Podcast appearances and mentions of cheryl sandberg

This week we read "Lean In" by Cheryl Sandberg and if we had to sum up this book in one sentence it would be "GO TO HARVARD!" Check out our Patreon where you can get access to ad-free episodes and check us out on all the socials @MeanBookClub. Mean Book Club is four ladies (UCB, BuzzFeed, College Humor, Impractical Jokers) who read, discuss and whine about NYT bestselling books that have questionable literary merit. It's fun. It's cathartic. It's perfect for your commute. New podcast (almost) every Tuesday! Here's the Season 18 reading list: 1. Fourth Wing by Yarros 2. Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance 3. The Housemaid by Freida McFadden 4. Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg 5. A Court of Thrones and Roses by Sarah J. Maas 6. The House in the Pines by Ana Reyes 7. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden 8. While Justice Sleeps by Stacey AbramsSend any future book suggestions to meanbookclub@gmail.com! Follow us on the socials @meanbookclub! Rate, like, subscribe, and check out our Patreon page at patreon.com/meanbookclub to become a true patron of the mean arts.CREDITS: Hosted by Sarah Burton, Clara Morris, Johnna Scrabis, & Sabrina B. Jordan. This episode was produced and edited by Sarah Burton and Blake Opper. Special thanks to FSM Team for our theme song, "Parkour Introvert." Thanks to Dana Music for "Uplifting Corperate Music." You can get both songs here: https://www.free-stock-music.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/mean-book-club--3199521/support.

In this insightful conversation, leadership expert Tracy Rotsey sheds light on a topic that many of us encounter at some point AND that we are often asked to cover in training - Imposter syndrome. Tracy shares practical tips for silencing that inner voice that tells us we're not good enough. Whether you're a seasoned business leader, head of an L&D team, a freelance trainer, or just starting out in your career, Imposter Syndrome can be a tough mental hurdle. But it's one you can overcome with the right tools and mindset. In this episode, we discuss strategies for building confidence, recognizing your value, and understanding why self-awareness is key to both personal growth and professional success. And it's not just about training design—it's also about creating a work environment where people feel safe to make mistakes and learn from them. Visit www.trainingdesignersclub.co.uk for more information and become a VIP member here: https://www.trainingdesignersclub.co.uk/vip-membership  Check us out on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/c/TheTrainingDesignersClub  Connect with Sheridan on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/trainingdesigner/  Episode specific Connect with Tracey on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/traceyrotsey/  Visit her website: https://practicaltrainingsolutions.co.uk/  Lean In by Cheryl Sandberg: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lean-Women-Work-Will-Lead/dp/0753541629  Ready-Written Recruitment Interview Training: https://www.power-hour.co.uk/product-page/recruitment-interviewing-1

[00:00:00] Karen Marsdale: I wanted to be a ballet dancer and I was very serious and was in ballet lessons and modern dance lessons almost every day of the week by the time I was in junior high. I went to dance camp in the summer, went to the University of Connecticut for a summer with the Martha Graham School of Dance. And then after my senior year of high school, I spent six years in New York doing a program with the Joffrey School of Ballet. My ultimate dream was to go to Juilliard. I did not make the cut. And I think that should have been a little bit of a signal because it's like dance is professional sports one in, how many million really become the prima ballerina at the New York city ballet. +++++++++++++++ [00:01:45] Tommy Thomas: Our guest today is Karen Marsdale, a longtime contributor to the economic vibrancy of Berks County, Pennsylvania. Karen spent almost 27 years in senior leadership roles with the Reading Chamber of Commerce and Industry before joining Hannah's Hope as co-executive director. She took her BA in fashion merchandising and business management from Stevens College and serves on the boards of several nonprofits in and around Berks County. Karen, welcome to NextGen Nonprofit Leadership. [00:02:16] Karen Marsdale: Thank you, Tommy. It's a pleasure to be here. [00:02:20] Tommy Thomas: I'm a huge fan of all that a well-led Chamber of Commerce can do over the years I've observed, what good things happen when the Chamber takes a role in promoting economics and also when they take a role in incorporating the non-profit sector into the life of a community because I think that's important. When I learned of your background, I just jumped at the chance to have somebody who's done that and then migrated over into the role with Hannah's Hope. Again, thank you for joining us. Now before we dig too deep into your multi-pronged career, let's go back towards the beginning. Take me into your childhood and what two or three things do you remember that maybe has contributed to you being the person you are today? [00:03:06] Karen Marsdale: I'm an only child. And so that in the era that I was born and raised, that was a bit unique because big families were more the norm then than they are now. I think one of the things that kind of charted my course was I was always around adults primarily. Now we did live near relatives, so I had cousins and aunts and uncles, you spend most of your time with your family, meaning your parents. And so, I think that being an only child did not only, particularly for my mother, have the, maybe the opportunity, sometimes it didn't feel so opportunistic to have someone who was just looking at you as the in, the child that they're raising and nurturing. [00:03:52] Karen Marsdale: So sometimes I might've felt a little bit overwhelmed, but when you're an only child, I've read books on birth order etc. And one thing that I learned from that was an only child is like a firstborn times three. When you're an only child it is like being a firstborn times three. You tend to be alpha; you tend to be a leader. [00:04:09] Karen Marsdale: So, you tend to be alpha, you tend to be a leader. And I'm not saying these things to say, this is who I am. It's just this is often what happens. My mother was a bit sensitive. And so I was sensitive. I know I got my feelings hurt a lot. And mother was not exactly grin and bear it. It was oh, you poor thing. So, I think, and that was a lot about her background. And it's just so interesting. And now today, especially, my work at hand as you see how much background in childhood impacts the life and the trajectory of an individual. I do remember one time I broke my arm, and my father was rough and tumble and praise many was a welder and, oh, you're fine, you'll be fine. And my mother then took me to the hospital. I got it casted up and I almost waited all day for my father to come home, jump in the driveway and say, see, I told you. It's funny little things that you remember when you're in elementary school. Those are some of the things I remember. [00:05:17] Tommy Thomas: What'd you want to be when you grew up? Karen Marsdale: Oh, my word. This is something that when I tell people, they're like, really, if they've never known this, or we've never talked about it. I became interested in ballet in about fifth grade after about four years of taking classes and not liking them because I really, and this taught me a great lesson, which I'll talk about in a minute. I wanted to be a ballet dancer and I was very serious and was in ballet lessons and modern dance lessons almost every day of the week by the time I was in junior high. [00:05:48] Karen Marsdale: And I went to dance camp in the summer, went to the University of Connecticut for a summer with the Martha Graham School of Dance. And then, after my senior year of high school, I spent six years in New York doing a program with the Joffrey School of Ballet. My ultimate dream was to go to Juilliard. I did not make the cut. And I think that should have been a little bit of a signal because it's like dance is professional sports one in, how many million really become the prima ballerina at the New York city ballet. So, I did go to Stevens College. My first year, I was a dance major. They had a good program, went there and then changed my major, but all through those years of especially junior high into senior high. And then towards senior high, I was teaching some classes at the dance school that I went to, and I had an excellent teacher. Like sports, dance teaches discipline.  You have to show up and work hard. [00:06:42] Karen Marsdale: She was a mentor. And I'll tell you what it taught me was number one, discipline. Because discipline and dance is as much discipline as it is, excuse me, in the sports world. You have to show up and work out. It taught me discipline. On a Saturday morning, if I didn't want to get up and go to a dance class at 8 or 9 o'clock, I still had to go. The other thing it taught me, because through dance, I also did, in our small community, we had community theater. I am totally tone deaf, so I can't sing. I couldn't be in, and when I was in musicals, and I did do some relatively, one in particular, I did a relatively important part in a musical. Community theater taught me stage presence.  I can speak to a thousand people because I am not really speaking to a thousand people, I am looking at and speaking to a particular person on the front row. [00:07:25] Karen Marsdale: So, I had to learn lines. When it came to the, just to the music, I just would lip sync, but it taught me a bit of stage presence that still to this day is very useful because I've often said I can speak to a thousand people and not being really terribly nervous because you learned that you're not really speaking to a thousand people. You're looking at somebody in the front row. And so I can do that. And sometimes I think it's less intimidating for me to speak to that group of an audience when we're doing a what, through the chamber. And we had some events that had over a thousand people, and I could get up and speak. [00:08:09] Karen Marsdale: And it was probably easier than speaking to the board of directors, when I speak about something that was a bit challenging. So that, just folks don't realize the things that kiddos can gain from being in different types of activity. [00:08:27] Tommy Thomas: So, you graduated, you had maybe decided that the dance was not going to be totally your career. What happened then? [00:08:37] Karen Marsdale: You mean after high school? Rather after college, right? Yeah. Okay. So, after college this is really again, something that is, typically someone gets a job looking at their major, etc. But what my husband and I did, and I will tell you, I was married after my junior year of college. My husband had come back from Vietnam. We went back to where I was at Stevens College in Columbia, Missouri. He did a year at the University of Missouri to finish up his degree. And then we took a funny, rather interesting term because we went back to our hometown and maybe this was the best thing or the worst thing we did, but we bought a small business, and it was really in the area of, and again, your understanding, it's back in the seventies, it was a woman's boutique. We sold some small, but we also sold fashion. We saw fashions, we sold gift items, we sold accessories. And my background in fashion merchandising. We decided to do this. My parents wanted us to do it. I think only children who think about this, come back home. Don't go a thousand miles away for work. [00:09:43] Karen Marsdale: So, we were in our own business for about eight years. And my husband also took a sort of a crash course while we were there in our hometown in upholstery. So, he opened up his own business. Here's two 20 some year olds in their own businesses and they're not second-generation family businesses. So, it was a great experience. We were going to New York on buying trips. We were meeting with sales reps. We were hiring people. We only had a staff, mostly part time of about five people. And it was a great experience. I look back now and think, through my life it really made us the people that we are because it did not turn out particularly well. [00:10:27] Karen Marsdale: Maybe we were more naive than we thought. And after about eight years, we had to liquidate the business. We tried selling it. It was not a good time in our community. And so, we weren't able to sell the business.  By this time we had two kids and a house and we had to liquidate everything to pay off our debt, and I'm very open to tell the story. Our first business failed. We had to liquidate everything to pay off our debt.  We walked away with less than a thousand dollars.  We moved to Reading, Pennsylvania and started over. [00:10:47] Karen Marsdale: We had to pay off all our debt. We walked away with under a thousand dollars. We moved to Reading, Pennsylvania, where I had some family and uncle and his family. And my husband had gotten a job prior to before we moved, and we started all over again. And we were still young enough to, it was a blow, and it was emotionally challenging, but we just picked ourselves up and said, you know what we've got is ourselves. And we both have skills that we can hone and give to someone. And one thing that it taught me, and this is why I think my career at the chamber was so rewarding and why I understood to some degree what it takes for a small business owner, because if you've never signed the front of the paycheck and had to make payroll, you don't know what it is. [00:11:42] Karen Marsdale: To really understand what business is all about, even the smallest of businesses. So that was a great life lesson. Amazing. And I just feel that everyone needs to take everything they do as part of a life lesson to move to wherever they go from there. [00:12:04] Tommy Thomas: So how did you get involved with the Chamber of Commerce? [00:12:07] Karen Marsdale: Okay. So that was a little bit down the road. When we first came here, I did a couple of jobs that were, I would say not temporary, but not what I would think would be my career. Again, it's that world of knowing people who know people and networking, which I just can't say enough for knowing people and networking and being a true person that cares about others and networking in that fashion. So, I had a very dear friend. She's still my best friend to this day, 40 years later, she was on the board of the chamber of commerce and a small business owner, had a couple of businesses. She is a very outspoken wonderful individual, with great high moral character. She went to our then CEO and my first CEO of the chamber and said there was an opening. There was not an opening. But she went to him and said, I have a friend and if you hire her, I'm going to guarantee she's going to make you look good. And I had an invitation to speak with the CEO. We had a great conversation, not really an interview. He said, you know what, Karen, I don't have anything right now. [00:13:19] Karen Marsdale: He said, but the next time there's an opening that you seem to be would fit, he said, I'm going to call you. And within, I think three weeks, he called me because the director of marketing gave her notice and was going someplace else. And he called me in, and he said, do you want the job? And I said, absolutely. I didn't even ask what the salary was. We negotiated that after I got the job, it was crazy. But so that was my introduction to the chamber world. [00:13:46] Tommy Thomas: At that time, I guess you had a staff when y'all were in the retail business, but yeah, think back to the first time you really had a group of people reporting to you, what kind of memories do you have of that? [00:14:00] Karen Marsdale: It was challenging because again, we, most of the women that worked for me, and they were women, obviously, it was a woman's boutique, as they would call it back then, were much older, they were my mother's age, some of them might have been a little bit older. But I think what made them respect me as this small business owner was the fact that I respected them and got to know them and cared about them and their families. And we were a team together doing this work. And they chose to be working where they were because they really enjoyed the atmosphere, the customer experience. And, I was a rookie, you're 23 and you're managing people who are 55 years old and you're just, I think one of the keys is you always have to respect those who are working for you while making it clear what the expectations are of the job. Servant leadership doesn't mean you're anybody's lacky.  It means you put that person first and find the greatness in them. [00:15:01] Karen Marsdale: But leading as I call it and, servant leadership, which doesn't mean that you're anybody's lacky, but it means that you put that person first and you find the greatness in them and help them. When that happens, I think I just did it at first, not knowing necessarily what I was doing. I was thrown into that. And my husband is also, he's an extremely intuitive person. He was the partner in the business. So, we did this as a team. And I think that was a good mix that we were both there working with and managing this small staff of people who really wanted us to succeed. It just, it was organic, I think. +++++++++++++++ [00:15:49] Tommy Thomas: What's the most ambitious project you and a team have ever undertaken and how did it work out? [00:15:57] Karen Marsdale: So, I will tell you, fast forward to the Chamber of Commerce. And one of the things that I loved about the Chamber is very entrepreneurial. Now that does not mean that I didn't have to work really hard. I should say entrepreneurs work. They never don't work. I think that's the thing that I loved about that and small business owners and people who were growing businesses, but I was in a position of leadership.  I had earned it.  I had proven myself, and I had some really great women in leadership in the community. [00:16:26] Karen Marsdale: And we just began to see that our women's programs at the chamber and most chambers will have some kind of women's programs, quote unquote. And they said, we're not really, we're just doing the same old thing and having a luncheon and, then people go away and, oh, that was great, but how does it help me in the workplace? So, we undertook to take, basically, a year to create an organization and this is how it was defined. It was an organization within another organization. And so, we created what we called Women to Women, and that was an organization within the chamber. [00:17:05] Karen Marsdale: We had our own programming, our own model. And it was really to help women in the workplace find their skills. And how could we help them move into leadership roles and again, from my background and from who I am as a person, this was never meant to be. And this is why I think it was so successful and why even men in the community said this is the greatest thing to really have a place where women can feel safe. They can build and develop skills and training because it was never women against men. These were not, we were not looking at men as chauvinists. Men and women can work together so well, and women at the table bring so much to the table. That was the essential foundation of what Women to Women was about. [00:18:01] Karen Marsdale: It was very hard work. I went out and got businesses to underwrite the work of what we were doing. We built our own membership within the membership of the Chamber, and it was a huge success. And I can remember we worked so hard. And that was not only getting the credibility of what we were doing, but pushing the sort of boundaries of we're going to do our own programming aside, along with the chamber that your chambers often do workshops, etc. But we really had some amazing successes. And we get a national speaker woman to come in. In the beginning of the fall of the year to kick off the whole year of training and development. And there were companies that joined the Chamber in order to be part of Women to Women. [00:18:53] Karen Marsdale: And to this day, it is the most successful program in their over 100 years. And it's going strong. And as a matter of fact, I'll just tell you a little aside. Last night, I was at a function, a gala for a nonprofit and sitting with a group of younger women, and the one woman said, I was just at lunch, and I overheard a group of women behind me, and they were talking about Women to Women. And she said, I wanted to lean over and say I know the founder. And again, Tommy, this is a big deal in a small market. So, I'm not talking about a national movement, but I had chambers around the country call and ask, how did you do this? I don't think I could ever get our board to do it. [00:19:36] Karen Marsdale: And I'd say, yeah, you know what? You have to keep working and working. I hate to say it, but it's true. Primarily made up of men. We'll embrace this. And see the value and say, this helps my company because I have women that I want to promote to leadership or their women in leadership. And there's all kinds of things we did mentor programs, lean in circles from Cheryl Sandberg from Facebook, who wrote this whole curriculum on, how do women navigate in the world of business. There were all kinds of things going on. And still are. And I will say one thing that a staff person I'm still in contact with, and she's done amazing things, moved from the chamber to other nonprofit work in development. And she said to me one day, this is really hard. And I said, yeah, Carolyn, this is very hard, but if it was easy, wouldn't everybody be doing it? That's just my mantra. ++++++++++++++++ [00:20:32] Tommy Thomas: You mentioned you had to go out and get your funding and I've noticed on the Hannah's Hope website, y'all have what seems to be a very robust corporate community of sponsors.  What did you learn about fundraising during those early days? Everybody is in sales.  Even if you are the receptionist in the dentist office, you are selling something.  We must develop that mindset. [00:20:47] Karen Marsdale: Okay. The thing is, I'll just say this one thing, everybody is in sales. I don't care what you do. If you're picking up the phone at the dentist's office and you're saying hello and you're selling something.  And so therefore, we all have to have that kind of mindset. I learned very quickly that you're going to get more no's than you are yeses, and you have to believe in what you're doing. So I took that to heart and I really don't give up on things. [00:21:19] Karen Marsdale: So again, if I know that this is good for people, I know this is good for your company to be a part of say Women to Women, or now Hannah's Hope Ministries. If I know, because what we're doing is so important, I want you to be a part of it. And you need to assist us in making an investment in what we're doing. And that's how I always really knew that you have to get as much value as the customer as we're getting, as the product. A good thing to remember is you need to, if you're getting those, you're doing a good job because you're going to get more no's than yeses. [00:22:02] Karen Marsdale: But again, and I, and a dear friend of mine who was a major player in the banking world here, a female, said, it's just a matter of the numbers. If you make this many calls, you're going to get this many no's. And now again, this is not just, this is saying you've got a good product. You understand your product. In sales you will get a lot of nos.  There is an old saying – “is this no for now or no forever”. It's beneficial to the customer. You're going to get no's. And you know the old saying, is it no for now or no forever. And so you hang up the phone and say, okay, that was a no. Let me make three more phone calls and I might get a yes. And I always wanted to end the day saying, gosh, I should have made those three phone calls. [00:22:38] Karen Marsdale: I'm going to make those phone calls before I leave the office. And so even with Hannah's Hope, quite frankly, I don't want to say it's an easy sale, but what it is, it's an investment. And it's funny cause I just sent an email to somebody who people say, you're never going to get him. And he's one of the premier car dealerships in our community. And I sit on a board with him and it's like I'm not going away, John. So the reality is, let's have a conversation because I know you want to invest in people. You have the fortitude to do this and not take it personally when someone says no. [00:23:15] Karen Marsdale: And again, I don't take it personally and I just move on to the next. And then I go back to that person. And yeah, I might not be making sense but again it's how successful people have to do this. It just doesn't come easily. +++++++++++++++++++++++ Next week, we'll continue the conversation with Karen. In that conversation you'll learn about the comprehensive programs at Hannah's Hope that empower women to achieve independent living, Karen's innovative leadership and mentorship strategies, and how Karen and her co-director are making the model of co-director work in an amazing way. I hope you will join us for that conversation. Links & Resources JobfitMatters Website Next Gen Nonprofit Leadership with Tommy Thomas The Perfect Search – What every board needs to know about hiring their next CEO Connect tthomas@jobfitmatters.com   Follow Tommy on LinkedIn Listen to Next Gen Nonprofit Leadership with Tommy Thomas on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

In this episode of The Healthy Sensitive, Leah navigates the poignant journey of grief and loss, drawing from her personal experiences. Following the loss of her cherished cat Sasha, Leah offers an exploration into the process of grieving, examining the varied forms and stages of grief as described by experts like Brené Brown and David Kessler. Delving into the profound words of Thomas More's Dark Night of the Soul, she draws a parallel between her personal growth and the transformative power of profound grief. Leah also touches on the concept of post-traumatic growth, demonstrating how sensitive individuals can positively channel their emotional reactivity during times of loss. Emphasizing the importance of deriving meaning and purpose in the wake of a loss, Leah integrates wisdom from thinkers such as David Kessler, Cheryl Sandberg, and Thomas More. She weaves scientific findings on resilience and personal-stories into a comprehensive narrative that sheds light on our emotional response to loss. This episode also presents an in-depth analysis of various practices aimed at easing the pain of loss, from spiritual engagement and fostering connections to creative pursuits. Leah underscores the significance of shared grief and social connections in facilitating healing. Whether you are grappling with a personal loss or guiding someone else through theirs, this episode sparks hope, offering comfort and perspective. It illuminates the path from grief to growth, transforming the loss into a catalyst for personal evolution. To join the Healthy Sensitive Community, Join Us Here: https://the-healthy-sensitive.mn.co/ 

Presented by Fellow.app. Streamline your meetings and make them more efficient and meaningful. Get Fellow for you and your team today. Head to https://fellow.app/coo/ to get started and start having better meetings. (00:12) Advice for CEOs and COOs This chapter welcomes Cameron Harold, the founder of COO Alliance and author of "The Second In Command," as we celebrate the release of his new book and examine its content, which serves as a guide for both CEOs and COOs. We explore Cameron's transition from COO to CEO, the mindset shifts that accompanied this change, and his insights into the balance between work and life. Cameron shares his experiences and lessons learned from running a business at a young age, including the importance of delegating, saying no, and focusing on the most critical tasks. The discussion also touches on how the book has already impacted the COO Alliance and the value it provides in understanding the CEO-COO dynamic. (12:37) Promoting From Within vs. Hiring Externally This chapter we explore the importance of creating a culture of continuous improvement within companies, akin to the mindset of elite athletes or performers. I share an anecdote about Patrick Roy to illustrate the resilience and determination that we aim to instill in our teams. We discuss strategies for fostering a safe environment where feedback is welcomed and viewed as a tool for growth, emphasizing that it's the systems, not individuals, that often need adjustment. We also touch on the sentimental value of sports heroes, as I recount a personal encounter with my childhood idol, Ken Dryden. Finally, I address the considerations involved in deciding whether to promote from within or hire externally for leadership roles, factoring in the individual's ability to complement the CEO's skills, their leadership qualities, and the strategic implications of such decisions, especially in companies with specialized knowledge or intellectual property. (17:24) Flexibility in Organizational Structure With AI This chapter examines the importance of flexibility in business operations and leadership. We explore the concept of a "bobbin' weave culture" where being too rigid can be detrimental, and the benefits of flowing like water, taking the path of least resistance towards the company's vivid vision. I discuss the necessity for leaders to align with core values and purposes, akin to a bobsled track, to guide the organization's journey. Additionally, we look at the challenges of introducing flexibility into rigid structures, using the example of Gerber Auto Collision's approach to acquisitions and the philosophy of "selling, not telling" to integrate new teams. The chapter also highlights the power of positive reinforcement and personal praise in leadership, drawing lessons from Howard Behar's practice of handwritten thank you notes at Starbucks, emphasizing the value of gratitude and recognition in driving employee success and satisfaction. (24:55) Exploring AI Tools and Admired COOs This chapter, we explore the significance of AI in the modern workplace, highlighting how our employees and CO Alliance members are encouraged to experiment with AI tools for one to two hours each week. We discuss the vast array of available AI applications, far beyond the widely mentioned ChatGPT, and the benefits of sharing experiences with these tools among teams to build momentum and enhance productivity. Examples include the transformative effects of AI on podcast production, such as using Descript to edit speech or Podium Stage for content creation. Additionally, we touch upon the importance of adaptability, illustrated by historical shifts in technology within NASA, and wrap up with admiration for influential COOs like Cheryl Sandberg and Matt Rawlings, noting how they exemplify effective leadership and innovation. (30:39) Leadership Lessons and Insights This chapter explores the contrasting leadership styles and trajectories of two COOs of 1-800-Got-Junk, with a focus on the impact of Eric Church's internal-facing, process- and people-centered approach as he grew the company from $70 million to $450 million, in stark contrast to my own media-facing, brand-building style during a different company growth phase. We also discuss the critical lesson of listening to team members, exemplified by a near-bankruptcy experience, and share a personal strategy for becoming a better listener by physically sitting on one's hands to encourage attentiveness. Finally, we examine the importance of asking systemic rather than symptomatic questions within leadership, illustrated by an anecdote involving Starbucks and the significance of maintaining operational systems for company-wide consistency. (37:02) Catch Up and Discuss Book Promotion This chapter celebrates the successful collaboration between CEOs and COOs as we unpack the critical dynamics of their partnership. I extend my gratitude to Cameron for sharing his insights and congratulate him on his new book, "Second in Command," a must-read for current and aspiring COOs, as well as CEOs seeking to hire their right-hand executive. We reflect on the nuances of the CEO-COO relationship and the importance of understanding each other's roles to foster a productive working environment. The discussion emphasizes the book's relevance for those looking to enhance their leadership teams and the overall health of their organizations. Thank you, Cameron, for joining me and enriching our listeners with your expertise. Links:Second In Command book - https://www.amazon.com/Second-Command-Unleash-Power-Your/dp/1544537603COO Alliance - https://cooalliance.com/Cameron Herold on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/cameronherold/Unique Ability by Dan Sullivan - https://uniqueability.com/Situational Leadership - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situational_leadership_theoryFellow.app - https://fellow.app/coo/Episode on Between Two COO's - https://betweentwocoos.com/41Michael Koenig on LinkedIn - https://linkedin.com/in/michael-koenig514/ 

Cheryl Sandberg to Mark Zuckerberg. Jonathan Powell to Tony Blair.James Baker to Presidents Bush and Reagan.Behind every great leader, there's an advisor, a confidant - a Chief of Staff.Join The Chief of Staff Association's  Euan Godbold each episode as he sits down with leaders at the heart of the world's most recognisable businesses, non-profit organisations and political institutions. Brought to you by the people who champion the role: The Chief of Staff Association.To learn more, go to: https://www.csa.org/

Have you ever felt like you're bumping your head against the ceiling in a male-dominated business environment? This episode tackles the challenges and obstacles women face while trying to break free from patriarchal expectations and redefine success on our own terms. We take inspiration from Cheryl Sandberg's book Lean In, and also discuss the huge shift in the business world due to COVID-19 and the golden opportunities it has presented for women to step into their CEO shoes.But stepping into your CEO shoes isn't just about seizing opportunities; it's also about supporting our fellow women on their journeys and setting boundaries when faced with negativity. We explore the differences in career expectations between men and women and discuss the potential for creating an inclusive and empowering environment when we believe in our own abilities. Don't miss this honest and thought-provoking conversation about the challenges and opportunities for women in leadership, and the power we hold within ourselves to change the narrative.I'd love to know what you enjoyed about today's episode! Leave a comment below or DM me on Instagram @16thavecreative Don't forget to subscribe, and tap the bell so you'll be notified every time a new episode drops. Plus, it would be amazing if you could rate the show and leave a positive review.Here's a few ways we can help you: JOIN THE WAITING LIST FOR START-UP SUCCESS! Build Your Business in 60 Days! Ditch Your 9-5! Get Your 9-5 Exit Plan Here! Get the Brilliant Business Beautiful Life Playbook Straight to Your Inbox! Ultimate Website Content Checklist The Framework: Your Brand Voice Check out our Services : Squarespace website design, copywriting, & branding

"Leadership is about making others better as a result of your. And making sure that impact lasts in your absence." - Cheryl Sandberg. Often times we can discount the power of mindset and the effect that it has on our ability to lead. Good leadership should have lasting effects that outlive the presence of that leader. In order to have that level of effective and lasting impact; that level of powerful leadership, you MUST have the proper mindset! Your mindset is a set of beliefs that shape how you make sense of yourself, what you believe about yourself, the awareness that you have of yourself and your confidence. Thus, your mindset will influence how you think, feel and behave when opportunities present themselves. In order to seize those opportunities, you cannot have a stunted mindset! Today we're going to talk about why mindset is so vital to leaders and their ability to lead well. Tune in to dig deeper into this topic with me! ____________________________________ Listen to this episode to hear more. Key Talking Points of the Episode: [08:25] 6 Attributes of Leadership [12:32] The Better the Mindset, The Better the Leader [15:16] More Than a Plan ____________ Learn more about Mindset to Momentum by clicking here! Feel free to shoot me a DM on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/ravencnole/ with your takeaways from this episode. AS ALWAYS, THE BEST WIN FOR US IS WHEN YOU → LEAVE A REVIEW!⚡️

In this very exciting interview today Mark stamped his passport in his #1 destination, Amsterdam. On today's podcast, we brought in author, Lisette Schuitemaker. Born in the Netherlands, Lisette is the eldest of four children which is the subject of her 2016 book The Eldest Daughter Effect. She also wrote in 2017 The Childhood Conclusions Fix and Childless Living (2019). In this episode, Mark and Lisette discussed Lisette's inspirations and conclusions for creating her books, writing non-fiction, and the inside tellings on her new book she's working on, The Inner Life of Money. In the first part of our interview, Mark asks about “alleviating loneliness and how we feel we are the only ones”. Lisette mentions attending the Barbara Brand School of Healing where she learned about the insightful theory of psychiatrist William Reich. She breaks down his 5 conclusions that people come out of childhood with. I should of not been born, I am differentWe are not good enoughBeing ashamed of ourselves We should be in controlWe should be perfect Her insightful feedback around these childhood issues coming from the eldest child is that even though we think we are not good enough, we end up trying harder and we wanna do better. She says that kind of makes it the “positive side of it”. And in turn, the negative side of it can be self-destructive and you end up starting over and over again.Observing patterns in firstborns like Hillary Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, Cheryl Sandberg, JK Rowling, Beyonce, and many many more that her main key takeaway was “responsibility”. She says alleviating loneliness, is also a “kind of freeing ourselves up to be our true selves and not be at a mercy of patterns that we learned in our childhood”.Lisette's “Hero's Journey” in creating Non-fiction “You have to know a lot about your material, and at the same time, you have to have some distance from it so that you can kind of be a bit more abstract in a way, whereas you're still factual.” The book that's always on her table is The Grounded Theory and it says, “look at your data, keep looking at your data, because at some point, a pattern will emerge.”She describes writing as:It isn't always writingIt's also reading, Writing is also despairing. Writing is going back to notes, and then going back to previous versions. “I think my imagination is not as large as my curiosity and my wanting to know how things are and my kind of empathy for people in certain situations. And then that's what I write about.”Lisette is currently working on a new book, The Inner Life of Money. She talks about currently co-writing on the topic of money and how she shares her ideas back and forth with her partner. Listen towards the end as she discusses her new book and to learn more about Lisette and her books go to her website at lisetteschuitemaker.com/en/You can also find her on Linkedin, Facebook, and Instagram. Copyright 2022 Mark

Why do so many leaders get Leadership wrong? Leadership can be a dealbreaker in most organizations. Many people get it wrong, or at least some of them do, and many times they don't even realize it. However, given how quickly the marketing landscape is evolving, collaboration between teams and practicing self-awareness to understand what's not working out is necessary. Do you wish to know what the different types of leaders are and what good leadership really is? Tune in to Episode 8 of The B2B POD and indulge in an engaging discussion between our host Radwa Hassan and guest Robert Jordan, where they elaborate on the different types of leaders and how they take on a crisis in their own individual ways.In this Episode -  We introduce you to our gracious host Radwa Hassan and our guest Robert Jordan.Give you a general overview of the challenges leaders face and how to overcome them.Our guest shares his insights on Leadership styles in his book Right Leader Right Time. Discover your leadership style for a winning career and company. In closing, we'd like to say thank you for tuning in to The B2B POD this week. We hope to see you for Episode 9.Episode highlights -[00:01]   Radwa introduces the guest Robert Jordan[00:14]   Radwa introduces the topic for the episode [01:11]   Radwa Hassan introduces the guest Robert Jordan[02:43]   Radwa cites a statistic from Gallup organization    [03:13]   Radwa asks what are the different types of leaders and what is good leadership.[05:48]  Robert explains the traits of Remarkable leaders[07:42]   Robert explains the 4 leadership styles called FABS [11:16]  Robert explains the Builder leadership type with an example [17:22]   Robert explains his perceptions written in his book Right Leader Right Time. [17:52]   Robert explains his perceptions as a Fixer leader[19:01]   Robert explains his views as an Artist leader with an example [21:27]   Radwa asks Robert which leadership style is most prevalent in the market[24:52]  Radwa talks about how important it is to lead by example to be a leader[26:01]   Radwa asks Robert for his Key takeaways for the listeners in their Leadership    journey           [26:48]   Robert states the harsh reality of leaders [28:05]   Robert gives an example of Cheryl Sandberg who left Google and went to Facebook  and was a great example of a leader [29:44] Radwa talks about Cheryl Sandberg having the 4 leadership styles[31:09] Robert shares a common trait among FABS leaders [32:31] Robert shares his psychologist's views on leadership[33:43] Radwa encourages the listeners to read Robert's book Right Leader Right Time.[34:25] The EndFollow us on: Instagram FacebookLinkedInB2B Pod Website Radwa LinkedIn Robert Jordan LinkedIn Right Leader Right Time: Robert Jordan and Olivia Wagner:Websites:  www.interimexecs.com & www.rightleader.com

Podcast 244 Becoming more productive and being better at managing your time is not about the hustle culture or squeezing every spare minute out of the day. It needs to be more human than that. That is what we're looking at this week. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin Email Mastery Course The Time Blocking Course The Working With… Weekly Newsletter The Time And Life Mastery Course The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl's YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Episode 244 | Script Hello and welcome to episode 244 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host for this show. Productivity has a bad name. Many believe it's about maximising your time doing work, so your company can squeeze the most value out of you without having to pay you more.  But becoming more productive and better at managing your time is and should never have been, about companies exploiting their workforce. Personal productivity is about building balance into our lives. A life where we can earn a reasonable income and have time to spend with the people we care about without becoming overwhelmed, stressed or burnt out.  But how can we do that with all the demands on our time? Well, that's what we will be looking at in this week's episode.  Which means, it's time for me to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week's question.  This week's question comes from Ann. Ann asks, Hi Carl, how do I convince my team that becoming more productive is to help them, not just the company? Every time I try to teach them to be more productive or be better with their time, they don't want to know. Hi Ann, thank you for your question.  This is one of the sad things about the work of time management and productivity. For a lot of people, they think it's all corporate mumbo-jumbo and is designed to “exploit the workers”.  Now, perhaps in the early days of mass manufacturing, that was the case. Hungry, ambitious factory owners wanted to squeeze every last drop of energy from their workers so they could maximise their profits from their endeavours. However, we've come a long way since then. Today, we are much more aware of the need for adequate rest. Indeed many countries have laws protecting workers from exploitative bosses. The European Union countries have what is called the Working Time Directive which sets limits on the number of hours workers can be asked to work in a week.  In recent years, we've had the hustle culture trend—where if you want to build your own business you need to be pushing 100 hours+ each week. This has been widely advertised by the likes of Elon Musk and Gary Vaynerchuk as a good thing.  Well, is it? To me that depends.  In the early days of starting my own business, the business was my total focus. I was working up to eighteen hours a day because I was working two jobs. I had my regular teaching work and in my spare time I was developing my online business.  The thing is I never felt exhausted or close to burn out because I was loving every minute. I couldn't wait to start the day and I never wanted the day to end. Sleep, back then was an inconvenience to me.  But that kind of working is not sustainable in the long-term.  And that's the key to this. There will be times when you need to pull out all the stops and work long hours. But that should never be the default position.  Very much like when we lived an agrarian life. The years went in seasons. The spring time was for planting, the summer was for nurturing and protecting our crops. The autumn was the harvesting of those crops and winter was for relaxation and maintenance. Spring and autumn were our busiest times. During those periods we were working from daybreak to sunset, likely seven days a week. In the summer and winter, we worked less hours.  Now the way I see productivity and time management is by getting to grip with how we are using our time, we can build balanced and sustainable lives. We have time for our relationships, to take care of our health and to develop our knowledge and skills while working a full-time job.  It's not just about our work. Work is a part of our lives, but it is only a part of our lives.  When you think about it, the average person works forty-hours a week, yet a week has 168 hours. That's roughly a quarter of our week. What do we do with the other three quarters?  Becoming better at managing your time and ultimately more productive allows you to complete all your work tasks within those forty hours, so you can enjoy the other 126 hours. That may mean ensuring you get at least seven hours sleep each evening. Taking some time out for exercise to protect your health and for spending quality time with the people that matter to you. That to me is the best reason for getting better at managing time and being more productive.  But it is more than that. Being more aware of time and what we do with the time helps us to focus more on what is really important to us.  It's true at some point, our career will be high up on our list of priorities. Most people want to advance their careers, perhaps they have a goal to become a leader in their organisation, or ultimately to start their own business. There will be times when eight hours a day will not be enough to achieve what you want to achieve. That's fine, as long as it's temporary.  What I find with the most productive people is they make their productive and time management practices a part of who they are. They develop processes that while are flexible to deal with the unexpected, enable them to have the time available for exercise, family and friends.  I remember reading an article about Cheryl Sandberg a few years ago, that described how her mornings were focused on getting her children ready for school. She ensured there was always time for a family breakfast before her kids headed out to school and she headed to the office. Equally, she made sure she was there when her kids returned from school later in the day.  It's her time management and productivity practices that help her to manage her family life as well as her professional life. Any article you read about Cheryl Sandberg will show you where her priorities lay.  And that's where your Areas Of Focus step in. It's these eight areas that inform you where you priorities are. Once you know what your areas of focus are, what they mean to you and what you need to do each week to make sure you are giving sufficient time to them, you can build those activities into your weekly life.  For instance, keeping fit and healthy is a core area of focus for me. So, I have a two hour block each day for exercise. One my favourite times of the day is the hour my wife and I take Louis for his daily walk. He gets on with his thing and we can talk and laugh.  While we don't schedule these walks on a weekly basis, it's something we do plan each day.  A couple of questions you can ask your colleagues, Ann, is what is important to them? What would they like to spend more time doing? This moves the narrative away from the word “productivity” to something more interesting.  Now, you may get answers like spending more time sitting on a beach drinking cocktails. That's fine, because what you want to do is to connect the notion of better time management and productivity with the idea that by being more intentional with their time, they can build habits and practices that will enable them to do more of the things they want to do.  Nobody wants to be sitting on a beach with a cocktail in hand worrying about what's in their inbox. While you might be at the beach, you're not mentally there. You're still at work. That's not a good place to be.  Having processes and systems in place allows you to completely turn off from work and focus yourself on being present with the things you are doing in the moment. When my wife and I are walking Louis, I'm not thinking about the email I need to respond to or the next YouTube video I will be recording. I am present.  Time management isn't really about managing time. You cannot do that because time is a fixed resource. What we can manage is the activity we do in the time we have available. So, the only question we need to answer is what are we going to do with the time we have each day?  How much sleep do you want to get each day? How much time would you like to spend exercising, socialising, resting and doing your work? This is where creating a calendar and calling it your perfect week helps.  With your “perfect week” calendar, you start with the things you want to do on a regular basis. For instance, I like to have ninety minutes each day for exercise and an hour a day for walking Louis. I try to get seven hours sleep a night and I like to have an hour at the end of the day for reading and learning.  So, these are scheduled on my perfect week calendar. In total, I like to have ten and a half hour a day for sleep and my own activities. Eating takes up around two hours a day—I like to cook dinner as it gets me away from the computer screen. So in total I get to spend half my twenty four hours on myself and family. The remaining twelve hours can be given over to work.  Now as it's my own business I run, twelve hours is perfect. For me my work is a way to help people which is my biggest motivator. Helping people regain a better relationship with their time so they are spending it doing the things they want to do is my purpose in life.  That doesn't mean I do spend twelve hours a day working. Some days I do, others I don't. For instance, I won't do any work on a Saturday night. That's reserved for meeting friends or watching British detective dramas—it's a hobby of mine to watch these shows trying to work out who did it.  It's when we can get to decide what we do with our time that we regain control over our time. Remember our work is twenty-five percent of the week. The remaining seventy-five percent is ours to chose what we want to do.  I hope that explanation helps you, Ann. I think the secret is to change the way we see time management and productivity. It isn't just a bout our work. It's about our life. If we want more time to do things we want to do, we need to manage the activities we do in the time we have available.  I hope that has helped and thank you for your question. It just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.   

Have you ever wondered why it's so hard to lose weight after you turn 40?   If you have, you're not alone. In fact, it's a question that many women ask themselves as they approach middle age.   The good news is that there is an answer. And, even better, it turns out that there is a simple way to turn on your cell's "fat switch" and lose weight, no matter your age.   That's what Dr. Betty Murray is here to talk about in this episode.   Dr. Murray is a nutrition expert, certified functional medicine practitioner, and speaker. She helps women 40+ harness their hormones to lose weight, optimize sleep, restore energy, and thrive in life.   During her research for her PhD, Dr. Murray made 4 key discoveries that lead to hormone imbalances that plague women over 40. Restoring balance to these key metabolic pathways is the basis of her Hormone Reset Program which has helped her, and her clients lose weight with ease, restore sleep, and turn up their energy.   She is the host of This Functional Life Podcast and the founder and CEO of Living Well Dallas Functional Medicine Center. Dr. Murray is a frequently featured nutrition expert on Fox News Broadcasting, CW33, NBC, and CBS.   So, if you're ready to learn how to turn on your cell's fat switch and lose weight after 40, then this episode is for you.   In this episode, we discuss: The 4 key discoveries that lead to hormone imbalances in women over 40 How to turn on your cell's "fat switch" How your genetics that controls estrogen detoxification may lead to weight gain and risk for diabetes, obesity, and cancer Body positivity and how to love your body at any age The role estrogen plays in weight loss The role of the nervous system in your hormonal function and your fat retention Foods to avoid that screw up your hormones And much more!   If you're struggling with your weight, or if you're just curious about how to lose weight after 40, then this episode is a must-listen.   So, grab a cup of coffee, put your feet up, and enjoy!   (00:00): Erica Jong said, "If you don't risk anything, you risk even more." And if you're struggling with your weight and excess fact, then you might not even be aware of why or what you're risking. And my guess today is gonna tell you all about how to unlock this situation. So the big question is how do women over 40, like us keep weight off, have great energy balance. Our hormones in our moods feel sexy and confident and master midlife. If you're like most of us, you are not getting the answers you need and remain confused and pretty hopeless to ever feel like yourself. Again. As an OB GYN, I had to discover for myself the truth of about what creates a rock, solid metabolism, lasting weight loss, and supercharged energy. After 40 in order to lose a hundred pounds and fix my fatigue. Now I'm on a mission. This podcast is designed to share the natural tools you need for impactful results. And to give you clarity on the answers to your midlife metabolism challenges, join me for tangible natural strategies to crush the hormone imbalances you are facing and help you get unstuck from the sidelines of life. My name is Dr. Kyrin Dunston welcome to The Hormone Prescription Podcast.   (01:14): Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the hormone prescription with Dr. Kyrin. I'm so grateful that you chose to join us today. Welcome today. My guest, Dr. Betty Murray is going to help shed some light on why your cells' fat switch is stuck, and you can't seem to lose any weight after four eight after 40. This is true for women, but also for men losing weight no longer is a math problem where it's calories and minus calories out. It becomes way more complex. And maybe you have really tried everything, you're at your wits end, and you just can't figure out what's wrong. No worries, Dr. Betty is gonna help you figure it out. She's the host of this functional life podcast and has a very dynamic practice. Her graduate work has focused on the difference inside the cell mitochondrial function and carbohydrate metabolism. Don't worry if you're like, what are you talking about?   (02:12): Betty is gonna explain it to you and she's gonna help you understand why if you don't risk anything, you risk even more. That's a quote from Erica young, which is prolific and really applies to us at midlife. So I'll tell you a little bit about Dr. Betty and we will get started. She's a nutrition expert, certified functional medicine practitioner and speaker Dr. Betty Murray. She's a PhD candidate. MSCN if F M C P all those initials after her name, she helps women over 40 harness their hormones to lose weight, optimize, sleep, restore, energy, and thrive in life. And who doesn't want that during her research for her PhD, she made four key discoveries that led to hormone imbalances that plague women over 40 restoring balance to these key metabolic pathways is the basis of her hormone reset program. She's the host of this functional life podcast and the founder and CEO of living well Dallas functional medicine center. And she's a frequently featured nutrition expert on Fox news, podcasting, CW 33, NBC and CBS. Welcome Betty Murray.   (03:20): Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here.   (03:23): Me too. I'm so excited to have you. I loved your interview and the stop, the menopause madness summit. And I said, Betty, you gotta come on the podcast and talk to all of us women over 40 about really what's going on inside ourselves. Why are we gaining weight? Um, we're gonna dive into that in a second, but I gotta share with everyone, or have you share why you're so passionate about this topic of weight gain in women over 40?   (03:53): I came to functional medicine and functional nutrition originally because I was diagnosed with colitis and I kind of went on my own journey to try and figure out how I could do things with my diet and lifestyle to keep from taking harsh drugs. And, you know, through that process was able to really, you know, kind of heal that. And honestly, I've been, you know, knock on wood flare free for more than a decade. And, but when I hit my forties, so I've never been a naturally thin person, but in my teens and twenties and thirties, I was able to maintain body composition by doing what everybody hears, you know, in high intensity intervals and doing some weight training and eating really, really lean right, low, low carb. And I could have the occasional cheat and it would all work when I hit my forties. It was like some major switch turned off.   (04:40): My hormones got worse. Like everybody talks about heavier periods, more moodiness and sleep problems that were already a problem. And that, you know, became almost unyielding, you know, two or three hours a night awake. And I went back to my functional medicine peers, cuz I was already in the industry and tried hormones, tried all these different things and no matter what I did, I might get my sleep slightly better, or I might, my periods might be a little bit better, but I could not lose weight to save my life. I'm a nutritionist. So, you know, it's one of those things like you don't wanna be sitting in the room with somebody talking about weight loss and those kind of things, when you yourself are struggling. And I, and I, and all the women I was seeing, I could just feel it for them cuz I was in it with them. And so when I went back to school for my PhD, cuz I just, I love to learn. That really was where I centered a ton of my research is what is different between men and women? Because I think any woman can tell you if they go on a dietary change with a male, it's like two different worlds, a guy gives up beer and pizza and they drop 20 pounds.    (05:44): Lettuce and...   (05:46): Right.    (05:47): Let guys do the beer and pizza, no beer and pizza diet, which does not work for any woman.   (05:53): And most of the women I see are the ones that are like, I'm doing all the right things. They're working out, you know, every morning, and they're eating low, low-carb and they're drinking just water, and they can't figure out why it's not working. And so that's really where I went on this journey because I myself was in it. And I just I saw all these women struggling with it. And the other thing that just broke my heart, and it was true for me and true for most of my clients is at some point in our conversation, they would say, you know, Betty, I want my life to be about this, this next season. Right? Cause when you get to your forties and fifties, we're looking at this next season of life. Maybe it's I want to do this with it. I wanna have a bigger impact.   (06:30): I wanna have a better relationship. And then they would almost always say Betty, if my body was different, I could, if I felt at home in my body, if the vehicle that I'm driving every day was where I felt comfortable. My life would be better. Then I would do X mm-hmm . And that for me broke my heart because I think women in this time period of life, we are in such a great opportunity to leave our impact. However, we wanna do that, whether it's with our family and kids or reaching out into the world or change the world. But a lot of times we're holding ourselves back because we don't feel at home in our body anymore. That just drives me at this point. That's why I do my podcast. It's why it's, you know, I, I go to the clinic every day. It's why I really reach out and try and help women because I, I truly believe we are the ones that are gonna change the world.   (07:19): You're speaking my language. I got the chill, bums going all up and down because that's why I do what I do. And you know, it really gets to this quote you shared with me before we started from Erica J if you don't risk anything, you risk even more. And I see so many women just giving up because they can't do what they wanna do in life because of their health, they can't get their health where they want it to be. And I consider my mission to help women get physically in shape so that they can give, deliver the gifts that they have to give to the world that are gonna save the world. What are your thoughts on that?   (08:00): Absolutely. You know, I, and sometimes that risk, you know, is really uncomfortable. So when I work with women in my hormone reset group, part of what we do is we start acting on those dreams, desires and goals, even though we don't feel as if we should could or would, right? So I'll give a really good personal example and you know, people might be uncomfortable with this. So for obviously more than a decade of my life, I was not comfortable in my own body. It affected my relationship with my husband. Cause I'm like, please don't look at me. You know, please don't look at me. So one of the things that I started doing is I started taking pictures of myself, slightly provocative, nothing, nothing nasty, but you know, for my husband and I, you know, I would set up my phone on a little, you know, a little stand I'd take a bunch of pictures, I'd take 50 in one of 'em I'd be like, that's not too bad. Right. Cause that's where you brain   (08:49): It. Right.   (08:51): And then I would show them to 'em and he would be like, you look beautiful. It wasn't for that response. It was for me to look through all those photos and go, this one looks good. Cause it started out. This one looks okay. And then it started out going and then it started changing to, I look, look pretty in this one, I look hot in this one. I send this to me. And so like weird things like that, that it seems so foreign to people help you start to own that beauty. Like the younger women and today are embracing body positivity. And as healthcare workers, we, we have this fine line between, we want body positivity, but we need to be healthy, but you don't see anybody our age doing it, Paulina, PVA. She does it. But none of us are really standing in it and going, yes, you know, I have some scars, I have some, you know, I have some jiggly bits, but I'm still beautiful.   (09:39): You know, you know, it's so true. Let's have a little divergence. We're gonna get into the hard science. Y'all, don't worry. It is the hormone prescription podcast after all, but let's go down this little detour because I was actually thinking the same thing the other day, when I saw the cover of the new sports illustrated with the woman, who's very curvy. And I actually interviewed a woman on the podcast when I first started it several years ago, who is a younger woman. I believe she weighs 350 pounds who actually has a huge following about it. And I saw some of the comments about the sports illustrated cover. And they're saying, are we now, uh, condoning obesity and core health in service of not shaming anyone and being body positive. And I'm just wondering what other people's thoughts are. So since you brought it up, can you talk a little bit about that?   (10:33): Yeah. You know, it's, it is hard because I do think cuz I think it's a circular thought. I know my body opinion changed by the time I was at like at the end of elementary school. Right. As, as soon as you hit that tween years, I think a lot of times our eating habits and other things that may lead to weight gain. And then cuz it starts as a little bit of weight gain. Then you get a lot of metabolic changes that adds to that weight loss. It's not as easy as calories and calories out. But I think the shame that we feel about our body that often develops when we're teenagers that we carry into our adulthood, mm-hmm, perpetuates behaviors that also make us more likely to use food as comfort and emotional and those kinds of things. So I think there is an important part of body positivity, but I also think that we have to look at, if somebody is significantly overweight, they do have all kinds of additional risks for chronic disease like diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, even cancer. But I think if we keep coming at it from the shame game and making people feel less than, but whether it's through media or other things for not being, you know, the ideal 1% person, then we're gonna perpetuate a bigger problem, you know, mm-hmm so I think it is a timeline dance. And it's one that I struggle with all the time, how to, how to handle it in an emotional way. And then also in a professional way. Cause I have a pro professional responsibility, right. To be real of what the risk factors are.   (11:58): Yeah. I agree with you. Well I think when we look at a lot of health problems, there is shame attached to them. I think there's a lot of shame associated with type two diabetes for instance, or sometimes for hypertension or high cholesterol people think in their minds, oh, well you must be eating too much salt. You must be eating too much animal fat. You must be eating too much sugar, but we don't have that around things like autoimmune conditions. If someone has lupus or multiple sclerosis, we really don't have shame around that. So I don't know that weight issues are unique in that respect. I do think that our generation, well, at least I might be a little older than you, my generation. I mean, I was steeped in like a Dell Davis and Jack Lane and oh my gosh, thin and Twiggy and you got to be so thin.   (12:50): And I look back, I had to pull out some photos of myself when I was younger for my Ted talk, that's coming up and I look how skinny I was and I thought I was fat. I know so that's, I think that's really insane making people who are healthy, feel like they're overweight, but I do think it's a very fine line cuz it's my understanding from the data that even a 10%, if you're 10% over your ideal body weight, there are consequences to be had from that. And that's not much if you're, if you're ideal body, weight's 150 pounds and your 15 pounds overweight, my understanding of the data is you are going to have consequences. And so I struggle with that. I still think we should embrace everyone. Scars, bulges, you know, skin blotches, all the things that we all naturally have and love that. But I don't think, you know, I personally don't think that the like the sports illustrated cover is condoning poor health. I think they're just celebrating beauty in all of its various forms.  (13:57): Absolutely. Well, the definition of beauty has been different over millennia, right? So if we look back into the Renaissance being curvy meant that you were fertile. Right? Right. So no, just depends what time period. So beauty is defined by time period and paradigm and the zeitgeist of the time I'm slightly younger than you, but I definitely hit the, you know, the supermodel era of the eighties. And then right after that, my early twenties was heroin chic, cuz nothing's better looking than somebody that looks like they do heroin. Right. you know, and so you, you, those mixed messages and those messages that we get, I think are damning and damaging and metabolic damage that results in obesity, which is a hundred percent metabolic changes in the cells that cause that, but we take it and still as a medical community treated as a morality problem, which makes me crazy. Yeah. Because it's not a morality and a, and a behavioral problem. It is a metabolic problem that happens. And the problem is you can't give up eating. Right.   (14:57): Can't you cannot stop   (14:58): That. Yeah. It's like, oh, I'm just not ever gonna eat again. That doesn't work. So yeah. So I think it is all those things. So my goal going forward is to help people understand what's happening inside their cells, what's happening with their hormones, how we might be able to manipulate that both therapeutically in a short term to fix some of the problems and then how to live ongoing, where I can maintain a healthy weight. That means my body feels healthy. Cuz a lot of times the other thing is we, we have a number on the scale and it's often a number we've had like 18 to 22 and that's the number we feel like we need to be when we weren't at hormonal peak yet it might not really be the most ideal weight for us. And I like for people to focus on what does healthy feel like? What does it mean? Can I run around and play with my grandkids? Can I go hiking? Can I bike 60 miles in a weekend? Like those things to me are more meaningful because those are real gauges of, can you live your life? It's not a number on a scale.   (15:53): Yes. I love that. It isn't a number on a scale and light with that. Let's dive more into the science. So I know that you focus on four main areas that lead to hormonal balances that plague women over 40 and contribute to the weight game. I love how you talk about this cellular fat switch. And basically that this fat switch gets turned on by these factors. And we have to learn about them to turn that switch off. So let's start, start there and talk about what these factors are.   (16:28): Right? So some of these people may have heard these stats. So statistically a woman's metabolism will slow about 5% for every decade, right? And most women experience about a 10 to 15% increase in body weight around the belly, just from entering menopause. Right? So the thing to remember is that estrogen, when it's balanced with the other hormones and everything's working in, in, in synchrony is actually sliming. But when it's out of balance too high or too low, we have a problem. We have, we play that sort of exorbitant price for that. So part of what we see is we have inside the cell, we have mechanisms that help our cell either burn your carbohydrate forms like glucose or fat and really what's happening is that stuff has to be happening inside the cell in a very, very orchestrated way. And a lot of times we focus on you gotta lower your insulin, which then, you know, makes your body able to burn fat.   (17:26): Well, my question always was is if women's metabolism changes at a rate that's different than men, what role must estrogen play? Cuz it does. So there's a fat switch inside the cell and it's controlled by a cellular metabolite called uric acid. So uric acid gets produced inside the cell and it's produced when there's damage inside the cell when there's damage to the DNA in RNA. And so when your at acid rise rises inside the cell, it acts as a switch and lowers the cellular mechanic. So think of it as the powerhouse inside the cell, it makes that powerhouse slow down. So, you know, for anybody that's in our age group, instead of having a brand new rock and Tesla, you have a 1984, you go, so everything slows down and, and this, this came about, this is not my research. This is another gentleman. Uh, Rick Johnson, I believe he's found a university of Colorado, I believe that's right.   (18:18): But they found that this change, this mechanism is something that happened millions of years ago when we went from being ape two man. And it was what allowed us to make it through an ice age. So the apes that actually had this switch turned on where uric acid would come up and slow. The powerhouse survived, you know, a, basically a disaster, which was an ice age where food was not available. So this uric acid response is to some degree, a starvation response. It's also the response of hibernation. So that's how they found it. They started looking at bears and squirrels and things that hibernate. And as the bears go into the spring and summer, where they start eating more high fructose, I, environmental things like fruits and things like that, honey, we would see this increase in uric acid. They would start gaining body fat.   (19:06): And then when they got to the wintertime and they'd go to hibernate, they'd be able to use that body fat over the winter to survive. So the rise in uric acid slows the powerhouse and slows down your ability to burn fat. And it's doing it through a bunch of mechanisms, which we won't really go into. So the interesting thing is women. When they go through menopause, have an automatic increase in uric acid, to the extent of at least about a 0.2, a point and a two at a minimum. And part of this is there is interplay between estrogen and the cellular mechanics in the mitochondria that affect uric acid levels. So if uric acid rising inside the cell is the switch that tells the slow to slow down. And now we can't burn fat or carbohydrates very efficiently. It is intimately tied to the actions at perimenopause and menopause when we lose estrogen. So that's super huge because a lot of women are like, wait, I'm eating low carb, I'm burning 400 calories a day in my exercise and I'm eating 1200 calories. How can I possibly not lose weight? And it's cuz the hormones and the interest cellular the stuff going on inside the cell directly control whether you burn those calories or not.   (20:13): Cause your fat switch is off. Right? it   (20:18): Right? It's on. It's on. Yeah. Well and then depending on what you eat, you may be turning it on all the time. Right? Cause food uric acid.   (20:27): Talk a little bit about that. Cuz everybody's wanting to know Betty, what foods are gonna be turning my switch on and which ones turn 'em off.   (20:34): Anything with fructose in it, high fructose corn syrup is the devil never eat it, never touch it. Don't do it. Anything with high fructose amounts now fruit like strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, apples do have some fructose resident in it, but it's got fiber and water and all this other stuff and it's not gonna raise that fructose level in your body. So fructose is the primary driver of uric acid in the body period, alcohol, sugar, processed flour. So anything that's baked, any kind of processed things that we've manufactured, cookies, crackers, breads, all of those things. If we eat them too much, they're gonna raise uric acid and then the other most insidious thing. And I think this is where this may be hiding for a lot of women. I know it is for a lot of women in my group is that a lot of the food additives raise uric acid, things like MSG, idolized, yeast extract, ye extract, flavor enhancements are all things that we've added to foods that make them taste more flavorful that actually raise uric acid.   (21:36): You know, you and I both grew up in the same age in the seventies. We had definitely a small percentage of the population that was overweight, but the obesity epidemic ballooned in the eighties and then it accelerated. So if we look at what happened to our food supply, high fructose corn syrup was introduced in the eighties, the use of crappy seed oils, which is a whole other conversation like soy corn, all of those things. And then the massive explosion of food additives and flu flavor enhancements has exploded. The other thing that raises uric acid and this is gonna upset. A lot of women I think are of these foods. So things like Parmesan, cheese, your charco trees. So all the women that are like, I just want a glass of wine and some cheese and crackers and, and some, you know, salami and I'd be happy, guess what? That food's gonna raise it. And I'm one of those people, like if I'm on my deathbed, I'm probably gonna have that.   (22:30): Okay. We'll get it ready for you, but maybe not so much right now. Right?   (22:35): Right. You can have it, but you just can't have it frequently. So, and then depending on your genetics, you either have a hair trigger uric acid switch, or it might be like a moderate uric acid switch.   (22:45): Let's talk a little bit about that cuz I know that's one of the four factors that you talk about your genetics. So you talked about the hair trigger switch. So what genetics are we talking about? Cuz everybody's wondering, do I have that?   (22:57): The truth is, is all of us have that enzyme URI case? We, to some degree. So all of us have an expression of that. There is a very small percentage of the population that don't and guess what they can't gain weight period at all. Zero zip never and, and we're talking handful. So if you're hopeful, that's not us. Right. Um, so all of us have that switch to some degree and then the degree in which it gets turned on, depends on a, the other thing that the research is kind of indicating is the more you do those foods and the more you've done this over time, the more hair trigger it is. Cause you gotta remember, it's a starvation response. It's our body thinking we're starving with plenty of food. So there's another enzyme that's also there. And genetically we may have this more expressed or less expressed is a thing called the polyol pathway.   (23:41): And the polyol pathway is where our body takes glucose. So the blood sugar circulating around in the body changes it to fructose. And so fructose again, we just learned is terrible for the uric acid. It also gets metabolized differently than glucose. It doesn't have insulin control. So if you're doing a, you know, low carb diet, but you're eating things that drive that uricase activity and drive uric acid up and what little glucose you may have circulating in your bloodstream, your body can convert it to fructose. And again, it's part of this sort of starvation pathway. That pathway is amplified as we go through menopause. So we are more likely to do that. What's interesting. Same gentleman, Dr. Johnson. They were looking at this pathway and when you're dehydrated. So let's say you're dehydrated. You had a bunch of coffee. You're having a smoothie with some fruit and stuff in it, but you probably don't have enough.   (24:36): You're not hydrated well enough. Mm-hmm being dehydrated increases the activity of turning glucose into fructose in everybody. That was a mic drop moment for me. When I heard that, I was like, oh my gosh. It's not just that it helps your selling your mechanics, but it quite literally changes whether your body is gonna make fructose and drive uric acid up. So those two genes we all have, but as women, we have genes that control how our body metabolizes estrogen. So can we take the estrogen that we make and can we get it outta the system? So think about it this way, our estrogen, we wanna use it. We need to wrap it in a bunch of different tissue wrappers. And those are, those are handled by your genes and your enzymes. And then you eventually get it to the trash can. People that have mutations that slow down the pathway for getting rid of estrogen.   (25:24): One of them's called co methyl. Transferase the other one's called C Y P one B one or cytochrome P 4 51 B one. Those are genes that help our liver sort of package stuff. If those are slow to do that, you are gonna have an increased  risk of metabolic syndrome, diabetes and obesity as a female, as you go through into perimenopause and menopause, the research shows that, and it's because there are alterations to how your body handles glucose. And the other side of it is, I think, and I haven't seen this in the research. I think that this might be part of the mechanism that increases our liver's capacity to make glucose out of amino acids. So let me back up, so I can explain that mm-hmm , our body always needs glucose. Red blood cells must have it. The brain must have glucose if you're not a good fat burner.   (26:14): So if you don't have ketones, we gotta have glucose. So our body has a mechanism inside the liver that can take glucose. I mean, I'm sorry, amino acids. So that's proteins broken down, and it can take it and convert them through a thing called glucose neogenesis into glucose. So your body can use it. I think that there's an interplay between that and these hormone metabolism genes, because we know that women are amplified. Also in that pathway, we are more capable of going through glucogenesis at a greater level as we go into perimenopause and menopause than we were when we were in our twenties and thirties and all of our hormones were balanced. It's that our survival mechanisms are sort of ramped up. We're designed to conserve nature, care about women being able to reproduce, right? So our bodies are generally designed to conserve. We don't need a lot of men on the planet. They just need to be hot,   (27:06): Right? no, no.   (27:09): You know, because, because truthfully, if you look at what nature cares about, can we reproduce and keep the species going? So we are designed to make sure that our body can manufacture food when we need it and make them, you know, make the body work properly. And so we have those things that are automatically turned on by our genetics. We have the estrogen detoxification pathways that a significant percentage of us are slow to do. I have those genes. That's how I ended up down this pathway and that I'm gonna have a harder time losing weight as those hormones start to fluctuate. And especially once estrogen kind of drops,   (27:42): You know, there are so many important points that you bring up there. So let's unpack this a little bit. So it is true that biological nature sees us as reproductive organs, basically mechanisms, and to bring a baby to life and take care of it for 18 years. And when we go through menopause, the hormonal changes are such that we're almost disposable, and we're only one of two species that lives any length of time in menopause. There's a certain species of whale that is the other species, but every other species of animal, when the female loses reproductive capacity, she dies. But I think that what we don't recognize is that some of the changes that we undergo actually do promote our death. Even though we don't die quickly, it's kind of like a slow death. And so I want everyone to wake up to the fact that everybody who listens knows that I am a firm believer that you can't have optimal health without balancing your hormones and hormone replacement.   (28:41): But this issue of how we package and detoxify our liver, our estrogen, I think is huge. And I think it's one of the biggest places where mainstream medicine totally misses the boat. And so I would encourage every woman listening. If you don't know your sip, one B one, and your C OMT. And if you don't know what we're talking about, we're talking about estrogen, detoxification pathways in the liver. You have got to find somebody who can help you dissect your genetics on that and figure out what you're doing with your estrogen or not. And if you're one of many women, most women are worried about breast cancer, which is actually not a thing that you're likely to ever die from. But it seems like more women are concerned about that. Then the consequences of no hormones, definitely you need to get these checked because if they don't function properly, your risk for breast cancer will be increased. And I know I'm on a little bit of a rant here, but I think it's so important. This idea is not only do you have the right hormones on the bus and are they in the right seat at the right level, but are they getting off the bus when it's their bus stop?   (29:52): Yeah, I believe for me, that was a major mechanism in my forties, as I hit perimenopause and all these things were going nuts. You know, I have. This is where my entire PhD was looking at hormone metabolism. And I was basically doing two things. I was estrogen dominant and estrogen toxic, and I was doing all the right things, but it was one of those things I needed to probably monitor it. , you know, a lot. And a lot of that research wasn't there when I first went into or was there, but wasn't commercially available. And now we have the capacity to test this and look at it, look at the genes and also the way to get rid of it. But there's a significant portion of women walking around with mutations there.   (30:29): It's so true, Betty. So everybody listening, hopefully you've heard that. And the other thing you mentioned that I wanna highlight that you don't hear everybody talk about is the role of the nervous system in your hormonal function and your fat retention or not. Right. So can you give a little more detail on that? Because I don't think that everybody knows about that.   (30:56): Yeah. So your nervous system, you know, is, uh, are the nerves that go out from the brain and communicate, and you know, and your brain and communicate to the body. And so they communicate through neurotransmitters and most of us know things like cortisol, cortisols bad. It leads to insulin resistance which leads to weight gain, but the nervous system is also responsible for giving the nerve message to your fat cells, to tell your fat cells, to dump the fat out, so you can burn it. So the nervous system sends out MES through NOP, epinephrine and epinephrine that are there that are supposed to help transport basically the fat out of the fat cell and be able to get it to particularly your muscle cells to burn and the nervous system activity of those hormones and neurotransmitters becomes weaker when we get older. So as estrogen levels decline, these also become weaker epinephrine and neuroepinephrine are also affected by C OMT, right?   (31:52): So if your cots messed up, they're probably gonna be a little bit off mm-hmm . So as we go into pen menopause, the jiggly bit fat that we don't like. So the stuff that's on the outside of the muscle, like the hip thighs, but abdomen that requires a ton of nerve responses. There's adrenal receptors in there that pick up the epinephrine and or epinephrine and, and sort of get that message. They sort of go to sleep. So the fat on the outside of your body is first in, last off. It's very hard for your body to do that. Particularly if you're not moving enough, if you're sedentary, cuz you don't feel good, those nerve cells sort of go to sleep. And so a lot of women may embark on an exercise routine or other things, and they don't see movement fast enough. They're like, oh the fat's not coming off yet.   (32:33): It's because that jiggly bit stuff is the last. So I like to paint this picture cause I think it helps people kind of move through that discomfort of it's not moving fast enough. Think of your muscles, like your legs, your hips, your abdomen, your butt as a piece of meat. Right? So think of it as it's prime rib. So prime rib, if you've ever looked at it, has fat running through it and then cutaneous fat or the fat on the surface on the outside, your body has to nerve and get that muscle tissue to burn everything off on the inside first. So it becomes a filet, and then it finally gets to the fat on the outside, and it's through that nervous system response. So here's a really cool thing. Did you know that a person that is twitchy, you all know these, usually they're a boy, not that it's not girls, but you know, they move kind of herky jerky.   (33:19):They, um, they're always, something's bouncing, something's twitching, some finger, something like that. They just can't sit. Still. Those people burn an average of 500 to 800 more calories because of the way their nervous system responds to twitching. And these, uh, these UN not uncontrolled, but non-flu movements. And so you think about how many women are like, you know, no, I'm very poised. I'm not bouncing a knee. I'm not doing that. It's quite literally because it keeps stimulating, stimulating these cells. So being somebody that moves and Turkey jerky actually helps it's O it's odd it's because these cells don't work very well.   (33:51): Well. So we should all take that up. Just be one of these people is moving and constantly   (33:59): But you think about it. It's very like the people that are, you know, the ones that you're like, do you know they're yeah. Do you ever, they, they are often thinner.   (34:08): I used to be married to one.   (34:09): Oh, my husband's always got his knee bouncing, and he can eat an exorbitant amount of food. He's got an eight pack at 56. It's like he used to make me crazy. Right? So the nervous system's really, really important. The other thing that happens is we have a transporter in our muscle tissue that transports glucose into the cell, right? And it's a transporter called Glu four. We have diabetes medications that we're trying to build for this stuff. Gluten forward gets sleepy when we go through menopause. So it makes it harder to get sugar inside the muscle cell. So you kind of think of it this way, the sugar Mo molecules sitting on a corner, waiting to get into the muscle cell, and they can see the Uber driver at the corner, and they're waiting for it. But the Uber drivers never get there cuz they're off in the distance cuz they're only doing about four miles an hour. So these transports become slow. Now it sounds terrible. Cause people go, oh man, now what do I do? It sounds like I'm screwed. Right? yeah. So the truth is we can turn all those things back on.   (35:06): You know, it's funny cuz you're you're saying now it sounds like I'm screwed, and I'm thinking no, the, the answer is just, don't go through menopause. And then I know people look at you, like what do you mean? Don't go through menopause, keep your hormones like they were before you went through menopause, and then you don't have to have any of this. That is the secret y'all   (35:27): Yeah. It's it's interesting. Cuz if, if female hormones balanced was so damaging and it was gonna cause cancer and all these other things, then we should see an extraordinary amount of cancer in 20 and 30 year olds. When they're at hormonal peak,   (35:41): Exactly   (35:42) Balanced hormones are what, tell the body that we're still supposed to be on the planet and we're valid and important to the planet. When you take 'em away, the body goes, oh, time to decay, right. Time to break down and fall apart.   (35:54): It is so true. And the idea that we believe otherwise, this notion that anything we were given that made us healthy and developed us into the healthy, vital, alive adults that we become is bad for us. Just boggles my mind, what we will actually believe. And it's like, we park our brains sometimes. You know, I think we women, we give up our power, a bit of a rant here, but we give up our power, and we look to other external authorities to tell us what is the truth? When you just use your common sense, right? It's like if someone tried to tell you that, oh, that calcium that you're getting in your diet is bad for you. And it's, you know, the calcium that's in your atherosclerotic plaque, in your heart causing heart disease is what's causing heart disease. Right? If somebody told you that, I would hope you would say that's insane.   (36:51): Calcium is needed. It's what helps me grow and develop healthy bones and have good neuro transmission and all of this. But this idea that people say the hormones, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone that make us healthy. All of a sudden when we replace it in menopause, they're gonna turn on us and cause breast cancer and all these other problems, it's insane to me. But I think that we, women, should stop questioning things. And if someone told you that was true of calcium, oh no, don't take calcium. It's gonna fog up your arteries and cause plaque and heart disease, we hopefully would say, that's insane, but we don't do the same with hormones. Is this making sense? Or am I sounding crazy?   (37:30): no, absolutely. So the, the thing that I would, I would recommend everybody think about and I think I'm gonna do a podcast on this. So as a researcher, right? So I'm actually truly a researcher. I spend time digging through the research, making up hypotheses, proving my hypotheses either right or wrong. Right. So the first thing you have to think about is you gotta check your premise, a good scientist and a good researcher comes up with a hypothesis, a hypothesis. And that's their question. Is this true? Yes or no, a good researcher goes to disprove their hypothesis. They don't go to prove it. Most of the research, particularly the women's health study that still gets quoted and should be retracted and burned at the stake for its inappropriateness and its poor methodology was started by people that wanted to prove that hormones were bad for women over 50 that were over, you know, past menopause.   (38:23): That's the premise that most of them went into it with and did a poor study design, which is probably too much more than what we get into that. So you have to check your premise. And the problem is, almost all of our research is funded by outside interests that want a particular outcome. And it's also being conducted by people that have a selection bias and a personal bias that they're translating into their research. So the best thing you could ever do is if you're looking at something, and you believe something, you should always go look for what the other side says. I am required to do that as a researcher. I must look at everything that contradicts what I think before I can really go and do my study. But unfortunately, a lot of the research that gets published, and particularly stuff in, in major media is poorly done. The methodology is terrible and our health is paying for it.   (39:16): Extraordinarily as women. And particularly as women, I think it's just egregious because, because of our high levels of estrogen progesterone, and we have testosterone too, and then we lose it in such a dramatic fashion over a very short period of time and the consequences are devastating, literally. So, all right, we have gone down a little bit of a rabbit hole. I'm wondering if you can leave everyone with a little optimism about what's possible for them and how they can get this beautiful vehicle that they've been given to live this life and into the shape that they need so that they can deliver the gifts that they have so that they can risk and do the things they wanna do. Like we started talking about Erica Jung's quote, "If you don't risk anything, you risk even more." What have you got left to do on this planet before you leave it? This is like the third act, the second act, whatever act you wanna call it, you've gotta have great health to get there. And that means a healthy weight, healthy energy. So what's possible. And how do you get there?   (40:27): So definitely I don't want anybody to, just to hear what I said and go, oh my gosh, it sounds like it doesn't work. Because for me, as I dug through this and found this, I was able to drop 35 pounds without extraordinary. Like without killing myself, I can eat foods today. I'm metabolically flexible. So I can, I can have some carbohydrates, and it's not like it's gonna go straight to my butt. By the next day I can eat a high protein, low-carb diet. And I'm fine. I can, I can go through things like intermittent fasting where I'm not, you know, ready to cloth somebody's eyes out. Cause I'm starving because my body is efficient. Right? So some of the things that you can easily do right now. So the first thing is all those foods that I listed off that raise uric acid, check yourself, check yourself and try not to eat so many of those, right?   (41:12): It's not that you don't have any of them, cuz it's impossible to really remove everything. But you wanna, you wanna kind of make sure that you're not driving it. So if you, so even if you go get a skinny margarita, cuz I hear this all the time, I'm gonna have a skinny margarita. Mm-hmm they're using an agave that is almost all fructose. So if I do that before I eat a meal, and I'm dehydrated, I'm setting myself up for bad stuff. Right? So take out the high fructose corn syrup, the fructose, the aged foods, the food additives eat foods in their whole natural form because it's the food additives that are also causing a problem yet the sugar out of the diet watch your alcohol cuz that also raises uric acid. The other thing is to make sure you're well hydrated. So you're not turning on that fructose conversion from glucose, cuz you could do that all day long every day, particularly before you eat the other thing.   (41:58): So when we look, I think it's really important to find out, you know, obviously we do genetics, we do hormone metabolism. I think it's really important for women to know how you're wired. Mm-hmm , you know what works for one person doesn't work for another and when you know those rules, it makes it easier for you to manipulate. So things like hormones, metabolism, testing, and DNA are super important, but even if you don't have that, the next thing I would make sure that I'm doing is that I'm doing movement. That helps turn on some of that nervous system stuff. You know, I alluded to it because if I have a slow nervous system to burn my fat and my transport for sugar into the muscle cell is slow. The two things that I make sure I really, really want to do is I need to turn on that nervous system.   (42:42): So you know, some of my people we practice like, you know, those sorts of, kind of crazy little movements, but I need to move more. That doesn't mean exercise more cuz sometimes women are overdoing it, and they're driving cortisol and a bunch of other stuff, but I need to move more. So think I'm walking, I'm doing more general movement. Mm-hmm and I need to do exercise that stimulates the heck outta my big muscle groups, your butt, your hips, your thighs, your legs. So that means that I need to do weightlifting. And weightlifting's super important also to bone density and other things, which is a huge area of concern for women our age and above. So weightlifting stimulates that Glu four transport along with more movement and high intensity intervals. But that doesn't mean I do two a days. right. That doesn't mean I have so many women that work out too much because they think if I keep burning it, I'll get it off, you know, but that could be counterproductive, but we do need to move more particularly for sedentary, cuz it's very hard for our body to do that stuff. And that could be simply just going out and walking in nature. I think that's another big part of it is like getting a little more centered, getting a little more, you know, time to yourself, getting a little more time in nature also helps.   (43:51): Yeah. So true. So there is hope you can have the best health of, of your life over 40. It's perfectly possible. You just need to find a guide who can help you get there, and you need to do it, and you need to do it now because like Cheryl Sandberg says, we need women at all levels, including the top, to change the dynamic, reshape the conversation to make sure women's voices are heard and heated, not overlooked and ignored. Thank you so much for joining me, Betty. Thank you for the research you do. And the work you do, we will have links to Betty's social media to her podcast, but tell everybody about these resources that you have and where they can find out more about.   (44:30): You. Certainly. So, so definitely my podcast is this, this functional life, and we cover these topics in more. You can also find a link in the show notes for a quiz, a hormone type quiz. So you can understand what's at play cuz again, your hormones, all interplay and that's a fun quiz that gives you a lot of information. And then if you look me up@bettymurray.com, you can find information about me and the things that I do.    (44:55): Yes, the hormone reset quiz definitely we'll have the link in the show notes. You can go there and find your unique hormonal imbalance, and we'll have the link in the show notes. So you wanna do that and thank you so much, Betty for joining me. It was so good to see you.   (45:09): Yes. Thank you for having me.   (45:11): Thank you so much for listening. I know that incredible vitality occurs for women over 40. When we learn to speak hormones and balance these vital regulators to create the health and the life that we deserve. If you're enjoying this podcast, I'd love it. If you give me a review and subscribe, it really does help this podcast out so much. You can visit the hormone prescription.com, where we have some free gifts for you, and you can sign up to have a hormone evaluation with me on the podcast to gain clarity into your personal situation until next time, remember, take small steps each day to balance your hormones and watch the wonderful changes in your health that begin to unfold for you. Talk to you soon.     Take the Hormone Reset Quiz from Dr. Betty Murray  to find out your unique hormonal imbalance: Some women over 40 experience hormonal imbalances that cause body composition changes, fatigue, and mood swings. Click the button below to take the Quiz, and you'll get a FREE personalized hormone balancing guide. https://quiz.metabolicblueprint.com/sf/cd62b0ef   Join The Hormone Balance Bliss Challenge  FEEL ENERGIZED, SEXY & CONFIDENT IN YOUR BODY AGAIN... IN JUST 5 DAYS. Discover How To Balance Your Hormones & Jumpstart Your Metabolism So That You Can Lose Weight & Regain Energy! CLICK HERE: https://bit.ly/hormonebalancebliss

Do you pride yourself on being productive? Have you found the line between toxic and healthy? In this episode, we are talking to Kara Pagliuca. We all strive to be productive and keep on task, but what happens when we can't leave the work behind? What are the impacts on us and our relationships when we verge over into the unhealthy region of productivity? Kara shares with Kristine how she uses planning, routines, and other skills to keep both productive and healthy. Kara is a Senior National Account Manager at State Street. Visit www.womeninetfs.com to find additional support in the ETF industry. Go to www.kristinedelano.com for a free worksheet on the 5 Indicators of Toxic Productivity and 8 Ways to Combat. Also check out Kara's book recommendation Option B by Cheryl Sandberg.

Kurt Andersen speaks with Roger McNamee, the author of Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe, about the evolution of Facebook and other big tech companies, and what measures might be taken to curb their influence.      ROGER MCNAMEE is a buѕіnеѕѕmаn, іnvеѕtоr, vеnturе саріtаlіѕt, muѕісіаn and author. He іѕ thе fоundіng раrtnеr оf thе vеnturе саріtаl fіrm, Еlеvаtіоn Раrtnеrѕ, and the co-founder of the рrіvаtе еquіtу fіrm, Ѕіlvеr Lаkе Раrtnеrѕ. He was an early investor in Facebook, introduced Mark Zuckerberg to Cheryl Sandberg and is now one of its most outspoken critics. McNamee is also a musician, playing bass and guitar in the bands Moonalice and Doobie Decibel System. A transcript of this episode is available at Aventine.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“It is the hard days - the days that challenge you to your very core - that will determine who you are. You will be defined not just by what you achieve, but by how you survive.”  - Cheryl Sandberg

E10: Advance Auto Parts, Executive Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer, Natalie Rothman. Advance Auto Parts is a $9.6B, Fortune 500 company with 70,000 employees. It's an American automotive aftermarket parts provider. Headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina where it serves both professional installer and do-it-yourself (DIY) customers. Prior to joining Advance Auto Parts, Natalie served in a senior leadership role at PepsiCo for 10 years. She also worked as an employment attorney with the law firm, Brown Raysman, in New York, and in recruiting and talent management with Estee Lauder, FreeRide.com, and Gundersen Partners. Natalie earned her bachelor's degree from Ithaca College, a master's degree from American University and a juris doctorate degree from Brooklyn Law School. Natalie's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalie-rothman-21965855/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalie-rothman-21965855/) WHAT YOU'LL DISCOVER IN THIS EPISODE: ●     How travel changes you as a leader. ●     What makes Israel a special destination for any leader to visit.  ●     How COVID19 tested Natalie's mettle as a leader, and the 3-part framework of how she's succeeded. ●     The one behavior that emerged during the Lockdown that Natalie would like to continue beyond the Pandemic. ●     After a successful decade at PepsiCo, why Natalie decided to transition companies and industries. ●     The essential distinction between mentors and sponsors, and why you need both in your career. ●     Natalie's recommendations for employees, from under-represented groups, on a mission to get the C-Suite. ●     The playbook for creating your own personal Board of Directors. ●     Why getting a law degree was one of the best decisions she'd ever made and why she left the legal profession. ●     The surprising trait Natalie would instill in every employee to boost productivity and loyalty. ●     The first step you should take when you have an idea to share with the C-Suite. ●     Why the cost of turnover is catastrophic. ●     A mistake that Natalie made early on that led to her success down the road. ●     Natalie's three book recommendations and how many hours she reads per week. ●     The importance of networking and supporting your network. QUOTES: “You own your career.” “Education is an investment in yourself.” “It's not just who you know; it's do they know you and your work.” RESOURCES: Lean In by Cheryl Sandberg https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BBA6FOI (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BBA6FOI ) The Talent Code by Dan Coyle https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004EYSXT8 (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004EYSXT8) Radical Candor by Kim Scott https://www.amazon.com/Radical-Candor-Kim-Scott/dp/B01KTIEFEE (https://www.amazon.com/Radical-Candor-Kim-Scott/dp/B01KTIEFEE ) No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention https://www.amazon.com/No-Rules-Netflix-Culture-Reinvention-ebook/dp/B081Y3R657 (https://www.amazon.com/No-Rules-Netflix-Culture-Reinvention-ebook/dp/B081Y3R657)  Wall Street Journal https://www.wsj.com/ (https://www.wsj.com/ ) Harvard Business Review https://hbr.org/ (https://hbr.org/ ) IPad Pro https://www.apple.com/ipad-pro/ (https://www.apple.com/ipad-pro/) Note Shelf App http://www.noteshelf.net/ (http://www.noteshelf.net/) ---------------- https://www.benfanning.com/the-ceo-sessions/ (Apply to be on the show) ------------------- https://www.benfanning.com/the-ceo-sessions/ (Connect with Ben:) https://www.linkedin.com/in/benfanning/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/benfanning/) https://www.instagram.com/benfanning1/...

While the media will dismiss it as a conspiracy theory, it turns out that Pedo Joe has connections to both the NXIVM and Epstein sex trafficking rings through Richard Branson and Ghislaine Maxwell. The plot thickens! More on that later in the show, but first: the tactical libertarianism and constitutionalism of the left intensifies! Three state Attorneys General sent a letter to Mark Zuckerberg and Cheryl Sandberg of Facebook demanding increased censorship of so-called "hate speech", citing the authority vested in them by "the Civil Rights Act", which apparently supersedes the First Amendment and now applies to the speech of private citizens. Can't say I'm surprised given that Facebook and their lawyers asked Congress to regulate hate speech themselves (using my IOTBW meme page as an example thereof), but it does further demonstrate the degree to which the political censorship on Facebook isn't a mere matter of iT's a pRiVaTe cOmPaNy. If the government is going to interfere either way, it should interfere to prevent the right from being censored.  We'll also be diving deeeeep into the mail bag! This is EPISODE 497 of So to Speak w/ Jared Howe!  

We listen today to Natalie Born, she's a strategic corporate innovation expert consultant, she describes her career journey and points of views around the art of corporate innovation to drive organizational growth. She has been focused on creating corporate innovative strategies to drive growth and disrupt industries for almost two decades.  Natalie implements the innovation design process to make a positive impact on leadership's way of thinking about innovation to drive revenue and market share results.Natalie has an incredible career background working in senior executive management roles at leading companies within diverse industries, such as CareerBuilder, First Data, ADP, IHG and now currently as VP of Innovation at Territory.coWe have a very powerful conversation around what organizations can do to embrace and execute innovation, how to approach innovation with a team and futurist mentality, and how to be disruptive in your industry to win. Growing up in the Peach StateGrowing up in a small town of Duluth, Georgia for Natalie, she always felt that she was the only one, she didn't belong, in the '80s there wasn't too much diversity in suburban Georgia. However she took that feeling of being different through her collegiate experience from Oglethorpe University to Maryland's Global Campus for her MBA and during an overseas business education program in India during her MBA, all these experiences began to shape herself to the corporate professional executive and consultant she has become“Noticing that I was different at a young age was difficult, but as I grew older I embraced being different and how  special it is to bring your differences to the table" – Natalie Born. Challenges to break through doors, being the only women and of color at the table in companies and tech Natalie describes and shares how her childhood, collegiate experience, and early corporate experiences prepared her to have a diversity and design thinking approach  throughout her career. “Alot of people talk about luck, I personally don't believe in luck, but rather in alot of hard work, working twice as hard to get ahead” – Natalie Born.What a reverse merger at CareerBuilder taught her about having a superior work ethicNatalie describes how a week after the company she was working within HeadHunter was acquired by CareerBuilder and being fired and hired again as part of the leadership team by CareerBuilder in a span of a week.  She has always had a drive to over-deliver and do much more than the bare minimum, always striving 150%, to wanting to do more to get to the next level. Her Reason Why and Origin of Her Entrepreneurship Journey“My career reached a level after more than 15 years in corporate, where it wasn't about me and I really wanted to help others around ideation, innovation and knowing how to help people freed from their mind ” – Natalie Born. Becoming intentional  about providing diversity and inclusion towards a more equitable and innovative corporate culture."Cheryl Sandberg talks about until you have a diverse set of candidates how can you pull the trigger on hiring that person. You need to bring the elephant into the room and painting it red and having those discussions around diversity and the same opportunities for career advancement." Natalie Born. The Art of Corporate Innovation with Design Thinking and Planning for Future  Growth“Innovation is no longer individual based, it's now very team-based, so it's all about getting the best and brightest team together and then you draw, putting all the ideas on the table, bad and good ones, to let the good  ideas take shape and win.” – Natalie Born.  Most companies will be disrupted by not being disruptive proactively“Too often companies are so focused on how much money we are making today that we are not creating the future. My fear is that large organizations are not disrupting themselves, so they end up being disrupted” – Natalie Born.  Pivoting and forecasting into the future is more imperative than ever“If your a leader you have to be a futurist. Corporations struggle with leadership side or innovation and the ability to create the future."– Natalie Born. Back to the Future with Natalie Born“Don't sweat the small stuff, overempahasis the things that have long-term impact and under-emphasize the things that have short-term impact” – Natalie Born.  Book recommendations to help you get 1% better1. Scaling Up by Verne Harnish2. From Impossible to Inevitable by Aaron Ross and Jason Lemkin 3. The Art of Opportunity by Marc Sniukas, Parker Lee, and Matt Morasky Bio:Natalie Born is the VP of Innovation for Territory Global and the Founder & Host of The Innovation Meets Leadership Podcast. As an innovation consultant, Natalie helps her clients move from idea to execution. Natalie has spent the last 15+ years designing and creating products with the goal of creating customer delight. She has contributed to two approved US patents during her career and is passionate about helping organizations leverage the incredible talent they have, to create the outcomes they want.Natalie worked with organizations such as CareerBuilder, First Data, IHG, and ADP, leading major initiatives in the acquisition, integration, and international product development in over 18 countries. Throughout her career, she has authored numerous articles and speaks nationally.* Received her Masters of Business Administration  and International Business from the University of Maryland Global Campus* Received her Masters of Business Administration  and International Business from the International Management Institute, New Delhi India * Received her Bachelors of Science, Business Administration  from Oglethorpe University * She is a Scrum Alliance  ScrumMaster® (CSM®), Project Manager PMI Certified You can connect with Natalie at the following:LinkedIn Natalie BornThe Innovation Meets Leadership Podcast Facebook Innovation Meets Leadership Instagram Innovation Meets Leadership 

003 Have you ever wrestled with imposter syndrome?  It causes you to doubt yourself, despite obvious proof of your competence.  I have! When considering starting any new venture, most especially an expert-based, online business, a lot of people struggle with imposter syndrome: 1) they're not an expert in any subject matter 2) what they have to say has either been said before or just isn't all that valuable The 3 Keys of Why You Don't Need to Be an Expert to Build an Online Business: 1)  Go Pro in Your Mind First. 2)  Give Up the Lie of Perfectionism 3)  Focus on the People Who Need You 1) Go Pro in Your Mind First:You just need to decide who you are.  --You are a ______ . Steven Pressfield, The War of Art, calls it, “going pro in your head.” 2)  Give Up the Lie of Perfectionism. Cheryl Sandberg's, “Done is better than perfect.” 80/20 rule  Release the need to be perfect.  You don't need to be perfect in your knowledge or perfect in the content that you're releasing in order to build an online business. 3)  Focus on the People that Need YouServant hearted leadership and business.   Who in this world is waiting for you?  Looking for answers. Needing encouragement.  Crying themselves to sleep because they don't have the tools and knowledge that you do.   The world needs what you alone can offer.Conclusion:You don't need to be an expert to Build an Online Business.  Anyone can do it even if you've never sold anything before! If you've never thought about this, I encourage you to think about it.  Think about the people who need you and how you can start serving those around you at an even greater level! Video versions of my podcasts:  FB page or YouTube Channel! Kick off 2020 Brilliantly!  Join our 7-Day Mini Habits Challenge Do Less, Achieve More! Register by Jan. 6! Leave a review and win a $100 Amazon Gift Card (2 drawings!) Receive your “Top 11 Apps that Will Change Your Life Checklist” AND enter to win a $100 Amazon gift card By doing the following by Fri., Nov. 1st and/or Sun., Dec. 8th! Winner Announcement FB Live:  Sun., Nov. 3 at 9PM EST Leave a review for the show Screenshot the review before you submit as it takes 24 hours to post! DM screenshot to my Joy Wilder FB Page OR email joy@joywilder.com  Like my Joy Wilder FB Page Double entry!! screenshot your fave podcast episode share to your FB or IG  #brilliantlifeshow and tag @JoyWilder1000 (FB) or @joywilder2 (IG)

  Chiqui Cartagena: The Public Policy Implications of Hispanic Marketing (Ep. 164) Chiqui Cartagena joined Joe Miller to discuss the public policy implications of Hispanic marketing amidst an increased demand for Latino data. Bio Chiqui Cartagena (@ChiquiCartagena) is the author of Latino Boom II and most recently served as senior vice president of the Political & Advocacy Group at Univision Communications Inc., the leading media company serving Hispanic America. At Univision, she was responsible for increasing the understanding of the importance of Hispanic voter and the key political issues that affect them among key political constituents across the country. In 2014, Ms. Cartagena was named one of Campaigns & Elections "50 Influencers". In 2013, she was recognized with a Multiethnic TV Leadership Award from Broadcasting & Cable magazine and in 2012, Cartagena received the ADCOLOR® Legend Award in recognition of her tireless efforts in leading the conversation about the Hispanic market. In 2007, she was named the Hispanic Direct Marketing Professional of the Year by the Direct Marketing Association. And finally, she is the author of Latino Boom II, Catch the Biggest Wave Since the Baby Boom, her second book on the Hispanic market which was published in 2013. Ms. Cartagena is a Hispanic media and marketing pioneer with 25 years of experience developing, launching, and leading some of America’s most successful Spanish-language consumer magazines, including People en Español and TV Guide en Español. She has also developed many integrated marketing programs for leading consumer brands to successfully reach the Latino community. Her career also includes senior roles as a broadcast journalist, having previously worked in the news divisions of Univision and Telemundo. Ms. Cartagena, a graduate of the University of Miami, is a member of the Awards Committee for National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences and lives in New York City. Resources Latino Boom Nielsen LatinX The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century by George Friedman News Roundup Can Facebook overcome its woes with Zuckerberg and Sandberg still leading the company? Facebook, which has lost about $100 billion in market value since March, can’t seem to right itself after a year of the Cambridge Analytica and election interference debacle. The UK Parliament got hold of senior level communications from a company in the U.S. called Six4Thirty which is suing Facebook. Six4Thirty, whose core business model was scanning Facebook data for bikini photos, obtained the communications in the discovery process in an attempt to establish that Facebook knew about the loophole it used to obtain Facebook’s users data, which was allegedly the same loophole that Cambridge Analytica used. Some of the communications are said to be from Mark Zuckerberg himself. So normally, the communications would be shielded from disclosure as the matter is being litigated. But it just so happens that Damian Collins, the Chair of the Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sports select committee, caught wind of the fact that one of Six4Thirty’s founders was in London—bringing the company within the UK’s jurisdiction. So that enabled Collins to seize the documents by sending a Serjeant at Arms to the founder’s hotel room and requiring him to turn over the documents within 2 hours or face a fine or potential jail time. So there’s that. And as far as Facebook’s hiring of a lobbying firm that allegedly worked to play into anti-Semitism against George Soros, Facebook’s head of public policy Elliot Schrage announced in an internal memo that he was responsible for hiring the firm. However, he said that it was never his intention to play into anti-semitism. Facebook COO Cheryl Sandberg weighed in in a comment, saying that she was ultimately responsible. Schrage has been planning to leave the company for some time, and he will be replaced by former UK Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg. Calls by some shareholders and others for Mark Zuckerberg and Cheryl Sandberg to step down from at least some of their responsibilities has fallen on deaf ears. As Zuckerberg said in a CBS Business Interview that, while he apologized for the company’s woes, said that stepping down or replacing Sandberg is “not the plan”. Can Amazon be humbled by pushback from its workforce? Amazon has huge, global aspirations. But will the company go as far as it needs to in order to resolve internal labor disputes? In the U.S., Amazon raised its minimum wage to $15 per hour but eliminated other perks, including employee benefits. But on Black Friday, thousands of European workers went on strike, demanding better pay and working conditions. All of this is happening amidst Amazon’s aggressive expansion efforts beyond ecommerce. For example, the company is bidding for 21st Century Fox’s 22 Regional Sports assets—including YES TV which broadcasts the New York Yankees. The Wall Street Journal also reports that Amazon is now the Number 3 digital advertising platform, behind just Google and Facebook, with ad sales growth projected to be at over 400% between 2017 and 2020, way ahead of second-place Tencent in China whose ad sales growth is projected to be at just under 200%. Roger Stone crony Jerome Corsi says he won’t take FBI plea deal Conspiracy theorist and Roger Stone ally Jermone Corsi told CNN that Robert Mueller offered him a plea deal on one count of perjury connected with statements Corsi made saying that he had no communication with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Trump confidante Stone himself said that he’d never had direct communication with Assange either, saying that he got all of his info through a backchannel alleged to be New York radio personality Randy Credico, which Credico has denied. Russian hacking is resurgence American officials and security firms are reporting that Russian hacking efforts are on an uptick following the U.S. midterm elections. The hackers are apparently trying to test the waters with the new Congress coming in. But experts are concerned that we won’t know the full scale of the hackers’ capabilities until the 2020 presidential election. Is China’s TikTok the next big video karaoke app? Axios has a report on the growth of TikTok, which has seen impressive user growth over the last year. The platform is now up to 7.2 million monthly users. It’s now ranked in the Top 5 U.S. apps in both Google Play and  the iOS app store and its global monthly usage comes in around 130 million. So some are asking how big TikTok can become in the U.S. NASA lands on Mars again For the 8th time, NASA has landed on Mars. This time, the rover Insight will explore Mars’ interior, digging beneath the red planet’s surface to determine its origins. It’s expected to be a 2-year mission. Trump ponders state-run TV network Is President Trump considering establishing a state-run TV network? Some think he is and it follows the same playbook as most dictators.

  Sahra V. Nguyen: Public Policy as a Creative Spark (Ep. 163) Sahra Nguyen joined Joe Miller to chat about her new Brooklyn-based coffee venture—Nguyen Coffee Supply. Bi0 Sahra Nguyen is an award-winning filmmaker, entrepreneur, and founder/CEO of Nguyen Coffee Supply. Currently based in Brooklyn, NY, Nguyen is also the co-founder of podcast agency Listening Party and a member of the 2018 Google Next Gen Tech Policy Leaders. In 2018, Nguyen launched Nguyen Coffee Supply—the first-ever Vietnamese-American owned importer, supplier, and roaster of green coffee beans from Vietnam—as a way to showcase the diversity of single-origin arabica and robusta. She works directly with a fourth-generation Vietnamese coffee farmer from Da Lat in the Central Highlands, whose beans are certified clean and organic in Vietnam. As the daughter of Vietnamese refugees in Boston, MA, the company’s name is a nod to Nguyen’s Vietnamese heritage. Nguyen graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with a double major in Asian American Studies and World Arts & Cultures, served as the Director of the Writing Success Program at UCLA, and published an e-book of poetry exploring themes of identity, race in America, and the Vietnamese-American experience. Building on her love of storytelling, in 2015 Nguyen started her own production company, One Ounce Gold. Her first self-produced documentary web series, “Maker's Lane," evolved into a brand new series for NBC News entitled "Self-Starters,” a show about Asian American entrepreneurs around the country. Helping launch the video channel for NBC Asian America, "Self-Starters" was nominated for the EPPY Awards and LA Press Club Awards. In mid-2016, Nguyen sold her second documentary series to NBC News, "Deported," which follows the grassroots fight to end deportation of Cambodian-Americans from the U.S. to Cambodia. "Deported" was nominated alongside CNN's Lisa Ling's "This is Life" and won the 2018 NAMIC Vision Award for Best Digital Media, Long Form. With a passion to constantly take on new challenges, Nguyen, along with three friends (all under the age of 30), opened up their first storefront business Lucy's Vietnamese Kitchen, in Bushwick, NY, in March of 2015. Within the first 9 months, Lucy's Vietnamese Kitchen won "Best Vietnamese Restaurant" by popular vote and has been featured in The New York Times, Time Out New York, Zagat, VICE, and more. Follow Sahra Nguyen on Facebook, Instagram, and Linkedin. Resources Sahra V. Nguyen Nguyen Coffee Supply ‘Deported’ on NBC News Roundup Bombshell New York Times report reveals Facebook’s political machinations A bombshell New York Times report last week cast new light on the extent to which Facebook sought to contain accusations that it was enabling Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Apparently, the company sought to promote the image that the company knew nothing about Russia’s interference while, at the same time, Mark Zuckerberg was kept in the dark. But internally, while Joel Kaplan and Cheryl Sandberg were doing their magic on the Hill working their Harvard connections, Facebook kept uncovering new evidence that Russians continued to use the platform to protect president Trump and spread propaganda in advance of the election and beyond. The New York Times also reports that the company apparently also hired lobbyists, such as Definers Public Affairs, to help the company oppose its critics. In a video-conferenced all-hands meeting on Friday, Zuckerberg defended the company saying the New York Times report was unfair and untrue, even as Cheryl Sandberg accepted responsibility for hiring Definers Public Affairs. And another report by the Wall Street Journal found that Zuckerberg himself pointed fingers at Sandberg, blaming her for the Cambridge Analytica fallout. Reuters: Russians impersonating State Department officials Reuters reports that Russian hackers have been impersonating at least one State Department official, Heather Nauert, over email trying to get other officials to download malicious code. Security firms CrowdStrike and FireEye uncovered the effort. But Russia denies involvement. Julian Assange back in spotlight Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who played a key role releasing hacked emails during the 2016 presidential election, is back in the spotlight. George Washington University Program on Extremism researcher Seamus Hughes uncovered a court filing which found that the Department of Justice appears to be pressing sealed charges against Assange. The Hill also reports that Ecuadorian officials have grown weary of granting Assange asylum at their embassy in London since 2012. If they evict Assange, Assange could be extradited back to the U.S. The American Civil Liberties Union opposes prosecuting Assange, claiming that doing so would be a First Amendment violation. Nation’s only African American network chief to step down ABC Entertainment President Channing Dungey, who is African American, is stepping down from the company as Disney seeks to restructure the company in advance of closing on its acquisition of 21st Century Fox’s entertainment assets next year. Dungey is the only African American network head in the country, and she’s been with the company for 14 years. She’s been responsible for launching ‘Scandal’, “black-ish” and the “The Good Doctor”. But ABC has seen overall ratings decline 10%, with an 18% decline among adults 18-49 according to The Wall Street Journal. JD.com’s chief shifting focus China-based ecommerce giant JD.com’s chief has announced that he will delegate more responsibilities. It’s seen as a long-term move to groom his replacement. Richard Liu was arrested in Minnesota in September for alleged “criminal sexual misconduct” with a Chinese student at the University of Minnesota. The company’s share price has also dropped 55% since January amidst the U.S.-China trade war. Snap subpoenaed on IPO disclosures Reuters reports that the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission have subpoenaed Snap to uncover whether the company downplayed competition from Instagram during its initial public offering (IPO) in March of 2017. Snap’s share price has tumbled down to $6.71 per share from its offering price of $17 per share. TV station groups settle with DOJ over ad sales collusion allegations Six tv station groups the Department of Justice alleges colluded to fix ad sales prices have settled. Sinclair, Raycom, Tribune, Meredith, Griffin, and Dreamcatcher all settled. The settlement simply requires the station groups not to share nonpublic pricing data with each other for 7 years. There are no penalties, according to Meredith. A private class action by advertisers against the station groups is still in progress.    

In this week's episode of the Working With Podcast, I answer a question about why apps are not important to your productivity system.   Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website The Beginners Guide To Building Your Own Productivity System Time And Life Mastery 2018 Edition The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page   SCRIPT Hello and welcome to episode 44 of my Working With Podcast. A podcast created to answer all your questions about productivity, GTD, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show. This week I have an excellent question about apps and why I feel apps are not important if you want to become better organised and more productive. But, before we get into this weeks question I would just like to remind you all that if you want to learn how to build your own productivity system, my FREE online course, How To Build Your Very Own Productivity System will take you there. It focuses on the basics of COD (Collect, Organise and Do) and shows you how to build a system that works for you.  Details on how to get yourself enrolled are in the show notes.  Okay, let's get into this week's question, so that means it's time to hand you over to the mystery podcast voice for this week's question.  This week's question comes from David. David asks: Ho Carl, can you tell me how I can find the best app to help me get my stuff together and get better at time management? Thank you, David, for your question. Now, this is a question I am asked frequently on Twitter, Facebook and in the groups, I am in and there really isn't a simple answer. The truth is, the apps you use are less important than the system you have in place. It's your productivity system that will help you to become better at time management, not the apps you use. Apps are just tools. But as any carpenter, stone mason or sculptor will tell you, what creates a great piece of furniture, stonework or sculpture is not the tool, but the skill of the person making it. It's how you use the tools that matter not the tools themselves. So my advice would always be to develop your system and your skill at using your system first before you start considering the apps you would use.  Recently, I was playing around with Airtable, a great planning app that's is loosely based on a spreadsheet with a lot of bells and whistles. Now I know if the guys who make Airtable are listening to this they would probably tell me Airtable is so much more than an Excel sheet and I would agree. But at its core, it is just a spreadsheet. Just like at its core Todoist is a database. After playing around with Airtable for a while I realised that what I would use Airtable for could just as easily be created using a Numbers sheet on my computer. The difference for me is that Numbers is free and Airtable is $20.00 per month for the features I want. All I needed to do was create a template in Numbers and I have the planning tool I want. Same function, same information.  I am pretty sure if you looked at any app, you could recreate its features in a simple spreadsheet or word processor. So really the tools are less important than how you use those tools.  Let's get down to the basics and I know I have talked about this before but it's always worth reminding you. Whatever tools you use, you only need to be doing three things. The first is collecting all your tasks, commitments and ideas into a central place. That doesn't matter whether that is a simple $2.00 reporters notebook (as Richard Branson and Cheryl Sandberg use) or a more complex app such as OmniFocus. All that matters is you are collecting everything in a place you know you will look at again sometime in the very near future.  Next is you need to organise all those things you collected. Tasks go onto a task list, appointments go into your calendar and your ideas go into your notes. Now it does not matter whether you are completely digital, paper-based or a hybrid of the two. All that matters is you have a list of the tasks you must complete, a place where you can review your notes and a calendar that will tell you where you need to be and when.  Finally, you need to do the tasks, attend your appointments and develop your ideas (after all, you don't know which one is going to be something special unless you take the time to develop it)  Now, how you organise your tasks, appointments and ideas is entirely up to you. And that is where it all comes down to personal taste. I like simplicity and beautiful design. Others like more complexity. It really is a personal choice. But the key is you get the collecting, organising and doing part solid first. This is why I would always recommend you begin developing your own productivity system on paper first and then try your system out on whatever apps you already have. If you have an Android phone then there's Google Tasks, Keep and calendar. If you use Apple devices then you have Reminders, Notes and Calendar. If your system works using those freebuiltt in apps then your system will work with any kind of app.  Whatever apps you use in the end, the goal is to make sure you apps blend into the background so you do not notice them. They just do their job. When you do your planning for the next day, you need to be able to quickly see what tasks you have and be able to decide which ones you want to focus on getting done the next day. These choices are made with the full knowledge that your calendar is telling you where you are going to be and what meetings and appointments you have. When your calendar is full of meetings then you can reduce the number of tasks you plan to get done the next day. When your calendar has a lot of free space you can add more tasks for the day because you will have more time to do them.  Really your productivity apps, your task list manager, notes and calendar need to be boring. You don't want to notice them or be tempted to play around with settings, colours or how you have things organised. If they are doing their job, then you are focused on what needs doing, where you need to be and developing your ideas. If an app is tempting you to play around with it's organisation structures and lay out, then your app is not helping you it's hindering you.  The only caveat I would add here is what ever apps you do choose, make sure the collecting part is fast and easy. There are a lot of apps on the market that take too long to load because they want to show off their animations, colours and logos and then you have to navigate to the add function using too many clicks. A great productivity app will allow you to collect your stuff with only one or two clicks. It's click to open and click to add. That's all it should take. Anything more than that and it's too many clicks and too long. The lower the barrier to add a task, event or idea the better—this why pen and paper still wins here.  The point here is no matter how feature rich an app is, it is always going to be your responsibility to maintain your system. It's your responsibility to collect everything, it's your responsibility to organise what you collected and it is your responsibility to do your work. It's never going to be the responsibility of the apps you use. The simpler, the faster and the easier it is to collect, organise and do the better you will be at being organised and the more productive you will be. The less time you spend in your productivity apps means you have more time to do your work. That should be your starting point when thinking about creating your productivity system. Fast, simple and easy to use.  I've seen some amazing productivity systems with elaborate structures, tagging and project hierarchies and I've seen these same systems fail the person who built them because they take too long to maintain and manage. Great personal productivity systems are always build on a foundation of simplicity and ease of use.  So, David, my advice is to look for the simplest apps you can find. Ones that have very few features and ones that allow you to collect, organise and do the right things at the right time without having to spend too much time finding that information.  One more thing before we finish. Once you have settle on a set of apps for your system, take the time necessary to really get to know those apps. Spend time playing and learning. You want those apps to become boring, to disappear in to the background and only be front and centre when you need them to be. To do that, you need to learn whatever apps you choose inside out. That was one ‘secret' I learnt a long time ago. Once you know the apps you use inside out, you get incredibly fast at using them and can fix any problems quickly.  Thank you very much for listening to this episode and thank you, Davi,d for your question.  It just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.   

** IF YOU'VE ENJOYED THIS PLEASE LEAVE A SHORT REVIEW. THANK YOU** 1.15 – A bit of background on Skillsoft – 2.35 – Internal communications to enable sales– 4.00 – Authenticity, focus and knowing when to offer support – 6.07 – The problem with office politics – 7.50 - People should love what they do (and maybe it isn’t here) – 9.10 – A leader’s role is to clear a path - 10.40  – Addressing gender imbalance, Starbucks and conscious bias – 17.30 – The changing role of learning in business – 13.45 – Cementing recall with stories – 17.40 – Providing specific learning for female high potentials - 22.50 – Personal development, your interests and a focus on ‘making you a better you’ – 24.38 – Democratisation of leadership and training at the moment of need – 27.30 – Sponsors vs mentors – 28.50 – Cheryl Sandberg, Plan B and pivoting in life – 30.50 – Jack Welsh and efficiency - 31.14 -  ‘You are enough’ – confidence and doing it your own way.

Gość: Joanna Ceplin Witajcie w kolejnym odcinku Marketing MasterClass. Dzisiaj moim gościem jest Joanna Ceplin – ekspert marki online, twórczyni Akademii Smart Brand, cyklu szkoleń stacjonarnych „ Marka Online”, oraz wielu kursów internetowych. Autorka artykułów dla Forbes Polska, Wyborcza biz, Harvard Business Review. W mediach społecznościowych ma wiele tysięcy obserwatorów, którzy uczą się od niej jak budować własną Markę Online od podstaw. Prywatnie mama dwójki dzieci i żona.Pamiętaj słuchając robić notatki, te poniżej na pewno Ci w tym pomogą:Droga Joanny w biznesie – początki w branży modowej, rozwój i wykorzystanie zainteresowań do nowych technologii.Metoda analizy idealnego klienta.Zasady budowania listy mailingowej. Sprzedaż - jak zmonetyzować swoją obecność na małej grupie klienckiej. Regularność i konsekwencja, jako klucz do budowy silnej marki.7 kroków cyklu komunikacji online (analiza klienta, treści, dystrybucja i promocja, lista mailingowa, relacja, sprzedaż, utrzymanie relacji - wysłuchaj wywiadu, aby dowiedzieć się szczegółów)Patrz na biznes holistycznie – nie utknij w wąskim gardleJoanna wyjaśnia czym dla niej jest Marka Online i z czego się składa.Dlaczego Joanna zaprosiłaby Magdalenę Pawłowską, Annę Wintour, Cheryl Sandberg i Elvisa Presley’a?Skontaktuj się z Joanną:Strona: www.joeannaceplin.plFacebook: www.facebook.com/joannaceplinbiznesInstagram: @Joanna_Ceplin

Gość: Joanna Ceplin Witajcie w kolejnym odcinku Marketing MasterClass. Dzisiaj moim gościem jest Joanna Ceplin – ekspert marki online, twórczyni Akademii Smart Brand, cyklu szkoleń stacjonarnych „ Marka Online”, oraz wielu kursów internetowych. Autorka artykułów dla Forbes Polska, Wyborcza biz, Harvard Business Review. W mediach społecznościowych ma wiele tysięcy obserwatorów, którzy uczą się od niej jak budować własną Markę Online od podstaw. Prywatnie mama dwójki dzieci i żona.Pamiętaj słuchając robić notatki, te poniżej na pewno Ci w tym pomogą:Droga Joanny w biznesie – początki w branży modowej, rozwój i wykorzystanie zainteresowań do nowych technologii.Metoda analizy idealnego klienta.Zasady budowania listy mailingowej. Sprzedaż - jak zmonetyzować swoją obecność na małej grupie klienckiej. Regularność i konsekwencja, jako klucz do budowy silnej marki.7 kroków cyklu komunikacji online (analiza klienta, treści, dystrybucja i promocja, lista mailingowa, relacja, sprzedaż, utrzymanie relacji - wysłuchaj wywiadu, aby dowiedzieć się szczegółów)Patrz na biznes holistycznie – nie utknij w wąskim gardleJoanna wyjaśnia czym dla niej jest Marka Online i z czego się składa.Dlaczego Joanna zaprosiłaby Magdalenę Pawłowską, Annę Wintour, Cheryl Sandberg i Elvisa Presley’a?Skontaktuj się z Joanną:Strona: www.joeannaceplin.plFacebook: www.facebook.com/joannaceplinbiznesInstagram: @Joanna_Ceplin

Sheryl Sandberg is synonymous with Facebook, and Silicon Valley success, and she’s the voice of “Lean In.” She joins us, frank and vulnerable, together with the psychologist Adam Grant. His friendship — and his research on resilience — helped her survive the shocking death of her husband while on vacation. They share what they’ve learned about planting deep resilience in ourselves and our children, and even reclaiming joy. There is so much learning here, on facing the unimaginable when it arrives in our lives and being more practically caring towards the losses woven into lives all around us. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant — Resilience After Unimaginable Loss.” Find more at onbeing.org.

Sheryl Sandberg is synonymous with Facebook, and Silicon Valley success, and she’s the voice of “Lean In.” She joins us, frank and vulnerable, together with the psychologist Adam Grant. His friendship — and his research on resilience — helped her survive the shocking death of her husband while on vacation. They share what they’ve learned about planting deep resilience in ourselves and our children, and even reclaiming joy. There is so much learning here, on facing the unimaginable when it arrives in our lives and being more practically caring towards the losses woven into lives all around us.

  Jenny Blake is motivation personified. She is a career and business strategist and international speaker who helps people move beyond burnout and create sustainable careers they love. She is the author of the newly released book Pivot, and previously Life After College which was based on her blog of the same name) Jenny helps leaders, employees and entrepreneurs achieve greater clarity, engagement, fulfillment and impact. Formerly, Jenny spent over 5 years at Google doing training, coaching and career development. During her time there she taught coaching best practices to Google executives all over the world as part of a global Career Guru program she helped create, later praised by CNNMoney in Google’s #2 Company to Work For acknowledgment. She advocates looking at career as a smart phone, not a ladder (dynamic, customizable to each individual) and help employees and entrepreneurs “pivot before they leap” by finding further growth within their company or existing assets to avoid feeling like their only option is to quit.   Topics Covered: Jenny’s Podcast PIVOT Book Launching a book Working with Cheryl Sandberg at Google Leaving the safety of a big job and the income that comes with it The 3 Questions You Need to Answer to Find Your Dream Career Barriers to entry in working for yourself  Productivity - The Business Ninja Tech Toolkit PIVOT Coaching Passion vs Purpose Reaching out to thought leaders and influencers Why Career is a Smartphone, not a Ladder Focus on Your Strengths, not on Doing a 180 What if You've Got Kids and a Mortgage? Why Caring What Other People Think is a Roadblock to Personal Reinvention The Power of Routine and Meditation   Show Notes: David Astbury’s Brain Octane: https://www.amazon.com/Bulletproof-Brain-Octane-Oil-oz/dp/B00P8E0QQG PIVOT Book: https://amzn.to/2QJpa5D PIVOT Website: http://www.pivotmethod.com/  Life After College Blog: http://lifeaftercollege.org/ Life After College Book: https://amzn.to/2NWykgr PIVOT Podcast: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/pivot-podcast-jenny-blake/id1054817076?mt=2  Jenny Blake's website: http://www.jennyblake.me  The Business Ninja Tech Toolkit: http://www.jennyblake.me/toolkit-home/  Tools Mentioned: Zapier, Evernote, Google Drive, Google Everything, Asana. --- I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you’d like to receive a weekly email from me, complete with reflections, books I’ve been reading, words of wisdom and access to blogs, ebooks and more that I’m publishing on a regular basis, just leave your details at www.futuresquared.xyz/subscribe and you’ll receive the very next one. Listen on Apple Podcasts @ goo.gl/sMnEa0 Also available on: Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher and Soundcloud Twitter: www.twitter.com/steveglaveski Instagram: www.instagram.com/@thesteveglaveski Future Squared: www.futuresquared.xyz Steve Glaveski: www.steveglaveski.com Medium: www.medium.com/@steveglaveski

A bunch of us have the feeling we're not qualified to be doing what we do. If you're a perfectionist, have a hard time asking for help, attribute your successes solely to luck, and can't take a compliment, you might suffer from imposter syndrome. Lots of people have this insecurity, including famous accomplishers Michelle Pfeiffer, Emma Watson, Kate Winslet, and Cheryl Sandberg. Some causes for feeling like a fraud include feeling pressure to achieve and being a minority member of a group. Solutions include: validating yourself by making a list of your assets and accomplishments, surrounding yourself with supporters, and realizing even Emma Watson and Michelle Pfeiffer feels this way. Regina sometimes feels like listening to Metallica, and she's no longer apologizing for it. Valerie worries she should have gotten stitches when she cut herself while slicing avocados, and she really hopes she never receives one of those suction basketball hoops with the spongy nerf balls. 

The Social Network Show welcomes back Sandy Garossino to the June 11, 2014 episode. Sandy Garossino, Founder of Red Hood Project and a former Crown Prosecutor in the Vancouver area discusses the latest on the public rebellion against the loss of privacy online. This is a very interesting discussion of some new Apps being developed and the public's reaction to them. Hear Sandy talk about the bills being introduced into Congress in the U.S.; about Facebook's new privacy settings and the new App that they want to introduce onto your smart phone; about the reaction of the public to the new App by Facebook; about the new ruling in Europe that allows people to have objectionable links removed from the internet; and hear about how people do not want to give up their right to privacy. Sandy Garossino is working on the front lines in order to help improve child safety for social networkers.  Sandy brings a unique perspective to the fight for child safety as she understands the issues from the perspective of a lawyer who prosecuted crimes against children.  Sandy started the Red Hood Project with partner Raffi Cavoukian after she and Raffi became aware of the Amanda Todd tragedy.  Red Hood Project is also the source of a letter written to Cheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook, which implored her to make changes to Facebook policy regarding cybercrimes. Sandy is a business owner, active community advocate and former Crown prosecutor in the Metro Vancouver area. She is a regular panelist on the Bill Good Show, contributes to the Vancouver Observer and blogs for Huffington Post BC.  

The Social Network Show welcomes guest Sandy Garossino to the March 6, 2014 episode. Sandy Garossino, Founding Partner of Red Hood Project and an advocate of corporate social responsibility returns to the show to discuss her current activities in Canada and to discuss online games. If you have ever wondered about online game sites, listen to the show to hear Sandy talk about online games and the addictive nature of them, and how they are driving revenue. Check out Nick Yee and his new book, The Proteus Paradox: How Online Games and Virtual Worlds Change Us-And How They Don't. Sandy Garossino is working on the front lines in order to help improve child safety for social networkers.  Garossino brings a unique perspective to the fight for child safety as she understands the issues from the perspective of a lawyer who prosecuted crimes against children.  Sandy started the Red Hood Project with partner Raffi Cavoukian after she and Raffi became aware of the Amanda Todd tragedy.  Red Hood Project is also the source of a letter written to Cheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook, which implored her to make changes to Facebook policy regarding cybercrimes.  

2013 was the year feminism went big in the mainstream, with Cheryl Sandberg and Beyonce claiming the mantle of feminism.  Is this a positive, a negative, or a mixed blessing?  Women's Magazine producers weigh in on the highs, lows, promises and problems of 2013 from the perspective of gender, sexuality and liberation. In the second half, we hear a conversation with dharma musician and teacher Eve Decker, and sample offerings from her new CD, Simple Truth.  Decker debuts the CD on Friday night at Freight & Salvage. The post Women's Magazine 2013 Wrap Up – December 30, 2013 appeared first on KPFA.

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: Interview with Clara Shih                     [intro music]   Lucy Sanders:     Hi, this is Lucy Sanders. I'm the CEO of the National Center for Women and Information Technology, or NCWIT. Over the last few years, we've been interviewing women who have started technology companies and have just had the greatest time talking to them about the fabulous things they're doing, getting all kinds of wonderful advice for entrepreneurs. With me is Larry Nelson, w3w3.com. Hi, Larry.   Larry Nelson: I'm happy to be here. This is a great series. We know it's had a great impact on a number of young women. Bosses, parents and the like.   Lucy: Wow. We've got a great interview today. It's a really fascinating interview with a woman who's not only started a technology company, but also is a best-selling author. Clara Shih, who is the founder and CEO of Hearsay Social. Her book, "The Facebook Era." We all know we're living in the Facebook era. In fact, my mother-in-law follows all the status of the family, all the time, on her grandkids' Facebook accounts. Hearsay Social is in this really interesting space in social media. I know Clara will set us straight when we're talking to her, but here is my sense of what it was. When I was working in corporate, we would have customer relationship management systems, where individual sales people, marketing people, could keep track of customers. The system itself, the platform itself, would actually do a lot of the heavy lifting of that in sort of a systematized way, so that the company's brand was well represented by those sales people andmarketing people. In this age of social networking, we have a lot of big franchise kinds of businesses that are busy developing local relationships through social media with individuals. Yet at the same time, doing it in an ad hoc way is not really particularly always supportive of that company's brand. So Hearsay Social is a company that is really trying to take that on by building a platform. So Clara, I hope I didn't get that too wrong, but we're really happy to have you here. Why don't you give us a sense of what's going on at Hearsay Social today?   Clara Shih: Thank you so much for having me. Hearsay Social is the fastest-growing social media start-up right now. We're based in Silicon Valley. We just opened an office in New York. We have 60 employees and growing every day. We were cash-flow positive last year. We've recently raised $21 million in venture capital from Sequoia and New Enterprise Associates. Things have never been better for us. We're thrilled to be part of helping to lead the social media revolution that's sweeping business.   Lucy: Give us an example. What would a Starbucks or a company like Starbucks do with a platform like Hearsay Social?   Clara: We focus at Hearsay Social on corporate-to-local companies that are brands that have a corporate presence combined with location. Whether it's State Farm, or 24-Hour Fitness, or McDonald's, you've got all these local employees and agents out there representing your brand. Increasingly, in a highly-decentralized that we're seeing from Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn and Foursquare and now Google Plus, we're seeing the local representatives and employees actually create their own pages, either to interact directly with customers, or because customers are checking in to specific locations using their iPhone or Android location-enabled device to kind of manage all of these local profiles and activity that are going on. Hearsay Social is all about, first, helping the chief marketing officer get a handle on who all in their organization is even engaging in these customer conversations at the local level, and then from there being able to push out corporate-approved marketing campaigns, viral videos, other content that goes out to each of these locations. Then the locations can tailor these materials for their audience, and retain a unique and authentic voice. Then finally, being able to measure all of that, and slice and dice by region or store or employee.   Lucy: I think that's just fascinating.   Larry: Yeah.   Lucy: Very much needed. It sounds like it's a really heavy, heavy technology platform. It kind of gets us to our first question about you and technology. How did you first get into technology? Then looking across the landscape, what technologies do you think will really be important in the future?   Clara: I've always been interested in math and science. I think growing up, having a father who was an engineer, I was always very curious about how the world worked. I was fascinated by how technology makes life better. I think that was how I initially got into this space. Going to Stanford, studying computer science there, being exposed to Silicon Valley and the tremendous innovation that takes place here, was incredibly inspiring for me.   Lucy: Obviously, social media is an important technology, both now and in the future. Do you see anything else that you think is really going to change the landscape?   Clara: If you look at technology, about once a decade you have a disruptive technology innovation that changes how we live and work. In the '70s, this was mainframe computing. In the '80s, it was the PC, the idea that every person could have their own machine, and today we have several machines per person. In the '90s, in the last decade, it was very much about the Internet. Social media is the key disruptor for this current era, that I call the Facebook era. I think along with social comes a couple of other trends. One is the real-time nature of communication. Two is that increasingly, people are mobile. It's not just about accessing the Internet from your PC, but actually concurrently with your iPad, your iPhone, a host of mobile devices.   Larry: I tell you what, Clara, I know there's many entrepreneurs that would like to be cash-flow positive their first year.   Lucy: [laughs] No kidding!   Larry: Besides that, why are you an entrepreneur? Then, what is it about the entrepreneurship thing that makes you tick?   Clara: Good question. I never really thought of myself as an entrepreneur per se, but I've always been very action-oriented. The world is changing so quickly. I think it's in large part to consumer technologies like Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn. The opportunity that I saw for Hearsay Social was, "OK. Facebook has fundamentally transformed how people interact with each other. How can businesses keep up?" I started imagining what the world could look like for companies. That became the foundation for becoming an entrepreneur.   Larry: Mm-hm. Wow.   Lucy: I even think writing a book is entrepreneurial. That's hard work, and a very original work. Along your career path, you mentioned your parents as influencers. Who else influenced you in terms of being a mentor, or giving you advice, or...? Who are your role models?   Clara: I would say that I've had the fortune of having many role models and mentors. I couldn't have arrived to this point without them. I'll just name a few. Mark Bennioff at Sales Force, the ultimate technology entrepreneur, who not only created a new company, but an entirely new way of delivering software through the cloud. More recently, I tremendously admire Sheryl Sandberg, who is the chief operating officer at Facebook, not only for what she's done there, but for how she's balanced that with her family, and with being a very outspoken advocate for women in the workplace.   Lucy: She's given several tremendous talks over the last few months. She's really stepping out in support of exactly what you're talking about. It's very heartening to see that.   Larry: Yeah. Clara, being an entrepreneur, there's the ups and downs and challenges and everything else. What is the toughest thing that you've had to do in your career?   Clara: That's a good question. I would say the toughest thing I've had to do was decide to leave a perfectly fine career path to start something new and start from scratch, and accept all the uncertainty that comes with being an entrepreneur. In the early days, there was no $21 million dollars and 60 employees and all of these. Just a blank slate. My co-founder Steven and I, sitting in my apartment. We didn't even know what the company would do or what the name would be. And that's really scary.   Lucy: How did you make that decision? Share about your thought processes there.   Clara: I think the decision to start a company happened pretty organically. I studied computer science and econ at Stanford, and then spent some time at Oxford, and then really grew up in the Silicon Valley companies. I worked at Microsoft, I worked at Google, I worked at Salesforce.com. I just happened to have been tinkering with the new Facebook APIs when they came out in early 2007, and developed what became the first business application on Facebook. Word got out, just because of the viral nature of Facebook. My friends added the application, their friends added it. Pretty soon, it made its way to the desk of a very influential analyst at Forrester, who blogged about it, and credited me with kick-starting the social business application movement. Before I knew it, I had offers to write a book, to keynote major technology conferences. Given the experience of researching and writing "The Facebook Era," where I realized that there was huge unmet need in the market, not only for knowledge and education in social media, but actual technologies to automate and bring governance best practices and effectiveness to these technologies.   Lucy: I just love this story.   Larry: Yeah, I do too.   Lucy: I mean, I just love this story, and I think it shows yet again in your life, you look backwards and you can the dots, but looking forward, it's like, "I don't know how people have career plans." You don't even know.   Clara: I couldn't agree more. I wish I could say that I had this master plan when I developed Faceforce, but really it just happened serendipitously, and I was opportunistic when opportunities came my way.   Lucy: That's an incredibly important piece of advice, which gets me to the next question, around giving young people advice about entrepreneurship. Or heck, even not so young people. If you were giving a young person advice about entrepreneurship, what would you tell them? I think I'll start. Be opportunistic, right? Be mindful that there are opportunities in front of you, and take them. But what else would you say?   Clara: I would say, expose yourself to as many new ideas and opportunities as soon as possible, because we don't know what we don't know. Sometimes, it takes a while to find what we're passionate about, but we can accelerate that process by learning new things and exposing ourselves to as many new things as possible.   Lucy: Yep.   Larry: Excellent advice.   Lucy: One of my favorite phrases now is, "Who knew?" [laughter]   Lucy: Who knew?   Clara: For me, when I was in college, it just so happened that I had to put myself through Stanford. There wasn't an option for me exceptto work both during the school year, as well as during the summer. In retrospect, that worked out really nicely, because I got an exposure to a variety of different industries and companies, and had plenty of work experience by the time I graduated.   Larry: That's great. You didn't plan on being an entrepreneur. You worked with a number of the big technology companies. What are the personal characteristics do you think that you have that give the advantage of being an entrepreneur?   Clara: I think one characteristic is that I don't take no for an answer. When you're starting out, a lot of people will tell you no, or they'll cast doubt. I remember my mom was pretty upset when she heard I quit my job at a secure company. It takes a lot of courage, and it just takes extreme confidence in yourself, and optimism that things will work out in the end. I think that that's certainly the most important one. The other characteristic of most entrepreneurs that I've met, and I hope it's true of me, is that we see the world in a different way. I remember working at bigger companies like Google and Salesforce.com that this rubbed people the wrong way a lot. My advice would be, stick to your guns, and if you believe, sometimes the best thing to do is to leave the company and start your own. And that's exactly what I did.   Lucy: I think that courage to leave a secure job... My son is starting his own company, and as a parent, I have to remind myself of that all the time, that it takes a lot of courage and confidence for him.   Larry: But Lucy, you left a job too. [crosstalk]   Clara: It might take more courage by the parents than by the individual. [laughter]   Lucy: Yeah, maybe that's the case. You mentioned Cheryl Sandberg and her speaking out about work-life issues. Do you have anything to add in terms of what you do, or any words of wisdom in that area?   Clara: I would just echo what Cheryl always says, which is, "The most important career decision you make is the partner you choose." I'm recently married. I got married two months ago.   Lucy: Congratulations.   Clara: Thank you. But there's no way I could do what I do without the love and support of my husband Dan. He's incredible. He inspires me, he teaches me, and he gives me balance in my life. He reminds me when I'm working too much.   Lucy: Can you call me too? [laughter]   Lucy: You're working too much.   Larry: [laughs] That is excellent. My wife and I, we've been married for 40 years. I was nine years old when we got married. [laughs] Well, I was close to it. We've worked together all this time, and it's just absolutely fabulous. I just love it. All right. Now you've already achieved a great deal. Not only the best-selling book and a company profitable in your first year, and all the other things that are happening. What do you think is next for you?   Clara: I guess just continuing to be open to the unknown, and to be opportunistic. I don't know what opportunities will come my way, personally, professionally, or for Hearsay Social as a company. I want to make sure that I myself, as well as my organization, we're always open to taking risks, and to continually challenge ourselves and grow.   Lucy: I just think that's so well said.   Larry: Yes, excellent.   Lucy: I think being open to the unknown is so important. As organizations grow, I think a certain amount of rigidity sets in. Being mindful of that may cause it not to happen. Clara, thank you so much for talking to us. I know our listeners will really enjoy this interview. I want to remind people that it's online at w3w3.com, and also ncwit.org. Thank you so much.   Clara: You're very welcome. Thank you for having me   Larry: Clara, this was really terrific information.   Lucy: Yeah, it's wonderful. Just wonderful. We really appreciate it. These interviews are really capturing the attention of women in technology. [music] Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Clara ShihInterview Summary: Clara Shih, founder and CEO of Hearsay Social and author of The Facebook Era, gives the following advice to young entrepreneurs: “Expose yourself to as many new ideas and opportunities as soon as possible. We don’t know what we don’t know, and sometimes it takes a while to find what we’re passionate about. But we can accelerate that process by learning new things and exposing ourselves to as many new things as possible.” Release Date: December 1, 2011Interview Subject: Clara ShihInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry NelsonDuration: 15:55