a crisis like this to realize that we should have stopped talking about it and just done it. You know, so what does that look like? What are some of the things? I'm going to throw out? One of the things that I thought that I've already thought of with universal pushing movies straight to DVD, I mean, not DVD but DVR, straight to the streaming services, there may not be a major need for theaters anymore. Big Box theaters, wow. At least a drastically reduced number of them. So what's something that you can look at that you're looking at now and you can start thinking maybe it's going to shift medical supplies. Right now China makes most of our medical supplies and I was told by someone who their company, she's a salesperson for the company that that supplies hospitals. And before like, she was telling me Probably, I don't know, a month and a half two months ago. Make sure you buy all the needles that you're going to need for the next year by all the gloves you're going to need for the next year. She said, we're not even telling our hospitals this yet. But there's one ship coming from China right now full of medical supplies, and that's the last one for a while. She said it, it's going to be changed for an entire year. And because they're not working, they're not able to work. They're not making medical supplies. And so now we see here, we are incredibly dependent on China. medical supplies also they they do a lot of our medication too. They do a lot of our What is it called? The one that is not the brand name. Generic Jay did a lot of our generics. And we might run out of certain medications because they do a lot of our generics. They make most of our Tylenol Not the time, like the generic Tylenol, they make most of our generic generic Tylenol. So what I see 85% of her antibiotics, right? So like, we change that, hopefully we change it, we learned the hard lesson and we change it now, well, then I was thinking ramp up, you know, we just ramp up and we do what we do. You know, hopefully that's gonna happen. Well, and we the, the other issue is, are we willing to pay more for it, because the labor in China is much cheaper. And if we make it here, we're going to have to pay our workers enough. So that we can, it will have to pay a little bit more for it because we have to pay our workers so that they can live in the United States. So that's an issue. But I think that we were as a country, we're going to have to look at all the things that were dependent on other countries, and we're going to have to see what we can do to not have this happen to us again. Yeah, Misty Kim. What do y'all have to say? Something that Scott and I were talking about is how, like we had never done online grocery shopping. Like you know, I buy stuff from Amazon but I'm talking about like, ordering your food from like imperfect foods calm or like ordering all your meat from Purdue farms.com like changing the way you grocery shop like we have had, cuz I'm immunocompromised and it's not good for us to get out at all. I'm in that super, super crazy high risk group. So we've been having delivery, delivering all our groceries and like today, we got an email from one service saying that they've had to suspend new members because they're so overloaded right now with new people and I'm thinking wow, this this could come pletely change the grocery store industry because we're so used to going out to the grocery store to get stuff and how many of us will come to realize that we like having stuff delivered on Friday because I go so far, I think it's great. It's not much more money than you know, going to the grocery store. And it's super convenient to order your groceries over three days, and then wham, it shows up at your door. So that was one thing we really thought about how this could really just be a societal change of just like people ordering groceries online, and then maybe there won't be a storefront on every corner the way you see now. Yeah, I think Walmart pickup is the best thing ever invented. Yeah, I love it. Well, like even before, if you haven't done that you need to start. No way. Don't Well in our neighborhood, we live in a older established neighborhood. And it was built when the in the 60s when people were coming in building the airport here, so a lot of pilots and air traffic controllers and things live in our neighborhood. And on our street. There's like three of us that are new newly to the neighborhood. The rest are all original homeowners. So it's it's an older generation and older demographic. And they've kind of gotten into the Facebook group and mastered that Facebook group but some of them are starting to get out there and master that online ordering. It's challenging them to be technology savvy right now. But the beautiful part is is those that are younger in the neighborhood that are going to the stores will say, I'm going to go to the store on Friday. If you have a pickup, put my name down, I'll pick it up for you still keeping some of our older neighborhood neighbors from going out into getting getting out and Not being where they don't need to be so it's really interesting then you talked about the bear thing the other day while ago we did the Shamrock challenge in our neighborhood for a scavenger hunt. And then we we started seeing the kids doing the chalk art out on the on the driveways sending positive messages to people. So you know, it's it's finding different things. Missy What do you think about you anything you can think of that shifting or changing that? Well, I see to like two sides of it, you know, you see the people that are kind of going crazy and taking advantage of the situation but then I also see more people being kind and you know, thinking of others before themselves and like the you know, compromised or the older people that they can they can help them you know, and even yesterday I had made a video on Facebook just letting everybody know I had to close down and you know that we'll be back and and you know Kind of reassuring them, but I got more reassurance for myself is like yes, you will be back and you're going to be stronger than ever. So just that support of people is just pretty amazing. I really have found that and I think it was always there but people are so busy. Yeah, that we don't take the time to share that stuff. So good, positive, that's a good positive thing. You know, if we just come back together, we were divided in a nation, maybe we'll come back together a little bit more. Seems like in times of crisis, that's what we do. Right? And I'm just do you remember after 911? After how, one day, the next day everyone had a flag out? Right? Everyone had a flag out, come together. Everyone was coming together. And maybe that's what is gonna happen right now. Because I'm seeing a lot of people want to do things for others more than ever. Well, and we're seeing we're seeing bipartisanship. up like we've never seen since 99. I mean, we're seeing a lot of things. They may not agree on a lot of the other things still, but they're putting that to the side, they're pushing all that to the side to be able to take care of a nation right now. And the the beautiful part is what I'm seeing on social media is, like you said, people are sharing positive encouraging messages to people. Especially when they see that they've got the resiliency to come back. You know, there's, there's, there's a few people that I know of that have gotten on Facebook and light of messages of what's happening in their area and stuff. And they're blasting you know, and you can tell they're angry and they're bitter and they're in there getting all it'll be okay or it's happening to everybody. You know, you're not in this alone and they're they're getting better back. It's, I guess the beauty thing I want to remind people is in times of crisis is when your squeeze I can't remember if john said or one of the other people said that the virtual thing that I shared with you all today, those sessions with john, he allowed us to share publicly. But behind that we've got all the other trainers that are part of the organization doing live videos with us all day long for the next three days. So I've been watching a bunch of videos live this week. But one of the things I said is when you're squeezed in a time of crisis, what's inside of you is going to come out and so you're getting on and good or bad. Yeah, good or bad. It's coming out. And the What are you made of? Are you made of a I'm defeated? This happened to me mentality Are you made of a you know, pull your bootstraps up Rosie the Riveter we can do it type mentality. And, you know, I'm a Rosie the Riveter lover. So yeah. You know, I'm one of those that I don't think this happens to us. I think we find ways to reinvent ourselves in and reestablish ourselves and we find times during this time to, to be leaders in that dark world we shine that light, we say, you know, you may not feel like you've got a safe place to go. I've got a wing right here. You can take shelter here and bit here a little bit. I'm going to push you out of this nest because you are going to fly even if you have to grow your wings on the way down. You are going to fly you know. And that's, that's what I get from the strong women. I surround myself and all four of you are the strong women I've surrounded myself. Janet has said it to me before there was tell somebody, what was it a while back. The when the twins were born, they just turned what six, so six years ago, I was kinda in the middle of it. I was Sleepless in Seattle or Bedford or her Wherever I was, I was, you know, brain numb. And I think Kim might be able to relate to this a little bit to it. I didn't know enough to reach out and ask for help at that time, because I was just doing what was in front of me. Yeah. And Janet said, you know, I've told she told me flat, because I've told you before, and I'll tell you again, all you have to do is ask for help, and help will be there. But I was still in my own mind of will these people relying on me, so I have to be the stopping point. I'm not the stopping point. I'm a flow through point. Yeah, that's good. We have to be reminded that we are a flow through point of the Holy Spirit of our love of what we fill ourselves with so that we can flow out to those that we are feeding and and loving and nurturing. And we can't nurture something if we are not in a nurturing mindset. It's so I used to imagine that A bunch of people that walk around those little squeezy stress balls, eyes and the ears pop. Like everybody is this Yeah. Yeah, you know, even me, I know I I've touched him with cam quite a bit right when she first got home I went and spent days there and stuff like that. But then even this week I went, Oh my god, it's been a week since we've texted What is going on? Why has she not reached out to me? Is everything okay? And her well, why haven't we gone to? Lee? I'm like, Okay, first off, am I being a bad friend? Am I this? Yeah. But I have to put all those negative things are behind and not say Well, I didn't talk to her this past week. She's probably mad at me because then those mental games will play and then you won't reach out and then you're emotionally distancing and isolating. And they're over there. Just going. No, thanks. It's been good. I was wondering where you're at. I just knew you'd circle around when you weren't busy again. And I was here like, Oh, well. How many I know I'm not the only one that has ever done this? Because I have heard other women tell me this. So, um, you know, as we're talking through some of the some of these, you know, I want to start looking at what are some of the best you have seen in people through this. This scenario, we talked a little bit about how our jobs are changing through all of this already. But you know, what, what are some of the best the most positive things that you've seen in people? Through this? We were What was it? Stacy, we were on a call the other day for the leadership alumni. And, you know, we've got some people on our steering committee who were on the front lines of this and they're just exhausted, right? When they're being told and I'm not saying who they are, where they're from, but when they're being told to pack a bag to bring to work because they don't know if they'll be able to go home. Right. You know, And this is just the beginning of what we're expecting to be a bigger surge and you know, so you know, what are some ways that you could you see positive coming out of it? I know there's other people that are what is it one groups donating every you can go on and put your beer order in. But if you put throw in an extra beer, a four pack or a six pack to your order and donate it to the Fort Bragg soldiers that are coming. That's hilarious. I'm like, okay, that's funny. But you know, what, what are some? What are some of the other things that you you're seeing and hearing? One of the one of the things that I thought was awesome, is we talked about it earlier is when our leadership htb, pivoted, and decided that they wanted to start a group to help the HIV community by posting the things that are most needed. And nobody told them they had to do that. Nobody told them that since their event was called closed down that they had to pivot, they just made a choice. And that's what happens whenever you start building leaders is they lead and that's what they did. So the first thing that I did when I was probably the seventh person invited in the group, and if you guys don't know, I am the, the sponsor of that group. So yes, I am the sponsor of leadership. So she's, she's a black, so I'm like, no, no. So I'm like, when I when I look at it, when I see them doing such great things, I get very excited because I'm invested into it right now. I get so excited about creating leaders and when whenever I get to help, and this is what they decide to do, I'm excited. So I was like, almost in tears, like, Oh, my God, look what, look what they're doing. And I immediately started texting. Rochelle Ross, who is the steering committee leader and said, Oh my god, do you see what they're doing? Like, this is great. Do you see What your Do you see what your what your teaching is making happen in our community? So that that's one of the biggest things that I've seen. And, you know, the last time I looked, I don't know how many people you have in the group now, but there was almost 1000 people in the group when I was blessed. Let me check Where's like under there was like, yeah, there was one I was looking it up 1.4. Okay, so what I mean, that's awesome. All of these people that all live in the HDB area, are able to look and they haven't categorized it into sections. So you can see restaurants you can see this you can see where you can get food, if you don't have food. You can see what food pantries are still are still giving you food. I mean, I just thought that that was so awesome. So that was one of the great things and if you look at the feeds inside the group, people that know nothing of what hcb leadership is are talking discussing. I invited one of my clients to the group who's been living in hers for like 30 years and she was very She posted something and she she got into message. Did you see how great my posts and to see all the people that were? So I mean, it's bringing people together. I thought that that was really awesome. And then and then I also see, like everyone is really trying to go to these mom and pop restaurants and buy food to go local. So I really love that I'm doing it also. But I think that that's great. Those are the things that I've noticed. Yeah. Here's another thing. You know, there's a lot of us who have diabetes, there's a lot of us who have high blood pressure. There's a lot of us who have asthma, those underlying health conditions that make getting the corona virus, you know, more dangerous for, you know, it's going to be more than a cold it could go wonky real quick. So what I've seen is just even after two months of friends and church ladies and just people rallying around my family through the heart stuff you know we didn't want for a meal for about eight weeks. Um we had more food and we knew what to do with we had friends cleaning our house take down our Christmas decorations. I mean you name it it was we had handyman come over and help Scott with cocking a tub. I mean, just you name it, it was done. And those same people now who know that I'm immunocompromised are texting me. Hey, I'm going to Costco. Hey, I have a friend run into Sam's Can I drop food off at your front door. So I just think seeing how humans are so generous. And kind and sweet and people are sending me, you know, we're still sending you extra prayers during this time. Just even that is just so touching and and you know, it just got me thinking, How can I reach out no knowing I'm stuck at home so now I'm with food delivery service. I've texted my neighbors and I'm like, Hey, we're having food delivered on Friday. I'm placing an order this day. Do you guys need me to order you guys anything so trying to help in the way I can. But just if you're able and be mindful of your friends who might be having to isolate more that just even going to a grocery store puts them at risk, right? Because I can't really leave the house at this point then, you know, my husband is stuck and because if he goes out and gets it and brings it in. So being mindful of the immuno compromised and how just if you're going to the store check in, or if a neighbor has run out of toilet paper or needs eggs, be willing to go put it at their front door, just be mindful of that stuff. And I've just seen it in spades more than I can even say, we have felt so blessed and just seeing God's goodness through human beings in such ways I never expected over these last couple of months. Well, and that goes back to those boxes that you're putting out to missing because you know, there's some people that may never ask for help or want to go to a place and get help but that they can go open that box nonchalantly get out what they need are, you know, I had somebody what say, Well, I only had some beans. So I went and put the beans in the box and I grabbed the the whatever Else it was that they needed, you know, and I was like, well, that's awesome that that what you needed was in that box, you know, and maybe somebody else needed those beans, you know. So finding a way to love on people where they're at, you know, with whatever skills or talents you have. Janet, I'm gonna come to you next, but I'm going to preface it with this because on Monday, we were hearing a lot of people, Mike's one of Mike's friends from high school took one of those blue rolls of paper towels, and he is he makes knives, homemade knives. And so he cut one of those rolls in half and he goes, look, I'm making toilet paper, you know? And Mike's like, Yeah, go ahead and do that. Because, you know, once they start flushing that down the drains it's

What is buyer intent data and how are marketers using content-level buyer intent data to get incredible inbound marketing results? This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Intentdata.io Chief Revenue Officer Ed Marsh breaks down the topic of buyer intent data, and specifically talks about how contact-level buyer intent data works, and how marketers can use it to get better marketing and sales results. Highlights from my conversation with Ed include: Ed defines intent data as "the collection of signals that indicate that somebody may be in market ready to buy your product or service." While it is a relatively new term, we all have intent data available to us. There are three kinds of intent data. First party data is what we have through the analytics software we use (ex. HubSpot). Second party comes from companies that sell data they gather through their own platforms. Third party data is collected from throughout the internet. Most intent data providers give you company-level data. Intentdata.io provides contact-level data which specifies exactly which individuals are taking high intent actions and what their contact information is. Company-level data can be used by sales teams to determine which accounts to target, whereas contact-level data can be used to create highly targeted marketing campaigns. With Google banning third party cookies, many intent data providers (particularly those who offer second-party data, will no longer be able to offer their data. One way to use intent data is in paid ad campaigns, and specifically for the creation of custom audiences. Another way is to trigger targeted email marketing drip campaigns or sales outreach sequences. Regardless of how you're using the data, the key is to have a way to unify all of that information and clean it up so it can be used correctly in your campaigns. That is where having some sort of customer data platform (CDP) can be useful. Ed says that the best way to get started with intent data is to focus on existing customers (for upsells and cross sells) and then on opportunities already in the pipeline, to see if you can close them faster.  Resources from this episode: Visit the intentdata.io website Email Ed at ed@intentdata.io Listen to the podcast to learn more about contact-level buyer intent data and how you can begin to use it now to get better marketing and sales results. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth, and this week my guest is Ed Marsh who is the chief revenue officer of intentdata.io. Welcome, Ed. Ed Marsh (Guest): Thank you very much, Kathleen. Great to be back with you. Kathleen: You’re one of the very, very few people who has been on this podcast twice. Ed: Well, it's a pleasure and an honor. Kathleen: It's less than five. I don't know the exact number, but it's definitely less than five. It's a small and exclusive club. Ed: As successful as your podcast has been, you're north of 100 episodes now, right? Kathleen: Oh yeah, it's like ... I think I'm around 130+ episodes. Ed: That's really neat. Kathleen: I have surprised myself. Yeah, it's great. I feel like now I'm one of those people who's competitive enough with my own self that now I can't stop. Ed: Both ... Kathleen: It's great. No, I'm excited to have to back, and you are back here really representing a completely different company, intentdata.io, which I don't think existed. Either that or it was like the kernel of a company when we first spoke, the first time I interviewed you. Ed: Right. About Ed Marsh and Intentdata.io Kathleen: Let's start with kind of a re-introduction to my audience. For those who either didn't hear you the first time around or heard you the first time around but aren't familiar with what you're working on now, could you talk a little bit about who you are, what you do, and what intentdata.io is? Ed: Sure, absolutely. We know each other, obviously, from the HubSpot community, the Inbound community, and have been kind of colleagues as agencies in that world for a number of years. In the context that we originally spoke, I was really working in that agency role but not as an agency consulting for middle market industrial manufacturers. But of course in the context of all of this inbound marketing work, inbound has evolved. It's not a binary world where outbound is evil like they used to say. No, the marketing takes all of these pieces. It takes inbound, it takes outbound, it takes paid, it takes great sales enablement, it takes all this stuff rolled together. And one of the pieces that I began to roll into it several years ago was intent data, and it was very immature at the time. It's evolved quite a bit, but it's really through the realization that marketing needs to be approached holistically for most businesses in this hyper-competitive, hyper-content saturated world that we're in, every company needs every tool, and they need to use it really effectively and intelligently both strategically and tactically. So against that background, I began working with a classmate of mine, actually from our mutual alma mater from Johns Hopkins that had worked on substantially developing and improving an algorithm for a very different approach to intent data than much of what was out there. Through that work I then began selling it and experimenting with it, and it's been substantially refined over the last several years. That algorithm is at the core of the intentdata.io business, and we've also incorporated some other elements like platform CDP in order to help companies fully exploit their full data stack and other stuff. That's kind of how I got to where I am today and why we're talking in this role. What is buyer intent data? Kathleen: That's so cool. I suspect that while most listeners of the podcast are pretty advanced, intent data's still a pretty new topic. I don't want to assume anything, and therefore can you just start by two to three sentences, I know this is going to be tough, can you explain what intent data is? Not necessarily what you guys do but what intent data is. Ed: Sure. So what's really interesting about intent data is that most companies already have it and they don't realize it. Because there's this new term that we've put on it. Intent data is the collection of signals that indicate that somebody may be in market ready to buy your product or service. So that could be visiting with you at an event or a trade show. It could be agreeing to have a meeting with you. In the common lexicon or parlance, it often is online activities like engaging with content, engaging with a competitor, social follows, and stuff like that. How intentdata.io is different Kathleen: Great. And there are a whole host of companies that have sprung up really in the last, I would say, two years that are calling themselves intent data companies. You mentioned that your algorithm and your approach is a little bit different. Can you explain what you mean by that? Ed: Sure. There's a broad spectrum of companies that say intent data, some of which are really static databases. Some are visitor identification. So if an unknown visitor comes to your site, you can use reverse IP lookup to figure out what the company is. Some are selling account level data that's sourced through different means including DSP or bid stream data from programmatic advertising. Some through publishing co-ops. There's first party data which is what companies have themselves that you collect through HubSpot. Second party data is like TechTarget sell which is based on their own publishing platform. And third party data, which is collected, supposedly or theoretically, everywhere else on the internet, although it's often from a small collection of sites. Kathleen: Now, I have a lot of questions. So in your case, what makes intentdata.io special, different, unique? Ed: So intentdata.io intent data is contact level intent data which is quite unique. There's a lot of companies out there that sell account level data. In other words, we can't tell you who the person is. We just can tell you there's been a bunch of people from IBM that are taking such-and-such a kind of action. There are companies that take account level data and then append to it their best guess of who the contacts might be based on who you tell them you'd love to talk to. You know, if you want to sell to CMOs and they see somebody that meets your ideal customer profile from a firmographic perspective taking action, then guess what? They're going to append the CMO's name, and you're going to get all excited, and you're going to think, "This is exactly what I want." What we do is we actually tell you who the person was that was taking action, and we give you their contact details, and we give you contextual information around the action they took. So not just engagement with some kind of an opaque topic, the taxonomy of which is completely mysterious, but rather we say, "They took action with an article online that had, at its core, this key term that we know is important to you." And because of that, then you can gauge where people are in the buying journey, the problem they're trying to solve, the outcome they're trying to achieve that competitors are talking to. You pair that with the information embedded in the job title like seniority and function with the firmographic details, and suddenly you have this really rich understanding of what's going on for the individual. And then of course when there's multiple people from the same company for the account and for that 10.2 person buying team that challenger talks about. Kathleen: Yeah, you're hitting on something that I think is really interesting. Because I started really looking at intent data probably a year and a half ago, and that's the kind of cool thing about the podcast is I get to talk to a lot of different people, I learn about a lot of different vendors, and specifically marketing technology vendors. Now I'm in a role as VP of marketing at Attila Security where I'm looking at, "What should my tech stack be?" And I've done this in a couple of different places now, looked at, reviewed intent data vendors. And I would say my perception, coming at this as an outsider, is that the big names that you hear most often are the ones that supply the account level data, as you described. I'm not going to name names, but that's basically what it is. Company x, lots of activity, they're looking at things. But you don't really know who in company x it is, and they market it as an account based marketing tool. So you're already doing account based marketing, you're already targeting companies. We are going to tell you which companies are showing the most interest. Which I can see the value of, but I'm actually really interested in this contact level stuff. Because yes, I think ABM has a lot of value, and it's something that I'm going to be working on, but I just can't help but think nothing beats knowing who the exact person is. You know, because at the end of the day that's the person who's either going to champion you or make the decision to buy. So, it's interesting to me that more companies haven't gone contact level data, and I'm curious if you can comment onto why that is. Why most intent data providers don't offer content-level buyer intent data Ed: Yeah, so there's a bunch of different reasons. Some of the big name companies started out unable to deliver contact level data and explained that as a technical impossibility or an illegality. And so there's some perception in the market that that's the case, neither of which are correct. A lot of the large name data is now sold just as an embed in other software, like with ABM software and/or with a contact database. And so it's just really easy for somebody to pay an extra 30 or 40 or 60 grand a year and get the data that just kind of flows. Of course- Kathleen: It's a lot of money, too, like, some of those add ons that you're talking about. Ed: Right. I think the other issue with intent data, of course if we have contact level intent data, it's easy to look, just on a pivot table for instance, at how many contacts from the same company are taking action. So you still get the account level insight, but it's a twofer. Not only are you getting that, but you're also getting the contact level insight. I think that one of the places that some companies have struggled with it is to just say, "Okay, I want to take this list of contacts, and I want to start blasting emails at them using, you know, SalesLoft or Outreach sequences”. And that's not all that effective. The companies that are really effective with it are the ones that take a more thoughtful approach whether it's in marketing, in sales, or both. So when you look at account level data, the reason that often succeeds with a sales team is because the sales team says, "Wow, there's something happening. I got to figure it out," and they start working contacts until they figure out where it is. And then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Whether they created the project through their diligence or uncovered it, nevertheless it's associated with intent data. On the other hand, marketing departments can take that contact level intent data, create custom audiences with it, for instance, and then do really remarkably focused and tailored paid ads to very specific audiences, again drawing on all of the contextual detail of stage and buying, journey, problem to be solved, etc. with a really tight sort of a messaging matrix. So to answer your question, from a marketing perspective, contact level data can mean more work. It's not as easy as just having Triblio tell you, "Okay, focus on these accounts." I mean, it takes additional work, particularly if you're going to use it for other use cases like event marketing in addition to demand gen. Market research is a great application for it. So you know, I think part of its awareness. Part of it is the initial perception that there was some impediment to using it, and part of it is the fact that there's more work to make it effective. How will Google's ban of third party cookies impact intent data? Kathleen: Now, I'm going to ask what might be a dumb question, but I've been reading in the news lately about how Google is going to ban and/or phase out the ability for people to use third party cookies. And I'm still trying to wrap my head around what that means. But it seems to me, this is where it might be a dumb question, that it's going to affect some of these intent data providers, particularly the ones that are looking at leveraging data coming in through ad platforms. Is that correct? Ed: Yeah, I think it's not a dumb question at all, and it's very perceptive of you. That's precisely correct. If you look at one of the very common methods of collection of intent data, it's based on programmatic advertising platforms. It's bid stream data, it's collected through a DSP, and what's interest is that- Kathleen: What's a DSP? Ed: Honestly, I don't even know what the acronym stands for. I'm going to embarrass myself. Kathleen: No, I mean I have no idea either. I was like, "Oh my god, am I just the only one who doesn't know?" Ed: What's interesting is that many of these providers have actually, going to set up a DSP without the intention of brokering and placing ads. But so they have the insight into what's happening into the market. Kathleen: Interesting. Ed: Who has space available, what kinds of topics, and who wants to put ads onto those pages. So it gives them some insight they've been able to build their intent data collection on, but that's predicated, to a large extent, on third party cookies, which of course Apple and Firefox did away with a while ago, but Google has announced a couple weeks ago they'll do on Chrome as well. Kathleen: Ah oh, by the way, I'm going to confess I did just Google DSP. It's a demand side platform. Ed: There you go. Kathleen: "Buyers of digital advertising use to manage multiple ad exchange and data exchange accounts." I had to look that one up, so you learn something new every day. Ed: Perfect. There are some alternative methods that companies in that space use. They try to call it fingerprinting and some other things, but they're just not effective. And so you're absolutely right. Although the sunset deadline I think is two years off, there are, in this crazy intent industry, there are companies demanding three year contracts right now including some that are selling DSPs. So how'd you like to be a company that signed a three year contact for that about a month ago? Kathleen: Yeah, and your provider's going to basically become obsolete, or they're going to have to figure out a different way to do it. So okay. Well, thank you for clarifying that. I didn't want to take us on too much of a tangent, but it's been on my mind. Understanding third party cookies is ... it's complicated. Ed: It is, for sure. Kathleen: So I probably need to do a whole separate episode just on that so that people can understand it, including myself. But in the meantime, so we're talking about contact level intent data, which in your case is not going to be affected if I understand correctly by Google's ban of third party cookies. Ed: That's correct. How are marketers using content-level buyer intent data? Kathleen: So now I'd like to shift gears and really talk about, "What does this look like in action?" Like, how are marketers using this information to improve their inbound marketing results? Do you have some examples you can talk us through? Ed: Sure, absolutely. I think that there's really three phases. One is building a full data stack. The second is doing proper analysis and segmentation, and then the third is doing orchestration. And if you look at kind of the maturity of the market right now, there's very few that are at the orchestration stage. There's not all that many that are doing the analysis and segmentation correctly, just because the limits of the existing martech stack that they have. But let's kind of, if you're up for it, let's work through those three kind of quickly. Kathleen: Let's do it. Ed: Chunk each one out. All right, so first you've got to have ... I shouldn't say it that way. It is beneficial, and as the process matures more companies will have a full data stack. So that means first party data, not just what you're observing of known users on your site, you know people that convert forms and come back and look at the pages, but anonymous first party data, who from companies is visiting your site that you don't know who they are, and then first party data from elsewhere in the organization. For instance, information on in-app usage and transactional information. There's all kinds of first party data that companies just partition. They think, "Well, that's customer service," or, "That's operations," or whatever but really is important to understand that entire customer life cycle. I think it's also important for companies to think of intent data across the customer life cycle, not just as a prospecting and demand gen sort of tool. Because it's got use cases across. But also in that full data stack, you might want some second party data from a couple publishers that are particularly strong in your industry that own those relationships. They have opted in readers and subscribers that have some really important insights into what's happening on their platform in that space and that subject domain that's important to you. And then third party data. And typically a couple sources of third party data. A great example in the martech space is G2 Crowd which doesn't give you a lot of signal but certainly gives you some important signal. You mesh that with something like our intentdata.io data, and now you've got a really interesting perspective. Those then, you've got to roll them up, properly unify them, cleanse them, and then you start to enrich it. And you enrich perhaps the technographic information or firmographic information. Or you understand about parent companies, and child companies, and how all of that's fitting together, you do some validation: validate email addresses, validate physical addresses because there's more marketing being done B to B with direct mail again, now. So all of this stuff has to kind of be rolled up into a very accurate, single customer view. That's one of the places that current marketing technology tends to fall a little bit short. Although there's great synchronization in many cases, there's not a lot of great unification of the data, and so that becomes a barrier sometimes for companies. They've got a great stack with Salesforce and Marketo and Drift and all these important pieces that fit together, but they're just not quite able to get it all rolled up into one very accurate, properly enriched, properly unified view. So then that sometimes is a barrier to the second step which is the analysis and segmentation. So think about it, for instance, if you had ... You talk a lot about ABM so you probably know Kerry Cunningham from Sirius and now Forrester that talks about second lead disease. You know, Kerry makes the point that we all get really excited about the first lead from a new logo, and that's great. The second lead from that same logo comes in, and people say, "Oh, that's cool. That's interesting, but we already have one. We're already working it." His point is that second one is the one that ought to get people excited because now you know that there's something more going on. It's not just some person, a crackpot, doing research on their own, but there's some sort of organizational activity. Kathleen: Right. There's water cooler talk happening at that company. Ed: Exactly. So let's extend that. Let's say that you have one or two people that convert on your site, known people in your first party data. Let's say that one of them has a demo, you know gets the freemium version of it and uses a lot of it, and one of them gets the freemium version and doesn't use it much. Let's say that there's two or three people from the same company that hit your site a number of times but don't identify themselves. So you know there's additional activity in the company. Now, let's say in third party data you see some of those same people plus other members that you know would be part of that buying team, in other words the right roles and functions are in place so you know there's a project, and you see them engaging with competitors, engaging with industry news. You can see where each of them is in the buying journey. And so now you've got a really interesting understanding of what's happening across that whole company. You've kind of validated the fact there is a project. You understand the roles that you see engaged. You understand the roles that aren't engaged or that you don't see and what your sales people need to focus, etc. But if you think about it, if you try to do that in a lot of the marketing automation software, you can't do it. I mean, even stepping from the contact level to the account level in many cases is a little bit tricky. It's not really a relational database the way you need it to be with most of the marketing automation platforms in order to do that sort of thing. There's two pieces. One is the technology piece, and the other is kind of the intellectual rigor and curiosity that's necessary to go through and say, "Let's build scenarios that really would tell us it's likely, it's sure," however you want to chunk them — MQL, SQL, whatever the case may be, and that's that analysis and segmentation then that gets really, really interesting and where companies, I think, in general are not yet hitting that point. They're kind of taking the list and saying, "Let's see who's on our target account list, and let's follow up with them," as opposed to using that list as a way to inform the target account vessel. Then the third piece, once you've done that, if you've got it all properly segmented, including micro segmentation so that the messaging is appropriate for the function, the seniority, the stage in the buying journey, competitors they've talked to, pages they've been on your site, all of that kind of stuff. Then you want to orchestrate, and you want to pull in your entire martech stack. So you want to automatically launch sequences from Outreach if that's what you're doing. You want to automatically add people to the right custom audience for a social advertising. You want to automatically add people to the right segment and address so when they come, they have exactly the right customized chatbot experience when they come. And you want all this stuff to happen automatically and at scale. And then further, you also want the automation to push the dots close enough together for the sales team. You want to suggest to the BDR, "Here's what we've observed. Here's what we infer from that. Therefore here's the template we think you should use and the enablement content we think you should use." You want to let the sales person or the AE know if they're in the midst of an opportunity and you see engagement with a competitor, then you want to make sure that they're clear not only that it happened but give them some context of the role and whether that person is also part of their deal or a new person. Just help them understand how to react to it. Because there's so much information flowing at people, it's really important to give them that context so they can seize it and action it. So I've been rambling, but I think those are kind of the three key areas to fully put intent data to work. Who is having success using intent data? Kathleen: It's incredibly clear to me that this holds amazing potential for marketers from so many different standpoints, and you covered a lot of them. You know, in terms of ad targeting, in terms of key account selection, helping your sales team, your BDR, your SDR, etc. do their job better, but it also sounds really complicated. So is there anybody out there that you've seen in the wild who's really doing this well? Like, who's really using this information well and getting results with it? Ed: There are some companies that are doing it, and it's places where they've had one person that kind of really seized it, applied creative energy to it, saw the opportunity, and grew with it. I understand absolutely your point about it sounding complicated. On the other hand, if we were to talk about doing digital marketing really well, that's really complicated too. And so there's always layers. I mean, you can start easy and then gradually progress into it as the organizational maturity and resources satisfy that. Kathleen: Yeah. Have you seen any success stories like where somebody's really been able to point to intent data and say, "That was the thing that helped me double my results or land that key customer"? Ed: Yeah, so we're not at liberty to discuss any of our client data and success stories because of nondisclosures. There's a lady named Amanda Bone who spoke at the B2B Marketing Exchange in Boston actually in conjunction with TechTarget talking about what they've done with a very robust intent data program, and I think the story that she told really illustrates the way you have to move into it progressively, you have to be very clear that you've got these cascading goals that you want to achieve. You're not going to try to do everything immediately, but also she understood the importance of having some platform that would help to integrate the data from different sources so that it wasn't just, you know, I got to look here, and then look there, and then look there, and hope that I remember it but rather pulled it together into some sort of a single view that made it actionable both for marketing and for sales. Unifying your intent data for use in marketing campaigns Kathleen: And what kinds of platforms do that? Ed: A couple of the intent data companies have very limited platforms that they may integrate anonymous first party data. In other words put some sort of an IP address lookup tool on your site in conjunction with third party data and provide a roll up of that, but the right answer I believe, and the direction that we're headed with clients, is to use a full blown CDP, to have the full capability of unification and the full capability of orchestration. Getting started with contact-level buyer intent data Kathleen: And so if you were somebody listening and you're thinking, "This sounds really cool. I would love to dip my toe in the water," but they're maybe intimidated by the full blown picture of, "Here's what it takes to really knock it out of the park," how would you suggest a marketer get started with this? What are some smaller things they could do to maybe have some initial wins and demonstrate success to, of course, as every marketer needs to think about like get that organizational buy in. Ed: Sure, absolutely. One of the really cool things about intent data is if marketers use it well, they can foster the alignment that seems so elusive between departments. So I look for quick wins with your partners on the success team, and that means feeding them signal from current customers and providing some training so that they understand how to interpret that signal. But if you see a current customer that's taking action with competitors or researching stuff, it's also a good upsell cross sell opportunity. So turn reduction, upsell, cross sell. So you can win with a success team pretty easily that way. With the sales team, I would discourage you from trying to start pushing them a bunch of new leads. I would focus on pending opportunities and target accounts and push them that signal. Now, you're going to have to provide a little bit more coaching and training in that case. And so you might want to phase it in gradually because nothing would be worse than a clumsy salesperson calling up and saying, "I thought you said you were going to buy from us. Why are you talking to the competitor?" That's not the way to use the data. So you want to make sure you train to avoid that. In terms of the marketing function itself, two easy places to start. If you're running pay ads, then develop some parallel paid ad programs with custom audiences, very tailored messaging. That's a relatively easy lift if you already have a paid ads program in place. If you're not doing any paid ads then that's going to feel like a project. So that's a judgment call. The second is to monitor events. If you're in an industry where a competitor of yours sponsors an event, what a fabulous opportunity to understand who the people are engaging with that event and target them with outbound sales. If you have industry wide events then do the same sort of a thing, but it's not specifically for targeting customers. It's obviously to create a base of leads for paid ads, for salespeople outreach, and maybe even in some cases if you're going to have a salesperson at an event and you're not investing a ton of money in exhibiting there. Use that to help them schedule appointments before they go. So those are a couple easy marketing use cases as well as a couple easy ways to incorporate it with sales, and success, and build alignment and buy in. Kathleen: Yeah, it's interesting that you mentioned events because I've thought about that. Even if you are exhibiting, if you're going to spend the money to have a booth at an event, most events these days don't give out their attendee lists. Ed: Right. Kathleen: And so, you know, marketers are left kind of scrambling with, "Well, how are we going to drive people to the booth?" Because you can send out a big blast, but you don't know that the people getting it are actually planning on attending, but if you can use intent data to narrow down your marketings to people who are going to be going to the event, then you can use a combination of advertising. You could ... there's all kinds of things you can do to really get in front of them before that event. Ed: Absolutely. For sure. And that investment is huge. That's where a lot of companies' marketing investment is going, but there's applications for the intent data before the event, during, and after. And of course there's also applications for event organizers for companies th at are organizing their own event and then opening it up to kind of parallel players. That intent data gives you ability as an event organizer to monetize for your other exhibitors. Because you can then say, "Hey, look. You're in such a such a space. We will, as part of the event package if you buy this add on, we will provide informational people that we see engaging that we believe are going to be attending the event that are particularly interested in what you're doing." So there's additional value as an organizer to monetize when you're exhibiting. Is buyer intent data GDPR compliant? Kathleen: Now, I'm sure that there are some marketers who are listening, and one of the questions that they'll have is, "What implications does GDPR have for all of this?" Because we're talking about contact level data, both data that you might be harvesting as the marketer using intent data, but you also just mentioned like event organizers sharing that data with others. So can you just talk about that for a moment? Ed: Show me two attorneys that will give you the same answer about any GDPR topic. I mean, we can certainly talk about it. There is no definitive answer. Every company has to have its own philosophy. I can tell you that we have clients in the EU that run our data the way we normally provide it. We also have clients in the EU and in the US that request that we mask certain fields in the data. So they get the job title, for instance, from which they can discern a lot of information, but they don't get the name and email address, and they still get most of the value out of it. So those are things that each company has to decide. The bottom line, we believe based on our understanding, is the data is entirely GDPR compliant as it. And because of how we harvest, what we're doing is we're watching people take action publicly online. So it's very much akin if you saw somebody comment on a blog post, on an article on Forbes or on a conversation on LinkedIn and you're a salesperson in the EU, there's nothing that prohibits you from figuring out who that person is, and reaching out, and contacting them saying, "It looks to me like this is of interest to you." So I mean, that's the closest analogy to commonly accepted sales practice that describes the data and why it's acceptable. Kathleen: Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. You're right, it's a total gray area, but I appreciate you trying to clarify that. Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: So shifting gears, I have two questions I ask all of my guests. You've been down this road before, but we're going to do it again because some time has passed. So we'll see if your answers have changed. Who do you think, either company or individual, is really kind of setting the example for what it means to do great inbound marketing these days? Ed: And I can guarantee you my answer isn't changed because I don't remember what my answers were. So I would say to that, a company called Mosquito Squad. I don't know if you've ever heard of them. Kathleen: Oh, yeah. Ed: Where I live in New England, the mosquitoes are horrible in the summer, and I get tired of ... Basically, you can't go outside for part of the year. So I got really fed up in hunting around, and they popped up, kind of typical inbound playbook, but then they have so fully integrated a helpful, and informative, and consultative approach throughout the process that made it easy to understand why to use them or what was involved and we ought to select them. Then it made it really easy to understand once we did what the process was going to be. Then they're really good about letting you know, "Okay, we're going to be there in 20 minutes. Okay, we're done. Here's what we did. Here's the invoice." I mean, it's so well integrated that not only did it make it easy to find them and learn about the service, but it makes working with them really easy too. Kathleen: Yeah, you're right about those mosquitoes in New England because I grew up in New Hampshire, and my mother used to go out to do yard work, and she literally would wear a hat that had a net that came down and like tucked into her shirt. It'd be like 90 degrees, and she'd be in long sleeves and long pants, and the pants would be tucked into her socks. It was just crazy. Ed: Right. Kathleen: So second question, getting off the mosquito topic, things change so quickly. This is a great example of that. Intent data, DSPs, most marketers really have trouble keeping up with all of it. So how do you personally keep up with everything that's changing in the world of digital marketing? Ed: Well, what I do specifically is not focus on inbound and digital marketing. I try to watch business more broadly. With general business resources, about trends in the economy, I mean there's certainly some kind of advertising and marketing related blogs that I follow and newsletters that I get from Ad Age through some others. I use a lot of Google Alerts around very specific kinds of terms because that way I'm not limited in hearing from the sources that I know about, but I'm discovering new sources as information becomes, and different perspectives become, available. I think like most people, this is a pitch for yours, podcasts are a great way to just kind of parachute in, get some ideas, see where there's an interesting episode, listen to it. You can do it while you're doing other things. So those are a great tool. Then the other thing that I do is follow a couple people, not so much because I'm so excited about the ideas they talk about but because I really love watching the way they create content and practice their craft. So I learn from seeing how folks balance all the media, and produce a lot of content, and build social following, and I just appreciate the way they do it whether or not I agree with the message that they're espousing. Kathleen: Can you name some names? Ed: Well, having said that I may not agree with the message they're espousing I got to be careful, but I mean there's some prominent marketers in the Boston area that have very large followings, that have a loudly proclaimed opinion about a lot of different things, that I think sometimes it's a little bit superficial or vapid, but they do create a lot of great content across a lot of channels. Kathleen: All right. With that caveat, come on I'm going to keep plugging. Who you got? Who you got? Ed: I think Dave Gerhardt is really interesting to watch. Kathleen: Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, you agree or disagree with anything he says, it's you can't disagree with the fact that he has successfully built a tremendous audience. Ed: Right. Kathleen: There's no two ways about it. Ed: Right. Kathleen: He actually gets mentioned a lot as a response to that first question I asked you. Yeah. Cool. Well, that's all interesting, and any particular podcasts that you are really a fan of? Ed: More general business ones. I love Business Wars. I like listening to The Knowledge Project from Shane Parrish. I like listening to some of the same ones that other people talk about, Joe Rogan where you get interesting perspectives from people of in depth interviews, history things. You know, Bonsai and all kinds of stuff. There's a lot of great podcasts out there. Kathleen: Yeah. I always love hearing what other people are listening to because there are so many out there, and I wish I had 48 hours in every day to listen to podcasts. It's a great way to learn. Ed: Like the numbers, if you compare the number of blogs to the number of podcasts, I don't remember what the numbers are, but there's like 3% the number of podcasts. So people that say that podcasting is already over the hill, I don't think that's the case. Kathleen: No. Well, it better not be. Because I'm on episode 130+ and I plan to keep going, so. Ed: You've got many more to go. Perfect. How to connect with Ed Kathleen: But then again, maybe that makes me an OG. I have no idea. This has been fun, Ed. I appreciate it, and if somebody is listening and they want to reach out to you and ask a question about intent data, or they want to learn more about intentdata.io, what's the best way for them to do that? Ed: They can email me at ed@intentdata.io, or they can go to the website intentdata.io. You know what to do next... Kathleen: Awesome. All right, I'll put those links in the show notes. And if you are listening and you have not yet taken a moment and gone to Apple Podcasts and left the podcast a review, I'm going to ask you to do that today. It's how we get found by new people. We're 130+ episodes in as we talked about, and I would really appreciate it. So if you're a regular listener in particular, take a minute and leave a review, and if you know somebody else who's doing kick ass inbound marketing work, tweet me @workmommywork because I'm always looking for new inbound marketers to interview. Kathleen: That's it for this week. Thank you so much, Ed. This has been a lot of fun having you back for a second time. Ed: Well thank you very much, Kathleen. I enjoyed it as well.

Most runners have experienced some tired, heavy legs at some point in their careers. The cause of such feelings? Accumulated fatigue. Because I'm a douche, I've gone ahead and "created" my own law related to accumulated fatigue. Follow the law? And you may be able to banish the symptoms of a build-up of fatigue for good! Check out http://DizRuns.com/821 for the blog post for today's episode. Love the show? Check out the support page for ways you can help keep the Diz Runs Radio going strong! http://dizruns.com/support Become a Patron of the Show! Visit http://Patreon.com/DizRuns to find out how. Get Your Diz Runs Radio Swag! http://dizruns.com/magnet Subscribe to the Diz Runs Radio Find Me on an Apple Device http://dizruns.com/itunes Find Me on an Android http://dizruns.com/stitcher Find Me on SoundCloud http://dizruns.com/soundcloud Please Take the Diz Runs Radio Listener Survey http://dizruns.com/survey Win a Free 16-Week Training Plan Enter at http://dizruns.com/giveaway Join The Tribe If you’d like to stay up to date with everything going on in the Diz Runs world, become a member of the tribe! The tribe gets a weekly email where I share running tips and stories about running and/or things going on in my life. To get the emails, just sign up at http://dizruns.com/join-the-tribe The tribe also has an open group on Facebook, where tribe members can join each other to talk about running, life, and anything in between. Check out the group and join the tribe at https://www.facebook.com/groups/thedizrunstribe/

The Coronavirus: I'm learning about it alongside all of you. As we watch the news stories about cities in China being quarantined, as we've seen the virus travel from country to country, as we wait to see whether this outbreak will reach disastrous proportions and death tolls. Because I'm supposed to travel to Seattle this week and Washington is the epicenter of deaths in this country, this decision has numerous personal implications. I called the nurse at UW to talk about whether I should attend my appointment and this is what I learned. Do I make a decision out of self-protection and some amount of fear? Is it foolish to proceed? If I get exposed, I am at HIGH risk to contract the virus. Will I be in spaces where I'm likely to be exposed? Are you impacted by the coronavirus? How? What would you do?

Episode 6 - Party Anthems.  This episode Becky and Matthew talk about what makes a Party Anthem.  Is it the repetitive lyrics?  A good dance beat?  Or perhaps just a call to get drunk and rowdy.  One song is from the 1987 (guess who's pick that was) and the other song is from 2009.                                                                                  PARTY ANTHEMS BECKY 0:07  Welcome to what the lyric, the podcast that confirms Yeah, that actually made it to radio.   BECKY 0:22  Well hello everybody welcome to what the lyric, today we're talking party anthems. Again I took that to mean any song that everyone will sing along to. Or like the end all be all karaoke because there's always those karaoke songs that everyone busts out or the end of the night the drunkies all sing together slurred speech and all   MATTHEW 0:50  Now tell me what is your familiarity with parties slash karaoke?   BECKY 0:56  Uh, not really karaoke so much but I have I've been to a number of parties in my day, mostly in my younger days. I don't do like the parties, you know, much.   MATTHEW 1:07 You don’t get swasted?   BECKY 1:09 Oh god, no. If I get wasted now it takes me like a week to recover. We went to go, a friend of mine and I went to go see a show. We each had one drink. The show is on a Thursday night when it was like a beer because we're not that kind of people. Show is on a Thursday night, we both walked into work the next day, and we're like, we should have taken today off.   BECKY 1:31  That's how bad it was. So yeah,   MATTHEW 1:35  Well, well done   BECKY 1:37   Back in the day. I did. I did boot and rally once.   MATTHEW 1:41  No idea what that means.   BECKY 1:43  Oh, so when you boot and rally means you've thrown up. And then you just get right back on the horse and start drinking again.   MATTHEW 1:50  Oh, I see the horse boots ya and you rally,   BECKY 1:55  You boot as in throw up and then you rally and you go back party. That was also the same time that I said, I could totally do a triathlon and then ended up doing having to do a triathlon. Not that same day, but like two years later I yeah.   MATTHEW 2:13  That’s pretty rough.   BECKY 2:16  Yeah, that was about 10 years ago.   MATTHEW 2:23  Nope I’m not a party-er I’m a big old square generally. I just value sleep entirely too much. I love the taste alcohol. And like I'm a generally fun drunk, but my God, that for sleeping is like totally the worst. I'm trying to think of like the worst drunk I've ever been. Well, couple events.   BECKY 2:46  I know. I was like, oh I got a few.   MATTHEW 2:49  I think the dumbest one. I think the one that really encapsulates how I party may actually shape the song that I've chosen is the fact that I got horrifically drunk at Fourth of July like a couple of years ago, also is very stupid.   BECKY 3:04  Please tell me Star Spangled Banner is your song?   MATTHEW 3:06  Yes. No, it's what's the one that everyone has to listen to every Fourth of July. Born in the USA?   BECKY 3:13  Yeah. Oh, fabulous.   MATTHEW 3:14 Born in the USA. But really what happened, I am incredibly pale. I lose water like nobody's business there was a rooftop party. They had no water, just alcohol. So for the entire day, I had no water and was only drinking alcohol until like midnight and I'm like, Why do I feel so ill? That's weird. Oh, I'm incredibly dehydrated. And you know, thank God, but I really, as I laid on that cold bathroom tile floor. I was like, I'm going to die here.   BECKY 3:50  Ah, that was me with kidney stones. So I know is the cold floor. And I'm going to die here. But yes, I feel you.   BECKY 3:59   I feel very sane and I appreciate.   BECKY 4:02  Similar pain Yeah.Oh God never kidney stones.   BECKY 4:09   I know I have gone last time so I’m very curious to know.   BECKY 4:15  So I will say aside from the signing up for a triathlon drunk, the boot and rally drunk, probably the second most popular time is when I said we were in Australia. I'm totally naming my first kid after this club and the night we were there was kinky disco, which is now I have a cat by the name of kinky disco.   MATTHEW 4:39  I had no idea.   BECKY 4:41  You did not know that. Yes, I my I'd gone with a friend of mine who eventually became my roommate. And we, I had said, Oh my God, this place is so great. I'm totally naming my first kid after that, and then we got a cat, Jimbo. And then she said Jimbo was lonely. And somehow convinced me to go to one of those pet adoption things and then she said you can name it whatever you want. And she picked out Kinks original name was pumpkin. blech, well Yeah. And so we get her in the car and she goes, what are you going to name her? And I was like, you know what's coming and she said, “No I don't know.. oh shit.” and I went kinky disco. And so for roughly 16 years kinky disco has been and she's lived up to her name. So that's, that's probably the two times the two really good times I've been.   MATTHEW 5:41  Then I cannot wait to know what song you chose based purely on the times that you've been schwasted.   BECKY 5:48  So I picked I'm going to just start reading the lyrics it’s from eighty eight.   MATTHEW 5:54  Oh, again preconception for me.   BECKY 5:56  You might know it from the movie. It was in a movie   MATTHEW 6:00  Would giving me the movie title give it away.   BECKY 6:02  It might   MATTHEW 6:02   Okay then don’t   BECKY 6:03  But you might have also not seen it because you're young enough where you might - Footloose which I saw so many times in theatre. When I wake up well, I know I'm going to be I'm going to be the man who wakes up next to you.   MATTHEW 6:18  Yep. Now oh wait is it I forgot where the are there parentheses in the title?   BECKY 6:27  there are.  When I go out yeah I know I'm going to be I'm going to be a man who goes along with you   MATTHEW 6:33  The proclaimers   BECKY 6:34  Yes   MATTHEW 6:36  I'm like is it I’m gonna be in parentheses 500 miles.    BECKY 6:37  I'm going to be 500 miles Yeah, yeah. And I love this song mainly because it only came to me like at 5pm last night and we are recording at 3:30pm I was driving from doing my errands and this song came on and I first outing do when I wake up will I’m going to be I'm going to be the body's waked up a few because everyone does a shitty Scottish accent. And then   BECKY 7:09  Once it gets to the chorus it's the but I would walk 500 miles, you know, however, I did every version of that accent through the entire song the whole drive home. I'm sure people were like what is happening in that car?   MATTHEW 7:29  That woman is having a stroke   BECKY 7:32  But I would walk 500 miles. I love it. I love that. I can't you can't not do it. I also again, I'm going to when I'm,  if I get drunk Well, I know I'm going to be the man who gets drunk next to you. You won’t . I'm going to say it right now. You won't. I don't even know what haver up is. I have to look that up. Peter. I wish I could call you right now, but that would be rude to ask what haver up is because I know,   MATTHEW 8:05  He probably knows.   BECKY 8:06   I know he told me one time. And then you know he’d  walk 500 miles and he'd walked 500 more, just to be the man who'd walk 1000 miles. Why don't you just go with I would walk 1000 miles to be the man why’d you have to add the 500? Maybe because they were twins and there were two of them.   MATTHEW 8:27  Ah, that's true. Or did they know that, was it Vanessa Carlton was going to come along with 1000 miles?   BECKY 8:34   I have some issue with that song. That’s a personal issue that can be discussed off mic. Yeah, I uh oh, god, it just that song in a song just makes me happy. Oh, it's talking, haver is talking foolishly or babbling. So if you're talking nonsense, I'm going to be the man talking nonsense next to you. You're Scottish I can't understand a lick of what you're saying anyways, so it doesn't really matter.   BECKY 9:10  I also like that when he says to fall down at your door so he's walked 1000 miles   MATTHEW 9:16 and died   BECKY 9:17  and then just dropped because walking 1000 miles is a is a good distance. But I also like that he says when I'm working Yeah, I know I'm going to be I'm going to be the man who's working hard for you. And when the money comes in for the work, I do all pass almost every penny on to you.   MATTHEW 9:40  Okay, well that's just being smart.   BECKY 9:41   Just got to buy new shoes. If he's walking 500 miles you got to replace those things every so often.   MATTHEW 9:46  I think that is reasonable...   BECKY 9:48  Yep But I honestly, I spent the whole song doing But I would walk 500 miles. And I would walk 500 more. And then I would also duh duh duh da myself so the car doing a call repeat to myself so I'd be like duh duh duh da and then I kind of lean over a little bit further and be like duh duh duh da in my car while driving, so yes,   MATTHEW 10:27  This one's going to be hard to rate just because it's like, I can't hate this song.   BECKY 10:31  You can't cause everyone sings it. Everybody's going to wake up.   BECKY 10:36  No I’m going to be, I’m gonna be the man next to you. It’s the way that they sing it. And I love it so much and every time that I hear it   MATTHEW 10:47  I mean, there are some bad lyrics that I have just so much tremendous goodwill toward it.   BECKY 10:51  It’s so it's so good. And then that the whole head bob thing. They're like chickens pecking at the ground the way they're   MATTHEW 10:59  Like Scottish   BECKY 11:00  Just furiously moving their necks and no, maybe it's a Scottish thing. I don't know.   MATTHEW 11:06  One can assume.   BECKY 11:07  Oh my god, I just it makes me happy.   MATTHEW 11:12  I love that pick.   BECKY 11:14  I also like, I just saw this one and if I grow old and then in parentheses, apparently the other brothers correcting the one when I grow old.   MATTHEW 11:23  Oh, wow.   BECKY 11:24  Well I know I'm going to be I'm going to be the man who's growing old with you. Cute.   MATTHEW 11:29  Yeah, but he's going to die by the time he gets there.   BECKY 11:31   I know he's fall down at your door. Uh, yeah. duh duh duh da   BECKY 11:39  You know, if you were to just yell that out the window. Somebody else would be like duh duh duh da   MATTHEW 11:46  They think they're a wedding. They feel like for whatever reason. Oh, yeah, this is another wedding song.   BECKY 11:52  This is Benny. This is from Benny in June. That's where I remember seeing it. When it became really big. I bet you also if I yelled when I wake up   MATTHEW 11:53 Oh yeah,   BECKY 11:57 somebody else would be like, Well, I know I'm going to be. Yeah. Well, I know I'm going to be I'm going to be the man who wakes up next to you.   MATTHEW 12:11  Oh, that's phenomenal.   BECKY 12:13  That’s why I'm not an actor. I can't do accents at all   MATTHEW 12:16  I disagree. I think that's one hell of an accent.   BECKY 12:22  But I would walk … All comes from back in the throat.   MATTHEW 12:25  I think the Scots would be inclined to agree.   BECKY 12:29  It's almost like I'm about to throw up but I'm choking it back.   MATTHEW 12:34  From all the drinking you did.   BECKY 12:36  Yeah. And if I haver up, which I would assume is throw up but apparently it's talked gibberish.   MATTHEW 12:46  Not as well don't. Well, but if you haver up, doesn't that mean that you're   BECKY 12:53  Drunk?   MATTHEW 12:54  Yeah, I was like, you're just spewing nonsense. I was like, that just sounds like you drunk.   BECKY 12:59  He already starting with the drunk he's said when I wake up and then when he goes out,   MATTHEW 13:04  Oh yeah,   BECKY 13:05   I'm going to be drunk and then he's haver and   MATTHEW 13:08  I mean that makes sense is a logical progression.   BECKY 13:10  It was I mean they at least work that one out pretty good yeah da da dun da da dun da dun dun dun dun dun   MATTHEW 13:17  I would, I give this a four. If I was like the least this is a four. You didn't try but then again my god you didn't need to.  you have solved…   BECKY 13:30  It’s really right there because everyone does this shitty Scottish accent but is nothing like these guys. Maybe this is my Halloween costume.   MATTHEW 13:39 Oh please do.   Last year's was hard to be beat. Oh, oh, I could probably I could figure it out. I mean, I did big ang last year. That's a tough one to beat. Yeah, I don't have to. I would have to answer the phone at work. That accent? When I wake up.  I can't even do it. I got to listen to them sing it.   MATTHEW 14:06  You can do it to the beat.   BECKY 14:07   And only do it to this song. That would be hilarious. Can I help you - duh duh duh da?   MATTHEW 14:15  And the other person's like, yes duh duh duh da.   BECKY 14:18  I will only help you if you can answer this duh duh duh da   MATTHEW 14:23  Here's a riddle when I wake up, and they just pause and wait for them to see a can answer.   BECKY 14:29  Well, I know I'm going to be?  I can't help you. I cannot help you. If you don't get this duh duh duh da Click.   MATTHEW 14:39  That'll have to be a ringtone.   BECKY 14:40  Oh my god. It might I might make it my ringtone now cut I honestly entertained myself for I don't know the songs. What? Three and a half minutes.   MATTHEW 14:50  Oh, well, it's perfect. It's also an I don't know if this is a decent segue, but this it will be a segue nonetheleast. I see the repetition between ours is like a good match. Yeah. And what is slightly infuriating is like last time did MacArthur Park broke out of the 2008? Till, like, 2008 streak back in 2009.     BECKY 15:10  Oh, right. Okay.   MATTHEW 15:11  Very slight distinction.   BECKY 15:20  All right. Well, I broke out of the me to movement.   MATTHEW 15:23  That is true.   BECKY 15:25  I mean, he just got drunk and was little, like, was a little stalker-y   MATTHEW 15:27  but that maybe they were in a long term relationship and already ready. He doesn't have any miles. he did walk there.   BECKY 15:36  That could be it.   MATTHEW 15:37   So I chose one. And the title is the chorus. And its one word, which I feel like is unfair, and potentially too many clues. But I've tried to find lyrics that are not   BECKY 15:52  2009   MATTHEW 15:53 Yeah.   BECKY 15:55   Is that a band or just a singer?   MATTHEW 15:57  Band?   BECKY 15:58  Okay. All right.   MATTHEW 16:01  And featuring someone but honestly I didn't realize who is featuring. It starts off with if you not drunk ladies and gentlemen get ready to get fucked up.   BECKY 16:13  2009?   MATTHEW 16:16  Yes, and I can't say the next line because includes the band's name   BECKY 16:18  okay?   MATTHEW 16:19  But the person who's featuring his little john so then they say, you know what, lil’ john Yeah.   BECKY 16:27  Get down for what is it that like turned out for what? No.   MATTHEW 16:32  No,  All of the alcoholics were you at let's go   BECKY 16:38  Oh so good so far   MATTHEW 16:40  right? So it's fantastic. When I walk in the club, all eyes on me. I'm with the party rock crew.   BECKY 16:48 Oh, is it the...   MATTHEW 16:50  All drinks are free   BECKY 16:51  It the father son duo a… Why can't I think of the name of them?   MATTHEW 16:57   I don't think their father son.   BECKY 17:00   Oh god, why can't I think of who they are? They had the party anthem Song.   MATTHEW 16:57  Yes.   BECKY 17:00  Sexy and you know it? Yeah, it’s a father song I believe.   MATTHEW 17:11  Are you serious?   BECKY 17:12  I will look it up while you're while you're continuing.   MATTHEW 17:14 You're correct. It is LMFAO,   BECKY 17:15 yep.   MATTHEW 17:18  And what I thought about going with, Party Rock Anthem, but I was like, No, no, if we're talking party rock anthems or party anthems, that's just too That's too on the nose. So I went with the one that goes Shot shot shot shots shot shot shots. Yeah.   BECKY 17:38  Oh, it's an uncle and a nephew.   MATTHEW 17:41 Okay, well, that's basically    BECKY 17:42  a little better. Yeah. Yeah.   MATTHEW 17:45  And I mean, it is a party song everyone's trying to get wasted.   BECKY 17:50 Oh, yeah   MATTHEW 17:51  everyone, easily you sing along party for your drunk. All you have to do is yell there are no music to it. You just yell shot, shot, shot, shot, shot, and shot, shot.   BECKY 18:00   I also like when I called them up the first photo is the one guy's wearing a shirt that says I'm in Miami bitch. But then it says performing in Fort Wayne, Indiana.   MATTHEW 18:11  You know what's to say? Like dress for the job you want? Yeah, for the job.   BECKY 18:15  Here we go.   MATTHEW 18:16  He wants to be in Miami.   BECKY 18:17  Oh my god. Yeah.   BECKY 18:19   Probably.   BECKY 18:20  Oh my god. Yeah. Who else was in this who?   MATTHEW 18:23  Well, little john is featured but I just love that. Like they lean in hard to all this. all of the alcoholics Where are you at? They know their audience got to love that. And also, they're already saying like, even if you're not an alcoholic, if you're not drunk, ladies and gentlemen, get ready to get fucked up. And I'm like,   BECKY 18:41  Yeah, this is happening.   MATTHEW 18:43  All drinks are free with the party rock crew, which I'm like, that’s very kind of you. Then they go into the first round of shots, shots. Shots, so, perfect. But then it starts to get you know where Becky didn't Wade into the me to movement. Yeah, this one certainly does because the next round says are you ready? Are you ready? Oh, they stopped us for us. Okay,   BECKY 19:13  Thank you Seattle PD.   MATTHEW 19:17  The ladies...   BECKY 19:18  Probably arresting someone outside the building. It’s fine.   MATTHEW 19:20  They're already here. The ladies love us when we pour shots and I was like, Yeah, they're for free. That's fine. They need an excuse to suck our cocks   BECKY 19:37  also probably true. I was like Can I just say me, written with his nephew? That's all I'm saying. Like   MATTHEW 19:43  That really changes the song for me. Well, actually, I mean, yeah, honestly, I didn't realize that was lyric. So this is this was a transformative experience for me. Because I'm like, they need an excuse to suck our cocks and I was like I don't know many men, but I don't think there was there ever is a man who needs an excuse from one to be like, Can I suck your dick?I think that if...   BECKY 20:14  I won't I don't know anyone who turned that down.   MATTHEW 20:16  Straight forward was like, hey, put this out here,   BECKY 20:20  Like a little attraction maybe didn't have to be fully attracted to you may be like, yeah, okay,   MATTHEW 20:26  Fair. Yeah, I'll take it anyway,   BECKY 20:28  You’re right. Yep. Sure.   MATTHEW 20:30  But then they don't answer whether or not they accept it. They just say we came to get drunk. How about you? I'm like, ooh, well, all are drunk. Why are you giving them...?   BECKY 20:40  Probably safe to assume accepted. I’m just saying.   MATTHEW 20:43  I think that's   BECKY 20:44  Safe to assume   MATTHEW 20:45  Accurate   BECKY 20:46  Yeah.   MATTHEW 20:46  Ah. And then it's so you know, now where am I alcoholics Let me see a hands up and I was like, fair, anyone who's here probably schwasted particularly if it's at a wedding   BECKY 20:58  And then this way, they can pick their pockets. to pay for the booze   MATTHEW 21:03  Oh, absolutely. Oh, wait, also. I mean, it's more just like I love giving people drinks and like, that's a very sweet sentence.   BECKY 21:12 Yeah.  That’s lovely of you.   MATTHEW 21:13  Also benefit oral from them being wasted. Yeah, which is uncomfortable. And then even worse, but very much on par is that the women come around every time I'm pouring. Well, that just seems accurate. I'd want a free drink. Their panties hit the ground every time I give them shots.   BECKY 21:34  It could just be that by some weird kind of odd universe thing. That that's the only place that elastic just breaks and like that’s why  their panties. Like the trees of mystery, or you go to one of those places. Yeah. Yeah, maybe that's what it is. It's like the club version of like, the trees of mystery. That's the only place where everyone's like elastic breaks in there. Yeah,   MATTHEW 22:06   Which I think it's true. And then you know, it. Shots I thought it was just an up heart like upbeat song about people wanting to get drunk. I think that's true. But then the final some of the final lines are now Sam fucked up and then responses. I'm fucked up. Fantastic. But then they're saying, I'm fucked up. I and then response I'm fucked up. So you're like I get I get the gist here and then they say I'm trying to fuck. Everyone responds I'm trying to fuck. I'm trying to fuck. I'm trying to fuck.   BECKY 22:42  So you picked the me to movement song   MATTHEW 22:45  I did. I Sheryl Sandberg’d it? Where was she the one who leaned in?   BECKY 22:48   I can't remember.   MATTHEW 22:50  I think its Sandberg San something. It's a Sheryl. It's not the one who wrote into the wild or whatever. Oh,   BECKY 23:01  Yeah, see, they're calling response isn't nearly as good as duh duh duh da .    MATTHEW 23.10  Yeah, no, I'm inclined agree with you.    BECKY 23:12  you can get better than duh duh duh da or a really awful Scottish accent.   MATTHEW 23:15  But I would argue that if outside this one day you were to yell Shots, shots, shots.   BECKY 23:19  Oh, yeah. Especially outside this window, because there's a bar right downstairs.   MATTHEW 23:24  Everyone would can either chime in, or when you stop them go everybody.   BECKY 23:31  Yeah. Yeah.   BECKY 23:33  But again, there is a bar downstairs   MATTHEW 23:36  It’s a biased sample.   BECKY 23:37  Yeah. Yeah, I bet you we probably could. I bet you. Yeah. Yeah,   MATTHEW 23:43   That’s what I'm thinking. So I mean...   BECKY 23:46   I think we're both equally good. I say mine's more a little bit on the fun, wholesome side of things. So it's less on the yuck scale for me.   MATTHEW 23:58  I agree. I mean, there both probably I would even bump mine to a three.   BECKY 24:05  Yeah,   MATTHEW 24:05  It’s it. It cannot be a four. Yeah, I'm trying to fuck and also women need an excuse to suck my cock.   BECKY 24:13   I think what makes mine on the yuck scale is the people who sing along like I did with the shitty shitty accent along with it. So the I would walk 500 miles and I would walk that makes it shitty? or yucky, but really, it makes it a whole lot fun. So I would say this is like a one depending on which drunk tries to do there   MATTHEW 24:47  Oh wait...   BECKY 24:48  There accent   MATTHEW 24:49  As our scale change,   BECKY 24:50  I can't remember now where I'm with. It's low. It's a low Yeah, factor.   MATTHEW 24:57  Like Yeah, low Yikes. Lower Yeah.   BECKY 25:01  Yikes Yeah. Oh my god.   MATTHEW 25:04  We haven't had caffeine okay. Yeah, that's   BECKY 25:06  That’s exactly what's happened I just realized I have not had caffeine all day. Geez No wonder.   MATTHEW 25:12  How are you alive? It's nearly 4pm   BECKY 25:15  Considering at work I drink death wish coffee. It is difficult.   MATTHEW 25:22  You're going to crash at 6pm.   BECKY 25:24  I probably will in the middle of that opera.   BECKY 25:27  Please watch it please watch....   BECKY 25:28   Paris Hilton.   BECKY 25:31  Yeah, uh, yeah. Oh my god. That's why I was like, why am I yawning? No death wish.   BECKY 25:39  Oh death wish coffee. If you want to sponsor us too, I'd really appreciate that. Oh, because I tots love your coffee. And I'm from the same area. So let's chat death wish   SPEAKER  25:53  Give us a call. You don't know our number. But you know our website.   BECKY 25:56  You've got the website, which is whatthelyric.com   MATTHEW 26:02  Fantastic Yeah,   BECKY 26:03  Now do we know do we know what...?   BECKY 26:05   I can't remember what it was next time? That's awful   MATTHEW 26:10  So TB TBD   BECKY 26:12 I left the house clearly no death wish Coffee, no headphones,  I don't even know what happened how I got here .Yeah, so......   MATTHEW 26:22  We’re hoping you're not having a collective stroke like we are but   BECKY 26:25  You might be   MATTHEW 26:26  But if you are hopefully you're enjoying it. We will have more episodes to come.   BECKY 26:31   I think we have what three left that we decided.   MATTHEW 26:35  Yes.   BECKY 26:35  Oh boy.   MATTHEW 26:36   Let's take a look. Well we'll post it on the web.   BECKY 26:39  Yes. Well I’ll all up? I still have to put the picture up of the rock aka.   MATTHEW 26:45  I did look that up and can confirm it is you’re....   BECKY 26:51  Yeah. I almost want to shout out to the rock and say are you guys related?  Could you confirm or deny Please.   MATTHEW 27:01   I think he'd appreciate it. If he ever saw....   BECKY 27:02   I think he went to he seems like a guy's got a good sense of humour about himself. I mean, you'd have to if you work for the WWE/F, whatever they are now, says the girl who went when one year for Valentine's Day. So amazing. It was the best Valentine's Day I've ever had. So that has to tell you about my dating life. And I was not seeing anyone at the time. My friend Ken took me. Thank you, Ken. You are the best ever. Yeah, we had seats that were like two rows back from the actual ring.Epic.   MATTHEW 27:36   That is phenomenal.   BECKY 27:38   It was amazing. I yeah. Again, haven't had a better Valentine's Day.   MATTHEW 27:45  And never will. And would argue that you can't top up.   BECKY 27:49  Now. You really can't. It's   BECKY 27:51  It was your top.   BECKY 27:54  Yeah. And on that note,   MATTHEW 27:56  Well, thank you all.   BECKY 27:58  We will talk to you again. Soon  

A brief update on COVID-19 and type 1 diabetes recorded March 11, 2020. Stacey talks to Dr. Satish Garg, an endocrinologist at the Barbara Davis Center for Diabetes. Dr. Garg talks about what we know right now, what he's telling patients and advice for anyone with T1D. Find out more about Coronavirus: CDC Info JDRF  Beyond Type 1 DiaTribe ----- Check out Stacey's new book: The World's Worst Diabetes Mom! Join the Diabetes Connections Facebook Group! Sign up for our newsletter here ----- Use this link to get one free download and one free month of Audible, available to Diabetes Connections listeners! ----- Get the App and listen to Diabetes Connections wherever you go! Click here for iPhone      Click here for Android Episode Transcription: Stacey Simms  0:00 Diabetes Connections is brought to you by One Drop created for people with diabetes by people who have diabetes. By Real Good Foods real food you feel good about eating and by Dexcom take control of your diabetes and live life to the fullest with Dexcom   Announcer  0:20 this is Diabetes Connections with Stacey Simms.   Stacey Simms  0:26 Welcome back to another episode of the podcast really glad to have you along. And once again, we are doing a short episode on Coronavirus and type one diabetes. I'm your host Stacey Simms. And you know after we put out an episode at the end of February about this, I heard from a lot of people who asked me to keep updates coming. Now as I have said before podcasting isn't really the best medium for breaking news. You can listen to this episode immediately as it comes out. You could be listening to it weeks or months years down the line. But I do think we can use the podcast here to get some good information out. So in the limited way that we can, that's what I'm trying to do. This episode is going to be on the shorter side, maybe 15 minutes of the interview with an endocrinologist just sort of talking about where we are right now and answering some specific questions from listeners. We will have a regular Diabetes Connections, interview and show next week. I'm going to come back after the interview and I'll talk a little bit more about the show going forward. I am recording this on March 11. The same day the interview with Dr. Satish Garg was recorded, obviously, the information may change. That's why I'm telling you the date. Please make sure you check the links in the show notes. They are on the episode homepage, or in the show notes. If you're listening on an app. It's kind of hard to find sometimes, but most podcast apps will have a place that says details or more information and that Where I'm putting the updated links, the ones that will automatically update when it comes to the coronavirus. And one more thing, you're going to hear Dr. Garg mentioned people with type one diabetes as having compromised immune systems. I did press him on this off the air and he says he uses that term to talk about people who have an autoimmune disorder like Type One Diabetes because he says, once you have one autoimmune disease, you're likely to get more like celiac disease or Addison's disease or other auto immune issues. He said, and you will hear him say this, it does not mean that people with type one diabetes are more likely to get sick from viruses like the flu, or COVID 19. With all due respect, I think it was a confusing way to talk about autoimmune conditions. And if you've listened to the show, a compromised immune system is not how anybody has talked about it before. So I did think that was worth pointing out to you. All right here is my interview. It is with Dr. Satish Garg of the Barbara Davis Center for Diabetes. Dr. Garg, thank you so much for spending some time with me. I know you're not only seeing patients but you're trying to reassure patients that I'm sure are calling in about the situation right now. how busy is your office at the moment? Are you fielding a lot of worried calls?   Dr. Satish Garg  3:24 Very many. I mean, my staff is swamped and getting calls and wanting us to write letters because they have Type One Diabetes should they go to work? And not only me and my emails are also we have nine different providers on the adult side here at the Barbara Davis center for diabetes and so many educators and all of them are swamped with these emails and text messages they're getting from patients.   Stacey Simms 3:52 So what are you telling patients who are asking if they should go into work?   Dr. Satish Garg  3:56 We primarily tell them to go on to these websites. JDRF has created a nice website giving guidelines for people with type one diabetes and also tell them to go on our website we posted some through University of Colorado and to coronavirus.gov and that is to the CDC. And if they have some degree of comorbidities, for example, if they are older, older than, you know, 60 or 65, and they have heart disease, hypertension, obviously they have diabetes, they may want to avoid places where there are larger crowds, or they may want to avoid unnecessarily getting in contact with somebody, for example, going for rallies and things like that people need to avoid so general precautions nothing specific to people with type one diabetes, except if they have comorbidities. We do recommend people to get the flu shot but they are specifically not at high risk of getting Any of these infections if their glucose control is good. But their immune system is compromised, because they have autoimmunity, it does get confusing. So the bottom line is that people have tried to maintain their glucose control as best they can to avoid hyperglycemia and avoid wide glucose excursions. And those are the general precautions. And of course, if their glucose control is not good, then they might be more prone to get bacterial infections and other infections, but their immune system is not normal, quote, unquote, on a healthy individual like you and I, who don't have type one diabetes, our immune system is different than the ones with Type One Diabetes. So it makes sense.   Stacey Simms  5:45 Yes, absolutely. I totally understand where you're coming from with that. But bottom line, good glucose control, you are not more likely to get COVID 19 if you have type one diabetes. You said right before we started taping that you had just seen an 84 year old patient with type one, what's your advice for that person?   Dr. Satish Garg  6:05 So we have more than about 400 patients who are older than 60-65 who have type majority of them have type one diabetes and some have type two, but they are requiring insulin therapy. Anybody who is in that age group, I always advise them especially many of them have comorbidities hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, heart disease. So those individuals I tell them specifically avoid, I'm not asking them to quarantine. Of course, if they have dry cough, and they start running fever, they should self quarantine, do advise them not to travel because right now, we don't know how the aircraft and what have you are being cleaned. Avoid large crowds. So just the general precautions that CDC advises that's what we are recommending to go People go they are definitely at high risk, one because of the age, second type one diabetes. And third, they have majority of them have some degree of comorbidities.   Stacey Simms  7:11 You know, one of the questions that we see a lot is, how can I prepare to be self quarantined? You know, a person with diabetes or household that has a person with type one diabetes in it. What are you recommending people keep on hand for two weeks, 30 days?   Dr. Satish Garg  7:28 Well, I think there might have been an overreaction to that people are slightly overreacting. Oh my God, we might suddenly be locked down, like Italy's logged on, like part of China was locked down. I hope that doesn't happen. So people are going on ordering insulin, masks and what have you. We don't anticipate that for example, in the state of Colorado, we only had about 15 to 20 cases now having a tip that they haven't tested a whole lot once you get a lot of people tested that One will really know the hard numbers right now, unfortunately, we do not have the hard numbers to how many people have been really affected by this disease. But we just give general advice to these individual.   Stacey Simms  8:15 You mentioned people trying to stock up on insulin. You know, one of the problems is a lot of insurance companies will not pay for that much, right, people are trying to get the prescriptions renewed. Are you running into that same thing,   Dr. Satish Garg  8:26 most of our patients would have about three months of supply, and if some of the insurance companies won't give them luckily for us at the Barbara Davis center, we have so many samples, we just give them one or two extra pens or vials so that they don't have to worry about it. Again, I'm hoping that this won't be a major event. Let's hope as the temperature turns around, that this virus will be just like what was Spanish Flu back in 1918. That will go through the cycle, but we don't know that a lot of people most of us Do not know the exact cause of this particular virus.   Stacey Simms  9:03 I will defer to you as the medical professional, but you're hoping it's like the Spanish Flu of 1918? That killed an awful lot of people.   Dr. Satish Garg  9:11 Well, but the Times have changed. You're right, that killed millions of people. No, we're not seeing anywhere close to that. Because what healthcare was 1918 100 years later is night and day. For example, back 40 years ago, I used to tell all my type ones, you're not going to live beyond 35 to 40 years of age. Today, I tell all of them, you're going to reach 80-90 years of age, I'm not aiming at 100. But you're going to reach nearly full potential of your life expectancy. So times have changed healthcare quality and what is available had changed night and day. So I think it'll be unfair to say that we're going to see those sort of mortality rates, but we saw back in 1918 because of the health care standards that are changed dramatically.   Stacey Simms  10:01 Um, you know, another listener of mine, I'm reading you some questions that I took from my listeners. And one of them had asked that there are some studies that people with type one have worse outcomes after major events like heart attacks, because of the autoimmune issues that people with type one already have. So she's concerned about that with Corona virus. Is there any indication? I know it's still early that one of the reasons that it kills people is because it does affect the immune system.   Dr. Satish Garg  10:32 So here's the problem, Stacy with that we do not have data to say that affect anything right now we have so few deaths in the US or even worldwide, and leave alone people with type one diabetes now convert to the best of my knowledge. None of the patients with type one diabetes has died. But again, that may be what I know of the numbers. Again, we do not have any for example here, the Barbara Davis center. We don't have any patient with the corona virus, and they have a significant number just like any other clinic of comorbidities. But we don't have any such problem right now. We are telling people in general to avoid travel for example, please don't be on a cruise ship that is a living source of petri dish that you're going to be definitely there is even 1% chance that you can avoid that you should avoid going on a cruise ship. Now, regarding other travel, the University of Colorado has already banned all our personal and domestic and international travel. So some common sense is to be taken into con in the sense if you really don't have to travel anywhere. avoid that. That this thing's bad. Through, hopefully just like a flu virus, and over time, it will all go away, we'll hopefully find a vaccine. And this will be a thing of the past. But right now, there is too much unknown, especially in patients with type one diabetes.   Stacey Simms  12:14 All right, so I have a question for you from Julia, one of my listeners who is actually a flight attendant, so she says, I have no one to ask this question. I don't know if you'll be able to answer it, but we'll give it a try. She says I fly internationally to London. I do everything I should to avoid getting it but I have accepted is likely I will get COVID 19. When this happens, and I'm told to self quarantine, unless it's very life threatening. She says, What should she do for herself in a mild case scenario? So here's the question a person with type one who does get this and is not having a life threatening incident of it. What should they do?   Dr. Satish Garg  12:54 I would do self quarantine. Make sure you have enough insulin, fluids and whatever else necessities of day to day life you need. Yeah, they should be no different course to the best of our knowledge. Again, as you asked me earlier, the effect on diabetes, But again, we have no data that anybody with type one diabetes who is well controlled, behave any differently than the ones who don't have type one diabetes. So, General precautions, you got mild cough, small fever, self quarantine, and you should do fine, just like you would do it for a regular flu   Stacey Simms  13:33 and your regular sick day plan that everybody should have their endocrinologist in ketones, that sort of thing.   Dr. Satish Garg 13:39 Yeah. Great.   Stacey Simms  13:40 You know, we've said well controlled several times, and I know every one is different. And I almost hate to ask this question, having a child with type one for 13 years. So I think I know the answer, but I'll ask it anyway. When you mean well controlled, is there a number again, knowing that everybody's different? Is it an A one C of 7.5? Is it a Is it an in range? The time in range number, you know, when do we start worrying about well controlled type one diabetes, we know an A1C of 14 isn't going to cut it.   Dr. Satish Garg  14:08 So there are many ways here, as you rightly said, for example, somebody at the age of 70 or 80, I probably don't want their A1Cs to be in the 7s, because they have lived their life. They don't have any significant comorbidities. Why don't you just take it easy and avoid the risk of hyperglycemia. Someday in the teenagers 30s and 40s, you probably want to me one sees around seven, with a time in range of 65 to 70%. That's our goal. 70% of our patients use some sort of a continuous glucose monitor, which is what we recommend and that is true for everybody who is at risk of getting Corona virus. That is one advice I would definitely give them that they should go on a continuous glucose monitor if they don't have one just because when you're sick, your blood sugars are To be higher that you need to be rather than having to finger prick every five minutes. Why don't you have a continuous glucose monitor, preferably a Dexcom g six because that is far more accurate as compared to the average Libra, which is cheaper. However most insurance companies pay and thus you can continuously be monitored and adjust your insulin dose accordingly. Rather than having to prick yourself 10 times a day. That's the only advice I would make change, especially to the flight attendant. Also, if she's not using a CGM, I would strongly recommend that to use as one.   Stacey Simms  15:36 It's interesting when you mentioned cost. I did get a question and I know it varies state to state. I know you're a doctor, not an insurance expert. But do you know when a governor declares a state of emergency, you know, in North Carolina, our governor has recently done that it is mostly about federal funding. It's not about emergencies in the street. I think most people recognize that by now. Is there any leeway for people To get extra supplies to be able to pay for things at the pharmacy, like a Dexcom?   Dr. Satish Garg  16:09 Yeah. I mean, I wish I had an answer for that. The only thing I would say is, if that scenario happens, I'm sure we can get a special prior authorization. This is a scenario that nobody has seen or confronted with. So we don't know answers to many of the questions you're asking. However, if one is facing that situation, we could definitely look into it and get a prior authorization for that individual.   Stacey Simms  16:36 Has there been any information coming out of you know, China or Italy or elsewhere, where they've been dealing with this for longer about people with diabetes and about how it reacts with COVID 19. I know when we say diabetes, that they lump everybody in there as one part to separate it, but have you been able to parse anything   Dr. Satish Garg  16:55 and that's what I was going to tell you next one in China. According to To quote unquote, what they say, Type One Diabetes is rare. I don't know to what extent is that rare, they just don't have the information on that attack. Secondly, they lump all diabetes, type one, type two, type two, who has a lot more comorbidity is a very different ballgame falls into those individuals who are more vulnerable and who are elderly. So I don't think those criteria may fit. So we don't have any data to that effect, specifically, type one diabetes.   Stacey Simms  17:30 What are you all doing in your office? As you said, You're seeing patients, you're they're talking to me today? What are you doing to stay safe?   Dr. Satish Garg  17:38 Just the general precautions, asked my staff to make sure they clean all the clinic rooms, we have like 44 exam rooms, clean all the exam rooms, surfaces and whatnot. And again, we've been lucky. None of our patients have yet been at least reported to have any of these coronavirus to so far be unlucky but who knows when you Going to be confronted, I'm sure you must have heard there was a meeting in Boston, where there were 200 biotech people, and I believe 17 or 20 of them have come down with the corona virus. So that is obviously put issue, whether we should have these large gatherings at all. And I would just lastly say to all patients with type one diabetes, just take care of your diabetes, the usual way, it's not a bad idea to have some extra supplies in case like what they have done in New Rochelle in New York area where they're calling it containment, basically, allowing less movement in the community. So it's not a bad idea, do a few extra days worth of the supplies but take care of your diabetes, the usual way as best as possible. I strongly recommend using a continuous glucose monitor does if you were to be infected, you have continuous access to the data. just you glucose management much better. But otherwise there is lack of data in specifically to type one diabetes and there is no different we will behave just like as a non diabetic individual.   Stacey Simms  19:13 Well, thank you so much for spending some time with me. I appreciate it very much. And we'll check back. If any of the information changes or frankly, we get more of it. Right. We'll get it out there. But thank you so much.   Unknown Speaker  19:29 You're listening to Diabetes Connections with Stacey Simms.   Stacey Simms  19:34 As Dr. Garg mentioned, there is a lot that we as recording on March 11 still do not know especially any kind of breakout information when it comes to type one diabetes. So keep in mind as of right now, when you're hearing people talk about diabetes, they're lumping everybody with every type of diabetes together. You will find more information in the episode homepage including The links that Dr. Guard mentioned at the very beginning of that interview. Alright, so here's the situation on the show going forward. And you know, this may just be for this next week, I have no idea. Like I just said, there's a lot of uncertainty here. But I am not going to make the show all about COVID 19. At least not right now. In the Facebook group at Diabetes Connections, the group, I took a poll, and the vast majority of listeners wanted regular podcast programming with COVID 19 updates as needed. Now, I do come from a news background as you probably remember. So I admit, it's just a little hard for me to pull myself back from breaking news mode. I mean, I'm thinking you know, wall to wall coverage. This is how we would do it. This is how you're seeing media do it, but I hear you, and I'm here for you and to do what you as listeners want to hear. Because I'm getting this episode out early, the next one may not air Tuesday, our episodes usually drop on Tuesdays. If you subscribe to the show, that is probably your best bet. It'll just come to whatever app you use. And if you follow on social media, of course, I will post there, too. So please check back in. And let me know what you're thinking and what you want to hear. And by the way, maybe I should have said this upfront. If I sound a little bit different, it's because I have moved my office. And frankly, I wasn't really ready to record yet, but we moved this up so I don't have everything in its perfect place. Hopefully it sounds just fine. But if it's a little different, that is why All right, thank you so much, john, you can as my editor for rolling with these changes and being able to get these episodes out. I very much appreciated. Thank you for listening. And please check back into the Facebook group, social media or wherever you listen for the next episode. I'll see you back here then.   Unknown Speaker  21:52 Diabetes Connections is a production of Stacey Simms media. All rights reserved. All wrongs avenged   Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Go ahead and skip the self-care . . .  . . . and let's see how quickly you build your business. I swear if I hear the word hustle one more time, I'm going to go over the brink into insanity. It's like we wear action as a badge of honor, when in reality - the magic happens when we stop and rest.  Did you catch that last part? In case you didn't, I'm going to repeat it. The magic happens when you stop and rest. You only get one life. Say what? Yep! It's true.  This is it.  The one. The only. And you're in the middle of it. So if you are chasing the notoriety, almighty dollar or approval of others at the expense of your own sanity and happiness - you need to get your poop in a group my friend. I say that with total love and affection - but THIS IS IT! And if you aren't taking time to enjoy your life, what's the point of all of it? This is why this week in Episode 78 I break down the symptoms of not getting enough self-care and 5 simple steps to get you back on track. Check out the entire episode here. Am I a hot mess or just need a little self-care? Great question! I thought it might be helpful to have a checklist of "watch for" symptoms, in case you've totally lost track of what's happening to you while you build this life you've been dreamin' about.  If you are suffering from one or more of the following, you may be in a self-care crisis: Confusion Feeling stuck Unmotivated Tired Burned Out Frustrated Overwhelmed Anxious Unsure Fearful Angry Holy crap Alisa, I go through all of those at least once a day. I get it.  I hate to break it to you, but you're an entrepreneur and part of that is considered normal. But when those feelings stick and you can't move past them, it is DEFINITELY time to take a break and recharge.  That means without a phone, email and social media be damned. Because let's be real, all social media does is exasperate your self-loathing when you're already at rock bottom. In this week's episode, I get pretty real with my journey of doing vs being.  They are two very different modes of Operandi.  When you are busy doing doing doing you end up with a handful of hair (because you pulled it out in frustration) and a lot of "to do's" that never seem to get done. Whereas, if you spend your time being who you want to be known for and doing the things that fill you up and make you shine, it's a WHOLE different experience. I'm picking up what you're putting down, but how do I start? Lucky for you, I've perfected a list of just how to learn to experience as the Italians say "Il Dolce Far Niente" which translates to "the art of doing nothing." Uh, do nothing Alisa, really? That seems like some hocus pocus woo-woo cuckoo-ca-choo. I know but stick with me - because I AM DEAD SERIOUS when I say this stuff REALLY works.  I know, because I tested it for a month. Does that mean you can lay around everyday eating bonbons and think your biz will hit the big time? Uh, no! But, it does mean that it's ok - more than ok - to take some downtime, do some self-care and then get back to it. So let's jump into that 5 step plan: 1. Rest. Entrepreneurs are driven. They don't like to stop. They don't really understand how to rest. We are constantly checking our phones, answering emails, connecting to customers on social, making phone calls, stopping in to say hello, networking, marketing, and the list goes on and on. But without the rest, we won't have any energy to do all of the things that need to be done or enjoy the freedom that started us on this entrepreneur gig in the first place. So practice, resting. I know it won't be easy - but oh baby, when you finally get into it - you are going to thank me.  I do love me some chocolate, just sayin'!  2. Create. Never underestimate the power of creativity. Because I'm telling you what, nothing gets the brain juices flowing like a little bit of creativity. It doesn't matter what you are doing, just jump in there and paint, cook, draw, write, color, build or whatever your little creative heart desires.  I give you lots of different ideas here in the episode. 3. Breathe. Say what? I do breathe, Alisa or I wouldn't be standing here.  I get you, but the reality is we just breathe, it's what our body does to stay alive. When we consciously breathe and tune into our breath on purpose - your whole world is going to open up.  Especially if you add something like yoga to the practice.  Mind blown!  I have had some of the biggest breakthroughs during and after yoga.  I'm telling you, you can't pay enough for that kind of therapy. 4. Move it. You've got to move it move it.  Yeah, I'm getting punchy.  But in all seriousness - move your body. When you take that walk, go for a bike ride, shovel snow or do whatever is you do to move the energy around in your body miraculous things happen. (see above) Whatever you choose to do, make it a habit.  I give you lots of ideas here in Episode 78 as well. 5. Journal. As I'm writing these notes (well after the episode has been recorded) I had an experience JUST today that shifted my entire day around simply because I started journaling. As entrepreneurs, we do a LOT of thinking. Sometimes to our own detriment. Because we need to get out of our heads. One of the greatest ways to do that is to pick up a pen (yes a pen) and start writing. There is no right way to journal.  Just do what works for you. Below are a few of my favorite places to find journals and some journal prompts to get you going. I share my crazy way of journaling here in the episode, check it out. Journals: Amazon 2nd & Charles Silk & Sonder has bundled a planner and journal and they are GORGEOUS Journal Prompts Now it's up to you! Are you going to buy into the hustle, or give yourself some downtime?  Head on over to the Facebook Group and share with the group your next self-care strategy. Listen to the entire episode here:

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Please ignore any speech-to-text errors) [00:00:04] Well, hello, everyone. We're so glad you joined us again today. My name is Kenny Thomas. For those of you who haven't heard my voice yet. And welcome to this next session. I was calling you Beatty Carmichael. Beatty is the CEO of Master Grabber, the creator of Agent Dominator and one of the top marketing experts in the real estate field. Beatty, I'm excited. What are we going to be discussing today? [00:00:29] Well, today we're going to talk about how to increase referrals. That sounds like a interesting topic for real estate agents. [00:00:37] Yes, I would say a very important one also. [00:00:40] Absolutely, very important. In fact, I was at a convention. It was a a weekend convention, hundreds of real estate agents. And they had a bunch of breakout sessions on the Saturday event that agents could go and choose what topic they want to learn. And one breakout session, Drew, I think it was like two thirds or three fourths of all of the attendees and all the other breakout sessions. Some of them actually had no one attending because this other one drama. Can you. Can you think what that one topic might have been when they get referral? [00:01:24] That's right. How to increase referrals. Exactly. I was talking to another client of ours, and he's a top producer down in Florida. He's been coaching with a coach for a number of years. And the coach got all of his coaching clients together. It's like 18 or 20 different, really strong top producing agents. And they went around the room actually as a conference call. So they went around the call and they were asking every single one last year, where did most of your business come from? Would you like to guess where all but one, my client, all the others who are the bulk of their business came from? [00:02:09] Any idea? [00:02:12] Referral, referrals and repeat from past clients. So this, if you do it right, can really sustain a business. And especially think about this, Penny, the real estate world is going into through some pretty dramatic shifts right now. Are you aware of some of those shifts taking place? [00:02:36] I've been hearing a little bit, but I'd love for you to expand on that if you can. [00:02:40] Well, there are shifts with what's called a buyer's Zillow's moving more into an aggressive competitor. Amazon's looking to get in. [00:02:49] There's this large class-action court case dealing with buyer commissions. And the bottom line is all these things are putting immense pressure on what's going to happen in the real estate world as a profession. What do you think would be one the best thing someone could do to protect to get all these market shifts that could eat away at their business? Any idea? [00:03:17] Obviously, increase increased their amount of sales to increase sales, but increase referrals and repeat sales from past clients. And so this is a huge topic because it really can help someone take their business and solidify it and be less susceptible to a range of market forces that they have no control over. And this is one thing that's real interesting is I've worked with our clients. Penny, you have complete control over getting referrals and getting people to do business with you again. You don't have much control over what the market does. So this is one area that you can really start to control your business. So let me ask you a question as we get into this. [00:03:59] Let's assume that you're a home owner and a friend comes to you and says, hey, Penny, I'm thinking about selling a house or thinking about buying a house. Do you have anyone that you would recommend I talk to? So you're going to make a referral, refer a friend to an agent. Here's the question I have for you. Which agent are you most likely to refer? One, that you would choose yourself or one that you would not choose yourself? [00:04:34] One that I would choose myself for sure. [00:04:37] So then the question if we move into this topic. Why would you choose one agent over someone else? Okay, so now let me turn the tables just a little bit. Imagine for a moment that your real estate agent, what causes someone to choose you over another agent? If you were to try to figure that out, do you have any idea of what that might be? [00:05:04] Well, off the top of my head, I would have to say my level of service and commitment to my client, how available I am and how relational I am. There needs first. [00:05:17] Okay. Now, let me ask you a question. That person who has never done business with you before. How do you articulate these things that you're talking about? How do you express to them what you just mentioned? [00:05:36] Customer service being available for the client. Just getting to know them. Engaging with them. Phone calls, meetings, that kind of thing. [00:05:48] Okay, so here's the problem I want to pose. I, um, I actually sat down with three agents when we're thinking about selling our home. And from top producing agents like the number two sales agent in our suburban city all the way down to good producers. And I asked him the question, why should I choose you over one of these other agents that's really qualified? You know what they said? [00:06:14] What? I don't know. [00:06:18] They could not give me a reason why I should choose them over someone else. So think about that. Now think about your answer to because what you shared with me is what most agents would say. Customer service, I'm available. I'm engaging with them. But how do you really quantify or measure that? But more importantly, how do you. What do you do to get someone to choose you? I'd like to suggest there's a different reason people choose you than what you just gave. And here's the point. Here's the thing. What you gave is the reason all agents think people choose them. [00:06:55] But when you really boil it down, the reason a homeowner chooses an agent either personally or to refer them is for something completely different. It ties in to what you mentioned, but it's completely different. Until you know why they choose you. Does it make sense? It's hard to get them to choose you. [00:07:15] Yes. [00:07:16] So if you want them to choose you, we got to go a little bit deeper. Peel back the onion a little bit more and say what the fundamental reasons they choose an agent. And once we know what that is. Then you've got a competitive advantage, because now you can start doing things that cause them to charge you more. So this is what working with clients. One of the things that has happened over the years is I'll follow up I follow up with our clients and they just get started with us with Agent Dominator. Once they've been with us for a month or two and they're starting to get their feet on the ground with us. And I cover this very same topic because this is the most important thing. My goal when I call them, is to ensure their success with us. And success is simple because success is a pattern. If you fail to do the pattern, you will fail the success. So here's what I tell them. People two for three reasons. And all three of these reasons have to be present. It's like a stool with three legs. If you take one leg off that stool. What happens to the stool? Okay. So unbeknownst to most agents, these are actually the three reasons people do business with you. [00:08:38] And once you can clarify and quantify these, then you can start to act on improving them in the experience. Number one is they like you, right? Do you know a person that would choose you as an agent if they did not like you? [00:08:54] Absolutely not. [00:08:55] Okay. The more they like you. Is it likely the more they're going to choose you? Yes. Okay. So liking you. By the way, I just want to. Does that have anything to do with customer service being available that been engaging? Or does it? Are all those different than simply disliking you? [00:09:17] I think it all. I think they all tied together. [00:09:19] They all tied together. But as a person, as a friend, I want to suggest that those qualities of what you do as a professional are separate from the qualities of why someone chooses to like you as a friend. [00:09:38] Does that make sense? Yeah. This liking you starts initially at the very top level. Most powerful is that they really like you as a friend. If you have five real estate agents that you know and one of them is your best friend. Which of those five agents are you most likely to choose? [00:09:57] My best friend. There you go. Relationship trumps everything else. So that's number one. Number two, the third. First, they like you. Second, they trust your expertise. As a real estate agent, this is where your customer service. This is where you're always available. This is where you are constantly staying on top of things. This is where you understand the contracts. You understand the process and negotiation. You understand what buyers want. You understand what sellers want. It is this professional level of expertise within your craft. [00:10:37] The third reason they choose you is you happen to be top of mind at the time that they're thinking about choosing an agent. If you're not top of mind, then you're never going to be chosen, right? [00:10:54] Okay, so all of these kind of tie into each other to put them like circles on a page. They all kind of overlap to a degree, but they all have different functions. And I want to walk through. How do you do that? So let me ask you if I were to ask you, Penny. How do you get someone to like you? [00:11:16] What would you tell me? [00:11:22] Oh, gosh, that's a really that's a broad question. I think it depends on the person. I would have to get to know their needs and the things that make them feel white. Some people feel white when you buy them a gift. Some people feel liked when you spend time with them. [00:11:41] Some people feel like when you do a service for them, some sort of act of service. You have to get to know the person first and kind of figure out what it is that makes them feel like, okay. I would probably from a business standpoint, I'd probably try to like them in that way. [00:11:58] Okay, good, good, good. Now you're married to Brian, right? Yes. When Brian was dating you, how did you. [00:12:11] Grow to like him. Spending time with him. Lots of time. [00:12:18] That's just the simple answer, you just spend time with people, right? Yeah. Okay. If you wanted to get someone to trust your expertise. [00:12:30] How do you do that? [00:12:34] Let's hear yes. Yes. No, no. Okay. Simple answer. But I think integrity has a lot to do with it. [00:12:44] Okay. All right. How do you get someone to always remember you? Keep well, you top of mind with them. [00:12:56] I would need to stay in contact with them in multiple ways, whether it's a phone call or text message, email, planning to take them to coffee or something like that. I'm always on their mind. [00:13:09] So here's where I'm going with all of these simple questions. For someone to want to choose you or refer you, they have to like you, trust your expertise and you have to be top of mind. [00:13:21] All you have to really do is ask your ask yourself this question is how do I get someone to like me? How do I get someone to trust me, not trust me as an individual? That's important, but trust me as a professional in my trade of selling real estate, how do I get someone to always remember me? I'd like to go through just a real short synopsis of how to do all these things, because this is the key to getting referrals. If they like you a lot, if they trust your expertise a lot. And if you happen to be top of mind, does it does it make. Does it make sense that you're absolutely going to be getting that referral? When when someone asked them, who should I use as a real estate agent? [00:14:06] So it's really not a mystery. It's just stopping slowing down and saying. What's really at play and how do we do it? So let me talk about liking you first. Okay. Okay. So ultimately everything you said about liking is absolutely correct. But I like to try to simplify a little bit more. Ultimately a relationship. Is all about. Do you truly value me as a person when you are spending time with Brian, did it. Was it clear that he valued you as a person? And the more he valued you, did that kind of make you value him more? [00:14:48] Yes. [00:14:51] So the question then is how do you go about just making people know that you value them? Let me let me suggest if I call you up, I'm a I'm a real estate agent, your friend. Hey, Penny, how's it going? What do you say? All right. Oh, we're doing fine. It's a beautiful day. The kids are great. Are your kids home from college or high school? [00:15:16] Yeah, I'm from high school, from high school. [00:15:19] I know how that works. Hey, by the way, do you know anyone who's thinking about buying or selling a home anytime soon? [00:15:27] I do, actually, my neighbor. [00:15:29] Okay. Pull out. Do I value you as an individual or as a sales prospect from that call? [00:15:38] Both. [00:15:41] Which way do you. When I finished hanging up the call and you were to ask yourself what was Betty's motivation in calling me? What comes top of mind of my motivation? Personal or business? Business. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Here's here's the interesting thing about relationships. Relationships are fragile. All it takes is one inclusion. That is not an authentic relationship. And it turns the table on the entire experience. And takes away. From the authentic portion of that relationship, does that make sense to use the wording? [00:16:23] No. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. [00:16:25] So what happens in a relationship? It's a sensitive situation. And if you want to get people to like you, your contact with them needs to be purely relational. Not business. Business will come if they like you. But if you ask for a business immediately, that engagement you had with them is perceived as entirely self-centered, self-motivated simply to get business. And it really had nothing to do with you as a person. Let's role play that scenario one more time. Hey, Penny, it's Brady. How's it going? [00:17:09] Hey, great. How are you guys? [00:17:11] Oh, we're doing super. [00:17:12] The kids home from high school now they are getting ready for the holidays. [00:17:17] Oh, I know. That's wonderful. Tell me about them. You don't have to go any further. But now the whole conversation is just about you, the kids. Husband, how life is. We share something. And then I say, hey, hey, I've got to run. I've got an appointment coming up. But I just want to give you a quick call. Hensala hadn't spoken with you in awhile. Have a great day. Talk soon. Click hang up now a moment. You ask yourself, what was his motivation of that phone call? What comes to mind? [00:17:46] Just checking on me, just saying hi and friendly. [00:17:49] Does that make you feel good? [00:17:51] Yes, absolutely. [00:17:53] Does that make you feel that I value you as a person and as a friend? [00:17:58] Yes. Is that tough to do? [00:18:03] No, no, it's not. Do most agents do that? No, no. So here is the key. The easiest thing you can do in the world. Most agents don't do because they get too busy. Right. I feel led to ask this question. If your husband gets too busy. To value you as his wife. What does that do to your marriage? [00:18:38] Not good things. [00:18:39] Not good thing. You could actually lose a marriage by being too busy, by not focusing on the little things that are most important, because you get. See, that is the big things that are really the important things in life. [00:18:52] And we lose out on the relationship. And I would like to suggest that what you do in building your real estate business is very much the same. It's the little things you do. Just touching people. That's the most important thing. So now let's go a step further. Let's take that same scenario. I call you up. We just have a little fun chat. It doesn't last long, but I leave the phone call and you're thinking, I really like Baity. He saw me. Now imagine the next day or two you get a note from me, Penny. It was so good talking and catching up with you. So excited about the kids. Hope you guys have a wonderful holiday season. And I sign it. What does that do to you, your feeling of my value to you at that point? Does it increase it? [00:19:50] Do you start to start to want to reciprocate that relationship? Does it make you like me more? [00:20:04] And the more you like me, more likely you're going to choose me as an agent. More likely you're going to refer me. Okay. So what I would like to suggest is to get someone to like you and to keep them like you even more. It's just a periodic reach out. You could even do it by text. Hey, Penny, how's it going? Just thinking about you. What's up? Now a text is bad. The default to a phone call. But it's a nice little touch. It has no ulterior motive behind it. But the phone call is the best because now you can interact, you can ask questions, you can share about you. They get to know you more. They get to you get to know them more is just catching up. And then if you'll follow up with that with a handwritten note, I suggest that handwritten notice on your real estate stationery. In fact, if I were a real estate agent, I'd get a bunch of note cards printed with my name and my real estate brand and my real estate information. And I would hand write you a note on my real estate card if my note if my personal note comes to you on my real estate card. Does that detract, in your opinion, from the authentic ness of my note? In other words, plenty of so great talking with you. Love catching hope. You guys have a great holiday and I sign it. Does it detract at all if it's coming from my personal stationery versus my business stationery? [00:21:41] Actually, I would feel like it was more heartfelt if you actually read it, right. [00:21:47] Okay. So I handwrite it, but I handwrite write it and it just happens to be on my work stationery. Does that cause any consternation on your end? If you were to get that. [00:21:56] No, it doesn't. Okay. [00:21:59] Okay. Okay. So it may be imperceptible. It may be more. But here's what I found when talking with one of our one of my friends who has been selling real estate for, gosh, 30 years now. He may actually made it, he said. I've never advertised for business. I've never spent any money to get business. I've always had as much business as I want, in fact, so much that I actually turned business down. And, you know, his number one thing that he does. [00:22:35] Call people. [00:22:36] That's right. He just makes these simple phone calls and he writes them a short note on his business stationery. That's it. Wow. [00:22:44] And here's what happens. They like him. And they remember that he is a real estate agent. [00:22:54] Top of mind, they like him. Bye bye. Curiously, the fact that he's in business so long, they trust that he probably has expertise. Unless he's actually done business with them and then they know that he has expertise. So this is really, really, really powerful. And by putting that little thank you note on a personal on your business, stationery, real estate, it might have a slight detrimental effect. Slightly degrade the touch, the value that touch. I don't think you'd be much, but what it does is it reinforces two things. I like you as a friend, but then you see me as a real estate agent as well. So that keeps that top of mind. Something else you can do. You mentioned this. Some people love gifts. If I were to drop by your house, even if you're not there and I leave some cookies and brownies, hey, I was in the area. Normally night out this way. I was in the area. Drop by. I got some brownies for you guys. Hope you enjoy it. [00:23:59] Does that make you feel good? [00:24:01] Oh, gosh, yes. [00:24:03] Does that increase my no pun intended? Does that increase my brownie points in your mind in terms of our relationship? Sure. Okay. Okay. So this is something else you can do, just a little drop by and just say even if you don't have a gift. Hey, I was in the area showing a house over here to another client. I remember you were here. I just want to drop by and say hello. Does that make you feel good? Yeah. So these are the little things that go a long way. Now, let's talk about being a little bit more strategic. Okay. So we got the relationship thing. Make sure people like you. They like you because you value their relationship and you demonstrate it because you reach out to them. And when you reach out to them, you mentioned nothing about real estate. Okay. Now it's okay if you ask me. Hey, Beatty, how's the house real estate going? Oh, man, it's going really great. I share a little bit. That's okay, because I did not volunteer it until you asked it. So it's still a personal call, but it's something you can do is take your list of friends, past clients, people you know, and identify those people who are a what I'll call a connector role. Do you have any idea what a connector role might be? [00:25:28] I guess I'm assuming it's just people that like if I'm my neighbor, I have a connection with her and then she knows somebody else. That chain. [00:25:39] Yep. So people who know other people. So let me give you an idea. Let me let me see if I can kind of lead this discussion just a little bit. You've got two people on your list. One person is a local Little League coach. And another person. Is a computer programmer who works from home. Which of those two people do you think would probably be more likely to be a connector to other people for you? [00:26:14] The first one. Why is that? [00:26:18] Outside the home, outside the home, I'd like to. There's one more element. Can you figure out what that element is? Why is the first one the little the Little League coach more likely to become a good connector for you than to work at home? Programmer. [00:26:35] He knows so many other people. [00:26:38] That's it. That's exactly it. So if you go through your list and ask yourself who is likely to know a lot more people, a lot of times simply by nature of their job, you can determine that a hairdresser, a bank teller, a little league coach, the choir director, a pastor, a youth minister. I mean, I could kind of go down the list, but they all have one thing in common. Their job, their occupation involves working with a lot of people on an ongoing basis. Repeat people in the local area. Does that make sense? Yes. If you were to be friend. The programmer and friend, the literary coach. Which one do you think you would likely get more referrals from? Yeah, for sure. So that's what I call a connector. And I suggest that you go through your list of people and you start to mark. Okay. First off, let's make sure you have a list, right. You create a written list. Okay. And then you identify those people who are connectors by virtue of the fact of how many people they probably know locally. Okay. So this would be those people who would just lie for the party. They love people and they know everyone. They may not have a job that is a or type job, but that's their personality. That's who they are. My brother, by the way, is that one. He knows everyone in town. And then you, those who have the other jobs that constantly have a flow of people coming through, those people who are connectors, you want to be a lot more strategic with this relationship building. [00:28:30] You want to pop by. You want to actually put it on sort of a schedule maybe every four to six weeks. Drop by. So let's say that you work at the bank. You're a bank teller. Okay. I'm going to swing by. Hey, Penny, I was in the area again, brought you some doughnuts. How are things now? I looked at all the tellers. Now y'all can eat any of these doughnuts without Penny's permission. These are hers. Okay. All right. Okay. So you feel special, right? Well, now I've made you feel really special. The more I do that, when you hear someone coming through, they're a little old lady or that or that someone coming through the tell tale teller slot and you're engaging with them because they're one of your normal clients types things and they're starting to talk about they're thinking about selling their home. Who's the first person you're likely going to think of referring them to you? Yeah. And when I swing by that date, bring you doughnuts, are you likely going to remember to say, oh, what did so-and-so call you? Because I was talking to so-and-so and they're thinking about selling their house. You think you might actually. Yeah. So the connectors are going to have their ear to the ground. Because they were involved with all kinds of people all the time. And the stronger the relationship, the more you pursue that relationship, the more likely two things are going to happen. They're going to refer you. [00:30:02] And when you happen to pop by, then they're going to bring back to remember it. Oh, you know what? You're the real estate agent. This person was saying just a week ago they're thinking about selling. And it's going to remind you to tell me because I'm actually there. I can't. In fact, I can't tell you how many people have told me. So when they start using our services, we guarantee results. But one of the things that we require is one that we guarantee it is that you have to at least call your prospects. Couple of times a year. I can't tell you how many times people have told me when I'm just on the phone and I'm talking to them, I'll pick up a deal because I've been getting the postcards, they're getting the emails, they're being reminded of me. And now when I call them, it's like, oh, you know what? A friend of mine is thinking about selling. You ought to call them engagement, interaction that prompts them to remember about the referral. So really, really powerful. So that's getting them to like you. Back to the question, how do you get someone to like you? You like them back? That's the easy answer. You do those things that let them know that you liked them. Second thing. So we go back to the store. Three reasons people choose you. They like you. They trust your expertise. And you happen to be top of mind when they're thinking. So let's talk about trusting your expertise. Here is the challenge in marketing, there's a concept known as outside perception versus inside reality. [00:31:39] Here's what it means in real estate. Let's say, Penny, that you are a real estate agent. And you want to market to a group of homeowners. That group could be people that, you know, there's your personal list or that group could be people that are just in a neighborhood. By the way, let me ask you a question. Is there fundamentally any real difference between someone, you know, who lives in a home and someone you don't know who lives in a home? In other words, no, there's no difference, only differences. You have a relationship with one, but not with the other, but they generally have the same like same desires, same feelings. And what we find is this the typical homeowner believes that all real estate agents are the same, that all they do is take a sign in the yard, list a home in the MLS and wait for someone else to bring a buyer. Would you agree that that's probably what most home owners believe to be true? So let's say that you are a top notch. Dedicated real estate agent, you serve your clients better, far better than the typical real estate agent. But as long as those homeowners believe that you're just like anyone else, are they more likely to choose you over someone else? They believe you're just like everyone else. Are they going to choose you or are they going to choose someone else just as easily, just as easily they would pick someone else for sure. [00:33:16] Yeah. [00:33:17] So the implication, real simple, if all agents are the same, it doesn't matter who I choose to sell my house, I won't get the same result. Same price and the same amount of time with one agent over another. But let me ask a different question. Let's assume that those people on that list, your personal list or that neighborhood, if they understood your skill and your expertise. And they understood it to the same degree that you understand it about yourself. Would they realistically choose any other agent besides you? No. [00:33:50] Okay, so that's what we call your inside reality there. Outside perception is you're like everyone else. So there's no reason to you, but you're inside. Reality is there's lots of reasons to choose you. If you could transfer your inside reality to them so they know as much about you as you know about yourself. Would that drive a lot more business? Do you think? [00:34:18] Yes, absolutely. And fundamentally, why? [00:34:27] Because there is a connection established. [00:34:30] There's a kind of a connection. They know more about you. Right. Let me go back to reason number two. If they understood you're inside reality, then does that mean that now they are trusting your expertise? [00:34:47] Yes. [00:34:48] Because you're inside, reality is your expertise. And if they don't know your expertise, they can't trust it, and therefore, on that stool with three legs, you're missing one leg. So what do you think would be a simple way to help them trust your expertise? [00:35:12] Guys, tell me. [00:35:15] Guys say anything most. Most real estate agents say, oh, gosh, I have no idea. Okay. Because I've never thought about this. Let me tell you the easiest thing. Okay. So let me pose it as a question to you. You're thinking five real estate agents. You're going to be selling your home, you know, five real estate agents. And one of them you see all the time making another sale, listing another house, closing another sale all the time. Boom, boom, boom. Sold again and sold again and sold again. Just listed. Just listed. Sold again. Sold again. And the other four agents don't say anything about them all. [00:35:57] They're real estate agents out of those five agents. Which one are you going to choose? [00:36:01] The one that's always selling for? [00:36:05] Do you think you trust that they probably have greater expertise than the other four? [00:36:11] Yes. [00:36:13] And what was your reasoning behind that? [00:36:20] The proof is in the pudding. All those things sold, sold, sold by the same person that I know, they're actually selling houses. [00:36:28] There you go. It isn't that easy, isn't it? That's the first step. Is simply showing off your successes all the time. [00:36:38] The way you transfer expertise as you get them to start to trust you more than someone else. And the first level of trust is, are you actually doing what you're supposed to be doing? Are you selling homes? That's the first level. But then there's some things you can do to increase that level of trust. And they're really simple. Any idea what you might be able to do to increase the trust? Just beyond showing off yourself. [00:37:02] Probably you would need to offer something, some sort of guarantee. [00:37:06] Maybe you could. That definitely helps. But before we get to that more complicated thing, let me ask you a question. You have you have those five real estate agents. Two of them you see are constantly selling. Three of them you don't see anything. So now it's a choice between those two. One of them, you see. So the other one you see sold for full price, sold in three days, sold for two thousand over asking price. Now, which one do you choose? [00:37:38] That one. Because I'm getting more thinks about not only are they selling that, they're selling for more and they're selling faster. [00:37:47] Bingo. Okay. So now we add a little bit more information that causes them to trust you more because you're now telling a little bit more about why they should I sell this home in three days. That's impressive. I sell this home for full price. That's impressive. So the more you get to share the inside reality of that sale, the more they start to trust you that maybe you can do the same for them. Makes sense. Yes. OK. Now let's take it a step further. What do you think? Before we get to a guarantee before you. What do you think? There's something else I could do. To get someone to trust me even more than simply saying sold in three days or so for full price or something like that. Tell me I can share what I did to cause it to sell that fast. For example, before I put this home on the market. We pre marketed it for an entire week. Mailing to the neighborhood door-knocking, letting people know the home is about to come on the market, and if they have any friends that want to be in this area, let them know. [00:39:12] We started to we went through the house and we made sure everything was absolutely perfect in order. No, no does. No, no burned-out light bulbs. If there is a room, there was a room that was kind of an awkward color. We had the owner change it back to a neutral color, took away everything that could have been a detriment that would cause someone to go. That's just not quite a good feel. In other words, the level of preparation and the level of pre marketing I did. So this home faster. Now, if I were to tell you that, does that give you greater confidence in my expertise? [00:39:47] Absolutely. [00:39:48] Okay. Yes. And then I could even guarantee to sell it in next days or I pay you or I could do all kinds of things. But trusting your expertise starts with just showing them that you're always selling. Then showing them what's going on with those sales. Explaining some more information behind that shows what you did. What you did may be what every agent does, but the homeowner doesn't know that because no way to tell them. So that's the second leg. Okay, so back to why did someone why does someone chooses an agent? They like you, they trust you, your expertise. And then you happen to be top of mind. So on top of mind. [00:40:34] Have you ever heard in selling the ABC of selling? Always be closing. Okay. Well, there's an ABC in real estate. It's always been contacting. Right. If you want to stay top of mind, you're just always there. And this is where the automated remote touch systems are in place come into play. So if you think about this. [00:41:02] Only you individually can get someone to like you. Your touches need to be personal. Hey, how's it going? Just thinking about you. Hey, I was thinking about you last week. Hadn't spoken with you in a while. Just want to call and say, hey. Only you can do those. Your assistant can't do but everything else in terms of trusting your expertise and staying top of mind. You can now automate that. You can send those out in postcards. You can do an email campaign. You can do social media and constantly be posting, posting just lists at another home to Facebook. And so all your friends are seeing that they're seeing that activity. You can share write a little explanation of what you did to sell this home in five days. All that can be done in an automated fashion, but you need to be consistent in doing that. But part of that is going to be your personal touches, because that's another contact part of that's going to be writing those will hand written notes or doing a pop by. But it's more on top of mind is more than that. It's doing all these other things. So now with that as a backdrop, I want to talk the last couple steps about how this realistically put this together. But before I go there, do you have any questions on any of this or how to do it or anything that's cropped up as we've been talking on it? [00:42:29] I don't actually I'm interested here. Just this last little part and this thing top of mind and strategies for because I can I can see a lot of agents and I think the best way to stay of mind. [00:42:44] Let me ask you a question before we get there. What do you think is the number one reason people agents aren't consistently touching their personal contacts? [00:42:54] I think for sure they're too busy. [00:42:58] Too busy, we don't have time for that. [00:43:03] They're too busy. Don't have time. And they're not prepared. Are you? Are you a busy mom? Busy employee? [00:43:12] Yes. [00:43:13] Busy wife? Yes. Have you gotten more accomplished in all your roles by bringing structure and knowing what you need to do and having things prepared to do it? Absolutely. [00:43:27] So here's a simple thing. If most agents would just create a little bit of structure, then they can easily fit this in their day. The reason they don't do it is they don't have the structure in place and it doesn't take that much effort. Let's go through the action. [00:43:48] So let's put a little bit of structure in place that takes very little time. Number one, make a list. The easiest way to start making a list of who all your friends are. [00:44:02] Just going through your phone contact, go through your phone contacts and go through your Facebook friends. [00:44:09] Yeah, I mean, there's a list right there. So write it down in one spot and then you go through it strategically, add contact in their phone number and what's their mailing address. Okay. And if you don't know their phone number or their mailing address or an email address, you probably don't want Facebook to send a quick message updating my records. Can you give me your mailing address? You know, how many people would give you your mailing address? Their mailing address, if you ask for it? All of them ask for it. Okay. So you put your list together and then this is real important to you. Want to categorize your list by A, B and C.. Okay, everyone, you know. Okay, A, B and C, here's a simple way of what I understand for this to be most effective as a real estate agent. Aides are going to be those people that you have the closest relationship with. The easy way to understand if you have a close relationship is if you know their spouses name and you know their children's names and they know your spouse and your children's name. In other words, the more you know about them, it's going to be an A. [00:45:26] Then the bees are going to be the people that you have a relationship with with them individually, but it doesn't go much further. So this would be like your work relationships. You know, John, down down on the second floor, you see him a lot, but you really you've never met his wife. You don't really know much about the kids. That's a relationship. A C relationship would be someone that is you. No pun intended. You see them only once in a blue moon. Okay. But you don't know much about them. So they bfc. Okay. So you start with your A's and B's and you then go through and list everyone that is going to be a connector. And if I have a, B or C, that is a connector, I want to move them to an A because that is the priority. And I want to build a relationship with them strategically because I I want that relationship now. So you're gonna make the A's B's. And then depending on how big the list is, you narrowed only to the A's or the B's or you include some C's. [00:46:34] But generally speaking, like if we're targeting when we work with real estate agents to help them market to their clients for 500 people is fine because so much of the marketing can be automated. But those that maybe they're personally touching may only be like two hundred. Okay. So it depends on what you're doing. But then the next step is once you make the list be strategic. An easy way to be strategic. If you don't have a fancy system, you put it all on an Excel spreadsheet and you just get loaded to Google Docs. On Google Docs, you can access it from your phone and you can access it from your computer. Does that make sense? [00:47:14] It does. [00:47:15] Okay. And then all you do is you put a column on and Google Docs says Date last touched and you scroll through your list. I've got five minutes before an appointment. I'm out on the roads. I'm gonna pull up my phone. Go to Google Docs and find the next person on my list that I haven't touched recently. Their phone number is going to be there and I want to reach out. Hey, pettiest Beatty. How you doing? Hadn't thought spoken to you in a while. Just wanted to visit a couple minutes. Oh, my appointments here. Gotta run. Okay. So it's a natural end of the conversation. But you like it. I've touched you. I'm gonna write you a handwritten note. Now I've got a system in place and it doesn't really take much time. So structure that approach and working from the list means that now you can go through that list and touch everyone. So let's go back. And I just want to review a couple of key things. Okay. That, too. Why did people choose you? They like you. They trust your expertise. You happen to be top of mind. [00:48:16] Your personal touch 100 percent needs to be authentic. Relationship only mentioned nothing about your business unless they ask you don't ask for a sale. Don't ask for a referral unless they volunteer it or the conversation just naturally goes that way, but may give them no reason to believe that the motivation of that call was for business purposes. Okay. Now, let me put this back in perspective. So I'm reaching out. I'm touching you. We say hello and checking on the kids. I'll write you a handwritten note. Couple of weeks later, I may say say hello again. A couple weeks later, I may call. Hey. Question Do you know anyone who's thinking of buying or selling a home? Does that spoil the relationship that you and I built simply by asking that as a friend? [00:49:13] Oh, God. That's a great question. [00:49:16] I don't think it was shit. It shouldn't be a trick question. You and I are friends. And I've demonstrated that over time and then I ask and say, hey, you know, anyone who's thinking of buying or selling home the relationship? [00:49:32] No. As long as you like. He said you have made that connection and stayed in contact with me on a regular basis. And it's not like you're just calling me out of the blue. That's right. [00:49:44] That's right. So here's the here's the key. It's okay to ask for business. But make sure you've established and nurture the friendship first and make sure you do it on a call that is strictly business related. Don't try to make it a personal call and then throw business into it. So keep the personal calls completely separate. And then as a separate event, you can ask for business on another call. And it's not going to spoil the relationship as long as the momentum of what you're touches or as long as your touches are really focused. Generally speaking, on the relationship. But that's your personal touch. Then your automated touches are rarely personal. This is where you get post-card set up. And by the way, as we're putting the structure in place. Okay, so let's talk about automation. Let me ask let me ask you, what do you think is more important content or technology? [00:50:52] Content. [00:50:53] Content. Exactly. Content is what you say, technology is how you deliver what you say. So don't get caught up with, oh, I've got this real fancy super duper e-mail auto responder system with artificial intelligence in it. That doesn't. That's great. But it's the content that's most important. Don't get caught up with. Well, I've got this automated postcard marketing system already. I just buy it off the shelf from this company. It's the content, not the technology. So make sure you focus on the content. On the content. Couple things you really think you really want focus on the core message. You want them to always remember about you. What is that? That makes it unique, that makes you special. That gives them a reason to want to choose you. And you want to make sure that that content is always there. You also want to be on the receiving end of that content. Make sure. Is this something they really want to get for me? Like an email? [00:51:59] Okay, if your if your email campaign is sending out an e-mail during springtime that says it's springtime, it's time to plant flowers. And that's the whole focus of the e-mail that's going to take your people off, because that's just wasting my time to tell me the obvious. Okay. So make sure that what you're putting out is good. And then the last thing and this is for a lot of agents, also fail. Years back when we started working with real estate agents and we were asking why are you doing business with us? And a lot of these are top producing agents that are doing business with us. And they gave me two answers. One is I need help. In making this happen, because I don't know what to do the other in about 50 50. The other half says, I know what to do, but I keep starting it. And then something comes up and I stop it. And it's a year or two before I remembered that I stopped it. Now I need to get back into it. And I'm just not consistent. Okay. So the way that you build that consistency is you create everything up front and then you have what I call lock and load and then you do put on autopilot. So you don't have to do it if you have to touch it every single week to get another e-mail out, every single month to get another postcard out, you will fail because you will get busy. You're going to it's like a diet. You break the diet, you cheat on your diet one meal and it's three or four months before you realize I'm off my diet because you just totally lost it. Does that make sense? [00:53:38] Yes, it does. You got to create everything up front and lock and load and then put it on autopilot so you don't have to touch it again. If you don't do that, then you're most likely going to be the yo yo person, you start it. You stop that, you start it. You stop in and it's never really worked for you. [00:54:00] So that can I put an unabashed plug for what we do with Agent Dominator? Absolutely. Okay. I know you would say that since your paycheck. Right. So everything we're talking about here is what we built in to Agent Dominator. The reason it works is not because Agent Dominators Fest is a fabulous system. It is the reason it works is not because Agent Dominator does what most agents don't do. It does. The reason it works is not because we have some fancy technology that no one else has. We do. But the reason it works is because it's right down the middle of the best practices of what you ought to be doing anyway. If you can constantly personally touch, constantly educate them on what creates your true why they should trust you and constantly say top of mind, you don't need any other system out there. Just like my friend I was sharing about earlier has more business and he can than he can handle. He turns it away and he's never spent a dime in marketing because he stays on top of it. But most people don't stay on top of it. Most people don't really know how to do it. And what we do with Agent Dominator is we do it all for you. [00:55:19] Okay. And as long as you're willing to pick up the phone and call or write a handwritten note to your personal contacts, we actually guarantee your results. So I would just encourage you to check that out. Here's something also were real cool because a lot of agents don't know if you realize this, but especially the long term producers sell both residential and commercial. So if that's actually one of you guys listening to this call, we do agent dominated with commercial as well on the investment properties because the folks who own investment properties are very similar to those who own houses. Right. If I own a little apartment building or a gas station also in my home, I'm not in an institutional investor. I just happen to have some real estate investment. And so finding listings there, getting them to choose you in the investment world is very similar to what you do in the residential world. So anyway, that's our plug before we wrap this call completely up. Is there anything that comes to mind that you'd like to ask or comments that you'd like to share? [00:56:38] I think I would just. And this is probably just me speaking from a personal standpoint, but I would encourage agents to offer above and beyond what other agents around them are offering. And I think that would be a great way for them to capitalize on referrals. It goes back to the trust buying and getting their name out there and really attracting business. I feel like they need to make themselves stand apart. That's something that help us choose our agent offering something that other agents we're not in addition to the fact that we always saw sold. So, you know, makes a difference. [00:57:19] You bring up one thing. I I'm a myth because I totally forgot it. So let me add it now at the end. This is this is bonus material. Great. If you're if you're one material. If you're one of my friends and you refer me a client and I send you a really special gift as a thank you note. What does that do to you? How do you respond? Does that make you feel special? Yes. Are you are you more likely to refer me again? Yes. Yes. So don't go cheap on that referral gift and don't give it only if that person that has been referred actually does business with you. The simple fact that, Penny, you referred someone to me, I'm going to woo you because I want more of that. Okay. That's a bonus for today's call. [00:58:14] Great. All right. This is a great call. Thank you so much for your time and expertise today. [00:58:21] Before we close out, do you have any last minute things that you want to share with our listeners? [00:58:26] I really don't. Unless you want more information about Agent Dominator, you can go to Agent Dominator dot com. There is a little forum there you can fill out. And if you love this type of teaching. Visit our website. Get sellers calling you dot com and you can find all kinds of other content there as well. [00:58:45] Yes, absolutely. I wish everyone a great week and a successful time in their business, whatever they're doing. Thanks for joining us, everybody. And we'll see you guys on the next one. Thank you, Beatty. [00:58:58] Thanks. Have a blessed day. All alrighty. p058 [/fusion_text][/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

Physical touch is such a powerful and amazing gift from God. He designed us for it. We need it. And it is physically, spiritual and emotionally damaging when we avoid it or do not get enough of it. In this episode, we discuss why Physical touch is so important and we give some practical tips on how to touch and be touched more.Embracing each other says “I trust you and need you in my life.”A comforting hug says, “I’m here for you.”A kiss says, “You are mine! And I love you!”Holding hands lets your spouse know you like them and like spending time with them.Tickle rubs, massages, running your fingers through their hair says, “I want to make you feel good.” ...And most times lets them know you desire more physical touch.Being married and living in that sacred space of physical closeness, embrace, touch...there is no other relationship like it on Earth. Make the time to send those messages of love to your spouse through touch. READ TRASCRIPT[Aaron] Hey, we're Aaron and Jennifer Smith, with "Marriage After God." [Jennifer] Helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage. [Aaron] And today we're gonna talk about "The Power Of Touch In Marriage." Welcome to the "Marriage After God" podcast where we believe that marriage was meant for more than just happily ever after. [Jennifer] I'm Jennifer also known as unveiled wife. [Aaron] And I'm Aaron also known as husband revolution. [Jennifer] We have been married for over a decade. [Aaron] And so far we have four young children. [Jennifer] We have been doing marriage ministry online for over seven years through blogging and social media. [Aaron] With the desire to inspire couples to keep God at the center of their marriage, encouraging them to walk in faith every day. [Jennifer] We believe the Christian marriage should be an extraordinary one full of life. Love. And power. [Aaron] That can only be found by chasing after God. [Jennifer] Together. [Aaron] Thank you for joining us on this journey as we chase boldly after God's will for our life together. [Jennifer] This is "Marriage after God." Well, welcome back, everyone. Thanks for joining us on this episode of Marriage after God, we're super excited to have you. You're looking at me funny Aaron, why are you looking at me funny? [Aaron] I was wondering if everyone knows that you're still pregnant. Or if they're waiting to hear about the baby 'cause I don' know if everyone knows the exact I'm still pregnant? [Aaron] March 20th is the due date? [Jennifer] Creeping up on us. [Aaron] More like, almost there. Also soon along with the baby coming, we have the end of our season coming. Season three of the "Marriage After God" podcast. [Jennifer] You're just prepping their hearts. [Aaron] I'm prepping their little hearts. [Jennifer] Will come back don't worry. [Aaron] Yeah, we have this episode and I think three more episodes. To finish up this season. [Jennifer] It's actually really great timing you guys. And it was intentional, because postpartum is the real deal. And so I need time. [Aaron] We're gonna take a break during the postpartum season and then will come back. Right before summer starts. We're super excited about that. [Aaron] Which always want to take these breaks gives you enough time to go back to all the episodes you haven't listened to yet, or haven't fully listen to. [Jennifer] Or relisten listened to your favorite one. [Aaron] Or relisten to your favorite ones. [Jennifer] I wanted to before we get into today's topic, I wanted to start off this episode with an encouragement of something that happened. But Aaron, when I mentioned that's what I wanted to share about, you're like, "No, let's just do the whole episode on that." I'm not gonna share it right now. That's what the whole episodes gonna be about. Enjoy it later. [Aaron] Right, but what we can talk about is so everyone, we've talked about how we're going through what's it called? "My Family 24 Ways". [Jennifer] "Our Family 24 Ways". That's what's it is. By Sally and Clay Clarkson. [Aaron] It's a family devotional and it's 24 weeks long. We did it twice. The first time we did it. We did it in a quarter of the time because we just kind of took each day was a-- [Jennifer] Each day was a new way. And they come with these coloring pages. Those are really great kind of quick overview of what it was about and gave us time to wrap our heads around it and get familiar with the content. And that was super fun for the kids. We did that last summer and then kicking off the new kind of school year in September. We're like let's do the whole week. And we'll use the was it a devotional or resource? We'll use it the way that they wrote it-- [Aron] Which is every way is a five day-- Process. Process, yes. Every day, there's another verse you're reading, another idea, there's another question, but it's all in the same family way. And we just finished that a couple of weeks ago. There's a couple of weeks we didn't do because of travel or different things. But we just finished it and it was great. The kids loved it, we loved it. [Aaron] Yeah, and we're bringing this up to just to kinda recap that we told you we were going through we gave it as an example to you all, on a great way to start doing a family bible time. It was a lot of fun was really easy. I had a lot of prompts for the parents to walk through it gives you the questions to ask. But Jennifer, what are we doing now? We finished our family 20 or 23rd, "Our 24 Family Ways". [Jennifer] "Our 24 Family Ways". [Aron] By Sally and Clay Clarkson. You should go pick that on Amazon. But when we're done with that and we love that. But what are we doing now? [Jennifer] There was that question creeping up to the end of that resource that were like, Hey, keep in mind, what are what are we going to do next? And there's lots of different things that we could have chosen. [Aaron] Now we've done before, where we just like read through some of the Bible, read just whole chapters. [Jennifer] I proposed to Aaron, I said, "Why don't we focus "on some of the kind of major Bible stories?" Our kids are still pretty young, and they know a lot of the stories but just clarifying for them, what actually was taking place during those stories, and what are the details and so we'll take a whole week on one story. And what I didn't share with Aaron was, my heart behind it was and let's focus on how Christ is pictured in these stories, which I just thought would be a really cool perspective, but I didn't share that part with you for some reason. I just said the Bible story thing really short and brief. And so I started making a list of the different Bible stories and I put them up on our chalkboard and you love the idea, and that first day that we started out with creation and Adam and Eve. You're like, and guys, because you're like, basically laying out what they can expect from how Bible time is gonna change for us. And you told the kids, "so we're gonna dive into these Bible stories, "one story a week, but we're gonna see how Christ "is at the center of each one." And I love that you did that we are totally like on the same page without even having talked about it. [Aaron] And it's been really good. Elliot's been loving them, because He loves learning about these stories. And also the questions and the digging in and how those correlations to Christ and Adam, or these stories that we all know of. [Jennifer] Just in simple things like in Genesis when it says, "we're gonna make them in our image" and get the kids to really like, focusing on what that one is. Like who is the hour. Who is us, who's talking here about Adam and Ellie is like, "Oh, it's God and Jesus in the spirit." [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] He got the idea in the beginning. And just an encouragement for those that are listening. You're probably thinking like, okay, like all of our kids know these stories, but you're actually surprised at the stories that you kind of know because you grew up in Sunday school, or how if they don't ever get brought up, your kids aren't gonna know them. They're not gonna know the story of Noah's Ark. They're not gonna know the story of Jonah and the whale. They're not gonna know the story of Joseph and Abraham and Isaac and Adam and Eve and creation. We have to do that. We have to teach our children these stories, and not just stories, their history. [Jennifer] Yeah, and my encouragement would be for our sake, as adults, going back to some of these stories have been encouraging because then we either see things we never saw before, or somehow it's relevant to something that we're going through that we can apply. That's just an encouragement. [Aaron] It's just getting back into the Word of God always and remembering these powerful, testimonies that God's given us of who He is, His plan for redemption and His story for us. Awesome, before we get into the topic, as usual, we have a free thing for you. If you haven't taken the marriage prayer challenge yet, we dare you. Take the marriage prayer challenge. It's marriageprayerchallenge.com. It's a 31 day email series where you're gonna get emailed every day with, something to pray about, and a reminder to do that. So you're gonna be praying for your husband or your wife every day for the next 30 days, 31 days, and we just wanted to get you jumped in. It's almost 50,000 people who have now taken this challenge. That's incredible. Yeah. If you're not one of those 50,000 I just wanna encourage you to go right now and take a break from the podcast even go sign up marriageprayerchallenge.com, It'll take you like one minute, and then come back and finish the episode. [Jennifer] Alright, so today's topic is on The Power Of Touch. And again, this is something that happened recently in our marriage that impacted me so much that I told him and I'm gonna share about that in the next podcast and he was like, "No, we're doing "the whole episode on this." [Aaron] And you went, "we don't need to do a whole episode "it's just a little passing idea." I did I was like, "No, this is actually really important "'cause of how much value you got out of it." [Jennifer] Yeah, so, and we understand that sometimes our episodes go quite long. And we're just gonna jump in, we're gonna dive in and give you the tips and tricks that you can do-- Up front. Right now we're gonna just do them up front. [Aaron] That way if you don't listen the whole episode, you're gonna walk away with the best tips for touch. [Jennifer] Yeah, I like that. [Aaron] What's the first tip they can get real quick. [Jennifer] I mean, I'm just thinking like, when you're passing by each other in the kitchen, you both have these tasks on your mind that you're trying to get done. Just give a little, elbow to the gut and let that let that spouse know that you're there next to them working alongside side them. [Aaron] It also might get them out of their way for a second. Another little tip is like when you guys are laying in bed and like just just right before your spouse is falling asleep, just to remind them that you're there and that you love them. Just giving them ,a wet finger to the ear. Or like a little like tap on their neck to like tickle them a little bit. [Jennifer] Maybe a pinch. [Aaron] Pinch. Those kinds of things that let your spouse know, "Hey, I know you're just we're almost falling asleep "but I love you." I love me so much. One of my favorite ones is when you're like out on family excursion, and your spouse is wearing a backpack And you're kind of walking, a little bit behind them just give that backpack a little push to the left or right. And it really throws them off. But it reminds them, hey, I'm here with you. [Aaron] It's almost like gets them to like flip around a little bit and then they could see you. [Jennifer] The whole point of touch really is to interrupt what's going on. It's to interrupt the day and to say, I love you. [Aaron] Everyone's thinking are they serious right now? We are totally playing. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] We're being playful. These are funny ways. Don't don't actually go by and especially if your wife's pregnant. Or go and hit the stomach. Don't do that. Don't do that. [Jennifer] No , we're just kidding. [Aaron] No, we actually legitimately wanna talk about the power of real loving touch, and what it means and how it works and why God's given us this gift of touch and the benefit from what we've seen in our own life. Something that Jennifer's gonna talk about in a second, an experience that she had with me. And then we're just gonna talk about that and encourage you the listener, you husband and wife who are in your car or in bed or at home, walking around the house, whatever you're doing listening to this, to just remember to touch more. It should be obvious but it's not. [Jennifer] I'd even say evaluate how long it's been since you've intentionally touched your spouse or what does that touch look like, either throughout the day or in the morning or at night, and just let the Lord inspire you today, when it comes to touching your spouse. [Aaron] And this isn't just for those that one of their love languages is physical touch, because every human actually every organism in the world requires touch for that stimulus for healthy growth, especially for human beings. And we'll talk about that a little bit later. But so this isn't just for those that the love language's physical touch. Every single one of us need to focus on this and if it's not your natural tendency to do so then we just gotta work a little harder. [Jennifer] Yep, okay, so this is what happened. I was having an off day. I felt rundown, I felt tired. [Aaron] Super pregnant. [Jennifer] I mean, just physically I just was not doing well. And yeah, just super pregnant. And I mean, everyone listening right now you're just thinking about that off day you've had and you're like, "Okay, I can relate to that." But I felt overwhelmed. And I was getting ready to jump in to school time with the kids. And I just had already felt exhausted. And so I was-- [Aaron] It was like the morning we hadn't even gotten our routine going. [Jennifer] Nothing had started yet. And I was already feeling down. And I didn't say anything about it. I just was trying to do what I knew I had to do, right that saying, "Do the next right thing." And so I'm in there with the kids. And Aaron, usually your routine is, after Bible time you get a cup of coffee and got out to the garage, that's were you work. But you didn't do that. You came in, you came straight to me your like Beeline right for me. [Aaron] Which is not normal for me. [Jennifer] No, usually there's just this space where you like maybe even question like, "Hey, how are you?" "What's going on?" You didn't do any of that. You just opened the door, walked over to me had me stand up. And you just wrap your arms around me and you just held me and I was like in tears over it because I didn't realize that I even needed that in that moment. And even though I felt like sobbing in that moment, I think I might have even chuckled 'cause it was like so refreshing, it was like that. Oh, okay that I think-- [Aaron] Also like, why are you doing this? [Jennifer] Definitely questioning that. But it was such a beautiful moment. And such a beautiful experience. I had to share it. And I wanted to share it with you guys, because it really impacted me and nothing needed to be said. Nothing needed to be more than that. It was just "hey," like there was so much said in the action itself of, "I'm here for you. "I love you, you can do this." And I remember at I had climbed up on the desk. And he was just staring at us probably wondering like, what are they doing? He's still literally a year and a half. [Aaron] And all that PDA is going on. And he's like, What's happening here? [Jennifer] But it really made me feel so good to be embraced. And I just I loved that moment. I love that you had a heart that was soft enough to know what I needed and to not let anything distract you from comforting me in that way. [Aaron] Well, and I'll all admit to everyone listening. I'm sure other men are much better at this. There's some people that are just naturally prone to like oh, like gentleness and comforting and recognizing weaknesses and others and wanting to go love on them. But that is not my natural position. I'm not naturally gentle, I'm not naturally sensitive. [Jennifer] I would say that you're more so you'd like to communicate about it. Like tell me what the problem is. And this is how-- How can I fix it. This is how I can fix it. which I think a lot of people probably think that way. [Aaron] And then on the negative side, I was in my worst way of dealing with this is feeling inconvenienced by someone else's weakness feeling inconvenienced by you're feeling down or because all I'm thinking is like we have this routine. You just got to move forward. And what's happening right now is like stop halting all that and that's my I would say that's my natural position. But you have been praying for me for a long time for this. Others have been encouraging me and rebuking me at times about my lack of sensitivity, my lack of gentleness. And it's something that I've been praying for myself. Because I'm a dad, I'm a husband, a leader in my church. And it's important in every aspect. I just been praying that God would help me be that way. This is not uncommon event, but that morning, I just felt like, Oh, she probably just needs a hug. [Jennifer] And it was perfect. And I just feel like I have to say this, logistically I know that this can't happen like this in every marriage. Schedules are different. Soldiers that are gone, for a long time People are deployed. Yeah, there's a lot of different types of scenarios or situations where in marriage where maybe you can't comfort them in that way with the power of touch, but it can be done still in a phone call or a text message or any opportunity where you are together, right? [Aaron] I would say, yeah, the physical touch is still important. I would say more important in those very little amounts of time that you would have. If anything, I would just, the encouragement for some one who's not around their spouse often, should make sure they take that focus more seriously. I got a question for you. I again, this is a new year-- [Jennifer] For me or for them? [Aaron] For you, Jennifer. It's not normal. But in that moment I came in and I surprised you by doing something out of the ordinary. And just holding you not trying to give you solutions not trying to ask you questions. Not feeling annoyed by the inconvenience. I just genuinely came to hug you and hold you and love you. What message is this into your heart? [Jennifer] It was really powerful for me. I felt like in that moment, there was this. Just first of all rush of peace. I feel like you reminded me that I'm loved. That I am cared for, that I'm thought of, that I'm not alone. Even though I'm alone with the kids currently trying to do school. You we're reminding me in a physical way that you're there and you're supporting me and you're encouraging me. And that how I'm feeling physically in that moment yet sucks and it's hard, but that I can continue on and that I have to, basically. but it was immediate comfort. [Aaron] It gave you something that you didn't have before? [Jennifer] Reassurance. [Aaron] How did it make you feel toward me? Was there like anything you thought, Or like, "wow, like this about my husband?" [Jennifer] Well specifically just that we are on the same team that you're there for me even when you can't take over for me like you just couldn't take over and do school that day, like you had work to do you needed to go get to it. But that you were supporting me in a comforting and encouraging way by letting your presence be known. And just that embrace. Did it make you, 'cause you've seen plenty of times in the past my annoyance, my dissatisfaction with a scenario like this. [Aaron] Did it make you feel more confident in my love for you to see the opposite of that? [Jennifer] Oh, totally, it really affirmed me and to think that you stopped your routine. You stopped your day, you stopped what was habitual, of going out to go to work. For me that was super thoughtful. And it was an immediate affirmation of this man loves me and cares for me and wants me to be okay today. And it did that like my perspective, my attitude, everything kinda just shifted in a more positive direction. And I was able to get through that time with the kids in a much better way. [Aaron] And I remember it drastically changed your perspective of the day-- As you see my countenance. Your countenance, by the end of the day, like I feel like you were more accomplished. At the end of the day, like you at the house clean. You had the, like you felt like a winner. Everything was done that you probably were in the morning thinking none of this is getting done today. [Jennifer] Yeah, and it feels so weird talking about it. Because in this way, 'cause I feel like we're sharing, like in depth, what the impact was, but it was such a small thing. It really was. It was it was such a small moment of physical touch that happened in our marriage. That really changed the whole day around. Imagine what would happen if that was a more consistent event Yeah, for both. For both of us. [Jennifer] I have a question for you. [Aaron] Okay. [Jennifer] Are there any standout moments of when I have randomly touched you or that have impacted you? [Aaron] Yeah, when I saw this question I immediately was thinking about the times in the past where we're sitting somewhere, maybe in church or at a friend's house or just out in public. and you'll put your hand on my back and just start tickle rubbing my back or rub your fingers across my hair, or the back of my neck or those little things even if they're only for like a split second. It instantly makes me feel like wow, that felt really good. My wife touching me wanting to connect with me that way. It also gives me this boost of confidence because in public when you're around people, I don't know if other men feel this way. But there's a confidence boost of like, my wife, my woman loves me. And like is showing it, isn't afraid to show it is-- [Jennifer] It's basically like earlier you asked me, what message did it send to my heart what you did to me. This would be what message is a couple when they're showing physical touch and affection. What message is it sending to others? [Aaron] Well in it, but the message to others sends a message to me, it makes me feel powerful, makes me feel respected. Like it's a little thing but like, my wife not being afraid to show affection to me in public means that she loves me that much that she's willing to show others that love publicly. And there's that there was a confidence boost in that. Other times, just like if we're laying in bed and you just, reach over to hold me or to play with my hair or to scratch my back like little things like that, that have been really like oh, immediately makes me feel really close to like, we're together. We're on the same page. Because what, when you're like, and everyone can relate to this. when there's like a fight or disagreement that there's conflict in the marriage. The last thing you want to do is touch. And so usually not touching is that is a common signal for distance for like we're not on the same page. That reaching across the bed, that reaching across the table, that reaching over to your spouse getting close drawing near. Is the symbol of unity. Is that proof of we're here together? I'm with you like your mine. And it's not obligated it's not like, "Hey, can you scratch my back? "Hey, I need a back massage? "Hey, can you rub my feet?" Which is not bad things to ask, but the unprompted, the desire, the actual desire, I'm going to reach out and put my hand on my spouse in a gentle way and for the purpose of touching them, knowing them and feeling their the warmth of their skin. It does a lot for that spiritual connection, that unifying nature of being one. [Jennifer] So, when I was thinking about ways that I'm intentional with trying to be, physical with you. I wanted to share this. Just as a tip for anyone listening is for me, getting in the car is a trigger, because I know I can reach over and hold your hand. Whether you're driving or I'm driving One of one of our hands is free. And so for me, I know it's such a simple thing, but just reaching over and grabbing each other's hands for a couple seconds, even if it's not long lasting. Is just really good too. [Aaron] Something that just another tip, another trigger when we're out to eat, I know I'll put my hand on your knee. When we're close together. A date night. [Aaron] Or we'll hold hands under the table. Things that keep us connected. And then another thing you're bringing up these trigger things to remind us of when we can touch and where. When we're in battle, because often we're both really hot. We don't cuddle too often because we get-- Temperature hot. Yeah, we're temperature hot. but like it could be easy to just get in bed do you thing forget and then you're rolled over and no touchings happening, no connection. But reaching over and like playing with your hair, or putting my hand on your shoulder or holding hands with you. I love all of that. Even though we can't cuddle because we're too like temperature hot. [Jennifer] More so during pregnancy. [Aaron] But I'm just a hot sleeper, it's hard for me to just want to cuddle for hours. But that doesn't mean there's not ways that we can connect. [Jennifer] And Would you say that there's any ways that I've failed in this area? I just wanna be honest with people. [Aaron] That's a big question to ask. [Jennifer] I know. [Aaron] Well, of course we've both failed in this area. Because selfishness creeps in, and when we're selfish. And usually it plays out. On "oh, I'm not getting what I want, "I'm not getting what I deserve." So I'm not going to give, what they deserve what they want or what they think they deserve. until I get mine. And we do that to each other. And we have in the past, we gotten way better at it. I would say we're talking about just non sexual touch right now. I mean, sexual touch is so important. We're gonna talk about that in a little bit. [Jennifer] I'm just on this side note. Any sort of physical touch will not just lead to sexual intimacy, but definitely cultivates that environment where you want more. [Aaron] Not negative physical touch, we're talking about actual, intensional-- Positive. Positive touch. [Jennifer] Affirmative. [Aaron] I would say just over the years, and it's something that God's been growing us both in is sexual touch, yeah, like initiating, reaching out and saying, "hey, I want to be with you, "I want to experience this time with you." But that's something that we've been both growing in. [Jennifer] Something that is required in order to grow in this area is communication. This is just an encouragement to our listeners, if they struggle with, I wish my spouse would touch me and they're not, and not wanting that bitterness to grow, you gotta tell them, you gotta tell them how it makes you feel or that you want to be encouraged in your relationship that you want to have more. when you say that's really important to be able to talk about it. [Aaron] Not just 'cause we sometimes get into this mode of, if I say something, then it's gonna devalue the reset receipt of it. [Jennifer] I've done that before, don't do that. [Aaron] If I tell my wife what I want, and then she doesn't, then it's devaluing it. It's almost like no, they just got to know. Rather than, like, I'm gonna communicate, maybe they don't know, maybe they have a way of thinking because of the way they're raised that just totally makes them disregard things that I want, or need. [Jennifer] Or maybe their mind just hasn't been on it. And by bringing that message in a positive way, "Hey, I think we like we've done this before, "hey, I think we need to kiss more," or, "hey, I think we need to hold hands more" or whatever the thing is that would feel you fill you up. Talk about it in that sense, where it's like, let's both make a commitment to do this more. [Aaron] I totally agree. And I think just having this desire to... We'll talk about the actual like, touch is just so much more than just it's a good thing to do. And so we'll talk about that more. The Bible talks about touch a lot. Jesus touched people a lot. And so we get this idea of the savior of the king, the Lord the Creator. come the earth himself, God Himself coming to earth in the form of man to touch us, right? There's a famous painting of God touching Adams finger right? There's this idea of Jesus coming to earth and in the flesh is like the ultimate intimacy active saying, God's saying "I'm gonna go, "come to touch you and and to heal you "and to make you be with me forever" and so we get to see this picture and Why don't you read John 13:5 of this super intimate moment that Jesus had with his disciples. [Jennifer] Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him. So that was, like really simple. And I just like you said, it's just a really beautiful picture of intimate touch. [Aaron] Right, and it's this story shows us the servanthood of Christ. him girding his loins wrapping the towel around his waist, getting on his hands and knees. [Jennifer] And everybody was probably quietly-- [Aaron] Beneath his disciples. He lowered himself even beneath his disciple to wash their feet. And then he tells them go and do likewise. Essentially which is go wash each other, go touch each other, go embrace each other, go walk in such a way that you guys are unified, and do and do what I'm doing. Look I'm lowering myself as a servant, go lower yourself as servants for the sake of washing each other and embracing each other. [Jennifer] I wish that the Bible was more descriptive in this situation because I would love to hear what was going through the disciples mind when Jesus is getting ready to do this. And while he's doing it. [Aaron] But we only get Peters response, which is he's like, "No, don't do it." He's like, "unless I do this, "you have no part of me." He's like wash my whole body. Oh wait do it, do it. But also how were they impacted by this experience? I wanna hear more of that. But they walked with Jesus and I'm sure they had even more physical interactions with him as far as just arms touching or hugging or shaking hands or whatever, probably took part in their relationships as they spent that time together. But just thinking, how was this touch different? And what message did it send to each one of them about their relationship with Jesus? [Aaron] What I think is awesome is, you have Jesus called our high priest, and this is just a thought I was having right now we're talking about this. And the high and the priests in the Old Testament had to do all the ceremonial washings for themselves so that they can atone for the sins of everyone else. They first had to wash themselves we learned that Jesus did not have to do this because he was perfect. We have perfect Jesus, already perfectly like did not need to be washed, by any means, because he was perfect. Getting down to actually touch the dirt of his brothers, of his disciples. And also how powerful it is because God's created us in such a physical way to need touch. [Jennifer] Where he designed our bodies with the ability to receive it, right like we have nerve endings, and we can feel and I used to think that's fascinating. [Aaron] We have this perfect God in human flesh touching other men's feet and touching the flesh of others. And so there's a physiological response happening, a spiritual response happening, an emotional response happening. All of these things are happening at the same time with the king of the universe. But we get to experience that in little ways, and in everyday life with our spouse, and with others. 'Cause this physical touch thing, we shouldn't just end at, "Oh, I'm not a very touchy person, "and I'll try and touch my wife more. "But I don't touch others." The Bible tells us to embrace each other and how important touches, just gentle, loving touch in everyday life actually has a physiological healthy response in the body. That helps us with many things, but spiritually, it reminds us that we're close. And that we're together and that we're unified and that we care, [Jennifer] Which is so important in marriage, right? Really important infinitely. [Jennifer] Do you remember the time that I washed your feet when you came home from Brazil so we didn't have this, as pre-kids, probably-- My feet were pretty dirty. [Jennifer] Second year of marriage. I wanna say, we're living in Florida at the time. And I had a job. I was working in a preschool and you felt encouraged to go to Brazil, we were missionaries. I just happen to have a job to support us while we were working in Florida. But we were working for an organization that was preparing a trip to go to Brazil, I think it was for two weeks, three weeks? [Aaron] It's two weeks on the Amazon River it's pretty awesome. [Jennifer] And so you went and I missed you like crazy. But I had been reading this Passage about Jesus washing his disciples feet. And I just felt so encouraged when you got home. I think it was like three o'clock in the morning. It was like the middle of the sleep hours. And, and I remember you came home and you went to go take a shower, and I'm like, take a bath. And let me wash your feet. Yeah. Do you remember this? I do, I mean, two years in our marriage where we were already starting to experience some of those-- Hardships. hardships. and relational struggles and it wasn't as bad as it was later on in our marriage, but it was already there, but it was events like this, which I think helped elongate our process of not falling apart sooner. Those little bits of surrender that those acts of like, well, "we don't know what to do. "We're gonna try this like," you're praying and you see this, you're like, "I'm gonna try and walk in this." You tell God, "Jesus says to do this, "and I'm my husband's gonna get home, "I'm gonna wash his feet." [Jennifer] When I remember specifically thinking like, I wanted to feel close to you. I wanted to send that message to you that, "hey, I'm your wife, I'm your helper, "and I want to do what Jesus did and love you in that way." And I saw this what Jesus did as a very intimate thing. And so I just told myself, I'm gonna have the courage and just asked him if I could wash his feet. [Aaron] And I remember it made me feel really close to you. It made me feel really loved, it made me feel really honored. Also, it just surprised me. It was a surprising It was like wait, what? It was a very impactful moment for us. we actually put that challenge in our 30 day devotional for husbands and wives, for them to wash each other's feet. [Jennifer] While we're talking about Jesus, my mind's always, I feel like I'm always going back to "Marriage After God". But if you haven't gotten a chance to read it, you guys should definitely get a copy. It's the book that Aaron and I came out with last year. But there's a section of we're talking about how a marriage after God is intimate. And it talks about Jesus and I just wanted to read it really quick. It's on page 65. If you do have the book. "And marriage after God relentlessly "pursues and embraces intimacy "with each other, and with God, "our greatest example of this level "of intimacy is of course, Jesus. "He put his hands on people "who no one else would dare to touch." And there's a reference there to Luke 5:13, "He reached down and held a dying little girl's hand "giving her life again." Mark 5:41, "He broke cultural taboos to talk to people." John 4:9, "And he wept over the death of his close friend." John 11:35, "That's our Savior, he embraced intimacy. "If we are not intimate with God, "we cannot be intimate with other people. "We cannot weep with those who weep or mourn with those "who mourn or laugh with those who laugh. "We must look to the example of Christ and be willing "to embrace intimacy with God, and inner marriage." And I was just brought to remembrance of that section of the book because of how intimate Jesus was that he was willing to do all those things when I think about him, holding that little girl's hand and it's like, no matter what hardships we face in marriage, we can think to his example and go, "I can reach over and hold my spouse's hand." [Aaron] Well I think the example of Christ touching like the lepers and the sick and the bleeding and the things that a priest wasn't allowed to touch otherwise would make them unclean. Jesus was willing to touch unclean people, because in reality all are unclean. And so he's, he's touching these lepers. He's touching these these sick, he's touching these blind, these people that were outcasts that desire to be healed, to be desire to be known to desire to be reconciled to the community. And it's kind of like this picture in our marriage. Like, are we only going to touch when everything's perfectly right? Or are we going to in the midst of our pain and our hurt and our ugly, our smelly and in our dirty times? Are we gonna touch? Are we gonna embrace? Are we gonna hold? Are we going to reach out our hands and draw our spouse closer to us? Because even though often in our vows, we say, for better or for worse, it's often just for the better, and when it's in the worst is like, I don't have the energy right now. All right, until you change or unless this happens when it's those times that it's the most necessary. Jesus said it this way, he said, "I didn't come "for the healthy I came for the sick." [Jennifer] And I would even say most impactful, when you're either at odds with each other or there's tension or there's hardship [Aaron] Or you don't deserve it. [Jennifer] Or you don't deserve it and your spouse reaches across the table and touches you in that way. Oh my goodness. It's powerful. It's impactful. And I think that that's exactly what maybe one, maybe a lot needed here today. I mean, I just feel like that was really encouraging and even to me. [Aaron] It's encouraging to me, it's something I have to continue to be to remember. You're, you're having a hard time today. And my flesh is like-- [Jennifer] Get up, Jen. [Aaron] It's like, I don't know if I can handle you having a hard time again today. Because I mean, which is totally my selfish flesh, because I'm not experiencing what you're experiencing. So it's hard for me to just empathize right away. But when you walk in the Spirit, so my choice to be like, like, I'm gonna understand my wife right now I'm gonna walk in an understanding way as the Word tells me to do. I can realize this is hard season for you, I'm gonna have this hard season with you. And so just go and hug you and hold you and-- [Jennifer] Tickle me with your beard, which didn't help Aaron. [Aaron] Funny, touching is good to be playful. [Jennifer] It was really sweet. And again, I do appreciate that you came to my level and you saw me were I was at and you had compassion on me. And for the husband's out there who are similar to me, go against your flesh, and walk in the Spirit and and do this for your wife. To be honest some of you men that are listening, are probably thinking like, "Man, I don't ever do that." She'll probably not know what to do. You'll go and you'll try and like draw close to you, and you're gonna feel super awkward and she's gonna tense up and you're gonna pull her closer and you're just gonna say, "I know, it's kind of weird, I just wanna hug you." And then what's gonna happen, she's gonna realize it's real. And then you'll, you'll probably feel her melt. And so don't be afraid to do it the first time, it gets easier, and ask the Lord to help you do it to sort of help you physically encourage your spouse with that physical touch with the gentle the loving, the caring, the caress, the just that softness. [Jennifer] It's good. So we've said it a couple times, but just this idea that physical, physical touch sends a message to your spouse and there was just a kind of handful of ways that I was wanting to share with you guys about what those messages might look like. This isn't like, 100% perfect. It's just some encouragement. [Aaron] When you do this kind of sends these messages. [Jennifer] Embracing each other says, "I trust you and I need you in my life." A comforting hug says, "I'm here for you." A kiss says, "you're mine and I love you." Holding hands, let your spouse know, you like them. And you like spending time with them. Tickle rubs, massages, running your fingers through their hair says, I wanna make you feel good. And most times lets them know that you desire even more physical touch. [Aaron] It's true, and for those that are afraid of that last part, if I do this, then it's going to make them want more. I think that's something that should be prayed through. Your heart of like, you're avoiding touching your spouse because you are afraid that that will make them want more from you sexually. And if that's a fear you have and that's an negative thought you have which is something that keeps you from reaching out and touching your spouse. I think that's something you should pray about, that God would change in you. And there's a scripture specifically about this. [Jennifer] Real quick, I just have to say, there's a flip side to this of when your spouse is giving you physical touch, and you don't want it to lead anywhere that you're not just doing while they're touching you thinking they better not they better not. And then the moment it starts leading somewhere that you don't want it to go. You're thinking, "See, I knew they were just doing it "to get that thing." But, you guys God designed marriage to be physical, and-- [Aaron] It's the pretty much the only confines for Biblical healthy physical touch. [Jennifer] Yeah, like we need to be there for each other in that way. Now, if there's a specific reason why you don't want it to be led somewhere, you got to speak up, you got to let them know. Otherwise, your heart's just going to wrestle. [Aaron] And there's a loving way. It's like, "Hey, I'm really enjoying, "you reaching out you touching me playing with my hair, "you rubbing my back, I know, "you might want something more. "And I just wanna let you know that It may not work. "And so can we plan it for tomorrow night? "Can we can I reach out? "Can I let you know tomorrow?" [Jennifer] Yeah, or the other way is to set aside whatever justification you're rolling around in your head and go for it and enjoy it. [Aaron] Oftentimes, you get to the end of it, you're like, "Oh, I'm glad we did that part." "Oh, I needed that." Exactly. [Jennifer] Okay, so why don't you read that? It's 1st Corinthians 7:3-5. [Aaron] And this is this is a scripture that challenges both husbands and wives. On the actual obligation, we have to physical intimacy. It says this, "The husband should give to his wife, "her conjugal rights," and we all know what conjugal means. "And likewise, the wife to her husband, "for the wife does not have authority over her own body, "but the husband does. "Likewise, the husband does not have authority "over his own body, but the wife does. "Do not deprive one another except perhaps "by agreement for a limited time." I like how first of all says it says, "except perhaps." So it means like, if this is going to happen in the rare occasions of depriving each other, it's going to be by agreement and only for a short period of time. Like don't let there be long periods of time that this stuff happens. That's what almost destroyed marriage. Was long periods of time of not-- Me avoiding-- Yeah. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] That you may devote yourselves to prayer but then come together again so satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self control. There's a very stark warning of the temptation that comes from avoiding each other sexually. And there's also at the command that my body is not my own. It's hers and her body is not her own, it's mine, right? Which has tons of implications and we can have another episode about this. But just just as an encouragement, you shouldn't be withholding sexual intimacy from your spouse. If there's a good reason then you need to discuss that and come to an agreement on it. If there's infidelity, which is a good reason to have a break from sexual intimacy. [Jennifer] Not just a break, it's a break being prayerful. [Aaron] It's a prayerful break from purpose of reconciliation, for the purpose of building trust, for the purpose of coming together against stronger than before, if that's where you're at. And so there's there's a stark command on the Word of God that whose bodies ours, are my bodies is not my own, I don't get to just make decisions for my own body. I have my responsibility to my wife, and vice versa. [Jennifer] And we shouldn't be using, sexual intimacy as a tool and withhold it from each other or anything like that. We can't, we can't let division and disunity and that kind of heart to seep into the marriage relationship which is so beautiful, the way that God designed, being married and living in this sacred space of like there's no other relationship like it on Earth. I receive from you, Aaron you receive from me. There's physical closeness, embrace touched, like there really is nothing like it on Earth and to be aware of that and the opportunities that we do have to come together. And again, this is just another place where I wanna assert that if distance or timing doesn't work because of work schedules or something, that is key be circumstances that are keeping you guys from being physically close, that you're affirming one another with your words, words are really powerful. And as much as this whole episode is about touch, you need to be affirming to each other and encouraging each other. Like, "we can't be together right now. "But I'm gonna make this a priority as soon as I see you." Right? [Aaron] Yep, and I want to talk about some of the way God designed us. And created us to for touch for that human connection. Not just verbal, but actual physical. And there's a story that we've been told from friends of ours that have adopted in China. And they went to China, and they walked into the orphanage, and it was silent. [Jennifer] There's babies. [Aaron] There's babies everywhere, but it's silent, no, no crying no. Like you would imagine in a room full of lonely babies. [Jennifer] They said it felt eerie. [Aaron] It was what's wrong. And this has actually been researched by a lot of people. There's several orphanage systems around the world that this is kind of a case where the babies aren't touched. They're not held on a hug. They're not cuddled, none of that stuff. And the babies very quickly learn that they're not going to be comforted. So they don't cry. They need it, they want to be comforted, but the only way they can communicate does nothing so they don't communicate. And it actually stunts their their neurological growth, it stunts their physical growth, it stunts a lot of things in them just because they're not being touched. I remember hearing a story a while ago, of an old man who's single, his wife died years prior, and he wanted to find something to do with his life. And so he started going to the NICU in his local hospital, just to hold the babies. He would go in there and he'd sit in a rocking chair and he'd hold babies that didn't have families, or that they were sick or whatever it was and he would just hold them for hours. Rock them sing to them talk to them. And he had this ministry of going and just holding babies which is amazing. When he gets to heaven one day, God's gonna hug him for doing that. Human touch is fundamental to our communication, to our bonding, to our physical health. There's been tons of research on how physical touch on even little mounts of levels. It brings healing to your body physical healing, like it helps you with your immune system helps you with your neurological development. What human touch does is there's a chemical that God's put in our bodies called oxytocin. And it's released during sex. It's released during hugs, [Jennifer] It's actually released during breastfeeding while a mom is bonding with her baby. [Aaron] Yeah, it's called the bonding drug. When you have an orgasm and during sex, and oxytocin is released in both of your bodies. It actually causes you to physically, emotionally, mentally bond closer with your spouse, which is also why it's prohibited to be having sexual relationships outside of your marriage. Because you're bonding in this way with other human beings that you're not married to. And this is this should be only happening within the context of marriage. But that oxytocin release that hormone is actually so good for so many things. It relieves stress. It combats what's the stress hormone, it's cortisol. It combats that. So you have too much of that in your body and you have all this stress and oxytocin being released through a hug, through a kiss, through an orgasm through that these things that are that release oxytocin in your body, and then boom, you're actually helping your body do what God made your body to do. Which makes it even stronger, healthier, more excited, more fit, less sad, right? It helps with depression, it helps all these things. And these are all just the just the biological function of touch in your in your life why it's so important. So again, like I said in the beginning, regardless, if you're love language's physical touch, every human being on the planet needs physical touch for healthy growth, healthy living. You could have access to this on a daily basis with your spouse. Think about how much more joyful, and secure, and confident and happy you'll be if physical touch's more consistent like healthy, loving, gentle physical touch. A caress here, a hand holding there, a kiss, a hug, caressing the neck, touching the ear, playing with the hair. All these things, that are so good for us and make you have to be so close. And it releases all these good things in your body. And it actually it's a spiritual thing. It's an emotional thing, it's a physical thing. [Jennifer] That's really good. So often, I think that as humans, we become contingent on the other person in the marriage to step up and do something-- [Aaron] Transactional. [Jennifer] And I think it's important to speak to that for just a moment Aaron, and maybe you can share on this but Just as an encouragement to those listening. That we shouldn't be waiting to initiate, waiting to insert ourselves and be physical, for our spouse to do it first or to take that first step or especially if there has been distance or time between, a season of no physical touch. What would you say to encourage them? [Aaron] Well, I first want to talk to those that, like, maybe I'm imagining a husband has a hard heart. There's something, wherever they are in their marriage. And like I said, we talked about earlier touch is the last thing they want. And I would imagine a wife is afraid to like to reach out and hold their hand because they're gonna pull away and reject them. [Jennifer] Or maybe the couple who they have tried to openly Express and communicate that they want more or that there's they're hurt because it's not happening and then they get shut down. And so that kind of like what you're saying about the baby's crying, not crying in the orphanages. They've learned to not speak up and to not say anything. [Aaron] 'Cause they're not gonna get it. [Jennifer] That makes me sad just thinking about that in marriage. [Aaron] So my encouragement to those is to do it anyway. Even if even if they reject you, even if you, you lean over and you go to caress your wife's neck and she swats your hand away, or you reach over to put your hand on your husband's shoulder, and he shrugs it off. It hurts. I'm not gonna pretend that that doesn't hurt, I'm not gonna tell you to pretend it doesn't hurt. But you can hand that to the Lord and say, "Lord, that hurts me. "But I want to love my husband, "I want to love my wife." And, and maybe it's the next time you're walking by them, to the kitchen you just for half a second, rub your hand across their back. They can't stop you. Whether they say a word to you, they're gonna think like, she touched me. [Jennifer] You're sending them a message still. [Aaron] You're sending them a message still. And you do that over and over, and over again. They they look frustrated. You go up and you get close and say, "Hey, I'm praying for you." Just put your hand on their shoulder. They look sad. So you say, "can I give you a hug?" Even if they say no to you, do it. Reach out to touch someone like the song goes, "I reach out" and go to your spouse and just don't give up. Don't give up doing good for in due season you will produce a harvest, you will reap a reward. And I mean think about it's like what Christ did. He reached out and touched a lot of people. And so be Christ in your home to your spouse, reach out and touch them, pray for them. Put your hand on them. Try and grab their hand, touch their lower back, put your hand on their shoulder, put your hand on their forearm. Whatever it is, just let them know that you want to touch them. [Jennifer] Yeah, that's beautiful. We hope that this episode encouraged you guys. And this really brought you to a place where you're evaluating physical touch in your marriage. And I would say our charge to you would be an encouragement to be the initiator. I know we already mentioned that but to be the initiator of physical interaction, in your relationship with your spouse. And don't let your flesh, your insecurities, or your frustrations get in the way. Be courageous enough to reach out and see how that touch impacts your spouse. [Aaron] And ask Christ to give you the strength and the courage to do it in a supernatural way with your spouse. [Jennifer] All right, Aaron, you wanna close us out with prayer? [Aaron] Yep. Dear Lord, we praise you for the gift of touch. We thank you for the way you created our bodies and gave us the ability to fill and touch. We pray that we would be husbands and wives who use the power of touch to affirm each other in marriage and let one another know we are near. We pray we would have the courage to reach out and hug or hold each other's hand. Even when it feels hard to do that or inconvenient. May our marriage be a priority in this way. May our touch remind our spouse that we love them and that we support them. We pray touch with encourage intimacy and closeness like we have never experienced in our marriage before. In Jesus name, amen. We love you guys. We thank for listening to episode, we pray that you would touch more and that if you haven't already would you just take a moment, leave us a review. Just scroll down to the bottom of your app, hit a star rating that the easiest way to do it, you just tap a star. Or you can leave us a text review. We love those and also blesses other people when they're coming to check out the show for the first time. It also lets iTunes and other podcast apps know how to rank our podcast based off her reviews. So we love you all. We thank you and we pray that God moves mightily in your marriages and draws you closer to him and your spouse and see you next week. [Narrator] Did you enjoy today's show? If you did, it would mean the world to us if you could leave us a review on iTunes. Also, if you're interested, you can find many more encouraging stories and resources at marriageaftergod.com and let us help you cultivate an extraordinary marriage. 

Stewardship is a big part of it, but so is luck. In today’s episode, we sit down with Rene Ancinas, president, CEO, and fourth-generation family member of Port Blakely, about how the company’s vision to leave the world better than how they found it, plus a few fortunate circumstances, have kept them going for over 150 years.  Episode transcript: Hi, I'm Kathleen Farris, and this is Very Different Roles, a podcast featuring conversations with family-owned business members, leaders, and advisors. Today we'll be talking with René Ancinas, Chief Executive Officer, fourth generation of Port Blakely. René, welcome to the show!   René Ancinas   Thanks for having me.   Kathleen Farris   You're welcome. We're glad that you took time out. We know you've got to be really busy up there with all those trees. So, we'll start today, René, to talk about, really, Port Blakely's success and the longevity that's allowed your family business to really continue, and of thriving in carrying your family values, your wealth, forward over the last 150 years. So if you can talk a little bit about your history and your family business and what you do for them.   René Ancinas   Sure, I'd be happy to do that. So, Port Blakely is actually a little over 150 years. It was founded in 1864 in the Puget Sound in Seattle. And it was not founded by an Eddy family member; it was actually founded by a gentleman named William Renton, who was kind of an icon in early pioneering history in Seattle. He had been a merchant marine; he had been an orphan, and like a lot of people at that time, he came west with that pioneering spirit and wanted to start something.   René Ancinas   He actually started in the milling business. He started a couple of different ventures which were not successful. One, he had started the company in a bad location with lots of high winds and notoriously bad Seattle weather.   Kathleen Farris   Probably hard for trees.   René Ancinas   Yeah, exactly. And then he... No, he was only in the mill business.   Kathleen Farris   Oh, got it, okay.   René Ancinas   This was before what we know today as sustainable forestry, which is a whole different world.   Kathleen Farris   Okay.   René Ancinas   Then he tried it again, and there was actually a boiler explosion and he lost his eye, and so he had this great eyepatch for the rest of his life. He went to the Bay Area to recover, and then he came back a third time and he found this great harbor on Bainbridge Island, which was sheltered and deep, and that's when the company really started and he really got going. So early on it was shipbuilding; it was the largest mill west of the Mississippi, one of the first to have electricity. And the family lore and the company lore is that it burned down at least two times. That was kind of the nature of it.   René Ancinas   But our family company came across from... They started in Bangor, Maine in the 18th century. They had been in the lumber business, like a lot of other families. They had gone, like a lot of business family members for a lot of different companies... Weyerhaeuser and everybody else... They migrated to the Midwest. Our family went to Michigan; we had operations there for the second generation, and different kinds of things. There was lumber milling, but the family member there was also in banking and dry goods. And then the next generation came west, like a lot of other folks, and they bought the company in 1903.   René Ancinas   Our family bought the company from the founders' estate in 1903, and at that point it was a mill, and over a period of time, Renton had also stockpiled some of his savings into forests. So back in the early days of big tree harvesting... A lot of people will have seen those famous pictures of the giant trees and... steam engines and people standing on these giant saws and all that kind of stuff. At that time, it was easiest to harvest closer to the water in Puget Sound and they would float and raft these logs around, which is why the mill worked on an island. But he was smart: he started buying forest land inland from there, figuring that at some point that was going to be valuable.   René Ancinas   And some of that forest land formed the beginnings of... When my family came on board, they made a good stab at the mill company. They got into shipbuilding during the first World War, but the forests were always in the background. And roundabout 1930 or so was when the family really focused on forestry and sustainable forestry, and that's the legacy that our family now... So we're fifth generation as of 1903, but if you count back to Maine it's probably a couple more.   Kathleen Farris   Wow. Okay, so-   René Ancinas   Yeah. It's a really interesting history, obviously. I could talk about it for a long time. And when you're part of western pioneering culture like we are, there's a lot of salty and interesting characters back there.   Kathleen Farris   I love the stories and the innovation piece, though, going all the way back to the 1800s. I'm curious to hear your perspective on, when they decided to innovate... Maybe they didn't know that they were innovators back then. You know, like when electricity was created, right? What is your perspective on that? Have you been told stories about, how did they get to the point? Was it a bunch of people around a table? Were they out on the mill? I'm just curious to hear your perspective of how it continued to carry forward, especially way back when.   René Ancinas   You know, that's a really good question, because modern management theory is just that: it's modern. There wasn't a lot of these things that you could go and read about how to solve these problems back in 1880 or whatever, and it was really kind of a scrappy perseverance entrepreneurship, and just... a fair bit of luck, I imagine.   René Ancinas   But I think at the time, they were dealing with the transcontinental railroad, and they realized that they had a mill on an island, and now the mill's going to be on the mainland, and so they tried to figure out how to raft lumber off to be closer to the railroad. The electricity was another thing. I don't know all the origins of that, but I think the mindset of people who were trying to build businesses in the wild west at the time had to have been very, very creative.   René Ancinas   And that DNA is definitely still part of the company, even though... I mean, there's a similar DNA that, over a couple of generations, you pick up roots and you move west each time for new business opportunities. It takes a certain mindset, and I think that our family members had a similar one, because when they got out here and they realized that they mill probably wasn't the best business, they pivoted pretty quickly into shipbuilding and partnering with other family members.   René Ancinas   And then after the first World War, when that really declined they had to pivot again, and then, with my great-grandfather, they spent quite a bit of time looking into forest genetics, and he ended up founding the Institute of Forest Genetics in Placerville to really study long term bug resistance, fire resistance, genetics, to figure out ways that forestry... to be sustainable. But it was really... Like I said, it took a certain mindset to pivot that many times.   Kathleen Farris   Yeah, and to really, the perseverance piece, I think, is fascinating, especially going back then again to the modern management time. How did they come together and keep the company going, the family business going forward and looking at everything that they needed to think about. Who would have thought they were thinking about, back then, what's going to impact the tree, because if there is something that impacts it of course it's not going to grow, right?   René Ancinas   Right.   Kathleen Farris   And then it dies off, like other businesses do. So yeah, I love the stories, which is a great part of having people like you come on our show, so our families can hear about, you know, how did you continue to innovate? And what I love, too, is what you were talking about the communication piece, because a lot of our families, that's a huge issue. And for some it's a positive, right? They're, "This is an opportunity for improvement!" And others are like, "Oh, no. Uncle this and that." So what I love about your company's vision is... and I read this... that it's to cultivate a healthy world, to leave things better than you found them, including your family. So I'd love to hear your perspective: where did that come from, and how do you continue to carry that forward as the CEO?   René Ancinas   Yeah. Well, it's a really interesting one, because I think what we learned after 150 years is that each generation has to drive its own vision within that context. If I think about those stories I just told, I'm fairly certain, although I... I would bet that they weren't talking about long term vision so much as, "How do we survive the Great Depression?" Or, "How do I survive the fact the mill just burned down a second time?"   Kathleen Farris   "How do I feed my family?"   René Ancinas   "How do I feed my family and take care of all these people that I've got employed?"   Kathleen Farris   Right.   René Ancinas   And so, some of those aren't a lot different, but in a lot of ways, we are in a very different world than we were then, and forestry in particular has gone through major revolutions and innovation and different mindsets in terms of its role in society. I mean, it used to be really, really frowned upon as the dark beasts of industrial extraction.   Kathleen Farris   Interesting.   René Ancinas   We all know about the timber wars and the [inaudible 00:09:17] and the redwood trees in California, but really more and more it's become a lot of the answer to climate crisis, because sustainable forestry really has so many benefits.   René Ancinas   And so to go back to your question, with my coming on as the next CEO and now having generations four and five engaged in the company... and also a different, I would say, demographic in our employees... We have more diversity in the employee workforce than we ever did. We have millennials and Gen X-ers and a whole variety of different folks... It was really important in 2013 or '14 as we were setting our next 30 year vision for the company, to say, "How do we make sure that our company is relevant and is impactful and aligned with a very mission-driven employee workforce?"   René Ancinas   There's people who are called to work in natural resources, just like in my old... My experience and my background is in the arts and music. But there's a real interesting commonality: people are very driven to work in nature. And so work has to be meaningful and impactful, so what we did in 2013 and '14 within the company is, we really revisited our vision for the next 30 years. And what really came away from that is that there needs to be a meaningful and impactful work environment. And part of that, and what drew all our employees and made this company, I think, special, was that our employees and our family felt it was important to take care of each others. Employees to family and family to employees.   René Ancinas   But also, because we work at a very large landscape level, the environmental impact and the impact that we have on rural communities and the communities where we operate was also very important. And so that vision... long answer to a good question... [inaudible 00:11:19] healthy world, really encompasses all that. It's that we want to leave things... This is kind of a classic example of stewardship, and we define it as exponential stewardship, which is, we want to leave everything better than we found it. Not just the company and the family members, just the employees, their families, the community, and the environment.   Kathleen Farris   Yeah, I love that. I mean, that's... In our family at home, we talk about that a lot, of, how do we leave each space better off than when we arrived? No matter what it is.   René Ancinas   Right. People who've grown up on farms or ranches, they've often heard that. There's, I think, another axiom... My grandfather was a cattle rancher, and we always learned that you leave the gate the way you found it.   Kathleen Farris   Yup.   René Ancinas   Of course, unless it's broken, and then you're supposed to fix it. Right?   Kathleen Farris   Yeah.   René Ancinas   So.   Kathleen Farris   Yeah, my family had a ranch. We did have cattle, and that's absolutely true. My dad would always say, "Hey, did you take the wire and close it?" It was before we had regular locks on it; it was literally the twine that kept it shut. So yeah, I loved that.   Kathleen Farris   Well, you know what I would like to do is kind of shift a little bit from the humans, but really talk about the governance piece. Because I know this is so important when you're looking at professionalizing and moving from generation to generation and how... especially from your perspective as a CEO, you come into this, you're in the G4, G5 transition, and governance is a huge part of helping our families continue to move forward. And when there's not governance in place, that's a different outcome and a different discussion, but can you talk a little bit about how your family business has used governance to move your family forward, and then maybe talk a little bit about the roles of your board and your family council? I think our families would love to hear that.   René Ancinas   Sure. Yeah, that's a big one. And certainly, in a cousin consortium as we are, and a fifth generation, we have about... plus or minus 140 what I would call stakeholders, about 85 shareholders... Well, first at the high level, we have a board of directors; we have 11 members on our board, which is large, and I'll explain why in a minute. But we have six independent professional board directors and five family members. And that's part of the reason that we have a larger board, is that we also operate by... We like to choose the best practices that might come from professional public company boards without a lot of the extras that, for us, you don't need at a private company.   Kathleen Farris   Sure, sure.   René Ancinas   So we have audit committee, we have a compensation committee, and we have a nominating and governance committee, so we have three committees and then a full board.   Kathleen Farris   Are the six directors family members, or are they elected from companies outside of your family?   René Ancinas   Of the 11 directors, all directors are elected by the shareholders. They're nominated by the board and elected by the shareholders. We're a limited partnership, so we have a slightly different [inaudible 00:14:36] structure; we have limited partner units and we have shareholder units that elect the board.   René Ancinas   But the reason we have 11 is that we wanted to make sure we have leadership on all those committees by independent, professional directors. And that family directors don't necessarily lead committees, but they actually play a very important role in communication about shareholder interests and needs. Not all directors have the same fiduciary responsibility. We also pay all board members the same-   Kathleen Farris   Oh, okay. So they get a stipend?   René Ancinas   Yeah. They get a stipend, a meeting fee, and then committee chairs get a little bit of extra for that leadership role. And then we also have a lead independent director, because my role is also CEO and Chairman of the Board, and we felt it was important because of the many hats that I wear, that there's always a lead independent director. That was something that we chose.   Kathleen Farris   That's great.   René Ancinas   Yeah. And of course, we have a family council, which can be anywhere from seven to nine, and they represent all branches of the family assembly for us that's defined as everybody 15 years and older, whether they own a share or not.   Kathleen Farris   Oh, okay. So that they can all have a voice. Okay, that's great.   René Ancinas   Yeah. So they all have a one-to-one voice on big, broad things. The shareholders and unit holders obviously have a vote by ownership.   Kathleen Farris   Sure, okay.   René Ancinas   So that's kind of the structure. The family council is sort of a constituent representative; they're educating, they're identifying issues and concerns and raising them. They're not necessarily communicating information about how the business is doing, but they're communicating to the business, "We think you should be communicating more about this topic," so we don't want to have the family council in a role where they are trying to translate business performance. This, again, goes back to, that's the business' responsibility.   Kathleen Farris   Yeah. Watch your swim lane. My favorite thing: watch your swim lane.   René Ancinas   Yeah.   Kathleen Farris   Let me help you stay in it, yeah.   René Ancinas   We talk a lot about that. So that's kind of the structure; I would say the goals of the governance structure are really about making sure that there is alignment and that there is a clear voice that we understand what the current owners need and want, but also we want to have future owners bought in so that when they inherit ownership or when they become owners, that they feel like they've had a say. And there's some complexity into that; make sure everybody knows who's coming from which...   Kathleen Farris   Which perspective.   René Ancinas   ... point of view. Right.   Kathleen Farris   Sure.   René Ancinas   But really, it's about alignment. And when we founded our whole governance structure back in around 1999, we spent a lot of time with John Davis and Cambridge Advisors... It was called Cambridge Advisors to Family Enterprise... and they really instilled in us an important concept, which was to keep the family in the business and the business in the family, there has to be a lot of pride and trust. And a lot of people will be familiar with that. So a lot of our governance structure, our programs, are all to make sure that we're building pride and trust in the company.   Kathleen Farris   So I think that's a really great topic to dig a little deeper in. So, pride. Some people are naturally going to have it, right? What advice would you give other CEOs like yourself if they're coming in and they have a landscape that maybe everybody doesn't have as much pride as you'd like them to. How would you look at engaging them? What advice would you have to share with our families?   René Ancinas   Yeah. Well, obviously they're going to proud of the company if the company is performing well. And so professional management and financial performance is really important. They're going to be proud... It can be subjective. For us, it was identifying, what would make the family proud? And that goes back to values, or is the company's values in alignment with what the family expects from the company?   Kathleen Farris   Sure.   René Ancinas   And if not, how do we reconcile that? So pride also has to do, I think, with... And we've had a lot of discussions over the years. You don't want the education of the family about the company to be an indoctrination, but you do want to make sure that you are sharing the stories about the company and what's the employee hat as the CEO. And usually it's even better to have not the family member CEO, but other employees come forward and talk about what they're doing and be really transparent about it, because you can't help but see how proud they are to work for the company and what we do, and that translates to the family. And then it builds over time. So this is a constant thing.   Kathleen Farris   It's kind of like a positive virus.   René Ancinas   Right, yeah.   Kathleen Farris   Yeah.   René Ancinas   And the trust comes with that. So the more they feel like they're hearing the whole story, not just the filtered, rose-colored lens-   Kathleen Farris   Yeah, "Everything's beautiful. We never have any problems."   René Ancinas   Yeah, which is natural when you're really proud of what you're doing-   Kathleen Farris   Yeah, that's true.   René Ancinas   ... but you have to be open and transparent about where you're maybe not succeeding, and that builds trust, and then that builds pride, too. So.   Kathleen Farris   Yeah, that's a really good point. Because I was with a family yesterday and one of my questions to their leadership team is, if you're going to go out onto the floor and share with the employees... which, about 40 of them were related of the 250... the "why" growth matters. Like, why are we continuing to grow? What was their answer? And the question was, we don't know.   René Ancinas   Wow.   Kathleen Farris   Right, yeah. So then back to... What I loved what you said earlier is, you took the time to plan a 30 year vision. I'm going to be honest: I had none of my families say that. Not that that's a bad thing, but good for you guys. How did you go down that path? I think I'd love to hear a little bit more about that. What was that process like? I mean, I've done vision work where we've done five years, 10 years, and then re-engineered back to figure out, how did we get to that. You know, here's the steps we took to get to that 10 year. But what does a 30 year process look like? Because I'm sure that because of that, and things you've done in the past, that's why your family is past the 150 mark.   René Ancinas   Well, that's an interesting... I should be clear: the vision that we did... And this presents, I think, a whole nother thing that's good for family companies to talk about. The vision that we're talking about, that we did, was the company's vision, that the employees in the company did. And we definitely included the family members, but this one was driven by what we know as a company and of what our employees felt strong about knowing our company and what their... based on what they believed the family would be proud of and that would do the right thing by the family, what is our company's vision? Which we shared with the family.   René Ancinas   The family, back when we were creating our governance structure as part of our constitution, the family also created a vision for the company, which was part of the constitution, and that they created for our family assembly. It doesn't maybe fall into what most people that might be listening would think of as a vision statement, but it had a lot of these same concepts of, we want to company to perform well, we want the company to take care of our employees and our communities, and that kind of thing. They were more statements.   René Ancinas   So what's interesting about all this is that family companies are not static, so just as you've done work in one of the circles, whether it's the company or the owners or the family, then you have to go back to the other one and keep building on it. So the family assembly now, through the family council, is revisiting the values over this couple of years, and that will likely lead to conversation about refreshing the family's vision for the company. And what we did do is, when we shared the vision for the company that the employees and staff came up with, there was a lot of excitement in the family. So it was really a test of, are we in alignment? And I think we got a lot of strong endorsements of that.   Kathleen Farris   Oh, okay. Good.   René Ancinas   But there's a separate conversation that needs to have as ownership transitions over time: do the next generation of owners share the same goals for the company as the previous generation? So it's never static. That's part of the stewardship of family governance, too.   Kathleen Farris   Yeah, I think that's a really good point, because like you shared earlier, each generation drive its own vision. And if your millennial generation is the "save the earth"... not saying that all of your generations aren't, but they have a different perspective of how they'd like to leave the space better off than when they arrived, so I think that's great that you continue to bring everybody together and really talk about what's working and their vision for the future. And some of our families have dozens of family members who work in the family business, and I understand that you guys have too. So I'd love to hear, what's the impact that you believe this has had on Port Blakely, especially what I read about binding the 140 members of the family closer to the company.   René Ancinas   Yeah. It's a really... When I joined the company, there were four of us. There was, my predecessor, the CEO, myself, and then the president of our forestry operations, because we have three operating divisions. We had four at the time, but three operating divisions. And his son had been working the company for many years, and so now it's his son Mike and I are the only two family members working in the company. But I would say that... I can say that from my experience...   René Ancinas   I have a couple of experiences. Before I was ever involved in this company, my parents had... I grew up in the mountains of Northern California in Squaw Valley, and my parents had ski shops. And very unrelated, but at the same time, there was something about an owner-occupied business. So they had special programs for ski racers to trade in equipment when nobody else had that kind of thing, because ski racing was a very expensive sport. They had fundraisers for ski education foundations; they did all this stuff. They had barbecues on Fridays for their employees in the parking lot; they did all kinds of stuff. And so there was a feel to having an owner-occupied business that I grew up with that I put in my memory bank.   Kathleen Farris   Sure.   René Ancinas   I would say that that same thing applies to having family members in a company when it's working well. When I came on board, I had a lot of employees say, "We are so happy to know that there's family leadership coming into the company. We were worried this may not happen," because I think it gives them a sense of continuity and that those values will continue.   René Ancinas   Now, the opposite side is that there's always a tension between that and it not becoming an entitlement, where as a family member you just assume you're going to work in the company, regardless of whether your qualified or dedicated. Because I think we've all studied and seen things, examples when that happens; unfortunately, the toxicity is kind of a multiplier. It's very de-motivating to the other staff.   Kathleen Farris   It just gets carried through the family business, for sure.   René Ancinas   Right.   Kathleen Farris   Yeah.   René Ancinas   So it's a balancing act. You have to be clear. One of the first things we worked on back in, I'd say '99 and 2000 was clarifying the expectations of family members and family employment. And we're going back to it in the next year to revisit it, because it's been 20 years since we looked at it.   Kathleen Farris   Oh, okay.   René Ancinas   Really make sure it's still relevant.   Kathleen Farris   So I know some of our families have shared that they have such a... I'll say "nonflexible policy," to where sometimes their family member is the best candidate, but because they're governance says "I can't give it to you out the gate if you, family member, don't interview as well as an outsider." So I'd love to hear your perspective on that, or how do you make sure that the entitlement doesn't happen, but that you don't lose a really good family member who could add total value? That's such a... That could be a morale issue altogether, of... You know, Susie is the new CFO, but really John really needed to be it because of where their skill sets align strategically with the family goals. So I would love to hear your thoughts on that.   René Ancinas   Yeah, I think one of the things that happens... It falls into the realm of entitlement and clear expectations... A lot of this can be subjective. So what I mean by that is, as long as you set expectations before you reach that really critical decision point, and you've thought through all the ramifications, then you're going to mitigate some of that concern. Where I think family businesses get into trouble in large and small incidents is when they reach that critical decision where there's a potential conflict and a mixture of professionalism hats: entitlement, experience, hopes and dreams and loyalties, is it gets very emotionally muddy, and that's where things go south.   Kathleen Farris   Right.   René Ancinas   So for example, we looked at a lot of different... And I wouldn't say we have this all perfect, but when we did our family employment policy, we looked at a lot of different models, and our general philosophy was that we felt that it was more important to have family members engaged in the company and working for the company than not. I know companies that don't want to have any family members as employees, except maybe the CEO, but we felt that it was important, that that was a good thing, as long as there were certain requirements. And so we said they must have a college degree; it's highly recommended that they work outside the company for a number of years, and they have to be qualified for the job and go through the same process anybody else does.   René Ancinas   I would say that in terms of our general hiring practices, we wouldn't outweigh any one part of the hiring process more than another. So if we really know the person and they didn't have the greatest interview, I'd say we probably wouldn't be that black and white about it, but it would require a lot of discussion, because any time you hire a family member, it's going to telegraph to the rest of the staff more so than it would anybody else.   Kathleen Farris   So true.   René Ancinas   Just to be aware of that is important.   Kathleen Farris   It reminds me of the can from when I was little... you know, the two cans and the wire. It's so quick. It just permeates, whether it's positive or negative, right? That's... I think that's... I mean, it does happen in other companies that are not family-run, but in fam-   René Ancinas   Well, especially if the can on the other end is in front of a giant megaphone over a stadium.   Kathleen Farris   I was going to say! In family-owned businesses, it is the megaphone.   René Ancinas   Yeah.   Kathleen Farris   Yeah, exponentially going through from one person to the next, so. You know, and too, I think... and shifting a little bit to the DNA that your founder... and I thank you again for sharing the story. I wish our podcast could be way longer, but when you come next time we'll have you on a panel or be our keynote. But the DNA that the founder created for Port Blakely, can you talk a little bit about how, in your role, you continue? Are there one or two things that you think about, "This is what I need to make sure is top of mind, to make sure those values continue to carry forward"? Because I think, just based on everything I've read and what I've learned from you and your staff is, it really has allowed your family to carry the wealth and the values forward in such a positive way, where some families, their founder is nonexistent in anything that they still do. So can you share a little bit about that, your perspective?   René Ancinas   Yeah. I thought about that... I've thought about that a number of times, because we're in this unique situation where our "founders," or our family founders, came from Michigan and bought this existing company, and they didn't start it from scratch.   Kathleen Farris   Right.   René Ancinas   The same mindset that brought them west, that same sort of pioneering, entrepreneurial mindset, was the same mindset that the actual founder of the company, William Renton, had when he came out from Bangor, Maine, all the way to [inaudible 00:31:26]. So I would say that... and then the way I've looked at it is, any company that lasts 150 years is very unlikely to be doing exactly what it did at the beginning and doing it the same way. So the way I look at it is, when I put the bundle of those three together in the history of the company, I really look at the DNA as one of being adaptable...   Kathleen Farris   Great, yeah, I love that.   René Ancinas   Creative. You know, a lot of perseverance and engagement. So when you're a founder and you're starting something, it is as much your life as it is your work; you're never not thinking about what you're doing. And there is a certain quality in our company where it is what people chose to do with their life; it's not an avocation; it's really a career that they're passionate about. And like I said, they're mission-driven. So we have that same dedication, perseverance, creativity; it's just maybe for different reasons in a different era.   Kathleen Farris   Yeah. That's great.   René Ancinas   Does that make sense?   Kathleen Farris   Yeah, totally made sense, because I think about some of the families who, they struggle with that and they can't figure out how to move to the next space because it gets in the way and it gets super muddy, instead of them being adaptable and flexible and... you know, you're right; if a family business started 100 years ago, they've changed. That's why they're 100 years old, right?   René Ancinas   Right.   Kathleen Farris   They still have a fabric of things that they do, and especially if they got governance in place out the gate, which doesn't always happen, right? Then it gets into these issues where family members sue each other, and then married in, and all of those things that just get kind of weird. But yeah, I really appreciate that. That's really helpful.   Kathleen Farris   So let's talk a little bit about... I learned about your Eddy Academy and your Leadership Academy, and I think our families that are looking at, how do we continue to educate the next generation, a lot of families are looking at that. Maybe they have no programs in place at all, and maybe they have a little bit. Do you want to talk a little bit about yours and how they've helped bring up the next generation?   René Ancinas   Yeah. Well, it's a really remarkable thing, because I grew up very distant from the company, and I used to come to shareholder meetings because I was forced to and had to wear a coat and tie and come to Seattle and sit in a smoke-filled room and... They were just very unpleasant, alienating experiences, and I can't imagine... It's hard to believe how much it's transformed, but I think...   René Ancinas   We've developed a lot of programs in the last 20 years for engagement. It's not just those; obviously we have an annual shareholder meeting, and annual meeting, which is as much a family reunion as anything else, but we have investor phone calls regular; we've had, from time to time, road shows where we do investor briefings with investors.   Kathleen Farris   Oh, okay.   René Ancinas   When we do shareholder meetings, we'll have guest speakers, or we'll go on field tours, or we'll do stuff to help people both have fun and engage in the company. I think the programs that you're talking about, the Eddy Academy and also then we developed a Leadership Academy, those are really based on a few things. One was, we want to make sure that everybody can come to the annual meeting, regardless of where they are in their stage of their life. So if they have kids and they're not coming, why not have a place where they can bring their kids and leave them? And if they're going to do that, with the mindset that we're trying to develop relationships between, sometimes, distant cousins at this point...   Kathleen Farris   Sure. Building a bridge?   René Ancinas   Building bridges, but also remembering that they're also business partners. And so at some point, those five-year-olds are going to be... if all goes well, knock on wood...   Kathleen Farris   They'll be shareholders.   René Ancinas   They'll be shareholders, and they'll be business partners. And so the more that they're looking to each other and they know each other and have a relationship, the more there's going to be glue.   Kathleen Farris   That's true.   René Ancinas   And then we also want to make sure that they understand and appreciate what this family company has provided all of us. And so there's a combination of fun activities, light activities around what the company is about. The Eddy Academy kids and their cohorts, the age ranges shift as generations are moving through.   Kathleen Farris   Sure.   René Ancinas   So as some of those little kids got into their preteens and teens, we realized, "Okay, we can't just send them to daycare; now we have to do other stuff."   Kathleen Farris   Right. Get some programming.   René Ancinas   Exactly.   Kathleen Farris   Yeah.   René Ancinas   So, and we've had a couple of educators in our family council over the years who have been really good at this, and so now with the Leadership Academy is a combination of traditional leadership development, and then some of the older kids that are in college or high school or just out of college, we've started doing every few years a national outdoor leadership program, NOLS program, where they actually go for a week into the outdoors, and it's a very powerful program that has been designed in collaboration with NOLS, and then they come to the annual shareholder meeting and share their experience there. And then we've developed internship programs, so it really tries to run the gamut from when they're little kids to owners.   Kathleen Farris   Sounds immersive.   René Ancinas   Yeah, and then we also have programs where any owner who wants to come and spend three days at the company, we have different curriculums where they can do a Port Blakely experience; they can go work in the woods for three days, or they can... There's a whole gamut of things they can do.   Kathleen Farris   Yeah. I think if I had to pick one of those, I would do that. Can I go with the trees?   René Ancinas   Yeah. It's a lot of hard work.   Kathleen Farris   Yeah. Yeah. Great. So, in your role, I'm sure there's been lots of growing opportunity for you, and so I'd love to hear, what's one or two unique challenges that you feel that you've faced, and how did you overcome them, and then was there anything that really surprised you in your role?   René Ancinas   Oh, wow. That's a... saving the good questions for near the end here. [inaudible 00:37:36]   Kathleen Farris   Of course. Welcome to Drucker.   René Ancinas   For me, it was a unique experience because I did not have a deep management background; I had been working in internet e-commerce, and before that I was trained as a musician, but I had been involved in the company to help establish that family governance program, so there was... As my predecessor said, people have the capacity to learn the business skills and tools, and we can get that, but having the understanding of how the family works and the trust in the family is the harder things to have. And so what the family company needed at that time, he felt, was more of that.   René Ancinas   Now, I think one of the things I learned from him is, companies and families will need different types of leaders and different leadership skills at different times, based on where they are. It's not... I think one of the main things I learned is, a lot of people think the CEO leadership role is something you see on TV, that every leader who works at that level is this brilliant entrepreneur who is smarter than anybody in the room...   Kathleen Farris   Yeah, they get up differently, they get dressed differently, yeah.   René Ancinas   Yeah, and frankly, they're usually middle aged white men, and the whole thing. There's this whole-   Kathleen Farris   Yeah. Totally untrue, but okay, yes.   René Ancinas   Totally untrue and based on a lot of bias. Now, I can't say that's true of everybody, but that's sort of the iconic CEO. What really happens, and what I've learned through meeting other CEOs is, there's a huge range of different personality types, and one of the things that I also learned is, you have to be yourself, recognize your weaknesses. You'll hear this a lot: surround yourself with people who don't think like you.   Kathleen Farris   I agree.   René Ancinas   Prop up your weaknesses or blind spots, and create a culture where you can have open dialogue. So it's not all top-down; it's really a collaborative effort.   Kathleen Farris   You get an A+. It's so true, though, because your role... It's kind of like we tell our students that work with us: everybody does get up the same way. We each have our roles in whatever company we work for, and you've got to make the best of it. And then, what education do you need? And the reflection piece is huge, and for families, I think that's it too: how do we continue to help them look inside and innovate themselves while they're innovating their own company? And for some families, the founder was the right leader; now passing the baton to G2, G3, or G4, you know, it's a huge failure rate. That next leader that's coming in might need to be totally different style of leader to carry the family business forward. And so I love how you shared that; I think it's extremely helpful for our CEOs and other people to hear.   Kathleen Farris   So what's the best advice you ever got?   René Ancinas   Oh my gosh. I think it probably is that, don't try to be something you're not. Know thyself, be yourself, and just be ready that you're never going to make everybody happy, but as long as you're genuine, you're real, you're authentic, you're caring, and you move things forward, the pride and the trust will be there. But you can't force somebody to be somebody they're not.   Kathleen Farris   Yeah, that's true. That authenticity is really true, especially in family businesses, because business is a family and a family is a business; they're all intertwined. That's great.   Kathleen Farris   Do you have a favorite book? Is there one book that you would recommend to family business leaders like yourself that they might want to read?   René Ancinas   That is a really tough question. I've read a lot of books on-   Kathleen Farris   I figured that.   René Ancinas   ... family business and leadership. You know, I did put a little bit of thought into this, and there's a few books that I would suggest. Early on, it was really helpful for us as a family to read through the generation to generation book.   Kathleen Farris   Oh, right, sure.   René Ancinas   I think a lot of people have read that as the three circle model. I consider John Davis a friend and a mentor for many years, and he and his firm have helped us through many, many things. But I find a lot of the writings he's done really, really helpful and insightful, generally speaking. We've also used a fair bit of the Family Business Consulting Group's pamphlets on a whole variety of topics. We used it a lot in succession planning; we've used books around... I think there's one called Financing Transitions that explains a lot of the really interesting concepts of patient capital, and some of the strategic advantages that family companies have. And then I'm a big culture person myself, so I'm a big believer in the writings of Feffer; I think he was at Stanford on culture-driven organizations.   René Ancinas   And I can't help but give a plug to our friend Mr. Drucker, because one of the early things that I think my mom sent to me very early on was an article about management as a liberal art, and I still have that dog-eared article copy in one of my notebooks, and I go back to it over and over again. I think the concept of management as a liberal art is a really, really important one.   Kathleen Farris   Yeah. That's a great story, and it came from your mom?   René Ancinas   Yeah.   Kathleen Farris   Wow. That's great. Yeah, I think those are absolutely great resources for our families to think about, because again, there's not a lot of research out there; there's not a lot of books for family business leaders, and I think these are extremely helpful. Thanks for sharing them.   Kathleen Farris   If you could go back in time and ask your founder for advice, given everything you've learned so far, what question would you ask?   René Ancinas   Wow. Boy, that would be a really interesting coffee. So I'm going to assume the founder-   Kathleen Farris   You could make it up. It could be a bunch of questions. Go ahead.   René Ancinas   Oh yeah, yeah. I'm going to assume the founder from a perspective of a family enterprise, versus William Renton.   Kathleen Farris   Yeah, great.   René Ancinas   I guess it would be... It's not so much advice, but I really would like to know what... and these were really siblings, so there were three brothers and a sister, and one of the brothers and the sister stayed in Michigan and the other two brothers came out west as a family enterprise together. I guess I would ask my great-grandfather and his older brother, what was their 30-year vision for the company, back in 1903?   Kathleen Farris   Great question.   René Ancinas   Why come to Seattle from Michigan in 1903; why this company; why here, and what were their hopes and dreams? I don't think we ever had a chance to hear that story.   Kathleen Farris   Yeah, that's a great question.   René Ancinas   Because like I said, I assume that they were just trying to survive, and they certainly had the means to come and buy the company, so they weren't suffering financially; they had the ability to do it, but they didn't have to.   Kathleen Farris   Yeah, the why behind it is always interesting to hear about how they got to that point of, this is the why. This is why that matters to us. Yeah, that's a great question.   Kathleen Farris   Well, I think this is a great place for us to end. Thank you for coming on the show today, and I'd like to close with asking you, why was it important to you today to come on the show and share your story? You could have been doing a lot of other things besides this, but why share your story? Why is that important to you?   René Ancinas   Yeah. Well, I guess I think family businesses, family enterprises, are a very special thing. As I say often to people, they're a whole different kind of animal. And no two are the same; the solutions that all of us are searching for are not the same; you can't find them in a textbook.   Kathleen Farris   It's true.   René Ancinas   And so anything that any family company can do to share with each other what we've learned, I think is helpful. And I'm the same way, so I am often listening to others talk about it and what I can learn from them. So I think it's really just about contributing to the conversation to help other family companies as much as our own.   Kathleen Farris   I love that. Great. Contributing to the conversation. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show today. I really appreciate it. This is Kathleen Farris, and you've been listening to Very Different Roles, recorded live in Studio B3 at Claremont Graduate University in conjunction with the Drucker School Global Family Business Institute.  

I have a fairly strict investment policy for myself. It doesn't change just because the market goes up or down.  Because I'm vocal about investments, I get emails and text messages from friends and followers regarding market changes.  What's your investment strategy? How do you determine what changes to make to your portfolio based on market changes?  drmo@urgentcarecareer.com 

If you're anything like me; making decisions is a bit difficult because 1) you're objective and can see both sides of a situation and 2) you're indifferent / apathetic about almost everything. Because I'm not the world champion of making swift decisions, and it was impacting how I move; I decided to do some research to figure out how I can be more decisive. This episode is what I learned. Have you caught up on the blog? I released a few new articles. Catch 'em at www.ashlyndtuffentsamer.com Sign up for #BadBishAlerts while you're at it

My guest today is Dr. Tamsin Astor.  Tamsin helps busy executives and corporations organize their habits and their mindset so they have time for what they want and need and time for fun. Welcome to my new podcast, Brain Hacks 4 Leadership.  I am Jill Windelspecht and I have spent over 20 years working with leaders around the world, helping them to apply neuroscience and social science to help them advance towards their goals.  I want to bring extraordinary value to you as a leader by brining the latest thinking about the science, but more importantly I want to provide you with practical ways that you can apply this to yourself, those you lead and your organization.   My guest today is Dr. Tamsin Astor.  Tamsin helps busy executives and corporations organize their habits and their mindset so they have time for what they want and need and time for fun. Women are the self-driven nurturers who rarely make their needs a priority.  All the other voices demand immediate attention and leave little time for personal care.   We make 35,000 decisions every day leading to Decision fatigue. Dr. Tamsin Astor, your Chief Habit Scientist, helps women to create the necessary connections between their daily habits and routines in order to clear the path for more personal time & energy. Tamsin Astor holds a PhD in neuroscience and psychology and a post-doctorate in education. Also, certifications in yoga (RYT500, Yoga Ed.), Ayurveda (Living Ayurveda, Yoga Health Coach), Mindset & Executive Coaching.   Dr Astor is a published author of Force of Habit: Unleash Your Power by Developing Great Habits. She is a mother of three, an immigrant and a lover of dark chocolate, coffee and travel!   Well, Tamsin, we are so happy that you're here with us today and I've had a lot of opportunity to get to see you speak and spend time with you and I've just always grown. Every time I hear you talk about how you have impacted your own life and impacted others lives by applying the neuroscience in what it is that you do in your coaching and consulting and speaking and so really happy that you're going to share that our listeners here today. So Tamsin tell us the neuroscience and what you're going to be sharing with us today. Well, hi Jill, thank you so much for interviewing me today. I get very excited about talking about the brain and neuroscience and how we can, you know, hack this amazing brain. You know, what I call the goal achieving machine between our ears. What I want to talk about today was vision and I'm very interested in how we can harness our brain's ability to create the life and business that we want, the home we want, the relationships we want, the engagement habits that we want in our business. The employee commitment was recently, I was reading a Gallup poll that said that only 34% of employees are engaged, which costing the U S economy somewhere between like $200 and $450 billion a year, which is a real issue. And I think part of that is connecting to the vision of what a company is looking for and whether that matches to the vision of the individual employee. I mean, I think this is a real issue that we struggle with is connecting our visions. And one of the things that we now know with the brain is that it's plastic, which means that we can change it. You know, we used to think, you know, 40 50 60 years ago that the brain would, you know, stop devolving at a certain point. But we now know that the brain can continue to evolve as we move forward and understand the connections in between the neurons. And one way, if you can think of this is like neurosculpting. Like when you see those great shows of people cultivating a bonsai tree, right? Or pruning a beautiful Rose Bush, you know, you have to cut and prune the connections or the growths that are not serving the overall whole. And that's the way that I like to think of what's going on in our brains. That we are creating the connections that are positive, right, that are nurturing the full goal. And when we've never done something before, we don't have the neurological connections. We don't have the Synaptic connections to get us there. So part of the way that we have to work to create the vision that we want, the life we want, the business, we want the engagement habits, all of these parts in business, right, is to start talking about it, writing it, seeing it, and you know, looking in the direction we want to go. I love that. What do you think gets in the way for people to do that? So I think often we get stuck with our goals. We have these goal deadlines. We have to meet tasks, we have to complete things that we have to check off. And the problem with goals is that it's very energetically exhausting, right? You know, we, you know, we make 35,000 decisions every day. And when we're sitting there and looking at these to do lists and trying to get stuff done, we just need it. It can be really exhausting and particularly if we are not bought into the vision, if we are feeling like we're just having to do stuff and get stuff done rather than really believing in it and buying into it. And one of the great ways to shift that is to cultivate the energy of creativity. And when you crawl, cultivate the energy of creativity, you release dopamine, right? So when you start to shift out of the fight flight, sort of overwhelmed, burned out stress situation that so many people, so many employees are in, so many entrepreneurs are stuck in the sort of the hamster wheel, right? You cultivate dopamine, which is boost your energy and boost your creativity. And one of the best ways to do that is by shifting into offering questions. Okay, Tell me more about that. And especially, I would love to know, I know that you coach leaders around this as well. And so how have you seen leaders apply this? Well, I'll give you a concrete example of a client of mine who when I first started working with her, she was in a state of, you know, massive, overwhelm. She was working for an organization working really long hours, feeling like she wasn't able to be present for her clients who wasn't able to present for her husband and their children and the way that she wanted to. She just felt torn in all these places. And one of the things that she really started to dive into as we work together, we were looking at what was she doing on a daily basis, what I call the microscope, what was she looking at every day and how was she connecting it to the telescope, to the life she wanted? Right. So she had in mind, but she hadn't really allowed herself to articulate it of this vision of the kind of life she wanted, the, the direction she wanted to go and terms of how she showed up for her clients, how she showed up for her husband, how she showed up for her children. And then she wasn't able to initially connect that to what was she doing on the daily basis to tie those two together. And so as we work together, she really started to think about what kind of relationship she wanted with her clients, what kind of relationship she wanted with her children and her husband. And she realized that she really wanted to take her children to go and live in a different country for a little bit of time and to experience different way of, of being and living. So she and her husband and the children went and lived in Africa for six months and she was able to massively shift how she showed up and what she did by creating a new vision of her life and looking at the daily habits and connecting those in a way that shifted her brain. Right. So she used her mind to change her brain. Wow, that's quite, quite a big shift moving across the world into another country to really change your mindset. How did that change when she came back? How did, how did she stop from going back to those old habits and old thoughts and stress and anxiety? Well, what she realized is it's possible. It was possible to create a life which tied the vision that you want, feel like to your daily habits. So keeping that front of mind and thinking about, okay, so you know what's really important, right? So often one of the things that people find when they do something is they realize that they don't need as many belongings, for example. And you know, we spend a lot of time caring and managing for things in our personal space, right? So she realized that that was one thing that she could create a big change around. She realized that the things that she and her family did when they lived in Africa was very nourishing to her. You know, family dinners, regular yoga classes, things that really shifted the day to day interactions that produce, you know, a happier feeling and more productive life. A feeling like she was living the life that she wanted to live. Right? Keeping that front of mind on a regular basis and committing to the vision. This is the vision that's important to me and what am I doing on a daily basis? What daily habits am I doing to keep that vision going? Yeah, I love that. And I work with clients quite a bit as well to really help them first get clear on their purpose and, and get clear on that vision. Tell me what is it about the brain that, that makes this so critical that really it, that makes it important for people to say, okay, you know, get beyond those tasks and those goals. How are we naturally wired that when we align them with our vision, it makes us more effective and have more energy? So what's really fascinating about the brain is that it doesn't distinguish between reality and imagination. So there was a really interesting study done at Harvard looking at piano players and they looked at what was going on in their brain when they played a piece of music and then what they found when they imagined the same piece of music. Imagine playing the same piece of music, was that the same parts of the brain were active, that implies that the brain does not distinguish between reality and imagination. So what that tells us is that if we want to create this amazing life for ourselves, we have to start creating the vision around it. And when we do that, what happens is that the entity around it starts to shift and we get coincidences. People start to show up in our lives. You can help them support us because we all creating a move in that direction. I love that. And like you said, we call it coincidence, right? That these things start to show up. But we know a little bit better that once we've been intentional about what it is we're looking for, we just see it more clearly. Absolutely. And that's partly the reticular activating system, which is the part of the brain where it draws our attention. And you might've noticed that, you know, when your buying a car you suddenly see that car everywhere and you're like, why is everybody buying the same car as me, because, you know, you've redirected your attention. And that's the same thing with creating the vision for the life that you want. When you really dial down and get super specific about your vision and about the kind of life you want to lead, things will start popping up. Well Tamsin tell us, how do you help leaders create this vision? How do you typically work with people to get them to set this if they don't have it already or maybe shape one that's a little bit fuzzy? So what I do with my clients is I work on this three point model that I created of vision, mindset and habits, right? So the vision is that future direction, the habits are the day to day things that you're doing and the mindset is, you know, your relationship with yourself, your, your limiting beliefs, your negative self-talk and how you navigate your relationships with others and set boundaries with others. And I use a yoga framework, which is, it's called the souls aim, which really helps people dive into creating the kind of vision that they want for their lives. And when they look at that and dive into that and explore that, we can then go a little bit more deeply into creating actionable steps to get there. And one of the key parts of that, which a lot of people tend not to include, which, is always interesting to me. How people react to that is pleasure. You know, we often have this kind of feeling that pleasure is a, you know, is a reward or is as a result of some actions that we take or we, you know, we push it to the side because we've got stuff to do and we can't make pleasure a priority, you know? And when we prioritize pleasure, everything flows. I love that. Prioritizing pleasure. So tell me, how does, how will this help leaders who, cause a lot of people that are listening are either in a leadership role or aspire to be in a leadership role, how is getting really clear around that, that vision help them become better leaders of themselves and better leaders of others? So clarifying your vision is really helpful because what it does is it helps you create a focal point for you and helps you create a focal point for your employees. And when you have a clear direction that you want to go, when you have a focus, you know that weaves together what you stand for, what you value, what's important to you, then you can organize people and inspire people and create energy around that. If there's a very dispersed energy around what the mission of the company is, what they're trying to do for their customers and clients, what somebody's role is, it's hard to show up and be productive and feel valued. If you're not clear, it's not clearly defined, right? So having a very specific direction in which going helps you keep on track. And it also is very important when you are feeling kind of discouraged and low energy and sort of politics of the world or events in the world are making you feel lethargic or sad or uninspired. When you can orient towards a positive vision that can help inspire and create positive that towards that right direction. Yeah, that's a great point cause we, we feed off others emotions and energy and as you said, if you have the vision, you've got good energy and that's going to help you lead and people want to work with you and we'd like to have leaders who seem to have more clarity of where they're going so exactly know who they are and what they're thinking. Part of that as well is you notice that they all walking the talk too. You know that they are showing up and doing what it is that they say that, that you know their company and their organization values, are they available to have conversations with their employees about it. Are they authentic, authenticity, empathy, all things that we now know are incredibly important in terms of leadership. But often leaders will think that they're being empathetic and authentic or fear it's going to make me look weak. But you know, we now know from all the studies and math that actually it breeds connection and when you connect with people and you articulate how you can be supported, what you need and your showing up and being real right, people connect with you in a way that's much deeper and results in a more effective leadership. Yeah, I think that's really important, especially today when there's so many people that have stress and anxiety to, to circle back, like you said, what's really important, cause maybe I'm bending wheels in the wrong way. So Tamsin, how do you see this applied from an organization perspective as well? Cause you always hear vision, we think of vision, mission, goals, we talk about it, but how does this apply to maybe a leader who's responsible for setting the vision for an organization? One of the things I think that is really key here is to constantly articulate that. So you are a leader of a large organization. If you have a vision that is clearly articulated what you want is your employees to understand it in their own terms. So what's interesting when you look at organizations that are incredibly successful, they encourage their employees to articulate that vision, the organization's vision in a regular way, in public, in a way that cultivates energy around that. So for example, organizations that have a weekly 10 minute meeting and everybody in the organization can week to week share a one minute story for example, on a story because we know that narrative is very bonding and people love and remember by narrative about the company mission. So Chevron, you know, safety, getting everybody to articulate a one minute story and a weekly meeting relating to safety, right. Would be an example of that. Yeah, that's great. I worked in an organization as well where we did something similar around safety and whatever meeting. There was always a one minute safety story. And just to remind people. And at first it felt kind of routine, but then it got really powerful and really made it real for people. So yeah. So how have you applied this to yourself? That's a good question. It is the moment I had a sort of a come to Jesus moment about this as it were when my ex-husband walked out for the fourth time and I realized that I had to let go of the vision of having a marriage and having children being raised in a, you know, in a home with two parents because staying in the marriage was not going to be sustainable for me anymore. And I was incredibly unhappy when in that sort of situation when somebody walks out on you four times to realize that there are issues there, so for me, I had to step back and recreate what the vision of my life was going to look like. And what that did for me was that it allowed me to really see a life for myself that I wasn't able to see in my unhappy marriage. I was not able to see myself doing what I'm doing now in the back of my head. And deep down inside I wanted to get out there and write and speak and coach and work with people. But I couldn't figure out how to do it in my marriage because I wasn't feeling supported. And so when I stepped back, I recreated the vision of what it would look like for, you know, me to parent and co-parent with my children's father in a way that was loving and, communicative and sharing and kind and on the same page as much as two different people can do and create a vision of my personal life, you know, and my professional life. And I've done that. And over the last five years, which is how long it has been, I've created a thriving coaching business. I have a three book deal, you know, I travel all over the world with my children and my ex-husband and I co-parent very peacefully and our children at 15, 13 and 9 and they are good in their life. Yeah, that's incredible that, that's a great story. That you articulate it very well. And your, your latest book, Force of Habit, which I'm loving as I'm diving into that. So Tamsin tell me, how do you keep that going? You said you've got a vision for your personal life and professional life and some of us listening has gone through and maybe created that vision and then maybe filed it away and it doesn't really drive us and inform us anymore. What is the way that we can make sure we keep this in front of ourselves? And, and how have you done that? That's a great question Jill. So one of the things that is really vital is that you revisit your vision every day. So we all know now the power of the morning ritual. You know, when you look at all of the research and books and blogs and you know, all of the successful people in the world, they all talk about how important it is to have a morning ritual. And I've been doing a morning ritual for about seven years where I nourish my mental body and I nourish my physical body. And that involves movement and involves, you know, meditation and journaling. And part of that process involves me taking a few minutes and it doesn't need to be more than a few moments just to sit there and picture the vision I have for my life. So I see myself standing on the stage, I see myself on that beach, I see myself working with clients. I really harness the power of my brain to create and start to feel what my life is going to look like. Oh, that is powerful. I agree. The morning routines, that is more and more on what we're hearing to really keep reinforcing that. And I just want to pick up on a word you said it's not just see but feel. So tell me a little bit about why it's important to feel while we're doing that vision. Right. Well, you know, we're very sensual beings. You know, where people that, you know, live, live in the real world. So getting our vision really embedded and clear, you know, moving, talking about it, singing it, feeling it, smelling it, touch it, you know, all of that. Really cultivating that and embedding it in a really deep way. It's so important. And you know, another way to think about it, another way to cultivate that energy is gratitude. Really taking time every day to, you know, again we know this, but the research is becoming more and more compelling about the power of gratitude to boost energy and keep you on track and keep you directed towards your vision. But when we move and don't sing and touch and feel and really embody our vision in as many different ways as we can, that's when it's more likely to happen. That's when it is going to happen. Yeah. So it's the visualizing it, the feeling it, the keeping it in front of you every day, which makes it a habit, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So what, you know, you can do vision boards and you can journal about it. You know, my friends always laugh at me cause I'm incredibly verbal and in every kind of way of quantifying my things always come up as like you should read dictionaries for fun you should you know, Like, you know, your a projector, your a talker and my vision boards tend to be words that I cut out of magazines, not pictures. So yeah, you know, and other friends of mine, you know they paint pictures. So it's about really embodying your energy and then they're getting that clarity behind that. I love that. I love that example that you shared with us. Well what else is important for us to know about this topic and how we can make sure we're applying this effectively? So I think one of the things that I think is really, really important is giving yourself time to step back and dream and vision and like design the business that you want. Design the life that you want. Because I think we often get stuck in this world of it's going to keep hustling cause yeah, cause more, more, more and we don't, we get stuck in the doing right. It's really important for us to go, Hey, you know, if I step back and give myself a chunk of time every day, every week, every month, twice a year, three, you know, to really look at the bigger picture, it's going to all work out much, much better in the long run. So tricks on journaling, I've always known that journaling is a useful thing and that I bought, I had this thing of like, well, am I being productive? Is this a good use of my time? Because I'm like hustling as a single mom of three kids and because I've gotta be visionary, I've gotta get things done and you know, I just, I took journaling training and during that I discovered that when you start the day with 10 or 15 minutes of journaling, you are way more productive. I think it's something that you'll see two to four times more productive in your day because you have sort of dumped the negativity, dumped the stuff that was kind of cementing and you've created a vision and a goal and the direction for the day. So giving yourself the space to do it, the time to do it, the permission to do it, I think is really, really key. That's great. Is it, is it journaling, just writing down whatever thoughts you're capturing? Or are you talking about journaling to say, here's my intentions for today, or is it both? Well you can do it all. I mean the great thing about journaling is that there is a multitude of different approaches. So sometimes for me it's about, there's a particular issue that I'm chewing over and if I journal about this issue I can release it and get on with the rest of my life. So I might journal conversation between, lets say I've had a negative interaction with somebody and it's bothering me. I might journal and have a conversation in my journal between me and this person to kind of create some resolution or create some sort of resolution around my feelings about what happened in the interaction. And then that then clears the space for me to be productive in the day. Other times it might be that I would like to just write down what happened in a particularly inspiring workshop or an event I went to, or a person that I met as a way of channeling the things about this person or what I learned from this person or this, this book or something that I can then distill and use in my own life. So it can be specific or it can just be sort of, you know, stream of consciousness. I'm just going to set the timer for three minutes or five minutes and just write everything that’s in my head and get it out. Great. That's, that's great. Thank you for clarifying that too. Cause it's, it doesn't have to be one specific way or one thing every morning. It's really just making that space and time and then knowing what you need. Right. And one of the, exactly. And one of the things that I learned when I did the journaling training was when you've done that is to read over what you've written, which is a lot of the time we have a tendency not to. And what's very helpful about that is you can see what you were thinking or what you were talking. There's something about the translation between your head on to the pain that you know, sometimes you look at your look at it and you'll think, wow, like I'm feeling really negative about the situation or about this person or I'm feeling really happy about this. Or wow, I didn't know that I had made this connection between these two things. Thank you for sharing that too. That's another powerful tip, don't just journal it and forget it. Take that time, read it and see what additional insights that you get from that. We've talked about quite a bit so far around visioning and creating your own vision and the energy that you can get and the importance around that. The ways that you can use it for yourself, how it impacts those that you lead. And even from an organization perspective around that. So for someone listening right now, what is one thing that they could do right away to get them moving towards the direction that say they don't have a vision or their vision is not really clear? What's one thing, small thing that you, you recommend that they do so they can start taking action. So one thing that I think is really important is to sort of clarify your purpose in life. You know, what is it that you're here to do and can you really dial into what your life purpose is? So that just would require you just to grab a journal, grab a notebook and sit quietly for a minute or two, bring your mind into your body through the action of breath. And then I'll ask yourself, what am I here to do? What's my legacy? What lights my fire when I'm gone? What do I want to be remembered for, what I want to be remembered for doing? Who do I like to work with? What do my friends come to me with? What do I really enjoy doing so that we're trying to move out of the Ought self. You know as a white woman who's 43 I ought to do this kind of work, want to like these people, blah blah blah and really moving into your ideal self, moving into what really turns on, getting clear on that can then provide an amazing direction for your life because it can then inspire you to do volunteer work which makes you happy and connected. It can be charitable work. It can inspire the work you do, it can inspire the kind of relationships you cultivate. It can inspire so many different areas of your life when you get clear on your purpose. Yeah. I love that. I love the transition you make from the Ought Self. What I ought to do to the Ideal Self, and I know one of the things you shared in and you share it in your book too is not to should upon yourself. Exactly. I was going to say it's absolutely key, particularly for us women, you know you get very caught up in feeling like we need to be living a particular way based on our gender, based on our look, based on her age, based on all the legend, based on our relationship, based on where we live in the world. Yeah, no shoulding on yourself or other people or other people. Don't should on them either. So your book that just came out, Force of Habit. Anything you want to specifically share around that or tell us about what you've got coming up next? I'm just in the process of creating a virtual program to go with my book. So my book dials in on the key habits to unleash your power. And I'm creating digital program, which slide into particular sections of this book. And I'm loading them into this amazing software that allows me to have an app on your phone that can text and email you to remind you to do your habits and then encourages you to journal and report on how you feel about having done these habits and how you feel when you follow through on these habits so that you can look and create that sustain change. Because often what happens is that we create a habit shift and after a day, 10 days a week, three weeks, three months, we fall off, we get sick, we have a family member in town, we're traveling. Let me think. Oh screw it. And we stopped going to the gym. Or we stop meditating and we stop, you know, doing a daily connection commitment and reaching out to potential clients or whatever it is that we've committed to as a habit. And when we have this track software, we can go back in and look and see, Oh my goodness, look at what I did for three months. I did this action every day and look at how great it made me feel. I can gently let go be kind to myself for falling off the wagon and get back on and start again. I love that. I love that. Reinforcing that accountability and the book too just has amazing examples and there's ways that you can apply at the end of every chapter as well. I love that and I'm looking forward to seeing that app when that comes out as well. Cause I know that we're all a culmination of habits. I coach around it, but I try to apply and practice what I preach and we can always improve. So I'm really looking forward to diving in here and seeing how I can apply it. And then everything, all my experiences with you have been really great and I've been able to learn and grow as a result of it. So I really appreciate you spending the time here with all of us and hope to have you back again soon. I would love that. Thank you so much Jill. Thank you.   To summarize Dr. Tamsin Astor’s discussion today, she talked about how we can harness our brain's ability to create the life and business that we want She shared that when we create a clear and positive vision, we can leverage that goal achieving machine between our ears.  We do this through talking about it writing it, visualizing and focusing on it everyday.  Paying attention to the things we are doing every day and being intentional to connect it to our vision.  Tying the vision of your life into your daily habits. we make 35,000 decisions every day. And when we're sitting there and looking at these to do lists and trying to get stuff done, it can be really exhausting   In her new book, Force of Habit: Unleash Your Power by Developing Great Habits she shares how you can use your mind to change your brain.  And one thing that is  really fascinating about the brain is that it doesn't distinguish between reality and imagination. If we want to create this amazing life for ourselves, we have to start creating the vision around it.  She uses a three point model that she created of vision, mindset and habits.   So clarifying your vision is really helpful because what it does is it helps you create a focal point for you and helps you create a focal point for your employees. So it's the visualizing it, the feeling it, the keeping it in front of you every day, which makes it a habit. What can you do immediately? one of the things that is really important is giving yourself time to step back and dream and vision and design the business and life that you want.    Creating your personal vision is one of the first things that I do with my coaching clients.  If you would like to learn how to work with me, you can reach out to me at jillwindel@talentspecialists.net.   Don’t forget to pick up Dr. Tamsin Astor’s new book – Force of Habit.