Podcasts about Bye

What's a 'heal phone' and why you need one? What are attachment agendas and why must they be released? What year does adulthood really kick in and why entering it affects you in ways you don't realize. What are physical and emotional foundations and why are they vital. What really causes auto immune diseases and why we are really just fighting against ourselves when we have them. What are 20th century career plans people continue to practice and why they no longer work. What fighting as a way of life yields and why those yields are limited. RGF Bonus: Elvis' last song, Kev bumping into Cheech from Cheech and Chong as Kelsey says so long: Bye betches.  

There is nothing more human than storytelling. In this bonus Voice & Ai episode, Anne is joined by award-winning voice actor Emily Lawrence, Co-Founder of The Professional Audiobook Narrators' Association. They discuss the financial vs. social implications of Ai voices, creating a community for audiobook narrators, and why human-ness is an essential part of storytelling… Transcript >> It's time to take your business to the next level, the BOSS level! These are the premiere Business Owner Strategies and Successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a BOSS, a VO BOSS! Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza. Anne: Hey everyone. Welcome to the VO BOSS podcast for another episode of the AI and voice series. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and today I'm excited to bring special guest Emily Lawrence to the show. Emily is an award-winning actor and writer that's narrated more than 425 audiobooks for publishers such as McMillan, Harper Collins, Penguin, Random House, Simon and Schuster, and many more. She's incredibly proud to be the co-founder and chair of the newly formed Professional Audiobook Narrators Association, or PANA, as everybody has come to know it. Her greatest loves are storytelling and reading of course. So narrating audiobooks is a dream come true for her. And her other passions include traveling, LARPing, aerial surf, fostering kittens, and chocolate. So I have a lot to talk to you about because I love cats. We know that. I have three of them. And so I just love the fact that you foster kittens. Emily: I do. Anne: And thank you so much for joining me today. It's a pleasure to have you here. Emily: Well, thank you for having me. Anne: Yes. Emily: Happy to be here. Anne: So in addition to the kitties, um, I need to ask you for a more complete description. I have never heard of this, but that might not be a surprise. LARPing. Emily: A-ha. Anne: For those BOSSes in the audience that may not be familiar with that, what is that? Emily: Uh, so LARPing stands for live action role play, and it's the nerdiest thing you've never heard of. Anne: I kinda love that. Emily: Um, so basically it's like -- people tend to be more familiar with Dungeons and Dragons, so it's basically like that, which is a kind of like you're role-playing out a video game kind of, only in Dungeons and Dragons, you sit around a table, and you talk about everything you're doing and you like roll dice to simulate fighting and whatever. And in LARPing, you actually role-play everything. So it's like a bunch of nerds in a park with like foam weapons. Anne: I love it. Emily: Fighting each other. Anne: I love it. That's great. Well, look, hey, the nerdier, the better as far as I'm concerned. Emily: Yeah, no, I love it. Anne: That's fantastic. So again, it's great to get to know the you behind the association that has been newly formed. How old is PANA now? Emily: Uh, well we opened to members, I think it was October 21st or -- Anne: Wow. Emily: -- thereabouts. Anne: Fantastic. So tell me, you know, I'm very excited to hear about this because I think it's probably about time, right, in the audiobook world, that there is an association that is vested in the interests of the community. Talk to me about that. Emily: Yeah. Well, I mean, there have been other organizations such as the Audio Publishers Association, which really represents publishers. Anne: Right. Emily: But narrators and other people in the industry can be members. And then obviously there's SAG-AFTRA which represents narrators as a labor union, but SAG-AFTRA also represents everybody else. Anne: Sure. Emily: So there was no organization that really was dedicated to narrators specifically. And I think you're right. It was about time and long overdue. Anne: So, I know that there's a lot involved in creating an organization. Tell me a little bit about that story and how did that begin? I mean, what was -- were there issues that were coming up in the audiobook world that you were saying, you know what, we need an organization to really take care of our community? Emily: Yeah. There have been talks for many years of -- among narrators of feeling unrepresented in various places and in various ways. And then obviously with the rising danger, I guess, or whatever of AI, I certainly felt like, okay, somebody has to do something. And so earlier this year, there were a lot of conversations in Narrator, Facebook, and other groups just kind of like that made me feel like, okay, we need to organize. We need to come together. And so I did that. Anne: And have a voice. I love that. Well, hey, it's one thing to talk, right, to sit around in groups and talk. I have so much respect for the fact that you pulled something together. I mean, there's a lot of work involved in that. Emily: Yeah. It was definitely a lot of work. I am very grateful to have my co-founder Emily Ellet with me through the whole process. And so we kind of started talking like about what this would be and how the community needs it. And then we just kind of did it. Anne: Well, I -- Emily: Here we are. Anne: You know, I love it. I was looking at your website, which for those BOSSes out there that want to check them out, it is pronarrators.org. I love your statement on who we are. I just think that your mission statement is providing opportunities for raising awareness of the narrator within public consciousness. And you have so many wonderful things that represent that this organization is going to be doing for narrators. Tell me a little bit about the initiatives for those things. Emily: Sure. Well, we're certainly very ambitious. We have a lot of really big plans, mostly around three things really. One is education, education both of narrators in order to raise narration standards throughout the industry, but also education of the public, and education in the industry about narrator needs and the fact that we exist because -- Anne: Sure. Emily: -- a lot of people listen to audiobooks and don't give a second thought to the performer who's bringing that story to life for them. And that's obviously important to us that, especially when you're talking about having humans versus robot narrators, you know, for people to recognize that we're human to begin with is probably really important there. So education in general is a big focus for us. Uh, we also have a focus on advocacy, which is kind of our umbrella term for all of the things that we want to do to help our industry thrive with human narrators as part of the mix, and the changes that we would like to see in order to help make that happen. And then the last one would be just community, fostering a community. As I kind of pointed out before, there was no organization that really represented narrators specifically, and only -- and we have a really wonderful, giving community. I mean, honestly, the narrator community is some of the most wonderful, friendly, open, supportive people I've ever met. You know, for a bunch of people who are essentially competitors, we're all so supportive of each other. We all help each other out all the time. And it felt like it would be really wonderful to have an organization that sort of formally recognizes, celebrates, expands, and strengthens that. Anne: So what sort of -- do you have events planned for things that you've -- meetings coming up, events, community outreach, what sorts of things do you have planned for the future? Emily: So we've got lots of plans. Um, everything's just in the beginning stages. We're a member-driven organization. So we operate entirely on volunteer labor. And so our committees have only just started. I mean, they all had their first meeting last month. And so everything is in its infancy. We're just getting started, but we've got big plans for example, community events to get together both in person and online and sort of, you know, build friendships, but also network and things like that. We have plans for an award ceremony that is going to be community-driven and peer-reviewed. So kind of like the Audies, which is our current Oscars essentially meets like the SAG Award. So it will be like a peer-reviewed award show, but that has different sort of categories than typical award shows that really focus in on celebrating our community in a different way, which I think I'm really excited about. Anne: Plans on collaborating or is it a possibility to do any type of collaborative work with the union? Emily: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. We've reached out to both the APA and SAG-AFTRA announcing our existence -- Anne: Right. Emily: -- and saying that we would really like to work with them to further our mutual goals, and both of them have responded very positively -- Anne: Excellent. Emily: -- and very supportive. And so we really do look forward to working with existing organizations to move everyone forward. Anne: So in terms of membership, so if I wanted to be a member, are there requirements, are there -- do you vet your members? What's involved if I wanted to become a member? Emily: Sure. Anne: Because I personally don't do audiobooks and don't hold that against me. I -- just not in my genre, but I know so many people that are just so passionate about the craft of audiobooks and narrating. So if I wanted to be a member, could I, or what is the process? Emily: So members are -- you're eligible for membership if you have recorded at least one audiobook -- Anne: Okay. Emily: -- that is available on some sort of commercial platform. Anne: Okay. Emily: So it's a very low, you know, if you've narrated one book, you can join. There's dues that have to pay, but then you're a voting member. Anne: Okay, great. Emily: If you do not qualify for a membership, we also are creating sponsorship tiers. So we'll have sponsorship tiers -- Anne: Okay. Emily: -- for -- Anne: Nice. Emily: -- other people in the industry like directors, proofers, editors, et cetera. And those are not ready yet, but once they are, there'll be sort of different ways to support the industry and get benefits and like access to events and things like that for doing stuff. Anne: Got it. Are you an official nonprofit organization? Emily: Okay. So we are operating as a nonprofit. We cannot apply for our nonprofit status until we file our first tax return. Anne: Got it. Emily: So -- Anne: Got -- well, I know that it's an involved thing, which is one of the reasons why -- I've, I've served on the boards of many nonprofits. So I know how involved it can be, which is again, why I have a lot of respect for you taking the initiative to put this together for the community. There's so much work involved in nonprofit, and I know how important volunteers and volunteer efforts go. It's so hard when everybody is busy to take the time and be able to help out in an organization like this. And I really look forward to the success of PANA because I know a lot of organizations that start off with the best of hopes. And then it turns into something where it is an awful lot of work and maybe more work than people anticipate. And so I know how it can be hard to progress. Emily: Well, it's definitely more work than I anticipated. Anne: Yup. Emily: I'm committed. So I'm there. And I know my co-founder Emily Ellet is also very committed, and we have a wonderful board. We've put together a board of some of the most respected -- Anne: Oh yes. Emily: -- people in our industry, and they are all very committed also. Everyone has expressed a sort of surprised at how much work it really is. Anne: Right, yeah. Emily: But, um, you know, everybody has affirmed to me multiple times, as recently as yesterday, that like, you know, we're in this and we're going to make this work. Anne: Well, I think having a voice for the audiobook industry is so important, especially with things that develop within our own industry. I mean, not just in audiobooks, but in the voiceover industry as a whole, we are facing changes, and I've known this because I've done my AI and voice series for at least 30 episodes now. So there are things that are, you know, impending and coming into this industry that we as professionals need to understand, and I don't know, evolve or work with or not, or form an educated strategy in order to co-exist, let's say, with them. So I will talk about the AI elephant in the room, which is AI. And what are your thoughts? I know that it's, it's scary for a lot of us that this technology is coming. And so what is your position on behalf of PANA in regards to let's say the evolution of AI and AI narrators? Emily: Well, we are a pro-narrator organization, pro-human narrator. Anne: Sure. Emily: And so we are dedicated to supporting human narrators however we can. We have a lot of ideas about how to address this, but I think the board has expressed our first priority to be education, because I think that a lot of narrators don't really understand all of the possible risks right now. I think it's wonderful that you're doing this, you know, you're, series to educate people. Um, but I think that we have a task ahead of us just to make sure that people fully understand -- Anne: yeah. Emily: -- what everything is. Like -- Anne: Sure. Emily: -- for example, a lot of people don't understand the difference between creating an artificial voice, like a clone of someone, and machine learning, which I don't know if you've covered in your series, but that's a really big thing that people need to be aware of. Anne: Yeah. Emily: So we have a lot of ideas about how to address that first and foremost, but also I think, you know, a lot of people -- just today I was seeing on Facebook, people posting like, oh, I listened to this, and it's actually not that terrible and blah, blah, blah. And so I think that it's important that we stay ahead of the game. You know, we can't let the robots catch up to us. We have to stay better. But also I think that, I mean, for me personally, this is not like PANA's official position or anything, but me personally, I think that a lot of the conversation is revolving around like dollars and cents. You know, publishers and whoever are going to do what makes the most economic sense to them. And if it's cheaper, consumers will follow suit. And there's just, it's kind of all about money and jobs and the things that general AI conversations are about. Anne: Yeah. Emily: But I think that with our field, it's not only about our jobs, it's also about the art of storytelling. Anne: Sure. Emily: Something that -- Anne: Agreed. Emily: -- I mean verbal storytelling is as old as language. It's like, we've been doing it as humans for forever. And that's, I mean, to me, that's what's at stake here. Like, yes, I would like to have a job. I would like to be able to do what I love to do for the rest of my life. But I'm equally as worried about, you know, the power of literature and stories and what it means to have, you know, just from like a moral, ethical standpoint to have robots sharing the human experience that they literally can't understand because they're an algorithm. And so I think that that is something that needs to be more part of the conversation for everyone, because what we do is an art. Anne: Sure, absolutely. Emily: And even if a robot is possible, it can never actually express anything human. And I think that that's important to me. Anne: Right. I agree with you. And I think that the consuming public has a lot to say, obviously, right? We are a market-driven kind of industry. What the consumer wants, right, or is it marketable to consumers or is it not? I mean, do consumers want to be able to listen to an audiobook and have a human? Like, is it meaningful to have a human or maybe for certain types of audiobooks, does it matter if it's a human or not? There's so many questions about that. Is there any type of book that you feel might be okay with something that's not human? Emily: Um, no, personally I don't because -- Anne: Well, and that makes complete sense. Emily: I mean, sure. I mean, obviously I have a certain point of view, but I think, you know, a lot of people are saying, oh, well, it's more suited for non-fiction. I think that that's kind of insulting, like -- Anne: Yeah, yeah. Emily: -- yes non-fiction does not involve character voices and things like that. Anne: Right. Emily: So from that perspective, it's easier for a robot to do, but I don't know, I've narrated nonfiction too. It's every bit as human. I think that authors would generally be insulted to hear that like, nonfiction is less human than fiction. I mean, I think it's all part of the human experience. Anne: Sure. Emily: It's all part of something that human beings have spent hours or months or years putting together. And they deserve a human voice to express that. Anne: Well, and you're talking to, you know, my specialty corporate narration and e-learning, so I understand that completely. I mean, to me, I mean, I want there to be a human teacher behind the mic. Emily: Sure. Anne: I want there to be, you know, I'm a company, I want there to be a human that's expressing my mission statement or my objective. And again, it comes to people responding and saying, well, you know, it's what the market wants. Or I guess for me, if I'm just one little person, me, I'm not going to necessarily stop the progression of technology. And so in terms of how I need to, I guess, evolve or work with technology that's, that may be encroaching on, let's say genres that I, you know, specialize in, I have to try to think of it in terms of, okay. So are there certain types that might be okay? A lot of times, you know, it's like, why do consumers go to outlets like the -- Fiverr, right, to get their voiceover? Because they don't have a value necessarily, or they don't -- Emily: Sure. Anne: -- or they have a certain value associated with that job. So could this not be the future lower end of -- Emily: Yeah. Lower budget production -- Anne: -- consumer -- yeah, lower budget. Emily: I mean, look, there are already people who are driven by money, you know -- Anne: Yup, yup. Emily: -- want the cheapest product, and they're hiring brand new narrators on indie platforms -- Anne: Yup. Emily: -- for like a quarter of the standard rate -- Anne: Right. Emily: -- or less, you know? Like those people already exist. Will those people start doing robots instead? Anne: Yeah. Emily: Maybe. Anne: Yeah. Emily: You know, who can stop that? Anne: Yeah, exactly. Emily: But I think yes, that is a concern because the more artificially narrated audiobooks that are put in the market, the more consumers get used to it, the harder it is -- Anne: Yeah. Emily: -- to argue our position. Anne: Exactly. Yeah. Emily: It's all concerning. I do agree that there's a certain element that I don't know how much control we have, but I also think that there will always be an element of high budget productions -- Anne: Yes. Emily: -- that will always have a human narrator. Anne: Oh, I completely agree with you. I mean, I don't think that there's ever going to be -- and I'm a tech girl. I worked in technology for 20 years. I do believe that there's always, there's always going to be a place for the human still in voiceover. And I think that narrators that have been for years, you know, telling stories and audiobooks, I mean, that is a level of acting that cannot be reached right now by any type of AI voice. Emily: Oh no. Anne: And I don't know that the public wants -- Emily: No. Anne: -- to be, necessarily feel like they've been duped either. Emily: Sure. Anne: So if they're listening to an audiobook, and they think it might be a human, so I think it's all speculation right now trying to figure out how -- like how long will it take? How far will it go and how human will it sound? And I guess my argument has always been well, humans are developing it. So I think you will always have those people that want to take it to the point where, oh my gosh, is this a deepfake? They'll always try to get there. But I like to think that technology is good inherently, and that because humans are developing technology, it will develop to a point that will help humans and not necessarily take them down or, you know, erase an industry. So I do believe that there will always be a space for a human actor in voiceover. I just don't know how far the AI will go in five to ten years, let's say,. Emily: Sure. But I will say that -- okay. So the way that these algorithms work, right, is that they find the middle ground, right? So they'll always be passible. They'll never be award worthy. Right? They're never going to take acting risks. They're never going to be able to, I mean, unless they have an engineer sit there and like tweak them for every moment, at which case, like just have a voice actor do it. Anne: Well, yeah. Sometimes there is a lot of tweaking involved, that's for sure. Emily: Yeah. So it's like, they'll just, they'll never be able to cry. You know, they'll never really be able to make a listener cry or feel that connected because they're not connected. You know, they're an algorithm. So they'll make the baseline choice, the easy, safe choice, because that's, you know, when you're talking about machine learning or it's studying thousands and thousands and thousands of performances, no two narrators are the same. We wouldn't make the same choices on the same book. So they're going to pick the baseline, which I think means that it will never be as good, no matter what, inherently it'll never be as good as the best narrators. So that's why we need to make all narrators, or at least narrators who want to make a living doing this, the best that they can be, because I don't think machines can ever really, truly catch up with anything that is off the cusp and beautiful and you know, like human, and they'll never be that. Anne: What if -- now here's my what if, because I do know of technology called speech-to speech where it can mimic. So what about an actor who, you know, has great acting skills, and they can act a baseline model, right? And then other voices can be applied on top of that. I mean, it's scary. I've heard it. Emily: Basically have a human narrate the book, but then put someone else's voice on their performance? Anne: Yeah, that is a mimic. So that would make it sound pretty much human, but with somebody else's voice or maybe with a different language. Emily: Well, I mean, if you're doing that, at least that actor is getting paid to do it -- Anne: Right. Emily: -- because they'd have to custom record that book. Anne: Exactly. Emily: Um, so that's, uh, a less scary proposition to me. Anne: Yeah, yeah. Emily: But um, yeah, I mean, I guess that's a possibility. I think the -- what we're more concerned about or most concerned about anyway, is machine learning, which will completely replace humans entirely. So like right now, most of the AI voices are licensed, where it's basically like they have somebody sit in a studio for a few days, and then from there they extrapolate whatever texts they want to be able to put on that person's habits. But machine learning would be like, they can listen to the thousand most popular in audiobooks and narrators of all time and sort of create an algorithm based out of that. Anne: Yes. Emily: And they'll never have to license. They'll never have to pay a single human for that. I think that's the biggest fear is completely taking us out of the equation. I think when it comes to licensing your voice or what you just mentioned, where it's like you record the book and then they put some celebrity's voice on it or something, I mean, personally, I am against those things. But I can see why some people might feel like there's more wiggle room in those. Again, that is not my personal opinion. I want to stop all of this, nip this on the bud. But if we're at a point where it's like, that's all that's left to us, at least there are still humans involved. Anne: Yeah. Well, and I think, again, if we're thinking about how we can evolve with it, if, if that becomes part of it, and I do know that that technology exists. I don't know at this point -- you've got people, you've got other companies that are not voiceover that are creating this technology. So how can we work with those companies or do we choose not to work with those companies right, in order to -- Emily: Sure. Anne: -- stay ahead, right? Is that a possibility? Emily: Um, okay. My personal feeling is I don't support anyone doing that because, and I have more to say, but like, because I feel like that's just kind of giving in. It's, you know, you get a sum of money, which is enough for a few years, and you're basically giving up your whole career in trade, and the careers of all of your colleagues, because how many of those, how many people's voices are they really going to need to license? So ultimately, and I understand that everyone's situation is different and, you know, I shouldn't judge, but ultimately it's a very self-serving decision to do that. And so I personally, and this is my personal opinion, don't feel like I can support those things. However, if someone's going to do it, I think there's a lot of important ways to protect yourself and to protect others in the industry. So I know that our union is working on licensing agreements that would be union. As far as I know, every one of these that I've heard of or seen advertisements for or whatever is non-union. And there's a reason for that. It's because they're taking advantage of people who are vulnerable. Anne: Sure. Emily: And they're taking advantage of people who need the money and who think, oh my gosh, a year's salary for a few days in the booth? Of course, I'm going to do that. Not realizing or not thinking through the consequences. You know, there's a reason that they don't want these contracts to be union because the union would want to, for example, limit how many times that person's voice can be used. Can they make a hundred audiobooks from that person's voice versus a thousand or a million from the same person's voice? You know, they're going to try to put limits on it to make it more equitable and spread it out. And these companies don't want to do that. There was no advantage to them for doing that. And then there's other things like, well, I've talked a bunch about machine learning, which if people don't know, I really highly recommend looking into it. But if you license your voice, and there's no provision in your contract which says that they can't use that for machine learning, they can take that voice and not only use it for clone or whatever, but they can use it to create a totally synthetic voice that they'll never have to pay anyone a dime for. You know, there's a lot of risks, and that's part of why we want to do an educational series is if you're going to do this, which I personally strongly recommend and hope that you won't, but if you will, please at least be smart about it. You know, there are companies involved like, you know, Google and whatever that have really deep pockets, and they can offer the kind of money that a lot of people would have a really hard time turning down. But you also have to remember that there's a lot more at stake here than your wallet or even your career. Um, so we just, if you're going to do it, you have to be smart about it and you have to read those contracts with a fine tooth comb. Anne: So I totally, totally understand all of that. Absolutely. What about the possibility of, as an organization, having a voice and going to these companies and saying -- I want to say it's like in the video gaming industry, when musicians would create music for video games, fighting for their creative licensing rights. What about that sort of thing? Like, and I understand, I mean, Google and you know that a lot of the big companies have a lot of voices already, not even voice actors, right? Just voices -- Emily: Right, yeah. Anne: -- that they're using to learn, right. They're using to put into machine learning and learn and test and create other voices. If as an organization, you could be a strong voice in saying, hey, you know what, anybody's voice that's used really you should be asking permission. There should be compensation. There should be -- Emily: Right. Anne: -- you know -- Emily: We should be getting royalties. Anne: Right, exactly. Emily: You know, like with any contract, you should have a limited period of time -- Anne: Exactly. Emily: -- where you can -- Anne: Exactly. Emily: You can't license in perpetuity, you should get six months or whatever, you know, like, I totally agree. That's part of why, if these contracts are going to happen, they should be union. Anne: Yeah. Emily: And that's why they don't -- they don't want to give us that, they don't. Um, they just want to give us a sum of money that is like an absolute fraction of what we would deserve for doing that kind of work. Anne: I have spoken with some companies who say that they are not those companies. You know, they say that they are for -- Emily: Well, of course they say -- Anne: Well, okay. But that's the thing though, is that, do you assume that all companies are not ethical? You know what I mean, in this game? Emily: I think honestly, I think any company doing this nonunion and not offering the protections and the compensation that any actor doing this deserves it, I don't think that's ethical. This is my personal opinion. I'm not speaking for PANA. Anne: Oh, no, no. Emily: I don't think it's ethical to offer a desperate actor a year salary and have their voice in perpetuity to use -- Anne: I agree. Emily: -- for whatever you want. You know? Anne: I agree with that. And I totally agree with that. And I think that that is absolutely where voice actors need to, you know, they need to be aware of these things that, you know, these companies that are for TTS. For me, that's a big red flag. And if you have a contract or you have a company that wants to pay you for, you know, 3000 lines of whatever, I absolutely believe that you should have a lawyer on that. Um, I say I would not take the job. However, if you go to these AI companies, I'm going to say independently and, you know, and try to work with them, or if there's an organization that can be on a board -- there is an organization right now that is working towards policies and legal contracts that will be in protection of the voice acting community. So I feel like there could be power in that as well. Emily: Sure. Anne: And especially from the audiobook narrators industry as well, because you guys are a -- you're a large community, and you have strong voices, and you work closely with the union. And I think that that is a wonderful thing. And I think that if you can get in on the ground floor of those usage policies, which everybody should have, right? And then, you know, ultimately, you know, fight the good fight hopefully so that the companies now understand, because I think in my research, I'm just going to say, there's a lot of AI companies out there that don't understand the voice acting industry. They don't understand like I actually had to say, no, there's usage. There's -- Emily: Right. Anne: -- you know, there's usage here for how long. And we have contracts that, you know, we can't use our voice for this company, because we're already committed to this company. Emily: Sure. Anne: And there's a lot of education, not just for us, but -- Emily: But for them. Anne: -- on their side as well. And I think that if you have a strong community of voices, that might be something to consider. Like you said, education, maybe education for AI companies as well. Emily: Sure. I -- Anne: Yeah. Emily: -- I would certainly be open to that. Anne: Yeah. Emily: And another one that we haven't mentioned, but that is definitely a concern, at least for me, would be having some sort of limitations on the content that they -- Anne: Yes, absolutely. Emily: -- could use voices for. Anne: Yup, yup. Emily: Like for example, you know, I'm, I'm Jewish. Anne: Yup. Emily: I would be horrified if my voice was used to narrate Nazi propaganda. Anne: Yup. Emily: You know, like that's just -- so I think any, any contract that is like in perpetuity with no limitations is unethical to me -- Anne: Yup. Emily: -- because that's just not how it should work. Anne: Oh yeah. Emily: Am I -- Anne: I agree. Emily: Am I open to working with AI companies to create a more equitable compensation system? Personally I think that that's SAG-AFTRA's job. If I ever hear of an AI company actually having union agreements with SAG-AFTRA, I would feel more kindly towards that AI company. I have yet to hear of that. I would potentially be open to that kind of effort, but honestly, I feel like that's putting the cart before the horse. I don't think we should give up the fight yet. I think we have enough good arguments and resources on our side to not necessarily have to get to that point yet. Anne: Okay. Well, I think that you've definitely got some strong arguments there, and I, I have also been in the forums and I hear what people say, and I understand. I myself have done so much research, probably a little bit more with the companies maybe than others, which is the only reason I bring up the point that there are companies who say that they are ethical and say that they will, you know, your license or your voice belongs to you. It's licensed to you. We will not use it in our machine learning, right? Only with your permission and only if you are compensated fairly, so. Emily: I mean, that's good. Good on those companies. Anne: Yeah. Well, I'm hoping that more companies will, with things, you know, with the unfortunate, but actually now fortunate episode that happened to -- maybe not fortunate. I don't know if I would call it that, but that happened with Bev Standing, right, with her suit against TikTok and the fact that it got settled, it does set a precedent. And so it's unfortunate sometimes that bad things have to happen in order for, right, resulting policies and standards and laws to come into play. You know, the whole thing with the Anthony Bourdain movie, right? Why resurrecting a voice without the permission? I think that there are bad things that happen. However, good things can come out of it afterwards in order to build laws. And I think that that's kind of where we might be in this crazy world of AI. And it seems like AI has just sprung up in the last couple of years like crazy. Emily: Sure. Anne: So I do believe after my research, for me, I think it comes to educating the companies, the AI companies about us and about what we need and about what our rights should be as actors. And I, I'm hoping that my involvement in this podcast is going to also have a voice that can help affect that. And so that they will see that we do need to license our voice. We do need to be fairly compensated. And, you know, I can only hope that my little part in it has something to do with maybe getting things the way that would be fair and equitable to us. Emily: Sure. I mean, I hope that, I hope that your efforts are successful. I do think that, I would like to think that these companies are just unaware or something. Anne: Yeah, yeah. Emily: And I'm sure some of them are, but I also think that some of them are very clever. Anne: Yeah, of course. Emily: And I know there are, for example, I can think of certain companies in the audiobook world who say, well, we won't -- they are clever in the way that they deceive people. You know, they'll say, well, we're not using our data to clone your voice, but they won't say that they're not using the data for machine learning or other things, you know? Like, and I think that, because I think that if we could get companies to do union contracts, that would certainly order it, you know, equivalent. That would certainly be a step forward. But I also think that educating voice actors to understand all of this stuff -- because it is complicated -- Anne: Sure. Emily: - and it's not necessarily natural to a lot of people. I think that's important too, because like right now there are companies where we're -- actors and publishers are literally giving data to and not really recognizing how it could be used. Anne: Agreed, agreed. Emily: And so that's a problem. Anne: I think we always have though, you know what I mean? I'm going to say long before this AI craziness, I think also, you know, there have been devices that have been listening to us and capturing our voices for a long time now. Emily: Sure. Anne: And so it's, I think it's good that we all are educated on it. And I just wanna give a shout-out to the organization, which I'm a part of, and anybody, if you're interested in joining them, it's called the Open Voice Network, which is based on creating standards for anything voice. And there are some companies who create AI voices that are in this organization, but it's all for the good of the voiceover world as well, to make sure that we are fairly compensated and hopefully, you know, we have a set of standards that can work for everyone. So that's openvoicenetwork.org. Maybe that's something that, you know, uh, BOSSes out there, you want to take a look at. I love, love, love what you're doing with PANA. I mean, thank you really. It's, I know how hard it is to bring an organization up and get these things going and moving and being productive. So congratulations to you guys. I think it's an amazing thing you're doing for the audiobook community, and I think it's wonderful what you're doing. Emily: Thank you. Anne: Yeah, yeah. Emily: Appreciate that. Anne: So tell us how people can find out more about your organization and you? Emily: Sure. Uh, pronarrators.org is our website. We are @pronarrators on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, and I'm Emily Lawrence. And you can find me at emilylawrence.com. Anne: Fantastic. Thank you so much, Emily, for spending time with us today. BOSSes, go check out pronarrators.org. Thanks again so much for joining us. I'm going to give a great big shout-out to our sponsor ipDTL. You too can connect and network like a BOSS. Find out more ipdtl.com, and we'll see you guys next week. Thanks so much. Bye! Emily: Bye. >> Join us next week for another edition of VO BOSS with your host Anne Ganguzza. And take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at voboss.com and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies, and new ways to rock your business like a BOSS. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via ipDTL.

Annie Scranton, Founder and President, Pace PR (New York, NY)   Annie Scranton is Founder and President at Pace PR, a media relations shop that partners with its clients to discern and achieve goals through getting its clients “featured in the media.” Annie believes that traditional media (television) is still strong and its real-time immediacy “brings credibility to a person or a brand” in a way that “holds a lot of meaning and is different from a newspaper article or a digital article or a podcast.” Pace PR works with a wide variety of clientele, but its three “pillars” are business (B2B, tech startups, corporate clients, climate sustainability initiatives), lifestyle (nutritionists, authors, fitness instructors, products, and brands), and thought leadership (political pundits, financial analysts, attorneys).  Annie says her firm selects clients they find interesting and exciting . . . ones that will interest the media and have something “meaningful to say.” Clients need to “have a presence and be compelling,” to be able to explain their thoughts in a way that audiences can understand, and to provide “takeaways” for viewers. The agency “preps” clients by providing media training. In pitching, timing is important . . . media is more interested in working with clients who can speak to current relevant issues. Credentials are also important. “Did the client work in the industry under discussion? What was their exact area of expertise? How did they touch the current topic that (the agency is) pitching them on?” Get to the point as quickly as possible and clearly state the payoff so producers can easily formulate the case for doing the story. Annie says producers get hundreds of pitches in their inbox and delete 99% of them. In this podcast, Annie provides some basic interview tips. “First,” she says, “Do no harm.” Answer the questions the interviewer asks in a way that is “as concise and clear as possible.” Annie says it takes a certain level of skill to be able to bring in your own message in a way that is “natural and organic” and not too “transactional.” If it's not going to “flow,” Annie advises holding back and waiting for the next time, giving a great interview, and “playing the longer game,” knowing that, if they like you, they'll invite you back. in 2021, after 11 years in business, Pace PR brought in a consultant to finally put some structure in place: “an operating plan, an organizational chart, and a lot of other tools.” Result? More growth and a better workflow.  Annie can be reached on her agency's website, pacepublicrelations.com or on Twitter @anniescranton. Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Annie Scranton, Founder and President at Pace PR, based in New York, New York. Welcome to the podcast, Annie. ANNIE: Thanks for having me. ROB: Excellent to have you here. Please start us off with a rundown of Pace PR. What is the firm's superpower? ANNIE: Our superpower is getting our clients on TV and featured in the media. There's a lot more that we do, obviously, and that goes into it, but at our core, Pace Public Relations is a media relations shop. We partner with our clients to figure out what their goals are, and then we help them achieve those goals by securing really meaningful, great placements in the media. ROB: I'm sure a lot of people really want that. What does a typical client look like for you? Is there a particular stage of firm, size of firm, industry? You name it. ANNIE: We're pretty wide-ranging and generalist and agnostic when it comes to the industry that our clients are in, but we do have three main divisions. We have B2B division, where we have everything from tech startups to corporate clients to climate sustainability initiatives and projects; we have a robust lifestyle division, so we have nutritionists, authors, fitness instructors, and products and brands; and then our third division is thought leadership. That's a lot of our political pundits and financial analysts, attorneys, folks that really have a vested interest in opining on cable news about whatever the topic du jour may be. ROB: Some of these are some pretty big placements, I would imagine. In client selection, how much of it is people who are interesting innately, how much of it is preparing them, and how much of it is just finding the area where they're more interesting? ANNIE: I think there's got to be an innate interest at least somewhat. It doesn't have to be a passion project or something that I personally necessarily follow, but I have to feel interested and excited when I'm talking to a prospective client because without feeling excited and having that interest, it's not going to come off as genuine when we're pitching to the media. So definitely vested interest is important. But also, we have to make sure that we feel like the media is going to be interested as well. It could be the most interesting thing ever, but if it doesn't fit into the news cycle or, as you were saying, maybe they haven't secured funding and they're super, super small . . . timing is important. We want to make sure that when we're talking about that sort of preparation, our clients are coming to us with an already established presence and a lot going on themselves where we can feel comfortable and confident that we're pitching a product or an organization or a CEO or a company that has something meaningful to say. And then we do a lot of work with our clients to get them prepped and media-ready by doing media training as well. ROB: That's a whole topic we could go down right there on the media training side. I'm recalling some conversations I've had on the topic. But let's pull in for a moment on what makes people interesting. How do you think about understanding and figuring out – obviously, there can be some subjectiveness to “This person is interesting,” but how do you think of scaling up the idea of “Is this person interesting and who are they interesting to in the media world?” ANNIE: I think interesting is a little bit individualistic, but for me, doing a lot of TV bookings for our clients, they have to certainly have a presence and be compelling just in the tonality of their voice, and be able to explain what they're saying in a way that's going to be digestible and make sense and have some takeaways for the viewer at home. Something that's really important is to make sure they have the goods to back it up. Did they work specifically in the industry that they are discussing? What was their exact area of expertise? How did they touch the current topic that we're pitching them on? Then we put our pitches together where we are highlighting our client's expertise so that way, when a producer is looking at it, they say, “Oh okay, this guest would be really great to have on air because of this specific background that they have.” ROB: Media training is such a deep and interesting topic. I've had a couple of times where, for whatever reason, I ended up on CNBC and I had to phone a friend and figure out what the heck I was going to do with this and how to do it well. There's an interesting balance. Depending on who you listen to, some people are going to talk about knowing what you want to say, and then sometimes you can very clearly tell when someone is on television and they're trying a little bit too hard to touch on their three talking points or something like that. How do you think about striking the right balance of being prepared and knowing your message, but then delivering it in a way that isn't forced, inauthentic, or just tone-deaf? ANNIE: In my opinion, I think first do no harm. What I mean by that is if you are fortunate enough to get booked on CNBC or a major TV network, answer the questions that are asked of you. I think weaving in your own specific messaging point is a skillset. It's something that may take time for some to be able to do where it feels really natural and organic. But if it doesn't flow off your tongue in a really germane and relevant way, my advice would be to wait for the next time you're on air, because first and foremost you want to develop a relationship with that producer, with that anchor, with that network. If you are too transactional on the first interview, they're going to see right through that and you're never going to get invited back on. So in my opinion, it's better to really give them a great interview and realize that there's a long game here. It's not just for a one-off interview. ROB: That's so important to remember. I think it can feel like you're playing in the Super Bowl or something when you get that TV placement, and you feel like you have to win it all at once. You make a great point; so much of business is the long game, and I think it's illuminating to people that media is not different in that regard, and you really can do this a lot if you serve the audience well and make the host's job easy. ANNIE: You totally can. I think it's also on the publicist or on your comms team to strike that balance for you. It's very rare that you're going to look up and see what would in effect be a commercial for a company or a product or a brand. Ninety-nine percent of the time, the CEO or the founder is talking about a news story that is relatable within their industry, within their area of expertise. But a publicist should be able to ask the producer, “Hey, at the end of the segment, can we have one question where we ask about the initiative that my client is offering?” or something along those lines. Generally speaking, they'll play ball with you – and if they don't, that's when the publicist needs to go back to the client and say, “Listen, I really advise that you do this interview because it will lead to other opportunities in the future.” ROB: You certainly speak with a lot of expertise, so let's uncover some of the background here. What led to you starting Pace PR in the first place? What's the origin story? ANNIE: I was 28 and working at CNBC for Donny Deutsch's show, and it got cancelled. I found myself suddenly without a job because everyone on the show got laid off. So I sent an email to everyone in my orbit and said, “I lost my job today and I need a job. If you hear of anything, let me know.” I got an email back that really changed the course of my life forever; it was from a publicist who I had worked closely with and developed a relationship with booking his clients on Donny's show. He emailed me and said, “I don't think you have any formal PR training, but I have a client. He's a broker. He just wrote a book on the market. If you know anybody on any show at CNBC that would have him on, I'll pay you $500 bucks.” I sent it to my friend who was working on the one o'clock hour and she's like, “Oh, he looks great. Can he come on tomorrow?” And that was my lightbulb moment. That's what spurred everything to happen. ROB: For sure. I of course skimmed through your LinkedIn before we hopped on here, and you can see the DNA of some of your career, and probably number one, I would imagine part of your eye for talent comes from being on the other side. Do you feel that the people you're booking with know that you have that background? Or is it more evident to them by how you probably approach the entire process with an empathy for their job and what they're looking for? ANNIE: A lot of them do, because a lot of them I'm still friends with or have a relationship with. But I do think the way I construct my pitches, the way my staff does by me teaching them, is to really cut right to it, for lack of a better phrase. Producers are getting pitched hundreds of pitches every single day. Every single day, they're getting hundreds of pitches to their inbox, and they delete 99% of them. So, it's really important to reference what is happening in the news today. You don't need a long preamble; you don't need to say, “Biden's Build Back Better plan, which was supposed to encompass X, Y, and Z…” No, just say “Biden's plan got shot down. If you want commentary on if it's going to resurrect itself or where they go from here, here is the expert. Here is what they say. Here's why you should book them.” Just make it as concise and clear as possible. I think if you do that, it's evident that you have an understanding of how TV news works. ROB: You make it sound so easy – and of course, I couldn't come up with that pitch very quickly at all. But that's why you are the professional. It's worth highlighting – I feel like it's pretty common to see a lone gun solo artist or a superman or superwoman with a couple of assistants, but you have managed to scale up the firm a little bit more. Not everybody has your experience booking; not everybody has that network. How have you gone about equipping new waves of your team to grow and scale and replicate an experience that – maybe you're able to hire a bunch of people who used to book for shows, but I imagine that's not everyone on your team. ANNIE: No, definitely not. A couple people, but not everyone. In early days, certainly pre-pandemic, I had a very small office for a number of years, and my more junior team members would sit right next to me and I would try as much as I could to use opportunities as teaching moments, as I'm putting together a pitch. I also was very much a part of the editing process and trying to have them understand how to get right to the point as quickly as possible while also clearly stating the payoff. Why should the person on the receiving end care about what you're sending? That's not easy to learn because most people, I think, think of good writing as long writing and having a lot of flowery explanations. But when you're pitching for TV, it's really different than that. Now we're at a stage of the company where we can invest in our staff in other ways, through writing courses or webinars or seminars that they may want to attend. But we just try to have a lot of visibility in terms of our pitch writing just so that the junior staff can see how we're doing it and then learn from that experience. ROB: I see. I can certainly see some proximity, some room for coaching, probably some roleplay, even, in there. Have you ever had younger staff write some pitches and have someone respond in more of a roleplay mode? Is that common? ANNIE: I guess I do that when I'm editing and writing back to them, because oftentimes I will say, “What are you trying to sell me on here?” Sometimes we have complex, complicated clients, and it can be really hard to say succinctly in the approximation of 20 seconds what point it is you're trying to get across. So yes, because when we used to work together in a small office, I would say, “Hey, Natalie, why should the producer care about this?” or “Hey, why should the viewer at home really care about this topic or this idea?” I think just making it as real as possible was helpful in those ways. So I guess so. I guess roleplaying in that way. ROB: It's interesting because there's a direction – as I was saying with the talking points – there's a point to where I think some coaching makes you sound really overly robotic, and it's almost like there's the other side of the mountain where you're talking about getting more concise, more human, more to the point. Maybe there's some New York in there, but there's a lot of media in New York, so I'm sure a lot of media talk is “Get to the point. We're busy here. We are inundated with pitches.” ANNIE: Yeah. You'll see even, if you start developing relationships with specific producers, a lot of times producers will email me one sentence. They're not worrying about capitalization and punctuation. If you work in cable news, you're producing every single day. It's a talking art, it's not a written art. Most of the times, the way they're communicating with the executive producer or the senior producer where they're pitching a story or they're pitching a guest is when they're having their meetings, so they're actually verbalizing the pitch and the guest they're getting. So they need to be able to take from the written pitch and use that language to formulate in words how they're making their case for why they should book this guest or why they should do this story. It's something that people may not have a knowledge base on if you haven't worked in TV, but that is how it works. ROB: It's such an interesting look behind the curtain. Annie, when you think about the journey so far in building Pace PR, what have you learned lesson-wise that you might wish to go back and tell yourself to do a little differently, or things you're doing differently now? ANNIE: This past year, in 2021, we started working with a consultant for the first time in 11 years of business, who helped me develop an operating plan and an organizational chart and a lot of other tools. We sort of joke around saying that we grew up this year at Pace PR. We could've done that earlier, for sure. I think I held on to that startup scrappy mentality for a little too long. It didn't hurt us, but I think it impeded our growth, because since we've invested in some of this work, we've all noticed not only more growth, but also I think an ease within the workflow in the company. So. I would say to think even bigger earlier on than I was. I mean, on the one hand, I've always grown slowly and methodically. Most startups, the reason they fail the first year is because they spend too much money, they grow too quickly. So there definitely is that balance. But I think I would've put on my business hat a little bit sooner in the duration of the company. ROB: Yeah. Did you start the firm by yourself? ANNIE: I did. I started it by myself and kind of just asked for help. I knew an attorney who I used to book on TV, so he incorporated the company. I asked a friend, “Do you have an accountant?” and they introduced me to my current accountant. A lot of it was trial by fire, and when I started it was just me, so obviously I didn't have to worry about staff and a million other things. I could take risks and do things a little bit haphazardly and it was okay. ROB: Right. Some people have that partner, that co-founder, someone who comes in operationally minded, and sometimes, as you've done, you get by on the strength of your strengths. I think it was probably a year and a half ago I hired a coach to come in and help me figure out some of these things, and it felt too early. I thought, “This is a big investment; should I really be spending this money?” But I haven't talked to a lot of people who hired a credible consultant or coach and regretted it. ANNIE: Yeah. At least where we are in the business, it just got me thinking differently. When you live and breathe your business and you started it and it's your baby, it's very hard to see the forest through the trees. It's like you only know one way of doing things. So when you get that outside perspective, at least for me, it has been illuminating. I do think the timing is important, but it's never too soon to at least start thinking about that and thinking about what the future will hold and how to scale and how you might see a growth path forward. ROB: What are some of the scale points that may have gotten in the way? ANNIE: Staffing has always been – not an issue, but it's something that's so critical to a small business. And I think time management, meaning all of us, from myself all the way on down, are very involved in the client work, in the client-facing aspect and the media pitching aspect, so it doesn't leave a lot of time or room to think about the business and growing and scaling the business. It's something that I've been fortunate (knock wood) where year over year, the company has grown. It's not to say I haven't put time and energy into thinking about how to grow; I have. But I have not ever been systematic and really intentional about it until this past year. I will say it's still not easy to carve out time in your day when you really don't have it, but I've been doing whatever I can to make the room and the space for that because it's really important. ROB: It's one level to think about the simple tasks that you can delegate, the lawyers, the bookkeepers, that sort of thing, but it's another thing entirely to really think about working on the business, on equipping things for growth. It's a different mindset, so I certainly appreciate that. ANNIE: Yeah, and if you don't have training in it or you didn't go to business school – I had never read a business book. It's hard to know what some processes can be or ways in which to scale. You may be somebody who has a ton of ideas, but then it's really challenging to put those ideas into practice. Somebody gave me the advice that as the owner of a company or someone in leadership, you should spend your time doing the things that only you can do, the things that you're really good at. I didn't excel at figuring out how to take my ideas and then implement them into different growth / revenue streams, but hiring and working with this consultant has absolutely been helpful in that way. I would recommend it to anyone. ROB: That's great to hear and great to understand. One of the ways I believe that you have chosen to scale the business is with different offices, different cities. How did you think about the right time and the right way to do that? That seems like a big step. ANNIE: Yeah. Some of it was a situation where someone wanted to move and came to me and said, “What do you think if we opened up an office in D.C. or LA?”, etc. Certainly, in this period of remote work, that's a lot easier. I think maybe a lot of businesses are having different office locations because people are living and working in different areas. But I would say for us, just thinking about the pillars of our company, which is business, lifestyle, and thought leadership, politics is a big part of that thought leadership – so having a presence in D.C. is important. It's important to get out there for meeting media and it's important for attending events that are going to be useful for new client acquisition or for strengthening relationships with the media. And then we have a member of our team out in LA, and that's really the hub of where a lot of lifestyle business is done. I think it's also important to have somebody there to have their finger on the pulse of what the trends are, what people are talking about – especially in that lifestyle space. That is important when you're having conversations with prospective clients, to say, “Oh yeah, I have heard of this.” When you have that intimate knowledge, it gives you that leg up when you're vying for the business. ROB: As soon as you said D.C. and LA. I was thinking about your pillars. It sprang immediately to mind with lifestyle, with thought leadership, absolutely. It does feel like it can be a little bit of chicken and egg in that case, though, right? How do you decide, is the thought leadership pulling you to D.C., or is it a bet based on what you're seeing? It seems like there's a bit of a risk and sequencing challenge there. Did it feel like a risk going into those markets, or did you feel like you had the evidence that made it inevitable? ANNIE: I think it's always a risk, because who knows how things are going to turn out? But like when you're saying the chicken or the egg, I feel like that is the perpetual mind state that I'm in. Less so with opening an office, because there are ways to do that where you don't have to have a ton of overhead to do that. So low risk on the financial side. But where I still see myself in that kind of scenario is thinking about hiring. We try to be prudent and hire when we have more clients that require more staffing to service those clients, but in PR, despite the fact that we have very longstanding and great client retention, it still is cyclical. We have a lot of clients that come to us on a project basis, or at the end of their first contract, they may need to shift funds to another area of their marketing budget. So it is a little bit always of that balancing act. All I can say is doing this for nearly 12 years, I think there's that bit of intuition, which is what I've come to rely on. ROB: Absolutely. Annie, as you're looking ahead for the future of Pace PR, for the future of the particular industry that you're in, what are you excited about? What's changing, what's not changing? ANNIE: I am excited about all of the many different media properties that are popping up or that are becoming more robust. I have CNN on in my office and they're promoting CNN Plus. In instances like that, for publicists, it's exciting because there's going to be so many more opportunities for clients to get them exposure. Somewhat challenging to keep up on it all, but it's a good challenge to have and I'm excited about that. However, the cornerstone of our business is traditional media, and a lot of people out there will say traditional media is dead, TV news is not going to hold the same weight as it once did. I disagree with that. I think at least in our lifetime, TV is still going to be a really important medium. Even amongst the younger generations, people, especially in big moments, want to turn on the TV. They want to see in real time what is happening. And even if they don't, getting those clips from a CNN or a CNBC legitimizes and brings credibility to a person or a brand in a way that I think is very different and holds a lot of meaning and is different from a newspaper article or a digital article or a podcast or something like that. ROB: How do you read when a media outlet starts to turn the corner? Because I distinctly recall I would start seeing these random video clips showing up in my Twitter feed of business news, and I'd sit here and say, “What in the heck is Cheddar?” And all of a sudden Cheddar's on my TV. It has crossed a little bit from being an upstart to also kind of a traditional outlet. How do you feel out – and maybe it is intuition – when things start to cross the boundary? ANNIE: I think it's a question that's kind of impossible to have an exact answer to because it's a bit of a science, but I would say for us, something as simple as in the early days, when we would email a client with a request to appear on Cheddar TV, they would always say “What's Cheddar?” And now, we don't get that question anymore. How does that happen? Probably by a million little things happening all at once and over a sustained period of time. But for me, it's less about maybe the name recognition, but what's really important is that the quality of the reporting and the interviews is very high from the early days. Cheddar always did great interviews, very professional all the way around and really well thought out. My clients always left feeling happy and like it was a good investment of their time, because even if they didn't have a ton of eyeballs watching that segment at that exact moment, as I said, having that clip and having it be well-produced and it looked good and it was a well thought out interview – that helps them in their own marketing materials to share that clip or to put it on their website or put it on their social media. ROB: Makes sense. There is some wizardry to it still. I appreciate it. That's why we need you. That's why you're there. Annie, when people want to find you and find Pace PR, how should they find and connect with you? ANNIE: I would love to hear from anyone listening. You can go to our website, pacepublicrelations.com. Or you can find me on Twitter @anniescranton. Shoot me a message and I'd love to connect. ROB: Sounds great. Annie, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and sharing from your deep expertise in this media world. ANNIE: I really appreciate it. Thank you for having me. ROB: Thank you very much. Bye. Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Daaamn.. what a last 24 hours. Lots of stuff going down. Tracklist like this: Bye bye boss, Ally back tomorrow, Chik-fil-A, AKTN, ADD news, March Badness, 5-10-20, ADD news, fav shows, Boss song, AKTN, ADD news, high voltage food review, buying booze, SWEET DIBBINS

Decision Space is the podcast about decisions in board games! Click on the link to join our active and welcoming Discord community!  Join the crew today! (Decision Space Patreon)   Episode 59 - A Feast for Odin An extravagant menu, satisfying options, and playing out over 7 courses, A Feast for Odin by Uwe Rosenberg delivers on the promise of a decadent gaming experience and then some. In this week's episode of Decision Space, we take a bite out of this sprawling decision space and give you, as always, our honest opinions about the decisions in this game and what makes them tick. The interdecisional spaceship is now departing.  Games Discussed A Feast for Odin, Underwater Cities, Patchwork, and more.   Timestamps Intro (Ratings and Slogans) - 0:00 Rules Overview - 11:07 AFFO Discussion - 14:14   Music Credits Thank you to Hembree for our intro and outro music from their song Reach Out. You can listen to the full song on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQuuRPfOyMw&list=TLGGFNH7VEDPgwgyNTA4MjAyMQ&t=3s You can find more information about Hembree at https://www.hembreemusic.com/.  Rules Overview Music:  Way Home by Tokyo Music Walker https://soundcloud.com/user-356546060​ Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0 Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/tokyo-music-walker-way...​ Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/pJThZlOuDtI   Contact We can be reached individually on Twitter at @jakefryd and @burnsidebh. You can also follow Decision Space on Twitter @DecisionSpa and talk to us there! If you prefer email, then hit us up at decisionspa@gmail.com. This information is all available along with episodes at our new website decisionspacepodcast.com. Bye!  

How to inspire the people you love to change without forcing them to do it. Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ClubHouseWithRussell.com Magnetic Marketing ---Transcript--- What's up everybody? This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to The Marketing Secrets Podcast. Today, I'm streaming to you from the Napoleon Hill room. Hey, what's up everyone? Yeah, I think I told you guys in the last episode or so how I basically bought in two or 3000 books, all in personal development. We had to move into this separate office while we're building our future library. What's cool about this is now they're in this little office with no windows or anything, and all the books are here and they're out. I've decided I'm going to start coming here every morning with the first two or three hours of the day and working inside of here, which is cool because it's given me chance to sit down and write the book, but also inside of that is to be able to like... as I'm writing the book, I have all the greatest personal development books of all time sitting here I can go look at. I can read, I can flip through little magazines. I can get inspiration from Napoleon Hill himself and a bunch of other cool things. I'm really, really enjoying this and kind of geeking out. And that's why I thought I'd do a podcast from here. Hope you don't mind because there's so many things I'm thinking about, talking about in my head that are going crazy. I had one this weekend that was... It was huge that I want to share with you guys. This is interesting because I wish you had context. I wish all you guys were in Mexico with us at the Two Comma Club X Inner Circle/Category King Mastermind meetup because we had such a good time, but I had a chance to do this one presentation, which will become chapter one of the book by the way. When you get the book someday, you'll have a chance to go through this exercise. I'm not going to walk you through the whole thing, but it's been interesting because as I've been creating this whole thing with success and like, "How do you achieve what you want?" It's fascinating to me because there's all these things, right? There's all these levers we can pull on and we can do and we can tweak. We start looking at it, there's like... Sorry, this is me jumping around, I did really interesting call with Tom Bilyeu and he took me down this path. I talked to this guy named Tal Tsfany who's the owner of the Ayn Rand Foundation, the CEO of the Ayn Rand Foundation and all these other people. All these pieces are trying to connect for me. It's just like, ah, so fascinating. So exciting. Anyway, sorry, I tell you this because one of the big things that... We talk about beliefs and rules and values and identity and there's all these different pieces that are around it, but I never knew how to glue them all together and what was first and what was second and the chicken and the egg and all these kind of things. Right? One of my big realizations that I figured out before the mastermind event in Boise or in Mexico was that it all starts with our values. For a long time, I was like, "Okay, what does that mean? What are values?" I don't even... Things that are valuable, things that I value and it wasn't until I talked to Tal, he's the CEO of the Ayn Rand Foundation. Ayn Rand is the one who wrote Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead and all those amazing books. Anyway, so I talked to him and he told me about this exercise he does with people because Ayn Rand is big on values. That's like the leading thing she talks about. I was like, "How do you explain it? How do you understand it?" He said, "What I do is if you understand the values, values are something that aren't a conscious thing, something subconsciously is happening that makes your brain," he called it the black box inside your brain happy. Right? He's like, "Most people don't know what that is. We just are walking around in life, bumping into things, hoping that we'll be successful and be happy." He said that Ayn Rand said that if we were to, I think he said if we spent 5% of our life looking introspectively at ourselves in our own mind that we'd be a society or nation of giants or something crazy like that. His whole thing is like, "We have to look inside, what is the things that actually make you happy?" He invented this exercise that we did with our group. He said we had to create a value galaxy. The event, I gave everyone big little thing of sticky notes. I said, "Okay, what are the things you value, these things that make you happy?" It could anything from reading a book or eating sushi or going on a date or making out or winning a wrestling match. What are all the things that bring you happiness? Like, seeing my kids... I gave them 15 minutes to write down as many values as they could think, anything that makes them happy, just to write those things down. Everyone wrote on these sticky notes and we stick them on the little board. Within 15, 20 minutes, everyone had 100 different values. It's like, "These are all the things you value." I said, "How many guys, when you were doing that, you had these new a-has? I forgot about that. I forgot about this, the things I valued, but I totally forgot about them. I'm not doing them, I'm not spending time in them." I think everyone, including me, had kind of that epiphany of like, "Oh my gosh. All these things I actually value, I'm not focusing on." Right? Then, the next thing is, he said, "Okay," Tal said, "This is your value galaxy." Instead of from here, you got to figure out what are the value themes? If you look at all these sticky notes, they're probably grouped together in themes, right? All these 10 or 15 are all kind of related to my family or related to my mission or related to whatever those things are. Right? He said, "Let's take this value galaxy and build it and move the sticky notes around to value themes." So we're creating these value themes, and when we were done, everyone had five or six value themes. These value themes were really cool because they were very much like, "I value my family. I value religion. I value personal development," whatever your things are. Right? It's interesting because the values are what drive us, right? That's the things that actually make us happy. It's not the goal that makes us happy, it's the value. It's the pursuit and the achievement of the value. Then, from there, we did a bunch of other cool exercises I'm not going to talk about on this podcast, but did some of the cool things with everyone in Mexico. Then, from there, we looked at the five or six value themes that people had. From the value themes, they picked one value theme that was most important to them right now in their life. Maybe it's business or maybe it's family, maybe it's sports or whatever, picking that one value theme and then setting your goal around that one thing. Anyway, it was so cool. The big epiphany I had that was fascinating to me is I'm always trying to figure out like, "How do my kids be amazing people? How do I get them to, I don't know, to, I don't want to say... how do I get my kids to do what I want them to do?" That's not what I'm saying, but you know what I mean? There's things that I believe, that I value that I want my kids to value as well. Right? Like my faith, my work ethic, these are things I value, I want my kids to value too. It's interesting because most of us, including me, for a long time until yesterday, note, but we try to force our kids to value what we value. Right? We don't know we're doing that. Instead, what we do is we set these rules and these guidelines, we force them to do this and we demand them to do this. We're trying to get them to do what we want them to do because we value it and it's important to us. We want it to be important to them too, so we're trying to force them. What's interesting is that forcing people to have the same value as you literally, in most cases, repels them and makes them not want to have that value. Instead, it's like, "How do I inspire them to want to have that value?" For my kids, for example. I'm like, "You have to go to church, you have to read the scriptures, you have to blah, blah, blah," because I want them to value that, that's going to push them away fast. Instead, how do I create it so they actually value it? How do I create experiences and something so cool that they're like, "Oh my gosh, I value this too?" You don't do it by demanding them, or forcing them, or setting up rules to keep them doing it, instead you do it by inspiration. How do I show them this is actually valuable in my life? How can I show this is valuable to their life? If I can get them to experience it or just see it or whatever, then they'll value it. After they value it, everything will take care of itself, right? Now they value it, they're going to do the things they need to have that in their life. If I'm not careful, me or you or any of us, are going to pull them off the tracks by trying to force these values on people or force your values on people. Instead, it's like, "I need to create an environment where they see why it's valuable." Then, all of a sudden, it becomes valuable to them. It becomes a value to them. Does that make sense? I don't know if that makes sense to you guys, but I'm freaking out having this epiphany of like, "Oh my gosh, I've been doing parenting wrong. I've been doing all these things wrong my whole life." Because now it's like, "Oh, this is the key is helping them to value it, not to force them to do it or to set up rules or whatever, it's getting them to value it." When you ask that question, it gives you a whole different answer, right? Now, it's like, "Well, I need to show them the value of praying. Let me show them the miracles that happened in my life and miracles happened in their life and that may help them to understand it. If they can see it and then they're going to start valuing it." Right? Let me show them the value of church. Church can be so boring most of the time. How do I make it valuable? Let me show them, if I can show them the value that I get out of it and then they're more likely to value it. Right? You create experiences and they do value it. Anyway, that was my big epiphany was just like, "Okay." It becomes, at least in my head, this is way more fun of a game. This is a more fun way. This is a more fun game is how to create those kind of things. It was really cool. I had a mini experience yesterday with it that was kind of interesting. By default, this is kind of something broken inside my head maybe, a lot of you guys know, I was a wrestler, I was a good athlete and things like that. It was interesting because I wasn't like... I had friends who were just always active. They're running, they're doing stuff, and that wasn't me. When I was wrestling, I would try not to move the entire day. I would just store up all my energy and then wrestling practice, I'd go crazy for two or three hours. I'd go crazy in the waiting room, and then I would not move again. I'd sit home and just watch TV or not move. My life nowadays is similar. I don't do a lot unless I'm going to go do something and if I do, I go hardcore. Right? I know if I'm going to work out, I have to shower afterwards because I'm going to be a mess. Right? I step back and I wouldn't jog from my office to my house. I would never do that. If I'm going to do that, I'm going to drive home. I'm going to get my change clothes. I'm going to go super hardcore for an hour and then be done. A lot of times, unfortunately for my kids, I fall in this rut of after church, whatever, we're at home, we're like, "Okay, what are we going to do?" It's just like, "I don't know." I'm like, well, my brain, I just want to not do anything. We default to that, but I do value exercise, I do value doing things, but in my head, that's not my default. Right? Yesterday, one of our kids' friends came over and she's a super cool girl, really enjoy having her over. You can tell her and her family, they value outside activities. They're there and they're like, "Hey," my son is with her and like, "Hey do you guys want to go outside and play bubble soccer and we can play these things." My first default's like, "No, I don't want to." I literally kind of like, I didn't say no, but I was just like, "Oh, maybe," and I kind of snuck away and laid down for a little bit because I was tired. Right? Then, I had this epiphany. I'm like, "If I want my kids to value outdoors and exercise and activities, I need to value it. If they don't see me value it, then they're not going to either." I was like, "Okay." I got up, got dressed. I was like, "All right." It was crazy, they'd already gone outside. I went out there with them. I got the other kids out there and we ended up playing for three or four hours. We had so much fun exercising and running and playing games. When it was done, in my head, I was just like, "Oh my gosh, they saw that I value this and they had a good time, so they're going to value it. Then, they're more likely to go and do these kind of things more in the future and with their kids and things like that." I'm like, "That's how we create change." Anyway. There's your exercise for all of you guys. Go sit down, figure out your value galaxy, build in the value themes, and look at the values that you want your kids to have, or you want your employees to have that maybe they don't have right now and then not force them into it, but how do you inspire them to create that as a value that'll be exciting and change their life as well? There you go. Hope that helps, hope it gets you excited. Got me excited. I'm still just freaking out because I'm so excited by it. I appreciate y'all for listening and I'll talk to you all again soon. Bye everybody.

In this weeks episode, Karly sits down to talk relationship trauma and relationship healing. She shares about a recent full circle experience with a guy that (unintentionally) ruined one of Karly's friendships, how that experience revealed how much she's grown, and boundaries she's been setting in her dating life. Make sure to tune into Hey Bitches every single Thursday and subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, & Spotify! If you're feeling extra frisky, screenshot this episode and tag @heybitchespodcast on Instagram to be shared on the story. Bye bye bitch!

Bienvenidos al podcast con Anne Ganguzza y Pilar Uribe! In this episode, your hosts cover how creating a great demo can get you booked without auditioning, the versatility of having multiple demos, and how being kind to everyone you meet is really the most underrated marketing technique…   Transcript >> It's time to take your business to the next level, the BOSS level! These are the premiere Business Owner Strategies and Successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a BOSS, a VO BOSS! Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza.   Pilar: Hola, BOSS Voces. Bienvenidos al podcast con Anne Ganguzza y Pilar Uribe.   Anne: Hey everyone. Welcome to the VO BOSS podcast. I'm your host Anne Ganguzza, and I'm happy to welcome back with me as special guest cohost Pilar Uribe. Pilar, how are you today?   Pilar: I'm doing great, Anne. ¿Tú cómo estás?   Anne: I don't know. Sí.   Pilar. Just say bien, just say bien.   Anne: Bien, bien.   Pilar: Bien covers it all.   Anne: Everybody will follow my own journey as I learn Spanish. Thank you. And I learned to be as -- the best bilingual voice artist I can be, but let me talk about another language, another language of love which it comes from my VO studio kitty Sebrina today. I noticed, Pilar, you know how animals, they have that sense. When you're a cat lover and a cat lover walks into my home, my cats know it. And I have to tell you that my little Sebrina, who is the most sociable of the three VO studio cats that I have, she's usually the first one that will come down and greet people, if she feels that they are sufficient --   Pilar: Worthy.   Anne: -- cat lovers. Yes.   Pilar: If they're worthy of her attention.   Anne: So I have to tell you that the last two times we've been recording, she has been scratching at my studio door, and she just doesn't do that. And I know, I know that she hears you because I have inside and outside headphones. And so what I hear here in my headphones in the booth are also kind of projecting outside my booth through my headphones. So I know she hears you. There's no other reason to explain why she's scratching at the door.   Pilar: Oh, I love that.   Anne: Like she must hear your voice.   Pilar: That's so cute.   Anne: She must hear your voice. And she must know that there's yet another cat lover with me, and she's scratching to get into the studio.   Pilar: And she knows there's a possible suitor right outside.   Anne: That's right. Exactly.   Pilar: Paco. Oh yeah.   Anne: Paco. Yes, she probably feels it. I'm telling you.   Pilar: They know, they know these things. They know.   Anne: They do. They know everything. Wow.   Pilar: We're just their, their custodians. They're the ones who rule.   Anne: Exactly. So I had to tell you that story, you know, because we share, we share a love for studio cats, for sure.   Pilar: So I can say, I can give a little shout out. Hola Sebrina, ¿cómo estás?   Anne: Oo. She's going to hear the scratching soon. I'm telling you. So we had a great conversation on our last podcast about being a bilingual voice talent and what it takes to, I guess, be successful in the industry. And I want to continue that to go a little bit more in detail. So if there are beginners out there or people just entering into the industry that want to market themselves as a bilingual voice talent, what are the steps that it would take for them to do so successfully? First of all, I think you must have some sort of a demo, right, that showcases that you have this talent. What are your thoughts about a demo and how you can successfully market yourself as bilingual through your demo or not, or what works for you?   Pilar: Okay. So since I started out in the world of voiceover without any like really any information -- I mean in the world of dubbing, that's what I meant -- they knew I spoke English, they knew I spoke Spanish, so I could do both. And I just kind of jumped in. I did not have a voiceover agent until I got to Los Angeles. So I had to get my own work. And that meant a lot of knocking on doors, talking to other actors and saying, okay, where are you, where are you working? What studios are you working in? And there aren't that many in Miami.   Anne: And you're talking physical knock. I'm just going to clarify this --   Pilar: Oh yeah.   Anne: -- you mean like physically networking with other people, which today really translates into online, right? Maybe --   Pilar: Yes.   Anne: -- groups and online, online networking groups. But yeah, you had to physically become a good networker.   Pilar: Yes. Thank you for telling me that, because, because I don't even realize. I think it's interesting because you know, you get to a place -- you know, I'm talking to you here. I earned my living doing this and it's, it's really, when you go back, and I'm looking at my, my past, everyone thinks, oh, oh, she's doing this. She has it all. Oh, it's oh, it's like really easy. Look at her. And every single step that you make is, it's like, you're climbing up the mountain, and then you slide back down and then you climb up the mountain, and you slide back down a little bit.   Anne: Yeah.   Pilar: And it's a lot of walking --   Anne: You claw your way up the mountain.   Pilar: -- you, you literally crawl your way up the mountain. My, um, my ex mother-in-law, God bless her, told me one time when I was learning something many, many years ago, she said as much as you may learn and then fall back, and, and if you're, if it's another language or if it's a new profession, you're never going to be at the point where you don't know anything. Once you start learning, you can't say you don't know anything because you actually know something now about that subject. And I, that's just something that I've always taken with me.   Anne: Yeah, that's a cool perspective. Yup.   Pilar: Because the more I learn -- yeah, right? Because the more I learn, the more I realize, oh, okay. I don't know about so much more.   Anne: Exactly.   Pilar: But there's other stuff that I do know now. So I just, I kind of bring it all. You know, my, my little lump of knowledge gets bigger and bigger. And so when I first started dubbing, as I said in a couple, couple episodes before, I just, it was luck that I got the job, but it was because I had been auditioning so many times before for these different studios -- no, excuse me, for this one studio.   Anne: But was it really luck, Pilar? If I ask you to think that back, was it really luck? Because you had really been working, uh, networking with people and getting to know people, and I'll tell you, the first rule of marketing is people buy from people they know, like, and trust. And so I think you might've been establishing that relationship in working in those studios when they said, you know what? We need somebody to do this dubbing job. And boom, guess who's top of mind? There you are. Just a thought.   Pilar: Okay, for those VO voces, those BOSS Voces who are listening to Anne for the first time, you got to go take classes with this woman, because she's completely turning my story around. And I'm sitting there, like my brains are like going, whaat?   Anne: I love it. You're a marketer. It's so funny, the parallels, right?   Pilar: I don't even know how I did it, but you're basically showing me all this stuff that I did without me even realizing it. So thank you for that.   Anne: Well, it's cool because we, we get to work it backwards now because now --   Pilar: Yes.   Anne: -- people just entering in the business, are they networking online? How are they networking? And maybe they should consider all versions of networking because it all helps you, you know, to get where you need to go.   Pilar: We're doing it, we're doing reverse engineering.   Anne: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.   Pilar: So reverse engineering a lot of the times means, and again, I'm not saying I do this, but when I have an interaction with somebody, I always keep them in my mind, and I send them an email, and I let them know what I'm doing. Because a lot of the time -- it's, it's basically being and not stalking them and not being obnoxious about it, but so they know that you're around. You know, for so many months before I actually got my first dubbing gig, I didn't get any response. And the same thing happened when I, when, when I started working for NPR. I didn't hear anything for months and months and months. And what I realized is that marketing is always the long game.   Anne: Isn't it? Ugh, yes.   Pilar: It's, it's the long game --   Anne: That's it, we can go home now Pilar, because that was, that was the wisdom, that nugget of wisdom. It is, it's a long game. So many people want that instant result.   Pilar: Yeah, because we have, we're exposed to instant gratifications through our cell phones, through our laptops.   Anne: Yup.   Pilar: And what it is is that it's basically putting a tiny grain of sand into the atmosphere and letting it go there. It might come back. It might not, but every single time you do it, you're sending the energy out of, I'm a voiceover artist. I can do this for you.   Anne: Yeah, absolutely.   Pilar: And eventually that does come back.   Anne: Yes.   Pilar: So I get my first gig and then I'm thinking, okay, I want more. So then I start asking questions. I started asking my actor friends and like, oh, you're with this studio. How do you get into this studio? And it turns out that the person who recommended me to work in the first studio is also now working part-time in the second studio. So I call him up and I say, hey, you know, what's going on? And they're like, oh, okay, well, I don't really have anything for you now, but maybe. So I was like, okay, great. And then, boom. Maybe I make a call or maybe he calls me again. And then the chain starts happening. So that's really what it became.   So at one point I was working for four different studios and, you know, making these connections and then slowly but surely. So then you reach a point, right? I want more. So then I go into the audiobook world, and I start doing that. And then a big part of my, my voiceover journey was Fafcon because --   Anne: Yup.   Pilar: -- I went and that's --   Anne: Networking.   Pilar: -- when I experienced. Yeah. That's when I experienced, I was like, oh, these people actually make a living at it full-time, because I'm sitting here running around, you know, with four different studios.   Anne: Sure.   Pilar: And I'm sure trying to deal with the whole audiobook thing. And, and they're like, oh no, we have our clients. We have our IVR. We have our people who call us up every so often. And we, and I'm like, oh, that's a new concept. And I had no idea about this part of the business.   Anne: You were learning about now these are all different genres. You were just doing dubbing --   Pilar: Yes.   Anne: -- and then you started with the audiobooks. Interesting about the audiobooks. And I'm going to say that might've been a few years back, right? There was no ACX back then, right? So --   Pilar: No, actually I started with ACX.   Anne: Oh, you did? Okay.   Pilar: So, so it was more recent.   Anne: Oh, okay, so it was recent then.   Pilar: 2012.   Anne: Oh, okay.   Pilar: They had just started 2013. They had --   Anne: Still that's a --   Pilar: -- they hadn't been around that long.   Anne: -- that's a while. Yeah. That's a while. That was when they just started, I believe. So, okay. And right there for audiobooks, that was kind of a, a cool thing because it was online, and you didn't have to necessarily have a demo to present. They were basically just offering you work and you could audition and not necessarily have to present a demo to get work there.   Pilar: Exactly. So I, again, not knowing anything that was back in the day when audiobooks were done in studios.   Anne: Yes, yes.   Pilar: So the publishing companies had their own studios, and you know, the big guys on campus went and they recorded there.   Anne: Exactly, exactly. Now, were you doing, were you doing Spanish or were you doing both English and Spanish?   Pilar: I was doing both. Actually I started out doing English, doing these like really funny romance things. And then I went the other way with Spanish and started doing religious things because somebody asked me to do religious stuff, and this was, and so here's where networking comes in. You never know. You just never know who is going to be somebody who's a valued contact. That's why, and I'll, I'll tell this story really quickly, and so I don't lose my place about this.   When I was working as an extra on "One Life to Live," there was this guy, and I, and I may have mentioned it. And I remember him saying so clearly that he said, you have to be nice to everybody on set. You know, we were just all looking at him like with stars in our eyes because he was so good-looking, and he was just like, you know, he was a series regular. And he said, be nice to everybody. And I never forgot that. So when I went to Colombia, I was very aware that I needed to treat the producer and the director exactly the same as the coffee lady, because the coffee lady, the person who brought me coffee, and that was her only job, she was just as important --   Anne: Oh yeah.   Pilar: -- as the producer.   Anne: Absolutely.   Pilar: You know, it's a courtesy thing. It's a human interaction thing. And I've always been very, very aware of that. But that experience --   Anne: Yeah.   Pilar: -- that I had on the set from somebody who was, you know, making, you know, a good amount of money to talk to us who we were just like these little star struck extras was really important.   Anne: See, it's not just a life lesson, right, but a business lesson to be nice to everyone. It's like be nice to the person that picks up the phone. You may think you want to talk --   Pilar: Exactly.   Anne: -- to the boss, but in reality, it all starts with the person who answers the phone or gets you the coffee. You never know.   Pilar: You never know where that person's going to be. So --   Anne: Exactly.   Pilar: -- fast forward to when I would do voiceover dubbing at this one studio, one of the engineers was, he was just such a sweet guy, and we got along really well. And he was so pleasant and jovial. And, you know, whenever he would ask me to do another take, I always did. And you know, if I thought that I could do it better, he would let me do it. You know, if it was just like a little kind of an alteration in, in the way I inflected in my voice. And he said, hey, would you be interested in doing audio books in Spanish? And I was like, sure. And you know, afterwards we spoke, and I did quite a few for him. And, you know, he said, I don't ask everyone this because obviously people can, you know, he, he gets different responses.   Anne: Sure.   Pilar: And so that's why I, I want to emphasize the importance of being really pleasant and nice and courteous to everyone. 'Cause you just, you just never know. And I, I did like four books with him, and that was just something on the side that I did. And I wouldn't have done that otherwise, if I had been like, you know, a bitch on wheels going to the studio.   Anne: And you know what's so interesting though -- let me just try to relate this to today in an online community, when you're communicating with people online and especially in these groups where you think it might be a closed group where you're only talking to voice actors, be nice to everyone, because there are people sitting there watching you, and reading those comments, and making judgements about your comment, if it's not nice, or maybe it's not becoming of a professional. They're watching and you never know who might be looking or listening behind the scenes. So be nice to everyone. I think it's just a wonderful thing to live by. Right? Just be nice to everyone. Be nice.   Pilar: I totally agree with that, Anne, and, and I would go even further because I was listening to somebody about this. When you're on Zoom, you know, it doesn't cost anything to smile.   Anne: True, so true.   Pilar: It really doesn't.   Anne: Yeah.   Pilar: You can just, you can just be pleasant, and you can have a nice sort of energy to you. I mean, I know we're always in sweats, and it just it's become a way of life. And we're probably going to be doing this for a long time, but there's a certain energy you bring when you come into a Zoom meeting. You know, you can either slouch and you can just be like, uh, you know, and we've all heard them. Everybody on --   Anne: Yeah.   Pilar: -- listening to this podcast has heard people who are just like these Nagging Nellies I guess, or the complainers.   Anne: Debbie Downers,   Pilar: Debbie Downers. Debbie Downers. It's like, oh yeah, I'm I'm in voiceover, but I --   Anne: But I can't.   Pilar: -- but I don't have a demo yet. And I haven't --   Anne: I can't do this.   Pilar: -- gotten any work in six months. It's like really, really? Are you kidding? Then why are you even here?   Anne: Yeah.   Pilar: You know, it's like, hey, I want to learn. I don't know anything about, oh, I don't know. Let's say you're doing, um, let's say a demo. You want to learn how to do a demo --   Anne: Video games or something.   Pilar: No, I'm thinking of, you know, those slot machine things?   Anne: Oh, casinos.   Pilar: Casinos. They're, they're actually, now that's a new genre that I heard about.   Anne: Yeah, exactly.   Pilar: I was like, oh my gosh.   Anne: Casinos and gaming. Yes. That kind of gaming.   Pilar: Casinos and -- yeah.   Anne: Yup.   Pilar: So it's like, let's say you go in, and you don't know anything about it. Well, hey, you're here to learn. I'm here to learn about casino and gaming. Yay. This is something new. So it's like, I feel like you can always put your best foot forward because it doesn't cost you anything.   Anne: Yeah. You can always learn, and you can always learn.   Pilar: Yeah. Exactly. You can always learn. So --   Anne: You can always learn something.   Pilar: Yeah.   Anne: Even if you're like, oh, I don't know. Like I didn't like this class or -- that's the teacher in me that says, you know, if you're a good student, you can learn anywhere, anywhere.   Pilar: Yup.   Anne: There's always an opportunity to learn.   Pilar: I totally agree. So back to the guy. So I did these four books with him, and somewhere along the way -- so I, I didn't have an audiobook demo. I had a bunch of audio book samples 'cause that's what you do.   Anne: Yup.   Pilar: And the experience at Fafcon, which was just so enriching. And I met some amazing people that I'm still friends with today, I realized everybody was like, oh yeah, the demo this, the demo that. I was like, why in the world do you need a demo? And then after I'd gotten all this information, and then I went home ,and I looked at all, everybody's website that I had met. And I was like, oh, this is our industry's equivalent of a resume.   Anne: Yeah, absolutely.   Pilar: That's basically very simple and quick and dirty explanation. You have to have a demo. So anybody going online, anybody who's considering you -- I just did a session yesterday, and I had a certain kind of demo for this 'cause -- I can't talk about it because obviously it -- now every -- you sign NDAs, wherever you go.   Anne: Absolutely.   Pilar: Um, so I auditioned for this company, and then they said, oh yeah -- he said, so he started talking about the style that he wanted for what we were doing. And he said, yes. And I, from your audition, but especially from your demos.   Anne: That's excellent.   Pilar: I was like, oh, okay. This guy did his homework.   Anne: Yeah.   Pilar: This guy really looked at my stuff before choosing me, which means that's why my demos have to be in order.   Anne: Absolutely. I'm so glad you said that because there are some people who think that you cannot book off of your demo. And I, I am in disagreement with that because I do believe that people that are doing their homework that are out -- they're searching online. If your demos are sitting there on your website, people listen to them. And I get requests all the time, you know, hey, I love -- can you do the voice in that spot, on your demo, in this particular spot that you're referencing? So I will get people. I know they've listened to the demo and I've booked.   Pilar: In 2020, I booked a year long campaign. I basically paid my rent and then some.   Anne: From a demo.   Pilar: From a demo. I did not audition. I didn't audition for. And I was like, wait a minute. Don't you need? And they were like, no, no. The agent, 'cause I'm so -- I was such a newbie, he was like, no, no, you don't need to audition. I mean, he literally said that to me. No, you idiot. They're booking you off the demo. And, and actually yeah, through my agent, I book off my demo all the time. So it's, I get people will request it because they've listened to the demos. So --   Pilar: Right.   Anne: -- I mean, of course I audition too, like everybody else, but I do book a considerable amount off of my demos.   Pilar: In terms of specifically a bilingual demo, what I did, what I noticed, first I, and I did what everybody does. The, the very first demo I did, I basically just did my spots. That's what I did, you know? 'Cause I, I didn't know any better, so I, okay. I've got a bunch of spots and let me, you know, hook it all together. And I actually got somebody who did it for, you know --   Anne: So for your bilingual demo, right? You --   Pilar: No, for my first demo.   Anne: Okay. First demo, you strung together spots that you had created. Okay.   Pilar: Yeah, exactly, because, you know, that's what you do when you're starting out, and there's nothing wrong with that. But then when I went to Fafcon and I realized, oh, these people actually had this professionally done, you know, the skeptic in me said, oh, come on, really? Why in the world would you need that? And I realized, because that's how it happens in this particular business. It may not happen any in any other business, but I've seen the reason why I've booked work, and why I need that because that's the way, that's the way it is. I mean --   Anne: Well, I think it also shows -- of course, you can put together a demo of spots that you've done already and lots of people do that. But also I think it can show a range. Maybe you get booked for a lot of -- a particular style of spot or a particular read. And I think a demo can showcase a broader range of acting that you can do.   Pilar: Yes.   Anne: And that's where I think that it's really advantageous as well as hooking up with someone who is familiar with what's out there and what's -- a good producer or a demo producer that knows what trends are out there, what companies are looking for and can implement that on the demo as well.   Pilar: Exactly. You just hit the nail on the head. You need somebody, you need a director. That's what a demo producer is.   Anne: Yeah, yeah.   Pilar: They know better than you do. So, you know, it's like you go in stages. So at first I thought, oh, I'll do my own demo. And then I realized, no, I need somebody who can direct me because they're going to showcase my voice to the best --   Anne: Yes.   Pilar: -- of my ability rather than me trying to figure it out because --   Anne: You're too close to it.   Pilar: -- the dirty little secret is that we don't know how we sound --   Anne: That's right.   Pilar: -- really and truly.   Anne: We're very close.   Pilar: We need somebody else. We need somebody else to sit there and tell us, no, no, no, you want the cosmetic read. This is, you know, you want the automotive read. You want the, you know, the Olive Garden read; they're all different. So after that I was like, okay, I'm going to bite the bullet. And I actually did, I had, uh, I did a kind of a double thing because, um, Bob Bergen was teaching a weekend class, and this just kind of came about up in San Francisco. And I had already booked time with Chuck Duran to do my demos because I wanted to go there. This was obviously before, 'cause now you can do it. You don't even, you don't need to --   Anne: You can do it online.   Pilar: Yeah. You can do it totally online. But I was like, no, I want it -- and I wanted to go to LA because there was something about it --   Anne: Sure. Well, there's something about the experience of being in a studio too in LA recording a demo that all you have to do is perform. And this is a really wonderful experience.   Pilar: Totally.   Anne: Yeah.   Pilar: So the demo that we did -- so I asked Chuck, I said, you know, I'd really like to do two. I'd like to do one in Spanish and one in English, because I was told don't ever, ever mix them. That was the first thing I was told. So I was like, okay, I'm not going to mix them. So we did it in English and in Spanish. So he did the English copy, and he actually speaks some Spanish. And so then I translated some of them and then we came up with some other things. And so then I had two demos. It was great.   Anne: Two identical demos?   Pilar: No.   Anne: Okay.   Pilar: Not identical.   Anne: You had different spots in Spanish then?   Pilar: Yeah. Some overlapped, but some did not. And you know, he was very strategic about it. So that was, that was, that was fine. Then I realized that I wanted to have a bilingual demo. I was just stubborn. I was like, I want a bilingual demo.   Anne: So wait --   Pilar: This is what I want.   Anne: So what do you consider a bilingual demo? Do you mean one that is both English and Spanish --   Pilar: Yes.   Anne: -- in the same demo? Oh, okay.   Pilar: And --   Anne: All right. So you are a bilingual talent that has a separate English demo and a separate Spanish demo. Now a bilingual demo means you're going to have both English and Spanish.   Pilar: Yes.   Anne: Okay.   Pilar: And I have -- if you listen to my bilingual demo, there's a little bit of a, of a little bit of an accent because that's something else that I get all the time. I don't really have an accent in either language.   Anne: Speak English with a Spanish accent.   Pilar: Yes. All the time.   Anne: Okay.   Pilar: That's what I get all the time.   Anne: Okay.   Pilar: So then that became almost a third category, and I did that actually online.   Anne: So that's a separate demo or just a separate --   Pilar: That's a separate demo.   Anne: Okay.   Pilar: That's a separate demo.   Anne: All by itself, the English with the Spanish accent --   Pilar: All by itself. The bilingual, yep.   Anne: Okay, but let's --   Pilar: But not all of them.   Anne: Okay, but --   Pilar: They're not -- so there's English with a Spanish accent. There's English, normal English. And then there's Spanish. They're all mixed in, in that specific bilingual demo.   Anne: Okay.   Pilar: And so I was told by my -- and so then whatever the agent happened, and they said, no, no, no, we don't want that. We don't want that on. You know, we just want the English and the Spanish. We want it separated. But I tell you, I have booked from that bilingual demo.   Anne: Right, which is sitting on your website.   Pilar: So -- exactly. And so it's kind of like when you go in, when you walk into a store, not everybody's going to buy the same thing.   Anne: Right.   Pilar: But you want to have pants, and you want to have a dress --   Anne: Well, people consume --   Pilar: -- and you want to have a jumper.   Anne: Yes. People consume your audio differently --   Pilar: Yup.   Anne: -- right?   Pilar: Right.   Anne: Agents will consume or deliver your audio separately, right? Or people that go to an agent website may shop differently than people that get to your website, in which case I like to have everything available on your website because you never know who's shopping. It could be an owner of a small company --   Pilar: Exactly.   Anne: -- or it could be a casting director or an agent. And so they're very different buyers because casting agents and talented -- that's what they do for a living eight hours a day, all day long. The owner of the small pizza place, you know, down the road, he doesn't cast voices all day long. He just knows what he hears and he knows what he likes. And so he does a Google search, comes up with your website, right, is bilingual voice talent. Boom. Here's your demo that is sitting there that maybe your agents didn't want to present both ways. And he says, that's it. That's exactly what I need.   Pilar: And here's the funny part. And I can't 100% confirm, but I suspect that -- 'cause of course, you know, when I, when I signed, I gave them all the demos. I'm pretty sure that the demo that they heard that booked me that job in 2020 -- it was just like an ongoing thing -- they booked me on the strength of the bilingual demo, where they heard me speak in English and in Spanish at the same time and with an accent.   Anne: Yeah, yeah.   Pilar: So don't be afraid of the having the accent. So, you know, I run into people all the time. So they, they're Spanish speakers, and they speak with a little bit of an accent. And then there are English speakers who have a little bit of an accent in Spanish, but specifically to the Spanish speakers who speak English, don't be afraid to put different ranges --   Anne: Yeah, yeah.   Pilar: -- of your speaking in English, because like Sofía Vergara, she's Colombian. Very nice. She really puts it on thick in, in that, in the, in the whatever it was --   Anne: "Modern Family."   Pilar: "Modern Family." She doesn't speak like that all the time. If you listen to her, she puts it on thick in some movies and pulls back, 'cause she knows how to do that. You don't have to have a perfect accent in English or a perfect accent in Spanish either.   Anne: Well, you know what's so interesting, and I can see where your agent might say, no, we don't want it mixed. Right? We want one, that's English, one that's Spanish, because traditionally we've moved away from, if you remember in, in narration -- I'm going, I'll make the comparison with narration demos. It used to be a narration demos, you put every genre in there. You had like a documentary style. You had an e-learning, you had a corporate, you had, you know, all different styles of narration.   So it became all mixed up into one. And then we became very target specific. And so then it became, okay, you need a separate demo for an explainer, separate demo for corporate narration, separate demo for e-learning. But when you're talking bilingual, you have a client, a customer that may need multiple versions of Spanish speaking language. And so I think when you mix it together in English, English with a Spanish accent, Spanish, you're giving them all of the range that you have in that language.   Pilar: Exactly. I --   Anne: And that makes sense to me that that would work for you.   Pilar: Yeah. Yeah. And I've, I've had -- I've been in sessions where I speak English with no accent, and they want a run of the copy that way. Then they want a run of the copy with a little bit of an accent, and then they want to run of the copy with a lot of an accent. So I'm giving them three choices because --   Anne: Exactly.   Pilar: -- they don't know at the time how they're going to place it for those markets.   Anne: Right. And the markets may change. Right?   Pilar: Yeah.   Anne: The markets may --   Pilar: Exactly.   Anne: -- be more localized or, or regionalized, or I think it really just goes with the territory. Now, I guess my question is if they use it multiple times, are they paying you multiple?   Pilar: Yeah.   Anne: You know, that's what you want to make sure, which is why your agent helps.   Pilar: Yes.   Anne: And, and --   Pilar: That's where --   Anne: Yeah.   Pilar: -- that's where it gets tricky because I've really only been doing the bilingual work this way, to the extent that I've been doing it since I came out to Los Angeles.   Anne: Yeah, yeah.   Pilar: Usually it was that you either do the spot in English or you do the spot in Spanish, before I had an agent. You know like for example, on the pay-to-plays.   Anne: Yep.   Pilar: You don't really have, you don't get that oh, let's -- once in a very long while, but mostly it's like, okay, Spanish speaker, Latin American speaker or American speaker.   Anne: But if you think about it too, I would imagine the type of customer that would go through an agency or casting director to find a voice, they know the target market of who they're advertising to more so than, let's say, somebody on a pay-to-play. Right? They're just like, oh, I need Spanish. Maybe, that's just my guess, an educated guess because, and they come to the agent because they're much more target specific. It would seem to me that would make sense.   Pilar: I agree, because I think that a lot of the times the ad agency is looking for specific markets. So if it's Florida, it's going to be different from --   Anne: Exactly.   Pilar: -- Southern California.   Anne: Exactly. You're going to need a different Spanish that's in Florida than is in California, which makes a whole lot of sense to me. Wow.   Pilar: And it's different than Arizona too.   Anne: Yeah.   Pilar: So it's like, you're talking totally different markets.   Anne: This is so enlightening for me because what's cool is that I have questions for you because I have no real experience with how to market as a bilingual voice talent, because I'm not one. But yet you tell me your experiences, and it's, so it makes so much sense really for every one of us in the voiceover business, how we need to be very target specific. We need to be able to serve the -- our clients and our clients have many different needs, many different demographics, and the better that we can serve them and showcase, right, through our demos, through auditioning, how we can serve that community, then obviously the more chance we have to get the gig, and you know, that's what it's about.   Pilar: Yeah. And I, I just to, just to piggyback on that end, let's say you don't speak another language. Well, get your accents ready.   Anne: Yeah.   Pilar: Because a lot of the times I am called to do with a slight Southern accent or with a British accent. There are tons of things, whether it's the video game world or even commercial copy. So having an ear, developing that ear, looking at YouTube videos, there are tons of YouTube videos -- I think is important to listen for, let's say, a specific regionalism --   Anne: Right.   Pilar: -- because you never know what you're going to get in the voiceover. And I think one of the worst things to do is to get an audition and then be scrambling because --   Anne: Absolutely.   Pilar: -- you're like, oh my gosh, I don't know how to do this.   Anne: Right.   Pilar: Let me go look online. How am I going to do this? And then you're just, you're adding all that stuff. It's like --   Anne: Sure.   Pilar: -- why not take some time, take a look at it, listen to it, you know, practice, you know?   Anne: Well, and let me add the caveat here because of, you know, the climate past couple of years that if the casting specs request a native UK Londoner, then perhaps that's not necessarily something you audition for, if it's in the casting specs. But I think it's important that it starts there. Because again, we want, if people are looking for a native speaker or a native ethnicity, then I think that -- that we should respect those casting specs. And also that's a question, do we do a British accent these days? That's an interesting question. Are we taking away work if we do that, if we're not native? That is -- it's, it's a tough question that I think everybody is kind of wrapping their heads around, what is right in this industry these days?   Pilar: So I think that it is very important to distinguish and to be upfront about it because here's the thing. If you present, the person on the other end listening is going to know immediately if you are not a native speaker.   Anne: Yeah.   Pilar: So, I mean, that's just down the line. So I'm very, I'm very clear on the fact that I say anywhere, I, I, you know, on my resume, whatever, wherever I'm a native speaker in Spanish, I speak French fluently.   Anne: Yes.   Pilar: So if you drop me in the middle of Paris, I will not starve. I will be able to get myself anywhere. And I'm not --   Anne: I'm so glad you made that distinction. Yes.   Pilar: Yeah, I'm not a native speaker because native means I was born there or spent most of my life speaking French, and I haven't.   Anne: Right.   Pilar: So I can't, I can't say that with any kind of authority.   Anne: Right.   Pilar: Now in terms of accents, I have run across it. I, it's really more, I run across it much more with video games and especially animation --   Anne: Yes.   Pilar: -- where they're going to ask you --   Anne: Yup. They're going to ask you to have an accent.   Pilar: -- for a Russian accent. And that's really more of a character --   Anne: Yes.   Pilar: -- kind of a situation rather than this is a person of authority --   Anne: Sure, absolutely.   Pilar: -- where commercial copy comes in.   Anne: But again, that might be, and I'm just thinking, right, that could be come more of a discussion as we move on --   Pilar: Yes.   Anne: -- as well.   Pilar: Agreed. Yes.   Anne: So wonderful thoughts on that, and Pilar, of course, it's always a pleasure. I learn so much on every one of these episodes. Thank you so much.   Pilar: Well, you're my marketing guru, so there we go.   Anne: Well, hey BOSSes, I'm going to give a great, big shout-out to our sponsor, ipDTL. You too can connect like a BOSS and find out more at ipdtl.com. Have an amazing week, you guys, and we'll see you next week. Bye.   Pilar: Hasta la vista, baby.   >> Join us next week for another edition of VO BOSS with your host Anne Ganguzza. And take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at voboss.com and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies, and new ways to rock your business like a BOSS. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via ipDTL.

Kimberly Grigg welcomes Kate Dryer, founder of Kate Decorates, to the show to explore beautiful family-centric decor on a “normal person budget”. Kate shares how she puts her belief that form and function can coexist in design into action.  Kimberly and Kate debunk the theory that beautiful living must wait until children are grown. To that end, Kate breaks down the benefits of performance fabrics, how to test them for durability, and recommends carpet tiles as easy-to-replace solutions. They explain how to find a color palette based on a signature piece and where to find less expensive options for furniture and accessories. Kate is an enthusiastic DIYer and Kimberly prompts her to divulge secrets on decorating with peel and stick wallpaper, ways to visually upgrade plain countertops without breaking your budget, and how to bring color and pattern into your spaces like a pro. Kate's ability to create attainable beauty for any family home will surely inspire you in decorating yours. About Kate Dryer: Kate Dryer is a thirty something wife and mom to two kids and one incredibly energetic labradoodle. She started her blog, Kate Decorates, as a creative outlet in 2015 and has been DIY'ing and decorating ever since. Their family's 1980s builder-grade home in the Washington, DC suburbs (where she was born and raised), was a beige box when they bought it which wasn't really her jam, so she immediately got to work adding color and pattern. Kate's mission is to help busy families create beautiful, functional homes they love… and have fun in the process. Resources discussed in this episode: Kate Decorates Kate Decorates on Instagram Easy Home Renewals  --  Contact Me: Email me at kimberly@kimberlygriggdesigns.com Visit my website: www.kimberlygriggdesigns.com Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest Check out my Youtube channel You can find the show on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and Spotify. Transcription Kimberly Grigg  00:00 Welcome to another episode of Decorate Like A Design Boss. And today I am so happy to share with you my new friend Kate Dryer. Kate is the founder of Kate Decorates where she's dedicated to sharing tips and tricks for creating a fun, functional and family friendly home. All on a normal person budget. Kate founded her business in 2016, shortly after giving birth to her second child. Despite searching Pinterest and her favorite magazines for attainable decorating advice that could help young families like her own, she quickly found that there were next to no resources out there for parents who wanted homes that were stylish enough for adults, but functional for life with kids and pets. You're gonna love Kate dryer. So let's welcome her as we discover all sorts of tips and tricks for family centered homes, but, not just that, for some very, very gorgeous decorating. Welcome to Decorate Like A Design Boss, a podcast for design lovers who want to create beautiful spaces in their very own homes. My name is Kimberly Grigg, and I'm a professional interior designer who teaches design lovers like yourselves how to decorate. And when I say decorate, I mean decorate like a design boss. If you're ready to create a space that your family loves, and your neighbors can't stop raving about, well, buckle up honey, because it's time to design. Well. Hi, Kate Dryer. I'm so happy to have you here.   Kate Dryer  01:58 Thank you so much, Kimberly, it is great to be here with you today.   Kimberly Grigg  02:02 Ah, well, I wish everyone could see how pretty you are and how pretty you look in your surroundings like, wow, this is perfect. I'm gonna have a good time watching.   Kate Dryer  02:13 Thank you. A box full of jewel tones, I guess.   Kimberly Grigg  02:16 There you go. And your sweater and everything is so color coordinated. So I want to kind of dive in, Kate. I mean, there's so many interesting things about you, including your cybersecurity background, and like all this cool stuff and your, your whole process, your brand. Kind of describe to me what it is that you do.   Kate Dryer  02:41 Sure. So about six years ago, after I had my second child, I needed a creative outlet. You know, it was... I heard someone say once - which now being a mom of more than than one I get it - they said 'one is one and two is twenty'. And I felt that so deeply at the time that my son was born. And so I started Kate Decorates, I started my blog, again, just kind of as a hobby for me to you know, have something to sort of, you know, maintain my own identity and give me some me time, which was great. But one thing that I noticed, as I was talking to a lot of my other friends who were at a similar stage in life, you know, they were just getting married, just starting families, everyone would come over to our house, and they would look around and say, Oh my gosh, you know, your home is just so calming and really put together and polished and like, Okay, how did you do that with two young kids and toddlers who make messes and hit their heads on the corner of tables and things like that. And it kind of dawned on me that there really was not a lot of information or great resources out there for parents who were a lot like myself, you know, just kind of starting out, but you know, needing their space to be functional, but also wanting to feel really good about their surroundings, especially during what's really a hectic time, I think, in a lot of people's lives. So fast forward to today. I actually left my full time marketing job a few months ago to focus full time on my design and doing consulting there. So it's been quite a ride, but it's been really fun, I think, to share really simple, easy family friendly decorating tips that people can, you know, put to use in a few minutes. You know, they're not difficult, it's not expensive, and it's just attainable and fun and makes you feel good about the home that you're in.   Kimberly Grigg  04:53 Love this. So I'm going to let you in on a secret. Well, it's not really a secret but something that is kind of interesting along these lines is I raised six kids in my home, and I can so relate. My youngest is now 21 and off at college, but I can so relate to how valuable this information is. I know for us, my husband would say things like, Why are you bothering? They're just gonna put peanut butter and jelly hands on everything. But I insisted that we live beautifully and that I have to somehow make the home function. So now that mine are grown, you're in the thick, you're in the thick of it. And so tell the listener, the audience, like, let's just dive in: what are some starting points for how people can live beautifully with children and peanut butter and jelly hands?   Kate Dryer  05:57 Right, and goldfish cracker crumbs and all those fun things? Yes. You know, one thing that I noticed, especially as a young parent, is that if your space feels chaotic, your life is going to feel chaotic. You know, home should be kind of your safe haven, a place that brings you joy and peace. And it is more important than people usually think to create something that you feel good about. And so I would say, you know, number one, think about how you want to live and how you want the space to feel. Do you want to decorate with neutrals and have it feel really calm and airy? Does, for example, like me, does color energize you, and does that bring a smile to your face? So think about what's going to make you happy, and then start to plan out, probably starting with... I always like to say start with the room that you spend the most time in and kind of create a plan for yourself and start there. It can be really overwhelming when you try to tackle too much at once. So focusing on one space in the beginning and getting that right, where you feel good about it, is really important. And then I think it gives you the confidence too to move on to other spaces in your home and sort of apply the same patterns, I guess.   Kimberly Grigg  07:23 Yes, and that's such good advice. I agree with you wholeheartedly. I tell people, Don't polka dot your house, like start somewhere and finish something so that while you're working on other spaces, you've got somewhere for the eye to rest. And I find that that's so important, because sometimes people will take their budget, we're going to talk about your cool thoughts about budget in a second, but they'll take that budget and they will start spending it in various areas of the home. And the next thing you know, you have nothing to show for your results. You got a lot of stuff. And you've done a lot of things but nothing is really complete. So I love the way that you said that. And one of the things that you also say that I'm very fond of, and this is right up my listeners' alley, is you like to decorate with normal people budget. So tell me a little bit about that. And how do you accomplish that?   Kate Dryer  08:26 Yes, I am so glad you asked. This is one of my favorite things to talk about because I think there's such a misconception in the design world that great design has to be expensive, which is absolutely not true at all. And so when I think of normal person budget, I think of, you know, I typically I'll put money into kind of the larger pieces that I know I'm going to have for a really long time. For example, you know, I have a great Crate and Barrel sofa in our living room that has been with us for years. It's withstood all kinds of incidents, and still looks great. So when you know there are those pieces that you're... they're kind of the heart of your room, I tend to invest a little more there. But when it comes to a lot of other pieces, you have to be realistic. So even thinking about, particularly with young kids, area rugs, okay? I would never at this stage in my life, invest in a really pricey rug. But the great news is there are so many different options today to find affordable decor, whether it's going to places like, you know, Target or Home Goods or looking online at places like Wayfair, there are so many different options that I think it is totally possible to mix and match in terms of kind of price, and just find ways to incorporate things that maybe look expensive but aren't, without without breaking the bank.   Kimberly Grigg  10:02 Yeah, so kind of even a high low, but like really sourcing and looking and I agree, I do feel like a steady piece, something that is a statement strong piece like your Pottery Barn sofa, but that also will withstand the hardships of everyday life, is a great place to start. So do you think that - can anyone learn to decorate?   Kate Dryer  10:31 I think so. You know, I was not always a decorating enthusiast myself, funny enough. I was always creative from a young age, but I love to write, and then I danced my entire life. And, you know, I think I've always had a good eye for design, but I've developed it, for sure, over the past couple years as I've become more interested in it. I think the other thing, you know, going back to kind of the normal person budget, the way that you can execute on that easily - because I think, you know, in theory, it sounds great, right, but somebody is probably sitting there going, Okay, this is cool and all but like how do I how do I do this in practice - having a plan for your space, and knowing what pieces you're looking for, is really, really important. And the other thing I would say is as a Type A person who is always in a rush to do everything, it like hurts my heart a little bit, but great decorating takes time, don't be in a rush to just kind of go out and get everything all at once and set up your room. It is just so much better if you can kind of make that list and think about, okay, I'm looking for a martini style side table or a rug with these colors in it. And kind of keep a list on your phone or in your pocket. So when you're out at stores or when you're, you know, shopping online, or, you know, at the local flea market, you can keep an eye out for those pieces, as opposed to just, you know, hitting the panic button and just getting things that are good enough in the moment.   Kimberly Grigg  12:13 So let's break that down even further. When you start your plan, let's say you walk into a space, tell me kind of step by step. What do you do? How do you develop that plan? How do you create your concept? How do you really, in a bare roots way, tell someone this is your process, this is how you do it?   Kate Dryer  12:36 Sure. Yeah, so the first thing I always like to do is just find out how people are going to use the space, how they use it today, or how they want to use it, because maybe their vision for it is a little bit different than how they're using it right now. So understanding the functionality of it is step number one, always. Then I like to understand kind of colors and things that they gravitate toward, you know, what colors, make them feel happy, what brings a smile to their face, are there certain, you know, places or experience or interests, maybe, that I can kind of listen to and figure out a way to bring those kind of feelings of those activities into the space. And then when I sit down to actually create a plan, I typically start with, in terms of figuring out a color palette and textures and things like that, I start with what I like to call the inspiration piece. And that is typically something that has a lot of color and pattern in it. So most of the time, that's, for me anyway, a piece of art. And then I build my color palette from there and then add in, keep in mind kind of the the functionality and ,you know, what the client has articulated that they want to use the room for, and I build it out that way.   Kimberly Grigg  14:04 I love that. I have a very similar approach often. And there's something about, especially when you start with a piece of artwork or a piece of fabric, there's something about so much of the work has already been done for you. And a) you already relate to it, and b) you can even take a smidgen of something that's in that - you like that word smidgen - something in that artwork and pull it out and can create some of the most unusual color schemes that exist. And I love to do that too, and I think that it also gives the average person who's trying to decorate some confidence, and you at least know that these things are going to work together. So I love that tip, that idea. Let's talk, let's kind of circle back round just a wee bit to when you're decorating for a family centered home, like speak to me about fabrics. And we talked a little bit about rugs and durability. And for that mom who says, I'm gonna wait until my kids graduate from high school to decorate my home because I don't want to spend money that is not going to necessarily be a long term investment, because there's peanut butter and jelly hands and all this stuff. So how do you kind of handle that with your clients in the spaces that you're creating?   Kate Dryer  15:38 Sure. So performance fabrics are your friend. There is just, for young families, there's no other way to go when when it comes to upholstered pieces. So I have - every room in my home and most of the spaces I design do include sofas and, you know, accent chairs that do have performance fabrics. And I tell my clients too, Okay if you really want to put this to the test, go to your local store where we're planning on getting the sofa from, ask for a fabric sample, take it home, and spill red wine and ketchup and grape jelly on it ,and like take your keys and rough it up. And that will give you a sense of how well it's going to last. You know, just like put it through the wringer, and make sure that okay, that's gonna work for us. The other thing that I like to do as well, because a lot of people are concerned about textiles, particularly like throw pillows, when we're decorating a space, a lot of times for my clients, and you know, even in my own home, I use outdoor pillows. Because, you know, I think if you look back years ago, outdoor pillows were not available in as many fun colors and fabrics as they are today. I mean, right now you can pretty much get almost any fabric and design in an outdoor really durable fabric. So that's another thing that I like doing. They're just easier to clean and withstand a lot more. And then the last thing that, you know, I typically look at is when it comes to rugs, you have a couple options. I think, yes, you can buy kind of a less expensive rug where, hey, if something happens, you're not going to cry if you have to throw it in the trash. But there are two other options that I really like, both of which I have in my own home as well. So one is I love carpet tiles. So there's a particular brand  Flor, F-L-O-R, and they have some carpet tile sets that basically look like really lovely, you know, area rugs. And that's great because if something happens, you pull up the tile, you clean it, if it's messed up beyond repair, you just order a new tile instead of having to kind of, like, throw the baby out with the bathwater so to speak. So that's great.   Kimberly Grigg  18:09 I love floor tiles, I used those when my kids were growing up, I thought they were amazing. And inevitably that would happen. I mean, I remember my 11 year old daughter spilled fingernail polish. And all I had to do was just replace two tiles and off we went, and I bought extra cartons when we started and it just worked out.   Kate Dryer  18:33 That's a great idea, buying the extra.   Kimberly Grigg  18:35 Yes. And just for the listener who doesn't know what we're talking about, these tiles come in... I know they used to come in 12 by 12s but now I'm sure they have multiple sizes, and they are literally tiles that you can put down just like a carpet. And you can pull them up and replace anything that gets damaged. It's wonderful. For families, for pets, for any, for rental properties, AirBNBs, I can't say enough great things about the usage of products like this. So yeah.   Kate Dryer  19:12 Yes. And I have to say, so we've had, I think three different floor rugs now. They have outlasted kind of my basically urge to redecorate, because I've never gotten rid of them because they're in bad shape. It's just like, oh, okay, we want to refresh the room and now I need a new rug. And I do have to laugh too because the only person who spilled something on our rug is me. I spilled a cup of coffee and cleaned it up with baby wipes and no problem.   Kimberly Grigg  19:43 And there you go. And so many of today's materials do speak to this. You know, somewhere along the line the manufacturing industry really got savvy to the way that people need to live. And it's not just people with children, it's people with messy husbands, it's people who, like you just said, spill coffee. I mean, I spill coffee too, or tip over a glass of red wine, or the spaghetti plate falls, or whatever - I mean, life is to live. And I know that when I was growing up, my family didn't use a lot of things, like we had towels that were the guest towels and you never touched those. And I'm sure they probably had dust on them eventually. But we used the regular towels, and I made it a life's mission, and I bet you have too Kate, that I don't want anything in my house that I can't use. I can't stand to see an unlit candle. I can't stand... I have a dining room now that I'm completely changing because we don't use it. And why have it? I mean, I'm not up for once a year, that's just not enough usage for me. And it's just a wasted space. So I love it when people use their homes, I think people are freeing up a little bit to utilize their things. I think that's been a big thing since bloggers and people started decorating with all these fabulous materials that we have now. But I still get pushback, and I want to know your answer, I still get pushback from that mom who doesn't want to decorate right now, who literally feels like she's just gonna wait and save her money until the kids are older, and they can somehow accommodate the home a little better instead of the home accommodate them better. So how do you handle that? And what do you what do you say to that mom?   Kate Dryer  21:49 Yeah, that's a great question because I've definitely gotten into conversations with people about this exact topic. So number one, you know, I like to gently remind people that there's a reason you contacted me, right? There is, you know, there was some trigger, where you looked at your home and were not happy with it. And were just like, Okay I'm fed up, I'm frustrated, and I want someone to help me create something that I really love. I also dig into kind of how spaces make people feel. And I will ask questions like what I just said: How do you feel when you wake up in the morning and come downstairs to your great room? Or, Do you enjoy having people over? Are you proud of the spaces that your family and your friends see? And typically no one is giving a resounding, like, Yes they're awesome. And so I also, in that moment too, I think it's good to remember that you can also start small. And so if someone is kind of on the fence about whether they want to put some money into it now or just, like you said, save up for the quote/unquote, real decorating later on, I like people to think about, well, let's, instead of tackling, you know, your living room, your kitchen and your dining room, let's focus on one area. Let's kind of work through this process together, and figure out, when we get to the end of it, how are your feelings different than they were when we when we started the process?   Kimberly Grigg  23:35 Yeah, and I bet that it's sort of like a snowball effect. I'm sure it is for you as well, you get that one room looking all pretty, and you start to notice that if done correctly, and if you've really considered who lives there, how they live, what the obstacles are, what the solutions to the obstacles are, then suddenly you have a room that functions, you have a room that lives well, you have a room that is so aesthetically pleasing that nine times out of ten that client will forget that Oh the pushback was all about my kids are young, and say this is so great I want to do this in the rest of my home. And I want to feel good about walking in my front door instead of just one room and I find people let up a little bit. And I encourage my listener to really put some thought into this. Do you really want to wait? Do you want to deprive yourself of living beautifully because you have young children? Or do you want to incorporate them, and we're going to really get into some of your DIY stuff, do you want to incorporate them? Because I also have found, and again raising six children in a home and insisting that it be beautiful and functional, I felt like by exposing my children to pretty, they became more reverent of the pretty, nothing really was ever broken in my house - to your point about the coffee, except my husband threw a nerf ball at or to one of the children and it knocked over a vase. The children didn't do it, my husband did it. And you know, and we lived through it, no biggie. But when kids learn that pretty is around them, they learn to respect that those things are there. And when they go to other people's homes, they're more respectful, in my opinion, of other people's things and the way that they live because they've just sort of been around it, exposed to it. Do you feel that way?   Kate Dryer  25:51 Oh, I completely agree with you. That is a great point. Because I think when, you know, and I've had clients where they're like, Oh well my in laws gave us this couch, and it's fine. But I think yes, absolutely, there is a tendency when you are living with pieces that you really don't have a vested interest in, it's really easy for... to see the kids jumping on the couch, or the dog jumping up, and you kind of shrug your shoulders and turn a blind eye, but then that behavior and that mentality is kind of set. And you don't want that for all the reasons that you mentioned. The other thing, I think, too, that has been helpful for me with my own kids, is we've decorated both of their rooms, and they have been really involved in the process. And you know, certainly yes, okay, I like a little bit of control over what the final product is going to look like, what a surprise, I give them choices, and I give them a voice, and want to make sure we're creating something that they feel really good about. So for example, my husband and my son built bunk beds for his room. And my son, I mean, he was, I guess he was five at the time, he actually painted the frame of the bunk bed. So I think when you can find moments to involve your kids in that process, I think it results in exactly what you mentioned Kimberly, is them having a deeper respect for their surroundings, for their things, and then that's going to translate for the rest of their life, which is great.   Kimberly Grigg  27:33 Yes. So I want to segue a little bit because I think, you know, we've talked a lot about how to live beautifully with obstacles. Now let's talk about how to live beautifully. And so I'm looking around at your beautiful spaces and of course I've been totally stalking you with your website and your Instagram and all of that, and your aesthetic is so lovely and a couple of things that I've noticed, and I do want you to speak to this, is girl you are not afraid of color. And what I've noticed, though, is you have a wonderful way of inserting wall color without it being overpowering. For example, I'm looking at the room that you're in with a beautiful shade of green on the walls and then it looks like a maybe a navy sofa and, so speak to me about how does someone not - especially with all the white in the world that we're living with, everything's white, white, white, white, white, white, white, and you know we're besieged with Pinterest and everything else like paint your walls white, paint your walls neutral, paint your walls, you know all that stuff - but yet here you are living in this gorgeous space and the walls are definitely not white. Tell me how you arrived at that and how you help people feel confident about putting a color on their wall.   Kate Dryer  29:11 Yeah, well, thank you for the kind words, first of all. When it comes to painting walls a saturated color, I still go back to what we talked about before: thinking about kind of that inspiration piece. When you are designing, for me actually it informs because we basically have no doors on any of the rooms on our first level, it informs everything I do on the entire first floor of our home. And so I think with... the biggest thing to remember when you do choose a wall color, like the green that I have here, which green is my favorite color so it wasn't a hard sell, although I will say my husband definitely questioned this decision but he got on board and painted anyway, like God bless him. But I think when you are painting walls a saturated color, for me at least, it's important in any room for your eye to kind of have a place to rest so that saturated color doesn't feel overwhelming. So if you're going bold on the walls, try to incorporate more neutrals. And you know, maybe textures, instead of more color and pattern, to still make the space interesting but not overwhelming. I just had a conversation with a client the other day, actually, who just has an amazing eye for design. And one thing we were talking about is that when you're decorating a room, not everything can be the superstar. Because when you have, you know, too many shining stars in a single room together, it's overwhelming. And you're just not sure where to look. And it starts to feel a little chaotic.   Kimberly Grigg  30:57 I call that 'one wow per room'.   Kate Dryer  30:59 Yes, yes, exactly, exactly. So with the green walls, you know, as you mentioned earlier, we have a navy blue sofa, we have, which you can't see, a tan and white area rug. And then aside from the pictures over here, you know, we don't have a lot of, I would say like extra elements. I have a white shelf back here that holds some toy bins, again in a neutral color. So I tried to kind of tone everything down around it, knowing that the green walls in and of themselves do make quite a statement.   Kimberly Grigg  31:35 Agreed. Although I do notice that you have some yummy patterns mixing up and I've noticed this in your work as well. So you mix patterns as boldly as you decide to put a color on the wall. A lot of people are terrified of patterns. So how do we get them comfortable with pattern and even mixing pattern?   Kate Dryer  32:00 Yes, it all goes back to, again, you know, start with that inspiration piece, you take all your color from there. And then, you know, I typically... I know a lot of people have different rules for mixing patterns. I like to think of it as basically make sure the patterns that you're choosing are visually different. And I work usually in the rule of threes. So thinking about, you know, okay, you can see behind me I have a buffalo check pillow, I have an embroidered colorful striped pillow, and then I have one that's more abstract in green. So a lot of the formulas, I think, that you read about on design blogs and in magazines are like: go with a geometric, go with a floral, or a more abstract pattern. And then for the third I say either go with a solid or you could incorporate some texture, for example. But I think working in the rule of threes is helpful because it can be easy, I think, to get carried away and not necessarily know when okay, I have enough here that it's going to be beautiful without being overwhelming. So typically yeah, I would say start in threes. And then go from there.   Kimberly Grigg  33:22 Love that. That is such great advice for the listener. And you got to go to Kate's website to see the way that she incorporates what she just said, it's so beautiful and interesting. And it keeps, I think, things from getting, like, again that polka dot feeling, like you could have a strong wall and then a strong sofa and then some solid pillows and the whole look would sort of be not right. But the movement in the artwork and the movement in the textures and the patterns of the pillow bring it all home in such a nice nice way. So you make things look so easy, Kate. Like that looks so effortless to me. And at the same time I was reading through some of your DIY stuff and I'm transitioning to DIY because a lot of my listeners love projects. So speak to me about some of your more successful DIY projects and how you brought them about, like tell me what you did and what someone at home could do that could have max impact.   Kate Dryer  34:42 Absolutely. So I am, I will say like a light DIYer. I'm not, you know, building bookshelves and built ins and things from scratch - actually my husband does which is very convenient. In those situations I'm the supervisor, not the person doing the building. I like, you know, easy DIY projects that you can do in a weekend or less. So a couple that I have done that I have really loved, so a couple actually have to do with wall treatments. You can see in my background, that there's patterned wallpaper in our foyer.   Kimberly Grigg  35:22 And I love, by the way, just love that, by the way,   Kate Dryer  35:26 Thank you. Thank you, it was, you know, it was... we have gray door, gray walls, it was very boring beforehand and I just felt like, you know, it's kind of cornered off nicely, because you have the coat closet and the stairs there, so it was the perfect nook to inject a little bit of personality. And so the wallpaper that you see is actually peel and stick wallpaper. Don't get me wrong, I love traditional wallpaper, but I am also to a degree like a little bit scared of commitment, and we're gonna long term. And this was our first kind of foray with wallpaper in general. So wanting to do something a little bit safer. But I think I spent less than $100 on wallpaper on Amazon.com. Showed up on my doorstep in two days and, I mean, it completely changed the look of our foyer. We did the same thing in our powder room on the main floor as well. It used to be a pretty boring, beige box. And, you know, lucky for me my husband added some wainscoting in there. And then we ended up putting, again, peel and stick wallpaper in a really pretty floral pattern with yellows and blues and greens above that. I mean talk about like an instant burst of sunshine.   Kimberly Grigg  36:47 So I'm looking at the foyer that you're speaking of because we're on screen together. And no one else can see this right now. But I am here to tell you, as a witness, I can imagine that space without that wallpaper, and you're right, it would have been a nothing. And because you do have a bit of an open floor plan, even, like you don't have doors, but... so you're open, your rooms are open to one another, I could only imagine how boring that would have been, or lackluster against these beautiful green walls that are sort of a showstopper. You needed something with strength to carry, something that could stand on its own. And, and that does it. I love the pattern choice especially. But I've got to ask you, I've not worked with peel and stick wallpaper. So how hard was it?   Kate Dryer  37:47 It wasn't hard. And the great thing is, if you mess up,you can take it off and do it again.   Kimberly Grigg  37:53 So you basically just... is it pre cut and you just, like, put it on and roll it? Or what do you do?   Kate Dryer  38:00 It comes in typical rolls just like a traditional wallpaper would. And, you know, we used let's see, a level, a razor blade, a pencil just to mark different areas of the wall where we needed to attach the piece of paper. And there is, of course you can get a smoothing tool. We we did not get a smoothing tool and just use our hands instead but that ended up being fine. But it was it was really easy.   Kimberly Grigg  38:30 Great to know. I have a lot of people ask me about peel and stick and I have not personally done that. So I was curious with someone who has done it. So it sounds like what a great idea and what a breeze and you can remove it and you're good to go, right? So this is great for renters, this is great for people moving into apartments, that kind of thing, or the ones who don't want to make a commitment. It would be great for me because my home is my laboratory and my husband says you change the walls in our homes like you change your underwear, which is probably true. So another DIY project that you've done that sounds fascinating to me and very helpful is a $10 trick to display your kids art. And I guess it could be anyone's art, I don't know. But, so tell us about that.   Kate Dryer  39:27 Yes. So in our previous playroom I wanted to create a place where we could display all the creations that the kids were bringing home from school. So I kept it really simple. We had a big blank wall and I ended up getting picture wire and eye screws and creating basically almost like a clothesline, in a way, for the artwork and then I got colorful clothespins to be able to display the art. And it was great it, you know, 1) it took up a lot of space and kind of helped us fill in what used to be a big blank wall. So that was great. 2) it was, because we were using clothespins, it was so easy to swap out the different pieces of art. And 3) I think, my kids anyway, they love seeing their creations displayed in our home. I have framed some of it, but, you know, obviously, gosh, they're bringing home so much stuff, you can't frame all of it.   Kimberly Grigg  40:31 Yes, so true. And I love that because the kids could actually change it out. Instead of you having to do it, it gives them some ownership in displaying what they have. I love that tip.   Kate Dryer  40:43 Exactly, yeah, my son in particular is really good about saying, Hey, I just did this, can we swap out this print over here for the new thing I just brought home, so it is cool to see them be excited about it and want to take part in that.   Kimberly Grigg  40:58 Yeah. So you also talk about making a faux slate countertop. Now how did you do this, and because a lot of people have not so ideal countertops, especially in places like laundry rooms or play rooms or things of that nature. And sometimes they don't have the budget to go out and just buy stone or tile or whatever for that countertop. So this sounds very clever. Tell me about this.   Kate Dryer  41:25 Thank you. Yeah, so our laundry room is in our basement. And again, like a lot of the other rooms in our home when we moved in, was just sort of a big, boring beige box. And obviously, with two young kids, we spend a lot of time in the laundry room. So I wanted to do something that just made it feel a little bit more cheery without spending a ton of money. So I used chalk paint to paint our cabinets. And then, this is a bit of an experiment, but I used chalkboard paint, just flat black paint, to paint over our laminate countertops. And now it, you know it worked well because there's no water or moisture on top of the counters here. We strictly use them for folding clothes, so they don't see a lot of wear and tear. But there are so many good options for updating your countertops these days, you know, I have seen people use chalk paint on their counters, I know that there are kits you can buy at, you know, the big hardware stores to kind of mimic the look of granite or marble. And then another thing that actually a few of my blogger friends have done, that I have loved, is that there is a company called Easy Counter Renewals and it's essentially almost like contact paper that looks like marble that you put over your counters   Kimberly Grigg  42:46 Ooh how cool. That sounds really great. Especially if you have a home that, again, maybe the budget won't allow new countertops, maybe it's not your forever home, maybe you don't want to spend, but you want to make things look a little better while you're there, kind of thing, these are some wonderful options and solutions. And I have to say, though, this must take courage, you must be very courageous, because if you haven't done it, and then you decide to wallpaper your foyer, or you decide to paint your countertops with chalk paint, like how do you get the courage? How do we give people confidence to embark on something like that?   Kate Dryer  43:32 I think there's always a Plan B, right? There's always another option. And I also tell myself, as funny as this might sound, and this actually hits close to home because we recently, kind of on a whim, ripped the carpet off of our staircase that leads from the main level to our upper level without really having a lot of experience in redoing staircases. But I think, like I said, there's always another way you can approach it. Or too, you know what, you can always make a phone call to a professional if something really goes south.   Kimberly Grigg  44:11 Sure, sure. And I think good design has a lot to do with developing a practice and really honing in on that practice, just like yoga. And I think that good design, once you have a little confidence really, and one way to get confidence is to take risk, and once you have a little confidence, good design, really, especially when you get into the category of things that are extraordinary, it's because you took some risk. And because you were brave enough to do so. And the homes that really become stellar have that combination of confidence and risk taking, don't you think?   Kate Dryer  45:00 Yeah. No, I agree. And I think too, especially when it comes to DIYs, I mean, you know, taking cues too from people around you. And that doesn't necessarily mean copying exactly what someone else is doing, but sort of learning from, and picking up tips and tricks along the way, from other people who maybe have tried similar things, to whatever it is you want to do. Because, you know, I'm not the first person to ever paint a countertop, but there probably aren't a lot of people out there who have said, Okay, I have leftover chalkboard paint. How else can I use it in my home?   Kimberly Grigg  45:39 Yes, yes. And, you know, I think that, to your point, there's so many things you can do. But the design enthusiast has a way of reading blogs, listening to podcasts, studying Pinterest, studying Instagram, all these things, to me that's part of the practice. And it's part of how you develop your eye, and really can hone in on what it is you love, or start to narrow, or weed out what you might love, but you don't want to live with in your own space. So, Kate, I could talk to you all day about all these fabulous ideas, and these tips and all of this stuff. And what a wealth of information. And a lot of this people can find on your blog, and on your website, and of course your Instagram, and I want to get into how those contacts work. But I always conclude with a signature question. And kind of think of it as a billboard of what you would be saying to the world about your craft or what you stand for in this craft. And I pose the question this way: if you had a hashtag on your tombstone, what would it say?   Kate Dryer  47:09 Oh, wow. Hmm. That is a good one. You may have stumped me. Ah, let's see. Attainable beauty.   Kimberly Grigg  47:23 Oh, that's really beautiful. And to me, it's what you stand for. When I first noticed your work, and I really noticed because obviously I asked you to be on my podcast, so I was drawn to it. Because I can tell that you are living life in a beautiful way. And I could tell immediately by your work that that was important to you. And my mission is to encourage people to do that, to live their lives in a beautiful way that is meaningful to them. Not what I consider beautiful, necessarily, but what they consider beautiful. So I love the way that you said that because to me, that is what your work embodies. And I think that is to be championed. So yay, hat's off to you. Now tell everyone how they can find you, get in touch with you, all those things. Like where do they look at this beautiful body of work?   Kate Dryer  48:34 You can find my brand, Kate Decorates, on my website, of course. And it's www.KateDecorates.co. So no "m" on the end of the URL. And you can find me on Instagram as well. My handle is @Kate_Decorates.   Kimberly Grigg  48:52 Fabulous. And for you listeners, you really want to check this out. It is breathtaking work. And Kate, thank you so much for being here and for sharing all of this great information. I really appreciate it.   Kate Dryer  49:09 Thank you. It's been so fun talking with you today.   Kimberly Grigg  49:12 You too. I hope you enjoyed getting to know Kate Dryer as much as I did. What a talented young gal. She is chock full of great tips and tricks for making your home not only attainable, but drop dead gorgeous. I loved this conversation and I'd love to hear from you how you enjoyed it and how we're doing on this podcast. Please leave a review. And I'll love it if you would subscribe and share this podcast with someone you think might benefit. And as I like to say don't wait: today is a great day to decorate. Bye for now.    Thanks for listening to Decorate Like A Design Boss. If you want more info on how to decorate your space like a pro, visit KimberlyGriggDesigns.com. See you next week.

Join us this episode as we travel back in time to 1993 for the release of Star Fox for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. We also talk about the TMNT Cowabunga Collection, Glover, and chat about the games that we've been playing. Jump in to the time machine with us! NEWS Nintendo 64 cult classic Glover coming to Steam The House of the Dead 1 and 2 remakes for Nintendo Switch keep the camp Spanish studio makes a bullfighting game we'd be OK with playing Red Hot Chili Peppers' 1999 song ‘Californication' is a free video game, finally ​​Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection Announced, Features 13 Games What we've been playing Mash Rock Band 4 - Xbox One Apex Legends - PC Dying Light 2 - PC Destruction Derby - PS1 Crash Bandicoot - PS1 Crash Bandicoot The Huge Adventure - GBA PS1 Demo Discs on stream Spyro The Dragon - PS1 Andy Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 - Switch Half Life 2: Update - PC Life is Strange - PC Picross e - 3DS Picross DS - DS Airborne Kingdom - PC Star Fox Soundtrack Star Fox Manual We know there are a lot of podcast options out there, and we appreciate you taking the time to put our words in your ears. It really does mean a lot. You can also check out our website at www.retrogametimemachine.com and you can subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Goodpods, and many other podcasting apps. You can join us on Discord, follow us on Instagram, YouTube and Twitter, and you can support us at the $2 or $5 tiers on Patreon. May your video games be fun. Bye for now.

Hi, everyone! I am Georgiana, your English teacher and founder of speakenglishpodcast.com. My mission is to help you speak English fluently. This week is a bit special because it is Spring Offer and all my premium courses have a 60% discount. I've received several messages with questions about the courses. I will try to answer some frequently asked questions in this short episode. By the way, you can get the offer at: speakenglishpodcast.com/courses Hurry up because the offer is only available until this Sunday at midnight. Let's start with the most frequently asked question: 1) What is the difference between the podcast and the premium courses? That's a great question! In the podcast, I talk about very diverse topics to improve your vocabulary. It's a great listening practice.  I also give a small example of a lesson in each podcast episode. It can be a mini-story of questions and answers or a point of view. Because of time limitations, I can barely develop these lessons, yet they allow you to test the method that I use in my premium courses in an easy and fun way. Instead, the premium courses are complete programs designed to improve your spoken English dramatically. These are conversation courses. You start speaking from DAY ONE with the conversation simulator. They are audio lessons that "simulate" conversations. I call them Q&A mini-stories. Unlike the podcast, the premium courses contain hours and hours of questions and answers. Imagine for a moment a podcast episode, but multiplied by 100. Also, the courses allow you to work much better on grammar aspects such as the plural, singular, all kinds of verb tenses, and certain common expressions of English. All of this unfolds in an interactive way, following one or more stories that provide a rich and entertaining context. For example, the Fluency Course (level II) contains more than 8 hours of audio with thousands of questions and answers (mini-stories) and almost 200 pages of transcription text. Of course, there are also many point of view lessons that allow you to work very intensely on aspects of grammar. One rule I always follow is to create lessons with complex characters and funny stories with unexpected endings. That way you'll never forget what you learn best and, of course, it's a lot more fun. Another question: 2) Can I use the premium courses on the iPhone, iPad, Android and so on? Yes, of course. You can use them without problems. It is important to keep in mind that the courses are not apps. That is, you don't install them. It's much more flexible. The courses consist of mp3 audio and text (PDF). This is much simpler and prevents technical problems. Transferring the content to any device is quite easy. However, when you buy one of the courses, I send you detailed steps to know what to do. In any case, you can contact me by e-mail with any questions. 3) Is there a monthly payment for the premium courses? No, there is no such thing. They are yours for personal use and forever when you buy the courses. 4) How many premium courses are there, and what is the difference? There are currently four courses. I will describe them briefly: 1) 30 Day Crash Course (level1): This course is for beginners with no knowledge of English. It is a course that works very well, and I am happy with the result because it helps a lot to start with English. In your case, I don't recommend it because if you are a follower of this podcast, you are no longer a beginner. 2) The Fluency Course (level2):  The level of this course is a bit easier than this podcast, but there is almost no difference. This program will help you automate the most common structures when speaking. It consists of 20 units with 20 unique and fun stories. I recommend this course if you're trying to stop mentally translating when you speak English, even with relatively easy expressions.   3) The Magic Course (level3): This course is very ambitious because it goes one step beyond the Fluency Course. The aim is to practice all the verb tenses in the context of a long and well-developed story. There is plenty of vocabulary, and grammar points are very useful. When you finish this course, you will have an advanced level of English. 4) The Business Course (Job Interview Course) With this course, you will master the 30 most common questions asked at a job interview, learn specific vocabulary, and when to use it. You will get examples of how to answer the questions. And the exclusive mini-stories will help you speak English more confidently at a job interview. 5) Georgiana, what if I don't like them, or I don't adapt to the courses? That's all right. If, during the first 30 days, you are not convinced by the program, you can request a refund without any problem. 6) Are there any free samples of the courses? Yes, of course. You can get some samples at: SpeakEnglishPodcast.com/samples Very well, I think I have answered the most frequently asked questions. I hope you found this helpful. Remember that you can benefit from the Spring offer promotion at: speakenglishpodcast.com/courses If your goal is to improve fluency, my courses can really help you. I repeat for the last time: speakenglishpodcast.com/courses Only until this Sunday at midnight. All right. That's all for today. I will see you next week! Bye! Bye!

Hello truth seekers! Welcome to another episode of Truth Wanted! This week MD Aware is joined by the fabulous Shannon Q!First up is Setuf from Spain, who asks our hosts if they perceive theism as illogical and if so why? The call eventually shifts topics to discuss the ethics and medical need for eating meat.Next up is Barry from New Zealand who shares their experience with hypnotherapy. The caller tested the procedure in an attempt to break a knuckle-cracking habit, and while it seemed to help at first, it ended up failing after the doctor shattered the placebo.Jim from Canada wants to talk about brain stimulation, specifically with regards to porn consumption, and if it is even possible to over-stimulate your brain with this activity.Next is Bill from IL who asks our hosts what the difference is between the terms “atheist” & “agnostic”. Ask a person what position they actually hold, rather than attempt to strongarm them into a definition they may or may not ascribe to.Next is Alison from CA who is battling MS, and wants advice from Shannon on how she is managing to cope with it.Matthew from CA is engaged in a debate with a friend about the origin of consciousness, and wants the host's input on the topic.Our final call is from an individual who is very excited by Florida's attempts to investigate and charge the parents of transgender youth as child abuse. Bye bye Peter from Canada!

This is the q&a!! Thanks to everyone who asked me questions and who answered anh q&a in general. Bye!!! Episode art is cover art I made on ibis paint x.

Another week, another episode of the jocks talkin' golf. This week, Maya and Liz talk about the Saudi Golf League, how it got started, and why Phil's comments were so harmful. Sit back, relax, enjoy the 'sode and don't forget to tell us your favorite queer villains. Find us @loose.impediments, @Mayasreddy, and @Shank.Haney on IG! Also go check out our good friends over at Juneshine and order yourself a case! Bye! https://juneshine.com/?sscid=21k6_5yc21& //Loose Impediments in produced by MindYourMedia// --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/groupgolftherapy/message

Emily Heck, Owner and Founder, Evergreen Strategic Communications (Indianapolis, IN)   Emily Heck, Owner and Founder at Evergreen Strategic Communications, started her agency in the fall of 2019. With no job in sight and no career plans, she started meeting with people, chatting over coffee, and trying to figure out her next chapter. Emily picked up some freelance marketing projects from a former co-worker and networked more intensely. Her business, helping nonprofits and small businesses organize their marketing, establish processes and systems, and more efficiently engage their audiences, grew.  Although in-person networking dropped off during the pandemic, Emily is now finding contacts she did not see during the “isolation time” of Covid eager to meet and “catch up” and more interested in re-connecting face to face. Potential clients are responding to her cold-call invitations to explore partnership opportunities a lot more quickly and with a lot less requisite “relationship building” than before the pandemic. In this interview, Emily talks about the importance of LinkedIn, “the place for silent scrollers,” for building connections. She says people may scroll through your feeds and read them, but do so with no likes, shares, or comments. Think nothing is happening? Emily says she often gets comments when she meets with people six months later, “I've really liked your content.” It‘s important to “keep posting.” Emily says small business owners and nonprofits have the same marketing struggles and are “behind” the big companies on lead generation emails, getting conversions on emails and social media, and on figuring out how to “pump that up.” “Getting there” requires guiding clients to build marketing model proficiency and effectiveness and scaling larger company processes down to something that works to help “small” grow.  When Emily first started working with clients, she spent a lot of time figuring out their processes, the location of their social media account login information, and establishing what they were trying to achieve through their marketing. Client websites, often a “mess,” may fail to “tell their story well.” “You can't really be effective in your marketing if you don't have a good base of organization,” Emily explains. So, she cleans up client websites and SEO first, as a base to “push everyone back to” from emails and social media efforts.” Email has changed a lot. Today, Emily says, “You've got to have some personality in your emails.” She recommends “changing the sender name from the organization name to a person's name” to improve open rates. Emily can be contacted on her agency's website at: evergreenstrategic.org, or on LinkedIn as Emily Hack in Indianapolis. Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Emily Heck, Owner and Founder at Evergreen Strategic Communications based in Indianapolis, Indiana. Welcome to the podcast, Emily. EMILY: Thank you very much. I'm so excited to be here. ROB: Good to have you here and talk some Indiana connections here. Why don't you start off by telling us about Evergreen, and what is your specialty? EMILY: Evergreen started in the fall of 2019. I started my own business right before the pandemic; I'm not sure if that's smart or adventurous or whatever word you want to fill in, but it is our origin story. We focus on nonprofits and small businesses, which may seem like two very different clients or types of clients, but they have the same marketing struggles. We help nonprofits and small businesses get their marketing organized, get processes in place, systems in place, and then work to help start engaging their audiences more efficiently. ROB: Got it. Is that organization the common struggle of where they're starting from? EMILY: Oh yeah. That is 90% of what I see. It's interesting; when I started my business, you're so excited, there's so much energy, and it's like, “I'm going to do social media for small business” or “I'm going to do email and marketing for small business,” and I found I was spending a lot of time figuring out their processes, figuring out where the login information was for their social media accounts. I spent a great deal of time doing that because you can't really be effective in your marketing if you don't have a good base of organization. ROB: I've certainly seen that. They may have worked with somebody; that person disappeared into the wilderness or just wasn't very good or whatever, and they were the only person that knew the logins. Do you end up starting from scratch? Are you trying to figure out how to recover those logins sometimes? Even that part, what are you scrapping together? EMILY: A lot of times I try to scrap it together, as you said, and find those logins. Just recently, last summer, I went through an appeal process with Facebook to get access to a client's business suite. So I'll go that route if I need to. A lot of times it's just an email to an old coworker or something like that, trying to find those logins, but sometimes you have to get out the heavy-hitter techniques and tactics to get access to stuff. ROB: I'm sure, Emily, sometimes you start with a client and they want to do one specific thing; sometimes they want to do everything. How do you help them come to the conclusion of how to do what is the right thing, what is the right thing to do first, and what's the right thing to do next? EMILY: This is a tough conversation that I have quite a bit. I do have a lot of clients that come to me and say, “We want an email newsletter” or “We want a blog started.” It's more about “Okay, but what are you trying to achieve with this?” I take a step back; let's have that conversation, let's talk about what you're trying to engage with your audience. And a lot of times the business owner or the nonprofit executive director is right. They know their business and their organization better than I do at that point in time. So, the project usually evolves from what they originally thought. Maybe they were thinking a traditional-style email newsletter, and I start to throw out some ideas – because email's changed a lot. Even I would say just in the past two or three years, how you're communicating on email has changed so much, and they may not be up-to-date on those new strategies and tactics. That's probably the second most common conversation I'm having behind “Where are your logins and what are your processes?” [laughs] ROB: How would you characterize some of that transition on the email side? Because there's certainly this historic idea of “Let's get a good template, let's curate some content, let me dump something in there that I think makes sense, and maybe I'm going to try to close some business too.” How does that evolve into what works in 2022? EMILY: What I'm experiencing with a lot of my clients and a lot of the emails I'm sending out is you've got to have some personality in your emails. Gone are the days of just throwing together some content, a blog preview or something like that. You've got to have some personality. I have several newsletters that I'm making come from a specific person within the organization – just as simple as changing the sender name from the organization name to a person's name has helped open rates. It seems so simple, but when you're flying through, trying to get that monthly email out, it's easy to forget. I'm always talking to my clients about “Let's add some personality in this. What are things that you can really connect with your audiences through on your email?” People don't want to see this endless scroll of boring content. [laughs] ROB: Boring content, company names. When I think about getting a bunch of stuff in Gmail across a bunch of different accounts – and I have the tabs; I don't know how many people have the different tabs set up for the updates and the transactions. I don't remember what all the things are. But it's almost like when you get to the tab where the newsletters tend to sit, when you get over to that updates tab, there's a certain curiosity to a person, a human, versus a company there. It's almost intriguing on its own versus organization name and “Here's my receipt from this other thing.” EMILY: Oh yeah, it's a total marketing trick when you really think about it. We're tricking you into opening it. [laughs] Which you could argue is marketing in general. But yeah, you are intrigued by it. I want to take it a step further that it's not a trick of “This is the same old newsletter that we've been sending you for the past five years, just we put a different sender name on it.” Let's also take the content and make it more appealing for the reader so it isn't an endless scroll. ROB: That certainly makes plenty of sense there. Emily, you walked us through part of the journey. You mentioned in the tail end of 2019, you started the firm. But what led up to that? What led you to take that particular plunge to say it was time to start your own business, and what led you into that? EMILY: I was working for an organization, and I'd only been working there for about two years, so I wasn't looking to leave when I departed in fall of '19. But I got into a very toxic situation that was not good for my mental health, physical health. I was deteriorating as a professional because of it. I left without a job lined up. I just went in and resigned one day because I knew this wasn't the future that I wanted. I reached out to a colleague who had actually left a few months prior to myself and said, “Hey, do you have any projects?” I knew she was freelancing. And she did, and the rest is history. I started with a couple projects and then picked up a couple clients and really started to network within my communities. The snowball just kept getting bigger as it started rolling. An interesting ride. There's a huge conversation right now on a societal level about the Great Resignation, and I feel like I was a couple years ahead of that. So, I totally identify with those individuals that are departing their jobs; that's what I did two years ago. ROB: Sure. Even then, it's an interesting shift, because you mentioned networking. In late 2019, you had one form of networking for a few months, and then that changed. What did networking look like? Was there a pause in networking in early 2020, a regearing, or just a dramatic shift in what that needed to look like? EMILY: Oh yeah. It's funny; probably about a month ago, I had coffee with the person that I had coffee with in March of 2020. He was the last person that I had coffee with right before everything shut down. It was kind of crazy – this was in December of 2021. We had gone two years without seeing each other. When I quit my job and I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do, I was setting up coffee appointments and networking with people. It was interesting. It was a little bit of a slower process because you go and just chit-chat and have coffee, whatever. And now I'm experiencing where I'm emailing people, I'm reaching out to them, total cold calling, or cold emailing if you will, and I'm getting responses back quicker. So, I think there's definitely been this shift in networking for sure. ROB: Is that for connecting in person now, or is that connecting digitally? Is the coffee meeting back, in your view? How is it spinning? EMILY: I'm picking up more coffee dates. I'm reaching out to people. Indiana just went through a little bit of a surge – a pretty significant surge – so everything's been virtual lately. But yeah, some people want to do virtual coffee chats, some people want to do in-person. I've actually experienced more of just emailing someone or sending a LinkedIn message and saying, “Hey, this is what I offer. I think there could be a partnership here,” and they want to chat – which would never happen before. You had to work on building that relationship. So, it's definitely shifted. ROB: Yeah, there seems to be, kind of like your newsletters, a human connection desire that's going on. It's been a discipline that we started since the beginning of the year. Every week, I'm contacting five people I haven't seen in a while and saying, “Let's do coffee, let's do lunch, let's do whatever.” The hit rate is tremendous because all of the meetings and recurring events we used to go to, none of the organizations feel confident having them. I was kind of a chicken – not chicken. My level of caution was I met people for outside lunch during COVID. Until I got my shot and my booster, I was an outside lunch, outside coffee – I was that person. Now I'll meet anybody anywhere. Some people won't. I respect what anybody wants to choose to do, because it's a hard time to know what to do. But the hit rate on in-person meetings has really been amazing to me. EMILY: Yeah. Do you find people are just wanting to chit-chat and catch up? Or is it more business-related? Because a lot of mine have been catching up because I haven't seen these people for two-plus years. ROB: That's right. I think those people probably might've seen on – the other secret weapon to me is LinkedIn. It's a real secret if we're talking about it on the podcast, right? [laughs] EMILY: Right. [laughs] ROB: But, basically, every once in a while, saying something about what we're doing. I'll see people in person – I saw people at football games in the fall and they're like, “Oh, I've been following everything you've been doing for the past two years.” I'm like, we haven't talked. I posted on LinkedIn and you never ‘liked' it. I don't say this to them, but they never engaged with it at all. But they've been reading my biography through LinkedIn. The people that I meet, most of the time it's chit-chatty, but I will also say that it tends to echo. Somebody I had lunch with a month ago last week says, “Hey, here's this person you really should talk to.” So it comes back around in that very open-handed, low expectation kind of way. That's what I'm seeing, I think. EMILY: Yeah, that's what I've experienced. It's funny that you bring up LinkedIn because just recently I came across – it may've been on Instagram or something that said, “LinkedIn is the place for silent scrollers.” You will have so many people who will scroll right past your stuff, read it, but not engage with it. They're not liking it, they're not sharing it or commenting or whatever. But then you will hear six months later, “Oh, I've really liked your content lately.” The purpose was to keep posting, even if you're not getting engagement. So, it's funny that you bring that up too, because that's the second time I've heard that recently. ROB: I don't have the discipline on LinkedIn that I do on my in-person meetings, so I wish I could tell you I found something worthwhile to publish every week, but I have to work on my personal content calendar there. EMILY: Yeah, it is definitely tough. ROB: Emily, as you've looked at how you've built things so far over the past couple years, what are some lessons that you have learned? If you could rewind two years, what would you tell yourself? EMILY: I'd probably tell myself to slow down. This is really hard – whether you're going out on your own in marketing or whatever your field is, your first thing is “I have to start figuring out how to make money. I've got to get money in the door. I've got to get clients. I've got to get work.” I wish I would've told myself to slow down a little bit because that would come – and set things up the right way. I'm in Year 2 of business, and I'm going back and having to re-set up some structures within my business that I probably should've been doing 18 months ago. That's been the biggest thing for me. It's hard. I started a business, and however many months later, a pandemic hit – and at the same time, I was also pregnant with my first child, so I went on maternity leave during that first year of business. I really wish I would've slowed down and not been in such a hurry. Even now, a couple years in, I'm like, okay, slow down. If I get a “no” from a client proposal or whatever, it's not the end of the world. Slow down. Be really purposeful. Be really mindful in what you're doing. ROB: I can't imagine trying to plan parental leave into that early moment of a business. How did you think about doing right by your clients but also giving yourself that time to enjoy a season of life that is unique and needs to be embraced? EMILY: I mentioned earlier my colleague that was also a freelancer. She and I work together a lot. I always tell people who are going out on their own, find a partner. You don't have to go into business together, but find someone to partner with on client projects, because business ownership is a lonely world, and it's good when you have someone you can collaborate with. So, I had someone that was picking up some of the work I was doing. The other thing was it was a weird time. My daughter was born in July of 2020. In 2022, July 2020 still seems like early COVID days. I was actually itching to get back to work because I was tired of sitting in the house. [laughs] It'll be interesting, as our family grows, what my approach to leave is next time, because I'm actually already thinking about it. How can I put structures in place now that I can have a full leave next time? But yeah, it was a weird year. Baby, new business, pandemic. I don't tell anyone, “Use this as an example of how to start a business.” [laughs] ROB: No, it rarely turns out that way, especially on this podcast. Many, many accidental entrepreneurs in different ways. As you think about the clients you work with, the small businesses, the nonprofits, we've talked a little bit about email and how that is changing; when people have to make the choice of what to activate first, what are some of the other things you see them needing to activate first that might not be what they expected in terms of how they need to be marketing? EMILY: Website is a really big thing. A lot of times people are thinking social media, email, website in that order, but I like to focus on the website first because that's your homebase. That's where you can push everyone back to from your emails, from your social media. We need to get that cleaned up and really telling your story well. Some people, their website's a mess because – kind of like I was a couple years ago – you're just trying to throw something together so that you can get out there and get your name out there. So, it's about going back and really looking at it. The other reason that I really want to look at websites is for SEO purposes. I think SEO was really big there in the early 2010s or so, and everyone was talking about SEO. Then it died off a little bit and no one was talking about it, and it seems to be a real buzzy word right now, about how to get your organic content situated correctly so that you can be ranking high on Google and you're providing good content. That's what I tell my small business owners especially: making sure your content is optimized appropriately and written appropriately is free. You're not having to create paid ads for it. That's probably the other thing. Social media is actually the last thing I look at. ROB: And then organic and paid social, those are two different conversations as well, right? EMILY: Oh yeah. With these clients especially, organic is where we've got to start, and then we work up to paid. It's so hard. Every social media channel is so full, so it takes time, but we can get there. ROB: Some people would also, I think, feel the same way about content they put on their website. How do you help someone think about putting out content that is actually meaningfully different and doesn't feel like it's the same as anyone else? If there's a context of maybe a specific small business client that helps tell the story, maybe that's a lens we can look through here. EMILY: I have a client here in Indianapolis that is a small plumbing company. They're very unique in that they've been around for 100 years, they're family-owned. When we're creating content for them, first of all, plumbing content is not necessarily always the most interesting thing in your newsfeed, and it doesn't change. Pipes freezing – you have the same five tips about how to avoid pipes freezing. For them, it's “Let's just get the content out there.” I know that every other plumbing company in town is putting something out right now in the winter about pipes freezing or preparing your home for winter or something like that, but we need to get our content out there. We need to be a part of the conversation. And it makes their current customers feel good. They feel really good about it and engage with it because it's like, “Oh, my guy, the guy that I recommend for plumbing services, is out there. I'm not always hearing about Competitor A and what they're saying.” It's a delicate walk. Sometimes, as the marketing consultant, I feel like I'm doing the same content that everyone else is doing, but in a lot of these small business cases, you've just got to get your name out there and in the mix. ROB: Right. It almost seems like for them – you kind of alluded to it – it's about the relationship they already had with the client. It's about the work they already did. Hopefully, they did their homework and got the client's email address while they were out doing some plumbing work, and then that seasonal tip of how to not freeze your pipes is a little bit of caring, almost. It's maybe not original, but you're showing up, and it's a good reason to be in the inbox. Nobody's super mad about “I'm reminded for the third time about how to not have my pipes freeze,” because that's a legit problem that is expensive. EMILY: Right. It's also going back to being organized. We've got that data organized so that we can reach whatever customer we need to so when there's a big winter storm barreling down on Indianapolis, we can get that email out, “Hey, here's things to think about with this winter storm.” It's a welcome addition to their inbox because it's timely and it's for them. To your point, that's exactly right. ROB: Emily, when we're talking about somebody's website content, when we're talking about having them talk about what they're doing in a way that speaks to their customer, a lot of times they've probably already tried. They already tried to write their website content, and they just couldn't find the right thing to say and the right story. How do you help someone communicate what they might not know how to communicate, but they almost feel it more than they know how to write it? EMILY: It's funny; I was having this conversation with a copywriter yesterday, and we were both talking about how we have struggled to write for our own websites. Which is why I'm hiring her to write some new pages for me, because I am stuck. Obviously, I'm a consultant, so I'm always going to say, “Hire a consultant,” but I think that shows the value of a consultant, to have someone come in with an outside perspective and really be able to put your story down on paper and make sense of it. I love the clients when I'm their target audience, a 30-something young mother or whatever, because I can bring in that perspective of “That wouldn't resonate with me as your audience member” or “Yes, that would resonate with me.” Like I said, I'm always going to be on Team Consultant because I am a consultant. But I think it's important to know that even marketing professionals struggle with it. We struggle with telling our own story and have to get outside help. So, I wouldn't expect a small business or a nonprofit to be any different. ROB: I'm glad it's not just me, because we looked at our website content and in a moment of desperation, I said, “I need to invest in our future, and I'm going to invest in having someone else do this.” They went out and talked to a few of our clients, and they told things back to us that sounded true but I could never have given the words. So I will advocate for Team Consultant here as well. I went through a StoryBrand process in our case, which was also interesting. I don't know if I would've done that – I don't know. I just know that hearing something back truthful felt a lot better than trying to make up words myself. EMILY: Yeah, it's a good level set for you. It can provide more perspectives and it gives you a good level set, and not only is it someone else translating your story – do we have time to do that? I mean, we're so busy as business owners. If one more thing is off our plate, go for it. ROB: Right, and it's a good reason to think a lot about profitability, around margins, because that creates the ability to invest into the future, the ability to have some reserves to hire people. There's a lot of moving parts there. When you look forward, when you're looking at what's next for Evergreen, when you're looking at what's next for marketing for your clients, what's coming up that you're excited about? Where is this going? EMILY: Evergreen, I am hoping to still grow and provide more support to nonprofits and small businesses – which I realize is a non-answer answer. But 2022 is going to be really the first year that hopefully nothing crazy is happening. I mean, first year of business was pandemic and baby; second year of business was still pandemic and it just seemed like crazy, crazy stuff going on. So 2022 is really going to be about finding level ground and finding a solid footing within the business. It's been exciting here; even since the beginning of the year, things are happening and things are coming together. I'm doing some awesome projects with some pretty cool clients, so that's really exciting. As far as clients, what I'm seeing and what I'm talking to them a lot about is trying to get more proficient and effective in our current marketing models. I'm talking a lot with clients – now, keep in mind these are small businesses and nonprofits, so they're a couple of years behind – we're talking about lead generation emails and how to get conversions on emails. We're talking about how to do that on social media and really start to pump that up. Like I said, these are small nonprofits and small businesses, but they are starting – I think in the big organizations, a lot of marketing ideas and processes start there, and then nonprofits and small businesses are maybe a little bit behind and start to figure it out. I'm really excited because I'm seeing that stuff start to bubble up and happen. A lot of my job right now is trying to figure out how to bring it down to a smaller size for them. It's easy when you have a 10- or 12-person marketing department to do a lot of lead generation and conversions and things like that, but we've got to figure out how to bring this down to a smaller scale. ROB: It definitely makes sense. The clients that you're talking about don't always have that margin for the experimental budget that some of the other brands will have, so being able to distill something that's actually going to work and deliver, or have a good chance of it – it's great that people have you thinking about that for them. Emily, when people want to find you and Evergreen, where should they go to find and connect with you? EMILY: My website is evergreenstrategic.org, where you can learn a little bit about my agency. And I'm a big LinkedIn-er, so find me on LinkedIn, Emily Hack in Indianapolis, Indiana, and connect. I'd love to chat on message about marketing or anything else going on in the world. So yeah, I can be found there. ROB: That's great. Emily, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Thank you for sharing your own journey and expertise. Very grateful for it, and good to meet you. EMILY: Thank you. I had a great time. ROB: All right, be well. Thank you. Bye. Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Decision Space is the podcast about decisions in board games! Click on the link to join our active and welcoming Discord community!  Join the crew today! (Decision Space Patreon)   Episode 58 - What We Talk About When We Talk About A New Way To Talk About Objectives In Games Holy S***! It's a new way to talk about type episode after long last. In this one, Brendan presents his new framework for describing scoring/objective systems in games. These come in three types, solitary, juxtaposed, and overlaid. We quickly go through each type and then share a ton of examples from real-life board games. Interdecisional Spaceship, take it away!   Games Discussed Chess, Cascadia, Broom Service, Welcome To..., Cartographers, Race for the Galaxy, Babylonia, Rolling Realms, Soccer (football), American Football, and more. Music Credits Thank you to Hembree for our intro and outro music from their song Reach Out. You can listen to the full song on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQuuRPfOyMw&list=TLGGFNH7VEDPgwgyNTA4MjAyMQ&t=3s You can find more information about Hembree at https://www.hembreemusic.com/.  Rules Overview Music:  Way Home by Tokyo Music Walker https://soundcloud.com/user-356546060​ Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0 Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/tokyo-music-walker-way...​ Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/pJThZlOuDtI   Contact We can be reached individually on Twitter at @jakefryd and @burnsidebh. You can also follow Decision Space on Twitter @DecisionSpa and talk to us there! If you prefer email, then hit us up at decisionspa@gmail.com. This information is all available along with episodes at our new website decisionspacepodcast.com. Bye!

Napoleon Hill said: There is one quality which one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning desire to possess it. Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ClubHouseWithRussell.com Magnetic Marketing ---Transcript--- Hey, what's up everybody? This is Russell Brunson, and welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. I'm here today in Mexico preparing for an event tomorrow with the Two Comma Club X Mastermind group, as well as the Inner Circle and the Category Kings. And I'm actually doing a presentation all about personal development and how to literally go and get whatever it is you want in life. And so I've got some thoughts and some ideas I want to share with you guys. So with that said, we'll cue the theme song. When we come back, we're going to be talking about definiteness of purpose. All right. So some of you guys have heard this story in the past, but when I write books, apparently my process, I didn't plan it this way, but I usually write a book and then decide I don't like it and delete it. And then go and do a live event where I teach the entire principles and concepts, and then start over and write the book again. And I keep forgetting this apparently, because you would think that it'd be easier for me just to do a live event, teaching the principles, and then write a book afterwards. But alas, I have forgotten every single time. I've literally done this ... I did it for the Dotcom Secrets book, the Expert Secrets book, and the Traffic Secrets book. And right now I'm doing it with the Secrets of Success book. Whoa, you guys just found out the title. I haven't told anybody publicly yet, so congratulations. You know something nobody else does. And so that's the new book I'm writing. And I wrote it. I wrote about 200 and something pages and realized I didn't like it, and deleted it. And now I'm doing a live event for our Mastermind group. And I was trying to think, How am I going to do this? My Category Kings were asking me and begging me, they're like, You should do it at your penthouse in downtown Boise and teach us for three days there. And I was going to, but I just didn't have the... Anyway, long story. I was like, Well, I'm doing this thing in Mexico. We have everyone coming. This is going to be the best place for me to do it. And so I've been preparing for it, putting it together, and I'm stressing about it and excited about it, and all the things that come with a new presentation and new principles. And I think a lot about this. I study a lot about this. I go deep on this. I think in my own mind I'm trying to always figure out how to be more successful, so I have a lot of stuff here. I feel like a lot of people would be successful, but I've never broken it down in a way that I can share with people. So that's been a hard process. How do you take this thing that you've been, a lot of it subconsciously doing, some are consciously doing for the last 20, 30 years of your life? And how do you put it in a way that people can then take it as a system and use? And that's been my challenge. But I think I got it, I'm really excited. And so tomorrow I'm actually doing a session in the morning. It's about 90 minutes to everybody, that's basically going to be the intro chapter for the new book. But it's something that's, it's powerful. And I can't tell you everything that's happening there, but anyway, I'm really excited for it, I think it's going to change people's lives. That'll be the intro session. Then we break, we got excursions. And we come back eight o'clock at night. And I'm going from eight o'clock until two or three in the morning, teaching the rest of the book. And I'm so excited for it. So someday this book will be there and you guys can read it, and hopefully it's good. If it sucks, then yeah, don't tell me about it because I put so much effort into this thing it's crazy. But as I'm working on this, there's one concept that just keeps driving throughout this book over and over and over again. And it's a principle I learned from Napoleon Hill. And I think a lot of you guys know who Napoleon Hill is. If you don't, he wrote the book Think and Grow Rich, he wrote The Law of Success. He's written a whole bunch of amazing books and magazines, and I've recently acquired most of his life work, original copies and original manuscripts. And it's been one of the cool things ever. And I'm telling you this because, one, it's interesting. In almost everything that Napoleon Hill's written, he has this one thread that weaves throughout all of it, over and over and over again. From every book, every course, every manuscript. Everything I've found that I've acquired, every magazine article, he just keeps coming back to this one thing. And as I've been putting this together, it's initially because I keep coming back to it as well. And I talked about it at Funnel Hacking Live a little bit for those who were there, but the principle is called definiteness of purpose. And it was funny for a while I couldn't remember how to say that word definiteness. It's the hardest word to say, but I've gotten it now. The way I remember it, for those who try to remember it, is definite. Like, I'm definitely going to do it. I'm definiteness. I have definiteness of purpose. And so the point Hill talks about this, if you want something in life, you have to... It's not just like, I have a purpose, but it's like, I have definiteness of purpose. So it's not just like, Oh yeah, I'm hoping to get this thing. It's like, no, no, no. I'm definitely going to get it. Definiteness of purpose. This is the thing. This is where it is. This is how I'm going to get it. And there's a quote from one of his books, he says that there is one quality which one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose. The knowledge one wants and a burning desire to possess it. So that's what definiteness of purpose is. It's all about seeing the thing you want, but more so than just seeing it. Seeing it and then having this burning desire. Like, I have to have that thing at all costs. I'm going for it. I'm looking for it. I'm going to figure it out. I'm going to run towards, I'm going to figure those things out. And then from there, there's a lot more that goes into this, but it's building on the plan and the structure and the strategy and then the tactics and all the stuff to go and get that thing. But it begins with that purpose. If you don't have that definiteness of purpose it's hard. I think a lot of people don't have that. So many people, they don't have a purpose. They're like, I don't know. I'm just here. I don't have a purpose. And I think that God's put desires in all of our hearts that are there to give us that purpose. And so if you haven't found that in your life where you're like, I don't know the purposes I'm doing. Sometimes I think some people think it's like, Oh, I got to be like Russell. I got to figure out what's my mission and who am I going to serve? And that may be it. One thing I talk about during my presentation tomorrow is the purpose is twofold. Sometimes it's like, I need to go and create this purpose, create this movement, create this calling, you're creating something. Other times it's alignment with it. There are so many rock stars on my team who have aligned with my definiteness of purpose, and they're part of it. I couldn't do it without them. And so it's not always, I have to be the one that's creating this whole new thing. Either I'm going to create something or I need to align with somebody who's created. What do I believe in? What's the missions that I have so much belief in, in the mission what they're doing? I want to pursue their goal. I want to pursue their mission with definiteness of purpose. I want to be aligned with them, I want to help them, I want to serve them, I want to be part of the mission. And so I think the big thing is looking for those things. What are the things you're passionate about? If you're not passionate about anything, well, it's time to start dabbling. Dabble in a million different things so you find something that lights a spark and gets you excited, that you can say, This is my thing. I'm going to move forward with definiteness of purpose. I think they're going to create something amazing. I'm going to find someone who already is doing something I believe in. I'm going to align with them, I'm going to serve, I'm going to be part of that. And it could be anything. I know when we first introduced Operation Underground Railroad with the ClickFunnels community back, man, four years ago, now. I had so many people who came back and said, I resonate with this mission. I want to be part of it. And they started weaving into their events and with their products and the things they were doing, because they wanted to be part of that. They wanted to serve these children with definiteness of purpose. That's a purpose I want to be aligned with, I want to work towards. And they didn't create it. I didn't create it. Tim Ballard was the one who was called for that mission. He was the one who had to do it. But all of us have a chance to look at that purpose and say, Okay, I want to align with that. And I have a burning desire to do it. I'm going to do everything in my power to win, to help, to serve, to do that thing. And so in all of us, we have different times in life, but the initial threat is that. And I'm glad he didn't just say, You got to have a purpose. And a lot of times nowadays, people are like, You got to have a why. What's your why? And what Napoleon Hill is saying is so much deeper than that. It's not just a why. It's your purpose, which is bigger. Why is a reason I want something. Which is big, it's important. But you say not just your why, it's your purpose. It's bigger. This is the purpose of me being here, is to go and do this thing, to get, to achieve, to retrieve, to bring back, to save, to fix whatever your purpose is. It's purpose. But not just a purpose. It's like definiteness. I am lasering in on this target. I'm looking at that thing. And I know that's what I need to give. That's the thing I've been called to serve, to achieve, to figure out. And then you start running towards that thing. And so that's one thing I wanted to share. Because again, there's a million things I could share with you from these presentations and this eventual book. But the one thing that's like this thread throughout is really understanding it. What are you moving towards with definiteness of purpose? Not just, What am I wandering? A lot of us are wanderers, we're drifters, we're waiting for something. But I'm looking at, What is the thing I can look at and say that. That is the goal. That's the mission. That's the purpose. And with all my focus, all my energy, I'm moving forward with a definiteness of purpose to accomplish, to do, to go after that thing. If you don't have that thing, I would implore you, I would beg you, I would ask you to go look for that thing and start searching for it. Because the quality of your life, the excitement, the energy, the passion, all the things will increase when you are moving towards something with definiteness of purpose. Too many people live their lives on a couch, watching Netflix. Where I think the good stuff, the stuff you're going to remember, the stuff that people remember you for are these other things. I think sometimes people hear this and they're like, Oh, you're saying I'm not ready, I'm not worthy, I'm not bore. I'm not saying that at all. I think all of you guys right now are good enough. I believe God's proud of you. I believe I'm proud of you. If you don't accomplish anything that doesn't matter to me. But the pursuit of something great will change you and it'll change the people around you. It'll change the people in the wake of the service you're doing. As you move forward with a mission, with something, the wake of people behind you that changes their lives, the wake of contribution is huge. I look at my mission to help entrepreneurs and serve in all these things I've been doing. I've been moving forward with definiteness of purpose, trying to use all my power to create, to do, to serve, to do these kind of things. And the wake behind me is contribution. It's created jobs, it's helped people and their families, it's helped entrepreneurs start their own companies. The wake of contribution when you are moving forward with definiteness of purpose is huge. And so go and create those wakes of contribution. Run, move forward, have some fun, go serve people. Pick a purpose and run towards it. Not because you have to have that for anyone to love you, or to care about you, that you need that to be a better person. That's not the things. It's finding that purpose. And then it'll light you up. It'll change you in a way that nothing else ever could. And so, anyway, there's my call to you. It's time, you guys. Your purpose is out there. Go find it and then pursue it with definiteness. If you do that, not only will it change your life, it will change lives of the people that are in your wake of contribution. So go and do it, have some fun with it. And then wait for me to write this darn book. Hopefully it gets done sooner than later because I want to share it with you guys. I think these principles are good. I'm excited. All right. That's all I got. Thank you so much. Have an amazing day. And let me know if you see this on Instagram or Facebook or anywhere, tag me. Take a picture on your phone and tag me. You upload the picture to Facebook or Instagram, whatever and tag me and tell me, what is your purpose? What are you pursuing with definiteness? And when you do that, I want to hear about it because you guys are the people that are changing the world. And so if I can support you and help in any way, that's my role. That's my job, is to help support the creators, help giving you guys the ability to get your message out to more people, because you are the ones who are changing the world. Thanks so much. And I'll talk to you guys soon. Bye, everybody.

Charlotte Dunford is the managing partner of Johns Creek Capital. She brings a unique perspective to mobile home park investing as she comes from humble beginnings. Charlotte is a first-generation American citizen and college graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she earned her B.S. in Business with a focus on business analytics and technology. After leaving China with just her belongings at age 16, she has come a long way to now owning over 20 mobile home parks. Charlotte, along with her business partners, currently sponsor the repositioning of 24 value-add and turnaround mobile home parks. In this episode, she will share her journey as well as her process for finding trailer park deals, property management, and her tips for passive investors. Charlotte has great insights for anyone interested in investing in this asset class. Episode Links: https://www.johnscreekcapital.com/ --- Transcript Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: Welcome to another episode of the Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum and today I'm joined by Charlotte Dunford, who's the managing partner of Johns Creek capital and today Charlotte is going to be talking to us about mobile home park investing and how she got her start and it's ultimately syndicating deals across the country. So let's get into it.   Hey, Charlotte, thank you so much for taking the time to hang out with me today. I really appreciate you coming on.   Charlotte: Thank you so much for having me.   Michael: It's so my pleasure. So we're gonna be talking today about a topic that I know very little. But before we get into that, I would love if you could give our listeners and audience just a brief background on kind of who you are, where you're come from, and what it is that you're doing in real estate.   Charlotte: Right, perfect. So my name is Charlotte Dunford. I am the managing partner of Johns Creek capital, which is Johns Creek capital is a private equity firm, focusing on small mobile home parks syndications. So this niche, our niche features value add properties, with higher cap rates in the 7% and up range at purchase. So we currently have 24, mobile home parks under management with over $4.6 million investor subscriptions and we started in 2020.   Michael: Oh my gosh, and how did you find yourself in that space?   Charlotte: So it's interesting how you know, how I find myself here. So I am a firm believer in escaping competition, one of my favorite books of all time, called from Zero to One by Peter Thiel, he is the co-founder of PayPal, and he suggested this strategy called, you know, it's kind of like Blue Ocean Strategy but it is all about escaping competition. So when I first my first job, out of college at 25, I started doing real estate on the side, using my salary to qualify for financing. But after two deals, I shot myself in the place where my salary wasn't keeping up with my ambition of scaling up the real estate business as much. So I took a calculated risk and quit my full time job about three years ago at 25 to start this company, and pretty much right after I started the, you know, it was a big risk for me, because my husband at the time was still in school, he didn't have a job. So now I quit my job. So to launch this venture, but I took a calculated risk because I saw the mass potential in the mobile home park space because of the demand of for affordable housing just kept growing, but the supply remain very low because zoning regulations and people are not building new mobile home parks. So that's what I saw in it and the big boys, they have been doing multifamily for decades. And for me, a 25 year college grad, wasn't really competitive for you know what, I had no leverage. So I decided to enter in a place where it was blue ocean, where it was a fresh start, and there's a lot more meat on the bow. And think I stopped my diamond in the rough there with mobile home parks.   Michael: I love it, I love it. So talk to us about your first two deals where they kind of traditional single family rentals.   Charlotte: Right, so I haven't even heard of mobile home parks when I graduated college, you know, very much ignore is still a niche today. So the first deal I got was a single family home in the south of Atlanta. I used my salary to qualify for and the second one was a duplex moving up by one unit, it was North Georgia. But after that I was capped out as far as from a banking perspective, I've talked with different commercial loans, you know, if you want to go up to four plex or even more multifamily, you know, you got to be at a net worth of blah, blah, and liquidity of something, you know, but I had no none of that. So the maximum I could go at was a two unit duplex. So yeah, that's my first two deals, and it worked out pretty well. But I wanted a lot more than just yeah, a single family duplex.   Michael: Well, I think it makes so much sense. And I think you're kind of very natural progression is what a lot of real estate investors do, also single family duplex, but then most people go to TriFlex, not quitting their jobs starting their own company to syndicating mobile home parks. So how did you get involved? I mean, how did you take such a hard turn?   Charlotte: Right, so you know, I was young, I was 25 years old and I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur and I've always wanted to own real estate and now that I'm about to you know, a duplex so I you know the multiple the buy triplex but they might be older or far advance in their career than I was and I was an associate business analyst. And there's no way within the time period I want and I see a property, I want to get a property but the financing wouldn't work out. It was a turning point for me because I realized what I really wanted to do, and I was young, and I was not afraid to take a risk and this is a that was was a calculated risk for me because I've learned so much from podcasts just like yours   I had a three hour commute every single day on public transit and from where I lived three hours per day, so three hours a day, five days a week, that's 15 hours, that's almost like a part time job. So to not waste that time, I would listen to podcasts on the train and every single day there to work and back, I learned so much from listen to different podcasts listening to different business audio books. So I pretty much learned for a year and a half straight, took a pretty much a morning and night class on the train. So it was calculated for me and always something I wanted to do. So you know, buying it one deal per year, or per two years, just not knowing enough for what I wanted, so…   Michael: That's incredible. So you went and got like a master's degree in your spare time via your transport to and from work.   Charlotte: Yeah, Master's degree issued by myself. Yeah, but…   Michael: It's the cheapest kind there is, it's a great UC Berkeley…   Charlotte: Yep…   Michael: Oh my god. Okay, so let's shift gears here a little bit and talk about like the meat and potatoes of actual mobile home park investing, because it's something that I've heard about for a while there's some of the guys over bigger pockets talk a lot about it. They're really excited about it. So what is it about mobile home parks that attracted you to it as an asset class?   Charlotte: Right, so there are a few things about mobile home parks that is super attractive to me. One is the niche that I'm in is small mobile, home parks, where the cap rates are high when we get into it. So you hear the saying that we you make the money when you buy, which is what you have to get in at the right price. If you overpay, then it's too late after whatever you do after that. So first of all, you know, is possible to get things at a high cap rate. So that's the first thing. And then financing of it, I was able to get most of my deals, 25 Parks, 24 parks with investor subscription, obviously, and we were able to get either cash or seller financing. And one of the better seller financing deals we've got gotten was 20-30, I think 30% down with 3% interest rate 30 year amortization and 10 year blue, so you're able to get this sort of terms, mobile home park.   Michael: What…?   Charlotte: Yeah, exactly. That's one of the earlier parks, we got. So at a very good cap rate at a very good financing term. So that just sets you straight, you know, right on the right path at the beginning and as far as operational after acquisition, mobile home park is a different animal than multifamily and single family completely different the closest asset class to mobile home park would be a parking lot.   Think about those homes, your park as a parking lot. You're not really in a rental business anymore. You are not fixing furnaces, you're not fixing their refrigerators, like you would in multifamily. You are charging lot rent. So they are on your lot and they're in anything but mobile, they can't really move their home, it's called mobile homes. But older homes, you can't move it without shattering on the road, newer homes, it is possible but it costs 10… you know, at least $10,000 to move it at a tenant in a mobile home park might find a little bit difficult to come up with the money to move in mobile home park, mobile home, so this there's a stability of it.   And on top of that, because you're doing lot rents, the lot, rents are incredibly low to start with. So there's a lot more meat on the bone with multifamily, especially during recessions like we are in kind of in today, it's hard to raise rents, the rents are going up, they raise it by $200, or even more for $500. It depends on where you are. But mobile home parks, we don't raise rents more than $50 per year. Because, you know, it's a big percentage. And there is meat on the bone, because we're buying it mostly from Mom and Pop operators who don't raise rents for years and they're the market rent is maybe one to $200 more than what a lot rent is charging. As long as your mobile home park product is the best value for money product affordable for affordable housing in town, you will have a good edge. So, you know, given the above points, we just find this you know, we still do find this asset class so fascinating. With so much potential just because of demand and supply and just the affordable housing crisis we're experiencing right now. We want to be part of the solution.   Michael: Yeah. Oh, that's so cool. So I love the analogy of like getting it to like a parking lot because I've said for years that I would love to own parking lots because pretty much maintenance free fit, you know, fairly risk research is so easy to operate. So right, what are the typical operational costs or expenses that you encounter in mobile home parks?   Charlotte: Right, so just like a parking lot operational expenses, including maintaining the ground, whatever is on your park. So for mobile home parks, specifically, it will be tree trimming, lawn care in the common areas, utility lines, if you're on septic, septic tanks, if you aren't public water than water lives, for example, you know, in the winter months, there might be increased cost in water pipes bursting, especially if the winters really cold and roadwork maintaining, you know, just the general peace and quiet in the neighborhood, cosmetic upgrades for the common areas, including adding a new sign, fences, all this stuff. So it's really about you know, making it successful. It's really about making, boosting the pride of ownership in your, in your park. So people don't want to leave and it's really creating this new neighborhood.   Michael: Yeah, that's incredible and so from a purchasing perspective, I mean, I'm curious to get an idea of what some of these purchase prices are, that might make sense for an investor. And then if you're not doing syndication, I mean, can you go to a bank, like, can you go to Wells Fargo and be like, hey, I'm gonna buy this mobile home park, can you give me a loan? What is the what is the financing typically look like?   Charlotte: Right, so for us, we haven't financed our deals, like I said, we either financed through cash or seller financing, but I did seller park, and we've been selling, we're in the process of solving a couple parks. So you know, the one that I sold was my personal park without syndication, but I owned it through seller financing when I bought it, but when I sold it, the buyer got a loan from the local bank without a problem, and we close. So you know, it was a quite a small amount it was in the 100,000 range. So it's a very small loan and that goes to show that banks are getting more comfortable with this idea of a mobile home park financing and especially if you're bigger, they will be more interested. I think it just like any lending product, you have to have this relationship with your bank, and you want to make sure that they they trust you, they trust this asset class, like any commercial loan, yeah…   Michael: Okay and if somebody wanted to go get involved, and invest in mobile home park directly, what are some of the price points that you're seeing?   Charlotte: So it depends on the, it depends on the market, obviously and it really depends on the NOI and the cap rate. So and then the occupancy right, so MT mobile home park is worth a lot less than a mobile home park, mostly occupied just like a parking lot, you know, it indicates your business success. So as far as pricing, you know, where I am, small to medium level mobile, home parks, we're looking at anything from 100,000 to, you know, over 2 million, so it's a big range it depending on how many lots you're wanting, so you'd be expecting to pay it depending on the market 22k to 30k per lot...   Michael: Okay, okay and is it similar to multifamily in thinking about scalability and kind of building a buffer, whereas the more lots you have on a park, the more resilient that park might be to occupancy issues or to repair maintenance issues?   Charlotte: Right, that will be similar. I mean, obviously, the more locks you have the if someone moves out, you wouldn't have to worry about it. But the important thing to remember and something that we have gained knowledge in through our experience, the only mobile home parks is that for small parks, where we get into at a high cap rate, the important thing is to have enough reserves in order to counter anything that is someone moves in, do you have the reserves needed to counter any problems because cash flow sometimes for a small park is not enough to cover like a big accident. That's where your reserves come in. But as long as the overall numbers work, that the small deals are solid, and we look at a lot of 15 Major, 15 Major parameters in determining whether a deal is good or not.   Michael: Okay well, interesting. And I know you're mentioning purchasing at a high cap rate and then of course exiting or refinancing at a lower cap. What are, where are you purchasing? What's your purchase cap on on some of these parks?   Charlotte: So one example would be a park that we're selling right now we actually got offers and we are you know, looking to exit… the offer the purchase contracts you see in progress. So we bought this park at 10.5 cap and we're selling a five cap.     Michael: Holy smokes, when did you buy it?   Charlotte: We bought in 2020, mid 2020. So it's only been 1.9 years less than two years and we are turning around and selling five cat because there are certain things that we do to increase the value of the park and the mark is getting higher obviously so the appreciation to market goes up and also, we just got a really great deal. So it comes to different points. So you have to buy it, negotiate it harder so that you can get a good cap rate. And you have the value add to make to kick it up a notch so that you can make it a better quality asset and you sell it on the natural curve of the asset class, and you sell it a better temporary, so….   Michael: God for you, Charlotte that's amazing.   Charlotte: Thanks.   Michael: That's really exciting.   Charlotte: Thank you.   Michael: So another question for you is when you talking about someone not paying their lot fees, I mean, what do you do if someone's like, yeah, like, I'm not paying my fees anymore? Because they own the home, right, so can you evict them and what does that look like?   Charlotte: You can definitely get them however, as we all know, if you're a real estate evictions, never fun. The only person wins in eviction is the eviction attorney. So it's true, you've spent a lot of money, I've done that before with my single family home, and it was a nightmare. So during the eviction moratorium, we had a lot of issues with tenants not paying because they know that we cannot do anything about it.   So how we handled it is that we are, you know, we would like to be advocates for our tenants, you know, we want to speak for them, we want to make life better for them, instead of just kicking people out, we're fair, right. So what we did during the eviction more term, people couldn't afford rent, to be honest, we reached out on our tenants behalf to different agencies, state authorities on the city authorities, and all kinds of governments on different levels, city county, and state and even local ministries to apply for rental assistance. So all of those rental assistance programs are either applied on behalf of our tenants, where we encourage our tenants to apply for them, that is being advocates for our tenants. So through those programs, we were able to have the income and the tenants were saved. And they were helped, and we got our income. So that's, you know, something we had to handle and you know, in general, if a tenant just doesn't want to pay, so it let's say, you know, they're they don't want to be paying you and no matter how much you want to help them, they just are not paying the walkaway right.   So if they abandon their home, there are several things you can do, we always put it into our lease contract called the first right of refusal, meaning that if they are considering leaving their home, or selling their home, we have the first, the first opportunity to buy this home, once would buy their home, then the home becomes ours, then we sell it to another tenant that passes our vetting process, and then that becomes occupied again, or we encourage our tenant to sell it to another qualified tenant, you know, park, then that, you know, we're a parking lot. So we don't care whose car parks there as long as you pay your lot fee, and then that new tenant will pay us.   And then the third and the worst scenario and the most costly, and I don't encourage anybody to do this, but it is a possibility is that to go through the legal process called the abandonment process. If someone leaves it abandons it, the tenants nowhere to be found. We have we've had death in our parks during COVID. What do we do with it with the abandonment? So you know, there's no estate, you know, assignees, you know, everybody's, you know, they don't have family here. So what do we do? We have to go through the court process in saying, okay, well, maybe the court deems this home abandoned, because no one's there to claim it, then court give it to us, and then we rent it out or give it to someone who sell it. So the third one is very lengthy and expensive. So the first and second approach are much better.   Michael: Okay, interesting. And I don't have like any real concept or frame of reference for what a lot fee a typical lot fee is, and of course, understood that's like asking what is rent for an apartment, it all depends on the market. So in the park that you're selling right now, maybe that'll be a good trial case. What were the lot fees when you bought it? And what were you able to do? Did you move them much when you're when you're selling?   Charlotte: Right, so it depends on the area, right… So for the south east, you're looking at around $150, average…   Michael: Okay, a month?   Charlotte: A month… $100 to one $50 in the Southwest. In the Midwest, and then we don't have that many parks in the outwest. We only have one Arizona, and that's kind of a special one. So we have heavier presence southeast in the Midwest, in the Midwest, you're looking at three to $400 a month, so different markets. So for the one, you know, for the one that we're selling right now is it is within that range. And we did raise the rents to 25 to $50 per year but granted, we did, haven't owned it for that long. We haven't… we own it less than two years, so some brand increases along with some improvements. Yeah, so that's about the average price.   Michael: Okay, interesting. And is there much of a market for like overnight rentals like RV parks as opposed to mobile home parks?   Charlotte: Yeah, RV parks is interesting. We're don't… have any, I think, you know, there's definitely markets for that and they are similar to mobile home parks in a way that it is kind of a parking lot as well. So but we don't own it. We're not too familiar with it. But a lot of cities you know, they don't allow your mobile home park to become an RV park, there's a strict zoning regulations and you can't just pull an RV in your mobile home park. It's meant for mobile home parks non RV parks. So that's, that's about all I know about RV is I'm not sure you know, much more, but I think I would say, you know, to add on to my previous point a lot rents is interesting, because, you know, 101- $150 is the average here in the southeast and what we have to do when we look at a deal is compare this lot rent, with whatever other housing products in town, for example, if the apartment building is also renting for a 150, then nobody wants to go to your mobile home park, if they could move to a an apartment building, same with house, you know, buying a house or mortgage. So you want to make sure whatever, you know, we're in affordable housing, because it's an inexpensive way to for housing for lodging, so you want your lot rent to be at least $400 below what they would have been paying with other housing products.   Michael: Okay, and so that's your metric kind of throughout?   Charlotte: Yes.   Michael: Got it, got it. Interesting, interesting. Well, surely, if you could recommend knowing what you know, now, to people that want to get more involved, or that want to learn more about mobile home park investing, where should they go?   Charlotte: Well, they should go to me, not to be served self-serving.   Michael: Ohh, I love it…   Charlotte: They should come to well, I have other don't worry, I have other recommendations, I'm not just going to be self-serving on this episode.   Michael: But no, it's great… Charlotte: Just go to our website at https://www.johnscreekcapital.com/ and fill out the contact form. Talk to me, I usually respond within a couple hours and I think other resources, I highly recommend would be Frank Ralph's, a mobile home, Park University, I've learned myself, learned a lot myself from there and there's just a lot of good forums, a lot of good books and his boot camps, and lots of investors, if you want to invest, you know, actively by yourself, you know, we take passive investors, but if you want to do everything yourself, here's website and these boot camps will be a great start, I never attended myself, but I've heard a lot of good things about them and yeah…   Michael: Okay, fantastic. And from a passive investing standpoint, I know, you said it's kind of a blue ocean, and you think the returns are fantastic. So what kind of returns have your investors been seeing over the last couple years?   Charlotte: Right, so when we started in 2020, and now we have, you know, let's just use the oldest park that we have our overall returns today, it has been 22%. And not per year, but 22%, to date, and the one that we're selling right now, we are offering, you know, we originally usually, with our deals, we usually offer in at least a 15% internal rate of return over the whole time and with this one, we are, we offered I think 15 to 19% internal rate of return over three years, and we're exiting at two years, with the offers we're getting right now, if we're to go through, you'll be far exceeding 19% IRR will be in the range of 21 to 22, so that is the performance and that's that's been the track record there.   But I think, you know, it's a process where the first year is usually on the lower side, though, we've been achieving averaging 6%, around 6% for the first year, so which is pretty good for home parks and, and then goes up and up and up in the preceding years, and then the one that you know, our preferred returns, sorry, preferred way to return is 8%. So and then after, after that will be followed by a waterfall just like any, you know, pretty standard syndication structure. So, so that's the performance and that's, that's kind of our structure.   Michael: Oh my gosh, Charlotte, this has been so insightful. Any other thoughts that you want to share with our listeners before we let you out of here?   Charlotte: Oh, I think that is pretty much you know, you asked a lot of good questions.   But one message I do want to deliver is that we we are extremely proud and excited to be part of the solution to affordable housing crisis. There is a big market out there and I also would like to share a personal story of how I came about so I you know, I came to this country at age 16, I did not come with my parents or anybody, I didn't have any friends so I pretty much came to this new country new land to start a new life but I saw vast you know, opportunities there back where I was from in China up until I was 16…. I, we could not own properties. There was you know, you have you only had was communist is still is a communist regime. So you have to lease it from the government for 70 years. So I was always fascinated with the idea of owning real estate, so that's why that's what I'm doing today. So I think it's important to when you look at a company like Johns Creek capital, looking at the founders profile, and their stories, and that's my story and that's kind of where I came about and I've gone through some challenges in my life, and which gives me the resilience to carry forward, a firm like Johns Creek capital, and my business partner as well. He has even more interesting story but I am the face of the company. So that's why I'm here talking about my story. But someday he'll, he'll tell my story as well. So that's one last thing.   Michael: Well, Charlotte, thank you so much, again, for sharing your story and for coming on and imparting so much wisdom to all of our listeners and viewers. And I'm so excited to stay in touch with you and see what Johns Creek capital goes from here.   Charlotte: Thank you so much, thank you so much for having me.   Michael: You're welcome. Take care, talk soon.   Charlotte: Thanks, you too. Bye.   Michael: Okay, well, that was our episode a big thank you to Charlotte for coming on the show. Really, really interesting. And we always joke that these episodes are very self-serving. So I get to ask all the questions that have been on my mind anyhow, but I hope that you got some value out of it too.   As always, if you liked the episode, please feel free to leave us a rating or review wherever you get your podcasts and we look forward to seeing on the next one. Happy investing

These are all great and super simple. And you can also do art in all of them. I recommend getting water bottle stickers for the sticker one but you can probably use regular ones too. I didn't go into too much detail about all of them but that's not really necessary seeing as they are super fun, quick, and simple. If you enjoy these slightly more structured episodes, tell me! You cabin do so in a review, a comment on Spotify, or in a voice message.(link below) I hope you enjoyed this and I hope you try these out. Bye! https://anchor.fm/greta-and-theta/message --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/greta-and-theta/message

1:1 Leadership Coaching – Work with me to up-level your leadership skills and excel even more! Bye burnout! Hello achievements! https://www.kfaconsulting.org/coachingwithkayla GLOW GETTERS PODCAST INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/glowgetterspodcast KAYLA'S NEWSLETTER: Get weekly updates and leadership extras in my inbox! Listen on my website and find more leadership lessons like this one!

Greg's Garage Pod with Co-Host Jason Pridmore P/B Bike911.com - A motorcycle racing Pod about MotoGP, MotoAmerica, and World Superbike, Pro Motocross, American Flat Track, Supercross, and more. If you'd like to support the channel here is our Patreon link: https://www.patreon.com/gregsgaragetv In this episode, Co-Hosts Greg White and Jason Pridmore talk:  ARAI News -  MotoAmerica's Pit Lane Challenge for $16,000!?! Garrett Gerloff tests with other WorldSBK Yamaha's, but how did he fare?  MotoGP - The 2022 season kicked off in Qatar over the weekend. Find out what the boys saw in all three classes.  MotoGP - Win and ARAI Corsair-X by playing MotoGP Fantasy with us! And it is free. When you register to play join our league. https://fantasy.motogp.com/leagues/join  Use this code in the search! 3X2LNEY5 Daytona 200 - The Daytona 200 is this week! The boys talk about who is in the race, who will be fast, and how many might be in the lead draft. Also, this kicks off the 2022 Championship for MotoAmerica's Mission King of the Baggers, and Twins Cup!  Supercross - The boys discuss Daytona. It was something to behold.    Supercross Fantasy - Supercross Fantasy is a disaster for GDub. JP... well, you'll have to find out.  The podcast has two leagues! One for the broad audience and one for the Patreon supporters. ARAI will provide a prize for the winner of each fantasy league.  Join us!! Supercross Fantasy: https://pulpmxfantasy.com/leagues/gregsgaragepodcast RM Fantasy Link: https://www.rmfantasysx.com/ Bye, Bye  Social Media Links: Jason's Instagram - @pridmore43 Greg's Instagram - @gregwhitetv Jason's Twitter - @jp43 Greg's Twitter - @gregwhite Greg's Youtube - GregsGarageTV

If you own a business, you are likely either a visionary or an operator. Entrepreneurs/visionary types are risk-takers. They innovate and lead a business with their ideas and vision. Operators are analytical and organized and solve problems within the business. This important dynamic between the visionary & the operator personality types keeps a business balanced and running. Property management growth expert, Jason Hull explores the relationship between visionaries and operators and their roles in a business. You'll Learn… [01:02] Intro: Visionary vs. Operator [01:34] What is a Visionary? What Makes Them Different From an Operator? [03:22] Visionaries Must be Allowed to Lead [04:23] Giving Operators the Right Problems to Solve [06:20] What if You are Both an Operator and an Entrepreneur? [08:23] Surrounding Yourself with a Team that Supports You [10:21] Another Type of Team Member: BDMs [11:18] What to do in a Toxic Business Partnership  [12:28] The Visionary and the Operator Together: a Magical Pair Tweetables “Visionaries are big-picture oriented. They're dreamers, they're creative, risk-takers, innovators. Whereas operators-- operators are these really detail-oriented, meticulous people.” “Giving the operator correct vision gives them the right problem to solve.” “Running a business is risky. It requires innovation. It requires creativity. These are the skills of the visionary.” “The visionary will lead with vision, and the operator in a healthy state will ensure that that vision is always going to get accomplished, which is super important.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Welcome DoorGrow Hackers to the #DoorGrowShow. 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.   [00:00:39] At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and their owners. We want to transform the 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.    [00:01:02] So today's topic everybody. We're going to be talking about visionary versus operator. So I get a lot of clients coming to me that are visionaries. And so, I want to get into this dynamic of the visionary versus the operator, and there's some important ideas to understand around this because it's a really common partnership or relationship that exists in business. It can be very symbiotic and it can be very helpful to have this relationship in a business.    [00:01:34] And so let's talk about the visionary. So what is a visionary? Visionary is the typical entrepreneur personality type. The visionary is somebody that has, you know, vision. They have these ideas of what they want to accomplish. They are usually driven. They're usually a bit more sales-oriented.    [00:01:52] They're a bit more risk-oriented than most people on the planet. They're comfortable taking on risks. They're comfortable doing the work. They're comfortable coming up with new ideas and innovating. They change quickly. They move quickly. They want to do new things. They experiment... they're driven, risk takers. You get the idea.    [00:02:13] These are the typical, stereotypical sort of entrepreneur personality type. And the operator is very different than that. Right? So, and to contrast these: visionaries are big-picture oriented. They're dreamers, they're creative, risk-takers, innovators. Whereas operators-- operators are these really detail-oriented, meticulous people.    [00:02:35] They focus on the details instead of so much the big picture. They're grounded. They focus on keeping things grounded. They're not like theoretical and big plan, this guy dreams... They're like practical and grounded. They're meticulous. They're cautious. And they are focused on implementation rather than so much innovation.    [00:02:56] And so visionaries, you need operators, right? You know, you might have them as a personal or an executive assistant. They might then graduate to being an operations assistant-- might graduate to being an operations manager-- maybe eventually director of operations-- and then maybe the VP of operations --and maybe even the COO of your company, where they may be dealing with some financials and some other things that you wouldn't trust anybody else with. Right?    [00:03:22] It's important in understanding this relationship between these two contrasting, different personality types-- and this is really important for the operator to understand, is that the visionary must be allowed to lead. The visionary has to lead because they're going to move the business forward.    [00:03:40] Running a business is risky. It requires innovation. It requires creativity. These are the skills of the visionary. but they are a dynamic duo, right? The visionary will lead with vision and the operator in a healthy state will ensure that that vision is always going to get accomplished, which is super important.    [00:03:59] A lot of times, visionaries might be trying to do it all themselves, and they wonder why things end up staying on their to-do list forever, why they feel stuck, why they have so much frustration, why they aren't able to just get stuff done. And if there's all these things you've had on your to-do list for way too long, it's probably because you're a visionary and you need badly some sort of operator in the business.   [00:04:23] Now the operator has some inherent challenges. The operator needs vision, and it's important that you give the operator the right problem to solve because if the operator doesn't have the right problem to solve, their usual default problem that they work on is how should we do this? How can we avoid this? Is this safe? Keep the business safe and keep things comfortable and make sure everything is done perfectly before we take action. And so they're always looking for the flaw, the problem they're super critical. A lot of times and they're always looking for the flaw in whatever your vision and things are.   [00:04:55] So what's important to understand, visionaries, is you need to give operators the right problem to work on. So instead of the problem of, "should we do this?" And "what's wrong with this,? And "where's the flaw?" You need to give them a different problem to work on saying, "this is the goal. How do we get this accomplished?" [00:05:15] "How can we make this possible? How can we make this work? How can we hit this target? How can we make more money? How can we do this?" Instead of, "should we?" or "why?" Or, you know, some of these kinds of things sometimes, right?    [00:05:29] So, giving the operator correct vision gives them the right problem. ‘Cause they are really good problem solvers. They're really good at solving these problems. And if given the right problem, "how can we make this work? How could we do this?" It shifts the brain out of, "should we do this?" Or "Why?" You know-- which your goal is to get this done-- shifts them to thinking and helping you figure out how to accomplish this.   [00:05:50] Now a lot of lawyers, accountants, really detail-oriented people might have that kind of personality type. And so a lot of times you need to give them the right problem to solve, because they're going to try and keep you from doing things or tell you don't do this, or this might not be safe. And if you know that this vision and down in your intuition says, 'this is what we're going to do, this is what I want to do.' [00:06:10] You give them: this is the problem I want you to work on. I already know I want to do this. Help them figure out how to do this... very different problem to give operators.    [00:06:20] Alright, now, forcing non entrepreneurial operators. Cause there are some of you operators out there that are also the entrepreneur and you run a business. And you're kind of a unicorn, you're a little bit unique and different, but forcing a non-entrepreneurial operator to lead and to push and to have drive is often very uncomfortable for them. And it's often very ineffective. There's going to be a lot of friction. They'll experience massive resistance to doing new things, taking risks, and they shouldn't be pushed to do sales or marketing or outreach or prospecting, or to be the face of the company in the long run.   [00:07:03] So if you are the operator personality type running your property management business, you may want to attract or get around some people. So operators should not be over sales, marketing, BDM-- business development management. They should not be over that typically because they're going to focus on conservation and conserving and doing less and spending less money and not experimenting and doing things safer typically.   [00:07:29] So your head of sales and marketing would be maybe their equal, not their subordinate. You do not want to put your operations person over them. Everybody may report metrics to the operator, but the operators should not be their boss. They should not be their supervisor or superior. If you have a head of director or head of sales and marketing or a BDM.   [00:07:50] Now, what if you are that operator entrepreneur? So let's talk about that. First, you may not actually be that person. You may just enjoy creating operational systems. I enjoy that. I love creating the systems and building out operational stuff, but I don't love doing the data entry. I don't love running those systems. I don't want to run the meetings. I don't want to run the process, but I like building out sometimes those processes or the mechanics or the mechanisms 'cause that's creative work for me. That's visionary, creative work for me.    [00:08:23] Now, if you actually are this operator personality type and you run a business, you may have struggled to grow your business because of that. So you may need to surround yourself with visionaries to get ideas. This is why some of my clients that are operator personality types, work with me as a. It helps expose them to new ideas. It helps stretch them, move them into the things that they wouldn't normally think of doing. It's kind of like, I get to be the visionary for them in some regard.    [00:08:50] Or you may need to go get a business partner or somebody that can fill that role if you really feel that that's a deficiency. So getting a visionary co-mentor can help... getting somebody else. Now you may also want to-- just a tip-- is just practice feeling, right? Because usually operators are very in their head. They're very mental. They're avoiding their feelings. They're trying to avoid feelings by using logic, which doesn't really work.   [00:09:17] The only thing you can do with a feeling is to feel that feeling. So my recommendation is don't be mentally avoiding feelings, be present, get in your body and feel those feelings because once you're comfortable feeling uncomfortable feelings... Once you can deal with that, you can move to a higher level of capacity as an entrepreneur.   [00:09:39] You will also need to learn to build the right culture and attract people that you can actually trust to let go of control to. A lot of times, you want to hold onto things and control everything and you don't feel safe letting go. They don't really share your values and you're never going to trust somebody unless they really share your values.   [00:09:58] You won't trust them to do things the way you would. You won't trust them to work with people the way you would. You won't trust your clients to talk to them. You won't trust that they'll make great decisions because they don't share your values and you cannot create values in people. It's hard wired in. They get their values from their religion, their parents, their upbringing, the culture they grew up in.   [00:10:20] They have those kinds of set. They've made decisions long ago, lots of little decisions that led to their values. So you need to find people that are good at culture fit or value fit for you. You may also want to get a BDM. So a lot of the operator entrepreneurs really struggle in the sales outreach, business development sort of category. That stuff's not fun. Like making a cold call sounds really uncomfortable for a lot of them, for example, right? They just know they're not good at it. They're not a closer, they don't have the bite, the hunger, the drive. They don't feel comfortable following up on somebody three times in the same day. They're like, "that sounds mean, or uncomfortable for them. Right?   [00:11:01] So if that's you, you may need a BDM or you may want to partner with a visionary I had mentioned before. Or at the very least, at least maybe a sales assistant that you can groom to be a BDM, which I've done a podcast episode on previously, which is a great episode. You should listen to it if that's of interest to you.   [00:11:18] All right. So what if you have an operator business partner? You're the visionary. And you're both equal partners in this business? This can be a really difficult, uncomfortable dynamic. If you want to grow and you have vision and they don't trust you, then that relationship is now toxic.    [00:11:38] If the operator doesn't trust you-- if you've destroyed trust with your experiments and your risks, and they don't trust you anymore, then to, to move the business forward, either you need to rebuild that trust or the relationship needs to end, because it's toxic. You cannot grow when you have an equal partner that's able to make decisions in the business, and they're saying, "I don't want to do experiments or do something uncomfortable or hire a coach or work with DoorGrow, or do anything that feels expensive or risky or new... I'm comfortable with where things are right now.    [00:12:11] So if you have somebody that's growth oriented and somebody that's comfort oriented and wants safety and certainty, and they're equal partners, you may have to dissolve that relationship. This is why I say the visionary must be the one that leads. This is super important that the visionary must be the one that is allowed to have leadership and to lead in this organization. They have to lead. Visionary has to be allowed to lead in this organization.   [00:12:38] So the visionary plus the operator: so if everything's working out, then you will be stronger together. This is a magical relationship. Somebody's creating the vision and somebody making sure everything gets done. It takes a huge load off the visionary entrepreneur's plate. And the operator has the right problems to solve and the right things to do, and they know what to do in order to win and what to figure out. And they're in the right role. And everybody is going to be happier in that type of business.    [00:13:10] If you're in a business that doesn't have a good operator, then a lot of things will fall through the cracks. There'll be a lot of things that aren't getting done. There'll be a lot of chaos. A lot of confusion there'll be constant changes in direction. Goals will change. Goals will be too big and unattainable. You're not connected to reality in the business and a business without vision or without a visionary will feel like it's not moving forward. It won't feel like there's growth. It won't feel exciting. It won't feel like there's something to look forward to in the business.   [00:13:40] And it will feel just safe, comfortable, and you're not gonna have a lot of growth. Right? So my hope is that those of you listening have self-identified: are you more of a visionary? Or are you more of an operator? And what do you need in order to get to the next level? And I hope this is helpful for those of you that are running property management businesses.   [00:14:00] If you want to move your business forward, if you want to grow your company, if you could use a little more vision or you could use some operational systems and to learn how to attract and build the right team, the right planning system, the right meeting structures, the right, systems in order to scale your business operationally... To support your operator or the right sales-related things to support your BDM...    [00:14:27] there is nothing better out there than the DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind. Our clients are crushing it with this stuff right now. And we have scripts for your BDMs. We have programs that are far more effective than what most people are doing to grow their business that are focused on generating more warm leads, more trust, more relationships that have like an 80- 90% close rate-- really effective.   [00:14:52] And we also have systems that are better than EOS or Traction or all these systems that exist out there we call DoorGrow OS. We also have a really brilliant hiring system called DoorGrow ATS so you can attract and retain and have A-players in your business and make sure everybody's on track, everybody's accountable and you have no hiders in your business.   [00:15:13] And so if you are interested in this, get on a call with our team, check us out at doorgrow.com and we'd love to support you. And we will also give you a free training with 7-- there's a couple bonus ones-- maybe 9 Frameworks, in which you can learn some of the secrets to growing and scaling your business and different lenses to view your business so that you can make your business even more effective. And we will give that training to you for free and explain the program and everything in it. And we would love to do that for you. So reach out to us at DoorGrow, and, until next time to our mutual growth.   [00:15:47] Bye everyone.   [00:15:48] You just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. 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!    [00:16:14] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: 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 doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe.   [00:16:35] Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

Training your ear takes practice - in any language! Anne and Pilar discuss what it's like to approach bilingual voice over in today's VO industry, from understanding culture and dialects to managing translation and delivery styles. Adaptation and observation are key to success as a bilingual talent, and it's important to keep a finely-tuned ear open to understanding language rather than just speaking it. Tune in to hear tips and information from a veteran performer… More at: https://www.voboss.com/bilingual-vo-101 Transcript >> It's time to take your business to the next level, the BOSS level! These are the premiere Business Owner Strategies and Successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a BOSS, a VO BOSS! Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza. Pilar: Hola, BOSS Voces. Bienvenidos al podcast con Anne Ganguzza y Pilar Uribe. Anne: Hey everyone. Welcome to the VO BOSS podcast. I'm your host Anne Ganguzza, and I'm honored today to bring back very special guest co-host to Pilar Uribe. Pilar, how are you today? Pilar: Hola, Anne. Cómo estás?   Anne: See, I need to start learning from you. Hola. Hola. So I am so excited to have you on this podcast because first of all, your journey is amazing, and our journeys are always ever evolving, right? And -- Pilar: Yes, oh yes. Oh, absolutely. Constantly. Anne: There's so much that our podcast listeners can learn from you. So I'm, I'm excited to continue that conversation. And I want to talk today about bilingual, what it means to be a bilingual voiceover actor in today's industry. And, you know, back in the day, I grew up in a very small town, and I was never really exposed to anyone that spoke a different language. And my exposure to let's say another language was my high school that said you can take French or Spanish, you know, for as many semesters as you'd like. And so I picked French, which I now think maybe I should have picked Spanish because I feel like that would be really useful to me today. But yeah, I was not exposed -- and it's one thing to be exposed to the language, but I was not really exposed to the culture. And I think it's so important for us to talk about that because as business owners, we serve many different communities. And it's so important for us to understand the community that we are serving and to be able to speak to them in the way that they're accustomed to and be able to serve their needs the best that we can. Pilar: Yes, this is very true, Anne. You know, I was born in New York, and both my parents were from Colombia. So that was all I knew because I spoke Spanish at home until I went to school in New York, and then I spoke English. And then when we, when we got home, we would speak only Spanish. And so every Sunday, my mother would make a traditional meal called ajiaco, which is this wonderful soup with chicken and corn and sour cream and chives, and it's like, it's so delicious. And we would listen to Colombian music. And so I grew up steeped in the culture. So it was like, there was stuff at home -- Anne: Right. Pilar: -- what we did at home. And then there was school. Anne: School. Pilar: And -- Anne: Where did you learn English then. Pilar: I learned English in kindergarten. Anne: Got it. Pilar: Well, I guess it started in nursery school 'cause I went to this playgroup where there were kids from all over. And then in kindergarten, I went to Convent of the Sacred Heart. And I think there was one other person who spoke Spanish. And of course, you know, when you're a kid, you catch on really quickly. So there was like maybe one or two people, one school friend, she spoke German, somebody else spoke Spanish, but that was also the custom of the day, which is that you learned that -- French was what was offered. I don't remember, at least at Sacred Heart, I don't remember Spanish being offered. When I switched schools, when I went to Spence across the street, they did have Spanish, but I mean, I already knew it. Anne: Right. Pilar: And so in New York, at least there was really no Spanish culture per se. You know, every so often of course I would hear Spanish being spoken, but it was in pockets. And so it was my home life, and then there was school life, and it was almost like never the twain shall meet. And so I, I grew up with a very Hispanic background because my parents wanted to give that to us, but I didn't see it reflected outside. That wasn't really until much later that actually it's, you know, you started seeing it, at least, you know, where I grew up. And so of course, my family, we would have -- lots of friends would come over, and they would speak Spanish. And so that was very fluid. But for example, I know friends who, whose parents were, they were not interested in teaching their, their children Spanish. So they have a very Latin sounding name and they don't understand Spanish. Thank God that my mother wouldn't let us speak English when we got home, because my career is basically been bilingual my entire life. Anne: So then, if I can ask, 'cause I've, I've looked this up multiple times, and I'm seeing some kind of different answers in different places. So then should I refer to the community as Hispanic or Latino or what is the difference there, if you wouldn't mind? I've got multiple places that kind of say they're the same, but yet they're different or they're mutually exclusive. Pilar: So it's, it's really strange. And I think us Hispanics, we don't even know. The word Hispanic -- I mean, when I was growing up, you were a Latina. A Latina was just, you were a Latina, which means you were from Latin America. Anne: Right, it referred to a place. Yes. Pilar: Yeah, exactly. So then Hispanic came along. If I go and I look at the term in Wikipedia, it says the term Hispanic refers to people, cultures, or countries related to Spain, the Spanish language, or hispanidad. So it embraces, because obviously we can't forget about Spain. Anne: Right. Pilar: So it embraces Spain obviously -- Anne: Right. Pilar: -- and the Americas where Spanish is spoken. And so Latinx is something that has not been around for that long. And it has to do -- see, for me what I understand it, 'cause I was like, what is this Latinx? 'Cause I was -- I would always hear of it for people who were gender neutral. Anne: That's what I -- Pilar: Who were gender fluid. But that doesn't mean that everybody who is a Latina is a Latinx. Anne: Correct. Pilar: So that's where it gets tricky and where people kind of sit there and they go, well, how do I refer to myself as? And so, you know, I'm an American because I was born in this country. Anne: Right. Pilar: And I speak Spanish. Anne: Right. Pilar: So for me, I would say I'm Hispanic because that's basically just the way that I referred to myself my entire life. The Latinx thing is something that's sort of come about in the last five, six, seven years, I think, which is fine. But for me, ultimately, I'm a Latina. Yo soy latina -- Anne: Right. Pilar: -- and that's kind of -- you know, for Americans, I'm Hispanic, but I'm a Latina because that's how I grew up, una latina. Anne: And it's Latina, because you're female, is that correct? Pilar: Yeah. Anne: And then Latino, is that -- Pilar: Yes. But then sometimes -- I know it's so bizarre -- Anne: And Latinx might be inclusive of non-binary or -- Pilar: Exactly. Non-binary. Anne: Got it. Pilar: That's exactly what it is, but because the Latino -- and because we have that differential in Spanish, because a Latino can also be male or female because I've had -- los latinos is like -- Anne: Right. Pilar: -- that's like everybody. Anne: Right, right. Pilar: You know, like, that's like so -- people just go overboard with trying to define the labels, you know? Anne: I guess, I guess it's just safe to assume that it's a personal matter, how you'd like to be referred to, right, for each person -- Pilar: Agreed. Anne: -- then. Okay. Pilar: Agreed. Anne: All right. Pilar: And I think it's kind of like everything goes. Anne: Yeah. Pilar: I mean, it's not -- well, at least for me, you know. I can't speak for everyone. Anne: Well, it's good to know because I, you know, I had questions I'm like, well, I'm not quite sure because again, when I grew up, I really was not exposed to really many people that had different cultures. I remember when I moved from my small town in upstate New York to New Jersey, I met so many people with so many different cultures, and I was like, this could have been good for me back in when I was growing up. But anyway, so now the question is, you speak Spanish, but there's so many different dialects, right? Pilar: Yes. Anne: And there's so -- many people need different dialects depending on again, what group you're speaking to. And I say group meaning buyer. If you're doing a voiceover and somebody hires you for that, they usually request a specific dialect of Spanish. So what are the different dialects and what, what are the differences between them? Pilar: Okay. So if you're talking, if, you know, if we start with Spain, which is [?], the Spaniards have a very, very different way of speaking. And so it's really interesting because Spaniards are some of the most lovely people, but the way they speak, it's almost like they're shouting at you. So [speaking Spanish] and so everything is just all, everything is always screaming. And that, I just said a bad word, by the way. Anne: Oh. Pilar: But you didn't understand, which is good. Anne: See? Pilar: So yeah, but it's, it's very, very guttural and it's, it's hard to explain. It is very, it's very tough sounding. So that's Span -- that's the Spaniards. Anne: Okay. So does that mean if somebody hires you to do some international work, and you needed to speak Spanish that was directed at people in Spain, would you speak in that delivery? Pilar: Probably, because I actually have been called to do that. Anne: Okay. Pilar: And also of course, and this is, again, nobody really knows because this is just conjecture, but the Spaniards, they have, they have a lisp. So supposedly, and some peoples, historians debate on this, but I want to say it was Phillip II or Ferdinand, I can't remember, but one of the kings had a lisp. So to cover, all the courtiers started lisping to cover his lisp. So instead of saying cerca, I'm near, estoy "therca," estoy therca. And then like canción, a Latin American would say, I'm singing a song, estoy cantando una canción, in Spain you would say estoy cantando una "canthión." It's the th instead of ss -- Anne: Right, right. Pilar: -- just for that particular C. It's not all the time. Anne: So there's Spanish from, people from Spain. Pilar: Spanish, Spain, right. Then they call this neutral. So neutral has a variety of connotations because neutral Spanish is actually, and this is something that I heard many years ago, when they say neutral Spanish, they actually want you to sound more Mexican. Because actually in terms of buyers, the largest minority of Latins is the Mexican -- Anne: Mexican. That makes sense. Pilar: So I want to say it's 89 million, but that might be an old figure. And so the Mexicans have a very distinct accent, if you go to different regions of Mexico. The reason why they ask for it is that it's a flatter way of speaking because when you start hearing different regionalisms, there's a lot of lilting. There's a lot of (singsong) and there's a lot more accents. The Mexican is pretty close in terms of being the flat, which is why they ask for it. Anne: They call that the -- Pilar: They call it -- Anne: Neutral? Pilar: Neutral Spanish, yes. Anne: Neutral Spanish. Pilar: But that's kind of code for -- it's, it's kind of more tilting towards the Mexican. Anne: Right. Because of the larger population, I'm assuming. Pilar: Yes. Anne: That's what -- Pilar: Yeah. And it's the consumer, right? Exactly. But here's the funny part. And again, the VO BOSS listeners might disagree, but the accent in Colombia, the way Colombians speak, is probably some of the best Spanish in all of Latin America. It just happens to be that way. I'm not speaking out of line. Anne: Well listen, I will tell you, I have to tell you this because when I worked in education, my boss for a good 18 years, he was from Colombia. So when he would get angry, and he would kind of go off into a different language -- Pilar: Yeah. Anne: -- it was very interesting. It was, I don't know it was lovely actually, but again, I never knew what he was saying. He was probably saying bad words, if he was angry at me or, or whatever. But it's interesting because he had an accent for 18 years, and he was, gosh, he was one of my, one of the best bosses I'd ever had. I mean, it was like half of my life that I worked for him. So I got to know him from his accent in English, but didn't ever really hear him speaking Spanish too much, except for once in a while, when he would talk to maybe his wife that would call or whatever, if I overheard him on the phone. Pilar: Yeah. Anne: Or if he got angry. Pilar: Yeah. But so Colombian Spanish is grammatically, it's probably the closest to Spanish from Spain. Anne: Okay. But then I imagine there's different regions in Colombia. Right? Pilar: Totally. Anne: Okay. And then you'd have like a different dialect for each. Pilar: Right, because you've got like, for example, the coast, um, [speaking Spanish] it's kind of like Southern, it's like the equivalent of Southern, it's and it's very, uh, it's, it's a great like people from Baidupar (?), [speaking Spanish] and then you've got Baices (?), [speaking Spanish]. There's a beautiful accent from Medellín. And then the region from Bogotá. There's all kinds. Anne: Yeah. Pilar: Where my family was from, Ibagué, it's just, it's a very funny kind of accent. They're all very different. And so that is important because a lot of the times when you are auditioning for something, they're going to ask you, because I get asked all the time. So you've got, like, let's say you've got Colombia, you've got Venezuela, and Venezuela, their accent is different, but it's more in line with the, because like for example, Caracas is on the coast. And so there, that accent is a coastal accent, and it's very close to the coastal Colombian accent from like a Baidupar, from the coast of Colombia, which is closer, not the same thing, but it's closer to like central America. So central America, you get into Dominican, which is very different. They speak at like 30,000 miles a minute. I mean, it is so crazy. You can't understand them. Anne: So then, may I ask, when you get an audition, right, are they specifying the dialect or? Pilar: Yes, yes -- Anne: Okay -- Pilar: -- now they are, now they are. Anne: -- all the time now there, because before this, I mean, bilingual has always been a thing, but I think lately it just was assumed that Spanish was maybe one or two different dialects. And, and I know for a fact, when I do a lot of telephony work, they would specifically request certain dialects of Spanish that they would want on the prompts. And so I think probably even now, right? So if you are not familiar with a specific dialect, do you go and study that before you audition? Or how does it, how does that work? Pilar: Yes, yes. Anne: Okay. Pilar: I actually have a coach who is -- Anne: Oh, okay. Pilar: -- she's great. She has, she knows all kinds of, I mean, dialects from all over the world. So and so I'll, um, I have some, some things that I, that I recorded with her. And so I'll just, I'll go to my notes there because even something proximity wise -- Anne: Sure. Pilar: -- Cuba and Puerto Rico, there's a very big difference with the accents. And I've been asked to do a Puerto Rican accent, and I've been asked to a Cuban accent. Those are the two that I get called to, sometimes Mexican. But a lot of the times what they're looking for, what I'll do, for example, when I'm doing an audition, and they're looking, they're asking to do the neutral Spanish, is that I will tone down. I will be very aware when I'm speaking of my Spanish, because I do have some regionalisms in my Spanish, and people who know, who have an ear and speak Spanish, native speakers -- Anne: Absolutely. Pilar: -- they will hear it immediately, so I can disguise it. It's practice. That's basically, it's like, if you want to put on a Southern accent, a Southern accent from Alabama is very different -- Anne: Oh yeah. Pilar: -- from a Southern accent from Virginia. Anne: Exactly. Pilar: So it's just a matter of being aware of what they are, and it starts in the mouth. So it's, it's great to get together with a coach. And for example, when, when they ask you for a British accent, and they're asking for an upper-class British accent, versus they're asking for a Scottish accent, 'cause a lot -- Anne: Sure. Pilar: -- you know, I get, I get those kinds of things for like video games. You just have to be aware, you practice, you get online. I actually did a, um, an ADR for a movie that came out, and I didn't know the language. So I got hired and he said, you speak Spanish. And I had worked with this looping director before and I said, yeah. And he said, okay, this is, this is a little different, you're going to have to practice. And I thought, okay, great, wonderful. So I start practicing, and it's this thing called Nahuatl, which is from a region in Mexico. And it's not really something -- it's a language, but it's not something that is spoken often at all. Anne: Right. Pilar: And this was for a big Marvel movie. So I started going online. There's very few videos, but I get ahold of them. I find somebody who speaks Nahuatl. And I speak to her and I realized this language has nothing to do with Spanish. And I'm like, uh-oh. So I literally phonetically had to learn phrases. And, and we had that all prepared because the looping director gave us time, but it was like, oh wow. This is a completely different language. This is not Spanish at all, but it is spoken in -- Anne: Spanish. Pilar: -- Mexico. Anne: Yeah, exactly. Wow. Pilar: So yeah, it's limitless amounts of variations. And if you're a native speaker of Spanish, you have to be very aware that you're not dealing with just one -- Anne: Right. Pilar: -- the way your voice sounds. Anne: Exactly. Pilar: You have to be able to adapt. Anne: Right. And not only just in the sound of it, right, or the accent of it, but I would say performance wise as well, right? There's styles in which people speak their language. Pilar: Yes. One of the things that I get called to do is to do a spot, and I have to do it in English and Spanish. And so first of all, Spanish is always longer. It always takes double the amount of time because we talk a lot. So double the amount of time what I say in English in Spanish. Anne: Oh, right, because you talk a lot, meaning the words to translate are twice as many. Pilar: Totally. Yeah. Anne: Okay. And you call it the bilingual two-step, I saw on your website or somewhere I saw that. Pilar: Yeah. Because it really, it takes literally double the amount of time to say it in Spanish as it does in English. And so Spanish is a beautiful language, and it's very descriptive. Anne: So I don't mean to interrupt -- Pilar: Go for it. Anne: -- I'm just thinking like, what if somebody that's not familiar, right, says, okay, I've got a 15-second or 30-second spot in English and oh, by the way, can you do it in Spanish? I assume that presents issues because you might have to do it much faster or you might have to maybe make some different changes and because you can't fit all the words in, is that correct, or? Pilar: Yes. So I'm much more -- I didn't use to be vocal, and I'm much more gently -- and obviously you have to do this in a democratic kind of a way, so you don't ruffle people's feathers. Anne: Right. Pilar: And they were aware of that. You know, copywriters are aware of all that today, which they didn't use to be, that they have to shorten it because otherwise you end up sounding like a chipmunk -- Anne: Right, right. Pilar: -- trying to get it out. And also the way a Latina like me expresses herself in Spanish is completely different from the way I'm going to say it in English. And it's the same copy. Anne: Now, how, performance-wise, if I might ask? Like, so you might say it in Spanish differently, would you be, I don't know, more excited or more dynamic or is -- what's typical? Pilar: I think it's in the way, the way the words are said, it's just different, because, because the actual sounds -- Anne: -- they go together differently. Pilar: Yeah. They go together differently. Okay. So here's something -- let me just see if I have it in English and Spanish. Okay. So this is -- I did something like this and it's, it's an Amtrak spot. "Did you think of the first person you're going to go visit?" Okay. That's in English. I'm just making that up. "¿Ya piensas de quien va ser la primera persona que vas a visitar?" So it's like two completely different people. Anne: It is. Pilar: And I don't know how to explain that, but -- Anne: It is. Pilar: -- it is. Anne: But that brings up a question, which I've always wondered about. So let's just say you have, you're doing a live directed session -- Pilar: Yeah. Anne: -- and the person that's directing you doesn't know Spanish. You have to know, right, you have to know the delivery. Pilar: Oh yeah. Anen: You have to know the nuance or does it happen that you don't always have, you know what I mean, a Spanish speaking, if you're doing Spanish and English or -- what's that like? Pilar: No, generally, actually, no, whenever I do live directed sessions, there's always somebody -- they may not speak it fluently, but they completely understand the language. Anne: Oh, okay. That's good to know. Pilar: You always have somebody there who knows. Anne: That's good to know. Pilar: But as a bilingual speaker, I feel like it's my job to make it easier for them. So I try to -- when they ask me and they're like trying to fish for a word, like, I don't like jump in, but I try to help them out, because it's difficult. Like I've done this my whole life. You know, I'm constantly in my head translating from English to Spanish -- Anne: Right. Pilar: -- Spanish to English. Anne: Right. Pilar: And so sometimes people just don't have that facility. I just happen to do it all the time. Anne: Right. Pilar: So if I can help them with a word or something -- Anne: Yeah. Pilar: -- I do. I'll step in, and I'll say it. Anne: Yeah. And that makes so much sense. I have really, honestly, I have such respect. I think everybody learn multiple languages. Really. I think it's such an education, not just culturally, but just, it's so many things you can get by being bilingual in your own personal development, really, so much you can learn. Pilar: You know, when it's a whole world. Anne: Yeah. Pilar: I mean, when I, when I studied French, it really, really opened it up because I was seeing so many parallels between Spanish and French. And I was like, oh, okay. So now I get why this, these are Romance languages. And then, you know, one time my family, my mother and my, my father and I, uh, we were invited to a wedding in Italy. And it's a really good friend of mine who is getting -- married an Italian gentleman. And I thought, well, why don't I just, I'm going to learn Spanish on the sly. And so -- not, not Spanish, Italian. And back in the day, dating myself, we had Walkmans right? Anne: Yup. I had one of those. Pilar: So I got a bunch of cassettes. Exactly. And I listened to it all the time. And my father would look at me like I was crazy. 'Cause he was like, 'cause I didn't say what I was doing. I was just always with the Walkman on. And so when I stepped off the plane, I was speaking Italian, and we could get around because I was speaking Italian. I didn't speak it that well, but I understood it. Now Spanish is very different from Italian, but there are a lot of words -- Anne: They're similar. Pilar: -- that are the same, so -- Anne: -- if I -- yeah. Pilar: So yeah, so it was really cool to be able to kind of navigate in that world because I had help. Anne: And it's important. I say that because the many times that my husband and I've gone to Italy now, I don't speak Italian, but my husband grew up with his grandparents speaking Italian, and his mother and father, not all the time. It wasn't -- he wasn't required to speak Italian. They were born in America, but his grandparents. And so he had enough knowledge, but thankfully he had that knowledge. And when we stepped off the plane into Italy, I mean, you just, you gotta be able to get around. Pilar: Yeah, yeah. Anne: And so I know very few words, few words, enough to like enough to get a gelato. But -- and to say please and thank you. Pilar: Exactly. And mi porte un po de panni? You can get a -- you can get, go very far. Can you bring me a little bit of bread? Anne: Yup. Pilar: Mi porte un po de panni? That'll get you anywhere in Italy, and there'll be grateful and they'll start flirting with you -- Anne: Yup. Pilar: -- and they'll offer you wine. And, you know, whatever. I'm always in such awe of voiceover artists whose Spanish, who, you know, it was not their first language, but they learned it, and they speak it really well. You know, they may not be native speakers -- Anne: Right. Pilar: -- because obviously fluent and native, they're two different things. Anne: Exactly. Pilar: But a lot of the times I will hear a really good Spanish accent, you know, over the, if, you know, if I'm in a train station or whatever, and you can tell the person is not native, but their pronunciation is flawless. So there's obviously a market for that. Anne: Yeah. Pilar: And that comes through practice. Anne: Yeah. Pilar: You have to practice, you know, and how do you practice? You, you read out loud, you -- and, and I do that. I mean, I'm, I'm a native speaker and I do that on a pretty regular basis. I'm reading a book in Spanish on my Kindle. And so I will read it. I will read entire passages out loud because I need to hear myself -- Anne: It's like a muscle. Pilar: -- and go -- yeah, exactly. Anne: Right? It's a muscle. Pilar: You need to practice it. Anne: If you're not going to be speaking -- I remember my husband's father when he used to talk to the family in Sicily. And by the way, Sicilian is different from Italian and different regions -- Pilar: Totally. Anne: -- there as well. I mean, his father knew enough, but also was very, it was very stressful for him to talk to the family because they would just be talking a mile a minute. And he was trying to get that back into his muscle memory and also speak it. He used to come off the phone. I mean, he'd be sweating. You know? So I can imagine, I can imagine what it's like being bilingual like, first of all, hats off and mad respect to anybody, you know, that speaks another language and can do it in fluently and -- because there's, there's work involved in that, that is a muscle memory and practice and all sorts of things. Pilar: Yeah. Anne: And I was thinking that it affords you some other opportunities in your voiceover business, such as -- I imagine you do a lot of dubbing. Pilar: Yes, yes. Anne: I imagine people ask you to do translation or proofreading services. So there's some other things that you can add as a service to your business as well by being bilingual. Pilar: Well, and also, yes, I agree with -- Anne: If you choose. Pilar: -- everything you just said. Anne: If you choose to want to do, you know, translation -- Pilar: Yeah. Anne: -- or proofreading or those things. Pilar: But even, even just knowing, maybe not being completely fluent, but even knowing a good amount of words and practicing those words -- because here's what I'm starting to see in a lot of copy is English copy but like a couple of Spanish speaking words -- Anne: Yes. Pilar: -- will sort of sift in there. And so if you can say it -- because a lot of the times I'm called and I can't completely make it in Spanish because people will be like, huh? What is she saying? Anne: Right. Pilar: But I can, I can add -- there's some spots I used to do. So instead of saying "this time on Colores" -- so I would never say Colores in regular. Anne: Right. Pilar: But it's not CoLORes. Anne: Right, right. Right. You have to have the accent. Yeah. Pilar: It's somewhere in between. So it's helpful to have an understanding of the sounds that another language makes, because I'll tell you, it's helped me. I can do German. I can -- I don't speak German. I can do Portuguese because it's basically about developing the ear. You know, a lot of times I'll hear a voice actor or somebody say, oh no, I can't speak. It's like, do you have a pair of ears? Anne: It's all about the -- Pilar: If you have a pair of ears, you just, you, you, you train yourself. Again, it's like what you said before. It's like a muscle. Train and develop that. Anne: And you know what, it's so interesting that you say that. I mean really, training your ear is, a lot of it, even just being conversational and, and understanding what a lot of people don't understand, what a conversational melody sounds like, because they've never really studied it. Right? Because all of a sudden -- Pilar: Yes. Anne: -- now, we're being asked to speak these words that didn't come from us and sound conversational. Well, there actually is a melody to being conversational and there's a melody to all of it. And so the process of training your ear is not something that happens overnight. That's for darn sure. You know, I just know that from the many students that when we go through our, you know, how are we speaking conversational or how do we get there? It takes a long time to develop the ear, but it's definitely something that can be learned, but it does take a lot of practice. A lot of practice. Pilar: It takes a lot of practice, but if you do it just five minutes a day -- Anne: Yeah. Pilar: -- and you, and you take a little piece of a newspaper in Spanish -- so just when I first got to Colombia, I had a little bit of an accent in Spanish. And my director was very strict, and he said, okay, you got to go get rid of that. And it was the slightest thing. It was like in the S's. And, and I, I was aware of it, but I was like, I don't know how to get rid of it. So I worked with somebody, but what I really did was I watched telenovelas all day long. And sometimes I would just, I wouldn't, I wouldn't even look at the television. I would just listen -- Anne: Right, just listen. Pilar: And I would repeat over and over again. That's how I learned Italian by myself. Anne: Yeah. Pilar: And so everything is possible -- Anne: Immersed yourself in the sounds and melody of it. Pilar: Yeah. Exactly. Anne: Yeah. Pilar: It's just having it around you, and you don't need to spend that much time on it, but you can -- Anne: Yeah. Pilar: -- if you do it on a daily basis, you are going to improve. Anne: I think it has to be consistent. Wow. There's so many other things I want to talk to you about being a bilingual voice talent. And I think we're going to be continuing that in our next episode, but this was a great beginning to talking about, I guess, the depth of what it takes to be a bilingual voice actor. So I thank you, Pilar. I'm going to say my last question to you is going to be okay, so now you know what our new series name is, right? Okay, so it's BOSS -- Pilar: You want to unveil it? Anne: Well, it's BOSS, and it's voices in Spanish. So how would I say that? Pilar: You would say BOSS Voces. Anne: BOSS Voces. Pilar: Or if you're from Spain, you would say BOSS Vothes. Anne: Oh. Pilar: La voth. Por qué -- Anne: La voth. Pilar: -- muy linda, Anne. Entonces, yo te puedo hablar todo el día, si quieres. Anne: Oh. Pilar: I just went overboard in Spanish. Anne: Okay. Pilar: I said you had a lovely voice -- Anne: Yes. Pilar: -- but for Latin Americans -- Anne: Yes. Pilar: - it's BOSS, BOSS Voces. Anne: BOSS Voces. Pilar: Voces. Anne: Voces, voces. Pilar: So with Spanish, you pronounce all the vowels. So it's ah, eh, ee, oh, oo, right? It's not A E I O U. Anne: Right. Pilar: So it's BOSS -- So you would say, maybe you would -- Anne: BOSS -- Pilar: -- you could give it a little, kind of a, a little sexy lilt. go BOSS Voces. Anne: BOSS Voces. BOSS Voces. Pilar: There we go. You got it. Anne: There we go. Well, now you guys know our new series' name. Thank you so much from my first, my first lesson from you. As always, it has been amazing to spend this time with you. BOSSes, we want you to have an amazing week. If you want to connect and network with amazing people like Pilar, you can find out more at ipdtl.com. You guys, have an amazing week and we'll see you next week. Bye. Pilar: Fue un placer, Anne. Nos vemos. Ciao. Anne: Ciao. >> Join us next week for another edition of VO BOSS with your host Anne Ganguzza. And take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at voboss.com and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies, and new ways to rock your business like a BOSS. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via ipDTL.

#NFL #Suspension #UFC272 #NBA We started this episode talking about the worst bets ever placed on sports in history. How do you wager $1500 and lose 10 Million you just have to watch to hear how it could happen. Calvin Ridley made a terrible mistake and it will cost him dearly. The NFL franchise tag deadline is tomorrow afternoon and so there was a lot of stories about signings, trades and who is in line to get these franchise tags. UFC 272 had a bitter grudge match as the headliner and another five rounder as the co-main. It was a disappointing fight as the sports biggest jerk won in convincing fashion. We closed out the podcast talking about the association and the stories of the week in the NBA. Please check out our website www.completesportsmedia.com and our parent site www.completemedianetwork.com Enjoy, Take care, Love yah, Bye for now!

Today's conversation with Siobhan Jones about why writing a book is good for your business fits under the P of Product in the 7Ps of the Humane Marketing Mandala Siobhan Jones is a Writing Mentor, Self-Publishing Coach, and founder of The Unlocked Creative. Writing has always been on Siobhan's heart. After going from trauma to triumph Siobhan realized she had a story to share, a purpose to pen and a reason to write. She realized that she was called to help women stop hiding and go after their writing dream. Now, Siobhan helps women to plan, write and publish their first book. Siobhan lives in Canberra, Australia with the loves of her life; her daughter, husband, and two talkative cats. When she's not writing you can find Siobhan spending time with her family, patting cats, drinking coffee, imagining cactuses and sheep, and running (not all at the same time). Siobhan's favorite quote: "Don't wait. The time will never be just right." - Napoleon Hill In this episode, you'll learn why writing a book is good for your business, and... The self-publishing process The pros and cons of self-publishing (and how your ego plays a role) An idea of costs related to self-publishing Why writing a book is good for business Ways to make time for writing your book while running your business How to put your inner critic on mute and write your business book The structure and/or discipline of writing and so much more. Siobhan's Resources   Siobhan's Website The Unlocked Creative Podcast Get the Time to Write guide and find more time to write your book! Connect with Siobhan on: Instagram Facebook Facebook Group   Sarah's Resources Watch this episode on Youtube (FREE) Sarah's One Page Marketing Plan (FREE) Sarah Suggests Newsletter (FREE) The Humane Business Manifesto (FREE) Gentle Confidence Mini-Course Marketing Like We're Human - Sarah's book The Humane Marketing Circle Authentic & Fair Pricing Mini-Course Podcast Show Notes Email Sarah at sarah@sarahsantacroce.com Thanks for listening!   After you listen, check out Humane Business Manifesto, an invitation to belong to a movement of people who do business the humane and gentle way and disrupt the current marketing paradigm. You can download it for free at this page. There's no opt-in. Just an instant download. Are you enjoying the podcast?  The Humane Marketing show is listener-supported—I'd love for you to become an active supporter of the show and join the Humane Marketing Circle. You will be invited to a private monthly Q&A call with me and fellow Humane Marketers -  a safe zone to hang out with like-minded conscious entrepreneurs and help each other build our business and grow our impact.  — I'd love for you to join us! Learn more at humane.marketing/circle Don't forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes or on Android to get notified for all my future shows and why not sign up for my weekly(ish) "Sarah Suggests Saturdays", a round-up of best practices, tools I use, books I read, podcasts, and other resources. Raise your hand and join the Humane Business Revolution. Warmly, Sarah Imperfect Transcript of the show Sarah: [00:00:00] Hi, Chavon. How are you today?  Siobhan: Hello? I am so well, how are you?  Sarah: I'm good too. Yeah. And you just mentioned you, you moved house and as an introvert and highly sensitive person that it feels always like, oh, that is a big thing. I dunno how, how you feel, but to me, moving is a big.  Siobhan: It's a big thing and it's always surprising how much stuff. Actually exists that  Sarah: we don't use. Yeah. Yeah. You collect things over time and then it's a good opportunity to get rid of some stuff as well.  Siobhan: Yeah, it absolutely is. Yes. But, but subtly, I think sometimes you have to do it a bit subtly. Yeah.  Sarah: Yeah. Nice. Bye bye. This is the second time you actually get to chat and talk. I was on your podcast and now you're here talking to us about book writing, and I'm really excited to [00:01:00] dive into this topic. First of all, also, because I've just gone through that last year and then also. Curious to hear what you think about it. And you kind of brought up this conversation around, you know writing a book can be good for your business. And so we'll dive into that, but maybe before we start I'd be curious to have you share a bit, you know, how you became a book writing, mentor, how you, how do you decide, okay. That is what I'm going to do.  Siobhan: This is a, this is a great question and I'll try and keep it. The short version, not the long version. A few years ago, I was sort of having some doubts about my career in communications in government. And I wasn't sure what to do. And I thought, you know, I've spent so many years practicing this communication craft, helping clients to [00:02:00] essentially market their services and programs to the public. And I just didn't want to progress with promotions anymore. And I wasn't sure what the heck to do. And so I thought, well, what was, you know, what was the thing that I love to do as a kid? Because I really wanted to connect deeply with something meaningful because one of my core values is meaningful work or impact. And I. Yeah. Thought back to when I was a child and just absolutely loved to write stories and remembered how I wanted to be April from the teenage mutant ninja turtles, but maybe not so much of a reporter, more of a. Telling the truth and whatever that is. So I really went on this a bit of a journey. I started writing children's picture books, [00:03:00] and then I began writing and reconnecting with the spoken word through my podcast, which really lit me up. And then. Helping other people to start that writing process themselves. And it was just, you know, I think the hardest thing about starting to write is starting to rise.  Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. This is so good. I love that you went back to your childhood. I, I tell that to my clients or it's part of the humane marketing approach is like, well, how do you figure out what your past. About or what your, why is, or, you know, guy kind of does big purpose word? Well, oftentimes it is, you know, going back to what you'd like to do as a child. And I love that you did that in order to figure out then while you know, what is, is, is it that I really want to do so good. Yeah. Thank you.  Siobhan: Thank you. Yeah. And [00:04:00] I hope that, you know, people listening who might be in a career transition or not really sure of the next step knows that they're absolutely not alone. Sarah: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So, so then you, you started writing children's books, but I think eventually you also kind of pivoted into this whole idea of helping others with their book. Right. Tell us what you learned in that journey of then writing your own business books, so to speak that work for  Siobhan: you. This is, this is also one of those see I'm a very, I really like to plan things in my life and this was yet again, one of those things that was completely unplanned. I. I spoke with, I have a business coach and, you know, I was speaking about how I would like to get my children's picture books, published the stories published in the [00:05:00] traditional sense. And she really questioned me on it and said, well, why wouldn't you just self-publish them? And I thought, I have resistance to this idea. Why do I have resistance to this idea? And then I thought I'm going to go after this because what I find happens with me is that I get resistance there for a reason. And thankfully I have people kind of like signposts, helpful souls along the way to help me really get back on the right path. And Question and reflect why I might be resisting things. So I, I really did some discernment work and thought, I don't actually want to self publish the children's picture books yet they need more work, but I will go ahead and self publish. And it was just a matter of them deciding what that, what that was going to be. And the thing that I had had done. [00:06:00] You know, I'd had lots of content available on my podcast for free, and many of those things were really quite practical steps and strategies that people can take to, you know, when they're learning about how to start writing, how to make it a habit and then, and then how to go on and, and self-publish, but what I wanted to do was actually self-publish my own. So that I could help other people from that extra layer of experience that I think is absolutely crucial whenever you are teaching people or helping others to reconnect with their own writing or creative inspiration. So that's sort of the journey of what I've been on. And honestly, self publishing. It's just opened a whole new world for me. And I know that it's, it's something that. You know is not, you know, it hasn't been around for hundreds of years, but the technology at the moment [00:07:00] is allowing quite a large growth in that industry. So there's lots of opportunity.  Sarah: Yeah. Did you end up publishing your children's books? The traditional way?  Siobhan: Not yet. I am still working on those. So I think for me, I I definitely would like to, and it's something that I will pursue, but I have another project up my sleeve at the moment. So. That that's that's something that I'm focusing on this year is this new project, which is actually writing a memoir. So it's something that I haven't done before and am really, really excited about where it can lead. I just think, you know, I, I kind of boxed myself in thinking I'll just be a children's picture book writer, but this is opened up that other door for me as well to think about. Well, there are actually other kind of formats and categories of variety, and it's [00:08:00] just immense this opportunity that we have to really express that express ourselves creative. Sarah: Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. Cause I went through the same thing when I thought about, you know, do I self publish? Do I publish within, you know, the traditional way? And, and there's obviously two camps. If you do search online or, you know, if you work with coaches and one will tell you, this is absolutely the only way. And then others tell you, well, you can be just as I was going to say successful, but a. That's not really the word I want to use, but you can get the book out there and attract the right people even with self-publishing. And so I really also had to think about, for me, what really was the driving factor, as well as the timing because I, I just felt that my books were very Timely, like they needed to come out now. Not, you know, when I eventually [00:09:00] found an editor as sorry, I publisher and it just like I had to get them out now. So I think that makes a huge difference. Even I'm talking to friends who are kind of hybrid publishing, so meaning they have some kind of a support with the publishing. They actually do print the book. And even there there's like the time it takes as much longer even though you pay for those, you know, you pay up front and it takes much more time to actually get the book out and there's delays. And where in the self publishing process. I feel like you are really the driver of this thing. Of course there's, you know, editing if you're hopefully gonna go through some editing phases, but, but you are in much more in control than if you work with the traditional way. Would you agree with that? Is that also your experience?  Siobhan: Absolutely agree with that. You know, with some of the benefits of self-publishing, as you would know, [00:10:00] Sarah, you own the rights to your book rather than the publisher owning those rights. You, you know, like you've just said, you don't have to wait around for months for a publisher to reply to your query letter. You know, you get to choose with the suppliers that you want to work with along the way. So people like editors and graphic designers, it's a huge, it's a huge advantage. Being able to. Personally tos the people that you're going to be working with collaboratively, which is another gorgeous part of, you know, self publishing and creating this thing and birthing and into the world. I think, you know, you get to craft your own journey, your own steps along the way. And you know, in the time of. That really matters to you and your, your life priorities. So I, these are the things that, to me were really meaningful [00:11:00] and things that I hadn't really thought about prior to finding out more about self publishing. Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. It's so important. And, and I know countless stories of people who worked with a publisher and kind of felt like they had. You know, Ben their integrity just a little bit, because we didn't really feel exactly aligned you know, the cover didn't look like they wanted it to look, or they had to use a certain title just because it's sold more because obviously the publisher's job then is to sell as many books as possible. So, so yeah, it's really also, I think in my opinion, it's really a question of ethics as well. It's like, Are you okay. You know, going really with the big publisher to go after more book sales in a way I'm hesitating to bring this up, but I think there's also a question of ego in this game. This, if you look at the people who [00:12:00] have, you know, published with with the real publisher that. It does sound still good. Right. And maybe that's also why we had resistance to go with self-publishing. It's like, oh, but that's not the real thing. You know,  Siobhan: it's like a hundred percent.  Sarah: My ego gets a little hit if I'm not really publishing the real traditional way. So I think there's some deeper inner work to do there. Siobhan: I love that you brought that up, because that was definitely a piece of my own resistance. And particularly towards children's picture books. I had one of the self publishing platforms that I help people to navigate. A representative from there actually said, you know, pretty much you can publish any type of book. We don't, I wouldn't necessarily recommend children's picture books. And I thought, oh, that's curious, because it has to do with the, [00:13:00] with the quality of the paper and the book material. And her sense was that. Children's picture books, you know, getting, getting there where she's at the point where she has to really try to see that it's self-published but other books are probably better done you know, in, in other genres and with other types of materials available. But yeah, really, for me, it was like, I remember having a conversation with my husband about it saying. You know, I would really like to have these particular stories published by a publisher by, you know, a real industry publisher as someone who's known. And he just looked at me and said, isn't that just an ego thing? And I went, oh, so I really liked these conversations. People that you can trust about how you're feeling. And I, and I absolutely agree with you. [00:14:00] It did require some work on the ego. And you know, I think another thing to remember as well is that if you are thinking, if you're really. Kind of hanging on this idea of being traditionally, traditionally published. There are people today who have self-published and then had their material picked up by traditional publishers, because they've seen that it's successful in the market, which is primarily what publishers are looking at. So that's something to keep in mind as well.  Sarah: Yeah. The backup plan you're telling your ego. Well, there's always that chance.  Siobhan: Exactly. Calm down. Sarah: Okay. That's great. I love that word sharing kind of openly about this eco stuff that's going on. Yeah. When you're deciding, you know, which way to go. Let's talk about. You know, just in general, why writing a [00:15:00] book and having a book can be good for a business an entrepreneur coach consultant any type of service entrepreneur. Siobhan: Absolutely. So I think for me, there are five key things. The first, the first benefit is relationship. So, you know, for entrepreneurs and solopreneurs, you can really build that one-to-one intimate knowing relationship with your, with your client or your prospective clients. So it is a form of long. It is long form content, which helps to really create and nurture. The knowing relationship between you, the author and the person with the expertise in a particular area, which is what you're telling through your story in your book and that real connection through your, through the language and stories that you're telling about the expertise, but also with fragments of [00:16:00] yourself strewn throughout the book that your client's going to resonate with. So, you know, I think. It helps your client to understand your values as well. And, and what you stand for, which is either going to repel or attract people. So you know, but it's, it is a really powerful medium. So that's the first thing I would say. The second is, you know, It's you providing a transformation to someone, you know, whether it's a solution that you might have that's related to, I don't know, say you're a vegan chef or something, you know, a solution to meal planning during the week and your story of how you got to w how you meal plan as a vegan, you know, it's, it's something that you can teach really easily through a book format. So. You know, I think transformation doesn't have to be necessarily transforming your whole life, but pieces [00:17:00] of your life that eventually lead to greater change. So that's number two. Number three is, and I mentioned a little bit about this before, but you're showing that you do have expertise in this particular area, so of your business and really You're building your credibility by having this essentially, it's one of the tool tools that you have in your toolkit as a business owner. You know, you can also have greater visibility when you're connecting with other business owners and collaborating with other people on, you know, who can help you to promote your book, but also establishing those relationships I think is really crucial. So that's the third thing. And the fourth thing is. It's low cost. And when I say that, I say it with a caveat because you can make it as expensive as you like to produce your book. Essentially, you can make it, you can do it on a pretty tight budget. You know, if you don't want to [00:18:00] produce a printed book, you can produce an ebook and they're much less less expensive to produce, obviously because there's no printing cost involved. And the actual purchase price of e-books is much lower because. You know, the person isn't ordering and they don't have to have a physical book delivered. So that's number four is low cost. And the fifth thing is something that's probably overlooked a little bit. And it's that you get to be creative. So. You know, you get to really hone your message. You really get to clarify it and be really clear about what it is and, you know, even redefine it if you need to. So that's, that's a huge benefit. And even eventually you can repurpose the content that you have in your book. So. They're just the five benefits of why having a book in your business is a good idea. Sarah: Yeah, I love all of them. I think my favorite one is definitely the number one, the relationship [00:19:00] because. I do feel like you it's it's, it's like a podcast. But it's even, it's different because you don't hear the voice, obviously, but since it's long forum, it's really like you're, you know, spending depending on the length of the book, but you're spending a few hours. With you know, with the author and oftentimes I don't know how many people read books like I do in their bed, but oftentimes like you don't really cozy kind of surroundings. And so you feel like really you're getting up close to, to the, the author and yeah, I think that, that makes a huge difference. And of course, You know, and that depends how much you also bring a view to your book as the author. Just like in humane marketing you know, we bring a lot of us to our marketing. I definitely encourage the listeners. If you are writing a book, do bring parts of you to your book as [00:20:00] well. That's where their relationship really gets deeper. And like you said, people get to see your values. I think that's, that's so important. Yeah. I wanted to also follow up on the, on the cost. Maybe we can just go a bit deeper there because if you know, if you're completely new to this, like I had no idea what it would cost to, to write a book, whether it's self-published or, or not. So can you maybe share some insights there for our listeners?  Siobhan: I am. I'm very happy to do that. So you know, I mentioned the vague statement that you can do it for as much, or as little as you like, really it's all about, you know, the time and the investment that you have that you're willing to make in publishing your book. So what I always recommend is that you decide on your budget first and then you allocate, you know, particular Not percentages, but you [00:21:00] prioritize things like editing and book cover design, because these are the things that are going to attract or repel your readers. And, you know, one of the biggest bug bears that people have about self-published books is the quality. So there are. People are getting much better at doing this well, but I think especially in the early years of self, the self publishing industry, you know, there was some people who would just, you know, publish whatever they liked without editing. And I know. Everyone listening would absolutely never think of doing that ever, but it's just something to be mindful of. And that I emphasize in my courses that I have available is that quality. You really need to prioritize that because again, The book that you're producing represents your standards and your values and your readers will either be attracted or repelled by those. [00:22:00] So but going back to costs, you know, that, like you mentioned, there are agencies that do provide kind of that hybrid publishing model. They tend to be I would say, you know, literally for me, when I was doing the research around this upwards of $5,000 you know, going up very quickly to, you know, tens of thousands of dollars to 10 tens of thousands of dollars. Yeah, exactly. So you're, you're right there. You know, or you can take the reins and enjoy stepping through the self publishing process yourself as an example, my book you know, I published it in under three months and I didn't say. A strict budget, but I published it with a budget within a budget of 1500 Australian dollars. So that's around, I'd say probably 800 or 900 us dollars. And that included all of the setup costs my you know, inter [00:23:00] international standard book number. ISBM. Graphic design and editing and all of those things. And I didn't promote very much though. However, so that's, that's what I advise people to do. I just really wanted to produce this book to just, you know, see if I could do it and see what the process was like. But definitely from my perspective, I think that's that. Fairly inexpensive way to do it. And I did engage a professional graphic designer who did both the type setting. So setting the type, the font, all of that sort of thing, as you would be aware, Sarah, and the actual design of the book cover and all those sorts of things as well. I went to a professional editor for two of the three editing steps. So I did my own structural editor. But then the, I actually, sorry, I had two editors. I [00:24:00] neglected to mention that, but I chose to have two different editors for the two different types of editing, which is not a hundred percent necessary, but I did choose to do that. So, you know, there are ways and means you can, you can pull one lever and you can spend more in one area than in another. But for me, I put most of my funding into the quality aspects of producing the book, because that was the thing that was really crucial to me in producing the book. So does that answer your question  about  Sarah: that? And what I would add is you know, there's the quality of the book in terms of. You know, spelling and, and the paper and the design and the formatting. There's definitely a quality aspect of that. But then there's obviously the quality of the actual. Content, the writing the, how your big idea comes [00:25:00] through, you know, is there any kind of structure in your thoughts? And that to me is, is just as important, if not more than the actual quality in terms of, you know, is there any spelling mistakes you can read a very. You know, good quality book in terms of yet there's no spelling mistakes, but then it's like all over the place and you're like finished reading the book and you have no idea what you actually just read. So that's why to me, there's also cost related to maybe working with someone like you or, you know, someone I do also kind of work on the big idea. I don't do the same work as you in terms of. You know how to actually write it, but let's come up with this idea that your book is going to be about so that you have a structure and, you know, you know, there's three chapters. There's going to be three sub [00:26:00] chapters. So there's a good flow in the book because otherwise. Yeah, I feel that that's really a big part of the, of the, of the quality of the book as well. So maybe you can share a bit what your role is in, in helping your clients with some of that, right?  Siobhan: Oh, absolutely. So I. I 100% agree. And in fact, it's, it's quite amusing that, you know, I started off speaking with you today, talking about how I remembered when I was a child, you know, what I love to do, and that actually continued, you know, through university. My major was writing and cultural studies. So you know, I think absolutely you can have a beautifully wrapped gift with nothing in it. You know, it's, it's absolutely, you can definitely have that. But that's not going to engage people. It's not going to excite people, inspire people[00:27:00] help them to see the world differently. Really the true power of books I believe. And you know, I think in terms of, you know, the structure is one thing, ideas that's where you need to start really is what is, what is, what is this book about? What is this book about? And being super, super clear on what that is and not letting anything else. Come into the story that isn't part of that big theme that you're writing about. So, you know, I could talk for hours about this. So really it's about, you know, you need to make sure that you spend that time to allow yourself to have the space, to come up with the ideas. And then the big idea, the big theme for the book that is the universal theme. That's going to connect with your readers. Deeply human level. And yeah. So, you know, makes sense now that I'm speaking on humane [00:28:00] marketing, because I'm talking about the human connection here, but you must have that down. Pat, before you pick up your pen to write, you must have your core idea, you know, and, and that can take a lot of time to get to get right. To really you know, I think one of the things in Western society in particular is that we don't allow enough stillness to allow those ideas to come in and really marinate on them and, and let them take shape. So, you know, you would know about this because I believe that your, you know, in your book, Everything flows really well. And you've got a beautiful, like I said to you a little while ago, Sarah, that I felt like I was just sort of sitting, having coffee with you. And you were taking me on this journey and that's exactly how you want to feel when you're reading a book and really deeply connecting with the author. So I would start there. [00:29:00] Then there's, there comes the most difficult part, I believe, which is actually. Sitting down and writing a really messy first draft and that has to be done. Whether you plan it. Then, or you just write and then restructure divides people into two camps, which are the, the, the, the pantsers people who fly by the seat of their pants and the planners. And so I have struggled over the years to realize that I, my approach to writing had been pantsing, but I'm actually a life planner. So you know, it's hilarious the way that creativity works.  Sarah: Yeah. It's funny. When I think about me, I'm an inf J so the J stands for judging, but, but really what it is. Planning everything. And so that's what my life looks like. And so that's how I wrote my [00:30:00] books and managed to write two books in a year. It really is that structured approach, but I can totally see that it works, that you know, the other camp can work as well. It just depends what your natural superpowers are in. You know, like more creative approach, that's just how you are wired. Then I don't see anything wrong with that. It's just, it's just different.  Siobhan: I I need to sort of correct myself a little bit there because you, you always need structure. Your book is always going to need structure. In terms of the method of how you go about it. Yes. Yeah. There's people are very different. So yeah. Unfortunately for people who don't like structure, it's, you know, it's part of, it's part of writing a book and it's part of what makes, you know, it's like part of constructing a house. You need the [00:31:00] pillars to be standing strongly, to be able to build. Beautiful framework for people to glide through that house. So you absolutely need structure. Yes.  Sarah: I find like, it's almost like if you. Naturally structured then you probably won't need as much guidance with that. Maybe you need more kind of mental on blocking, you know, it's like mental guidance, confidence coaching, that kind of support or creativity writing where if you are naturally just creative and you can write for hours, then you need more help with the structure. Do you agree with  Siobhan: that? I think it, yeah, it's, it's very individual and, you know, depends on what you, how you best learn to write and also then how you apply that. So, yeah, we're, we're all quite unique in that and it's, it's really about, [00:32:00] you've kind of hit the nail on the head there. So it's about. Working out your best writing life and how you write with inspiration and how you motivate yourself to write the story that's meaningful for your readers and for you. Because, you know, ultimately you're not going to sit down and spend hours writing something that isn't meaningful for you as well. So I think that's something else. That is kind of overlooked a little bit is just the sheer enjoyment of the process is really important. Like if you don't enjoy writing it or. You are under no obligation to do it at all. It's really about, you know, is this a medium that lights you up? And you know, if you enjoy reading books and you're entertaining the thought of writing and you have this kind of deep little flame inside that says, write the book, write the book, write the book. Then [00:33:00] I believe that's absolutely there for a reason. I think what I primarily do is, is really guide people to understanding the process of oh, first of all, accepting. The hardest part of writing is actually sitting down and writing and making it a habit in your life and integrating it into your life. And I help people with the time management side of that. And and when I say time management, I don't mean, you know, providing them with the schedule, but actually really looking at their values and life priorities and identifying, you know, if writing is one of those, well, how do I. Ref like that, you know, how do I have that reflected in my schedule? And then, then assisting them with the strategies and tools to be able to integrate it. And I think. You know, I have a couple of courses available. One of them goes through, you know, how to write and finish your first draft so that messy draft process starting to write, making it a habit [00:34:00] and then writing the thing, actually doing it. And then for people who want to continue on and actually do want to self publish. There's the, there's the author, the unlocked author rather which steps people through the whole process. So it's really about I feel like one of the really big barriers to starting to write and then going on to self publish. Is the sheet overwhelmed about all of the information that's just available everywhere and trying to sift through that and work out well, this person writes for four hours a day, this person, you know, gets up at 4:00 AM and this person writes at 11:00 PM, which one's right for me. And it is always going to be about what's uniquely, right? For you as a writer.  Sarah: So important. Do not think you have to do it. You know, everyone else is telling you more except for them. Yeah. Yeah. So are these [00:35:00] courses the main part of your work, do you also work one-on-one tell us a bit more about how you.  Siobhan: Yeah. So I, I do have these courses. So, you know, the first one I mentioned is called the writer unlocked and it's actually the book that I produced is the book version of that course. So I provided it in another medium, which goes back to what I was saying earlier about the great thing about books is that you can repurpose them. But it really is for people who want to. Right. And just need that guidance. And I do have an online community community that people can join for that accountability. Because I talk a lot about that in the course. And again, it's unique to you. One form of accountability, you know, my form of accountability is not going to work for everybody. So understanding those really. Those really important key parts of taking, writing into your life as a practice, [00:36:00] really. So yeah, so that definitely those, that course, and then the self publishing course, which is the unlocked author. But I do offer one-on-one services, mentoring services for people who are feeling particularly stuck. I tend to find that you know, one of the main things that happens for all right I've only ever had one author who said that they don't experience it, but is the inner critic and strategies to help people to basically put that thing on mute because it can be done. It won't go away. Won't go away. But you know, we're all familiar with that mute button now, so we can do that. We can put it on Butte and right.  Sarah: Nice. Yeah, that's wonderful. I think you also have a free guide that tell us a bit about that and we'll share the link in the show notes.  Siobhan: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. And I think, you know, I say that one of the hardest things is starting to write. I [00:37:00] think the other thing is the idea of time. So particularly for entrepreneurs and solopreneurs, who. Trying to work out. Okay. Well, you know, if you've decided that writing a book is for you or you're thinking about it, then one of the barriers can be, how do I actually fit this into my life? And so I created the time to write guide and you can get it for free, from bit dot L Y slash time to write guide. And in that guide, you get essentially a way to identify. Where you truly do have time because you do, if you prioritize it and it means something to you and you value it, and there is a schedule in there for you to plan that writing time in I've also provided a few options for you as well. If you're really struggling with those limiting beliefs which is supported through the unlocked creative podcast as well. So that's also for.  Sarah: Wonderful. [00:38:00] Yeah. I'm glad you mentioned that the podcast as well, and people can own so well put the link to, to our episode when I was a guest on yours so that people can go check that one out. So yeah. Thank you so much. Shawan this was delightful. I always have one last question and that is what are you grateful for today? Or this.  Siobhan: Thank you so much. It's just, first of all I'm grateful for being here on the show with you because I absolutely adore speaking with you. And so that's one thing, but I'll go another one, which is honestly, it's summer here in Australia, and I had this delightful run this morning in the cool air and it was. Sarah: Nice. Yeah, it's winter here, but it's, it's pretty blessed today as well. Wonderful sunshine. So thank you. Yeah. Thank you for hanging out and, and, and really kind of shining a light on this book publishing [00:39:00] process. I think people will really appreciate the honesty with which we shared here today. Cause I find that. Like, you know, a lot of these things that are completely new to us, we just have no idea. We have these, maybe these, or we do have some ideas, but often they're wrong. And so hopefully this has helped some listeners to really kind of get a deeper understanding of that process. So thank you so much for  Siobhan: sharing. Shawan. Thank you. Thank you. It's a pleasure.

Welcome back to a Sorta Star Wars podcast! Let's dive DEEP into Attack of the Clones! 2022 is the 20th anniversary of this amazing(ly long) film. Guacamollie is here to breakdown this movie with me 11 minutes at a time until the end of the year! This episode explores mintues 23-33! Enjoy! Thanks for listening! Be safe. Be courteous. BYE! If you'd like to support the show and be entered to win the monthly contests, visit our Patreon at patreon.com/sortastarwars Thanks everyone for your support! *This podcast is a production of Ryit Media and is hosted by Ryan Lehman (@sortastarwars) **To hear other podcasts hosted by Ryan Lehman, search "Ryit Media" on any podcast player or find the links here: Granny Shiftin': THE fast and furious podcast: https://link.chtbl.com/ipk12aZ_ Dad Reads Books: https://link.chtbl.com/q_7bYUCz AND NOW Silver Screen and Television Dreams: https://link.chtbl.com/djA5v-LB --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Heya hiya hello-hah! This episode is really two podcasts in one. The first part talks about our recent trip to Universal Studios and what we thought of all the rides. The second part talks about our featured game, Roblox NPC's are becoming smart! (recommended by Tyson_Something (Thanks!

Season 2 Episode 43: Let's RefreshWell hello, hello everyone, this is Chats with NyWelcome back, I am your host Niomi and thanks for joining me.  Where I'm sharing tips and tricks for all sorts of relationships.This year I wanted to try something a little different in reference to achieving my goals.  Many times we get discouraged because, as most of us do, we lose track of what we're trying to do or achieve.  Now we've moved into the 3rd month of the year I thought it would be fitting to do a little “check-in” with ourselves.  When we prepped our goals for the year in the last episode of 2021, what kinds of goals did you set for yourself?  Were they financial? Were they about weight loss? Were they about spiritual growth?  Let's take a moment to refresh and realign our efforts so join me in this episode.As always you can find me on Instagram @ChatswithNyPodcast, on Twitter @ChatsWithNy, and on Facebook @ChatswithNy and you can e-mail me at morningchatswithny@gmail.comUntil next time, stay safe everyone.  Bye!Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched! Start for FREEDisclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Amer is in the Ukraine... ok you got me, he has COVID and is forced to isolate at home. I prop up a television with Amer's hot face next to me on the couch and we have a good time. Check out the video on YouTube to see what it looks like! Leave us a 5 Star review and Subscribe to us on the 'Tube'! BYE!

Robin Blanchette, CEO and Founder, Norton Creative (Houston, TX)   Robin Blanchette is CEO and Founder at Norton Creative, an agency focused “narrow and deep” on restaurant and hospitality branding. Their primary client base includes multi-unit operators, mid-size and larger chains, and franchises. They also work with independents . . . but never with conflicting brands or direct competitors in the same time frame.  Over the eight years of its existence, the agency has worked with over 150 different restaurant brands, developing strategies, doing creative work, finding whitespace, differentiating positions, and designing brand standards that allow room for franchisees to “own their businesses” while maintaining what Robin calls “brand purity.” Clients have included Buffalo Wild Wings, TGIFridays, Bob Evans Farms, Mellow Mushroom, Friendly's, Fuddruckers, Sonic, and Luby's . . . . Robin started her career on the client side and said that the agencies she worked with “didn't get it.” She makes sure that the creative her agency produces not only works on the marketing side . . . but addresses questions such as: “What is your business problem you're trying to solve?” “What is your objective?” and translates the creative solution into business results in terms of sales, traffic, and profitability.  Norton Creatives architecture and interiors team helps develop brand architectures that will be scalable to two or more locations so that a single site operation can seamlessly “grow.” When the creative team designs menus, the layout is engineered for profitability. The firm also provides carry-out packaging design and merchandising services, which have increased in importance during the pandemic. In this interview, Robin talks about the challenges restaurants face . . . and what successful restaurants have done to succeed over the past couple of years. She reminds us that restaurants have very tight margins and notes that the number of restaurants in the US is down 100,000 from pre-pandemic days. Those that have succeeded are those that are willing to do “whatever it takes.” In particular, Robin says many have developed new ways to deliver to their customers, reduced the number of selections on their menus, and gotten more efficient in their operations.  Robin can be reached on her agency's website at https://norton-creative.com/, on LinkedIn, and on Instagram. Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Robin Blanchette, CEO, and Founder at Norton Creative based in Houston, Texas. Welcome to the podcast, Robin. ROBIN: Thank you for having me, Rob. This is great. ROB: Great to have you here. Why don't you give us a focus in on the superpowers of Norton Creative? I think you have a pretty distinctive story for us. ROBIN: Absolutely. We say we go narrow and deep. We're focused really only on the restaurant and hospitality industries. We do creative work, find whitespace, differentiating positions, ways to bring the brand to life in this industry. We're experts in hospitality. To be honest, I just have to say that this industry versus any other industry is really one of service, and that's what we love about it. It's really about the people. I mean, you could see through the pandemic, the restaurant owners/operators, independent chains, they all rolled up their sleeves. They're completely open and humbled to be in an environment to serve people, and that's what we do at Norton. That's why we focus solely on this industry. ROB: It's fascinating. I've known some very small agencies that try to focus in on very mom n' pop restaurants. You see really small clients – and sometimes they have bigger restaurants, too. Where is your sweet spot? Are you working with local, single location? Are you looking mostly at multi-location or franchise or chain? How does that fit your mix? ROBIN: We really are in both, but I will say our primary client is multi-unit operators, mid-size and larger chains. We do independents. We have an architecture and interiors team, so anything the guest really sees from a restaurant perspective is what we focus on. Architecture and interiors, we do large chains, but we also do a lot of independents. Chefs that have been maybe working for a brand and then they want to create their own brand. We've got a client that wanted to start a cookie shop, and we created a cookie shop. She's got one location; she started as a virtual brand and she was like, “Now I want to open an actual, four-walls place.” So, most of our clients are large chains and mid-size chains, but I will say we're a creative group of people, and if you know creative design type folks, they want some really unique and independent stuff to do. So we like to balance it out for them, for the team, because they like to do unique, niche-y kind of stuff too. You know what I mean? ROB: Absolutely. To that point a little bit, when you're talking about a restaurant that is investing in architecture and design, it's still somebody thinking a little bit bigger than someone who took over a lease, someone else moved out, they're moving in, they want to sell their mom's favorite sandwich. I mean, maybe there's a good place for it, but I hear you talking about investing in a brand architecture that might be able to scale out two more locations, even if someone's starting with one. ROBIN: Absolutely. I think right now, too, certainly during the pandemic and what we're thinking of as post-pandemic – let's put out the positive vibes there that this is post-pandemic – there's a lot of folks that are looking to take their one-unit, two-unit, three-unit and franchise. There's a lot of franchise development agreements happening right now. We work with a regional chain out of Houston called Shipley Do-Nuts, and if you're a Texan, you know very well what that brand's all about because you're born and raised with it. But they're franchising rapidly across the country. To be able to get brand standards and get your box right, get things lined up so a potential franchisee, or even a potential buyer for that matter, can look at it and go, “Yeah, I can expand this, it's obvious” – Wahlburgers is one of our clients based out of Austin, and they're doing the same thing. It's like, let's create a brand position, a story of your standards so that we can now execute this in multiple ways across the world and across the U.S. ROB: Franchisees seem like a particular challenge. A lot of times you'll see some really well-run restaurants, even gas stations, tend to not be franchised. So how do you think about the design of the brand, the design of the collateral in a way that is easier for a franchisee to succeed? That seems like quite a challenge. ROBIN: I think some of it has to do with development agreements and how the franchisor decides to set up the boundaries and rules and how they also might hold franchisees accountable for those. From a franchisee perspective, there does have to be space – I worked for Applebee's corporate for many years, and we had an incredible group of franchisees and business owners that owned lots of different chains, lots of different restaurants, and we would have local walls that they could interchange their own local flair, if you will. So, there are ways for franchisees to make it their own, but you're buying the sign and paying royalties towards that brand. For us, when we create pieces or brand standards, there has to be some sort of give and take there for a franchisee. It's their business, it's their livelihood, it's their company. My philosophy is around brand purity. I believe that individual brands should take up their own space – not that nobody has a competitor, but in terms of creating a brand from scratch or even trying to differentiate one – look, there's lots of wing places in this world, but Buffalo Wild Wings are the only people that do it their way. They're the only one that focuses on a gathering place for sports and the best wings, or whatever. So I think about it as brand purity, and franchisees think of it that way too. That's why they're buying in. ROB: Yeah, Buffalo Wild Wings you mentioned is a client of yours, I believe. ROBIN: Yeah. ROB: It is a fascinating thing; there's kind of a hole in the market to an extent. You say, what is the national sports bar chain that is actually going to deliver on something you expect to receive from it? It's not quite there. We have a couple local chains; some of them die, some of them come, some of them go. And then there is the big yellow and black sign that you can see from the highway. I think it's interesting to turn a corner here and talk about the origin story of Norton Creative. You mentioned your own background on the brand side. I think it's very credible. What led you to move from the corporate side and the brand side and take some risks by starting your own shop? ROBIN: It's very scary. [laughs] I'll say that. It was a very scary proposition. I joke when people are starting their own restaurant brands or whatever; I'm like, I was googling how to start a company. I'm not going to lie about that. That's the God's honest truth. “What forms do I need to fill out?” or whatever. But the impetus for it was – if you've spent any time at all on the client side – I hired all the big agencies and many small agencies. I've gone through the formal pitch processes that take months and I've hired somebody out of the blue. I've been on that side primarily. So I really knew what was missing, I think. That was part of it. Gosh, I had great agencies and really talented creative people, and certainly all the major consulting companies, too, come in, like the big decks from the Big Three or whatever. What's missing is I could never find anybody that could solve my creative conundrum out of the gate. They didn't really get it on the agency side. Now that I'm on the other side, we work really hard to get it, like “What is your business problem you're trying to solve?” Not just your marketing problem, not just your creative problem, but what's your objective? We come back to that every time. And every agency I ever had would bring beautiful work, but it didn't actually go to work. I hear other people say that all the time, like “Our creative works,” but ours really is about sales, traffic, and profitability. It's even hard to train creatives a lot of times in that, but think about it; when we're doing a menu design, we do not do menu design without engineering, which is profitability work. Where do the items go? Where does the eye go for the guest? Where's the heat of the person? We do all of the backend stuff on that because I don't want to design a menu, roll it out, and then your best-in-the-world item fails because we've shoved it someplace. That's a long way of answering your question in that we really understand, I really understood, what was missing. We have a tendency to say things like, look, I am not going to give you a 100-page deck to answer a very short question of “What are we best in the world at?” Let's write a paragraph. It's born out of some sort of truth, right? If we're going to have to explain this to the guest for two hours, it's never going to work. What is it in its most simple form? What's your brand about? I think what has made a difference – we've been around eight years now. Somebody told me when I first started Norton, “It's like owning a boat. The best day is the day you get it and the day you sell it.” [laughs] The in between is all the work. It's just hard work. And that's where we are now. We're in the middle of the work. And it was born out of “We get you because we've been there. We understand.” ROB: You have a very deep experience in the industry. How do you go about taking somebody who may be very talented, and they may have even delivered a very good quality of work across a range of industries – how do you bring them into the restaurant world? How do you build that into culture, build that into training, build that into process? ROBIN: First of all, we've all eaten at restaurants, so it's not a stretch to be like, “Do you know what it's like to be a restaurant guest and read a menu?” That's the first point of contact for the most part. So that's not a hard hurdle to overcome. It's not like I'm teaching somebody about the pipeline across Alaska or something. It's not something hard to teach. People get it, and they get the restaurant experience. In terms of the underneath of it all, some of it's just teaching and getting in there, being thrown in and saying, “Look, here's how we engineer our menu. Here's how we build a box to make the customer journey be the best. Here's how we create stories.” Some of it is just teaching, and we really do like to hire more junior folks and train them into the industry. Again, I'm really focused on our leaders. In the restaurant industry, we talk about “train the trainer.” We train the trainer a lot here, and we use a lot of the way that restaurant operators train somebody who is a 16-year-old host and how they greet the guests and how a server might greet somebody, how a kitchen might move quickly but still provide quality food. We use those same fundamentals for what we do every day. I don't want a piece of work that goes out that is not the best it can be. We've got expo. If you've ever worked in a restaurant, you know what expo is. You're checking the plate before it goes to the guest. So, we have folks in place that get it, and we also hire a lot of people who've been on the other side. There used to be a thing where it was like in-house creatives are maybe not that great. They haven't worked across a variety of industries of whatever. But in-house creatives on the restaurant side get it. They know they've got to turn it quick. There's somebody standing over their shoulder saying “Make that blue, make that purple” or whatever. They understand the language, too. So, we hire people like that as well. ROB: Got it. You mentioned packaging; are you also even in packaging design and takeout? Has that been part of your world for the past couple of years especially? ROBIN: Oh my gosh, yes, and long before that, you can imagine. One of the very first projects that I worked on when I was at Applebee's was creating Carside To Go. You might remember it back in the late '90s, when that all started for some of the bigger casual dining chains. All the pitfalls that go into that are the same ones we have today, which is like the guest doesn't want to get out of their car, and how are we going to be of service to them? So yeah, we do full to-go packaging. Again, it's built out of the brand. With Buffalo Wild Wings, we're super flexible. They have a lead creative agency, which is the Martin Agency, which we're huge fans of – huge fans – and we do all of the menu and merchandising work for them. So we all work together. When it comes to things like packaging, we're working on packaging along with other folks, many times, working with operations, working cross-functionally with either other agencies or also working within the organization cross-functionally. Lots of different teams. We're not just working with the marketing teams; we're working with the development teams and real estate teams, things like that. ROB: Right. A challenge that strikes me – I think this is a challenge brand side as well – when you talk about something like package design, that's kind of an intermittent need. Same thing with internal architecture. Some people – maybe you'll tell me differently – don't tweak their menu that often. So how do you juggle having these capabilities that are not a persistent need, but it's a recurring one? It's kind of that challenging “usually but not always” need. How do you juggle some of those specialties? ROBIN: First of all, the way we're set up, we certainly have retained clients that we work on stuff every single day. We're in and out all year long, and those are transformational partnerships where we are in it. Everything they need, they call us. And then we also do a lot of project work. When somebody has a need – when Smoothie King needs menu design and engineering work and profitability work, or Red Lobster – we just finished doing some work for Red Lobster – they will call us and say, “We need this work. We're not ready yet” – especially right now in the middle of the pandemic, the government shut down our industry, in effect, in 2020. What's happening right now in the industry is we have lots of folks that are calling and saying, “Hey, look, I'm not ready yet for the full package of services because I just can't. We had 50 people in our marketing department; now we have three. We can't do it yet, but hey, can you do this for us right now? Can you build this campaign? Can you do this for the next six months?” or whatever. And of course we can. Again, we're of service. We'd like the transformational partnership because obviously – and you understand – when you have those retained relationships, you can really add more value long term, and certainly it helps from a resourcing perspective internally and the P&L. But from just how we can handle the intermittent needs, we do. We just say yes. ROB: What are you seeing when it comes to – some places have probably reopened pretty well, but some places have probably reopened hoping that they're going to be able to keep doing exactly what they did before. What are you seeing change in the actual function of restaurants, the marketing, the design? There's obviously this mobile and pickup version of things, but are people going to be able to relaunch these big box, large format restaurants with crowds? How are they having to adapt their space for the new reality? ROBIN: Fortunately and unfortunately, we've got hundreds of thousands fewer restaurants than we did before the pandemic. You'll have to check me on the number, but I think it's 100,000 fewer restaurants in the United States from before the pandemic. For the restaurants remaining, the ones that fought, rolled up their sleeves, did their best to try to survive – PPP and ERC and all the ways in which – those chains are I would say healthier than ever. They reduced menu skus in terms of number of items, because menus were getting really big. It's hard to delete stuff because you're like, “Ah, I have that one guest that likes that item.” It's like, well, let's figure it out. So, menus got smaller. Restaurants had to be much more efficient in terms of how they were utilizing their supply chain. Obviously there are labor issues and all of these things. I would say from my purview, restaurants are more efficient than they were before, and there's people hungry for eating out. They're hungry for entertainment. My husband went to a car show/boat show thing this weekend and he's like, “It was like a mob scene.” People are like, “We'll take whatever, just to walk around and find something to do.” But people are back in restaurants again, and they're saying, “We want that.” In terms of the large chains, I think it's gotten some guests back. People are spending maybe a little less money. They're saying, “Maybe I was eating at the high-end fine dining before; now, you know what? I'm good. I would love to eat at TGI Friday's. I miss my potato skins.” ROB: It certainly makes sense. I've seen all over the map – one of our favorite pre-pandemic places, I think they still don't know what they want to be post-COVID. Their dining room is in a state of disarray, and they're like, “You can take your food and sit outside and eat it if you want, but we don't even know what to do with our dining room.” They used to have an ice cream scooper, and they just dumped it. I don't know if they know what they want to be when they're done. But you see these brand transformations where their delivery was actually really, really good. And I've never seen them do free delivery, and they really nailed it. I've been surprised by what it can be. We're in Atlanta; you're in Houston. These are larger footprints. This is not New York City where you go pick up something around the corner or some guy walks something up to your door. 10 minutes is 5 miles. ROBIN: Right. Add traffic. But I will say the restaurants that are killing it right now are the ones that were like, “We're going to do whatever it takes. We're going to figure this out. What do people need? What am I going to do?” There was a whole period of time with lots of phone calls around self-delivery versus the third-party delivery folks. The third-party delivery folks were taking most of the margin in restaurants, and margins are very lean. I don't know what the general public thinks, but I will say that restaurants are not just printing money out there. It's a hard business. It's hard work, and the people are caring and of service. They want to provide the way in which – like my local restaurant, like what you're talking about, did everything they possibly could do. I'm like, I can't believe this bag of food showed up at my front door hot in five minutes. This is crazy. Way to go, guys. But yeah, lots of weird things that happen, but it was really born out of the grit of the industry. Think about things like virtual brands that are working out of kitchens. People are taking those down day parts and they're using them to try to make profit to keep those teams going. They're paying people by day. I think the biggest thing, Rob, that I was just thinking about is some of it – the brands that are the big chains that really have the dollars to be able to invest in technology – and I know you guys operate in this space – you can see the difference, the folks that have made the shift to these really turnkey technology platforms and point of sale platforms. The ones that can't do it, I think they're struggling more. ROB: Yeah. It's still definitely shifting. One of your friends, the Buffalo Wild Wings folks – I went to online order the other day and they said, “Do you want to order from our kitchen?” It's only pickup and delivery. It's not even a ghost kitchen. They're putting it front and center to people and saying, “Look, we're here too. This is a pickup spot and it's a place that's closer to you when you want delivery.” I don't know – maybe you helped them architect that. But it was evident to me, “Wait, this is closer to me. They'll probably get me my food faster and warmer.” We're just down the road from our friends at Chick-fil-A's headquarters, and what they're doing with their drive-thrus is herculean. Whereas I'll go to Burger King and their drive-thru is closed or it's taking half an hour. I go to Chick-fil-A, they're cranking through 50 cars in 5 minutes, and I don't even know – ROBIN: If I could pick up my prescriptions from Chick-fil-A, I would. [laughs] They are gold standard, man. Gold standard. You're absolutely right. Their speed of service – but they figured it out. That's what I'm saying. Just think about it. You've got all this dead space, and you've got cooks in the kitchen, and you have this time. If you're Friday's or Applebee's or Chili's, there's a dead time where nobody's eating. What are you going to do with that? Let's be more efficient. Let's figure out how to be of service more. I appreciate that. ROB: It is that commitment. I'm sure you've done this as a firm; it's that commitment to figuring it out. We had a local megachurch here that, in April of 2020, said, “We are closed through the end of the year.” The clarity of vision involved in that – you're telling everyone, “We're going to figure it out. We're not waiting around. We're not waiting for this thing to be over. We're going to lean straight into it and do what it takes to get through and emerge on the other side who we need to be, with whatever changed.” ROBIN: I saw that with restaurants, too. ROB: Robin, as you reflect on the growth of the firm so far, what are some lessons you've learned that you would want to go back and tell yourself as you're heading out of the brand world and the brand side and you're going to build your own firm to serve them? What would you tell yourself? Lessons learned. ROBIN: Oh man, lessons learned. Oh gosh. I've got to say this out loud? I would have been more confident about my own abilities and the abilities of our team from the get-go. And when I say that, we always did great work from the beginning, and always had really big clients from the beginning. What is it, the cobbler's kids have no shoes? [laughs] We did not market ourselves. We didn't talk about the great things we did. We said, “We're not ego-driven, we're not about awards,” all the things we would say. “We're not about getting awards. We just do the good work, we're super humble, we're scrappy, we fly under the radar.” Those are all the things that we'd say about ourselves, but at the same time, the humility in it is totally our personality. That's just how we are. But we should be standing up and saying, “Oh my gosh, look at our great work. We are so proud of it.” You can say that and still be humble about what you do and not have this big fat ego about things. I would say I would've done that earlier. Coming out of the pandemic, we started doing that. We're like, oh my gosh, we've touched over 150 different restaurant brands in eight years. There's no agency that can say that. We've touched so many of them and loved them, to be honest, and built real, meaningful relationships with people that we care and cherish. I wish we would've waved our Norton flag from the beginning. Better late than never, but now's the time for us to say, we're proud of what we do. We're proud of our industry. We think they're amazing people. I'm telling you, even going back to the conferences, the restaurant and hospitality focused, the keynote speakers – it's all changed. People are like, “We're so grateful for our teams. They're leading from a place of optimism and hope and empathy” – things that I didn't really hear 20 years ago. It was all about the almighty dollar. Now we're all very Simon Sinek, Adam Grant, hope and optimism focused. I think it's what we've been through. That's what I'd tell myself. ROB: It's an interesting journey there. One challenge I can imagine is the perception of conflict and conflicting clients. These people have chicken, these people have pizza, those people have chicken, those people have pizza, they have sandwiches. How do you address the challenge of conflict, both the actual concerns of it as well as the perception? I think that's a common thing to many people, but maybe especially in the low-margin restaurant world. ROBIN: I think the perception is changing in the agency world a little bit. I certainly, when I hired McCann back in the day for their amazing TV and creative work – love those people – that was a really important thing to me that we made sure there was no creative conflicts in their agency. I did think that at the time as a client and as a CMO. I did think, “Do I really care about that?” [laughs] I really just want the best creative minds, and surely they're not taking work from one team and giving it to another. And that really is true. They're not doing that. At least in my view, no agency is doing that. We certainly don't do it. We do conflicting work sometimes, but for the most part all of our retained clients, there's no conflict. And we try to keep it that way. Any sort of transformational partnership that I think of, long-term relationship – like Fogo de Chao is one of our big clients who we love. They're amazing. Look at them for leadership in the restaurant industry. They're just amazing. We're not going to take on another Brazilian steakhouse, for instance. We're just not going to do that. We're very focused on what we can try to solve for them. So, the retained relationships, we keep that very, very clean. In terms of the project work, it comes in and out anyway. We would rethink that, probably, if they were going to become a long-term partner. But we're pretty careful about that. We're never working on conflicting brands or direct competitors at the same time, ever. That's a hard no. ROB: Yeah, I can certainly see how Brazilian steakhouse is a niche; it's hard to define – perhaps you can, but it's hard to define separate experiences in that world. It also strikes me that that's a place where hospitality has really lived at a chain level for a long time. The real hospitality in the hospitality industry can be missing quite often. What I see across a lot of your brands that you work with is I don't necessarily even think about them on a list. I think about them as the place that you go to that is – you mentioned Applebee's, but then you mentioned something like Fogo de Chao, you mentioned something like Macaroni Grill. It's not the fifth version of that thing; it's almost the only version of what it is, and what I think of when I go there. It sounds like that's what you're aiming for – helping them be the only thing of their kind. A Buffalo Wild Wings is the experience that it is, and it's not one of your top five chicken wings sports bar places. ROBIN: Right. I think that's important for any brand, including Norton. That's why we say narrow and deep. Be who you are. Be comfortable in your own skin. We play the “what if?” game a lot. This brand's known for potato skins; what if they did this? You know, in this service business, now that I'm on the outside of it, the idea really is to provide what we in Texas and Louisiana call “lagniappe,” which is the added value, the special thing, the thing that maybe nobody has thought of to be helpful. How are we going to present menus that's something that's different than everyone else, or whatever. For all of the brands that we work on, what are they best in the world at? That comes down to something as simple as what's on their menu. What are they best in the world at? Even if it's not a profitable item, what can they be known for? All of us as people and as brands deserve that. You've heard that term, probably, and used it in your lifetime, about “death by a thousand cuts.” I think there are so many brands that you get different leadership teams that come in, different people, everybody's got a new idea, and then you get off task. Next thing you know, you don't even recognize your own brand. So, we work on that. ROB: Really, really fascinating firm, fascinating work. Great progress, Robin. Obviously, you're working with household names, and ones that have pushed through the pandemic. When people want to connect with you, Robin, and want to connect with Norton, where should they go to find you? ROBIN: Obviously, our website is an easy way. Certainly LinkedIn. We're Norton Creative. I always say you can call me. You can reach out to me in any form or fashion. It's all out there. We certainly have a marketing director, Jesse Dickerson, who is managing all of the day-to-day business development and activities. Now we aren't the cobbler's kid who has no shoes; we are trying to do a little bit better at talking about what we do. So certainly website and Instagram, LinkedIn. We're all out there. ROB: Wonderful. Robin, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and sharing. We are glad to hear your story and your expertise. Thank you so much. ROBIN: Thank you. ROB: Be well. Bye. Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Adam, Dan, Carl and Tibbsy are back again for another episode of tangent fulled goodness.  This week.. Happy birthdays to us - We're a year old! Tangents to get us going include....Tesco meal deal... Kammy leaving Sky Sports? 1️⃣. 20:03 - Ukraine rules OK, Russia go do one!.... Champions league final moved to Paris, WC qualifiers refusing , F1 cancelled, Poland FA - Gazprom 2️⃣ 30.30 - Chelsea 3️⃣ 34:44 - Snakes on the pitch 4️⃣ 37:32 - Taylor vs Catterall... It's a disgrace, not that Carl's bothered. 5️⃣ 43:55 - Pen shootout - Kepa's moonshot Thanks for your continued support, get subscribing if you haven't already. Follow us on socials, search for @GOATangent on Twitter and you'll see us on Insta and Facebook by searching for Gone off On a Tangent. Bye for now! UP THE GOAT

Hi guys! Today I'm doing what it says in the title. Please remember to respond to the poll on Spotify! Bye! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/greta-and-theta/message

Greg's Garage Pod with Co-Host Jason Pridmore P/B Bike911.com - A motorcycle racing Pod about MotoGP, MotoAmerica, and World Superbike, Pro Motocross, American Flat Track, Supercross, and more. If you'd like to support the channel here is our Patreon link: https://www.patreon.com/gregsgaragetv In this episode, Co-Hosts Greg White and Jason Pridmore talk:  ARAI News -  Bobby Fong to Mission King of the Baggers? The Daytona 200 entry list is out... we take a quick look.  MotoGP - The 2022 season kicks off this weekend from Qatar! Listen to what the boys have to say about the contenders and pretenders.  MotoGP - Win and ARAI Corsair-X by playing MotoGP Fantasy with us! And it is free. When you register to play join our league. https://fantasy.motogp.com/leagues/join  Use this code in the search! 3X2LNEY5 Supercross - The boys discuss Dallas.   Supercross Fantasy - Supercross Fantasy is a disaster for GDub. JP... well, you'll have to find out.  The podcast has two leagues! One for the broad audience and one for the Patreon supporters. ARAI will provide a prize for the winner of each fantasy league.  Join us!! Supercross Fantasy: https://pulpmxfantasy.com/leagues/gregsgaragepodcast RM Fantasy Link: https://www.rmfantasysx.com/ Bye, Bye  Social Media Links: Jason's Instagram - @pridmore43 Greg's Instagram - @gregwhitetv Jason's Twitter - @jp43 Greg's Twitter - @gregwhite Greg's Youtube - GregsGarageTV

Decision Space is the podcast about decisions in board games! Click on the link to join our active and welcoming Discord community!  Join the crew today! (Decision Space Patreon)   Episode 57 - Broom Service Imagine if to fold in poker you had to say, "I'm a cowardly hill witch." Well, that is basically Broom Service in a nutshell, and I don't need to say more than that to tell you that Broom Service is an incredible game. We won't bury the lead this week. In today's episode, we hop into the Interdecisional Spaceship to cover one of our favorite games that we won't let fade away.  Games Discussed Broom Service, Voyages of Marco Polo, Poker   Timestamps Intro - 0:00 Rules Overview - 9:20 Broom Service Discussion - 11:37 Wrap Up and Calls to Action - 1:11:27   Music Credits Thank you to Hembree for our intro and outro music from their song Reach Out. You can listen to the full song on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQuuRPfOyMw&list=TLGGFNH7VEDPgwgyNTA4MjAyMQ&t=3s You can find more information about Hembree at https://www.hembreemusic.com/.  Rules Overview Music:  Way Home by Tokyo Music Walker https://soundcloud.com/user-356546060​ Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0 Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/tokyo-music-walker-way...​ Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/pJThZlOuDtI   Contact We can be reached individually on Twitter at @jakefryd and @burnsidebh. You can also follow Decision Space on Twitter @DecisionSpa and talk to us there! If you prefer email, then hit us up at decisionspa@gmail.com. This information is all available along with episodes at our new website decisionspacepodcast.com. Bye!  

An interesting conversation I had with my buddy Chad Woolner about your real identity as a business owner. Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ClubHouseWithRussell.com Magnetic Marketing ---Transcript--- What's up, everybody? This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Seekers podcast. On today's episode, I'm going to share with you guys something kind of interesting, at least for me. I was at a wrestling duel watching my kids wrestle and had a chance to hang out with Chad Woolner, who's one of my friends who's a chiropractor, who's somebody who's been using ClickFunnels and all these philosophies in his chiropractic business. And he came up with a principle I think that was really powerful called being a solutions curator. So I'm going to cue up the theme song. I'm going to come back and talk about it and how it's a different lens to look at you and your business. I think it's going to help you guys a lot. So with that said, let's hear the theme song. All right. Welcome back. I've got to think of a better way to transition into that. I don't really know. Anyway, so this was interesting. As you guys know, I am a part-time internet marketing nerd, full-time dad. Right now it's the kids' wrestling season, and so for me every day at 2:30, no matter how busy or stressful or any things are at, I pack up the office. I race home, put on my wrestling shoes, and head over to wrestling practice with my boys. And it's, man, like the most... Anyway, it's my favorite. And I don't know if they even like me being there, but I just don't want to miss any second of it. Today I was driving to school. I'm like, there's only two more years before they're graduated, like after this year. And I'm just like, "Oh, this is crazy and hard." So I'm trying to be there as much as I can, which hopefully all of you are doing that for your kids as well, because all this other stuff we're doing, it's just a game that we are participating in, trying to burn time until we die. The only thing that actually really matters is our families and our kids, so make sure you spend time for them and carve out the time for your busy schedule from things that don't matter, and make sure you have time for things that actually do matter. But anyway, inside of that, this Saturday we had a wrestling tournament which I was... This week was hard. My wife was out of town. I was really looking forward to sleeping and getting a break because I'm just worn out, as I'm sure a lot of you guys are, too. But they had a full-day wrestling tournament Saturday, so we were up at 5:30 in the morning, waking kids up, driving them across town, weigh-ins. We had to be at the gym by 6:30. Weigh-ins at seven. Wrestling started at nine, and then we were in the gym for like 13 or 14 hours. It was the longest day ever. But luckily one of my buddies, Chad, his son wrestles for another team, so he was there. So it was kind of nice having someone to talk to. And I asked him what he's been doing. If you've read my books, I've mentioned Chad in most of them from one way or the other, just different things that as I was learning these principles and applying them, he was one who took a lot of these ideas and tried them in his chiropractic practice, which has been really fun to see how these internet nerd principles can work for a more traditional business. And it was interesting, because he told me, "Yeah, I've been doing these events." And he talked about what he teaches his docs to do now. And it was so fascinating, especially for me. Because you guys probably heard a couple episodes ago, I did an episode about how I feel like my calling is that I'm a curator. I learn a bunch of stuff, and I curate the best, and then from there I write my books. I create software. We do these things, we're curating the best principles and practices from the marketing world and bringing them to you guys. And Chad said that what he's doing with his chiropractors is he's teaching, "You're not actually a chiropractor. You're not even a marketer. What you are is you are a solutions curator." And he said that, and I was like, "Whoa. That's cool. Tell me more. What do you tell people? Explain that to me more." He said, "Most docs, they look at it as, I went to school. I learned how to give adjustments. So people come to me, and I give them adjustments. That's how they look at their work, right?" He said, "Their identity is that I'm a chiropractor, therefore I do chiropractic services for people." And he said that when he started working with doctors more and more, he started trying to help them understand that you're a marketer. So the next identity he shifted his tribe to is, "You're marketers. You've got to market your business. You've got to get people coming in so you can serve them." And that was kind of the next wave of identity he gave his chiros was from, again, from a chiropractor to a marketer. And he's like, for him the identity that trumps all the rest is a solutions curator. And what it means is when somebody comes into your practice, your job is not just to give an adjustment. Your job is to give solutions. You're looking for what are the problems they have? And your whole goal and mission and vision is to find solutions for problems and then to curate them together. That's why people come to you, right? It's because you've curated all these different things and are bringing them the best of the best. For example, you guys come to me because I've curated through hundreds of thousands of hours of books, and... Maybe that's an exaggeration. Tens of thousands of hours of books and podcasts and practical life application and research, and I can come out and say, "Look, this is the best funnel. This is the best process. This is how we buy ads… And so all my books are a curation of what I've learned and discovered and figured out. And so for you is whatever role you're in, that's the same thing. You're a solutions curator. And so for his docs, they come in, and now it's like, "Yes, I'm going to go and give you an adjustment. That's one solution I've curated. But I've been doing a lot of study, a lot research, and we have supplements, and we've got these new protocols, and we've got biohacks, and we've got all these different things we can offer our clients when they come in." And the more valuable you are, the more likely they're going to keep coming to you, the more likely they're going to refer to you. And if you're someone who just gives an adjustment, okay. He gives a good adjustment. But if you come in and are a solutions curator, "We've got all these things. I can do testing. I can do this. I can do all these different things." Now you become unique. Now you decommoditize yourself. Now you become something special. And I think that's true, not just in my world where I'm becoming a solutions curator for you guys, not just in Chad's world where he's teaching chiropractors to do this, but for your business as well. Think about what you do through that lens, that you're no longer just, "I teach people, blah. I do, blah." No, no, no. The result people are looking for is this, and I curate solutions to help them to get that result. And it can be all sorts of things. We talked about this in the Econ versus Expert SmackDown. If you listened to that, it was like, you have to stop looking at... For that challenge we did, people were looking at themselves like, "Oh, I sell information products. Or I sell physical products." That's how people seem to categorize themselves a lot of times in our community. And it's like, no, no, no. You don't do either of those things. You have a dream customer that you've been called to serve, and your job now is to serve them. And that means in any way this can help them be sort of more successful. So it could be through physical products. It might be through digital products, through coaching, through supplements, through... There's a million different ways you can serve somebody. So when you start looking through your business of like, I'm in the business of serving my dream customer, I'm not in the business of doing whatever. That's when you start having these big breakthroughs. And I think it was powerful listening to how Chad's been coaching his doctors and helping them understand that, no. You're a solutions curator. Same thing. You've got a customer. They're coming in to you. Your job is to curate all the different solutions to help them have success, to be happier, to be whatever. And so the same thing's true for all of you guys. Think about your business through that lens. Who is your dream customer? What's the big result I think they're looking for or the big problem they're running away from? And then what are the things you can curate to help them have success inside of your world? And what's cool about it is this opens up all the other things. It opens up your value ladder, opens up different offers, upsells, downsells, cross-sells, backend sells, all those things start happening very, very easily when you start looking at what you do differently. And so as Chad would say, as he was telling me with his chiros, he's like, "You have to shift your identity from a chiropractor to a marketer to I'm a solutions curator. This is what I do. I curate solutions for my tribe, for my people." So hopefully that's been helpful for you guys, because I think a lot of times we get so stuck in, "I do this thing." And it's like, no, no, no. You don't do this thing. You serve this audience, and how can you do it? Well, I'm going to curate as many different solutions and opportunities and ways possible. In my world, think about all the things that we've curated for you guys. What I do is I help entrepreneurs. They're my dream customers. Help them build funnels, that's the end result of what I'm trying to do. But inside of that window, we've curated all sorts of stuff. We've got funnel scripts, which is a tool that helps write copy. We've got traffic secrets. We've got live events. We've got funnel hacking live. We've got all these different things we've curated together to help you have more success, make it simpler, to give you a community, to help your belief. I'm writing a book on personal development to help you with your mindset. Yeah, I think it's pretty cool. So you are a solutions curator. Look at it through that lens, and I think it'll change a lot of things for you. Thank you Chad, for developing that and thinking through it. And thank you all you guys for listening. I hope that you got some value from this. If you did, please rate and review. Let people know. Share this episode, on and on, whatever you can do. Obviously something that we share free of charge, the thoughts, the ideas, inside my head, and if you enjoy them, then pass them on. If you think I'm crazy, that's cool, too. Anyway, I appreciate you guys. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll talk to you all soon. Bye everybody.

With late Summer underway here in the Southern Hemisphere, we are experiencing those last balmy bursts of sweet summer energy with the dampening effects of late afternoon storms and muggy weather. Within the five Element framework of Chinese medicine, late summer is associated with the Earth Element, Stomach, and Spleen. More so than any of the other five elements, the earth element or spleen season is one to put aside your strict diets, feel into your intuition and cravings, and not only prioritise but ENJOY your food. As TCM Five Element Food Therapist Kimberly Ashton puts it, "The theme of the Earth Element is enjoying the sweetness of life".   The easiest way to understand the Earth element and how we can nourish the Spleen is to look out into nature at the earth itself; Think, soil, microbiome, digestion. The way we eat in this season is pivotal for nourishing our core, bringing balance back into the digestive system, and cultivating an intuitive relationship with what our body wants and needs. Helping guide and inspire this intuition through the fabric of functional food therapy and Chinese medicine wisdom, we have TCM food expert Kimberly Ashton covering the energetics, foods, cooking styles and associated emotions of this season. Mason and Kimberly journey into this multifaceted, (both) sensitive and practical element and discuss how we can bring balance back into our lives and digestive system through the foods we eat and how we prepare them. Kimberly outlines the exact foods and flavours to welcome into the kitchen and why Spleen energy is all about relaxing, enjoying and embracing the sweet aspects of food and life. Tune in now.   "The spirit of the Spleen is the intellect and this idea that we think or we overthink. It is the mind and the brain itself, but it's definitely related to the state of our spleen. If the Spleen is happy and warm and functioning well, you're going to be very clear in what you want and what you need".   - Kimberly Ashton      Mason and Kimberly discuss: Digestion. Food cravings. Spleen/Soil Qi. The Earth Element. Digestive imbalances. Foods for Spleen season. Warming foods for the spleen. Cooking styles for this season. Food Therapy for the earth element. Spleen energy: bonds and boundaries. Alleviating dampness and balancing digestion. Managing dampness within the body through food.     Who is Kimberly Ashton? Kimberly Ashton is a Holistic Wellness coach that focuses on the 5 Elements, Food Therapy and Chinese Medicine. She spent over 18 years in Asia and Shanghai, 8 of which she co-founded China's first health food store & plant-based nutrition cooking studio. Now back in Australia, she launched Qi Food Therapy in 2020, a platform offering e-books, online courses, and coaching for “balancing life energy” through food, food energetics & emotional wellness. In 2019 she published her second book “Chinese Superfoods” in Mandarin, which encourages new generations of food therapy enthusiasts to explore Asian traditional foods, everyday ingredients & get back in the kitchen. It has sold over 7000 copies in China. Her approach is centered on cultivating an intuitive relationship with food and helping people understand their energies through food choices, cooking techniques, the 5 Elements, emotional & energy practices.   CLICK HERE TO LISTEN ON APPLE PODCAST    Resources: Kimberly's Website Five Seasons TCM  Kimberly's Instagram Kimberly's Element E-BOOKS 5 Elements & Cycles E-Course How To Eat In Spring with Kimberly Ashton (EP#133) Eating For Vitality In Summer with Kimberly Ashton (EP#147)      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, CastBox, iHeart RADIO:)! Plus we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Mason: (00:00) Hey, Kimberly. Welcome.   Kimberly: (00:01) Hi, Mason. How are you doing?   Mason: (00:03) I'm so good. Thanks for coming back on with me. We're getting through the elemental wheel slowly, but surely.   Kimberly: (00:10) Yep. I love it and I love the earth element.   Mason: (00:14) Well, I mean, it's the gateway. I think it's like the gateway element over towards Chinese medicine. I know for me it was. Well, it was the one that I didn't like the most when I was a raw foodist because it was the one that hit my ideology in the face the most with reality and therefore, I rebelled against it.   Kimberly: (00:36) Yes. Actually, that's a good term. A lot of people will rebel on the earth element and then they find themselves with digestion issues and emotional issues and become very ungrounded. Yeah, we'll be covering a lot about the importance of the earth element, not just the organs or the season, but the element itself.   Mason: (00:54) Do you want to paint a picture for us in your world, in your internal relationship to the spleen, the element that is the earth, just what it represents for you, whether you want to talk about the organs or emotions or how it impacts your life?   Kimberly: (01:12) Yeah, absolutely. The easiest way to understand the earth element is if we look out into nature and look at the soil and the earth itself. When we grow our food, anything that's just above or just below the soil is really our soil and our centre, which I always like to compare it to our belly button and everything just below and above that. The importance of our core physically, emotionally, mentally, energetically is really the core and that is not just unique to TCM. You see that in Ayurveda, you see it in Japanese culture. They even have certain words for this element. It's funny because in Chinese there is words, but they're much more powerful in other languages. If you may allow me to bring them in things like hara in Japanese or agni in Ayurveda, like this digestive fire. They're really short, concise words and in Chinese, we don't really have anything which is one word or a short phrase. We have spleen-qi and digestion and spleen stomach organs or organ pair, but it's not as sexy as hara or Agni in my opinion.   Mason: (02:29) No, I mean, I'm with you on there. Tahnee's got a big book at home called Hara Diagnostics and growing up with my dad doing in a black belt and Japanese jujitsu, we talked about the hara regularly. I'm much more connected there, but I guess it shows the translation. I mean, you're talking about in native tongue, but even for me relating to spleen, straight away it taps into my Western desire to relate to anatomical, Grey's Anatomy, separate, oh, that's that organ, maybe spleen, pancreas, organ, physical organ, and which it is representative of what we are talking about, but so not. It takes away everything. As you're saying this, it's much more than actually relating to the reality of it. It's hard when you're just saying the spleen-qi and doesn't represent the etheric reality that it is.   Mason: (03:27) I think that is important for us. Like a few people have always told me, never just say spleen, say spleen soil, say spleen soil so that you don't get lost in that mental trap, not that it's bad to obviously go there at times. Bringing up soil, I think is another one. Tahnee and I always have a little fun back and forth about this because for me, it's soil, the element of soil, because the element of earth goes into a larger concept of [Pachamama 00:03:59], which is not a bad thing necessarily, but it's so impractical, I find, when relating to the earth soil within yourself and doesn't play into the analogy or metaphor or story that I think is more captured in soil. You can relate soil and water and soil and metal a little bit easier. Yeah.   Kimberly: (04:22) Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. I know that we're both big fans of nature and in Taoist philosophy and wisdom, it's always about that internal and external. When we start to see as the soil and you see that now on the last, I don't know, five to eight years, this in the Western wellness world, this huge growth in talking about the microbiome and the soil and food. The Chinese wisdom of the earth element, soil element has been there all along. If you don't have a strong soil earth element, that's it, your health won't be balanced. It's very hard to define balance in other elements if this element isn't strong and of course, the digestion is the key part.   Mason: (05:08) You're bringing up agni is one that, yeah, it is beautiful to bring that agni fire into the fold because quite often people won't relate that fire with the soil, but yet as I think I've said quite a few times on the podcast, maybe even in chats with you, how that the kidneys are kind of like the pilot light for that light, for that fire of digestion [inaudible 00:05:39] to the spleen to be able to be turned on. But it is that spleen that is the actual fire that sits under the pot that is the stomach, which I know people are like, well hang on, no, isn't it soil and not fire. It's like, oh, okay. Yeah. We're talking about a yang function of that soil-qi. The goal posts keep on moving, but again, the beautiful thing is staying slippery because there is no goal post when it comes to health, there is no balance. You got to be able to dance in that harmony.   Mason: (06:13) But then hara you bring up as well because the way my dad talked to me about my hara, relating somewhat to lower dantian-esk kind of like if not exactly that reality in the body, but he also always referred to it as the centre of my universe. I'd orient myself around that core as you brought up, which is something I guess I've just found myself not feeling when I do tap into that spleen soil-qi and I'm like, oh wow, but of course, it is that earth element that sits at the core of all the others and is the centre of the universe that there's an orientation around it. I mean, I just wanted to kind of like [inaudible 00:06:59] to that and bringing that up because that really helps me get a clearer picture on what we're actually talking about here with spleen.   Kimberly: (07:06) Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. I just mentioned the belly button because when I'm teaching kids and we draw, trying to learn the elements or apply them, even as adults we start with that middle line, that's the middle line of the earth and so that's where we're starting, especially when we're going to dive into food later in this podcast. I'll be talking a lot about that middle line and suitable foods because it's very logical. If we break it down, the five elements are really logical and this element is very easy to interpret in terms of foods and the energies purely by understanding that that middle line, middle ground and therefore, all the issues that we have with digestion or imbalances. I call them digestive imbalances. There's plenty. People will be very familiar with IBS and diarrhoea and bloating and all of that. You go to a acupuncturist or a TCM doctor and they'll be like, oh, usually they'll say something along the lines of spleen-qi and people go, what? What's that? But you can definitely eat really nourishing foods to build that and it's something that I love building and we can talk about that as well today.   Mason: (08:25) Well, let's talk about the season as well because you're going to be talking to us about the somewhat of maybe the cooking styles of our kitchen maybe not completely at its core, but somewhat transforms towards a particular direction in terms of cooking styles, techniques, ingredients that are coming in, intention we're putting into our food to match the season and what's going on around us, which is late summer's something that in some areas it kind of feels like it's always late summer in other areas doesn't have any of those qualities. I'm interested to hear that and also point out that it might be that those ingredients and these insights that you use during this season, but this is probably the diet, and I'd to hear your thoughts, that is used therapeutically to heal most-   Kimberly: (09:17) Correct, yep.   Mason: (09:17) ... for most people. Yeah. It's I mean [crosstalk 00:09:21] yeah.   Kimberly: (09:22) Yeah. Yeah. As you said earlier, this fluidity is needed when we are approaching the five elements because it's not just five elements, five seasons and then there's lines and rigid boxes around them. We have to blend them and when we need them, we draw from the other elements even in this season. It's now late summer, the weather's changing, it's getting cooler. There's a little bit more rain. There's dampness and humidity typically. We need to modify the way we eat and cook definitely.   Kimberly: (09:54) The key theme for the season would be to alleviate dampness and to balance the digestion. As you said, that can apply to a lot of people in other seasons, but also in Chinese medicine, in between the seasons, you can draw from this. Say, if it's spring to summer or autumn to winter and you get a upset stomach or you're feeling a little bit slow or you have some dampness or you're feeling lethargic or you have some bloating or diarrhoea, we can draw from this, the wisdom of the earth element and foods to come back into balance. It's always about coming back into balance in this element and this season, the earth element is about transformation, our ability to transform, our food, our thoughts, our energies to prepare us for what's coming. Like you said, we can slide that into really any time of the year when we need it and it's definitely the most healing, cooking and ingredients for anybody at any time.   Mason: (10:58) Well, just because we get a lot of questions about the spleen. We talk about it a lot and there's many different ways to approach. It's intimidating in its simplicity. I think because it requires such practical transformational changes that are grounded in the core of your personal food culture or family culture and that can be confronting if we are really rigid in the way we're doing things. And our rigid patterns, personal habitual patterns, within the kitchen, food and emotions, a lot of the time as well are out of alignment. It's often quite confronting to admit that, which is I think something really is I just want to constantly extend my compassion, cheering everybody on that adventure, just go in nice and easy with a lot of empathy for yourself, which is a lot of like very spleen [inaudible 00:11:52].   Mason: (11:54) Just again, little reminders that I think for emotional journeys for a lot of people, for me, the way that I relate to the spleen, there's several aspects of that element and that system within the body. One being the muscular system, seeing that there is the food that you're eating is building good high quality muscle and then the way that you're moving is going to help you develop appropriate high quality muscle. I feel it's really important to remember that as well as a huge part of the spleen being about creating bonds and boundaries and with soil, moving soil and creating boundaries that are organic and not superficial.   Mason: (12:37) But I find a lot of people when they're really ready to go like, all right, I've got really poor boundaries or my boundaries are too rigid and I'm not able to create strong bonds with myself, a bond with earth or bond with my family and friends as to the depth I'd want, that's when the spleen really starts coming up as a theme. Or maybe you're just going, I'm just [inaudible 00:12:59] attracted to spleen friendly diets. Maybe just in correlation to that, there's maybe other areas perhaps would be of interest to you. I like throwing that in there and with that, I'd love to go on a deep dive with you and definitely going to be yeah taking notes myself today.   Kimberly: (13:16) Yeah. It's funny what you just said. The spleen and this earth element, it's not just the spleen, but as you said, spleen stomach pair, will throw in the pancreas as well, so spleen, stomach, and pancreas, it's like the chicken and the egg. It's like, do we need strong nourishing foods then the muscles and then the emotions, but the spleen is so sensitive, well, the whole earth element is to the emotions. Maybe you're eating really well, but then you're bombarded with overwhelm and worry and anxiety, so it's which comes first. In my mind it's well, you got to have both. You can eat all the... I'm going to talk about millet and puddings a lot today-   Mason: (13:55) [crosstalk 00:13:55].   Kimberly: (13:58) ... we're going to talk about puddings, all these foods, but if you're still having these emotions, it's really hard. You have to manage both and maybe people don't want to hear that because they want a quick fix or a easy solution or one food to help. I've got maybe top three to five foods for you today, but definitely the earth element is the most sensitive to those emotions, so definitely look at that as well. It also-   Mason: (14:28) [crosstalk 00:14:28].   Kimberly: (14:28) It also impacts our decision making ability. I said, worry and anxiety, most people who study the elements and the emotions in yoga and qigong, they're familiar with the emotions, but actually feeling them and embodying them is different. But decision making is a funny one, too. If your spleen is a bit weak or you're getting some spleen weaknesses or IBS of any sort that I just mentioned, your ability to make decisions reduces. Therefore, it's really hard, it's doubly hard to then know what to eat and then I see people who are a little bit lost and like, I don't know what to eat, I don't know what to eat. If we can have those simple steps and simple foods, a little bit of warmth, a little bit of getting that fire back in the belly, then you step up and you become much more grounded and calm. And then you can deal with the emotions and the diet and nutrition as well. It's a multifaceted element.   Mason: (15:21) It's practical. It's real. It's not easy, but I mean, it has to be and I hope everyone loves as much as I do just how we can't not go into the reality of the energetics or the philosophy of the emotions, whatever you want to call it. Otherwise, we have bastardised and commodified the system in which this has emerged from. If we don't continue to come back to the essence, as you're talking about there, the anxiety piece. A lot of people would just go anxiety, heart [inaudible 00:15:55] disruption, but there's many so different shades of anxiety and there's lots of different types of clinical diagnosis on different types of anxiety. But even that for us to just be aware of like, oh, that's different shades of our own inner anxiety and perhaps one is over just ruminating and chewing, constantly ruminating and chewing, chewing, chewing, chewing, and not digesting a life lesson and therefore, not making a decision. That's going to just throw off your spleen-qi and then you can have a drip of millet just straight into your stomach and it doesn't matter. It's just like, it doesn't matter.   Kimberly: (16:37) We should have intravenous millet drips. That would be amazing because not many people are familiar with it. But yeah, no, I'll mention some of the best foods and they're actually really yummy and delicious and as you said, quite simple, actually, if we take it back basics, but I thought I'd just quickly mention a few imbalances. How do you know if your earth element needs strengthening? Appetite, if you have a loss of appetite, if you have any of those symptoms I mentioned earlier, like diarrhoea, loose stools, bloating, anything really in that whole IBS, irritable bowel syndrome category, which doesn't really exist in those terms in Chinese medicine. Water retention as well, so there's a fluid metabolism effect that's important with the spleen, any kind of nausea, indigestion, anything to do with the stomach and the lower half of the body.   Kimberly: (17:33) If you're feeling really lethargic and heavy in the legs or have edoema and swelling in the ankles, that's all to do with this system. Most people have a look at the list and go, yep, I can relate to one of those or many of those. It's important to know what we're feeling. And then the simple list of foods or categories anyway would be, what I call, ground and round vegetables. As we come back to that line in the soil, anything that's just above or in the soil itself, so pumpkins, sweet potatoes, onions are actually perfect example of the earth element. They're very round and they're got all this lovely layering and they're sweet. A lot of the vegetable that I just described and the flavour of this element is sweet. In that way, most people love the earth element.   Kimberly: (18:29) As soon as you start talking about earth element, they're like, oh, I can have more desserts. I'm like, well actually, I do recommend and I prescribe desserts because we want to have this calm, nurtured, motherly love through this element. If you look in every food culture, there's always desserts and always sweets. Of course, I'm talking about not white sugar and refined junk, but using sweet vegetables, wholesome sweeteners, and condiments, fruit. We're talking pudding, but we're also talking pies and cakes, all this very, maybe even grandmother kind of warmth and love through our food. That's missing in a lot of modern day dietary habits. We kind of demonise dessert or sugar or sweet flavours when actually we need them.   Mason: (19:26) Well, I mean, I feel, again, it's the pendulum swinging quite far, which I understand and went there, especially when there's that energy of like have a massive, I don't know, Sunday roast dinner and then put a big, heavy, overly sugary dessert on top of that and you can feel the dysfunction of your body just trying to compute digesting sugar, which is I think my friend [Sage 00:19:53] talks about. It's like a Ferrari in the digestive system, you put it on top of like a tugboat equivalent, something that's like a heavy protein that's slowly digesting. Again, it's a hard and fast rule, but I do prefer that Chinese medicine does bring in awareness of yeah, well, don't throw the baby out with the bath water because there's a lot of medicine in that.   Kimberly: (20:19) Yeah. You could still have that roast. I mean, you could still have that roast and the dessert. The earth element's also related to not doing anything in excess, it's all about balance. Overeating, you can eat, earth element's all about the food and nourishing and having this beautiful satiating feeling after you eat. It's good to have a have that, for example, but not overdoing it. The boundary comes from most people just overeating, good food or bad food. The earth element's like, no, we find balance, we eat a little bit of everything. We have our roast, we have our puddings, we have our whatever it is, but in balance. But as I said, most people are missing the sweet, the naturally good sweet flavour, and by that I would prefer or rank very highly the sweet vegetables and some fruit and definitely more natural sweeteners and things like cinnamon, and cardamom, and all the sweet herbs can really help with this flavour and coming back into balance through our cooking and our food.   Kimberly: (21:24) On that note, carbs are a good thing. The earth element is all about wholesome, happy carbohydrates. It's not about eating lots of too many pastries or white bread or white rice, but just having some good, wholesome carbohydrates, whether it's rice, white rice or sticky rice or brown rice or red rice, and then millet. Millet is the best friend of the spleen. If we're looking at the colour of the season or this element, it's a yellow or an orange or even like a earthy brown soil. Foods that come into that category and millet is really something that I share with a lot of people. I've worked with people who just they literally add more pumpkins, some sweet potatoes, some millet into their diet and depending what it is of course, but they start to notice their energy, their happiness. You just feel happy when you eat these nourishing foods and you feel comforted as well. It's very soothing to eat foods like millet.   Kimberly: (22:27) If you don't know what millet is I highly recommend you look it up. It's a small, yellow, soft, sticky, mushy grain.   Mason: (22:37) Yum.   Kimberly: (22:38) Yeah.   Mason: (22:38) Wow.   Kimberly: (22:39) You can make it sweet and savoury. You could make it into a porridge with some milk, soy milk, some cinnamon, make it with nuts in like a breakfast porridge or you could make it with roasted vegetables and make it into more like a fluffy salad kind of like quinoa, but a little bit moister. Those would be my suggestions of just simple foods and then cooking styles for the season would involve a little bit more warmth, using your pots and pans and a little bit more moisture. Think soups, stews, casseroles that kind of texture and consistency. Texture isn't something we've talked about a lot actually, but for this season, it's a really nice one to bring in this soft, creamy, comforting flavour, whatever that means to you. I'm going to say pudding again, but it could be pudding, it could be pie, it could be crumble, a nice fruit crumble. Or even I start to crave in late summer and going into the colder months, more creamy beverages as well. I'm a black tea, green tea kind of girl, but when it gets cooler, we can start having some nice milk or soy milk or oat milk or whatever milk you choose. Start to bring that into your mornings as well.   Mason: (24:13) Because I kind of always sense the question, I think I feel like I've asked quite a bit in terms of like recipe guides and that kind of thing. Have you got those on your site?   Kimberly: (24:25) I do. I actually have an ebook for each element and the one for earth element's on managing dampness, so it's more specific to that, but yeah, there's other recipes for certain elements and certain seasons. I'm actually going to be doing a short course with beautiful recipes that I haven't written myself have enlisted some wonderful teachers and chefs in Australia and overseas and it's just purely on the earth element and it's about relaxation and food therapy. There's a lot of desserts and the idea of understanding how we can relax our body and our mind purely by looking after the earth element in late summer season because a lot of us that experience anxiety, worry, nervousness, tension, stress, it's all around the earth element. We can definitely reduce those symptoms and come back into balance with food.   Mason: (25:30) I might just quickly ask some reiteration what I really there is like as you know, I've got a spleen-y constitution, which I think surprised me more than anyone, but it's actually not [inaudible 00:25:43] I'm like, oh actually it's not really that surprising. What happens because it's, I know, I don't know if you gone too much into this, but the personality or spirit of the spleen, the [crosstalk 00:25:55] so much about the intellect and from what I can tell or the way I'm relating to it at the moment is that aspect of somewhat reflection and intellectually taking stock of how are we going moving towards manifesting our visions? How are we going? Have we planned effectively? Are my actions detracting from one another? Has my timing been good? It's kind of the time to really take stock of how the harvest was that year and how we prepared going into winter.   Mason: (26:30) I do have a tendency to overthink intellectually a lot and so quite often, because I have that proclivity to constantly ruminate, therefore when I start looking at the, not that these are laid down as rules, but I'll treat them as an intellectual rules of like, all right, this is cooking style, this ingredient, or can I do that ingredient? I'm like you, you said, quinoa and when my spleen-qi when not flowing, I can feel it go oh, gosh, there are people out there that are worried. Well, can I eat quinoa? Is that right for the earth season? It just goes around and around. I like for you then bringing up when we are cooking or eating or doing a dessert, the intention there just immediately takes me out of my mind is to bring that relaxation into the body and that feeling of nourishment and therefore, I go, okay, that's a real good guide for me. When I get into the kitchen, don't worry about the rules or remembering the ingredients and [inaudible 00:27:35] that are going what I'm bringing into... And I'm curious about the other qualities [crosstalk 00:27:40] that you're looking for and seeing in a recipe or ingredients like what the outcome is and using that as a lighthouse rather than getting stuck in the rumination for spleenies like me?   Kimberly: (27:49) Yeah. First comment is you've probably got the spleen-y rumination going and then your metal element going, I need a rule or a recipe. The earth element is all about intuition and it's a very feeling, sensitive element. When we're in the kitchen, definitely, I always encourage people to look at the recipe or use it once or twice and then just throw it away or scribble all over and change it. I actually, really, this is a public announcement, I hate writing recipes. I hate it. I do it. I actually have to finish one more on the kidney and the water element at the moment, but because it is rules and it's rigid. When I cook, I don't use recipes and I know people need them and I understand that.   Kimberly: (28:38) But what we want to cultivate on what you just said is to have this intuitive nature. If you wake up it's hot or cold, it doesn't matter what season it is or what podcast you've listened to, if you're feeling like eating salad, eat the salad or think about, oh, maybe there's a reason why I need to cool down. Same with the earth element, if you wake up and you're thinking, oh, Kimberly and Mason said I must eat more pumpkin and millet and this and that, but you're just not feeling it, there definitely isn't any reason to stress about it or overthink. But yes, the spirit of this organ is the intellect and this idea that we think or we overthink. It is the mind and the brain itself, but it's definitely related to the state of our spleen. If it's happy and warm and functioning well, you're going to be very clear in what you want and what you need.   Mason: (29:36) Can you talk about warmth there, the importance? I feel like I think we've hit it several times, but I can never get enough reminders, especially coming from the raw food circles.   Kimberly: (29:45) Yeah, yeah. The idea of the spleen or the spleen-qi is to be able to regulate the upward and downward energies in the body, whether it's food, emotions, everything, how we're feeling and thinking. I always think of it as like, if you have your spleen, which it is a small organ in Western anatomy and it's not considered if much importance, but in Chinese medicine, it's very important, up there with the gallbladder, both very small, but very powerful and important. When we pour lots of cold water on the spleen, we lose that fire, we lose that even zest for life. We lose a lot of upward energy, potential, and warmth. In Chinese medicine, the, I don't want to say, rule, but the guiding principle would be to have more warm foods than cold and to avoid ice.   Kimberly: (30:41) I personally love a good ice cream in summer on a hot day, no problem there, but I always tune in and think is my spleen okay with this today or if I have it three days in a row? A lot of the traditional food cultures and wisdom will say not too much cold and to have warm foods, especially in the morning. If you're a smoothie or raw person, no problem, but not ideally first thing in the morning, so have something like a ginger tea or a warm porridge or a tonic herbal drink, something warm first, and then start your day. That's just a long term health thing to cultivate the energy of the spleen and not just put that fire out constantly.   Mason: (31:28) Yeah, I mean, I feel there's a real maturity coming about now in terms of Chinese medicine's having been having to hold in the west, especially, such a strong place and maybe sometimes a rigid place of just being like, no cold, no raw. A lot of practitioners who maybe are really good in their treatments, but maybe not good at communicating nuance, even though they embody it and so there is just this kind of like, just stop doing all this bloody smoothies and raw foods and juices. I think now there's more of a nuanced integration, a colouring of that conversation coming up, little distinctions, like well, your spleen element might not necessarily care that you move to Bali and Hawaii and the weather's always warm. You maybe think you've tricked the system and you can always do tropical fruits and cold drinks because you're in that environment, but your organs maybe don't want to be long term stationed in that environment or even if you live there, maybe they still want to have a bit more respect and honouring. I think that's definitely happened maybe even an overcorrection away from raw foodism and veganism and that kind of thing. But then the other one is the cold plunging that is now probably the biggest, such a huge, awesome practise, but [crosstalk 00:32:57]-   Kimberly: (32:57) I think they all are and they all have their place. I'm a very modern, flexible five elements practitioner, so I will never say you can't have ice cream because I quite enjoy good quality, personally vegan ice cream, but any ice cream for those. The ice baths, the smoothies, there's a time and a place. For some people, they actually probably are craving that for a reason. It's when that happens and then you start finding you get diarrhoea or digestion issues that you might feel really hot on the outside, on the external layers of your body, but your inside, spleen, intestines, for women, even the uterus, if there's cold, or kidneys even, on the inside, you just need to balance that out. Some food, some herbs, some acupuncture, get back to balance.   Kimberly: (33:46) I have a teacher who's always said, "We should technically be able to eat anything." If we have a strong earth element, an ice cream here or a cold bath there or whatever is not going to cause you that grief or pain, but when you do it and you're out of balance in the first place, you're just going to overburden the system and make it harder to come back into balance one day when some other condition or illness will manifest and that does happen. There is a time and place for cold things, absolutely. Just know what it is and when your personal level or limit has been reached. I mean, the other thing I do is I play with it, I experiment. I'll have ice cream and then I'll have a ginger tea and I feel the effects on my body or I'll have a ginger tea knowing I'm going to have ice cream tonight.   Kimberly: (34:38) You just self-experiment, you really test the feelings and the energies of the food, knowing full-well the properties of it. That's fun, too. Or you can use [moxa 00:34:50] as well sometimes, but I definitely notice the difference when I eat foods that my spleen doesn't like. I feel it the next day, whether it's brain fog or an upset tummy or dampness, I feel it. But yeah, maybe it's the sensitivity or the awareness, but then the beauty of the five elements is you can always do that balance. You can use food, you can use cooking, herbs, acupuncture, moxa is fantastic. Not that I'm suggesting you eat ice cream and use moxa, but you can bring warmth to your body in other ways.   Mason: (35:26) Yeah. I mean, that's like qigong, like it's all on offer and they all kind of integrate.   Kimberly: (35:34) Yeah. The ancient wisdom was all about balance. If you are staying in balance, you can come bring yourself back to balance and the earth element is all about that. As long as we nourish it and have these foods on a more daily basis, then you can challenge yourself or challenge your spleen in small ways. I mentioned ginger, let me just add a few more foods for everybody. I mentioned those round and ground vegetables. Don't underestimate onions for their sweetness, carrots, parsnips, turnips, for the vegans and vegetarians red beans or adzuki beans are really good for the spleen, the spleen-qi, the spleen energy, also our blood, chickpeas and lentils. When I was living in China, my TCM doctor would recommend for everybody, meat eaters and vegetarians and vegans, for everybody having lentils, sweet potatoes, also artichokes. They have a spleen-qi quality to them to enhance our spleens. That's something just to note. If you're a meat eater, then absolutely a little bit of meat will help with the energy of the spleen, keeping it strong and robust.   Mason: (36:53) Any particular meats for this season?   Kimberly: (36:58) Meat's a funny one because with each food chart that I find in Chinese medicine, there are some books, not many, but in terms of food energetics, chicken's a funny one, for example, because some people will put it in the wood element, which is spring, and some people will put it more in autumn and winter. It's a tricky one, but one of the charts that I have for the five elements, because you can apply meat and any food to each element, one that I found that most people agree on would be duck, pork, salmon, tuna, mackerel, so some of the more oily fishes as well, they classify them in this element or in the season. Again, that comes back to charts and tables and recommendations, but seeing how you feel would be my suggestion. But as a comparison, a lot of what Chinese medicine would classify as warmer meats, such as lamb, would definitely be more in winter and then more seafood and fish in spring and summer. You can experiment with meats for sure, just as you can experiment with vegetables or even beans or pulses in each season. There are definitely different ones that are more suited.   Mason: (38:26) Beautiful.   Kimberly: (38:27) Yeah. I'm actually going to make a chickpea pumpkin stew this weekend. That's a very earth element, roundness. If you're a meat eater, you could put some meat or fish with that as well. That nice, creamy, rich, hearty kind of stew is what we're looking for.   Mason: (38:49) Yum, happy spleen [inaudible 00:38:52]   Kimberly: (38:52) Yes.   Mason: (38:55) Yeah. Are you sometimes fascinated by how much notoriety damp spleen have these days in the health world?   Kimberly: (39:02) Yeah.   Mason: (39:02) It's like the one thing that's permeated purely Western orientations. It's like someone who's like [inaudible 00:39:11] a full pelt keto, they're just talking about ketosis and talking about all those other areas of fat metabolism, but then they'll bring up spleen dampness just out of nowhere. It's like, I don't know, instinctively the spleen's just going like, dude, please, please, please can we not be so rigid? [crosstalk 00:39:35]-   Kimberly: (39:34) Yes.   Mason: (39:36) ... keto can definitely fall into the same category as a therapeutic diet, just as a spleen friendly diet can become a therapeutic diet and then people fall too far into ideology around their therapeutic diets, which is spleen friendly, keto. And then thinking that that can become a holistic approach to life dietarily when this doesn't quite work like that. Again, it's another maturity or [inaudible 00:40:06] that we need more maturity and conversation and making a distinction. I'm going to start and then I'm going to hopefully create this result and then I'm going to be able to slowly integrate further back into one more full spectrum, integrated, elementary, romantic, lots of laughter, lots of fun, different aspects of different organs and virtues and nourished at different seasons or different times of my life. We need to just remember that, so we don't get stuck in trying to find the right diet.   Kimberly: (40:35) Absolutely. Yeah, variety in every season would be key and definitely in the earth element finding those sweet qualities, creamy, nourishing and go whatever ingredients you want just within that framework and enjoy it. This is the time, this is the where the foodies live or the earth element people are. They prioritise their food because they feel it and they enjoy it. Taking pleasure from our food would also be my suggestion for this late summer earth element and throw away the rigidity. Bring that back in metal, bring that back in autumn if you want, but just let it go and relax, chill out for earth element. Have some pie and just life's okay. You don't have to worry so much because that also comes into this element, this overthinking. We're worrying like, oh, guilt and all of this in there and it's no fun. This is a season to enjoy. It's also in the 24 hour cycle we didn't talk about that, but it is in the afternoon. This is afternoon tea time. This is when people want that sweet piece of cake or pie or cookie, muffin, whatever, energy ball. This is the time to respect that, honour that and yeah, you have my permission to enjoy afternoon tea.   Mason: (42:05) That's good therapy. It's good therapy [crosstalk 00:42:07]-   Kimberly: (42:07) Yeah, absolutely.   Mason: (42:08) Yeah. Yeah. I think we've got a pretty great community and I think a lot of people have gone through that stage of going, I can't do this anymore. I can't do this rigidity. I can't do this feeling dirty if I have something that's not in my mental scope of the right thing to eat. Again, it's just like that doesn't have to be come your whole life as well. Going no, I just need to enjoy, that can lead to, gosh, what's the word I'm looking for, that can lead to a, not gorging, but just like never stopping chasing that sweetness hit versus going, there's a season or a time of day where it could be nourished and then not dominate everything as well.   Kimberly: (42:56) Yeah. The sweetness of life. That's the theme for the earth element, definitely.   Mason: (43:03) Beautiful. What's the best way currently for everyone to make sure they're in touch with you and your work and all your future, I don't know if it's a surprise yet, of what you're bringing out in the future soon, but things that people should be aware of and be able to hear about?   Kimberly: (43:17) Yeah, well definitely with the earth element would be this relaxation in food therapy short course that's coming out very soon, Hopefully around the time that this podcast is out and qifoodtherapy on Instagram or qifoodtherapy.com. I've got some eBooks, online courses, fantastic online summit coming up soon, and I'd love to connect with anybody who wants to talk about pudding or desserts or cooking.   Mason: (43:46) Love it. Thank you so much again for coming on and helping keep everyone's spleen soil nice and dry and fluffy. I mean, that's another one I want to [inaudible 00:43:56] like, really, if you go away from even a really Disney style of imagining of what that earth looks like internally and allow it to break out into a real gritty, grounded reality of soil, imagine yourself grabbing soil and if you're grabbing that sloppy too wet soil, it doesn't have many worms, it doesn't feel great. Verse, when you find a really nice, fluffy, aerated, rich, aromatic soil that you can smell, it's alluring. It smells like life itself. Imagine, oh, I'm going to [inaudible 00:44:36] and I'm going to ease myself over in that direction of having that quality and feeling when I relate to my spleen. Thanks for holding that space for everyone getting there.   Kimberly: (44:47) My pleasure and yeah, fluffy soil, I just wrote that down. Brilliant.   Mason: (44:52) Lots of good work gets done when we're in our chats, doesn't it?   Kimberly: (44:55) Yes.   Mason: (44:55) Lots of good insights.   Kimberly: (44:57) Thank you much.   Mason: (44:58) Beautiful. Have a great weekend and looking forward to jumping on with you again next time.   Kimberly: (45:04) Thank you. Bye.   Dive deep into the mystical realms of Tonic Herbalism in the SuperFeast Podcast!

How can you build the ultimate property management team for your business? Too many entrepreneurs build the wrong team. They have to micromanage their team, they can't trust them, and their team members do not share the business owner's values. Property management growth expert, Jason Hull explains why business owners might get stuck with hires that do not share their values, how to attract the right team members with clearly defined company culture, and what to look for in the ultimate executive team. You'll Learn… [01:13] Recap on the Four Reasons for Starting a Business [02:22] Going from Solopreneur to Having the Ultimate Team [04:24] Building a Team to Give YOU Fulfillment and Freedom [6:19] The “Sandtrap” of Struggling to Grow Business [7:49] Why You Might Have the Wrong Team and Company Culture [10:26] The “Fifth Reason” for Starting a Business: Safety and Certainty [11:05] The Key Team Members for a Property Management Team [15:10] Creating a Core Executive Team of Thinkers [18:48] The First Hire You Should Make and Job Descriptions Tweetables “If every team member is coming to you and asking questions on a daily basis, throughout your day, you do not have a very good team.” “The reason you have the wrong team is because you are showing up in the business as the wrong person, and you are in the wrong role.” “The goal is we're trying to build a core executive team that you can trust to make decisions for and on behalf of you, the business owner. Which means you need people that can think, people that share your values.” “The very first hire that you get should be based on not what the business needs most.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] If every team member is coming to you and asking questions on a daily basis, throughout your day, you do not have a very good team. You've built the wrong team.    [00:00:10] Welcome DoorGrow Hackers to the #DoorGrowShow. 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.   [00:00:50] 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.    [00:01:13] All right. So today, we're going to be talking about this idea of the ultimate property management team, at least the basic foundational team that you would need in order to get to that ultimate level we all want to get to where we have the highest level of the "four reasons." and if you have not listened to my episode on the "four reasons for starting a business," Then go back and check that out.    [00:01:42] So for those that have not heard that, quick recap: the four reasons for having a business are to have more fulfillment in life, to get fulfillment out of your business, to get freedom more and more freedom, and more contribution so you feel like you're making a difference, living your purpose, and support. This is why we create the vehicle of a business. So it can also give us more support and related to that, you cannot have maximum freedom, maximum fulfillment, maximum contribution, unless you have the ultimate team. So let's talk about the ultimate property management team.   [00:02:22] Now, for most business owners, you start out as a solopreneur. This is this journey you start on. The transition from solopreneur to having a team is one of the most painful and difficult transitions. I see business owners go through. This was hard for myself. It's one of the biggest challenges at even multimillion dollar companies or large companies that have been in groups or masterminds that I've been in with... it's building that team and building the right culture and the right team. In building the ultimate property management team, usually you're going to need a few key strategic ingredients, right? So the ultimate team would be basically you as a business owner-- property management business owner-- having a team that allows you to not have to do anything you don't want to do in the business.   [00:03:08] So let's say, you just want to function as a business owner and maybe just hold on to a couple of little pieces that you enjoy or love doing. So here are some of the key people. So typically you're going to need at least probably about five team members, and in order to afford that most property management businesses usually are going to need to be around 200 to 400 doors typically.    [00:03:34] I know there's this model out there. And a lot of people will bring up Steve Crossland. He's a really cool guy right here in Austin... does property management. And there is this Steve Crossland model of property management where you do everything. You do every single thing in the business.    [00:03:52] You do every single thing in the business, and if you're doing every single thing in the business, that's cool. But, you might not enjoy that. You might not enjoy every single thing. Most of us as business owners, there's certain things we're really good at, and there's a lot of things we're really bad at. There's a lot of things I'm not good at, and I don't want to do those things. I don't enjoy doing those things. Those things, those things are not fun for me. So I want other people to help me do those things. And not only that, but it becomes really difficult to try and do everything on your own.    [00:04:24] Now, is it more profitable if you can do every single thing yourself and you're willing to just dedicate all your time? Yes. You can make a lot more money maybe that way, because you have very little cost, but you have to recognize on a previous episode, I talked about the five currencies. I think I talked about that. If I didn't, I'll do it in a future episode, but these currencies are time, energy, focus, cash, and effort.   [00:04:52] So, not all of them are money, right? Cash is only one of them. You want to hold on to as much cash as possible and you're willing to give up all these other sacred currencies, like your life time, your energy, your focus, and that's fun for you? Cool. But for most that's not fun.   [00:05:10] That's not freedom. That's not fulfillment. That sounds like hell right? It's just another job. And if you want to be the guy, or gal by the way, for every maintenance request and every accounting problem and every sales call, or any leasing situation, or every showing... or every operational challenge you are not going to really--- you're not going to have freedom, you're not going to have fulfillment. You're going to be in a prison of your own creation.   [00:05:39] So what's the ultimate goal? Like, if you start this business, usually for most entrepreneurs, the ultimate goal is going to be to have a team so that you feel supported and you feel like Iron Man in that super suit. You're a normal person, but you have this team that increases your abilities, your capabilities, allows you to provide a great level of service and to do a good job and feel like you're making a difference in the world, but you don't have to do all the stuff that's uncomfortable, painful, or you don't enjoy doing.   [00:06:08] So typically, maybe about five team members in addition to yourself. And probably 200 to 400 doors so that you can afford or justify that at least minimum, somewhere in that range or more.   [00:06:19] So we need to get you to that point, and if you're having trouble with that, that's something we help clients focus on is how to get to that point. Now, most people get to this point, and I call this sometimes the "second sand trap," or maybe the third sand trap.   [00:06:33] But, there's the initial sand trap of like: "I can't get on any clients" or "I'm starting my business." That's where a lot of people get stuck. I don't know if that even counts as a sand trap because they're not even going, they have a fantasy business. Right? The next is the first real sand trap is the sand trap of the solopreneur sand trap. Just breaking that a hundred door barrier... getting stuck, maybe around between 50 to 80 doors... can't grow any more. It's too painful. You can't manage any more properties than that on your own for most people and you're struggling and you can't afford to hire anybody and you end up painted into a corner and stuck, right? First sand trap.    [00:07:09] Second sand trap is you are in that 200 to 400 door range and you have a team, but it's the wrong team. And this is where a lot of property management businesses sit stuck and stagnant. They're in that 200 to 400 door range.    [00:07:23] The business owner feels like they have to micromanage everybody on the team, which, you know you're that person if you're like, "We just need more checklists! And we need more processes!" And you're trying to control everyone. And you are the person that every single person on the team comes to and asks questions. If every team member is coming to you and asking questions on a daily basis, throughout your day, you do not have a very good team.    [00:07:49] You've built the wrong team. You don't have a team of thinkers. You don't have a team of decision makers. You have a team that you have to micromanage, and these are people as process that you have to control. And this is the initial team most people build. When they start building a team, they build a team the wrong way. They build a team that they have to micromanage and control because at first it feels really cool.    [00:08:11] There's a lot of ego and everyone's coming in asking questions and they feel like they're really smart. And they end up quickly like the Emperor or Empress with no clothes. Everybody wants to say yes to the boss. They're not giving the boss valid feedback. And so you end up with a business that is struggling.   [00:08:30] And the reason you have the wrong team is because you are showing up in the business as the wrong person. And you are in the wrong role. You've created this role, holding onto all the things that you think you have to do as a business owner. You're like, "I have to do, you know, the accounting. I have to control the finances."   [00:08:53] That's like, "I'm the business owner. That's my job." Or "I'm the only one that can do the sales. I have to do all the sales and I'm the BDM too. So I have to do all of that because nobody else is as good as me," or whatever you tell yourself. Or "I have to handle the operations because that's running the business and it's my business and I'm running it.   [00:09:11] "I have to manage the entire team and do everything." Whatever it is that you are holding on to, if it's not something you enjoy, you are showing up as the wrong person. So we want to make sure that we build the right job for you, and then we build the right team to supplement you-- the right team around you.   [00:09:31] And most business owners are stuck at the 200 to 400 door range in this industry because they have the wrong team because they've been showing up in the wrong role and they didn't understand the four reasons and they weren't moving towards that consistently. And they didn't set up the right culture.   [00:09:49] Their team has no clue really what the company's core values are. They have no clue what the company's client-centric mission is to, to benefit clients. Then, you know, none of this is clearly defined. There's a lack of culture. And the business owner has a lack of clarity on themselves and never got clear on why did they even do this? How does this give them more fulfillment and more freedom? How's this helping them be more of themselves, create more contribution. How does this help bring them more alignment towards the four reasons? That lack of clarity means you're going to have team members that also are not in alignment with those four reasons.   [00:10:26] So there's the fifth reason. And the fifth reason is safety and certainty. Your team members are just people that want safety and certainty, they just don't want to get fired. They just want to keep getting paid. They just want their job and they become hiders, not believers in your business because you haven't given them anything to believe in. There's no real culture that's clearly defined, so the culture in your business is what actually is going on in your business.    [00:10:49] So if there's office politics, if there's micro-managing, if there's laziness, if there's confusion, if there's crappy processes, that's your culture. That's the culture that you have defined by not clearly defining it.    [00:11:05] So let's talk about these key team members that you would need once you get to that 200 to 400 door range, or as you're growing and scaling, if you wanted to offload things. So in most businesses at that stage, you're going to probably need a maintenance coordinator that handles the maintenance coordination.   [00:11:23] This could be an introverted person. That's just really detail-oriented and really good at remembering stuff and can facilitate tools like Property Meld and stuff like that. That was property meld, M-E-L-D. They can facilitate tools like this for communication and nothing falls through the cracks with them because they're on top of that kind of stuff, if they're the right personality. So you have a maintenance coordinator handling maintenance, it's a big piece of the business, right?    [00:11:48] You will probably need a property manager, somebody that handles the leasing side of things, that handles the onboarding of new tenants and new owners that the salesperson hands people off to, and that is the boots-on-the-ground person that goes out into the field and does certain things related to leasing and onboarding... that sort of thing.    [00:12:08] You'll also need an operator. This is probably the most important role, second to the visionary or the entrepreneur, which would be you, those listening to this. So the operator is going to be the person that handles all the operational pieces they're going to be very different than the visionary personality type. They have all the details, make sure the team are doing what they're supposed to be doing. They make sure that meetings are being run on time.    [00:12:34] And in a certain way, they're handling the strategic planning for the company, which we have a system that we teach clients called DoorGrow OS, which I believe is better than Traction or EOS or any of that kind of stuff that most of you are dabbling with out there. There's several advantages in DoorGrow OS over that system. Maybe that'd be another podcast episode.    [00:12:55] But you have an operator and they have an operating system and they're going to make sure process documentation and systems and everything are working well and that the business runs. And they're basically the key person that's going to enact your vision and make sure your vision is coming to fruition and they will ensure that it gets done.   [00:13:12] You will probably also need a BDM. You may love doing sales. And that may be one of the last things that you give up and maybe nobody would be quite as good as you. But if that is not your personality type and you don't enjoy it, or you just have part time availability to dedicate to that, you can only really do sales and follow-up maybe 10 to 20 hours a week or less.   [00:13:34] Then you may want-- if you really want to grow and scale your business, then you will need to get a full time person. That's focused on networking, connecting, building relationships, prospecting, and growing and scaling your business... referrals... all of that kind of stuff. So that would be a BDM, which is a business development manager. Basically a sales person in your property management business.   [00:13:59] The other role that you may need is maybe you don't enjoy– or are not an expert at the financial stuff. I've worked with financial coaches and things like that, because this was something I was not naturally good at because I didn't enjoy it. But I like making money and I like winning financially. And I like knowing that the business is sound and safe financially. So I got coaches and mentors on this, but I still have people and resources and a team to help with these pieces so that it's not something I have to put a lot of time and energy into.   [00:14:33] So you'll need somebody on the accounting side or financial side, bookkeeping, accounting, that sort of thing if that's something that you are not getting a lot of freedom and fulfillment from and contribution from.   [00:14:45] Then another role that you will probably need would maybe be a receptionist, somebody to just field the onslaught of all these phone calls that you're getting from so many tenants and owners and things coming in, to triage things and get them to the right people. You'll need somebody maybe to answer the phones because those low level calls can eat up a lot of resources for these higher level team members.    [00:15:10] Now, what is the goal that we're trying to build here? The goal is we're trying to build a core executive team that you can trust to make decisions for and on behalf of you, the business owner. Which means you need people that can think, people that share your values. You will never trust your financial person to make decisions, you'll never trust your BDM to sell and bring in people the right way and attract the right clients, you'll never trust fully your operations person to do the job the right way unless you deep down know they share your values.    [00:15:48] They might be skilled and can do those jobs, and you may have a team. If you're in that 200 to 400 door range and you feel stuck it might be because you have a team of people that don't share your values, or they're not clear on your values and so there's a disconnect.    [00:16:05] So you need executive team members that are part of this executive team decision-maker/ thinkers that can run pieces of the business-- additional engines in the business-- instead of everyone just being cogs or wheels that are turned by the engine. You need other people that can take these pieces off of your plate so you don't have to make every decision. You don't have to answer every question. You don't have to do every single thing in that, and they don't have to check in with you on every single thing either-- that you're able to trust them. And the only way you'll be able to trust them is if they share your values.   [00:16:40] And if you cannot trust your team members with those things, either you haven't made your values clear to them, or you just know already, which is probably more likely they don't have the same value set as you, You cannot create enough processes and checklists and systems to force executive-level-thinker team members to be effective at implementation and taking action and taking over pieces of the business. That's impossible. There's too much going on.    [00:17:07] They need to share your values, and those values need to be clear to them and need to be related to them, and they need to buy into them and be believers in those values and believers in you and believers in the vision of the company.   [00:17:21] If they don't believe in you, and they don't believe in the values, then they're just "hiders." they're just showing up to get a paycheck. They're going to just do their job. They will do the bare minimum. They're not going to do anything extra. They're not going to think or make decisions 'cause they'll probably just make a mistake or get in trouble, so they're going to come to you and ask you to do it for them. "Make this choice for me." And then you end up just with a whole bunch of people that are eating up your time instead of taking more of your time off of your plate because they're just eating up time, asking all these questions.    [00:17:54] So that's kind of the ultimate team. Now, if you have other ideas or other team members, feel free to comment inside our Facebook group, which is the community for those that are fans of this podcast and that are fans of DoorGrow. You can go to doorgrowclub.com which is our Facebook group, and you can join that group.    [00:18:16] Let me know: what does the ultimate team look like for you? I'd be curious to see if I missed something here, but this-- these are some of the key team members that I've seen people need in their businesses in order to offload and take things off their plate. So that's that. That's about the ultimate team. So in order to have the ultimate team, you need culture, you need a lot of clarity on what you and your role should be in the business and on your purpose in life and on what your values are and what drives and motivates you so that we can build the right ultimate team around you.   [00:18:48] And the next step: the very first hire that you get should be based on not what the business needs most. It should be based on what you need most in order to get to the next level towards the four reasons. This is why I have a strategic process for clients to do a time study, to figure out: what do they need next?   [00:19:10] And then we have a specific way of doing job descriptions that I call "Rdocs" to figure out what is the ultimate job description for the next hire that I need to get in order to let go of the things that are eating up the currencies that I don't want to be giving up, which you know, things that are stealing my energy, things that are stealing my focus, things are stealing my cash, that were preventing from making more cash things. They're stealing my time.    [00:19:35] What are the things that I would want to give up most? And how can I build the right job description around that? And what is my current accurate job description? Is this what I want? Or are there things I can just highlight on that, that I could eventually put onto somebody else's job description. So these are the things we get into more in the DoorGrow OS and into the scale program that's in our mastermind.    [00:19:55] So if this stuff is interesting to you, if you got some value out of this, you might be a good fit or interested in being part of our DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind. So reach out to us, go to doorgrow.com, schedule a call with our team, and we will give you a free training that will help you know everything about our mastermind and help you learn some of these cool frameworks.    [00:20:20] We give this free training away that has seven-- actually, it has probably like nine or more, frameworks that are gonna help you learn how to scale and grow your business more effectively, and we hope you get really excited about that. Realize you're a great fit for it. And it will also break down why most companies are struggling to grow and why most marketing ideas and channels like SEO and pay per click, Google ads and content marketing and social media marketing and pay per lead services are BS and are not helping you grow your business.   [00:20:52] And if you've been trying this stuff and struggling, they all can work, but there's a big, massive reason why they're not working. We can reveal that to you in that training and help you do something that's not those things that cost no dollars and we'll make you a lot more money, and it takes less time than using those strategies to get on a lot of business.   [00:21:14] So anyway, check this out. Doorgrow.com and until next time, to our mutual growth. And I hope you all build the ultimate team and have the ultimate level of freedom and fulfillment in your life and contribution and support. Bye, everyone.

Moving from the closet booth to the…car booth? Anne and Pilar finish telling the story of Pilar's Journey in Part 3 of the Boss Voces premiere. Listen as Pilar finally packs her car (+ her cat!) and moves to LA in hopes of establishing her VO career and signing with a big agency. It's been a wild ride, but things are really coming together now on the West Coast for Pilar... More at: https://www.voboss.com/pilars-journey-part-3 Transcript >> It's time to take your business to the next level, the BOSS level! These are the premiere Business Owner Strategies and Successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a BOSS, a VO BOSS! Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza. Anne: Hey everyone. Welcome to the VO BOSS podcast. I'm your host Anne Ganguzza, and I'm so happy to welcome back to the show special guest cohost Pilar Uribe. Pilar, hey, how are you today? Pilar: I'm doing great. How are you? Anne: I'm doing great. Hey, I have been so interested in your story, and we've learned so many things that are parallels to being in the voiceover industry today from your story. So our last couple of episodes, we talked about your telenova star personalities in Colombia and your -- I think it was nine years you were there in Colombia doing all kinds of acting -- Pilar: That's right. Anne: -- and some radio as well. And then you moved on to Miami, and we're talking to us about your radio career in Miami and how you evolved into that and also in voiceover. And now we're on when your next move, which it's so interesting, you moved from Colombia to Florida, to Miami, and I, I think it was all just things seem to take you where you needed to go to evolve in your career. And I think that's such a cool parallel with my experience as well. And hopefully BOSSes that are listening out there kind of have some similarities as well. So I'd love to hear about your, I guess what made you go from Miami to LA, and let's, let's continue the journey with you. Pilar: So I'm in Miami, and my, as I said, in the last episode, my land lady, she actually wrote me an email saying, I'm so sorry, but I'm going to sell the apartment. Anne: And you were there for how long? Pilar: 16 years. Anne: Wow. Pilar: Yeah. So my first thought was total and utter panic because I was like, oh my gosh, I have to get out of this apartment that I've lived in. And I've sort of made a life for myself. And I started looking around. I had been working with somebody. We've had like a 25 now, yeah, more than 25-year conversation with his really good friend of mine in New York and something that he used to say to me. I had started getting a little bit sort of, I want to do something else, but I'm not really sure what it is. You know, I, I've got four jobs and I've got the radio host thing, and it's just, you know, it's, I'm always hustling, and it would be nice to be able to do more voiceover. But you know, Miami is not a lot, a lot of opportunity there, unless it's in my booth. And he said something to me, because I was like, you know, I think I need to. And he would say until you decide to pack your bag, you're not going to move. And he said that to me for years. And I take it now is it's not just a physical thing. It's sort of a, if I want to do something, I have to go ahead and do it. Anne: Yeah. Pilar: Because I can talk about it -- Anne: You have to pack your bag. Pilar: -- until the cows. Yeah. So like, I can talk about it until the cows come home. But if I don't actually do it and decide to make a change, I'm never going to do anything, you know? Anne: Yeah. I love that. I love that. There you go manifestation again. Pilar: Exactly. Anne: Especially for those BOSSes that are early in their careers, and they don't know, and they think about it, and they think this is what they want to do, but yeah. Actually taking the step and the, the physical part of yes, making that decision, putting the things in place, and it helps it come to fruition. Pilar: Exactly. So I didn't tell anybody, and this is something that I'm very conscious of. A lot of the times I would sit there, like I wrote like 17 or 18 songs when I lived in Colombia. And so I said, you know, I'm, I have songs and I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I would tell everybody that I was gonna put out an album eventually. I never put the album out, but I told everybody I was going to do it. And a lot of the times when you say things like that, you leak your energy. So when you have an intention in your mind, it's really important to keep it within yourself, um, and share it with people that you can trust and be aware that it's not something that you need to sit there and gab and gab and gab and gab about, but that you really need to focus on what it is that you're doing. And I think that, that's what I, I mean, I did that for a while, and I would sit there and I would complain, and I'd be like, oh, you know, I want more. And I'm really kind of in love with this thing called voiceover, but I don't really know what it is. And so I decided to just go ahead and kind of be quiet and say, okay, if I'm going to do something -- because I'd been doing it for 10 years and everything that I got was actually I got it. I didn't have an agent. I didn't, I, you know, had the on-camera agents, but I was doing voiceover. So I thought, okay, what, where can I go? And so VO Atlanta was coming up. And so I just thought, well, let me, let me check out Atlanta, because I love Atlanta. I've been there a few times, and I went and I saw these people and it was really wonderful. And then I thought, let me go. There was a, I think it was a WoVo was having a small, like a little mini session in San Francisco. So I thought, let me, let me go there. But once I left to go there, there was something about it. As much as I loved Atlanta, Atlanta was, I mean, at that point, um, this is two years ago now going on three, it's really, it, it definitely has a very strong voiceover, but it was more for on camera. And I realized I really want to focus on my voiceover, you know? And, and I had always thought, I mean, I always knew that in LA, you know, LA for me, it was like the Olympic village. And I was like, do I want to, I've always dreamed of going to LA and this, my friend Dale has been telling me would tell you, pack your bag. Anne: Yeah. LA is weird dreams coming true. Right? People move to LA with their dreams. Pilar: Right, exactly. What was it that they say in -- "what do you wish for? It your dream!" Was it that -- it was this great guy at the very beginning of "Pretty Woman." Anne: Oh! Pilar: He says it at the very beginning. Anne: Oh yeah. Pilar: And he says it at the very end. Anne: Yup. Pilar: "What do you wish for?" It was, it's really cool. So I went to San Francisco and then I went and I spent a few days with a friend in LA. And as soon as I got there, I was like, oh, I'm supposed to be here. And I just knew. Anne: Yup, yup. Pilar: I just, it was like, I arrived. And I just knew that that was the place. Anne: Yup. Pilar: So I went back to Miami and I started setting intentions, just like I had when I moved to Colombia. I was like, okay, I'm just going to start setting my intentions here. And I was like, okay, I'm going to need a place to live. And I had time before I had to leave. So this is like in March, March/April, and I had a lead from a very kind person who wrote a letter to Atlas Talent, and it turned out and of course, it's the universe, because they were looking for bilingual voiceover talent. Anne: There you go. Pilar: So I get this email, and they're like, we'd like to have a meeting. And I was like, oh my gosh, they want to have a meeting? They want to have a meeting with me? Are you kidding? I was like, I, so I didn't want to tell them that I wasn't there yet. So I was like, you know, I'm in the process. So I wrote them back and I said, you know, thank you so much. I'm in the process. I'll let you know when I get there. Anne: Now, can I ask you how long ago this was? Pilar: Two years ago. It's going to be three years. Anne: Okay. And it's so interesting because again, the timing of everything, right? I feel like it's important to me. We're really coming into, you know, inclusivity and diversity and needing bilingual and more and more and more. So that makes sense to me. Pilar: Yes. And, and that will play later -- Anne: Yeah. Pilar: -- into that. So I started packing, I started throwing things away. I started giving things away because I realized I can't move with all my stuff. 'Cause it was just, it was just too expensive. So I had to, you know, sell, give away, donate. And I got July 19th, 2019, I got into the car. I packed all my stuff, and with my kitty, with Paco. Anne: And drove across the country. Pilar: I drove across the country. I picked up a very good friend of mine who actually, we started out almost -- I met him almost as soon as I got to, uh, Miami ,Aaron, Aaron Goldenberg. And he is an actor as well. He was living in Atlanta at the time, but I flew him back from Atlanta to Miami on my frequent flyer miles. And we drove across the country, which I highly recommend. I mean, you know, this is -- Anne: With a cat. Pilar: Of course. Anne: With a cat. Pilar: With a cat, of course. I highly recommend -- Anne: How was your booth kitty in the car for a cross-country trip? That would be interesting. Pilar: I have to tell you, he was really good considering, you know, of course there was meowing going on. Anne: Yeah. Pilar: I never let him out of the car. I mean, I never let him out of his travel bag because, you know, that's just not a good idea with -- Anne: Yeah. Pilar: -- with cats, but he was really good. Anne: What about when you stay -- I can't imagine you did the drive in one fell swoop. Pilar: No, no, no, no, no. Anne: Yeah. Pilar: It took us seven days. Anne: Yeah. Pilar: We would drive, I would park some litter in the bottom of the car. I had some litter there and I had water there. And so what I would do is that I would take him out when we would do rest stops. I would take him out and we would leave him alone. We would close the car. We would leave him the most. So he would check it out. He never went to the bathroom in my car. Anne: Oh my gosh. Pilar: I have to -- yeah, no. So what would happen is when we would get to a place, I would immediately, the first thing I would do was I would set up his kitty litter box with a little portable thing that I had, and I would put it in the closet usually so he would have privacy and he would go immediately. So -- Anne: I can't imagine them holding it for like an eight-hour ride. Like -- Pilar: I know. And the thing is, it was right there. That's what was so obnoxious that he wouldn't go. And I had the kitty litter there for him, but he refused to go. So, you know, whatever. Anne: We digressed, we digressed -- Pilar: We digressed, yes. Sorry. Anne: -- into the studio -- into the studio cat -- Pilar: Yes. Anne: -- conversation. But I'm sorry, I had to, I had to ask. Pilar: But it can be done. I'm just, I'm telling you now, Anne, it can be done if you want to go across with the kitties, it can be done. Anne: See, we manifested it. We manifest -- we manifest our kitties as well. Pilar: Exactly. Anne: Crossing the country. Pilar: Um, yeah. So it was, it was, it was great. I saw the most beautiful parts of this country. I was like, it's, it's really, when you realize, for those of you living in the States -- Anne: Yeah. Pilar: -- you just realize the vastness of this country and how amazing it is. You just, you really don't get that um, you know, when you fly in. Driving, it was, it was just, it was such a great experience driving through all across -- all of the states. Anne: That's what I'm going to do when I retire. Pilar: It's definitely worth doing. Anne: Yup. Pilar: So we, we arrived in Phoenix, and Aaron had to fly back for a gig. So I dropped and we -- that had that already been planned. So I dropped him off in Phoenix, and it was close enough that I could, you know, drive the rest of the way myself. It's like 600 miles. So it was long. But I had, I had done that before. So I drove. And then when I was literally inside LA, when I was literally inside, when I was inside the -- in California, I took a picture. I was like, okay, I've reached California. So I took a little, a little post -- I did, I just did a little Instagram post. And when I got within the confines of LA county, when I knew I was within LA county, I stopped the car. I pulled to the side of the road. I stopped the car, and I sent an email so the agent would know that I was there because I didn't want to lie about that I was there when I wasn't. So I was like, okay, I'm already physically here. So then they know. So then they wrote me back pretty quickly after that. And they said, you know, we're every, and it was, you know, it was the summer. So everybody was on vacation. So I got to LA, I wrote them and I, I saw them like about two weeks after I arrived. I arrived at a friend's house. And then I started doing Airbnb, and then I found a place through a good friend, Randy Thomas. She found me -- a friend of hers had a room. So I rented a room, this dear man. So I just started living basically out of my car. I just, I had all this stuff, obviously. So I took some stuff out, but I would live out out of my car because like, what else am I going to do? Anne: Right. Pilar: I can't bring all that stuff 'cause it wouldn't fit in this room. Anne: And this is before, this is before pandemic. Pilar: This is way before pandemic. Anne: Yeah. Okay. Pilar: Yeah. So, so I'm, I'm -- Anne: Well, not so far, actually. Pilar: No, no, no, no, not that far. No, because this is August. This was August. So -- Anne: Right, pandemic March. Pilar: Yeah. This was the August, 2019. Anne: Okay. Because was it 2020? Pilar: Yeah, yes. Anne: Where have the years gone? Pilar: Yes. I know, exactly. We went through a whole year and a half. Right? It's already -- Anne: Didn't we have two years of pandemic? I'm not sure. Pilar: Yeah, we're about to reach two years of pandemic, yes. Anne: So okay, so you're about a year before the pandemic then. Pilar: Yeah. Six months. Anne: Oh, okay. Pilar: Nine months, nine months. Anne: Okay, nine months. Pilar: Nine months. So -- Anne: Like a pregnancy, like -- Pilar: Exactly, like a pregnancy. Exactly. So I had nine months ,and that's really important. Anne: Yes. Pilar: So I, I, um, I, I go to the agent. I, you know, I get all dolled up and I, I get there super early to the appointment with the agents, and they were like, so incredible. So nice. So normal. I was like, wow, okay, this is just, and they asked me questions. And so I, I, you know, I give them my stuff. I give them my little, you know, my little elevator pitch, which by the way, everybody needs an elevator pitch. That's really important to have an elevator pitch. That's what I'm discovering is like, you know, just basically like a little minute of your life. Anne: Sure. Pilar: You know? Anne: Absolutely. Pilar: And so then they, you know, they asked me, they said, do you want to freelance? Which is what I had been doing for 16 years, because Miami is a right to work state, so with all my on-camera agents. And I didn't, I didn't have any experience with, with VO agents. And they said, do you want to freelance? Do you want to, you know, sign? And I was like, oh, where's the page where I can sign on the dotted line? I was like, I'm not, I'm not freelancing if you're giving me this choice, I'm signing, you know, because obviously California is not a right to work state. It's like, you sign with an agent, you're done. So I was like, yep, I'm on board. And then afternoon, they sent me an audition. And I was like, okay, how do I do this? So I became really good at auditioning inside my car. Anne: Tell me about your setup in the car. Pilar: So the setup is, it's actually, it's a really cool setup. So you sit, you have to sit in the backseat. You pull the seat all the way to -- forward. And I have a Sennheiser 416. Anne: Yup. Pilar: So you pull the seat all the way forward. You sit on -- and, you know, it's, it's, it's a maneuvering situation to get your butt in the bottom of the car, not on the seat, but on the floor of the car. Anne: And we'll share a picture of this setup on our website, on the VO BOSS website. Pilar: Totally. Oh yeah. Anne: I would love to share. Pilar: Oh, I have it. I have it. I have a picture. Yeah, totally. Totally. And then the laptop goes on the back seat, and then I've got my Focusrite 2i2 there as well. And then little, you know, the cables. And then I've got my Sennheiser with a stand in the middle of where the, on the -- Anne: Console, on the console? Pilar: On the console. Anne: Okay. Pilar: No, in the middle of where the front seats are. Anne: Yes, yes. Right. Pilar: So it's that little it's, it's not on top of where the dashboard is, but it's in the middle. So I'm sitting down, and I'm looking -- Anne: I call that the console. Pilar: Oh, you do? Okay. We call that -- Anne: Well, I do, the console in between the seats. Pilar: Yeah. Okay, cool. Cool. Cool. Yeah. Okay, cool. It's like, I'm not familiar with that lingo. Sorry. I'm not that advanced! So I don't know why they used to call -- we used to call them jump seat -- the jump parts. I don't know, whatever. Anyway, so I'll take a little table. I'll call it the table. So I'd put my set, the, the holder, the mic holder and the Sennheiser. Anne: Yup. Pilar: And I would start doing auditions from there. 'Cause I originally, I had a, uh, a dear friend who would also let me use his studio, but sometimes I couldn't get to the studio in time if it was quick. Anne: Right, right. So it's not like you were living out of your car. I mean, you had a place to stay; you just didn't have a booth. Pilar: I didn't have a booth. Yeah. And the thing is I didn't have room. Anne: Yeah. And so your car acted as the booth. Pilar: Exactly. My correct as the booth. Anne: Yeah. Pilar: And so I had the trunk of my car was filled with stuff -- Anne: Sure. Pilar: -- because I couldn't take everything out, 'cause it just wouldn't fit in the room that I was living in. You know? Anne: Yes. Pilar: So like when I wanted to wear something different, I would go and get something out of the car -- Anne: Go in the trunk. Pilar: -- and then -- yeah, exactly it was, it was actually kind of an easy way to live, you know? Anne: Right? Pilar: -- 'cause I, I didn't have that much. Anne: Minimalist. There you go. Pilar: So it was perfect. And then this guy had a garage. So sometimes when I needed real quiet, because it was -- the lawn mower situation -- Anne: Yup, yup. Pilar: -- in California is just a nightmare and a half. There's always lawn blower, leaf blowers everywhere every day. So I would go and I would park the car, and I would, and this was summer. This was still summer. This was August. I was, I was just sweat like a pig. Anne: Sweltering in the back seat there. Pilar: Totally. But it was perfect because I was really, it was like, I was insulated. Anne: But not like Miami. I can't imagine if you were in -- Pilar: No, no. Anne: -- a car in Miami. Pilar: Oh no, that would be horrible. No, I would. I would be, you know, they wouldn't find me. I'd be asphyxiated. It'd be so bad. Anne: So you did your first audition in the car. Pilar: I did my first -- Anne: For Atlas. Pilar: Yeah, I did my first audition -- I think I did my first -- yes, for Atlas. Yeah, absolutely. 'Cause that was, that was like the first I, I needed a place to go. So that's where I did it. And then I did it at this friend's house as well. A lot of the times, you know, I would come in and I would, I would do like three or four, you know, auditions. I did them for five months, five months. Okay? So I would audition. I finally found again, it was, I wanted a quiet place. I asked for a place. I found this wonderful woman who's also a voiceover person. And she had converted her closet, not her closet, but this other house where she had, uh, she had, she used to do it. So it was actually already sort of treated. It was already a treated space where I'm, where I'm talking to you from now. So it was, it was perfect. Anne: Ah, so you're still in the same place? Pilar: Oh yeah. I'm still at the same place. Anne: There you go. Pilar: You know, when I found the place, it was a matter of, I asked around and this person said, oh, I have this friend of mine who's looking for somebody. So it was just, it was so perfect. It was one of these aha moments. I was like, this is it. This is where I'm supposed to live. I saw the place. And I was like, I want, you know, this is where I want to be. And the first day that I moved in, I had not finished moving in when I had it professionally treated and everything set up here where I'm speaking to you from now. So it was perfect. And I just auditioned and I auditioned. And when I say this am, I mean, it, I didn't get one gig. Anne: So for five months, you auditioned and you auditioned. Pilar: I got zero and I, yeah. I took classes of course, 'cause I realized, oh, this is a different scenario. I'm in the Olympic village of voiceover. Anne: Sure. Pilar: This is not, you know, we're not in Kansas anymore. Anne: Right. And when you auditioned, what sorts of opportunities -- were they bilingual? Were they English? Spanish? What were they? Both. What did they send you? Pilar: They were everything. It was like, they were everything. And it was like, oh my gosh, stuff that I would never have been able to do if I was in Miami. Now this was pre-pandemic. Anne: Yup. Pilar: Obviously the situation has changed, but it was also a testament to my agents who were like willing to put me out there because you know, they're always talking and there's always feedback obviously. Anne: Sure. Pilar: So I would get auditions for McDonald's. Well, I would never, I've never been able to do that in Miami. Anne: Hold on a minute. I'm going to back the truck up there for a minute because you say there's always feedback. So with great agents, I think you get great feedback. Pilar: Yes. Anne: And if you are actively requesting feedback, I think that that can very much help. I know there's -- some people never get feedback. I think that that is something that is very different. And when you're shopping around for agents, and agents are shopping around, it really is a partnership. And I think that if you want a great agent, they will, they will be absolutely willing to give you feedback and help to propel your career. Just like you're going to help them get clients. Pilar: Exactly. And you just made a really good point because it's a partnership. Anne: Yup. Pilar: It's not, oh, the agent is up there, and I'm down here or, "oh, you work for me. You got to get me the rules." No, no, no, no, no. Anne: Right, exactly. Pilar: It's not a community. It's like, you've literally created a community. Now, the agents won't say anything until you ask them. Anne: Yes, absolutely. Pilar: If I'm in the driver's seat, I need to drive my career. So I need to ask for that. And I have to be able to, you know, put my ego to the side -- Anne: Yes. Pilar: -- and listen to what they're saying. Anne: Yes. Pilar: And not say, oh, well, they don't know what they're talking. They don't know that. You know, it, it really is. It's a, it's a real give and take. It's about giving it. It's about receiving. Anne: So now in your five months, when you were not booking, were you asking for feedback? Pilar: Not at the beginning, but then I asked for who do you recommend that I study with? Anne: Right, right. Pilar: And they were like, okay, we have this and this and this. And I was like, okay, great. And I also asked other, I asked a lot of other voiceover people. I was like, well, who do you recommend here? Who do you -- so then I started taking classes. Anne: Sure. I think what's nice is that they, first of all, I would feel like because they are a large talent agency and a very well-known one. The fact that they gave you the opportunity, like if it were, I think any normal person going through that, and I'd start to be, oh my gosh, I haven't booked for five -- you know, it would start to psych me out. Oh my gosh, what if they drop me? Or what if, and it could be a nerve-wracking kind of situation. If you feel like, well, there's gotta be something that needs to change here. So you want to book for your agent. Pilar: And you know what the thing is, Anne? To me, it's a testament to my agent, the agency that I have, and I feel really blessed. They were very -- it's not -- they knew that I was there. They knew that I was new, and they were -- Anne: They had faith in you. Pilar: -- it's not that they were hands off. Anne: They had faith in you, right? Pilar: Exactly. And there was somebody that I talked to in the office one time, because I was just like really freaking out at one point. I was like, oh my God, they must think -- Anne: Yeah, I can imagine. Pilar: -- who is this person? Why did we hire her? You know, it's like, she's not doing anything. And she was so nice and to the point, and she's like, you know what? It was almost like she said -- she didn't say it this way, but what she meant from that conversation was we know you're a newbie. That's why we're throwing it all out at you. We're giving you the space to do this. Anne: Nice. Pilar: So, uh, and I can't, I can't remember how she said it, but that's what I walked away from. Anne: Sure. Pilar: And I was like -- walked away with -- Anne: Sure. Pilar: -- and I thought, oh, thank God. You know, I'm not -- Anne: Yeah. Pilar: -- like I'm not going to be fired immediately. You know what I mean? Anne: What a nice, what a nice testament to really a working partnership and that your agent has faith in you, and they're giving you -- Pilar: Yes. Anne: -- that space. And I think obviously they had to have known when they first spoke to you, when they first met you, that you had the wherewithal to be successful from whatever, from your past experience, from your personality, from your drive, whatever it was, they had that faith in you, and they kept that faith in you. So that's a really nice, that's a really nice story. Pilar: Yeah. Anne: I'm hoping that our listeners will take that for what it is, because I think getting an agent and having an agent and having a relationship with an agent is something we could have a whole podcast episode about -- Pilar: Yeah, yeah. Anne: -- in regards to the, how to work together as a partnership. Pilar: Yeah. And, and, and I think for me, what was really great was that I was willing to listen to them, and I was also willing to be transparent with them. Anne: Absolutely. Pilar: So they knew, they knew where I was coming from. I mean, they knew that I had radio experience because I have all this stuff on my website. Anne: Sure. Pilar: But they also knew that I was very new to the business in terms of commercial versus all these other genres in the world that they live in. Anne: Sure. Absolutely. Pilar: And they were willing to give me that latitude. Anne: Great. Pilar: So transparency, I think, is really important in this world. Anne: Oh, I completely agree. Pilar: And to be able to turn it into something of, not that I don't know this -- into, I'm very willing to learn -- Anne: How can I -- Pilar: -- and I'm willing to work hard, yeah. Anne: -- how can I learn? How can I, yeah. I'm eager to learn. There you go back to, back to your roots there. Pilar: Exactly. Anne: I may not know, but I am absolutely eager to learn. And I think there's a lot to be said for that in just an overall mentality about what we do every day in our -- I mean, there's always opportunities to learn, and you're talking to an educator here, one that was in front of the classroom for 20 years. We always, always have an opportunity to learn and to improve. And I think that if you take nothing else away from our episode, absolutely, this is one of them. And there's always ways, if you're transparent, if you want to learn, you're eager to learn, people appreciate that. And agents, especially, I think appreciate that. Pilar: Absolutely. Yep. I totally agree. Anne: So five months, nothing. Then what? Pilar: Then I booked this job and -- Anne: Commercial? Pilar: Commercial. It's a commercial job. And I will never forget when the check came in. I thought they'd made a mistake. I almost called them and said, you've, you've made a mistake because this has gotta be wrong. Luckily I called a friend of mine. I al -- I literally, I had my hand on, on the press send a button. I thought we just call a really good friend of mine back east who's a voiceover. And she started laughing when I told her. She said, no Pilar, that's the right amount. This is what it means when you are a union actor, to get paid in the industry. So I was like, oh, thank God. I'm going to be able to pay my bills. Anne: Yup. Pilar: And then that was the end of January. And then in March, the pandemic hit and I was ready. And so I just, I started booking. I just started booking and booking and booking. Anne: Success begets success. Pilar: Yeah. Yeah. Anne: Fantastic. Wow. What a great story. Pilar: Yeah. Anne: What a great story. And so now during this pandemic, you're still in the same place, right? Except now you have -- Pilar: Yes. Anne: -- you don't have to necessarily record in the back of your car because you have a studio, which is awesome, which is where you are talking to me now from. And you are, I hope just a booking machine. And now is Atlas your only -- I imagine you have more than one agency or is Atlas pretty much your agency you're working with right now? Pilar: Well, I was with Stars before I was with Atlas, and they were, you know, they were okay with it. You know, and they're, they're totally okay with having other regional agents that are not, you know, in their market. I've looked around for others. But you know, when I started looking around the pandemic had hit. So they were really swamped. Anne: Yeah. Pilar: So they're really my go-to people right now. Anne: Sure. Pilar: You know, it's, it's not easy because yes. I had a huge glut in 2020, and then 2021 was a lot quieter. It's been a lot quieter than I expected because I, you know, it was just the, I don't, if it was, I was the new kid on the block or what it was. And so, you know, for me, it's like finding other ways to be creative -- Anne: Sure. Pilar: -- and to be able to support myself in that way. And so it's like, I'm constantly learning, you know? And if there's, if there's one thing that I can, a takeaway for me, from what I've been talking about is that I always have a beginner mindset. So if there's a place where I'm feeling stuck, because this is an area, let's say, where I'm not booking, it's like, okay, what other ways can I find -- Anne: Sure. Pilar: -- to do it creatively? Anne: And to evolve, right, as an artist. Pilar: And to evolve. Exactly. Because it's not just about booking the big, you know, commercial job. Anne: Sure. Pilar: It's about how can I incorporate everything that I've learned, and how can I maybe use that in a different way? Anne: And I'll tell you what I, what I love is first of all, your story is so wonderful because you try, you have faith, you manifest, you move. And while you struggle, you know, and fail sometimes, you ultimately come out where you become successful. And it has happened from the story that has evolved here to you multiple times. So each time when you move, you're growing, you're hitting those stumbling blocks. You're growing, you're finding success. And even now you came to LA, you got the agent, you got the jobs, you did really well. Now you hit a little bit of a lull. And so again, you're going through that cycle of how can I improve? How can I grow? What can I do to, to learn? And I think it's such a wonderful testament to how our industry works and how the artistry works of voiceover, where we just must continuously learn. We must continually take those chances. We must continually learn from our failures, right, and put into practice things that we can do to be successful. And what a great story. I absolutely love it. So I want to take the time now to thank you again for telling the story and helping us in being so inspiring. Because I think in our next episodes, I really want to get more into the nitty gritty of the day to day voiceover career that you are now embracing and, and living so that we can talk about how BOSSes out there can, you know, maybe do the same so that they can be successful. Pilar: Absolutely. And I'm very, very excited to keep going. Anne: Yeah. All right. Well, BOSSes, I'm going to give a great, big shout-out to our sponsor, ipDTL. You too can network like a BOSS. Find out more at ipdtl.com. Guys, have an amazing week and we'll see you next week. Take care. Bye-bye. Pilar: Bye, fellow BOSSes. >> Join us next week for another edition of VO BOSS with your host Anne Ganguzza. And take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at voboss.com and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies, and new ways to rock your business like a BOSS. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via ipDTL.

Wondering how to earn more points towards travel? Trying to decide which travel credit card is the best fit for your family? This week we chat with points and miles expert Jennifer Yellin about the best travel credit cards for families. Kim and Tamara also talk about the changing travel restrictions in Europe, the Caribbean, and cruises. Note that since this podcast was recorded, Italy has also dropped its testing requirement for fully vaccinated travelers. About Jennifer Yellin Jennifer Yellin is the founder of Deals We Like, where she helps her readers travel on a deal. She writes about everything travel related, such as travel credit cards, travel rewards (points and miles) and travel destinations. Jennifer is also a freelance writer for CNN Underscored and The Points Guy where she writes on similar travel topics. Jennifer loves traveling to beach destinations and embracing ski trips with her family. How to Pick the Best Travel Credit Card for your Family For family travel, you need to book early if you are looking to use points since they are popular times to travel and you need more seats than if you are traveling solo When choosing a credit card to start using points there are some that are very easy to redeem points, like Capital One which allows you to earn points and then use the points eraser to erase the travel charge on your credit card. Others, like Chase Ultimate Rewards, you transfer your points to airline or hotel programs to use your points. You can get better value that way but it takes a little more work There are also airline or hotel specific cards that provide certain perks, like a free night certificate or free baggage, that can be valuable if you are able to fully utilize it Also look at the annual fees and make sure you are getting more value than you are paying in annual fees The Hyatt card will help you earn Globalist status, which will provide nice perks like room upgrades. See our episode about the best hotel loyalty programs Southwest is a popular card for Southwest fliers that can earn the Companion Pass (see our episode about flying families for free) The Chase Sapphire Preferred is a great card but wait to sign up until they have a very good sign up bonus. Points transfer easily on a one-to-one basis and you can even book through their travel portal. They have a partnership with Southwest and OneWorld Alliance members like American and British Airways If you transfer 1-to-1 to Hyatt, you will get more value out of your points then transferring to Marriott If you do decide to have multiple cards, make a note of which cards give more points for specific categories (e.g. gas, travel, supermarket) and put a piece of tape or label on each card and write on it which category to use that card for If you have a specific trip in mind, find out what hotel you want to stay at and then look at signing up for that hotel brand credit card and sign up when there is a good bonus (unless a card like Chase has a better welcome offer) You can also sign up for credit cards in you and your partner's name or a personal and business card to get multiple sign up offers if you have a specific trip in mind When you want to use points for a family, it can be hard to find enough free seats for everyone. Just keep in mind that if you book separately you may end up separated if they reshuffle the flights but you can try to get the itineraries linked to avoid this If you have status, you probably want to buy a ticket for the person with status and use points for the rest Expert Flyer is a membership website that helps you find special award availability For international airlines, it also helps to use an award booking service to help find flights to a specific destination, these usually cost about $150-200. Usually you don't pay unless you can book You can use Point.me (used to be Juicy Miles) where you put in your itinerary and the system will provide you with options that you can book and that is a less expensive service because it is automated When you transfer points, it can take 24-48 hours for the points to show up in your account and you can't book until they are available. You can Google how long it takes to transfer points between specific programs Once you transfer points from your credit card to an airline or hotel program, you can switch them back to the credit card so be sure you want to use them To earn additional points, sign up for every shopping portal available such as eBates/Rakuten (for cash back or points), some have Chrome Extensions to remind you to purchase through the portal. Most mainstream ecommerce sites will earn you points There are also a lot of sign up bonuses around big shopping weekends Cashbackholic will show you which shopping portals offer the best rates/points offers EV Rewards will also compare for you Always look at the targeted offers that are sent to you from your credit card companies to earn extra points or cash back Buy gift cards through shopping portals, put purchases on credit card and have others pay you back for group dinners, class gifts, etc. Never sign up for a credit card without a sign up offer Southwest currently has a good offer for earning a Southwest Companion Pass Make sure you can always easily meet the minimum spend requirements when signing up for a new card If you are applying for a mortgage or a loan soon, don't apply for a new credit card, but otherwise it won't hurt your credit score Cancel cards when you are no longer getting value, but you can also call and see if you can get a fee waived or reduced If you have applied for 5 or more Chase cards in 24 months, you can't get approved for a new card and Amex offers are usually once in a lifetime but you may be able to get it once they roll off your credit card in seven years or so Full Episode Transcript [00:00:00.190] - Kim Tate Stay tuned to find out how you can charge your way to free travel. [00:00:15.450] - Announcer Welcome to Vacation Mavens, a family travel podcast with ideas for your next vacation and tips to get you out the door. Here are your hosts, Kim from Stuffed Suitcase and Tamara from We 3 Travel. [00:00:29.890] - Kim Tate Tamara. It's kind of a fun intro today because I feel like we're going to share some happy news for a change that's happening. Do you want to kick us off and start talking about some changes that are happening in the travel space lately? [00:00:41.710] - Tamara Gruber Yeah. I mean, just overall, I think everyone feels a whole lot better than they did a month ago, for sure. And I know traffic to my website showing that people are more interested in international travel than they have been, for obvious reasons. But it's just so nice to be on the side of things where it's like things are getting better. [00:00:58.670] - Kim Tate We have good news. Yeah. [00:01:00.680] - Tamara Gruber But as you guys know, we're planning a spring break trip coming up very quickly, and we've been keeping everything crossed that everything goes okay. But we saw just actually, I just saw very recently, I think it was on February 12 that France has lifted their testing requirement to get into the country. So it's just like one of these hurdles that I can check. I can just cross off like, okay, the day before, how am I going to get the test that I need? And is it going to come back in time depending on how things are there or they're going to shut now that things are better, they're closing some testing centers. What's the best way to get this test that they need? So it's just like one of those hurdles that I don't have to go through now. And it's just it's such a relief. And also because Hannah had COVID in early January, I was actually going to get her tested to see if she's still testing positive. Do I need to get the doctor's note and go through that whole thing? And so as restrictions are lifted, it's just so nice to have one less thing that you have to do as you're getting out the door, and then one less thing that could kind of screw up the road. [00:02:11.860] - Tamara Gruber Obviously, you could still get sick, but hopefully you would know that versus like, oh, no, you're actually asymptomatic. Not that we want to be traveling asymptomatically, but you know what I mean? So I'm just encouraged that there are a number of European countries that are lifting their testing requirements at the same time, though, I should say that is for people that are fully vaccinated and different countries have different rules about full vaccination. Like, for example, for France, you need to also be boosted if it's been more than seven months since your second shot or your only shot if you're like me when it was Johnson, Johnson. So you need to follow still those kind of guidelines and all of the rest. But at least on the testing front, it's one thing. So, yeah, so France lifted it. The UK has lifted that, Ireland has lifted it. Spain lifted it. And I've seen that both Portugal and Greece have lifted it for the EU. And so my matter of time before they lift it for the US as well. And part of it might be like the US still has the requirement that people need to test, including US citizens, on entry into the US. [00:03:24.420] - Tamara Gruber So it might be one of those things where it's like, well, if you lift it for us, we'll have it for you kind of thing. But yeah, at least I mean, right now we're still going to have to get tested in France to go into Italy. But at least we know that that's pretty easy to do. Like, there's tons of pharmacies around and it's cheap and readily available and fast turn around. So I'm not as worried about that. And then I actually just ordered some testing kits from EMED, which is what you and I used when we were in Portugal because it's the proctored self testing that is accepted for return to the US. [00:04:00.540] - Kim Tate And it's instant. Yeah, it's really good. [00:04:02.170] - Tamara Gruber Yeah. [00:04:03.870] - Kim Tate That horrible one day window that the US enacted, which I hope they're going to reedit that now that Omicron is calming down because that one day is a big ask. [00:04:13.080] - Tamara Gruber Yeah, it's definitely and I was worried about like, oh, if we're in Italy, I know I can get tested, but will the turnaround be in time? So I just felt like bringing these along is going to be the easiest scenario. We just do that in the room and we'll be all set. So positive news on my friend. And I know you've been paying attention to some other stuff going on, so you have some positive news, too. [00:04:34.640] - Kim Tate Yeah. Well, we're headed out on a cruise for spring break, and we're getting numerous emails that keep coming in because cruises are really volatile right now with the way they're changing. A lot of them went back into even a lockdown. They canceled a lot of cruises in January. And now I think things are loosening up, and so that's kind of opening up options. And so I think that for cruising, just know that cruising is back. Cruises in general have always been, as we talked about in that episode a while back, they're pretty obsessed with cleanliness and germs because of other things like norovirus that they've had issues with. So just know that cruising is back. And so if that's an option. The other thing that I like about cruising is because we're doing a Caribbean cruise and because you come in and out of a US Port, you are waived from a lot of those testing requirements that if you were just flying directly into a Caribbean Island. So there is some benefit to that. Just know that some of the Caribbean Islands also are editing what they're requiring. And I know that, for example, I believe it's the Bahamas and maybe even Aruba, if you're vaccinated, you no longer have to submit a PCR test. [00:05:41.530] - Kim Tate You can take a rapid test. Of course, it has to be a proven rapid test. You can't just take one of the Amazon ones and take a picture of it. It has to be like the EMED ones that you're talking about. But I think for some travelers, those are way easier than, like you said, making appointments and going in through a drive through or some kind of testing site. And then that stress over. Will I get the results in time, especially if for us out here, the Sundays really throw us off because they don't run the results on Sundays and do the testing. So if you need it, you kind of have to either wait for Monday or you have to go Saturday and hope that process works. So I just know that for us, it's kind of a big thing to keep an eye on. And I do think, like you that things are relaxing, and I think everybody's ready to get back to travel. So I feel like a lot of us traveled over the past year anyways, but it's becoming more accessible for people who maybe don't want the cost or the stress of testing. [00:06:35.070] - Tamara Gruber Yeah. I mean, I've talked to a couple of people recently. They were like, oh, I just paid $100 for a test, and then they dropped it the next day. The cost for a family to have to deal with that kind of testing is considerable. It's huge. [00:06:51.000] - Kim Tate Well, our in laws won't come visit us from Canada because they're a family of five and they didn't come last summer because even after the border opened, they can't pay for five test times $150 or whatever. It just was cost prohibitive. [00:07:06.880] - Tamara Gruber So, yeah, I like to be an optimist, and it's been hard for a couple of years. And I know things can change and all of that, but it is just nice to see positive news, positive things happening. And I'm excited. I'm excited for where all of our travels are going to take us this year. [00:07:26.130] - Kim Tate I definitely think that it's exciting and I think that it's people I mean, governments are seeing that the travel restrictions and the testing isn't necessarily catching it. It's still spreading like wildfire all throughout the country. I think that's a bigger thing. Like, I'm fully into watching things, but the fact that obviously Omicron moved through multiple countries, it really shows that we kind of all just need to get back to living and do our responsible parts. [00:07:54.940] - Tamara Gruber Yeah. Well, speaking of getting back to living, I think everyone has been thinking of the trips that they want to take. And so we've been trying to have some episodes that addressed some of that, like some of that inspirational dream travel and today we're going to talk to really a credit card expert, and she's going to help us figure out ways to earn our way to those dream trips using credit cards. So I'm very excited to kind of find some new strategies after talking to her today. [00:08:26.090] - Kim Tate Yeah, definitely. Jennifer is a true expert. So let's get talking to her. [00:08:38.270] - Tamara Gruber We are here this week with Jennifer Yellin. She's a travel and credit card expert, founder of travel site Deals We Like, and a freelance writer for The Points Guy and CNN Underscored. So, Jennifer, I feel a little bit odd to have such an expert here today, but welcome. [00:08:52.970] - Jennifer Yellin Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. [00:08:55.340] - Tamara Gruber Well, we get a lot of questions about credit cards and strategies. And there are always some of our favorite episodes, and people always have different advice. So it's really nice to talk to, like, people with different viewpoints and experience. But before we get into really talking about what credit cards families should be using to earn points, I was hoping you could inspire us a little bit with some of the trips or flights that you've been able to book using miles and points. Sure. [00:09:21.790] - Jennifer Yellin Absolutely. So this past two years, like many of you, probably has been a little bit of a pause in staying at home. But just more recently, my family was actually able to take our first trip since the Pandemic started to Aruba, and we were able to book that fully on points, utilize our JetBlue points. And with JetBlue, it's really cool that if the flight goes down in price, you can cancel now with your points and rebook it. So I was able to do that a few times and really get that price down really low. Booking with points, even during the Christmas time period, it was pretty awesome. And then we stayed at the Hyatt Regency there right on Palm Beach and used points as well. And my husband actually has global status, which is their top tier status. So we are able to apply a suite upgrade. And we're confirmed into a two bedroom suite. And my kids had their own bunkbed room, which I thought was so cool. [00:10:11.020] - Kim Tate That's amazing. That's definitely like a dream. Good job on that, because I know those suite rewards are kind of difficulties sometimes. I hear they are. [00:10:19.280] - Jennifer Yellin I mean, it wasn't available right away. I had a check online daily, maybe hourly leading up to it. And probably about two weeks before our trip. [00:10:26.930] - Kim Tate It opened up nice. [00:10:28.700] - Jennifer Yellin That was good. [00:10:29.960] - Kim Tate That definitely sounds good. I know Tamara was in Aruba, too, but I think those are the dream trips that everybody thinks about when they can do points on Airlines and hotels. So Unfortunately, I get overwhelmed at that aspect of, like, how to redeem. And so I have a whole bunch of points, but they're all just sitting in my account doing nothing for me. So I had a friend who's in the point space once say to me, what do you hate free money? Because you're not using your points. So I know that that's a good thing when you can use them. [00:10:57.520] - Jennifer Yellin Yeah. Family travel, specifically points kind of early because we always are booking during the popular Christmas break, spring break time frame. And that's when everyone books early. So right now I have a bunch of trips planned for December break. Clearly, I'm not taking them all, but booking them right when the war calendar opens up has allowed like a word availability to be booked and it's easier to come by. [00:11:22.660] - Tamara Gruber That's a good tip. [00:11:23.840] - Jennifer Yellin Yeah. As long as I can cancel them, I'm good. I probably have like four different trips. [00:11:28.850] - Kim Tate Yeah. It becomes you have to have a spreadsheet to manage it sometimes. [00:11:33.110] - Kim Tate Well, what do you think is some of the so let's start off by talking about what you think some of the criteria is for people to look for when they're choosing a credit card to start earning points because there are a lot of options and I know kind of what I'm thinking and what other people have said. So in your opinion, what should people look at? [00:11:50.580] - Jennifer Yellin I think it kind of depends. There's two types of credit cards out there in the points space. Forget about cash back, but there's those that allow you to easily redeem your points. Like capital One is the first one that comes to mind. You book your flight and you can kind of use your points to wipe away the charge. [00:12:10.730] - Kim Tate Like the eraser or something. [00:12:12.510] - Jennifer Yellin Exactly. Like at a very easy rate. You don't have to worry about award availability. Like you were saying that you don't want to deal with if the flight is available. The hotel is available on points. As long as you can book it with cash, you can use your points. Then there's one like the Chase Ultimate Rewards, which kind of has a few different programs, actually. But those are where you can redeem your points to various hotel and airline programs by transferring your points. But that takes kind of some motivation, I guess it takes some effort and work and you need to kind of learn the programs, but then you could actually get something of better value. So it kind of depends on what your personality is. [00:12:53.540] - Kim Tate Right. And then, of course, there's also, like specific airline credit cards, like Delta or I have an Alaska card just because it gives me some perks. But it's funny because on Alaska I still book with my Amex because Alaska pays three times, but Amex pays five times. So it's kind of funny how you have to think about that stuff. [00:13:10.330] - Jennifer Yellin Absolutely. Other things I look for is I try to keep my annual fees low because I have a decent amount of credit cards. But are there perks that come with a credit card, like a free night certificate? So like Hyatt offers a free night certificate. It's capped at a category four, but I always find that that helps pay for the annual fee and actually allows me to come out ahead. So are there any of those other bonuses or perks that you'll utilize? [00:13:35.210] - Tamara Gruber I used to have a Marriott card, and I felt like sometimes I ended up not always using that voucher for the free night because then you would look at it and when I wanted to book, it was only like $100, $150. And you're like, oh, I'm going to save it for something else. And then it never ended up happening with all these things you definitely have to stay on top of make sure you're using the perks and the bonuses that you get. Right. [00:13:58.270] - Jennifer Yellin Definitely. Because if not, you could be spending a good amount on just fees where you're really not worth it. [00:14:04.160] - Tamara Gruber I mean, I totally admit that we've had the Capital One venture card for years and years, and the Holy Racer thing is just super simple. [00:14:12.670] - Kim Tate Yeah. That's what Paul likes. He loves that one. Just for the ease of it. [00:14:16.910] - Jennifer Yellin Yeah. And we've also been using a higher credit card. And even though we're not getting the best value every time you make a purchase, it helps us earn global status, which, as I've mentioned before, is like their top tier status. So by earning that status, because every time you spend, I think $5,000 on the card, you get two nights towards status. So that, combined with staying at hotels, allows us to use that and then kind of get these awesome perks. So you kind of got to look at the pros and cons of every car and see what works best for you. Whenever anyone asks me, my simple answer sometimes is it depends. [00:14:51.780] - Tamara Gruber Yeah. We talked to who is Ed Pizza, right. A few months ago, Kim, and he was really recommending Hyatt as a great program for families. So I'm glad that you brought that one up and like ways to kind of maximize that because their point redemption is certainly much more generous than, as I mentioned, the Marriott card. [00:15:11.380] - Jennifer Yellin Yeah. Ed and I are big Hyatt people for sure. [00:15:15.100] - Tamara Gruber Well, it sounds like you gave a couple of good starter cards for someone that's interested in travel but maybe doesn't have any particular destination in mind, or they just want to be able to use it, like travel generally. I know some people are like, really into Southwest, do everything Southwest. We had somebody on that talked about that in the past. But are there any other kind of starter cards that you would recommend for someone that doesn't want to be loyal to a particular brand or a particular airline? [00:15:43.570] - Jennifer Yellin Sure. Yes. If you don't want to be loyal and you kind of want to be agnostic and have to diversify your portfolio, I guess the Chase Sapphire Preferred is a great card. I wouldn't say the sign up bonus is as high as it has been over the past year. So if you're not in a rush, you might want to hold off. But that is a good program where it's simple. They have really good transfer partners such as Hyatt, United, JetBlue, and then once you get more into it, you can explore some of the international airline partners as well. But it's simple. Everything transfers as one to one, and you can kind of figure out what your needs are and then transfer to the program. Or you can book through their travel portal. I think it's run by Expedia. It's the exact same process as booking as any other Expedia hotel you would or Air flight. And you can utilize your points that way, too. It's at a fixed value, so they offer a good amount of opportunities. [00:16:37.550] - Tamara Gruber And are they one that has a really broad portfolio of Airlines? I remember I used to do that a lot with Amex, and then they had gotten rid of a lot of their partners and we kind of dropped Amex for a while. Some still have limited partnerships with the one to one transfers. [00:16:55.310] - Jennifer Yellin Yeah, I think they have a broad number of transfer partners. It's on the airline front, off the top of my head. United JetBlue, British Airways, which a lot of people will book domestically. You can book their British Airways points using on American Airlines, so they're a partner. So it's really easy to travel domestically even with an international airline. And then there are some other international carriers, too, in Southwest actually is one of them as well. So I think they have a good amount. There are definitely ones that are better than others just because of not all points are pretty equal. So if you transfer one to one to Hyatt versus one to one to Marriott, Hyatt points are 20,000 Hyatt points is probably equivalent to 60,000 Marriott points. So it's slightly different when you're transferring in a one to one rate. You want to get the best value. I'd say. [00:17:45.920] - Kim Tate Yeah. I think that it's good to mention that you do have to be mindful of the transfer partners because that is where you can get into. There's a whole it's kind of like couponing, right? Where the people who are like those extreme couponers, they knew everything and they could stack stuff. And I think that people who really get into this are good at stacking stuff because it's like, oh, I know for a fact that British Airways has really high taxes. So maybe you want to fly Air Lingus into Ireland and then get to there's little things like that that you learn over time. But it is nice to have the multiple transfer partners knowing that you can kind of optimize the way the credit cards work for you. Do you have any tips? Because I know this is a big thing in the point space about deciding if you do decide to have multiple cards, how do you decide what expenses to put on each card? [00:18:29.730] - Jennifer Yellin So I have many cards, probably too many, but I kind of look at category bonuses. So some credit cards will give increased payout for gas, some will for restaurants, some for travel, supermarkets, your common purchases. And so I kind of lay it out and I actually have what's it called tape with Sharpie written on which one to use for various types of purchases. And that has helped, but that can definitely get overwhelming. I'd say if you don't want to be overwhelmed, you're probably better off with a credit card like the Capital Adventure that just offers you two points for every dollar you spent. It doesn't matter what you're purchasing. If you're buying a toy for your child, purchasing travel, going to grocery store, anything, it's the same return. So it really depends on maybe your personality and how much you want to spend on this. But if you're willing to put in the effort, you can definitely maximize every single purchase you make. But it will require a few different credit cards. [00:19:35.410] - Tamara Gruber I like that tip, though, of like putting a little note on them in some way because I have a terrible memory when it comes to numbers. And so I could see myself having a spreadsheet somewhere that says use this one for gas and this one for that. But until it becomes like routine and a habit, I would be like which 01:00 a.m. I supposed to use again. So like a little tip, right? [00:19:56.480] - Kim Tate So many people in the point space on the groups, a new quarter comes around and they change out and they have those label makers like the Dymo label makers, and they put them on their cards, which card to use? And they do it for their spouses too. That maybe aren't into it as much because sure enough, I think of that. I'm like, which one do I want to use for dining? What do I want to pay here? [00:20:24.450] - Tamara Gruber I'm thinking like when you use Apple Pay or you do online and your card saved, you can name them. Usually just name it like Amex or Visa. You could name it like grocery store, dining, gas. [00:20:36.650] - Kim Tate All the gas probably isn't needed online. [00:20:39.090] - Tamara Gruber So that kind of covers some of the general travel. I know some people have some dream trips in mind. Like say, okay, I want to go to the Maldives or I want to go to Tokyo. Like what is a good strategy to get me to a particular destination? Is that better to then look at a specific card for the airline? That might be best for that? What would your approach to that kind of scenario be? [00:21:05.080] - Kim Tate Absolutely. [00:21:05.600] - Jennifer Yellin Whenever I give anyone advice, I always actually find it's easier for me to help them when they have a specific trip in mind, because then you can have a strategy for that particular destination. So I know it was a few years back, but a friend of mine wanted to go on our honeymoon to the Maldives. Like you had mentioned, it's definitely a quite extensive adventure. So this is a prime opportunity to use your points and miles. And I said, well, the Hyatt actually has a great property there get the highest credit card. I can't remember what the actual bonus was at the time, but right off the bat, it was either two or three nights free at the Maldives. This was many years ago when before the point rates went up a little bit. But that was probably a $3,000 in savings. So I think if you know exactly where you want to stay, let's say it's the Hyatt, then look to see what the Hyatt credit card is offering at the time. Look to see what maybe the Chase Sapphire Preferred is offering at the time, since you can transfer the Hyatt and see which one is going to give you a better welcome offer for that particular destination in mind. [00:22:07.650] - Kim Tate Yeah, I know we were planning a trip to Tokyo, and Japan Airlines is a partner with Alaska, and Alaska is my airline of choice here in Seattle. And so that was easy for me because I was kind of banking those miles and I got the Alaska card because my status gives me free bags, but I was able to get free bags for my kids as well. And all that. And those points really helped in the way get us our Tokyo flights that we didn't get to use, but still there. [00:22:32.320] - Tamara Gruber You got them? [00:22:33.530] - Kim Tate Yeah. [00:22:33.910] - Jennifer Yellin I did something similar last year about probably eleven months ago. I knew I wanted to go to Hawaii over this past December break. We didn't go, therefore, we went to Aruba. But I purposely just got the Alaska credit card purely for them, based in Boston. Boston. I don't think I've actually ever flown Alaskan Airlines in my life, actually. But there was a points available I saw. So I immediately applied for the credit card and both my name and my husband's name. And actually I applied for the personal credit card and the business credit card in both of us. And I knew that immediately would give us both a one way flight there. And I already had American Airlines booked on the way home with points. So I applied for that card for that one specific destination. I now have all these Alaska airline miles, and I know that I'll just use them at another point of time to hopefully go to Hawaii again. [00:23:21.250] - Kim Tate Yeah. [00:23:22.350] - Jennifer Yellin So I did that myself, too. [00:23:24.870] - Kim Tate So let's talk about we talked about booking flights and using points because this is something that I've struggled with a lot. When you are for a family, when you are wanting to use points, do you think it's easier to just always search for four tickets? Say you're a family four. Tamara is a family, three, whatever you are, your whole family search for tickets with those points? Or do you think it's better to be willing to pay for some and get tickets for some? Because I know that I've struggled with that, especially because as a status person, I almost want to buy my ticket, which is what I did for our spring break. I bought my ticket and I use points on my family's three tickets because now I'll earn miles on that trip and they don't care about anything else. So do you have any tips about that for using points with a family? [00:24:10.340] - Jennifer Yellin Yeah, we actually do the same. We fly JetBlue a lot now. And my husband had status and actually they extended his status. So he still has his status, which actually isn't worth as much anymore. But we'll pay for his ticket and then use the points to purchase tickets for myself and my two kids. And then Jeff, who allows you if you call them and the tickets are booked within a few minutes of one another, they'll kind of link them kind of for you. So that's a strategy we use with JetBlue and Southwest. There's no capacity control. So as long as there's a paid ticket available, you can go ahead and use your points. It doesn't matter, unlike some other Airlines. But with other Airlines, sometimes I do recommend just looking at one ticket at a time, because if there's one or two tickets, you could do that. The only problem is when you're booking with multiple itineraries. And sometimes if there's schedule changes, the Airlines aren't as helpful, I guess is the right term to keep families together, necessarily if they are booked on separate itineraries. So that's just one thing to keep in mind if you're booking under multiple reservations. [00:25:15.090] - Tamara Gruber Yeah, we've actually had that happen to us a number of times. We used to travel on points much more often and we were separated. And it's one of those things that especially when you book far out in advance, they tend to reshuffle flights fairly often and equipment, and so you can easily get moved around. And it's something I'm sensitive to because I have a child who is now older, but when she was younger was also a nervous liar. So there's, like, no way I would have wanted her separated from me. I think it's a good tip to say call, tell them to link the PNR numbers on the itinerary, but it's definitely not foolproof. So if it's something that you're concerned about, definitely something to keep in mind. [00:25:59.070] - Jennifer Yellin Right. And my thought is if I'm willing to pay for two or three of the passengers and I'm probably willing to pay for all of them and then use the points at another time, I personally like to book with everything either paid or points just to keep everything clean. [00:26:15.750] - Kim Tate And I know that when you do talk about just for people who are maybe a little more intermediate or advanced well, if they're advanced they already know this. But I know that a lot of people use Expert Flyer, which is a website. You can actually pay a yearly membership fee. I think it's like $49 a year. $99 a year. I don't remember what it is. And they somehow have some magic API that looks for special award availability that's coded a certain way. And so if you are trying to play a game, I know some people set up like alerts so that if they're watching a specific flight or a specific destination, they can kind of if an award ticket becomes available, they can hurry and log in and book it. [00:26:57.950] - Jennifer Yellin Yeah, absolutely. That is one good technique. And another thing I've kind of found helpful at times is using an award booking service. I know that seems silly from someone who kind of knows as well, but specifically with international Airlines, it can be beyond overwhelming. And they have all the tools and they have the same API's. And I don't know what they do in the background, but sometimes they're able to find ways that you didn't think of to go ahead and book an award internationally using partner programs. And it can actually save you points. So if you have points on one Airlines, but then also points in a flexible program like the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card, which awards you ultimate reward points, you actually could potentially transfer your points to a program and then book your itinerary for less points than booking with another program. So there's so many different things to know, I guess, when it comes to that. But there are services out there. [00:27:53.490] - Kim Tate Yeah. Do you have any? Because I know a friend that I kind of met once that's in the space. And at one point when we were looking at Japan and I was trying to decide if I was going to do it myself and he charged like 150 or something to do it for you. But do you know what those typically charge or what? Is there a top one or two that you know by name that you could mention? Sure. [00:28:15.120] - Jennifer Yellin Yeah. That price point sounds about right. But then there are other services that have kind of come out over the past few years. So one is Point me, it used to be called Juicy Miles, and instead of them actually booking it for you, you can kind of like Expert Flyer in a sense, somewhat. You put in your itinerary and it kind of lists out all these different options for you. So it's all system process. There's no one physically doing it for you. And that's a much less expensive option. I think that you can charge a monthly fee or maybe just you can do it a one time or even a seven day trial period. I think so. Those are some good options, too, because it's less expensive. But it will give you all these international Airlines that you do in point programs that you probably didn't even know existed. And how to book. The only problem is some of them are a little bit more challenging to actually transfer to and book. But by quick Google searching, there's, like everything out there that you can figure out on how to transfer points and everything. It's time consuming. [00:29:16.410] - Jennifer Yellin It's really time consuming. And sometimes, I don't know, it might be easier. [00:29:19.740] - Kim Tate That's what I'm saying at this point. I would pay someone $250 to do it for me because I do know how time consuming. [00:29:26.970] - Jennifer Yellin Yeah. And usually you don't pay unless it works. Right. [00:29:30.550] - Kim Tate Unless they get it for you. [00:29:31.880] - Jennifer Yellin Right. If you're not happy with it, no harm. [00:29:34.500] - Kim Tate Yeah, that's good tip. And I think also just a heads up for some people realize that a lot of these, like, I know Amex and Ultimate Rewards, a lot of their transfer partners take 24 to 72 hours for the points to kick into your account, which can be a big issue, especially if you're like, oh, this airfare just became available. Now I have to transfer the points, but then you're waiting there two, three days. I'm hoping that they hit your account so you can buy that award ticket. It's very stressful. I actually did that for Alaska to get our Japan tickets. I needed like 50,000 more and I had to transfer some. And I was like, oh, my gosh, please get in my account before these disappear. [00:30:09.750] - Tamara Gruber That's a really good point. [00:30:11.620] - Jennifer Yellin Yeah. If you like Google also, I don't know why has it, but if you Google, like, time to transfer points from one program to another, there's so many experts out there, points people that have kind of taken all the data and put it all together. So some of them are instant. Some of them could even take seven days. But you could probably get a good inkling based on what these other people have put together. [00:30:35.190] - Tamara Gruber Yeah. Well, it's one of these spaces where there are so many experts, but trying to sort through it all on your own is definitely confusing. That idea of being able to hire someone to help you. And thinking about that, I'm such an advanced planner, you kind of want to be like, oh, well, I'm probably going to use this. I'll just switch the points over now, but then you can't switch them back. [00:30:58.030] - Jennifer Yellin That is a good tip. Once you transfer points out of, like, Capital One or City or American Express Chase, I think those are the three main ones. They're in that program of choice. They are not going back in. So once flexible, points are no longer flexible. [00:31:12.770] - Tamara Gruber Yeah. One way. [00:31:14.020] - Jennifer Yellin Yes. [00:31:15.690] - Tamara Gruber Well, we talked a little bit about some ways that you can maximize kind of your earning potential through these. But maybe we can just touch on that a little bit more deeply because I feel like it gets challenging for families that don't have someone that's like a real road warrior that's traveling a lot to kind of build up points simply from travel. So obviously you need to find other ways to earn those points. So maybe you can just touch on a few of those strategies. [00:31:41.670] - Jennifer Yellin Absolutely. So one major way is to sign up for every single shopping portal. Ebates is one that's always advertised and that will give you cash back, although you can now have those points go into American Express. But similar to ebay, you can sign up and receive points to American Airlines or United Alaska. All the Airlines have their own shopping portal. So all you have to do is Google Alaska Airlines shopping portal and it'll bring you up. And a lot of them even have those widgets on your computer where every time you go to a site, if you were to Gap.com, it'll pop up and say kind of give you a reminder, remember to shop through the Alaska Port. I don't know if that. [00:32:22.620] - Kim Tate Yeah, the extensions. Like the Chrome extensions. Yeah, exactly. And I think Ebates, just so everyone knows it's called Racketon. Now, if you're confused about that. No, it's okay. You're good. I still think of them as ebay. So I wanted everyone to yes. [00:32:35.800] - Jennifer Yellin Ebay was definitely a softer name. So every time you make a purchase online, there's no reason not to earn points unless it's more of a boutique store. But with your mainstream stores, even if you're only earning one point per dollar spent that's one point more than you would have earned otherwise. And sometimes if you sign up for their emails, if you spend $200, earn $1,000 bonus. They have these types of bonuses all the time, especially around the holidays, Black Friday, even randomly, the long holiday weekends, like Memorial Day, Labor Day, big shopping weekends, and just sometimes out of the blue. So there's ways to really accrue a lot of miles from home. [00:33:17.530] - Kim Tate Absolutely. [00:33:18.420] - Jennifer Yellin Yeah. [00:33:18.790] - Kim Tate That's one of my favorite tips. I do that a lot and I really like it. And there's these websites now, the one I use the most is like Cashback Holic. And they'll compare. So if you're going to you're like, okay, I'm about ready to buy. I'm going to book this Marriott stay. You can type in Marriott and it'll show you like who, because I belong to Racketon and Top Cashback and I can compare those two. I try not to get into too many of them, so I mainly use those two. But I'm like, oh, Top Cashback is 6%. Racketon is only four. I'm going to go to Top Cashback so you can get really nerdy and kind of compare them also. [00:33:49.190] - Jennifer Yellin Oh, totally. Absolutely. And EV Rewards is another one that will also compare for you is great. [00:33:57.090] - Tamara Gruber I totally admit that. I completely suck at this. I don't use any of these. And every time you read about it, you're like, oh yeah, I should do that. And I just get excited if I actually learn how to use one of the bonuses on my credit card, like get $50, $50. [00:34:16.510] - Jennifer Yellin Yeah. And another thing you want to do, I mean, this is separate from the shopping portal is I remember I think it was the last time I received an email from Barclaycard. And they are the bank with JetBlue. And it was like ridiculous offer spent $2,000 on your card over three months and earn I think it was 40,000 points. It was a targeted offer. I got it. My husband didn't. I was like, all right, moving all my spent to my JetBlue card for the next few months. Right. And they're just paying attention just helps you earn these increased offers. So there's definitely ways from home without flying to earn points and miles. [00:34:55.990] - Kim Tate I've definitely been getting better about when I'm about ready to either go on a trip or go shopping with my girls or something along those lines. I log into my Chase and my Amex accounts online and I look because they have an offer section because you have to add them to your card. [00:35:09.740] - Jennifer Yellin Yes. [00:35:10.010] - Kim Tate And I don't think people always realize that. So if it's like, oh, Levi's is having a deal, I add it to my card because maybe they're going to want Levi's jeans while we're on back to school shopping or, oh, guess what? Hilton is doing this special. If you spend if you stay two nights, you get whatever the case may be. And I don't think people do that enough. But it's a good way to really I think if you want to get serious about it, you should log in often to the offers page because they reset every month. [00:35:34.850] Yeah. [00:35:35.740] - Jennifer Yellin Every day you're going to laugh. But American Express offers used to update every day at three in the morning. And I'm not joking. And so when my kids were small and I was up in the middle of the night non stop, I was like, so excited. And that was part of my daily routine. Some people have their morning coffee. I would look at my American Express offers. I'm not even kidding. That's awesome. Daily. But I will say it used to be you could add them to every single American Express credit card you have. I can't remember when, but a few years ago, it's now just one per account. So it's not as generous as it used to be. But I used to check them every single morning. And I'd saved thousands of dollars this way because it's not earning points. Well, actually, there are offers that you can earn points, but some of them are cashback. So now there's either cash back or increase point offers. So it depends on the offer and the type of card you have, because some cards might have it somewhere, but they're really great way to earn points or offset your purchases. [00:36:33.850] - Kim Tate And like you said, so many are targeted. Like Tamara got this offer for a Marriott offer at one point on her Amex and mine. I didn't have it and I'm convinced it's because I had the Amex Marriott card. [00:36:42.870] - Tamara Gruber I don't know. [00:36:44.830] - Jennifer Yellin You'll never know. And sometimes you can even I remember I can't remember the exact offer, but it was like grocery stores and I spend $500 getting $100 offer, something like that. And I wasn't going to make $500 purchase in once because sometimes it's on a single purchase. So I just bought a $500 gift card there and then just use the gift card over the course of my shopping fees. So there are ways to kind of I don't know if scheme the system is the right term, but play the game. [00:37:13.460] - Tamara Gruber Yeah. I mean, I do what you do, Kim, is when I'm shopping online, I'm like, wait, that might have an offer. Let me look. But the other thing with the gift cards is just simply like gifts, right. We give gifts and I buy gift cards for people all the time. And it's just like if it's something that you're spending anyway, just find a way to use to earn points on it, right? [00:37:34.430] - Jennifer Yellin Absolutely. Or be the one to pay the bill at the restaurant and have everyone to Mo you buy the class gifts or anything like that. Like everyone wonders why I'm always a class mom. It's to accrue all the money and then I can put all the purchases on her credit card. [00:37:49.320] - Tamara Gruber Love it. [00:37:49.910] - Jennifer Yellin Little things like that. [00:37:51.290] - Kim Tate Well, I know another big way to maximize points is with sign up bonuses. So could you give any final tips for people that are thinking of getting a new card, anything they should know about sign up bonuses or things to watch for, and then wrap it up with any final tips that you think people need to know about credit card points? [00:38:07.580] - Jennifer Yellin Absolutely. So one thing you want to make sure of is when you sign up for a credit card, make sure it doesn't have to be the best offer because you might be waiting around for a year for the best offer. But make sure it's a really good offer. I know we were speaking before and you said you apply for an offer that was like half of what it typically is. So when you see an offer, make sure it's a good value and it's going to provide you with enough points that you'll be happy with that. Even if a better offer comes along in a month or two. Pay attention to best offer. Some banks, actually, if you apply within a few weeks or maybe even a month, if you call them up and say this better offer just came out, will you match it? They may or may not match it for you, but it's always worth a try. You never know. Some banks have kind of different fools and they change every so often also. But if you're looking for a credit card right now and specifically for family travel. The Southwest Credit Card actually has one of the best offers where you'll earn the Southwest Companion Pass. [00:39:05.500] - Jennifer Yellin I don't know if you guys have discussed the Southwest Companion Pass much on the podcast, but it's definitely one of my favorite travel features. And it allows someone to fly with you for free in a limited number of times. I've been a passholder for the past 13 or 14 years at this point. And it's like the most amazing thing ever. So that's one of my favorite offers right now. If you live in a Southwest hub, if you don't live near Southwest, then it's not worth it. [00:39:33.520] - Kim Tate And I'll chime in and just say that we did cover quite extensively about that Southwest offer and stuff with Lynne and that's episode 181. If anybody wants to go back and listen to that awesome. [00:39:43.960] - Jennifer Yellin Yes, she's an expert and everything's Southwest as well. So that's one thing right now, credit card offers are changing all the time. I think Marriott just came out with something last week, United as well. So it's like hard to even keep track. But sometimes even just like Googling best credit card offers from the experts. You'll get pages, but make sure it's really the best and not just them pushing you on the best when it might not be. [00:40:11.950] - Kim Tate Yeah, I definitely think that I've done that where especially if I have a big purchase, like, oh, I'm buying a new camera or we're about ready to take a big trip and I'm going to be putting a lot of charges. I kind of go and I say, okay, best credit card offers for March 2022 or whatever. And of course, it's the points guy, nerd wallet, upgraded points. [00:40:31.310] - Tamara Gruber Like all those guys. [00:40:32.280] - Kim Tate And so it's kind of good to just read through those and kind of see which ones are popping up. And they definitely, you'll know, because it's not just an offer. Like they'll write a whole article about this amazing offer is one of the best we've seen lately, that sort of stuff. [00:40:45.640] - Jennifer Yellin Right? Absolutely. And also just another tip is make sure you can meet the minimum spend requirements. Some of the credit cards are 1000 $2,000 in three months, six months. But the Capital One Venture X card right now, for example, is like, I think it's $10,000. So that might not be obtainable for most families. [00:41:04.130] - Kim Tate Exactly. [00:41:04.910] - Jennifer Yellin So it just makes it something you can do. [00:41:07.420] - Kim Tate Those business cards can sometimes have really high spends. Because I've looked at doing a business card, sometimes I'm just like, there's just no way I can spend that right now. [00:41:15.240] - Jennifer Yellin Right. [00:41:16.170] - Kim Tate Although I know that's a whole other expert level of people who do credit or gift card buy and resell to do that. So that's a whole other level. [00:41:24.990] - Jennifer Yellin Yes, it is. If you're interested in that, go to Greg at the Frequent Mile or he is crazy when it comes to this. But awesome attitude. [00:41:32.530] - Tamara Gruber One of the things that I'm thinking about. As I'm listening to you guys, I'm thinking about what I have an upcoming trip where I'm going to be spending a lot of money and some of that's already on one of my credit cards. But maybe I should look into what bonuses are up right now. But it makes me think about when you want to churn your cards. And we obviously talked about signing up, you and your husband for a card and signing up for this card in that card. And it's like, at what point are too many cards? Like too many? Like, how long do you keep it before you get rid of it? Are there considerations to think about in terms of your credit or just eligibility for future cards? That just to make people aware of? [00:42:10.930] Sure. [00:42:11.520] - Jennifer Yellin So as long as you're responsible with your credit cards, for the most part, credit cards are not going to hurt your credit. I mean, you'll see people who have 50 credit cards and they still have these awesome 800 credit scores. If you're applying for a mortgage to get a house in a few weeks, don't apply for a credit card right now. Right. So there's definitely or even any loan I wouldn't recommend applying for a credit card. Wait. And then go and get it. In regards to when you should cancel, if you're not getting value out of your credit card, cancel it's not going to hurt you or downgrade to a no annual fee. For example, if you have the Chase Sapphire preferred card and you find that the $95 annual fee is not worth it anymore, first of all, call and see if they'll do something for you. A lot of times they might say, okay, if you spend $1,000, we'll give you a $95 credit. You just never hurt. I know. Last year I think I ended up getting about $500 back from American Express amongst a lot of my credit cards. I know COVID played a hand in that. [00:43:16.470] - Jennifer Yellin But always call and see. And if not, then see if there's a car that you can downgrade it to, and then there won't be a Ding on your credit report. I mean, it also depends on what your current credit score is. And sometimes you might get a Ding, but it will go back up in a few months. So there's a few factors depending on. [00:43:34.050] - Kim Tate Yeah, it's like ten point Ding, and it does pop right back up because we've had that opening up a credit card kind of opens up. [00:43:40.310] - Jennifer Yellin Gives you more credit, which creditors like, too. [00:43:43.520] - Kim Tate So opening up credit cards is not a bad thing unless you're applying for a big mortgage. They don't like to see your capital, your accessibility too high, right? [00:43:53.510] - Jennifer Yellin Absolutely. And then Chase also has Chase and American Express have different rules in place. So I'm not sure if you've discussed Chase is 524. [00:44:01.800] - Kim Tate Yeah, we talked about that. [00:44:03.530] - Jennifer Yellin So you've applied for five or more cards. Usually they're personal cards, but sometimes they throw business cards into it, too. Chase will automatically not approve you for another credit card. I've seen some reports that that might be changing, actually. So we'll kind of see what happens over the next few months. But that's one thing to keep in mind. It's five or more cards in 24 months, I think I said. And then American Express also doesn't allow you to get the welcome offer for I believe it's like once in a lifetime, but once it falls off your credit report, they might not know. So might be like seven years. So those are things to kind of keep in mind. That's why you want to apply when the offer is the best, because if it's not and you're going to be losing out on points if a new offer comes around and then you're not able to get it and you're no longer a card holder. [00:44:48.390] - Tamara Gruber I have one more question for you, because now I'm just going to use you as my personal source for information if you want to get an additional card for someone in your family. So, for example, I have a 17 year old that we've been waiting till she turns 18 to get a credit card for her. And we've been debating like, do you get her own credit card or do we put her on one of ours? Do we get another one of the capital one cards? Any tips for if you're adding somebody in your family, maybe a first card? Is there any advantage, like kind of getting points from them versus kind of setting them up on their own? [00:45:24.660] Sure. [00:45:25.100] - Jennifer Yellin So just remember, if someone is an authorized user, you're responsible for all of their credit card habits. So if the credit card bill is not paid or if anything happens, it kind of can hit you. So just something to keep in mind with teenagers. But I actually personally don't know a lot about the high school age and what credit cards you can and cannot apply for for that age. I'm not there yet, fortunately. But setting someone up as an authorized user, I think some credit cards you can maybe do as early as 13, you can add them on. And that actually helps them as well build their own credit score. So it's always a great thing to get add on authorized users if they're not eligible to get their own credit card. And then when they are to get them, there are various student credit cards, and a lot of times those comes with $300 spend limits or very low thresholds that you might want for your child. But yeah, definitely getting them set up will only help their credit score, which can then ultimately help them in their 20s to apply for a credit card. [00:46:26.470] - Jennifer Yellin That will be useful. But there are a lot of student credit cards out there that do give you points and miles. [00:46:32.810] - Kim Tate They do come with a really high annual fee or not annual fee interest rate. Normally, that's the only bad thing. We actually added my husband and my daughter, both as authorized users with my Amex Platinum Tamara, because of the lounge access. So now, especially if they're changing it, we're going to get Mia. And that'll be my maxed on three, because with Amex Platinum, you get three authorized users for $175 total. So you pay the $175 and then they get all the lounge benefits as well. Are they changing the lounge that you can no longer guests unless you spend like $75,000 starting in January of 2023? I think you don't get anywhere. Is that right, Jennifer? I think that's right. [00:47:15.840] - Jennifer Yellin That I don't know. [00:47:17.100] - Kim Tate Okay. [00:47:17.820] - Jennifer Yellin Sorry. [00:47:18.780] - Kim Tate No, you're fine. [00:47:19.580] - Jennifer Yellin Yeah, but I will say that the expensive credit cards a lot of times you have to pay to add an authorized user, but no annual fee or low annual fee credit cards. Usually you can add a few authorized users for no fee. [00:47:33.380] - Kim Tate Great. Well, one of our questions that we ask all of our guests is what do you wear when you travel? So do you have any favorite brands that you want to tell us about when you travel? [00:47:41.020] - Jennifer Yellin Sure. I travel as comfortably as possibly. And I also wear my everyday clothes, which consists of black as leader pants, which is side pockets, like those leggings. And then you can put your cell phone or any cars. Side pockets are a necessity. Once I found them, like two years ago, I can never go back. And sneakers or flip flops, depending on the weather. Nothing fun and exciting. [00:48:05.480] - Tamara Gruber Well, you're brave wearing flip flops on the plane. [00:48:07.370] - Kim Tate My feet are always freezing. [00:48:09.230] - Jennifer Yellin Yeah, that is a good point. It depends on the length of it's. Just like an hour flight that's going to be different. But you're right. I used to travel for work every single week for many years. And I would always be traveling like those high heels and hated every second of it. I would get off the plane and go straight to the client site for the week. And now I just want to be comfortable. [00:48:28.770] - Kim Tate And everyone has those little packable ballet flats that you can just pop in and out. Yeah. [00:48:34.610] - Tamara Gruber I'm happy, though. So work travel days are behind me, too. And just like work dress in general has changed. [00:48:41.210] - Jennifer Yellin Oh, yeah. I got rid of all of my stuff, never going back. [00:48:44.640] - Kim Tate Good. [00:48:45.030] - Tamara Gruber Well, can you remind our listeners where they can find you online or learn more about points? [00:48:51.120] - Kim Tate Absolutely. [00:48:51.940] - Jennifer Yellin So you can find me at my blog Deals We Like. You can also find me on Twitter or Facebook. Everything is at Deals We Like. And then also I'm a freelance contributor at the Point Sky and CNN Underscore. So I have some great articles there as well. That where you can learn more about credit cards, family travel, anything in the points and miles world. [00:49:10.850] - Tamara Gruber Thank you so much for sharing all your knowledge with us. It's always really great when we can get an expert on and just kind of brainstorm some ideas. Hopefully people will have something new that they can try to get them a little bit closer to their next kind of dream trip. [00:49:25.130] - Kim Tate Thanks for having me. It was great chatting with you. [00:49:27.320] - Announcer Thanks. [00:49:27.630] - Tamara Gruber You too. [00:49:31.850] - Kim Tate Well, as always, thanks for joining us for another week here and I have a little request. Tamara, I was looking at our podcast page the other day and I noticed that we were almost at 100 reviews. We are really close so I'm going to do a little bag from all of our lovely listeners and ask you guys if you're willing if you love our show, if you would leave us a five star review on your favorite podcast app, the one I looked on was Apple podcast. But wherever you're at or listen to us, if you'd leave us a positive review, we'd love it. We love hearing from you guys and I'd love to see that switch to 100 reviews. [00:50:05.780] - Tamara Gruber That would be great. I know we've been at this for almost six years and actually by the time it comes out it will be six years and we're just really bad about asking for reviews. We definitely appreciate it. I know some podcasts every day it's like the first thing that you hear is like leave us a review but we would appreciate it. We'll give you shout outs online. We'll read them especially if they're nice, but even if they're not nice, we will read them mindful of it but otherwise stay tuned because next episode we're going to be talking about sustainable travel and I think that is also on a lot of people's minds as we're getting back out there and how to be responsible and thinking about things in a more sustainable way. So join us next time talk to you again soon. Bye.

#Ukraine #Boycott #UFC #Vegas49 #NBA #NFL The Russian invasion of Ukraine has shook up the world and most of the sporting world is asking for bans and boycotts for Russian teams and events. Our host Darren Campbell thinks that every Russian athlete should be barred from competing in any athletic endeavor individual or team sport. The conversation started with talking about the UFC card from Vegas this past weekend. Islam Makhachev won the main event with a TKO over Bobby "King" Green. According to Darren he should never have been allowed to compete and the UFC is another league that should be banning any Russian from competing going forward. The card had a lot of interesting elements and these two have a great breakdown that you will enjoy! The NBA is fully into the second half and there is a good exchange about the biggest trade of the season with James Harden and Ben Simmons switching teams. Harden had a historic start to his career with the Philadelphia 76ers while Ben Simmons had a setback in his attempt to return to play this season. We all look forward to seeing how this trade works out years from now! We spent some time discussing both conferences and the top 10 teams in each and how they have been playing lately. We had a couple of short items to talk about from the NFL. Please check out our website www.completesportsmedia.com for all of your sports info etc. For other genres click on the link to our parent site www.completemedianetwork.com Enjoy, Take care, Love yah, Bye for now!

#Ukraine #Boycott #UFC #Vegas49 #NBA #NFL The Russian invasion of Ukraine has shook up the world and most of the sporting world is asking for bans and boycotts for Russian teams and events. Our host Darren Campbell thinks that every Russian athlete should be barred from competing in any athletic endeavor individual or team sport. The conversation started with talking about the UFC card from Vegas this past weekend. Islam Makhachev won the main event with a TKO over Bobby "King" Green. According to Darren he should never have been allowed to compete and the UFC is another league that should be banning any Russian from competing going forward. The card had a lot of interesting elements and these two have a great breakdown that you will enjoy! The NBA is fully into the second half and there is a good exchange about the biggest trade of the season with James Harden and Ben Simmons switching teams. Harden had a historic start to his career with the Philadelphia 76ers while Ben Simmons had a setback in his attempt to return to play this season. We all look forward to seeing how this trade works out years from now! We spent some time discussing both conferences and the top 10 teams in each and how they have been playing lately. We had a couple of short items to talk about from the NFL. Please check out our website www.completesportsmedia.com for all of your sports info etc. For other genres click on the link to our parent site www.completemedianetwork.com Enjoy, Take care, Love yah, Bye for now!

BYE!

Decision Space is the podcast about decisions in board games! Click on the link to join our active and welcoming Discord community!  Join the crew today! (Decision Space Patreon)   Episode 56 - Our Board Game Biases and Affinities Today's show topic is arguably the first one we should have ever done. In this What We Talk About episode, we dive into our board gaming biases and affinities. It is our hope that this episode helps you get to know your interdecisional spaceship co-pilots just a bit better, and in turn makes our past and future criticism just a bit more nuanced for you. Hop in and enjoy, then head over to our discord to join in the conversation. In this case, do not check your biases at the door!   Games Discussed Tigris and Euphrates, A Feast for Odin, Rock Paper Scissors (of course), Castles of Burgundy, El Grande, Kanagawa, and more.   Music Credits Thank you to Hembree for our intro and outro music from their song Reach Out. You can listen to the full song on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQuuRPfOyMw&list=TLGGFNH7VEDPgwgyNTA4MjAyMQ&t=3s You can find more information about Hembree at https://www.hembreemusic.com/.  Rules Overview Music:  Way Home by Tokyo Music Walker https://soundcloud.com/user-356546060​ Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0 Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/tokyo-music-walker-way...​ Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/pJThZlOuDtI   Contact We can be reached individually on Twitter at @jakefryd and @burnsidebh. You can also follow Decision Space on Twitter @DecisionSpa and talk to us there! If you prefer email, then hit us up at decisionspa@gmail.com. This information is all available along with episodes at our new website decisionspacepodcast.com. Bye!

I am always excited to meet another woman who is crushing it in her online business, but the ones that become my biz besties are usually the women who were really successful in a corporate, nonprofit, or academic career before they said “Bye, Felicia!” before going out on their own.  Today's guest, Michelle Glogovac, CEO of MLG Collective, a boutique PR & Podcast Pitching Agency that helps authors, entrepreneurs, and experts share their stories. She decided that an online business would suit her life as a wife and mom a whole lot better than her corporate path of working in the aviation industry and give the creative freedom she craved.  How often do you meet a badass biz boss who was up to her eyelashes in conversations about jet fuel in a former life?  How's that for a career pivot? Michelle and I became pals during a business retreat and decided that interviewing one another for our podcasts was a not-to-be-missed opportunity.  Her superpower is seeing the story inside of experts that it is hard for them to recognize and share. This girl understands that she is in the relationship business, not the PR business or jet fuel business.  She is not only a Podcast Matchmaker but has actually introduced two couples as well.  Michelle has integrity,  genuinely gets to know her clients by reading their books, listening to their podcasts, and doing a deep dive into their online presence. She hates sleazy sales tactics and is as allergic to “copy & paste” pitches as I am. Highlights of today's episode:Michelle talks about the differences between promoting and sharing We ponder why the more of an expert you are, the harder it is to embrace itHow she feels about authors now that she's on her way to becoming oneTwo amazing stories of what can happen when you hire a pitch queen (Michelle loved it when I called her that!) Mic Drop Moment:  “I actually have to believe in you to pitch your business, book, or brand” If you'd like to connect with Michelle after listening to this interview:Website: https://themlgcollective.com/Podcast: https://themlgcollective.com/my-simplified-life-podcast/IG: https://www.instagram.com/michelleglogovac/Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelleglogovac/Podcast Guest Pitch Checklist: https://bit.ly/34vxcut IF YOU ARE NOT WHERE YOU WANT TO BE IN YOUR BUSINESS,  WHICH OF THESE INNER OBSTACLES IS HOLDING YOU BACK?  TAKE THIS QUIZ AND FIND OUT! What's Holding You Back?https://bit.ly/obstaclesquizThinking about working with Diann? If you need the focused attention on your business & life that is only available through 1:1 coaching, click here to schedule a free 30-minute consultation with Diann to see if her 12-week private coaching program is right for you. Free Consultation for 1:1 Coaching The Driven Woman Facebook Group:https://www.facebook.com/groups/thedrivenwoman/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coachdiannwingert/ 

Decision Space is the podcast about decisions in board games! Click on the link to join our active and welcoming Discord community!  Join the crew today! (Decision Space Patreon)   Episode 55 - Cartographers In this week's episode of Decision Space, we chart a course (heh) for the flip-n-write game Cartographers, designed by Jordy Aidan and published by Thunderworks Games, where players get to, get this, draw a map on their sheet of paper! If that sounds like fun, it is. But what does the game have to offer beyond its appealing theme in terms of decisions? Well, if that is what you are wondering, then you are in the right place. We also share brief-ish thoughts on Babylonia and Libertalia: Winds of the Galecrest.    Games Discussed Babylonia, Libertalia, Cartographers, Isle of Skye, and more.   Timestamps Intro - 0:00 What's on Your Mind - 2:22 Babylonia - 2:35 Libertalia: Winds of the Galecrest - 7:26 Cartographers Ratings and Slogans - 13:11 Rules Overview - 17:01 Cartographers Deep Dive Discussion - 19:36 Wrap Up and Calls to Action - 1:03:15   Music Credits Thank you to Hembree for our intro and outro music from their song Reach Out. You can listen to the full song on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQuuRPfOyMw&list=TLGGFNH7VEDPgwgyNTA4MjAyMQ&t=3s You can find more information about Hembree at https://www.hembreemusic.com/.  Rules Overview Music:  Way Home by Tokyo Music Walker https://soundcloud.com/user-356546060​ Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0 Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/tokyo-music-walker-way...​ Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/pJThZlOuDtI   Contact We can be reached individually on Twitter at @jakefryd and @burnsidebh. You can also follow Decision Space on Twitter @DecisionSpa and talk to us there! If you prefer email, then hit us up at decisionspa@gmail.com. This information is all available along with episodes at our new website decisionspacepodcast.com. Bye!

Bye

Decision Space is the podcast about decisions in board games! Click on the link to join our active and welcoming Discord community!  Join the crew today! (Decision Space Patreon)   Episode 54 - Cascadia Sorry to all previous guests on Decision Space, but it must be said that on today's episode of Decision Space we welcome our most special guest to date. For our deep-dive discussion of the decisions in Cascadia, we are joined by none other than Brendan's wife Maya Polan. Brendan and Maya have cranked out 65 plays of Cascadia so far, so when we say deep-dive, it isn't just lip service. Please hop in the Interdecisional Spaceship as we chart a course for the best abstract game ever designed... or is it?   Games Discussed Cascadia, Calico, Sagrada, and more.   Timestamps Ratings and Slogans - 0:00 Rules Overview - 7:55 Cascadia Deep Dive Discussion - 10:56 Calls to Action - 1:07:03   Music Credits Thank you to Hembree for our intro and outro music from their song Reach Out. You can listen to the full song on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQuuRPfOyMw&list=TLGGFNH7VEDPgwgyNTA4MjAyMQ&t=3s You can find more information about Hembree at https://www.hembreemusic.com/.  Rules Overview Music:  Way Home by Tokyo Music Walker https://soundcloud.com/user-356546060​ Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0 Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/tokyo-music-walker-way...​ Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/pJThZlOuDtI   Contact We can be reached individually on Twitter at @jakefryd and @burnsidebh. You can also follow Decision Space on Twitter @DecisionSpa and talk to us there! If you prefer email, then hit us up at decisionspa@gmail.com. This information is all available along with episodes at our new website decisionspacepodcast.com. Bye!

Decision Space is the podcast about decisions in board games! Click on the link to join our active and welcoming Discord community!  Join the crew today! (Decision Space Patreon)   Episode 53 - What We Talk About When We Talk About Tempo in Board Games and What It Isn't This game has a great tempo! That move just gained you so much tempo! I have tempo in this situation! All of these phrases can say a lot about a game, a game state, and a game's decision space. The challenge is that in each phrase, the word tempo is actually referring to something different. In this week's WWTA episode of Decision Space, we deep dive tempo in board games as well as a few things, like initiative and pacing, that it isn't. Hop into the interdecisional spaceship allegro because we are taking off now! Games Discussed Chess, Magic: the Gathering, Azul, Tigris and Euprhates, Underwater Cities, Castles of Burgundy, and more.   Music Credits Thank you to Hembree for our intro and outro music from their song Reach Out. You can listen to the full song on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQuuRPfOyMw&list=TLGGFNH7VEDPgwgyNTA4MjAyMQ&t=3s You can find more information about Hembree at https://www.hembreemusic.com/.  Rules Overview Music:  Way Home by Tokyo Music Walker https://soundcloud.com/user-356546060​ Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0 Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/tokyo-music-walker-way...​ Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/pJThZlOuDtI   Contact We can be reached individually on Twitter at @jakefryd and @burnsidebh. You can also follow Decision Space on Twitter @DecisionSpa and talk to us there! If you prefer email, then hit us up at decisionspa@gmail.com. This information is all available along with episodes at our new website decisionspacepodcast.com. Bye!

Decision Space is the podcast about decisions in board games! Click on the link to join our active and welcoming Discord community!  Join the crew today! (Decision Space Patreon)   Episode 52 - Evolution: Climate This week we begin with a brief "What's on Your Mind" discussion. Brendan has been playing Calico, and Jake recaps an epic birthday game day. After that, we hop right into our signature deep dive discussion of the Evolution system with a focus on Evolution: Climate, designed by Dominic Crapuchettes, Dmitry Knorre, and Sergey Machin with art by Ben Goldman and Catherine Hamilton. Our interdecisional spaceship navigates us to the heart of this decision space and to a question of politics. What is it that makes this game inherently political... or is it? Bleep bloop. Interdecisional Spaceship computer is booting up. Initiating podcast module.    Games Covered Evolution: Climate, Oceans, Calico, So Clover, Dune Imperium, A Feast for Odin, and Cascadia.   Timestamps What's on My Mind - 0:00 Game Overview - 10:55 Rules Overview - 17:40 Evolution: Climate Feature Discussion - 20:31 Calls to Action - 1:07:06   Music Credits Thank you to Hembree for our intro and outro music from their song Reach Out. You can listen to the full song on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQuuRPfOyMw&list=TLGGFNH7VEDPgwgyNTA4MjAyMQ&t=3s You can find more information about Hembree at https://www.hembreemusic.com/.  Rules Overview Music:  Way Home by Tokyo Music Walker https://soundcloud.com/user-356546060​ Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0 Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/tokyo-music-walker-way...​ Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/pJThZlOuDtI   Contact We can be reached individually on Twitter at @jakefryd and @burnsidebh. You can also follow Decision Space on Twitter @DecisionSpa and talk to us there! If you prefer email, then hit us up at decisionspa@gmail.com. This information is all available along with episodes at our new website decisionspacepodcast.com. Bye!

Click on the link to join our active and welcoming Discord community!  Join the crew today! (Decision Space Patreon)   Episode 51 - Palaces of Carrara Jake and Brendan are back in the interdecisional spaceship and - look out! - we're heading straight for Kramer and Kiesling's 2012 game Palaces of Carrara -- a decision space some call ungrokable. Find out what we say as wee discuss this sleek design that's oddly hard to talk about in this week;s episode of Decision Space, the podcast about decisions in games. Stick around for the end, where Jake shares the biggest hit party game from a recent bachelor party he attended in the "What's on My Mind" segment.   Timestamps What's on My Mind - 1:01:10   Music Credits Thank you to Hembree for our intro and outro music from their song Reach Out. You can listen to the full song on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQuuRPfOyMw&list=TLGGFNH7VEDPgwgyNTA4MjAyMQ&t=3s You can find more information about Hembree at https://www.hembreemusic.com/.  Rules Overview Music:  Way Home by Tokyo Music Walker https://soundcloud.com/user-356546060​ Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0 Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/tokyo-music-walker-way...​ Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/pJThZlOuDtI   Contact We can be reached individually on Twitter at @jakefryd and @burnsidebh. You can also follow Decision Space on Twitter @DecisionSpa and talk to us there! If you prefer email, then hit us up at decisionspa@gmail.com. This information is all available along with episodes at our new website decisionspacepodcast.com. Bye!