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Diabetes Connections with Stacey Simms Type 1 Diabetes
On The World Stage With T1D: Cellist Alisa Weilerstein

Diabetes Connections with Stacey Simms Type 1 Diabetes

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 17, 2020 37:58


Alisa Weilerstein has been living with type 1 diabetes almost as long as she’s been making music. She debuted with the Cleveland Orchestra at age 13, played Carnegie Hall at 15, performed at the White House at 27, and at 29 was awarded the MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” fellowship. She was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at age 9 and her first concern, of course, was for her fingertips! Alisa speaks to us from Berlin, where she and her family spend half their time. In Tell Me Something Good we share stories about girl scouts stepping up and hearing a Dexcom alarm at the Supreme Court. This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please contact your health care provider. Check out Stacey's book: The World's Worst Diabetes Mom! Alisa mentions playing in concert while pregnant. See that video here Join the Diabetes Connections Facebook Group! Sign up for our newsletter here   ----- Use this link to get one free download and one free month of Audible, available to Diabetes Connections listeners! ----- Get the App and listen to Diabetes Connections wherever you go! Click here for iPhone      Click here for Android   Episode Transcription (rough transcription, not yet corrected)   Stacey Simms  0:00 Diabetes Connections is brought to you by One Drop created for people with diabetes by people who have diabetes by Gvoke Hypopen, the first premixed auto injector for very low blood sugar, and by Dexcom take control of your diabetes and live life to the fullest with Dexcom.   Announcer  0:22 This is Diabetes Connections with Stacey Simms.   Stacey Simms  0:27 This week, she was playing the cello before she went to kindergarten. In fact, when Alisa Weilerstein was diagnosed with type one at age nine, her first thought was her  fingertips.   Alisa Weilerstein  0:41 I was already quite curious about the cello and the left hand, of course, it's the hand that goes on the fingerboard. And I remember saying to my doctor, I'm not going to click my fingers on my left hand, they won't be able to play.   Stacey Simms  0:50 She was certainly able to keep playing - Carnegie Hall at 15, the White House at 27 and at 29 Weilestein was awarded the MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant fellowship. She has quite a story. It was great to talk to her and tell me something good girl scouts stepping up. And did you hear the Dexcom at the supreme court hearings? This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please contact your health care provider. Welcome to another week of Diabetes Connections. I'm so glad to have you along. I am your host Stacey Simms, and we aim to educate and inspire by sharing stories of connection. If you are new to the show, I am so glad to have you here a little bit about me. My son was diagnosed with type one right before he turned two he is almost 16 now so it's been a minute, my husband lives with type two. I don't have diabetes, but I have a background in broadcasting and local radio and television. And that is how you get the podcast. I am always amazed when I meet and talk to people with incredible musical talent like our guest this week. To me playing music reading music, expressing yourself through music is like another language. I appreciate music. But I don't have that kind of innate understanding that a true artist has my old radio show co host when I did mornings in Charlotte, North Carolina, where I am now for more than 10 years. And he was also a musician. And they just have this natural ability. I mean a true musician who can write music and read music and play and play by ear. To me it really is something special. And I hope I did this interview with Alisa justice. Because of course we're interested in talking about diabetes, but we talked about music as well. I also want to let you know, we are not out of November yet diabetes Awareness Month of course, we'll be doing some fun things on social media. I have a big sale going on for the world's first diabetes mom real life stories of raising a child with type 1 diabetes, it is on sale right now use the coupon code November, you've got to use it on my website at Diabetes connections.com. I can't do coupon codes on Amazon sorry. But this covers more than free shipping and everything else. So it's still a nice discount if we're doing $4 off for the rest of the month. So go to the website, scroll down, you'll see the book in the middle of the page there under the most recent podcast episodes. And to use the promo code, you're going to click order a signed copy. The other links take you to Amazon and you can't use a coupon code there. But if you click on order a signed copy, it'll take you to the right place. There's also a little teeny tab on top that says shop. It's hard for me to believe the book has been out for a year. I hope you're not tired of me talking about it. I got one nasty email this year I will share. Somebody stopped listening to the show two weeks after I published the book because he was tired of me talking about it. I felt like saying to him, you write a book, see if you want to talk about it! (laughs) But I appreciate you you know putting up with it. Especially this year when the whole book tour was canceled. I was supposed to like many of you, right? We were supposed to travel and go places and do things so you know I get it. Of course everybody's in the same boat. But I am going to continue to talk about the world's worst diabetes mom because man it was so much fun to put together and I'm not ashamed to say the response has been fantastic. So if you want to get a copy promo code November at Diabetes connections.com Diabetes Connections is brought to you by One Drop and getting diabetes supplies because a big pain you know that not only the ordering and the picking up but the arguing with insurance over what they say you need and what you really need. Make it easy with One Drop. They offer personalized test strip plans plus you get a Bluetooth glucose meter test strips lancets and your very own certified diabetes coach. Subscribe today to get test strips for less than $20 a month delivered right to your door. No prescriptions or co pays required. One less thing to worry about not that surprising when you learn that the founder of One Drop lifts with type one, they get it One Drop gorgeous gear supplies delivered to your door 24 seven access to your certified diabetes coach learn more go to Diabetes connections.com and click on the One Drop logo. My guest this week has been living with type one almost as long as she's been making music. Alisa Weilerstein has a remarkable story she debuted with the Cleveland Symphony At age 13, played Carnegie Hall at 15, performed at the White House at 27. And then she was awarded the MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant fellowship when she was 29 years old. I found her Tiny Desk concert. If you're familiar with those from NPR, that was 10 years ago, I will link that up as well. She is currently in Europe where she and her family live for half the year. I spoke to her. It was back in September when she her husband and their four year old daughter had just traveled back to Berlin from San Diego. Elisa, thank you so much for joining me, it's so interesting to talk to you that you're in Europe, we've got a little bit of a lag here on the call. But thanks for coming in. I   Alisa Weilerstein  5:37 appreciate it. Oh, you're so welcome. Thank you for having me on your show.   Stacey Simms  5:40 Before we jump in and talk diabetes and music. Tell me a little bit about living in Berlin. You live there half the time now?   Alisa Weilerstein  5:47 Yes. Well, I mean, I'm a I'm a cellist I played classical music. Of course, in normal times, I play about 120 concerts per year. And they're split between Europe and North America with an occasional trip to Asia. Of course, during the pandemic, that's been radically changed, obviously. But that's my schedule during normal times. And so it was very important for both me and my husband, my husband, as a conductor, to have a base in Europe as well, so that we're not just constantly on transatlantic flights, more than we actually need to be. So we have a base in Europe, which is Berlin, and it's such a great Center for the Arts. And our daughter loves it here. Our daughter was actually born here four and a half years ago. And yes, that's one reason why we chose Berlin.   Stacey Simms  6:27 I'm curious what the flight was like, and what the experiences like traveling from the US right now, with everything that's going on?   Alisa Weilerstein  6:33 Well, it's interesting, because then we spent most of the pandemic in San Diego. So we were there from March 13. Basically, you know, that that the day that all of the all of the borders shot, and I actually traveled to Germany in June, to play a live broadcast in Hamburg. At that time, it was a two week quarantine in Germany. And so I can't even hear it here in my apartment in Berlin. And at that time, it was even more sort of wacky to travel at that point than it was a week ago, when we flew back here to San Diego with my whole family. At that time. I mean, there were there were so few flights, and there was practically no one in the airports. So I flew from LA to Newark, of course, you know, you don't take your mask off your face, obviously. And even though there were like 10 people on my site, and not more than that, and then I had 10 hours in Newark, and then I suppose from Newark to Frankfurt, and I got a test immediately upon arrival, they were even doing testing at the airport at that time. And then my results arrived within 48 hours. You know, I tested for the for the virus and also for the antibodies, which unfortunately, I didn't have the antibody, I was actually disappointed. But anyway, I flew back to San Diego to rejoin my family. And then my whole family to my husband, my daughter and and also our daughters many. We flew back to Berlin. Again, it was a very few flights to San Diego, Chicago, Chicago, London, London, Berlin with a four and a half year old, you can imagine what oh, my gosh. But, you know, we tested right before literally before he went to the airport, we went to a lab to test and then we got tested at the airport and in Berlin Tegel airport there. They're doing testing upon arrival. And those results came within 24 hours. And potential street for me got here. So my girl was able to go to school right away here, which made her very, very happy. Great. Yeah,   Stacey Simms  8:18 yeah, I'm glad. I'm sure you're all glad to be settled.   Unknown Speaker  8:21 Oh, yeah.   Stacey Simms  8:24 So let's talk about type one. You were diagnosed at nine. Do you remember your diagnosis story?   Alisa Weilerstein  8:30 Oh, yeah. Very well. Yeah, it was actually the month before my 10th birthday was March first 1992. And as you remember that, of course, like 92 was a kind of critical year in diabetes research, which definitively proved that tight control could ward off the risk of complications by you know, whopping percentage, and they are 66% less likely to get complications if the agency was 7% or below. So that was encouraging. But yeah, my diagnosis story was essentially, for the couple of months leading up to my doctor's visit, I exhibited the classic symptoms, I was urinating frequently with who had extreme thirst, and I was losing some weight. And I've always been a kind of muscular body type. And I suddenly became, you know, sort of like belly dancer and not like my energy was okay. And was was actually sort of normal until like, about a, I remember, like, a few days before I went to the doctor, and I was just feeling just sort of tired, which was very unlike me. And my mother took me to the pediatrician. She said, you know, maybe you have a bladder infection because I was, you know, going to the bathroom every hour or something like that. So I remember we got a urine sample from home, which the doctor had asked us to do that. And so you know, I peed into a jar basically. And then we went to the pediatrician and, sorry   Stacey Simms  9:52 It's a type one diabetes all the time.   Alisa Weilerstein  9:58 The diabetes podcast, so I'm your listeners are familiar with this. And anyway, I am submitted the sample. And then I remember the doctor who might like very much, I actually took my mother aside, and there was some whispering, which I didn't know about. And my mom looked very serious. And she said to me, Well, the doctor thinks the jar was contaminated. So just give her another example. And so I went to the Darrell bathrooms and gave her a sample from the sterile cup. And unfortunately, the result was the same, which of course, showed sky high glucose. And the doctor said, Well, you know, you need to go straight to the ER, and doctor told me, so do you need to get a blood test? And so I thought, Oh, my, you know, I don't really like and then I remember asking my mother, I said, well, Can I at least get some m&ms afterwards. And my poor mother, she, I mean, she didn't know much about diabetes, but she heard that word diabetes mentioned. And she knew that that meant a sugar issue. And so she just kind of looked at me and she opened her mouth, and she closed it again. And ah, and, you know, we drove to the hospital. And then the rest was really kind of blur. My father, you know, I remember my mom calling my father saying you need to get here now. And my, my little brother at the time was four. And I remember them all kind of standing around me and I was getting weighed. And then suddenly, I was like, on a gurney with IVs, and needles sticking in and out. And then doctors coming in saying, Yes, we think it's juvenile diabetes. And of course, you know, somebody was in examining my tongue to see how to hide it. And I might I, I might have been, and it was very kind of dramatic. My blood sugar was 464. At the time, they said that actually, we caught it relatively early. If you can believe that. I think at that time, some kids were coming in already, you know, the 800, or something like that, coming into with, you know, really, rather advanced ketoacidosis. And I wasn't there yet, I was throwing some ketones. It wasn't yet in kind of a dire situation. Anyway, I was then in the hospital for about a week just for the kind of diabetes education and it was kind of a crash course in how to manage type one diabetes. And at the time, my insulin regimen was NPH. And regular to the fast acting because it was it was even before the time of humalog. And my blood sugar meter took 45 seconds to read the blood glucose results and counting carbohydrates and all of that stuff. So this was my diabetes education.   Stacey Simms  12:16 At nine years old, you were already on your way to playing music and performing as you did anyone say anything? I had to fit your first question, right? Can I still do this? What did they tell you about your musical career?   Right back to Alisa, she's gonna answer that question. But first diabetes Connections is brought to you by Dexcom. And they have this great partnership with Tandem now with basal IQ and control IQ. And we started on basal IQ as soon as it was available. And this is the Dexcom g six tandem pump software program, and immediately started doing less work for better results. When we switch to control IQ, oh my gosh, even less work even better results with diabetes. I don't know if you remember, but years ago, they started with just putting the CGM information on the pump and it didn't communicate, it's just there. But this is something else, the whole system keeps spinning more steady. His time in range has increased significantly, his agency, you know, I don't share exact numbers, but it is the lowest that he's ever had. Of course, individual results may vary. But to learn more, just go to Diabetes connections.com and click on the Dexcom logo right back now to Elisa sharing what she was most worried about at her diagnosis.   Alisa Weilerstein  13:38 Well, this is why I say 1992 was actually I mean, if one had to be diagnosed with diabetes, you know, at any time, it was an encouraging year to be diagnosed. Because I mean that the doctors who actually were well informed said, If you manage this, well, you will be able to live exactly the life that you want to live. And that was the constant messaging from my doctor at the time, all the nurses around each month this is and and they were teaching me how to do things. And he said this is the reason you have to do this is so that you can live a full life and do all the things that you want to do and play the cello do go to school, see your friends, play sports, do all of these things. And I remember there was just one issue, where I kind of had to make a special accommodation, which is what the finger picking, because of course I was already as you say I but I was already quite curious about the cello. And the left hand, of course is the hand that goes on the fingerboard. And I remember saying to my doctors, I'm not going to click my fingers on my left hence I won't be able to play and I but however if I was able to prick my fingers on my on my bow hand that wouldn't have affected that. So I only used three fingers to prick and my whole life after that I only I only use the same three fingers to pick my finger, my test my blood sugar, and luckily they accommodated and they basically well as long as you do it and as long as you don't hurt yourself. Sure. That was the answer.   Stacey Simms  14:57 I was going to ask you about that. Because I couldn't imagine especially the amount of finger prick you had to do back then. Yeah, Listen, I've, for somebody who nagged her son for years to rotate fingers do a different thing. Yeah, you were able to just move it around enough so that you didn't have issues with just those three fingers.   Alisa Weilerstein  15:14 No, I didn't. And, and even at the time, I mean, the lancets were very good, very painless, and very thin. So I mean, there was actually there was never an issue. And I mean, at the time, the recommendation was to test four times a day, I remember at the time that was considered like being very responsible. Of course, now, we would probably say that's kind of bare minimum. But as I got older, and I tested more often, I mean, I was asked to test before the continuous glucose monitors were accurate enough to kind of rely on I was testing 10 times a day, and I was just using those same three fingers.   Stacey Simms  15:43 That's so interesting. And you've mentioned a couple times 1992, we should just step back and mention as you listen, if you're not familiar, we're referring here to the dcct trial, the diabetes control and complications trial, which was really the first time as you said, that they believed that you could make a difference. I mean, it's hard to believe that before that time, doctors thought, Well, that's it if you have type one or juvenile diabetes, as they called it, you wouldn't live past 30. And this showed that you could,   Alisa Weilerstein  16:09 yeah, and you would kind of have to go to an alternative doctor to get anything more hopeful, or any kind of agency with it's really yeah, and   Stacey Simms  16:16 I'll link up more information on the dcct. It was such a pivotal time and diabetes. And it wasn't that long ago, when you think about it now. Alright, so you're then on your way, you're doing what you need to do. You've got your family on board, you're playing music, Cleveland Orchestra at age 13. And on and on. And I have to say, when I watch someone play the cello, and please forgive me, I am so musically ignorant, except that I enjoy listening. It seems like it's very athletic. It's a very physical looking instrument to play. Can you talk about that? Is it I assume that   Alisa Weilerstein  16:48 yes, it is? Oh, yeah, yeah, completely. And especially I'm not very tall, myself, I'm about five to my posture is good. You know, you have to learn how to use your body in a very efficient way, like kind of a lot of Alexander Technique. And yoga concepts can apply very well to pretty much any instrument, but kind of the cello, especially in terms of the strength that it takes. And truly free with instruments, you have to basically use your body to know how to use the natural energy and not natural body weight very well. And of course, it just takes a lot of years of practice to build it up. I mean, there's no substitute for time really, with that,   Stacey Simms  17:21 you must have by now of routine and you you the physicality of it, you've got that down. But when you were younger, and first learning, what did you do? Did you keep tabs like in your chair, or in your case, you know, how did you manage diabetes and playing   Alisa Weilerstein  17:35 I mean, I kept glucose tablets pretty much everywhere. playing the cello itself did not cause low blood sugar, I mean, there were a couple of pieces that I knew were kind of workouts in a way and that I would sometimes eat a little bit or maybe drink a little bit of juice before, I mean, like the way you would before going for a run, just to have like a little bit of energy to make sure that you have a threshold that can kind of carry you through if you're going to drop a little bit. So it was a lot of trial and error. And I just found out kind of what worked in I mean, in terms of going on stage, especially before the pump, certainly which I got an A pump when I was 16. So that was 98. And certainly before the CGM, I would test before going on stage. I mean, I've just tested in general much more on concert dates than on other days. And I always like to get to the hall about an hour before so that I could slowly put the gown on. So they put me so they kind of put my ducks in a row in terms of playing and just warming warming up slowly and kind of just getting myself in the mental space. But it was also blood sugar wise, it was just important for me to be able to test one hour before, kind of every 15 minutes. And then like two minutes before I'd walk on stage just to make sure that I was not going to get low on stage. I mean, like if I was 170, or something on stage, it wasn't ideal, but it was better than being 65 when you're going on stage because of course below that, then you kind of start to lose coordination. I mean, my ideal number to go on stage would be like 130 because the blood sugar's maybe slightly on the high side, but it's good enough that I felt normal. And I had a threshold to drop, so that if I walked offstage, and I was 85 or something like that would be fine.   Stacey Simms  19:10 You mentioned there were a couple of pieces that stand out as being more physical or do can you share those with us? I'm curious, which anything stand out?   Alisa Weilerstein  19:20 Sure. There's a concerto, which means that there's a solo instrument with an orchestral accompaniment, and the composer is Prokofiev, who was a Russian composer who actually died the same day that Stalin died. Oh, my 1953. Yes, the same day. So of course, nobody paid attention when he died, unfortunately, because it was one of those really, really tragic ironies to add to so many tragic ironies of the time, but he wrote a fantastic masterpiece for each other an orchestra called the symphony concert count, which is a symphony concerto. It's a 45 minute kind of tour de force, for the cello and for the orchestra as well, but especially the solo cello where which is just Just wild, very, very, very physical, technically very, very challenging. And it's just kind of an endurance exercise. And I remember just being very sure that I was not going to get low on stage. So I did a few practice runs of that pizza. The first time I played it in public, the first time I played it in with the orchestra, I was about 16 or 17 years old, I did several kind of practice runs, just running through with it with a kennel reduction for friends and for for my parents and things like that. So I knew kind of what my blood sugar threshold was with that piece in particular, it's funny, it was   Stacey Simms  20:34 Prokofiev. All I know is Peter and the Wolf.   Unknown Speaker  20:37 That's what I think. Yes, of course. No, it's just what I pay for my daughter all the time. You're fantastic.   Stacey Simms  20:43 It's funny. Oh, yeah. That's great. Yeah, yeah, at this point, it's almost like a professional athlete. In terms of I assume you have a routine, you know, you know,   Unknown Speaker  20:52 look, at this point, you   Stacey Simms  20:54 know, what you're doing. I'm curious. But anything throw you for a loop in terms of diabetes. These days, I'm thinking about advice for, you know, younger people who are starting out in a musical career, or, you know, just anything like that. So what throws you for a loop, we're in there?   Alisa Weilerstein  21:10 Oh, well, sometimes I can have a very inconsistent response to stress or to nerves, because generally speaking, I don't get nervous on stage. But perhaps the kind of travel situation, especially these days can make me quite stressed out and, you know, say high strung and nervous and then my blood sugar just shoots up, sort of out of nowhere, or it can be like a kind of a sticky high, and I can't get below 185, no matter how much I mean, like I can be, like, feel like I've got an ID of insulin and nothing brings it down until I relaxed, that can just sometimes be really kind of flummoxing and very frustrating. And then of course, I get more stressed about the blood sugar. And then of course, the stress response doesn't go down. So that's something that I just find very frustrating. And something that I feel is kind of out of my control and less like kind of just force myself to do some deep breathing in a kind of airport travel situation, which is stressful. Other things that life can throw your way. unexpected things I just signed, you know, test test test, look at the CGM as much as possible. And then you can catch the kind of unexpected highs and lows much much more easily. And so that's my advice to anyone just test as much as possible. Or if you have a CGM. Just make sure that you're really aware of what's going on there.   Stacey Simms  22:20 Can I be nosy? And ask where you were your tech? Yeah, she during performance, of course, I'm trying to think of the body motion and where it's, you know, where it makes sense.   Alisa Weilerstein  22:29 Well, not on my arms. Probably imagine, I put my infusion set in the center of my stomach. And when I'm wearing a gown, there's, I'm not sure even which company makes any more. But I think there's the diabetes mole, which has something called the five thing and this kind of like a garter belt, and it has a pocket, which is where I put my pump, when I'm wearing a dress or a concert gown.   Stacey Simms  22:52 Right? You've mentioned your daughter a couple of times, if they did, were you concerned, I obviously, you know, it takes a lot of work when you're wanting to get tight control before you get pregnant. I'm curious. Sounds like your doctors told you from the get go that you'd be okay. Can you share a little bit about that journey in terms of, you know, deciding to have your child,   Alisa Weilerstein  23:10 it's something that was kind of hanging over my mind. And it was it that's a personal thing. It's just not to say that, oh, you get a diabetes diagnosis, and you worry for the rest of your, let's say, especially if your child 17th, whether you're going to be able to have a healthy pregnancy or not. But I did actually have that kind of worry. And I would say I spent probably two years before we decided it was the right time to try and conceive just kind of experimenting to see how tight I thought I could get the control, especially with an intense travel schedule. And I found that at the time, the CGM was getting better and better. Like as you know, back in, you know, 2008 2009, the CGM was maybe 40% accurate assess. I mean, it was just terrible. I was like throwing it against the wall sometimes because it would just as I took Tylenol or something, it would go up to show that I was reading 400 because it couldn't, it didn't react about this kind of medicine and other things. And it was fall off. And it was just awful. So I get back two years before, you know my daughter was born in 2016. So this was like 2014 or so. I mean, my agencies had been in the low sevens at the time, and then I got them down to 6.8 6.6. And I thought, Okay, I think I'm going to be able to manage this. Because I was doing a lot of fine tuning. And then as your son will probably relate to this, like, the more you pay attention, the worse you actually think your blood sugar is, but it's actually your budget is actually getting much better. You know what I mean? Yeah. And so this was something that I realized that my doctor was telling me I was doing it, basically. And I was like, Really? I don't think I'm doing and then I saw Oh, my average was like 129 Oh, okay, that's not bad. But I mean, of course, it needs to be better than that for pregnancy. But this is in range. I could finally envision, you know, having an average of you know, 110 or something like that. And so we got pregnant and of course, the pregnancy itself is the biggest motivator. And I, of course, I was poked and prodded more than I care to remember during the pregnancy because of course, I was classified immediately as high risk and I had to see the doctor, you know, all the time, but I was working and traveling until 35 weeks. Oh, well, you can find a YouTube video of me doing my second to last concert with our daughter, my daughter and my belly. I played Hindemith concerto with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony. And my belly was absolutely huge. And then like, I'm walking on stage with this thing. And I saw myself, wow. I mean, I remember what it felt like. But seeing it now as it was some distance. It's kind of kind of amazing to me that I did that. But it was important to me to keep going. And I generally had a very easy pregnancy until the very end, and I felt best. And my blood sugar was best when I was active. You know, I was under strict supervision of my doctors, but I managed to do that.   Stacey Simms  25:50 How do you talk about your diabetes with your daughter?   Alisa Weilerstein  25:52 What does she know? She knows, in a very general way, if she sees me drinking juice, she knows that I'm low, because I don't drink juice. Otherwise, she knows that I have diabetes, she knows the word diabetes, and what you know, let's say in a very general way, what it is, and she knows what my medicine is, and that she's not supposed to touch it. And she can watch me kind of handle it, things like that. But that that's this is only Mama's territory to kind of handle things like that. So sometimes she likes to kind of look at my pumpkin to know what it does and things like that. But other than that, she doesn't know too many other details.   Stacey Simms  26:22 One of the things that when we were talking about coming on the show, I noticed that you're working with he Genesis, can you tell me a little bit about what you know who they are,   Alisa Weilerstein  26:31 he Genesis is? Well, it's an amazing company, they don't only work on diabetes research, they work on kidney disease and liver disease. And really, they're kind of primary goal is to make sure that there are no organ shortages for anyone who needs them. And so what they're working on is Type One Diabetes islet cell transplants. So they have an incredible immunology team, which I've been in touch with a bit. And it's just, it's very, very exciting, the research that they're doing, and my association with them really is to kind of spread the awareness of what it's truly like to live with type one diabetes, and to stress the need for a cure. Because nowadays, with biotech, making such amazing advances, sometimes people around me who don't know me, so well look at me, and they they don't really even know that I have diabetes, and they say, Oh, well, you make it look so easy. And it seems like with the technology, you can live a very, you know, you What do you need a cure for in a way. And this, of course, is exactly the wrong kind of message that you want to send us and Well, yes, I'm a very positive person, and I manage my diabetes as best I can. And I have the technology and the knowledge to do that. However, as we were saying before, living with Type One Diabetes is a 24 hours a day, seven day a week, 365 day a year job. Even with the technology, there is not a moment that goes by that you can really relax about it, you always have to be paying attention. I don't know how to look at a plate of food and not count the carbohydrates. And I don't know how to go for a run without thinking, Okay, how is this going to affect my blood sugar is my pump actually going to react to that and say, if I if I go for a sprint, how many glucose tablets do I have? Am I gonna drop too low to actually finish it, that kind of thing. And that's even with the technology that we have now, not to say nothing of hyperglycemia, gun awareness and all of these other things that we know are dangers with living with type one diabetes, and you as a parent of a diabetic have a type one diabetic who is luckily very well controlled. This is probably something that that you were always concerned about hypoglycemic unawareness overnight and things like that. I know that this was certainly something that my mother probably lost countless hours of sleep over. And type 1 diabetes is, you know, to say nothing. Also at the expense of managing type 1 diabetes, we all know what insulin prices are, we know what the prescription medication needs are. And the fact that type 1 diabetes is actually the most expensive chronic disease to treat of any chronic disease. And so this is really why we all need to be lobbying this and countless other reasons. This is why we are all lobbying for a cure. Not treatment, pain, of course, better treatment, but in the absence of a cure. But the ultimate goal, obviously is is a real cure.   Stacey Simms  29:08 We didn't talk much about music during this interview. I didn't know you were here to talk about. Okay, that sort of thing. But you have been playing according to what I've read you really been playing since probably before you remember much right? Did you start playing cello at age four?   Alisa Weilerstein  29:23 I did. Yeah.   Stacey Simms  29:24 Is it still exciting? Is it still challenging? Is it still fun?   Alisa Weilerstein  29:27 Oh, yes. And I'll eat all of the above. Yes, challenging, exciting, fun, frustrating, wonderful. tear my hair out type of frustrating sometimes as well. But you know, is one of those things where there's no concrete goal, really, I mean, you just have to keep growing. And in a way, there's a kind of a parallel with diabetes management, there are two because as we know, there's no way to do it perfectly. And you have to just do the best you can. And so that's like being an artist. You're constantly striving to be better to be the most studiers to yourself. To the composer's to what you're trying to say, you know, you're always searching for ways to do that better and to do it more clearly. And to do it more Honestly, I'm always experimenting.   Stacey Simms  30:09 Well, Lisa, thank you so much for joining me and for making time to talk about this. It's been a crazy time we're living in now, but I wish you the best as you're now in Europe. And, but really, thank you so much for spending some time with me and my listeners.   Alisa Weilerstein  30:23 Oh, my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me on your show.   Unknown Speaker  30:31 You're listening to Diabetes Connections with Stacey Simms.   Stacey Simms  30:37 I will link up more information you've got here Elisa play. So I'll put a lot of that in the show notes, a couple of different links, including, you know, she mentioned that video where she was pregnant, I found that and she obviously looks great. But Josh, he plays with such passion in every video, I think you'll love it. So I'll definitely link those up. Whatever app you're listening to, if you're listening on an app, they always have show notes and you can often get the links there as well. But if you have any trouble as I always say just go back to the homepage and that will help you out. Tell me something good in just a moment. Did you hear the Dexcom at the Supreme Court we're going to talk about that. But first diabetes Connections is brought to you by g Bo hypo pen, and almost everyone who takes insulin has experienced a low blood sugar and that can be scary. A very low blood sugar is really scary. And that's where Jeeva hypo pen comes in. It's the first auto injector to treat very low blood sugar. Jeeva hypo pen is pre mixed and ready to go with no visible needle. That means it's easy to use in usability studies 99% of people were able to give Jiva correctly, I am so glad to have something new, find out more go to Diabetes connections.com and click on the G book logo. g book shouldn't be used in patients with pheochromocytoma or insulinoma visit Jeeva glucagon comm slash risk.   Didn't tell me something good. This week, let's talk about the Girl Scouts for a moment. This is all about Isabella. She was just diagnosed in April. And she is part of a Girl Scout troop. Her mom Carrie posted a photo and I wanted to talk to her about that it looked so great. And here's what happened. Isabella is part of a Girl Scout troop. And she did a presentation on diabetes for diabetes Awareness Month. But this went a little bit further than a lot of the presentations that we have seen. And Isabella let everybody or asked everybody to do a finger poke to experience a little bit of what she goes through. And I'm laughing because the photo that's posted and I'll see if I get permission to share this is Isabella poking an adult's finger, and the adult is looking a little apprehensive. But there's this little girl in the background who just is very concerned, she's got this look on her face. Like really? What do you have to do that all the time? You know, it's a wonderful picture to show the empathy, I think and really also, and this might sound a little bit flowery, but I mean, this the bravery of Isabella, it's not easy to show other people, all the stuff that you have to go through when you have type one. And you know, maybe her friends would be scared or maybe they would treat her differently to have the support that she has, I think is really special. So Carrie, thank you so much for sharing that. Isabella, congratulations to you for sharing all of that. And good on the Girl Scout troop. That's awesome. Our next Tell me something good comes from the highest court in the land. Last week, the Supreme Court heard arguments about the Affordable Care Act. This is the third time in eight years that the Obamacare as it's also known, has been in front of the Supreme Court. But what I want to focus on is Justice Sonia Sotomayor is Dexcom Yes, of course, many of you already know that. One of the justices lives with type 1 diabetes. If you haven't read her incredible biography. I will link that up in the show notes. And yes, she is one of my dream guests. So somebody helped make that happen for us. I reached out to the press office, I'm gonna continue to work it will get her on one of these days. But her Dexcom apparently went off crystal a prick. liano heard it. She is an incredible diabetes advocate. And she was the very first guest on this show. Yeah, back in 2015. And she tweeted out that she had heard it she thought it was her Dexcom going off, but it was Justice Sotomayor is and that sparked a little bit of conversation about why would it be going off as a clerk kind of bring her juice box? And is it frustrating that you can't silence all the alarms? And why would you want to silence all the alarms and it was interesting to hear people go back and forth about that. One thing that did come up if you do want to silence the alarms, and look, I know we want that urgent low to be going off, but you are grownups as you listen, and a lot of people do not want to blaring at their workplace or they want to have a different way of doing this. Right. We all want our DIY stuff. If you don't already know one workaround is to stick headphones into the jack on your phone and then the alarm will go off but it'll go off in the headphones and it won't bother anybody else at work. As a mom, I don't want you to turn your urgent low alarm off. I mean, come on. I'm a mom, but I get it. So that was one thing but came up. But isn't that interesting? I have all sorts of personal and prying questions for Justice Sotomayor. Maybe that's why she doesn't want to come on. And talk to me about, hey, where do you put your Dexcom? Do you use skin tack?   Unknown Speaker  35:12 We would have more important things to talk about. I   Unknown Speaker  35:13 am sure   Stacey Simms  35:14 if you haven't told me something good story, please send it my way. Stacy at Diabetes connections.com or posted in the Facebook group Diabetes Connections, the group. I feel like this month has been busier. And not just because it's diabetes Awareness Month. I'm actually I there's stuff going on. I'm doing panels. I'm taping things more than the podcast. So it's kind of fun. And I'm feeling more energized than I have been in a while, which is nice. This weekend. I'm participating in the healthy voices conference. This was supposed to be in the spring, I think we're supposed to be in Dallas. I mean, I can't even keep track of the number of airline tickets. I had to reschedule, like most of you. But I'm excited because I'm not just talking about diabetes. I'm actually not even talking about diabetes. I'm talking about podcasting. And I'm talking about teaching podcasting. And I will be teaching health advocates, patient leaders how to podcast and how easy it is, you know, not to be afraid of it, how their voices are so important, but truly, it's not an esoteric, you know why you should podcast or your voice matters, which it very much does. It is down and dirty. You plug this microphone into this program. Here's how you get your RSS feed on Apple. I'm thrilled to be doing this. And if as you listen, you know somebody who wants to hear more about that stuff. podcasting is obviously my passion and I love helping more people get started. As this episode airs. I believe it will be tonight, I am taping something that will be for air in December. It's the annual Wait, wait, don't poke me, which is a game show that I do for friends for life. It is a take off of the NPR show. Wait, wait, don't tell me. I love it so much. We have so much goofy fun, and you'll be able to hear that you'll be able to watch that, if not at the conference in December. Shortly thereafter, I'll make it public and we always have a good time. Please remember that all this month you can get the world's worst of diabetes mom real life stories of raising a child with Type One Diabetes for a big discount for dollars off at Diabetes connections.com use the promo code November, he makes a nice gift for the holidays. Boy, I'm so bad at this advertising stuff. But you can go ahead and read the reviews on Amazon. You can purchase it on Amazon as an audiobook or an E book or head over to my website and get the discount. And I forgot to mention if you buy it off my website, I'll sign it for you. There's a little form on the on the very bottom of the order form. When you fill it out. It'll say order notes and just put if you want me to personalize it, or anything you want me to write, assign them all but if you put it in there, I will personalize it for you. thank you as always to my editor john Buchanan from audio editing solutions. Thank you so much for listening. I'm Stacey Simms. I'll see you back here next week. Until then, be kind to yourself.   Benny  37:52 Diabetes Connections is a production of Stacey Simms Media. All rights reserved. All wrongs avenged

Thinking Big Podcast
Is it time to outsource? with Gayla Scrivener

Thinking Big Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 21, 2020 60:50


Welcome to the Thinking Big Podcast. Today we have a special guest Gayla Scrivener. We have a lot of entrepreneurs that listen to the podcast, and at some point we have to make the decisions to start outsourcing US.  The time comes where we have to start working on our business and not in our businesses. One of those area’s is content marketing and that is one of the areas that Gayla’s company takes care of. Gayla is a close friend with a great story and company, and like most successful entrepreneurs, she gave the proverbial FU to the traditional working life and created a career that she could do from anywhere in the world.  Today we are thinking big on how to let stuff go and start outsourcing yourself. Connect with Gayla Scrivener at the following social media link: Website http://scrivenersolutions.com/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/ScrivenerSolutions/ Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/gaylascrivener/ Instagram https://www.instagram.com/gscrivener/ Podcast https://www.gaylascrivener.com/category/podcast/   Connect with Sean Osborn at Thinking Big Coaching http://www.thinkingbigcoaching.com https://www.instagram.com/thinkingbigcoaching/ https://www.facebook.com/thinkingbigcoaching/   Until next week, remember to always think big Ratings and reviews directly impact search rankings for the Thinking Big Podcast. So please help us get more ratings and reviews. Leaders are Readers, here are some free books for you to get. Free copy of Think and Grow Rich http://bit.ly/free-think-and-grow-rich-ebook The 7-day Think and Grow Rich Challenge https://bit.ly/tagrchallenge Free Audibles book http://bit.ly/thinkingbigaudible   Episode Transcription: 0:00 Welcome to the thinking big podcast. Today, we have a special guest, gala Scrivener. Now we have a lot of entrepreneurs that listen to this podcast. And at some point, we have to make the decision to start outsourcing us and start outsourcing all the stuff that we do because as entrepreneurs, we start off doing everything. The time comes where we have to start working on our business, instead of in our business. And one of those key areas is content marketing. And this is one of the areas that galas company takes care of. Now gala is a close friend, she's got a great story and company. And like most successful entrepreneurs, she gave the proverbial f due to the traditional working life and created a career that she could do from anywhere in the world. So today, we are thinking big on how to let stuff go and start outsourcing ourselves. 1:26 Well, I want to welcome gala Scribner to the podcast today. I have been looking forward to this because I think we're in an environment. Now, you know, the biggest one of the biggest things I see is people starting a side gig, you know, and it's, it happened before, you know, before this COVID crap and before this pandemic crap, but I think it's going to be forced, and even more and more to where people have a side gig, you know, they have a side business that they're trying to do an online business that they're trying to do. And, to me, every household is going to have one and talking to people that I you know, that I work with. And then I know, the biggest complaint that I get from people is they don't know how they don't have time, they don't have the energy to be doing all the social media stuff, they just don't know, they don't have the tools they don't, and you get burned out. You know, I know people I don't want to post every day or I don't want to post every other day. And really, that's what you do, give me a little bit give us a little overview of how you kind of started what you did, and what drove you to kind of create what you're doing now? 2:39 Well, you'll have to remind me to get back to the social media part. And I want to first I guess, lead with that, that everything that we're doing in an online business, everything that we do in business period, is building relationships and nurturing relationships. And when you think of social media, and oh my gosh, I've got to post every day or I don't want to do this and we're getting the tasks kind of in the way and it fogs us that ultimately what we're doing is just needing to connect with people and and serve serve those folks. But it takes it took me a while to kind of understand that and circling way back in the Wayback years I I have been an entrepreneur for just a short amount of time, really. Back in 2012 is when I took the leap, left corporate life and jumped both feet in to start Scrivener solutions. And I had been in the medical management field for 20 years, right out of right out of high school my first year or so into college. I landed a job at an ophthalmology office. And believe it or not, I I was majoring in marketing at the time in college. This young 19 year old I'm going to be a marketing major. And I soon realized or told myself, I could never sell anything. I'm not a marketer. I'm going to change my degree to Business Administration and I stayed in medical management from this. I went in as this bright eyed fresh 19 year old in an ophthalmology office and was filing their charts and calling and confirming appointments. And then and then going to school part time or full time school part time job and then not three months later the A medical biller went on maternity leave. And why the office manager and the doctor decided to put this little 19 year old in the billing seat, I have no idea. But that's what happened. I, I, I did the medical billing, I learned that just by just by doing. And it was so many years ago, the only electronic claims we had was to Medicare. And I knew I was responsible for the backups. And we had backup tapes that looked like eight track cassette tapes. And we had seven of them, and I had to switch them out. And I took one home in my purse and everything like that I didn't really understand all of that. But I learned just by doing and the lady never came back for from her maternity. So I, I was their medical biller, and then I was recruited to be in another office and, and then my, my I, I worked in the industry for 20 years. And then my daughter was graduating high school. And honestly, I just became burnt out burnt out with the whole industry, just tired of all the red tape and you want to help patients. But every one of them has different insurance. And there's it's such a game. And I became I guess, jaded by the whole process. And I wanted something different. And I was tired of being tethered to a particular location. And the but that's all I knew. And that's all my whole family knows, we've only known that you go work for somebody. And no one in my family was really an entrepreneur, no one. And I was like, I don't know what I'm doing. And the company that I was working for my last, my last corporate gig was managed managing medical imaging company, and we had MRI centers in different parts of the country. And that company was closing. And so I'm like, Okay, I need to find another job. But see, I was director of operations and the, the head guy said, Hey, stay, help clean up this mess or close things down. So I stayed to the very bitter end. And that was a horrendous type of 7:40 process. Because you have to let people go, you have to talk with vendors that the company can't pay, you have to sell MRI equipment that you have no idea how it got into the building to begin with higher cranes, higher construction, and it's just, it was such a big job of closing the company down and it was emotionally hard. But I knew that I did not want to find another job. I wanted something different. And we I had decided like maybe it's time, maybe it's time to do something different. Well, my husband and I we love to camp and we like to, to just explore. And that's just what we do. We we can drive aimlessly, we can just like to go to all these little nooks and crannies. And about that time in about 2011 he was saying let's get a little camper so we can camp and do little weekend things and I looked at him and I said why not be cool if we could just live in an RV, like full time and just meander around and have a job or we could just work from anywhere. It did not take him but two seconds for him to start researching and we because we still had that corporate job our intent was Alright, we're gonna find a place to go we we ended up selling everything we had. So that we downsized and we bought a 38 foot motorhome and Alfa see diesel pusher. And in 2011 we moved into that vehicle full time. And that was like okay, the safety net type thing is is breaking because I was still working for that company. And I needed to go to different parts of the country to close down right where I centered well Instead of me flying back and forth from the home office to, you know, to another part of the country, Monday through Friday, then go back for the weekends, like my husband's a musician and, and his schedule is very flexible. It's like, you know what I'd rather us be together and let's just go to take the RV. And we were renting in Florida at the time. And it's like, I have no, I have no desire to stay or buy property in Florida. So we have our RV, like, we sold everything. We're living in the RV, let's just go. And that last few months that I was with the corporate life, we were in the RV. But then I was like, Okay, what am I going to do? Like, what kind of job Can I have? And I, I found in research because I had been in an industry for 20 years. That's all I knew. I didn't know, I had no idea of the wonderful ways people can earn a living and have freedom and have just love what they do. And I, in research on what kind of company can I create? What can I do? I came across the word virtual assistant. And I was like, Huh, what is this, and reading the job description and all of that it was like, Well, I do all of that stuff. Now anyway. And I haven't really seen my boss in the years that I worked for him, maybe five or six times in person. So I'm kind of like his virtual manager, right? So I can do this, I can do this. So I should have in hindsight, I started growing my side business. Before I like, jumped off. And that is the biggest thing. But seeing that I had this, I had this weird mindset. I had this mindset that if I were to, if I were to work on my business, even though the company I was working for the time involved, was hard, but it wasn't as long. 12:20 I had the time to get started on it, I could make the time, right, I can make it a priority. But somehow if I was working on something for myself, I was cheating. The company I was working for weird, the weird thing. And I had never known to like, work on something and build something for myself. But I waited until the job was completely done. Before I really really hit the ball rolling and I started networking, when just getting my, my my face out there because the only people that I knew were in the medical industry. And I I didn't know what kind of businesses were out there. So in we went back to Missouri to be our home base. That's where my husband and I had grown up. And we we went to start start our business. And at first it was a virtual assistant business because I would work on practically anything that small business would need. And it was just me and freelancing. And then I soon realized that most folks need help talking with their clients, their prospects, and just the cold communication. And all of that entails on what does your website look like? Well, I like working on websites, so I helped him with that. Then social media and being consistent in that email publications, direct mail newsletters, all 14:13 there, there's 14:15 podcasts, there's videos, there's all this the publications that we do and content marketing and the more I studied on marketing my own business and making connections and how I could scale my communication I'm already doing face to face networking, well, how do I What are effective ways to stay in contact right with folks and that was through social media and through through emails and in some of my clients do direct mail, newsletters and things like that. And I soon grew a team to lead a virtual team and I recently just Shout out, it's like, you know, we don't do general virtual assistant where we do content marketing tasks, we take the burden off of the the hundreds of details that are involved in getting our getting seen out in the virtual world out in the digital world. So what my team and I do with Scrivener solutions, we take that burden off. And a lot of our clients have to do everything themselves. I relate to that I did everything myself at first. And, but there's stages, it's like, okay, I want to implement a social media plan, for example, right and go back to to where we first started, oh, my goodness, it's such a pain to be talking or to be out there on social media, I can relate social media, we do that. And we do it a lot in Scrivener solutions. But for me personally, there's one platform that I like to be in, because it's fun. The other platforms I'm in, and I do engage in, but I have helped with that. But it wasn't always that way. Right. And at first, when it was just me, myself and I, in my company, what I would do is schedule time to just block off time and spend an hour. And think of what I'm going to post for the next week or two, just pre think, you know, what am I What am I want to say? And is there something that inspires me? And? And is there a cute post, and I would just get into the habit of I need a post, excuse me a post today, right? And that just worked that muscle, it's like, Okay, I have the consistency, people are seeing me out there. And I had I was involved in in that local networking group. And I also would post into there that group on a consistent basis. And even though and it was mainly Facebook, I did have a LinkedIn, I thought of LinkedIn at the time as simply an online resume. Right. And I wasn't there at first. And I think that I mean, we see folks that have been doing it a long time, and they're everywhere, literally everywhere. But they didn't start that way. So when you're first starting out, or if it's just an office of you, it's okay to be active in one place, find something that that you can be active in and then think ahead, train yourself to think ahead and, and schedule to use a scheduling tool in Facebook, we just schedule right there on on the on the page. And then you can use other other tools buffer Hootsuite or any other third party tools for other things. And so I started with Facebook, and then I would add in at the time, Twitter and then LinkedIn and I did similar posts, but I scheduled them out. And so then I was on three platforms. And at the time was five days a week I at that time, I chose not to post on the weekends in that manner. I would do like organic ones or scheduled ones. 18:46 And not long after that I hired Sharon to be on my team. And she is my social media manager. She She leads all of our social media and I got her into the routine and training her like this is what I want on that. And we soon we're doing the same thing for clients and helping them find their voice and everything like that, to get that baseline and see for my social media, my baseline being out there that branding part of it to be present. My team does that for me. Thank heavens, you know, like for for my blog posts for my podcast for any video or whatever that needs to be publicized. I'm not worrying about Okay, I got to get it on social media. My team already knows that. So that's, that's something to where I found that the value of the details of what am I going to say when I can hire Sharon, who's literally she was a cheerleader for the Tampa Bay Rays years ago. So she is my cheerleader on my team and she is fantastic. Stick of, you know, cheering me on. And I love how she does our social posts. And my clients. I mean, our clients, they love that because it's like, we're on our client side, and we draw things out that our clients are to maybe bashful, right? Are they? posting on social media? I think sometimes we feel boastful. 20:26 Now do you? Do you think it takes some time to get used to either the client what you're posting, or you're getting comfortable posting for a client, knowing how they think and knowing how, because everyone kind of has their feel their, you know, their, their, how they talk? Is it? How long does it take you to kind of really meld with a customer to start posting in their behalf? Because I know, that's a scary thing for me to think about. 20:57 Well, the the thing is, and what I had found is, you know, we we learn from, and I don't want to call this a mistake, but what I've had a lot of learning opportunities, and there are I have been too anxious maybe to take on a social media client, because that's where they're at is only social media, they're not creating what I call a core piece of content, a core piece of content is either a blog post, a podcast, or a video, what is that main message that you're going to be right? You know, expressing. And without that, see, with that main message, let's say, I have a life coach for a client, for example, and she does a weekly video. Well, for us, we can help her work up that video to get on her podcast. And then we would disseminate that out through email and through social, but we can draw things out, 22:01 right? So you're you're actually she says, right, so you're actually taking content from someone that they have something that they've done and reusing that same stuff on multiple platforms, multiple technology, from blogs, to, you know, post to this. 22:18 And that's really what social media is, is, is sharing our ideas and beliefs. And if you don't have it on your website, or in your videos, then, you know, how can you hire somebody to share what you have, right? So and it does take time, though we do have different types of clients, we have an association where we want to make sure and we don't know, the association leader will review the social posts before we publish them. Because sometimes we may I say something not not not disrespectful, but we may highlight a non member not knowingly, right, or something like that, whatever the rules were laid. But we also want to make sure that our clients have a look and feel, but we have an approval process. And a lot of times within three months, there is a level of comfort that they say, you know what, I don't even want to look at these anymore. I want to focus on this other stuff. Because if something comes out, and they say, you know, I don't really like that image, or I really don't like that. We can delete it. Yeah, you know, but that it does take communication. And I am really big on having that communication with our clients. I've had some early on clients that wanted us to take care of their social platform of choice. And we struggled so much because it was like they they just dump the work. You know, they said here, do it. And then they disappeared. It's like, we don't even know you very well. And then you look at their website. And they're so inactive. So I won't even take a client anymore unless they believe in the power of content marketing and want to want to want to go through that process of sticking their neck out for other people to get to know them because they know that if they set you know broadcast their message in one way, whether it's video audio, or the written word that they will attract followers. And then what we do in the in the in the back office, you know behind the scenes, is we help hold up their platform, because we're taking care of all of those little tiny details. Write, so that they can focus on their message. And that we can push their buttons, I like to say we like to push our clients, but 25:08 that is so big and also multiple platforms it's so for me, for instance, I don't get a lot of information, I don't do a lot of blogs, I don't. I don't go to blogs, to learn stuff many people do. And that's why I think it's so important to do things on multiple platforms, because I get my stuff from from podcasts, I do a lot of stuff with podcast and, but I know a lot of people that don't listen to podcasts, they will, they would rather go to a blog, they would rather go to these other platforms. And if you can affect efficiently, get content out on multiple, the same content, reuse the same stuff on multiple platforms. That is that is absolutely huge. And the thing is, I'm not good at blogs, I would need to hire you to go and do stuff like that, because that's just not where I'm, that's not my forte, that's not where I'm at. But it's very critical that that platform gets used as well. 26:03 And there's what I like to do for podcasts, what I do for my podcast is I record it, and then I summarize it for the show notes. And then it's also on my website as a blog post with an embedded, you know, an embedded recorder or audio player. So it helps with also with SEO, and sometimes sometimes I'll draw out, it's like, I had this content that if I did it a little bit different way. And like did a tutorial, that's another piece of content, it's basically the same thing, but I did a video of showing something on let's say MailChimp, and I just dove right in and, and showed on MailChimp and I had like a tutorial video. 26:56 And then 26:59 I posted that on YouTube, then I also posted a little brief description on my website, embedded the video, but then I had off of that video another piece of content, which was some people really like checklist instead of watching the video they want to go through. And so it's like, all I have to do is make a blog post with a little images of the exact steps. And that's a separate one with a little downloadable printable, you know, print pretty version of the steps, right? It's basically an operating procedure of how to do whatever. So for me, I'm, and that's just duplicating it, and you have a little bit different titles, and then you can do some things with your key words, on the blog post. But also from the social media standpoint. It we like it that we can have a an audio piece. And we can direct people to the podcast to if it's a libsyn link, if it is an iTunes link, something like that, and say, Hey, that just broadcasts that a new episode, then we can go in a little deeper and then and draw something out of the episode that would appear on the blog post and point the person to the blog post with the embedded audio player. So that's more than one opportunity to say the same thing in different ways. And you're drawing out the ideas and and that's what we like to do is take that core piece of content and dissect it, I guess you can say 28:50 and God that is so important in it. And I didn't even realize that until maybe a year or so ago that how you can reuse the same content in different ways to absolutely hit a much bigger, bigger audience. Absolutely. That's that is a that's probably one of the biggest learnings I've had in the last couple years is to reuse that because it's hard to come up with content. Good core content is for me is hard to come out with. So it's like, man, if I can reuse that, especially if I can have someone else do that because I'm just not adept at that. That is that is absolutely fantastic. 29:25 And another tool that we just started using it's called headliner. And are you familiar with? 29:33 Yeah, love headline. Yeah, 29:34 I like that, that you know, you just have an image it does a pull out a little clip. And that's a different type of social posts. And it makes your social feed. Interesting, right. And we use you wear all the time experiment and I love what we do because we have different our different clients. You different tools. So we are introduced to different things. And a lot of our clients come to us and they, they use our systems, you know, they, that's what they come to. And that's why I shifted from being a virtual assistant company, as more general administrative stuff, to focus on content marketing, because we have created systems in our company, we've experimented and we actually use, I let my staff loose on my website on my stuff for Scrivener solutions website, and for the gala, scrivener.com website. For both of those, that's our playground, to where if you break it, that's okay. But you know, we're in and following a lot of content marketing news, and what's trending and what should we do? And sometimes our clients are not ready for that, you know, or they feel terrible, because they're not in that, that space, it's like, you know, you don't have to be you need to it all, all. Content Marketing is and another word for it is, is relationship marketing. Yeah, we just need to take a deep breath and just say, How do I communicate to folks? And how can I communicate to whoever you hire, whatever team you build, to help you communicate your message. So that you can be more effective and have more reach, you know, 31:39 and I, you know, going back to your story, and that's one of the things that I, you know, from, from an entrepreneur standpoint, that I absolutely love about your story, and all the stuff that you're doing is, you didn't have a huge grand plan, you didn't have a huge grand idea of your ultimate goal of where you are today, you know, had you tried to think of back then of what you're doing today, you would have not, would have not started you have not going it's that I just love the story of you making the decision. Moving forward, what's the next thing I can do to progress to my dream, which is the freedom which that that is, and to me, that is so, so big that so many people want is that freedom. And what's funny is now, not only have you done that, and you've created that, you know that the true entrepreneur, you started your company, you did this, but what you're doing is actually helping other entrepreneurs, kind of do the same thing. Because we don't understand a lot of that stuff. We don't we're not doing that stuff. We're not the expert to that stuff. But you actually use the system develop the system to help other people use the system. 32:58 That's fantastic. 32:59 I, I am so what lights me up is the ability to work from anywhere. And I find that just an awesome opportunity that each and every one of us have. And you were saying, you know, I think that there's going to be there's more and more people trying to do this side gig, right, you know, from and, and they wish that they could do it full time, or they don't have enough time to do this. They don't have enough time, you know, we we will find enough time to do the things that we really want to do. And and it will it shifts, but there is uncertainty. And there will be something that happens that you say no more. And I'll have to be honest. I mean, the more years that I'm in this, it's like there is no I jokingly say, the more years that I'm an entrepreneur, the less employable I am. I mean, I am so unemployable I just nobody will want me to hire me for their company and I don't want to go Yeah, because I want to have I want to be able to have my office anywhere in the world that I want. If I wanted to move to Colorado for three months, just because I want to and or if I want to have I mean what's big for for my husband and I is that we have nomadic stents. We may be going for four to six weeks and we will now we don't drive around our our big beast is what we call it the 38 foot diesel pusher. We travel even smaller. We travel in our 98 Jeep Cherokee with a rooftop tent. We have solar we have a little refrigerator. And we live out of that for four to six weeks at a time. And we are nomadic. And we, we want to go on roads, where that 38 foot RV will not go, right. And we have gone on so many adventures. And we get so excited. And it's a challenge for us. We're in the middle of, of nowhere. And it's like, oh my gosh, we've got 4g, oh, stay right here. Let's 35:28 Don't move, don't move. 35:29 We're gonna stay here for three days. All right. And we'll we'll work or we were in hot springs, North Carolina, just outside of, of they're just a tiny little town. Beautiful, beautiful. And we're we're going across to a little area in Tennessee, we've stayed there for almost a week. And we had absolutely no service. So we had to pack up every day, go to the little tiny library in town, and we'd work and then we drive back and in pop up the the rooftop tent. And doing that we could stay home and do the same routine and be really stressful about how our business is going. But each time because every time we would go, I'd be stressed out, oh my gosh, we're gonna be going on this, this thing and I'm not prepared. Well, we're never prepared fully for anything in life. So we just we had our deadline, we were gonna go. And we learn more from what we want to do and how we want to grow our business. On those trips, right, and our business has grown every time that we've done that we found what our priorities are, what, what makes us more passionate, and, you know, it shaped our decisions, but in roughing it for four to six weeks. And and we are it takes a little while but we are preparing for a bigger nomadic trip. And so we're laying that foundation now on how our business should run. And we challenge ourselves to say, Okay, we've got to shake things up. There's a and, and challenge ourselves and get out of our regular routine. Otherwise, we're going to be the woulda, coulda, shoulda, people, right. And so I get fired up that I love that we have the opportunity to work from anywhere. And it bothers me that you have to clock in people, so many people, I just have to clock in and, and they're I don't know, I have these, these reflections of the old Dunkin Donuts commercials of the guy hunched over shoulders like time to make the donuts, you know, and I'm used to feel that way when I'd go to work. And now I don't it's an adventure every day. And I love to hope to have the, you know, help my clients to where they can have the freedom that they want whatever they they want. And if helping them with the details of social media and website updates and, and sending out emails, helps them achieve their goals. I love being behind the scenes to make them look good. And in being in you know, sometimes it's hard and sometimes I've had these fleeting thoughts of, Okay, I want to go back I it's just too hard. You know, this build is has come and this payment has not come so. And it's I think sometimes I feel like I'm on a I don't know if this is a thing, but it's their entrepreneurial bipolarism that's one day I can be on top of the world the other day, it's just like Dang. But it's every year it gets better and better. And it just things are are so great. And I had a moment of I am so glad I am and free of working the corporate life because I was about almost three years ago. So my, my older brother he he was very, very ill. He's been very ill for a long time. But it was at a point that family needed to come and I could drop everything and take my parents to Chicago and we were there with my brother We were there with him in the hospital and my 70 year old parents from, from the country to that, when they're worried about their son, right to drive in Chicago traffic, that's just terrible. So I had an email, I was able to

Diabetes Connections with Stacey Simms Type 1 Diabetes
"We Treat the Data" - DreaMed Diabetes Wants To Help Lift The Burden

Diabetes Connections with Stacey Simms Type 1 Diabetes

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 29, 2020 46:52


There's new help for doctors who want to treat the person with diabetes and not feel overwhelmed with data. The people at DreaMed Diabetes are behind the brains of the Medtronic 780G system, but they're hoping to help thousands of people who may never use an insulin pump by making diabetes data a lot easier for doctors to use. This week, CEO and Founder Eran Atlas explains their Advisor Pro system to Stacey. Study in Nature Medicine about DreaMed Diabetes  Join the Diabetes Connections Facebook Group! In TMSG a big award for a doctor you all may know better as an Amazing Racer and I learn the word Soccerista. Read about Emerson in her own words here  In Innovations – women and diabetes tech design. Read the DiabetesMine Article here Sign up for our newsletter here This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please contact your health care provider. Check out Stacey's new book: The World's Worst Diabetes Mom! ----- Use this link to get one free download and one free month of Audible, available to Diabetes Connections listeners! ----- Get the App and listen to Diabetes Connections wherever you go! Click here for iPhone      Click here for Android   Episode Transcription (beta transcription - computer only) Stacey Simms  0:00 Diabetes Connections is brought to you by One Drop created for people with diabetes by people who have diabetes by Gvoke. hypopen, the first premix autoinjector for very low blood sugar, and by Dexcom take control of your diabetes and live life to the fullest with Dexcom.   Announcer  0:23 This is Diabetes Connections with Stacey Simms.   Stacey Simms  0:28 This week, there is so much data when it comes to diabetes that even your doctor would like an easier way to interpret numbers and make dosing recommendations. A new first of its kind technology called DreaMed may help   Eran Atlas  0:43 with the use of your system. I can stop being a technician I can learn to being a mathematical or an engineer, I learned how to be a physician and I wanted to continue to go and practice medicine. I don't want to go and practice engineering.   Stacey Simms  0:55 That's DreaMed co founder and CEO Eran Atlas, talking about the reaction he's getting from people who use their system will explain what it's all about and how it could help in Tell me something good. A big award for a doctor you all may know better as an amazing racer, and I learned the word soccerista. innovations. Let's talk about women and diabetes tech design. This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please contact your health care provider. Welcome to another week of Diabetes Connections. I'm so glad to have you along. I'm your host, Stacey Simms, we aim to educate and inspire about type 1 diabetes by sharing stories of connection, as well as stories of technology. And that's what I'm talking about this week. And I went into this episode, I gotta tell you sort of thinking it would be one thing, because I know many of you are very familiar with the technology and these companies. DreaMed is behind the algorithm that's inside the Medtronic 780 G, which was just approved in the US. And we actually are talking to Medtronic and our very next episode about that many other things. But the agreement with Medtronic and DreaMed was it was done several years ago. And DreaMed while I'm sure very proud of that algorithm, they've moved forward, they moved on they want to talk about something else. It was very interesting for me to go through this interview, and I hope you enjoy it as well, for more of the mundane, less technology and more basic, how much more basic can you get with diabetes and insulin? I'll give a quick update at the very end of the show. I had mentioned in a previous show, we had some insurance changes, a bunch of you wants to know how that was going. Hey, yay, insurance changes are always fun. So I will talk more in detail about that at the end of the show. But in terms of insulin, yeah, we're switching types. Don't you love that? We had been on novolog for many years. And then when Benny was I want to say about eight or nine. We switched insurance and they switched us to human log and we have been on that ever since he's 15 and I guess it's time to go back to no vlog. So I'll talk more about that at the end of the show. Luckily, we don't have any issues or haven't had so far I know a lot of people do. Fingers crossed. So yeah, insurance update and more at the end of the show. All right. Interview with the CEO of DreaMed in just a moment. But first diabetes Connections is brought to you by One Drop. One Drop is diabetes management for the 21st century. One Drop was designed by people with diabetes for people with diabetes. One Drops glucose meter looks nothing like a medical device you've seen this. It is sleek, compact, seamlessly integrates with the award winning One Drop mobile app, sync all your other health apps to One Drop to keep track of the big picture and easily see health trends. And with a One Drop subscription, you get unlimited test strips and lancets delivered right to your door. Every One Drop plan also includes access to your own certified diabetes coach have questions but don't feel like waiting for your next doctor visit your personal coach is always there to help go to Diabetes connections.com and click on the One Drop logo to learn more. My guest this week is the co founder and CEO of DreaMed and is really company with the slogan we treat the data you treat the person Eran Atlas talked to me about everything from their partnership with Medtronic. As I said they develop the algorithm that's inside the newly approved 780 G to their newer technology. And this is all about helping doctors better interpret the data they're getting from CGM and pumps. He mentioned a brand new study on this, comparing their algorithm very favorably to outcomes from Yale and Barbara Davis diabetes centers. And I will link that up in the show notes at Diabetes connections.com. I learned a lot from this conversation. I really hope you enjoy it as well. Here's my talk with Eran Atlas of DreaMed. Eran, thank you so much for joining me. I'm excited to learn more about this. Thanks for coming on.   Eran Atlas  4:49 Thank you very much for having me.   Stacey Simms  4:50 All right. Tell me just generally, what is DreaMed What does this mean for the diabetes community?   Eran Atlas  4:56 Well, you know, for a certain amount of years A lot of effort has been invested on, let's get more accurate glucose measurements, let's get more continuous glucose measurements, let's get those glucose measurements and insulin measurements being connected. And everybody told us that if we will have more data, more accurate data, more accessible data, all the problems about managing people with diabetes will be solved, right, because the patient will be more knowledgeable, the providers will be more knowledgeable, will have the tools to get into a better decision. Now DreaMed started as a technology team within one of the biggest Institute's that treat people with diabetes, Type One Diabetes here in Israel. And what we saw there is that data is not all and and sometimes in order to make this analogy, these logic thinking between data and decisions, there is a lot of gap that you need to jump in order to make that move. You need to be experience, you need to know what is important, what's not important, and you need to be able to make the right decision in the right time for the right patient. So what dreamed is taking on is we would like to take the responsibility of allowing providers and patients to make better decisions about insulin dosing. When we started in 2007, the Holy Grail was okay, let's try to develop these automated insulin delivery algorithm that will make these decisions in real time. And we managed to do a prototype and we published these results as were the first publication in New England Journal of Medicine. And finally, after didn't several clinical trials send people home, we were the first group in the world that sent people home with automated insulin delivery, we licensed that to Medtronic diabetes. But the cohort of people that are going to be using are currently being using automated insulin deliveries pretty small depend on the amount of people with diabetes type one type two that needs to make decisions about insulin. So what dreamed is now focusing is on developing those and commercializing those algorithms that will be able to take all the vast amount of data that's out there, and it can be accessible from cloud to cloud, mobile and everything. And how do we get into the most accurate, personalized decision about how much insulin a specific person with diabetes need to infuse? Not just in terms of real time, but more about looking on the treatment plan? How to optimize carb ratios? How to optimize basal treatment, how to optimize insulin sensitivity factor? What is the difference between a patient on an insulin pump to a patient that is using multiple daily injections based on only different kinds of types of injection regimen? That's what DreaMed right now to do. So we would like to make sure that we will treat the data. So a person with diabetes can continue to live in a provider can start dealing with the person that is in front of them and not just looking into the computer, making himself a technician with numbers and decide what to do.   Stacey Simms  8:04 you have heard the podcast. So you know, I'm easily overwhelmed by data and information. I listened to everything you said. And here and I'm trying and here's what I heard. We want to make life easier for you. There's too much information that comes your way even with accurate CGM. Even with automated insulin delivery, there's so much data and information that unless you are a numbers person, you know, you may not be able to crunch it yourself. And I know you, you mentioned already a lot more down the road. But if I could focus on that the automated insulin for just a moment and come back to some of the other things. Can you just tell me as I'm listening and please correct me if I'm wrong, Vinnie, my son is using control IQ with the algorithm that's inside the Tandem pump using partnering with Dexcom. Is this sort of that? Is that the first step that you're talking about when you talked about automated insulin? Is it the algorithm that controls the pump in the CGM together?   Eran Atlas  8:56 Correct. We started in 2007. Building such an algorithm at the time we called him the medical doctor, the MD logic artificial pancreas. And the idea of what is different between the algorithm that we developed back then and the one that you have right now in control IQ, is how do you make these real time decision about how much insulin to infuse and, and while control IQ, as you may know, is using MPC technique, a Model Predictive Control, and you have that model of Medtronic that uses a different kind of type of control. It's coming from the engineering world, we were strong in understanding how physician analyze data and what we did is we took a technology called fuzzy logic, and I thought you know what fuzzy logic is but I'm sure you have it in your washing machine, and you have it in trains in China and everything. And the idea behind fuzzy logic is that you know why the world is not one and zero black and why there has to be a mathematical way to make decisions based on gray areas. And it's pretty much the way that we're thinking as a person. So, we took his the way that physicians analyze data, make a decision and automated using dispatches fuzzy logic. And we develop these automated insulin delivery algorithm. And we tested it and when he got the the ability to communicate with Medtronic pumps, and now, we have our some part of our algorithm is going is inside the Medtronic 780G that they announced that they got to see mark for that in June DC or in there, I'm sure that they're going after that the FDA, the main difference between what we did and what happened in control IQ and Medtronic 670 G, is the fact that we were the first that play with the changing automatically both the basal and bolus. And we have the ability to predict glucose into the future and dose insulin based on the predicted glucose. Some of the elements that we have, you have also in control IQ. And I noticed Ctrl Q is working pretty well. But one of the things that we had in that time is the understanding that there's a lot of sensitivities off the patient that these AI D algorithm will need to use. So for example, when you are using your control IQ, you still need to go through your meals, right? So you need to optimize your carb ratios. And some of the safety limits are still dependent upon the insulin sensitivity factor off the pump or the open loop basal rate of the pump. So the algorithm is like riding on that basal rate. So we had a similar methodology. And we developed these what we call today, the DreaMed Advisor. It's that algorithm that optimize the sensitivity factors. So I back into the time we have two pieces of our technology. We only licensed one of it to Medtronic. And we continue to develop the other one because we believe that the other one will have a much more larger number of people with diabetes.   Stacey Simms  12:01 So tell me about that other one, where will it be used? Or you're talking about people with type two or people who use insulin, any type?   Eran Atlas  12:08 So that's an interesting question. So we just we started with an algorithm that basically optimize open loop pump therapy, and we took data from CGM at the beginning. And history of pump delivery basically did an automated way what any physician is doing in the clinic right now. And we developed that technology we got we won a grant from Helmsley Charitable Trust back then in 2015. I out of 70 applicant applicants got $3.5 million to evaluate the performance of this algorithm versus doctors from Joslin Diabetes Center, the School of Medicine yell, Barbara Davis in Colorado University of Florida, within three sites in Europe, with the intention to show that if you are a physician, any kind of type of physician that uses all algorithm, you'll get into the same clinical outcome as if that patient data was analyzed by doctors from these leading academic diabetes centers. And yesterday, the results of the study were published in Nature medicine, showing that we are doing the same outcome. As expert Doc's. If you can think about it, 60% of the cohort, we type 1 diabetes, the adults one are being treated by primary cares where we can do to the to the glucose control of these patients, if we will equip those primary cares with a technology that helps them analyze data and get the same performance as special endocrinologist, what we can do to the touchpoint of changing the insulin treatment of a patient, if instead of the patient will need to wait 3, 4, 6, 8 months to see his endo will have some sort of virtual place that he can send the data and share the data with the algorithm the algorithm will make all the calculation and recommend how to change the insulin dosage or the insulin treatment plan of that patient. So that was the what we did so far. And when we approach FDA, we that FDA didn't know how to regulate such a device. Yeah, because there was no predicate to what we offer to FDA to do. So what we managed to do with a very strong partnership with the FDA team is to decide and we will regulate this device as a new product. So in 2018, we got FDA clearance based on 510 k de novo. So we are the first in the US system that regulated a product that an algorithm can take continuous glucose sensor data and make recommendations to our healthcare providers how to optimize insulin treatment for our patients.   Stacey Simms  14:44 So I'm trying to break it down because that does sound like such a useful tool. I'm an adult with type one, I'm seeing a general practitioner who may not know the nuances of treatment, they take my CGM data, they take my dosing data either I'm assuming either from a pump or from me They send it to your service, the care provider, the doctor then gets the data back and can give the patient advice based on your technology using the expertise and you know, from the algorithm. And that new study said that advice is comparable to Yale and Barbara Davis and all the places that you indicated. Did I get that right?   Unknown Speaker  15:21 Exactly.   Stacey Simms  15:28 Right back to Eran in just a moment. And he's going to be explaining their agreements with other diabetes groups like Glooko, like Tidepool, but first diabetes Connections is brought to you by Dexcom. And do you know about Dexcom clarity, it's their diabetes management software. And for a long time, I just thought it was something our endo used, you can use it on both a desktop or as an app on your phone. It's an easy way to keep track of the big picture. I try to check it about once a week, it really helps Benny and me dial back and see longer term trends, and help us not to overreact to what happened for just one day or even just one hour. The overlay reports help add context to Benny's glucose levels and patterns. You can even share the reports with your care team, which makes appointments a lot more productive. managing diabetes is not easy, but I feel like we have one of the very best CGM systems working for us Find out more at Diabetes connections.com and click on the Dexcom logo. Now back to my interview with Eran Atlas   Eran Atlas  16:27 And the way that it has been flowing in so we sign a data partnership with gluco. With Dexcom, we take all we have our own platform, so the patient can download the data at home, he doesn't have to get physically to see the provider, which is super important, especially now when it COVID-19 is and then the data is coming to our system, all the provider needs to do is just push a button request the recommendation here we'll get that recommendation and nothing's going to get you know, blurred the things you know, please consider looking on. He will get exact numbers that the algorithm will tell them listen at 6am change the call ratio, that specific patient from one to 15 to one to 10 exact numbers.   Stacey Simms  17:11 All right, I have two questions. From a very practical point of view. I'm curious if you've run into a provider who says I can do this better? I don't need this. Sure. I don't know the difference between Lantus and Tresiba. I'm a general practitioner. But why do I need something like this? Have you run into resistance from providers? Or are they I could see the flip side, thank goodness for taking this off my hands because I don't have the time to learn all of this.   Eran Atlas  17:37 So there are two types of providers. So first of all, that the approval that we have right now the clearance that we have with FDA is just for type one people on insulin pump, we are pursuing the advance of the indication for use for the injection cohort and with the intention to submit it by the end of the year. But in the study that we did, and right now we are we already deployed the system in several clinics around the US. You know, we are in Stanford University, University of Florida, New York University, Texas Children's so that we are already people who have already more than 1000 people that use the technology. And so when we heard for them, these couple of things. So number one, it became they curious, they want to check, we want to make sure that we didn't make any false recommendations. And they're not agreeing 100% with anything that we are recommending. So we always allow them to edit. If there's anything that they would like to edit, they can edit it before they share it with a patient. But as time goes on, and they building their confidence with a system, they are relying on the system, and they're really feeling how they've helped them. So for example, Dr. Greg Forlenza from Barbara Davis said, you know, what would you use of your system, I can stop being a technician, I can learn to be a mathematical or an engineer, I learned how to be a physician. And I wanted to continue to go and practice medicine, I don't want to go and practice engineering. So this is one of the feedbacks. And I think that when we'll code to the mass numbers of providers, there will be different kind of providers, some of them will be resistance, but I think that one thing we'll see the clinical benefit and the response of their patients, I think that it will endorse that and it will build our confidence with it.   Stacey Simms  19:17 I love that that he doesn't want to be an engineer, he wants to be a physician. We should all be so lucky to have a doctor who wants to do that. My other question on this and I'm apologizing just throw things at you to mess up the system. But the first thing I thought of was somebody like my son who's a not an unbiased person, but he's a great kid. He is not a perfect diabetes person. Perfect example that I think would mess up your algorithm. This morning. He had I don't even know coffee, hot chocolate glass of juice. I don't know what he had. But he had something as he's going to virtual school to. He's he's right down the hall for me so I could go ask him, but I can see that his blood sugar has already gone up to 140 it'll drift back down thanks to control IQ. I don't know if he bolus for that drink. If or If people just after, what is the algorithm do when people aren't, quote, perfect diabetics, because you can adjust the carb ratio and the basal rate all you want, but most people with type one aren't automatons who are going to fit an algorithm?   Eran Atlas  20:14 Oh, that's an excellent question. I think that at the end, if you are creating something for the use of people, you have to understand that nobody's perfect. And you have to make sure that the recommendation that you are providing will be a right on the spot, because otherwise it will cause safety issues. So what we are doing, when we're taking the data, number one that we are doing, we are trying to split that data into events, and understand, okay, that's a meal event, that's a bonus event, that is events that usually debatable could make an influence because there's no BOCES a meal. Before afterwards, we also apply different kinds of techniques to automatically detect places where the patient ate, and the bowls for that, or didn't report the name use these calculator in order to calculate the amount of light and and then for each one of the events, we are trying to ask the algorithm is asking himself Okay, is it a issue of dosing problem? Or is it an issue of behavioral problem? Do we see the high glucose posted meal because the carb ratio is wrong, or because the patient just deliveries, bolus 1520 minutes after the meal, and there's no way that the glucose could be down? So we are from our experience, because we are so much integrated with doctors that understand data. And because you know, I'm here, ces 2007 is closing my 14th. year on February, we know so much about people with diabetes, how they behave. So we programmed the algorithm in that way. So the recommendation that we are delivering is on the spot. If we're saying that we don't have enough events that imply on changing and dozing will not issue that we can personalize even the behavioral messages and calculate what is the most important behavioral that will improve the timing range. And we're not issuing 20 types of behavioral messages. Learn to be have a message note, we're issuing no more than three. And we're very specific. So if we're seeing something that happened specifically on the breakfast of Benny world, tell him listen, Benny, please pay attention on breakfast, deliver the insulin, 10 minutes before the meal, because that's what's set what makes your entire day being hot. Or if we're seeing that when he has an iPhone, you just eat whatever he finds in the refrigerator. And we see it from from the dynamics, we're trying to teach him how to compensate for a high pole in a better way.   Stacey Simms  22:46 It's absolutely fascinating. I think that's tremendous that you're building in the behavior as well. And you can really account for it back to the automated systems. And forgive me, Eran, you used a term open loop rather than closed loop and pardon my ignorance, you explain what that is?   Eran Atlas  23:02 Sure. So open loop is what we call using pump therapy with CGM or with self management blood glucose meters without any ID system. So though some people call it sensor augmented pump therapy, some people say just a regular insulin pump therapy. Some people say it's open loop, there is no algorithm that closed the loop in real time and command in real time how much insulin to infuse on an insulin pump based on CGM data.   Stacey Simms  23:33 Okay, if we go back to the algorithm that is more closed loop and kind of looking ahead for what you're planning on that we've already talked about mealtime, boluses, and how challenging they are for people, whether it's estimating correctly or remembering to do them or doing them late. What's your plan for that? I know there were a few AI systems that are looking to try to do away with a manual mealtime bolus is that in the cards here.   Eran Atlas  23:56 So for us is not on the cards at a moment. I think that what we are trying to look is is beyond the AIP system. It is how to help those with type two on insulin, how to have those on injections because think about it a couple of years ago, nobody knew what's going on with people that still doing injections, right? None of them knew CGM you didn't know what's going on with injections because they didn't record that or they just cheating and when they sat in, in the reception area of the clinic, they to complete the paper and and try to make lottery on when they did at those doors. They're instantly now these days been available thanks to the hard work that Dexcom you know avid Medtronic is doing on the CGM space and companies like companion medical and others they're doing you're connected to and and we know other efforts of other companies. You know, no voice is doing that Louie's doing that. So all of a sudden the same problem that we had a couple of years ago when people on CGM and pumps for the type one persons and depression And the amount of data, we're not going to have it in a much, much broader population, you have about 12 million people that dose insulin in the US, but only 1 million of them are on pumps with type one. So the question is, what are you going to do with these 11 million people? And that's where our focus on that's number one, another focus that we are looking at is going into contextual data? And how can we know and combine the fact that we can know where you are from your personal life in terms of you know, if you are driving or you are walking, or you are going into a restaurant? And how to combine that information with the glucose data? And what predictive real time notification we can give you in order to improve that, and the glucose control?   Stacey Simms  25:49 Alright, wait, wait, you're gonna know where I'm driving? I'm walking to a restaurant. Wait a minute back up? Are you in my this is something in my phone? Are you using cell data?   Eran Atlas  25:58 That's easy. You know, when you're driving? Do you have a Bluetooth in the car? Yes. So the phone knows that you are connected to the Bluetooth of the car, right? Yes. So for example, if you will give the permission, our application will be have the knowledge that you are driving? Are you using navigation software?   Stacey Simms  26:17 Yes. Do you have to lift or no, I don't mean to interrupt your train of thought here. But for some reason, I just thought of the Pokemon Go app from a couple of years ago, because it knew when my kids were in the car and not walking, right. I mean, I know I sent you're probably laughing because I sound so ignorant with this stuff. But yeah, with our cell phones, I'm sure that everybody knows where we are at all times. It's   Eran Atlas  26:37 amazing. That's right. But I think again, so I'm not talking about you know, poking your privacy and everything. And it's have to be on a certain things that that the user will need to authorize, or the benefit of the user, but but potentially, many will learn driving, like they will go into any driving license, I'm sure that nobody wants a person with diabetes, that these glucose is going down or predicted to be down in next 30 minutes to start driving.   Stacey Simms  27:05 So would it give in your system, would it then give a reminder, um, you know, I'm walking into a restaurant time to bolus Is that what you're envisioning.   Eran Atlas  27:13 So again, your glucose is dropping in the next 30 minutes it please take something before you start to drive. Or we're seeing that you're going into a restaurant and you're using glucose is sky high, or going high and the high trend, please correct your glucose now before start eating, because then it will be much more difficult to correct your glucose. These are the types of things that you know are examples of how you take context and combine it together with glucose and insulin data.   Stacey Simms  27:41 It's so interesting to me, because I think, especially with the type two community who use insulin, it's a very different world than the type one community where most people well, I'm biased, because my podcast audience is so well educated. But people are thinking about it so much more often. I have lots of friends with type two, who dose insulin who don't really think about it, who don't really know, just because they're, as you said, they're seeing a general practitioner, they're not as educated. It's not a it's not a personality flaw. And I could see where this would be so helpful. Just these reminders with people with type two, have you already learned any nuances of how they want to use this kind of system? Is it different than people with type one?   Eran Atlas  28:22 So I think that within the type two population is very much dependent when there are on multiple daily injection therapy, or they're just doing basic only. So that's one big difference between type two and type one another big difference is Yeah, like you said, they're thinking about the condition differently. They are denying the fact they have a condition. I think that's much stronger than people with type one, especially teenagers with type one that you know, try to break the system and try to see what's going on. But it's still you need to find other ways to do that. And we're still studying eighth, what is the best way to deliver that to people that have type two diabetes. And that's why initially we're focusing on their providers, and try to better understand what people that are treating people with type one diabetes would like to see how we can help the providers provide a better treatment for them. That will be our first step, then when we will get these endorsement and understanding about the actual users will be much more comfortable to offer something that will go directly to the user because as you said it truly it's a different population. I remember   Stacey Simms  29:31 years ago, there was a big push and I know you were you were around. If you started in the mid 2000s, there was this big push to almost gamify type 1 diabetes, right with apps that kind of gave you rewards for checking or here's a game that would help kids learn or even adults. And it turns out that most people didn't want to think that much about it. They just wanted the system to take care of it like stop reminding me to log stop reminding me to dose handle it. Talk to me about how DreaMed will do that. Even though You are talking about reminders,   Eran Atlas  30:02 because I think that the difference between the reminders that are in the market, they used to be in the market. And what I'm trying to talk about is that those reminders were based on general timeframe. So for example, you know, you're logging into the app that you need to take your basal insulin between seven and 9am. And and now it doesn't matter if you are going just to go into deliver that it will be some sort of mechanism to just ping that, that reminder to you and will drive your crazy, right? I think that what dreamin is trying to do is a couple of things. Number one, we're not just giving them regular reminders, we're giving actionable reminders, so it will tell you to do something, because this is the right time for you to do these actions. And number two, we are trying to take off the burden of treating diabetes, you know, taking the burden off thinking about your glucose and thinking about what you need to do right now, for people that use a ID system. This is exactly what he gave them, you know, you know that there is something that looks on your glucose on a regular basis every five minutes, analyze the situation and provide your the actual dozy, but on people with with multiple daily injections are not using pumps. So there is the only way to make the insulin injected is to make some sort of a partnership with a user. So that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to create all the mechanisms that will bring this partnership between the person with diabetes on injections and the algorithms, we're trying to make sure that wherever we are issuing some sort of reminder, it will be an actionable one. And and hopefully it will be within a certain timeframe that the user is willing to accept such a reminder, because for example, if you're driving and then the system is shouting out, give insulin right now there's no way that you're going to give that insulin right because right now you're driving. But if we're able to capture the exact moment that you're open to get that reminder, and this international reminder, it's not a general one, I hope that people with diabetes will find it useful. And I think that's the thing that we are trying to learn together with the community. And to be are we personally diabetes at work for us, because at the end, it's a partnership between the person, the provider and the industry. And that's what we're trying to create. It's important for people to know that there are companies that are not in the US and might be a little bit small, but they are trying to make a difference for you. And I hope that together with what we're trying to do and what the community is trying to do, when we are partnership, we really, really be able to make that difference. Because the culture of dream ed is coming from a clinic. It's a company that the importance of making lives better is on our culture. Another thing in our countries, make sure that whatever we're issuing has a clinical benefit. We're just not not just want to have a cool product and just get more money. And I really, really optimistic about the impact that we can do on people with diabetes. And we're committed to do that   Stacey Simms  33:14 around before I let you go. Do you mind if I ask about the population with type one in Israel? Sure. I'm trying to think I know in Scandinavian countries, it's very high.   Eran Atlas  33:23 it's debatable, but it's between 30 to 50 k people in type 1 diabetes in Israel, this is it. But we don't have a lot of people with type 1 diabetes. If you're looking on the pieds all the peas are being treated by you know, academic centers, big hospital clinics, the clinic that I'm coming from, is pretty much treating a very large portion of this of the kids and adults are usually go in the same way either to a specialist, but the most of them are going into two primary cares. Where were very techie we were had a lot of a lot of people on CGM and insulin pump. We currently don't have control IQ and ease rail. It's not approved so and 670 G is not reimbursed so the majority of the cohort here in Israel are on regular pump and CGM.   Stacey Simms  34:11 This is well as I said, before we started taping, my son is planning a long trip to Israel next summer. So maybe knocking at your door if you're just some hand holding.   Eran Atlas  34:22 I will be happy to I will be happy. Don't worry. Yeah, I think I can vouch for that.   Stacey Simms  34:29 Everyone, thank you so much for joining me in explaining all this. I really appreciate it. I hope we can talk again soon.   Announcer  34:39 You're listening to Diabetes Connections with Stacey Simms.   Stacey Simms  34:45 More information in the show notes Just go to Diabetes connections.com. And every show has show notes we call them I call it an episode homepage as well because not every podcast player supports the amount of stuff I put There, every episode this year has a transcript. Every episode ever has links. And so sometimes if you go to Apple podcasts or if you listen on, you know, Stitcher or Pandora, or wherever you listen, and we are everywhere, right now, they don't support the links. So if you're ever curious, or you can't get to something, just go to the homepage and find the episode, there's a very robust search, because we're up to 325 episodes. So I wanted to make it easy for you to find what you were looking for. But when you do that, you can find more information about DreaMed, and I linked up the study as well that he mentioned, comparing their algorithm to doctors at Yale, that sort of thing. You know, I'm curious, as you listen, what you think about something like this, I feel like this podcast audience is so involved in their numbers in a way that most people in diabetes land are not. I mean, let's face it, there's very few people who are interested in DIY stuff like this audiences. I mean, I know you guys, you're very technical, you're very involved, even if you're listening, saying, hey, that's not me, the very fact that you're listening to a podcast about diabetes puts you in a different educational plane, then, you know, 90 95%, let's say, of all people with all types of diabetes, which is not a knock on them, it's just the reality of diabetes and education. So I'm really curious to see how this can help. Because as he's saying, you have a general practitioner, who's treating people who's dosing insulin, right, they're given the prescriptions out. And an algorithm like this can make it so much more precise and safe for the people who are getting those recommendations from these doctors who, you know, might really want to do good, but do not have the experience of the education in at a chronology. So that's my stance on it. We'll see what happens I'd love to know what you think. All right, innovations coming up in just a moment. And I want to share this article I found about women in diabetes a device design, but first diabetes Connections is brought to you by a new sponsor this week. I am so excited to welcome g Volk hypo pen. You know, almost everyone who takes insulin has experienced a low blood sugar. And that can be scary. A very low blood sugar is really scary. And that's where evoke hypo pen comes in Jeeva is the first auto injector to treat very low blood sugar. evoke hypo pen is pre mixed and ready to go with no visible needle. That means it's easy to use, how easy is it, you pull off the red cap and push the yellow end onto bare skin and hold it for five seconds. That's it, find out more go to Diabetes connections.com and click on the G Vogue logo. g Vogue shouldn't be used in patients with pheochromocytoma or insulinoma, visit Jeeva glucagon.com slash risk.   saw a great article that I wanted to pass along to you from the wonderful folks at diabetes mine. And the headline on this is where are the women in diabetes device design? And I'm not going to read the whole thing to you I will link it up. But the question here was all about our the shortcomings of diabetes technology a result of just the the functional design requirements the way it has to be made? Or could it be related to the fact that there aren't enough women in the medical technology design field, they did a whole survey about you know wearing this stuff, and you know where to attach it, how to put it, you know, dresses, things like that, which you know, at first, listen may sound kind of silly. But when you think about it, wearing the device, the comfort of wearing the device, the mental stress about wearing the device, these are so incredibly important, because people with diabetes men and women, as you know where this stuff 24 seven, I mean, you think about the difference between something that is clunky, that looks outdated, that, you know, just doesn't feel right in your hand. I mean, these things make a big difference in terms of how I hate to use the word compliant, right, but you know, how well we use them how much we use them how comfortable we are with them, in addition to focusing on the pump companies, and in particular Omni pod, very, very interesting take on women who work at Omnipod there, they also focus on women designed accessories for diabetes tech, because when you think about it, and they list all of these companies, you know, we've talked about a bunch of them in the past myabetic and funky pumpers spy belt tally gear pump peels, one of my book to clinic sponsors, thank you very much pump peels, these are all founded by women, because they saw the need and wanted to make life easier and better. So I'll link that up. I really thought it was a great look at a topic that we hadn't thought a lot about before. We focus a lot on what patients need to be involved people with diabetes who actually wear the gear need to be involved. But what about people who wear the gear differently and have different expectations and that by that I mean women. My daughter when she was in high school, wrote a whole paper on pocket equality and did hard research into why women's clothing doesn't have pockets and rarely has pockets that are big enough. I mean, my son puts his phone and his palm I don't know, you know, a lunchbox in his pocket, and he can fit everything in there. He doesn't think twice about it. But sometimes I think about where the heck would I put a pump, if I was wearing what I'm wearing today, right, I have any pockets. Really interesting discussion and hats off to diabetes mine for focusing on that innovations is also your chance to share hacks and tips and tricks that work for you, you know, just little things that make life better with diabetes. So you can post in the Facebook group, or you can email me, Stacey at Diabetes connections.com.   Didn't tell me something good this week, a big award for a familiar face around here. Most of you remember Dr. Nat Strand from The Amazing Race. She was the in the team of Nat and cat. And that was The Amazing Race 17, which I can't believe was 10 years ago. We talked to Dr. strand, earlier this year about working as a physician. And during this time of COVID. And how she was treating her patients. She treats patients with chronic pain and that sort of thing. And we're talking about her on tell me something good, because she is the inaugural winner of the Lisa Stern's legacy Diversity Award from the American Society of pain and neuroscience. So congratulations, Dr. strand. Of course, the ceremony was virtual, but you could follow her on Twitter and see the pictures and see what nice things people are saying about her and I will link up her Twitter account if you don't follow her already. Also, in Tell me something good. Something that popped up in my local group. Brian shared a post about his daughter Emerson about diabetes and soccer. And he said I could share it. And it's actually a story about her. It's a story by her. It is Emerson's sucker rista story playing with diabetes. And this is a column that Emerson wrote that is published on the girls soccer network, I would really urge you to read it especially if you have a child who is a high performing or wants to be a high performing or elite athlete. She talks about no days off. And how well you know I'm sure your mind went to diabetes. That was her mantra in terms of sports. And it has really helped her she says deal with soccer. And with diabetes. I'm not going to read her words here. I just think it's a great column I would urge you to read it I'll link it up on the episode homepage and I'm going to put it in the Diabetes Connections Facebook group as well. Well done Emerson really great to see the incredible hard work that it looks like you've been putting in and what a wonderful column as well. So thank you so much Brian for sharing that and for letting me talk about it a little bit here. If you have a Tell me something good story could be a birthday a diverse serie, you know, your child has published in a national print publication, you know, anything you want to focus on, that is good news in the diabetes community, please reach out and let me know, just tell me something good.   Tell me something annoying, could be the name of this segment, I just want to talk a little bit about our insurance changes, mostly to commiserate with with many who have gone through this. So as I said at the top of the show, our biggest change is now that they're going to switch insulin on us. You know, I talked to Benny about this, we are so fortunate to have a frankly, have a pretty good stockpile of insulin that we've built up. If you follow the show for a long time, you know that I've discussed his insulin needs went way up. And they have gone back down to almost pre puberty levels. But we never changed the prescription. So you know, I have unfortunately or fortunately, I don't know I have shared insulin in the Charlotte area with adults in need. We have some great local groups. And it is ridiculous that we need to do this, but we do share with each other. And I've been happy to help out on that. But we are basically out of pins. And I like to use pins as a backup. And Benny likes to have them for flexibility. You know, he'll take them sometimes. And if something's wonky with his pump, he knows he can get himself a shot, that sort of thing. But I hate the idea of changing insulins right everything's cookin right now everything's chugging along really well. I don't want to rock the boat. But I also don't want to pay $300 for a pen. So I'm going to be talking to our endocrinologist, Vinny has an appointment in two weeks, as I'm taping probably more like a week and a half as you listen. And we know we'll talk about it, then maybe have some samples, but most likely we will be switching and we did not have an issue when we switched in the past. So I have fingers crossed that it will be fine. It'll be fine. But that is annoying. And I know I don't feel like appealing and fighting if we don't need to. It's possible that novolog will work just as well for him. So let's at least find out and we'll go from there. The other issue was, of course, that we are now dealing with edgepark. And I will spare you all of the details. But I tried to do a workaround. And I'm laughing because I should know better by now. I tried to get the Dexcom prescription to stay at our pharmacy because man we've been filling it at the pharmacy for the last couple of years. And if you have already been able to do that, you know, it's like a dream. At least it is for us. It may take an extra day to get it but it's a day. It's not like they're mailing it out for you and it takes three weeks. It's been wonderful. And I just had on auto refill. And it's been great. But edgepark told me, we don't filter your pharmacy, you only can do it mail order. Well, I didn't want to wait. I didn't want to be cut short. So I let edgepark go ahead and fill the order. But then I did some detective work. And I kept calling and talking to people, because what else do I have to do, but be on the phone with these people? And I finally got someone at my insurance company to admit they would fill it at the pharmacy. But here's what she said. She said, Well, we don't like you to go to the pharmacy, because they don't often have it in stock. And I said, Come on, you know, that's not true. They can fill it in a day. They've been filling it for four years. And she said, Okay, well, you can you do a pharmacy benefit and, you know, blah, blah, blah. So I hung up the phone, and I will fill it at the pharmacy next time. I already have the order from edgepark through the mail. And I thought you know, that's just because my insurance company has a deal with edgepark. That's all that is. She's trying to discourage me from going to the pharmacy because that's their business. I get it. But how stupid is that? How outrageous is that? Oh, now you know why I saved it to the end of the show. I will keep you posted on our many adventures as this moves forward. Because Up next, I have to fill Benny's tandem pump supplies. And we've never been able to do that at the pharmacy. So I'm sure it'll be more adventures with edgepark my new pals. Ah, goodness gracious. All right. Thank you to my editor john Kenneth for audio editing solutions. Thank you. If you are still here, listening to me rant. I love you. Thank you so much for listening. I'm Stacey Simms. I'll see you back here next week. Until then, be kind to yourself.   Benny  46:35 Diabetes Connections is a production of Stacey Simms Media. All rights reserved. All rounds avenged   Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Thinking Big Podcast
Day 7 The Mastermind Challenge - Think and Grow Rich 14 day challenge

Thinking Big Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 25, 2020 15:55


Welcome to the Thinking Big Podcast. This episode is part of a special 14 day Think and Grow Rich Challenge. Today we are going over the ninth step to success, the step on the power of the mastermind, the literal driving force.  I recently hosted a live 14 days Think and Grow Rich challenge that benefited Feeding America and I thought it would be great to put the challenge right here on the podcast.  So for 14 straight days I will be releasing a new podcast and the associated challenge that covers each of the 13 steps of Think and Grow Rich plus a bonus challenge on the introduction. It doesn’t matter if you have ever read the book or not, the challenge is designed for anyone to do. There is a link in the show notes so you can sign up for free and get download all of the challenge worksheets and a PDF copy of the original Think and Grow Rich Today we are thinking big on the power of the mastermind. The 14-day Think and Grow Rich Challenge. https://www.sean-osborn.com/14daychallenge   Free Audibles book http://bit.ly/thinkingbigaudible   Connect with Sean Osborn at Thinking Big Coaching Website http://www.thinkingbigcoaching.com Instagram https://www.instagram.com/thinkingbigcoaching/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/thinkingbigcoaching/ Until tomorrows challenge, remember to always think big Ratings and reviews directly impact search rankings for the Thinking Big Podcast. So please help and rate and review the podcast. Episode Transcription: (00:00): Welcome to the thinking big podcast. This episode is part of a special 14 day think and grow rich challenge. And today we are going over the ninth step to success. The step on the power of the mastermind, this is literally the driving force of success. And I recently hosted a live 14 day think and grow rich challenge. And I thought it would be a fantastic idea to put it out here on the podcast so everybody could listen whenever they wanted. So for 14 days I will be releasing a new podcast and the associated challenge that covers each of the 13 steps in think and grow rich, plus a bonus challenge on the introduction. And let me tell you, it doesn't matter if you've ever read the book or not. This challenge is designed for anybody to do. There is a link in the show notes, so you can sign up for free and get all the download challenges, all the worksheets and even a free PDF copy of the original book think and grow rich. So today we are thinking big on the mastermind. (01:04): Welcome to the thinking big podcast with Sean Osborne, the show helping you think bigger into your life and potential Sean believes, but equipping you with the tools, strategies, and philosophies required to be successful in all aspects of your life. You can achieve anything you believe in empowering. Our own growth makes a deeply positive and lasting impact on our lives community and our world. Now here's Sean. (01:29): Hello everyone. And welcome to day seven of the 14 day think and grow rich challenge today. We are doing the challenge on the power of the mastermind. And I can tell you that this is one of the chapters. This is one of the things that has made the most difference in my development in my success is the mastermind. It is one of the most powerful tools that we will actually discuss within this entire thing to grow rich chap thinker grow rich, a challenge. They're all important, but this is the one that has made the biggest amount of change in my life. And Hill describes the mastermind, you know, as being defined as, you know, coordinated knowledge and effort in the spirit and harmony between two or more people for the attainment of a definite purpose. And you're hearing, especially nowadays, you're hearing a lot of people talk about masterminds and they're having a mastermind. (02:33): And there's a big difference between the mastermind that Hill's talking about. And some of the stuff that you're, that you're seeing out on the market that you're reading about, that's, it's different. So a lot of things that you're saying out there are really not what I would consider masterminds. They're more workshops or more book studies. They're more, you know, people could call this what we're doing here, a mastermind on and grow rich. But that is not what he's, what he's talking about. The mastermind he's talking about is bringing people together in a spirit of harmony that creates a third mind, a more powerful mind. And I have discovered personally that Mashburn groups have unleashed my most important efforts. My most important efforts of everything that I've done have come as a result of a mastermind you in the form of new ideas, in the form of inspiration, you know, previously unknown resources that are brought to me. (03:34): And most importantly, it's really a spiritual energy that goes beyond her own intelligence and reasoning. When you, you, to me, you do mastermind, you have mastermind groups with people in order to access the mastermind to access the mind when you bring people together. And you're in harmony, you have access to a much more powerful mind that the two of you or the three of you are having many people don't have individually and mastermind groups is one of the essential things behind every successful person that I know. And if you go to a line one 22 within this chapter, and he says, a group of brains coordinated or connected in a spirit of harmony will provide more thought energy than a single brain. Just as a group of electric batteries will provide more power than a single battery. And I think a better illustration that really is, if you look at what they call draft horses, you know, that pool, each draft horse can pull around 8,000 pounds. (04:44): So you would think that two draft horses would do 16,000 pounds. I mean, I'm not a math genius, but a plus eight to 16, but that's not the case to to draft horses can actually pull 24,000 pounds working together. And we are the same with our brains. No two minds ever come together without thereby creating a third invisible intangible force, which may be likened to a third mind. What I call the mind, the mastermind. And I am always in masterminds. So this is one of the challenges is in the book, but I am always in masterminds. I have been for years and I'm normally in two different masterminds right now. I'm in two different masterminds and actually run a mastermind as well. But they are that important that I always have multiple masterminds that I'm in and some of them are different. So I've been in different masterminds for different things. (05:43): General masterminds are fantastic where you're a group of likeminded people, and you're just brainstorming. You're accessing, you know, all of these things that you can't access by yourself because no one person has enough experience, enough education, and the ability to accumulate anything of great success, whether it's be fortune or whether it be and whatever it is that you're wanting to do, one is not a big enough number. And there is, you know, seldom talk, you know, about this principle behind you at the six exit, the success of every winning athlete, every famous musician, every wealthy business person I've ever known or have ever studied. And I can tell you everyone, you know, no one, it's not the, you know, it's not the IQ, it's not the college GPA. It's not the right family. It's, it's not the, you know, good looks. They have surrounded themselves with other successful people. (06:44): And the concept of surrounding ourselves with, you know, successful people thinking big people is as old as man itself. It's in history. If you look at ancient Greece and you look at, you know, bled Owen, Aristotle, and Socrates, all surrounded themselves with those who would challenge their thing and expand access banned that arsenal of possibilities. And I've already mentioned in a previous previous challenge, you know, in finger Ridge Hill talks about Carnegie's secret of success. His law of success and Carnegie himself had a mastermind, you know, a group that he surrounded himself with for advice, for counsel, for personal cooperation and other businesses, they all had groups of people that they discussed with and a mastermind with. And probably one of the most famous quotes and regards to masterminding in, in a sense comes from Jim Roan. And he's famously said, you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. (07:49): And I like to dig a little deeper, and it's the five people who you are most in line with most you you're influenced by if you, if I go meet with any person, any client, and it doesn't matter. And I see who they're hanging out with, I can tell, tell them exactly where they will be in five years, unless you grow, unless you change. Unless you have masterminds with bigger people in you align yourself with more successful people. You're going to be the average of the five people that you're hanging out with and look around, look around in your life. And I can tell you if you, if you honestly look around those principles are absolutely confirmed. And I had the thoughts of my first company when I was with very successful people. My first company, you know, these people, I got onto their thought vibration by being in mass quote masterminds with these people that they're, that vibration of thought. (08:46): They really expected me to do these things. I expected more when I was within a mastermind or when I'm within masterminds of successful. And if you go to lines 56, you know, he'll says no individual may have great power without availing himself of the mastermind. Anybody you've looked at anybody you've seen that is successful has had a mastermind behind them. Henry Ford, you know, talks about it in the book. You know, he's what he had. He had three months of school, you know, he was uneducated his illiterate, but he could push the button on his desk. Any one of a, you know, hundreds of buttons. I'm not sure how many buttons he had, but he pushed a button and he could get any general knowledge that he wanted. You know, Andrew Carnegie, you know, had one per his steel business, that's it? He, wasn't a huge steel person. (09:38): What he, his mastermind helped him do that. You know, Franklin D Roosevelt had one that he called. I think he actually called it the brain trust. So this whole purpose of the mastermind challenge is to align yourself with a group of as many people as you think it's needed for the creation of carrying out your plan or plans for the accumulation of whatever success you want, whether it's money, whether it's in your career, whether it's in your relationship. But I can tell you this before forming your mastermind Alliance, you need to decide what advantages and what benefits you offer as an individual member to your group and return for your cooperation. It's like anything else in life, you know, nothing's free, nothing's free. What can you offer your mastermind in return for what you get from them and arrange to meet? And, you know, once you get your mastermind, you know, once you, you, you've got your mastermind going, arrange to meet with the members of your mastermind, as often as possible, they see as much as, you know, twice a week until you have perfectly aligned yourself with everybody within that group. (10:48): And for instance, my masterminds, we meet most of my masterminds. We meet every other week, but in between the masterminds, I have calls and talks and zooms and whatever technology we can use to communicate with the other members of the mastermind. So that even though the group only meets once every two weeks, there, there is not a week that goes by that I don't talk with at least one or two people from one of my masterminds. And you need to maintain really. He says that in the, in the book, you need to maintain perfect harmony between yourself and every member of your mastermind. And he says, if you fail to carry this out doesn't I think he says out, you know, carry this instruction, know to the letter you may expect to meet with failure. Now we're going to go through the mastermind tool in a second. (11:35): So this is the challenge for the day. You know, here, here's the actual challenge. And the goal of this is really two part one to start thinking about your mastermind and who you'd want to be in it. You know, that's got a spot where you can list people who you want to be in your mastermind based on what they bring to the table. And honestly, there's, there's two ways that you can go about doing a mastermind. You can create one yourself, or you can join someone else's mastermind. There's the two I've done them, both. I paid the two that I'm in right now. I pay for, I pay for the host of the mastermind and what, what that's buying me is their connections and aligning me with people. They're very good at doing what they do. And they align. They align the groups with other people that will all benefit each other. (12:27): So do not be afraid of going out and searching and paying for a mastermind. Again, you can start your own. You can do, you know, however you want to do your mastermind, but align yourself with more successful people. Here's the thing you don't want to be the biggest fish in the pond. You don't want to be the biggest fish in the pond, but at the same time, you cannot be such a small minnow to sharps. Cause you won't be able to benefit. Again, part of this is looking at what you can offer them. So, as an example, if I was to go into a mastermind with, you know, let's say Tony Robbins and John Maxwell and Elon Musk and all these people that have a thought vibration, that's way up here. I would be, I'm too small about fish. I would not benefit them. Like they would benefit me. (13:15): And it's almost like a high school, you know, I hit set, but you want to be with people that are within your thought or just above your thought to challenge you, to push you. You do not want to be the biggest fish. And once you're the biggest fish in your mastermind, it's time to find another mastermind. It's time to start another mastermind. It's time to go out and, and, and, and look for another mastermind to be in. And the second part of the challenges really start to sit down and figure out what you can offer as a benefit to other people in a mastermind. And I'm not talking about just technical things like, Oh, I can offer it things. You as a person, what can you offer? It's much think of what can you offer as you, not as what you do as what you are, what can you offer is what you are young, what things have you done in life? (14:04): And what challenges have you conquered? You know, what problems have you solved? What are your superpowers? You know, what are, you know, what are some of the things that, that you've done that come easy to you? You know, start thinking of those things because it's not, again, I get a lot of questions on people like, well, I can only offer this and this it's not the, it's not the technical things. I don't know how else to describe. It's not the tangible things. It's intangible things. It's the things that make you, and I'm telling you this, every single person watching this, every single person in this challenge has a ton to offer. Every single person has a ton to offer. We need to recognize that. Remember, as he'll said at the beginning, we need to recognize already in us, you have it there. So now we're going to pull this together. (14:56): We're going to start creating a mastermind. You're going to start looking at other people. You're going to start trying to develop these relationships and these groups of people that will absolutely push you and expect more of you than you do of yourself. So here's, today's challenge. It's again, it's the mastermind challenge. Do this one again, this is probably one of the, the best tools for success that, that, that I can talk to you about this. This will give you more bang for buck. You have to do all of the steps. Don't don't get me wrong. I have to go, but you will get so much out of a mastermind. So until tomorrow, thank you. Thanks everybody for stopping by at night. Thanks everyone for playing full out in this challenge. It's unbelievable seeing what people are doing in this challenge is absolutely fantastic. It's amazing. I will see everybody tomorrow night start thinking about your masterminds.

Thinking Big Podcast
Day 6 The Imagination Challenge - Think and Grow Rich 14 day challenge

Thinking Big Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 22, 2020 18:21


Welcome to the Thinking Big Podcast. This episode is part of a special 14 day Think and Grow Rich Challenge. Today we are going over the fifth step to success, the step on Imagination.  I recently hosted a live 14 days Think and Grow Rich challenge that benefited Feeding America and I thought it would be great to put the challenge right here on the podcast.  So for 14 straight days I will be releasing a new podcast and the associated challenge that covers each of the 13 steps of Think and Grow Rich plus a bonus challenge on the introduction. It doesn’t matter if you have ever read the book or not, the challenge is designed for anyone to do. There is a link in the show notes so you can sign up for free and get download all of the challenge worksheets and a PDF copy of the original Think and Grow Rich Today we are thinking big on imagination. Because ideas are the product of the imagination, and the starting point of all success... The 14-day Think and Grow Rich Challenge. https://www.sean-osborn.com/14daychallenge Free Audibles book http://bit.ly/thinkingbigaudible   Connect with Sean Osborn at Thinking Big Coaching Website http://www.thinkingbigcoaching.com Instagram https://www.instagram.com/thinkingbigcoaching/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/thinkingbigcoaching/   Until tomorrows challenge, remember to always think big Ratings and reviews directly impact search rankings for the Thinking Big Podcast. So please help and rate and review the podcast. Episode Transcription (00:00): Welcome to the thinking big podcast. This episode is part of a special 14 day think and grow rich challenge. And today we are going over the fifth step to success. The step on imagination, I recently hosted a live 14 day think and grow rich challenge that benefited feeding America. And I thought it would be such a great idea to put this out here on the podcast for everybody to listen to. So for 14 days, I will be releasing a new podcast and associated challenge that covers each of the 13 steps of thinking. Go rich plus a bonus challenge on the introduction. And it doesn't matter if you've ever read the book or not. The challenge is designed for everybody to do, and there's actually a link in the show notes. So you can actually sign up for free, get all the downloads and all the challenge sheets and a free copy of the original think and grow rich book. So today we are thinking big on imagination because ideas are the product of imagination and the starting point of all success. (01:35): Hello and welcome everybody tonight. It is so good to see everybody. And tonight is a very good night. Tonight is the night that we get to do the chapter on imagination. That is the workshop of the mind, and it's the fifth step. And we're actually doing this one tonight because it goes very well with what we did last night with autosuggestion. So tonight now this one's going to be a little bit shorter. So the video was probably only going to be 10, 15 minutes at most because the challenge tonight is going to, there's a time limit on it of two hours. So it's gonna take you up to two hours, but that's a maximum, you gotta stop at two hours. So that's the maximum that it can be. And we're going to stop with some quotes on imagination from some of the other great thoughts and thinkers in the, in this world, Mark Twain, you cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. (02:37): Robert Collier, the great successful men of the world have used their imagination. They think ahead and create their mental picture in all its details. Filling in here, add a little, they're altering this a bit, altering that a bit, but steadily building Werner Erhard create your future from your future, not your past, but that's a great one. Create your future from your future. Not your past your past is not your future. William James. The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter their lives by altering their attitude of mind. So tonight we're going to kind of go Ninja on your mind a little bit, because the way that we're going to, the things that we do really are kind of back doors to your subconscious and a way to work with it and kind of a stealth Ninja mode and images really are a very powerful and direct communication to your subconscious mind. (03:45): We think in pictures, we don't think in words, we don't think we think in pictures. And let me give you an example. If I asked you to think of a house, well, you would probably think of your house. You'd see a picture of your house on your mind. If I asked you to think of a car, you would probably see your car or a car that you want pictured in your mind. And we even go in and try to fake our minds out. And if I told you, let me tell you this, Oh, a Fox's tail is not white. What pops into your mind? Even though I said, it's not white. What popped in your mind was a Fox with a white tail. Your imagination sparked both ideas and plans for achieving them or your imagination muscle. If you don't use it, it goes away. (04:39): It's just like any other muscle that we have your imagination. We have to use it, or we lose it. And today's challenge is really getting that muscle working and noticing these ideas again, you, I mean, do you remember when you were a kid, the Magination that you had, we need to be like kids more. We need to be daydreamers and thinking and imagining man, if we were back, if you realize that back when you were had all this imagination, that's when you were learning everything too, there's correlation to that. Everything you see started as an idea in someone's imagination, every manmade thing. If you look around you, every single thing that's manmade that you see started off as an idea in somebody's mind. And in this chapter Napoleon Hill talks about, you know, imagination has two forms. It has synthetic imagination and creative imagination, and really synthetic imagination is not what we want. (05:41): We want creative imagination and synthetic imagination, you know, creates nothing. You know, it works with, you know, the materials or experiences that you already have, old concepts, old ideas, you know, and recombines them into, you know, maybe a new way of looking at a new shape, but it doesn't create anything. And as an example, if you were to take eggs and you were to take bacon, well, I could use synthetic imagination and put those together and create eggs and bacon, nothing new was created. It was just a new shape of things that have already been there. On the other side, that is creative imagination. That's where we want to be creative imagination, which works at the subconscious level. It generates new ideas through hunches and through inspiration. There's that word again, inspiration and Spiro in spirit, infinite intelligence, it produces the plan or plans that you need to achieve your goals. (06:41): And the other day I talked about the, you know, the chef that I watched on, on that show and he used creative imagination. He took ingredients that everybody has access to. He had no, he didn't, you know, bag them up some brand new, you know ingredient. He used the same ingredients that everyone, but he used his creative imagination and said, how can I combine these two great something that no one else has seen before? You know, this allows the, you know, by night, a mind of man direct communication with infinite intelligence, creative imagination is our vehicle to infinite intelligence. You know, and it's through hunches, intuition, inspiration, know new ideas are passed on to us. And as an example, the Wright brothers, they use creative imagination to tune in and become aware of what was there. They didn't invent anything. People say the Wright brothers invented flying. (07:43): They didn't invent anything. They became aware they didn't invent aerodynamics or they didn't invent gravity. They became aware of the idea of, of how to use your creative imagination to create something that no one else has. That's what they did. And yeah, matter of fact, in my, in my workshop, my a thinker Gurwitz workshop, I teach, you know, how ideas come from infinite entails and think of a radio, think of a radio right now, and think of right now in the room that you're setting. I don't care where in the world you are the room that you're sitting in. You have every type of music available to you right now. It's in the air. It's all around you. You have, you know, rap, you have, you know, country, you have talk radio, you have sports. It's all in the room that you're in right now. (08:36): All you have to do to get it is tune into it. You have to have a device to tune into that radio. It's already there. You just have to tune into it and ideas and infinite intelligence are just like that. And we use our mind, our subconscious mind to tune into those stations, tune into that by bration of thought where that lies. You know, if you think about the Wright brothers, anybody could have become aware to fly thousands of thousand years before the Wright brothers did it. Could someone not have become aware of how to fly? So if you think about it, I hear people are wanting as well saying, man, I thought of that. Someone stole my idea. Well, if these ideas are part of infinite intelligence and you tune into them, can someone eventually tune into the same idea? Is it possible that someone already had the same idea you had? (09:31): And didn't take action on it as well. You know? Cause don't forget that ideas are just ideas. You know, they need to be acted upon to become real before someone else tunes into that vibration and steals your idea. You know, great ideas when we get those, Oh man, they take on momentum of their own. There. They spurred you to act and persist until they transform into reality. When you have ideas that get you going, Oh man, I can do that. Oh man, I can do that. Those ideas are what keep us going. And the world's greatest leaders, thinkers, artists, they all use creative imagination to create masterpieces, you know, to create inventions and products and everything. And they become great because they developed the faculty of creative imagination. If you look at anybody that is successful, anybody that's done stuff that no one else has. (10:27): They've created a masterpiece. They've, they've done whatever they have the faculty of creative imagination and your own imagination. Faculty may have become weak. You know, most of ours have because we don't use it enough to make it active, to, to keep it pressured. It's like, how often do you go to the gym? You got to go to the gym every, every couple of days to make it worthwhile. If you go to the gym once a month or once a year, you think you're going to build any muscles? No, you're not going to build any muscles. You've got to do it all the time. Because when you do, you know that one idea that you have can build your definite purpose with just one single idea. You know, if you think about in the book, you know, you talked about Coca Cola, you know, the doctor who invented Coca-Cola could not imagine past his own little thing. (11:19): He did not see outside. He didn't didn't have the imagination, you know, muscle to think of the scope that it could be and sold that for $500. You know, one idea. So if you start your creative imagination, one idea that you get from the creative imagination can change your life. Just like that can change your life. Think, visualize fantasize, dream, get your imagination, muscle back into shape. And that's what tonight's about. Remembering your future. Remember I told you about that using creative imagination. So when you, when you go and you build a memory of your future, you're using creative imagination and images. Again, we think in images, images are everything and images are really a powerful and direct communications to our subconscious mind. Yeah. Unlike your, your conscious mind when your subconscious receives an image, it doesn't ask how it doesn't ask why it doesn't ask when those are the questions really that your subconscious, excuse me, your conscious mind often get stuck on. (12:26): You know, those are the things that your conscious mind gets stuck on and often stops forward movement. Here's the thing, images bypass your critical mind. This is where we're getting all Ninja images, bypass your BS filter that says, how am I going to do that? I can't do that. What do I think I am? I'm not good enough for that. That's a stupid idea. Who's going to do that. Images will bypass your BS and by building. So what we're going to do. So part of we're going to go through this. So tonight's challenge. You've probably heard of dream boards. You've done dream boards and hopefully this one's a little bit different and we're going to make you look at it every day. That's where it becomes proper looking at it every day. So by putting a dream board somewhere, you can see it every day. (13:24): You will prompt yourself to visualize your, your ideal life, your dream, everything you're going for. And that is so important because the visualization activities creates the power to your subconscious mind. And it literally, it programs your brain to notice available resources, even though they've always been there. So these resources, so you're going to come up with ideas and you're going to start seeing resources. Those resources have always been there, but you haven't been consciously aware. So you don't see them. The porch principal. Remember I told you the it, so why don't you become consciously aware? And you're getting these images automatically put into your subconscious mind. You're going to now start seeing these things that have always been there. And by adding a visualization, visualization, I can't even say that this visualization practice to your daily routine, you will naturally become more motivated to get what you want. (14:23): So here's the challenge today. Here it is first part. It's going to be a dream board. There's two pages to the dream board. You cannot go more than these two pages. You have to stick to two pages. So time limit is two hours. What you're going to do is you're going to take these two blank pages. You're going to get 10 magazines, eight to 12 magazines, let's say and cut out stuff for at least 45 minutes to an hour. You're going to have stuff cut out way more than that than these two pages. But now you got to decide what's important. What's not important. So you're going to put on your vision board, the most important things, whether it's words that you, that you cut out, whether it's images that you cut out, put those on here, things that you want, things that you desire, you know, is it a dream house on the beach? (15:13): Is it a boat? Isn't it, isn't a car. Is it being a chef in a Michelin star restaurant? You know, what is it that you desire? Get those pictures, put those on here. So you have two hours to, to do your dream board. But here's the thing. I want you to post this on your refrigerator. I want you to see this dream board every damn day. And yes, you might have people come by. Not, not as many now with, with code, but you might have people combined that giggle and say, Oh Sean, you're so silly. Yeah. They'll say I'm silly until they see what's happening. People might make fun of you. Family members might mock you. I'm not gonna say they won't, but it is so important that you put this up there, screw them. This is your dream. Not theirs. Screw them. Who cares what they think, put your stuff up on their fridge. (16:05): This is what I'm passionate about. This is what I dream about. Put it up there, see it every single day. Okay. So that's the first part that's going to take you really, most of the time for tonight's challenge. The second part is over the next couple of days, you know, what are some of the hunches or inspirations that you've had after seeing your dream board for a few days, which ones could lead to your goal. So you're going to start, you're going Ninja on your mind. You're going to start putting some of these ideas back there. And infinite intelligence is going to start popping ideas to you, pay attention. You know? So what are some of the hunches that you get back that could lead you to your goal of getting what you want, getting your dream, and then what are one or two steps that you could do on that idea? (17:00): So let's say you have an idea. Let's say my idea is to, you know, speak in front of 10,000 people. You know, that's my that's one of my dreams is a national speaker international speaker. I might have an idea that says, Hey, this is a fantastic topic to talk about. And it might just pop up an idea of something to talk about. If I'm paying attention, I might go, Oh, let's start developing that. I could take two steps. Well, let's, let's look at developing some content behind that idea about that, about that topic of what I could talk about. So it's these little ideas that were, that you're going to start getting. So what I want you to do is Mark down any, any hunches, any inspiration, any ideas that you get over the next couple days after you post this to your refrigerator and you see it every day and then what are some of the that you can do to get there? All right, everyone. Well, thank you so much for tonight. This, this is really one of the funnest challenges. It really is. Tomorrow night we have the power of the mastermind. Probably one of the most important steps is the mastermind. We'll explain that tomorrow. So until tomorrow, get your dream boards done, get them posted and let's start getting known Ninja on our minds. I'll talk to you tomorrow.

Thinking Big Podcast
Day 4 The Faith Challenge - Think and Grow Rich 14 day challenge

Thinking Big Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 16, 2020 17:48


Welcome to the Thinking Big Podcast. Today is part 4 in a special 14 day Think and Grow Rich Challenge. Today’s challenge is on the second step of Faith I recently hosted a live 14 days Think and Grow Rich challenge that benefited Feeding America and I thought it would be great to put the challenge right here on the podcast.  So for 14 straight days I will be releasing a new podcast and the associated challenge that covers each of the 13 steps of Think and Grow Rich plus a bonus challenge on the introduction. It doesn’t matter if you have ever read the book or not, the challenge is designed for anyone to do. There is a link in the show notes so you can sign up for free and get download all of the challenge worksheets and a PDF copy of the original Think and Grow Rich Today we are thinking big and talking about the second step of success, The chapter on Faith, the state of mind which may be induced, or created, by affirmation or repeated instructions to the subconscious mind.  The 14-day Think and Grow Rich Challenge. https://www.sean-osborn.com/14daychallenge Free Audibles book http://bit.ly/thinkingbigaudible   Connect with Sean Osborn at Thinking Big Coaching Website http://www.thinkingbigcoaching.com Instagram https://www.instagram.com/thinkingbigcoaching/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/thinkingbigcoaching/   Ratings and reviews directly impact search rankings for the Thinking Big Podcast. So please help and rate and review the podcast. Episode Transcription: industry and in the past. So let's go over a few quotes that are about faith, faith in ourselves. Um, Martin Luther King jr. Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step Wallace D Wattles. Things are not brought into being by thinking about their opposite. How many times? I mean, everybody can think and grow rich, but most of the time we think and grow poor, right? You cannot have a, if you're always thinking about B Howard white faith can move mountains, doubt can create them. (02:37): George Seaton, faith is believing in things when common sense tells you not to when competency common sense. I don't like common sense. Common sense is overrated. So we are on the chapter of faith. Welcome to tonight to start this off, we'll just read part of the actual intro to this, uh, to this chapter. Dave is visualization of and belief and attainment of your desire. And that is big there. It's not just, you know, belief in yourself, essentially it's visualization of and belief in attainment of what you desire. You know, if you don't see and feel your dream in your dream in your mind, you're never going to see it in the physical reality. You're never going to see that and let's go to page 45. And this is, you know, right at the beginning of the chapter page, excuse me, line 13 through 16. Faith is the head chemist of the mind when faith is blended with the vibration of thought, the subconscious mind instantly picks up the vibration, translates it into the spiritual equivalent and transmits it to infinite intelligence. (03:53): Now my think and grow rich mashed mind, we dive deep into infinite intelligence, what it is, how you get it. And we really dive deep into that, but this is so, so important. And did anyone from yesterday build their future memory? You know, one of the, one of the steps or the challenges from yesterday was to do your, you know, your statement of desire and build a future memory of it. Remember your future. When we build that memory, it is so important that you do that. And they is a state of mind which may be induced or created by affirmations or repeated instructions to the subconscious mind. It says that right in the book through the principles of autosuggestion that's tomorrow is out of suggestion, but they and autosuggestion go hand in hand. And this is why repeating your affirmations twice daily is so important. (04:47): That's why reading your statement of desire twice every day, feeling it, seeing it twice a day is so important. And how do we, you know, part of what this challenge is is how do we do these things? You know, how do we, how do we do these steps? How do we get to them? And so, so how do we build faith in our success? Well, I'll tell you the three to me, the three biggest things in building the faith is one confidence in what you're doing, builds faith. If you have confidence in what you are doing, it will build faith in your ability to do it accurate knowledge in what you're doing, builds faith. That's why accurate knowledge is so important. You got to know when you do a, you're going to get results. You got to have that accurate knowledge, and that builds faith in your potential. (05:40): It builds faith in you and knowing these 13 steps will absolutely build faith. These 13 steps build incredible faith that you can achieve, what you're setting out to achieve. And all of the greats have, you know, all the grades do this. They all talk about this. Yeah, I'm not sure if you, uh, like Tony Robbins, you know, Tony Robbins has a fantastic, uh, if you've ever followed me ever do this, he has a four box, uh, method of looking at this, basically the same thing. And he has four boxes. One, the bottom box is belief, which is faith certainty, you know, certainty in what you're doing. Faith belief above that as potential. Then you have actions and then below that you have results. So it's four boxes. And what it's doing is it's kind of a graphical way of showing you that the faith that you have in yourself, the belief, your certainty, and doing something, builds your potential, your potential then builds that that's what your actions are done. (06:40): Your actions are based on what you think your potential is. And those actions create results. And it's a vicious cycle either, either up or down. So your results then build into your beliefs, build into your certainty. So the higher you go, the higher your beliefs are the higher your potential. And it's a circle up. It's a always going up, but it can always go down too. As a matter of fact, thinking big, you know, my coaching thinking, big coaching, you know, my thinking big is a methodology and the B I G and big do the same thing. The B is for beliefs. That's your faith in yourself? That's the bleeping yourself. That's the certainty in yourself that generates more imagination. That's the eye. So when you believe, if you know, and you have faith that you can make $10 an hour, well, it's not hard to imagine, use your imagination to do 15. (07:31): It's not hard to imagine a little bit higher than you are in anything. What you're doing. If I can do this, then I can imagine a little bit more. And then the G is growth, which is a combination of your actions and your results. So again, it's the same way. We're all talking about the same thing. You know, your certainty, your beliefs, going into your imagination, going into your growth and your actions and your results. They're all tied together. So in addition to having that intense burning desire for riches or whatever it is that you're wanting, you know, that obsession really more than a burning desire, it's really an obsession. You must also have unwavering faith and belief in you in your ability to achieve it. You know, faith and belief is one of the most to me is one of the most important keys in converting your dreams, your thoughts into reality, you know, faith, it actually works on a subconscious level. (08:27): You know, it moves you towards your goal. If you have faith in yourself and your plans to achieve whatever it is, your wealth, whatever it will actually, when you have that faith that actually prompts or gathers or knows, or sees ideas and associations that lead you to success in that dream, you have, we talked about it. You know, I think in day one, you know, my philosophy on, uh, you know, the, the poorest theory, you know, the second I got when I all of a sudden started seeing it. So when you are focused on and have faith in a certain thing, you're going to start seeing that all around you. If you have faith in, in negative things, you're going to see those negative things around you. So having that faith is absolutely critical. And here's the thing. If you lack faith and believe the opposite, you'll be defeated every single time you will be defeated. (09:19): And that's when I talk about, you know, most people, you know, everyone can think and grow rich, but most people think and grow poor. And the thing is, is you don't even have to be consciously aware of the negative thoughts. You have thoughts going on, subconsciously that you're not even aware of that are going on. And those subconscious thoughts will either good or bad. So what we're trying to do is we're going to plant those good ones in we're going to plant them those. So it is critical to develop faith that really propels you toward your goal toward your dream. You know, faith inspires others to help you. You know, one of the things that we're gonna go over in this is the mastermind. That is one of the most important steps for me within think and grow rich is getting those people around you and doing masterminds and having access to the mastermind. (10:13): And it's hard to get people into a mastermind. If, if you don't even have faith in what you're doing, if you have faith in what you're doing and what you're gonna be doing is going to work, it's easier to get others to work with you. You know, this is, you know, that is literally by constantly telling yourself that you can succeed. You know, you have to have that faith and you do that by constantly, constantly telling yourself you can succeed. And more than that, it's envisioning yourself succeeding. It's what I was talking about is remembering your future. And one of the things that Hill talks about in the chapter is you eventually become a believer. You begin to, you know, you eventually become to believe the things that you repeat yourself, positive and negative. And here's the thing by default, we are absolutely fantastic at the negative. (11:03): We're constantly telling ourselves negative thoughts. And, and part of that day, one challenge was making the tick, Mark being consciously aware of every time we had those negative thoughts, we have those all the time. And you really, what I do is go beyond just envisioning your success. You know, you can see it, you can feel it. I want you to act as though you already have it, and I'm not talking about fake it till you make it. I'm talking about actually acting as though you have it. So let's say one of your goals is to be financial. You want to think, and you want to go rich. You want to have the freedom. You want to have the money, go out to dinner once a month, or once a quarter to a nice restaurant where that nice bottle of wine, don't worry about the money. (11:50): Don't, don't worry about how much it costs. Go do it act is if you were already there, because I'll tell you what, when you do that, your mind takes on the vibration of that thought that's dominating right there. It takes on you. You were at a different vibration when you're doing that. So I always tell people, act as if you have an alter ego of that person, you want to be, don't fake it till you make it act as if you already have it. And one of the challenges today is, you know, he, a Hill has in the book is what he calls his self-confidence formula. And it's part of, you know, again, it's part of today's challenge. I call it the success confidence formula. This is really something that we need to do to be successful, not just for ourselves. And it's five things it's in the book. (12:42): I think, I can't remember what, uh, what page it's on, but it's five things that you need to memorize and you need to do every day. And you're going to sign off, you know, part of the challenges you're going to sign off that you're going to memorize these things and you're going to repeat them. Now. I want to know it was quite a few, so I'm not going to go, or it's quite long each one. So I'm not going to go through all of it, but I'm gonna give you kind of a cliff note of what each one is for the first one is you're telling yourself affirmations that I know I have the ability to achieve my specific goal. And I mean, specific goal. Remember in day one, you gotta be down to the damn penny. If it's financial, you gotta, you gotta be very specific. (13:21): Number two is I will concentrate my thoughts for 30 minutes a day on the person I intend to become. That's the, you know, acting as if 30 minutes a day act as if you're that person act as if you already have what you're dreaming about. Spend in a third one is spend 10 minutes a day demanding self-confidence of you demand 10 minutes demand. Self-confidence number four is my goal determines that I develop self competence to achieve it, your goal demands. And if it doesn't demand that you develop self competence to get it, then it's not a very big goal. It's not something worthy of you going after. And number five is I will cultivate positive thoughts towards myself and others. That is such a biggie because I'm telling you, we are so negative in our thoughts all the time, and we don't even know it. (14:19): We don't even realize it. And again, that's what the day one was putting a tick Mark. Every time you, I just want you to become consciously aware when you do that. So you can eliminate it. Cause again, these are, these are at the subconscious level. We don't even notice that we're, we're doing some of these. So the second part of the challenge is really towards that is cultivating positive thoughts, thoughts towards ourselves. And as we're going to learn is autosuggestion or self-suggestion or, you know, doing these things and telling ourselves these things absolutely matters. So the second part of the challenge is besides doing what's in the book. So this is kind of what's in the book. The second part is I want you to write down five of your limiting beliefs in the opposite, in the opposite. And let me give you an example. (15:05): So for example, one of my limiting beliefs was that I was stupid. I had a limiting belief that I was stupid for so long because of where I came from him. And you know what my background is. So I thought I was stupid. You know, my, instead of my limiting, instead of my belief, I'm stupid. My limiting belief might be, uh, I would read something like I have all the knowledge I need and the things I am passionate about. I have the knowledge to help people conquer their dreams. So I want you to write down five of your negative beliefs in the negative, in a positive light. And whenever you're doing this, I want you to repeat your negative beliefs, your opposite, negative beliefs. We, the thing that we have to do is we have to start magnetizing our mind towards the positive things. Thoughts are things, they're everything, and getting a good representation of where you're at and what to do to gain faith. (16:03): So all of this will build your faith. That what you're doing is right. It's building fate, that what you're doing is going to work. What you're doing is absolutely there for you. And I'm going to tell you this, it is impossible, impossible for you to have a dream or an idea and not be capable of doing it impossible. If you have an idea, I don't care how many times you say I can't do that. I'm not big enough for that, or I can't, I don't know the people. And if you have an idea and you pulled it from infinite intelligence, you are fully capable of doing it. You would not be able to have that idea if you weren't. So today we're building the faith that you can do it. We're hacking your subconscious mind. This is a way to hack your subconscious mind and start putting in crap that we want, instead of the stuff that, that just goes in naturally the negative crap that goes in naturally work. We're putting in stuff that we want. So now we're hacking the subconscious mind. We're building our own fate and what we can do. So until tomorrow, tomorrow is another good one. Tomorrow is on, autosuggestion, goes hand in hand with this because autosuggestion is the way that we really hack our subconscious mind. That that is the tool we use to hack our subconscious mind. So tomorrow I will see you at seven o'clock.

Humans, Now and Then
From Bully Boss to Boss Whisperer: A Story of Transformation

Humans, Now and Then

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 19, 2020 38:38


In this episode, Jay Guilford discusses his transformation from a Bully Boss to a Boss Whisperer. He also shares his perspective on technology and the future. Episode Transcription: https://otter.ai/s/fhylU6dYR9yqnBcXW9p6wQ Jay's Bio: A few years ago, Jay ran away with Cirque du Soleil. At the Cirque-Us, Jay led the design of Cirque’s corporate training and team-building sessions. He literally worked with a bunch of clowns.   Jay’s professional nickname is "The Boss Whisperer." His superpower is the ability to deliver "difficult" feedback to teams and senior leaders in ways they can hear. Jay has had the good great fortune of working with several name brand companies including Google, Uber, Mastercard, NHL, Club Med Punta Cana, SwissLife, Kmart Australia, and SAB Miller Brewery Latin America.   As a former and reformed bully boss, Jay has personally experienced the transformative power of leadership training and coaching. Thus, Jay’s goal is to improve the way managers lead and team members interact. His mission is to build a world where work is not just a means to an end, but a source of inspiration, transformation, and interpersonal growth.   Website: coworkslead.com Email: jay@coworkslead.com   Episode Resources:   Workplace Bullying: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20191219-workplace-bullying-is-more-harmful-than-we-realised   https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0135225   Remote Work: https://www.forbes.com/sites/cognitiveworld/2020/03/09/a-deep-dive-into-remote-work-for-our-future-of-work/#a4074321843e   More about the Peter Principle: https://hbr.org/2018/03/research-do-people-really-get-promoted-to-their-level-of-incompetence   According to Gallop, only 1 in 10 people have the ability to manage people: https://www.gallup.com/workplace/231593/why-great-managers-rare.aspx   EEOC's guidance on workplace retaliation: https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/retaliation.cfm   The global rise in individualism: https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/individualistic-practices-and-values-increasing-around-the-world.html   Music by Ryan Sullivan.  Contact: sullybmusic@gmail.com

HVMN Podcast: Evidence-based Nutrition, Fitness, & Biohacking
Reversing Multiple Sclerosis (MS) Through Low-Carb Nutrition · #120 ft. Dr. Terry Wahls

HVMN Podcast: Evidence-based Nutrition, Fitness, & Biohacking

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 9, 2019 44:38


This week’s episode is truly the embodiment of the popular motto, “Taking your health into your own hands”. The story of Dr. Terry Wahls is a fascinating, deeply personal dive into the tie between nutrition and disease management. Dr. Wahls, a clinical professor of medicine at the University of Iowa, has struggled with secondary progressive multiple sclerosis for more than a decade. In the year 2000, Wahls was jogging every morning. Just three years later, she found herself confined to a wheelchair suffering from chronic pain and brain fog. Despite having access to the latest drugs from reputable establishments like the Cleveland Clinic, it wasn’t until a radical change in her diet and additional interventions like neuromuscular stimulation that Dr. Wahls finally felt she was on the road to a form of recovery. Now, she can walk, work, and has since even completed an 18-miler bike race. || Relevant Links || Dr. Terry Wahls: https://terrywahls.com/ Episode Transcription: https://hvmn.com/podcast/episode-120-dr-terry-wahls ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Check out our products for optimal metabolic, physical, & cognitive health: https://www.hvmn.com/pod Take a short survey that will help us improve the podcast and be entered in a HVMN Ketone giveaway: https://go.hvmn.com/podcastsurvey We also want to hear from our listeners/viewers! Contact podcast@hvmn.com with any feedback, questions, and guest suggestions! Write a review for us on iTunes, let us know via email, and we'll send you $15 worth of HVMN Store Credit.

Barefoot Innovation Podcast
Transforming Identity: GlobaliD CEO Greg Kidd

Barefoot Innovation Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 28, 2018 97:09


It’s always extra fun when we have a show where the guest talks about the days when Jack Dorsey hacked him and lived in his backyard. For today’s conversation, I’m joined by my friend Greg Kidd, Co-founder and CEO of globaliD. I’m predicting right now that this one is going to be a Barefoot Innovation fan-favorite. Greg has an unusual background. He was involved from the early days of Ripple, Twitter, and Square. Unlike most Silicon Valley innovators, though, he’s also been a banking consultant and worked for the Fed Reserve Board. He is famously a big thinker (I like to tell him that people sometimes have no idea what he’s talking about, although I promise that doesn’t happen in this show).  I remember the first time I met him -- we walked into a party at the same time one night in San Francisco, and were still talking, barely inside the door, two hours later. This is actually the longest episode we’ve ever done, because he’s just fascinating to listen to -- I couldn’t tear myself away. We recorded it this spring in globaliD’s space at the Digital Garage in San Francisco, where Greg shared his vision of what’s ahead in finance, commerce, and technology. We talked about the magnitude of the shifts he sees, and his passionate belief that new technology should be used to empower people, not control them. The secret to that, Greg says, is decentralization. He thinks blockchains and distributed ledgers are as revolutionary as the internet was. And he thinks, above all, that we should decentralize control over people’s identities. As he says, government-issued identities are inherently insecure -- they create huge centralized “honeypots” of data that attract hackers -- and they can invite misuse by government itself. Greg's firm globaliD is building an alternative. Its software can be downloaded to the phone to create an individual token of identity that can attach a unique name, which then can collect identity proofs, or “attestations,” based on the person’s electronic footprint and relationships. The individual can customize how to share identity information for different purposes, shielding sensitive information for some uses and revealing it in others, in order to protect privacy. Because the underlying information lives in the individual’s device, not a government or corporate database, it’s relatively secure from cyber-attack. As mobile phones approach ubiquity worldwide, this kind of system can also expand financial inclusion by authenticating millions of people who lack traditional credentials and therefore can’t enter the mainstream financial system. We've done other shows on this (I suggest re-listening to the one on the India stack and Aadhaar card with Sanjay Jain). Governments throughout the world are working on this, especially in countries where much of the population (often, especially, women) lack documents and therefore can’t satisfy the bank Know-Your-Customer regulations. A few years ago I ran into Greg in Fiji at the annual summit of the Alliance for Financial Inclusion. He was speaking there on how to use mobile phone-based data to help refugees identify themselves to authorities, to make it easier to screen people even in the midst of mass migrations and humanitarian crises. The US needs updated identity methods too. Our analog-era systems like social security numbers are no longer secure -- too often buyable on the dark web. Digital solutions will be coming here soon. Greg also gets excited about making innovation work with regulation. He says we don’t have to end up in George Orwell’s world, nor in Mad Max’s, as he argued in this memorable piece. I promise this episode will leave you with some new ideas. Links Link to Episode Transcription www.hardyaka.com Podcast with Anne Boden More on Greg Kidd Greg Kidd is the CEO of globaliD and the former chief risk officer at Ripple. His work taking his own startup public (Dispatch Management Services) on the Nasdaq is book-ended by time at Booz Allen, Promontory, and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve. He was an initial investor and advisor for both Twitter and Square, and his investment firm Hard Yaka continues to back many fintech and regtech companies. His leadership pursuits include work at Outward Bound and the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS). More for our listeners We have many more great podcasts in the queue. We have a wonderful episode with the California banking commissioner, Jan Owen (which is extra exciting because we recorded it outside with lightning and thunder through the whole thing). We’ll also have other regtech firms, including Compliance.ai, which is creating machine-readable regulations, and Alloy, which has high-tech solutions for meeting the Know-Your-Customer rules in AML. And we have one with the co-founders of Earnup. There are many more in the works. The fall events schedule is filling up. Some of the places I’ll be speaking are: Finovate Fall, September 26, 2018, New York, NY NFCC Connect, October 2, 2018, Dallas, TX P20 Conference, October 10, Atlanta, GA American Banker Regtech Conference, October 15-16, New York, NY Money 2020, October 21-24, Las Vegas, NV Singapore Fintech Festival, November 12-16, Singapore LendIt Europe, November 19-20, 2018 in London ABA/ABA Financial Crimes Conference, December 2-4,  Washington, DC Regtech Rising, December 3-5, London If you listen to Barefoot Innovation on iTunes, please leave a five star rating on the show to help us continue to grow. Come to jsbarefoot.com for today’s show notes and to join our email list, so you’ll get the newest podcast, newsletter, and blog posts. As always, please follow me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. support our podcast Meanwhile, keep innovating! Subscribe Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates. Email Address Sign Up We respect your privacy. Thank you!

Windows Insider Podcast
Jobs of Tomorrow

Windows Insider Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 25, 2018 42:29


Technology and the jobs that go with it are evolving exponentially faster. How can new grads and seasoned pros alike be prepared for the jobs of tomorrow? How does Microsoft hire the brightest minds to work on leading edge tech? We ponder these questions and more with Dave Wecker, Architect at Microsoft’s Quantum Computing team, and Tyler Roush, of Microsoft’s talent sourcing team. Dave gives us a peek into his work on the frontier of quantum computing, and Tyler shares what it’s like to source talent for an international dream team. Then, we sit down with Microsoft engineer Raymond Uchenna Ononiwu to get his tips on landing a Microsoft internship and how to turn that into a full-time job offer.     Episode Transcription   Jason Howard: You’re listening to the Windows Insider Podcast and I’m your host, Jason Howard. This is Episode 17: Jobs of Tomorrow. Technology and the jobs that go with it are evolving exponentially faster. How can new grads and seasoned pros alike be prepared for tomorrow’s jobs in tech? How does Microsoft hire the brightest minds to work on leading edge tech? We ponder these questions and more in this episode.   Before we get to our first segment, we’ve got a great opportunity we want to mention called the Windows Insider Women in Computing Award. If you are majoring in computer science or a related field, you could win a trip to the Grace Hopper Celebration, the world’s largest gathering of women technologists. Winners will also receive mentoring at Microsoft Headquarters. You can get full details by going to Insider.windows.com.   In case you didn’t know, the Windows Insider Program runs quite a few awesome contests and they are only available to Insiders. So that’s my shameless plug – if you aren’t yet a Windows Insider, go to our website and register. It’s free, it’s easy, and you become a part of a global community shaping the future of Windows.   OK, onto the show!   (Music.)   Jason Howard: First up, we have special guests from Microsoft’s Quantum Computing team to talk about life on the cutting edge and what Microsoft looks for in candidates for jobs on the frontiers of innovation. Dave and Tyler, welcome to the show. Would you please introduce yourselves for our audience?   Hi, I'm Dave Wecker. I'm the Quantum Architect and my job is to pull all the pieces together from the very top which is the software, we normally do all the way down to the materials, the fridges, the devices that we put in our labs all over the world. So, I spent a lot of time on an airplane going from lab to lab.   (Laughter.)   Tyler Roush: My name is Tyler Roush. I work with our talent sourcing team and I've been working with Dave for the last two years but most of my job is trying to understand what they do as much as possible and identify some of the skills that we need to come on to Microsoft to help build a quantum computer.   Jason Howard: So he's doing a cool stuff, and you're getting people to come in and do the cool stuff.   Tyler Roush: Exactly.   Jason Howard: Awesome. So Dave, we start with you. Can you help us understand in kind of layman's terms what quantum computing actually is.   Dave Wecker: Yeah it's actually fairly straightforward, if you think of it compared to classical computing. Classical computing we have bits, and a bit is zero or one. The qubit which is the basic unit in quantum computing is also zero and one but it can be zero and one at the same time. It's actually a little more than that because there's more information than just the zero or one in there. So, you can do a lot of computing with a single qubit. If 32-bits holds one number, let's say on your phone, that number can be from zero to four billion, 32 qubits can hold four billion numbers at once. So, all of a sudden, you're doing computation on a massive amount of information at one time, this unlocks a whole bunch of possibilities for what you can do computationally that you can't do with a classical computer.   Jason Howard: So, what are some of the possibilities that kind of like get you going, things that you've found and they have expanded your mindset and way of thinking about it when it comes to what quantum computing will enable us to do?   Dave Wecker: Well there's some poster children we use, things that are good examples of what you can do. A lot of people bring up cryptography, Shor’s algorithm but to be honest that's not our focus, it's not the type of thing that we want to do in terms of solving problems for the world and doing things for Microsoft that we think are worth doing and are important.   So, I'll start with a very mundane one, which is fertilizer. Fertilizer is something that is extremely expensive for most of the world and the reason is it takes a process that uses a lot of energy, a lot of pressure, high temperatures to make and so a lot of the emerging world can't buy fertilizer because it's out of their price range, because of the amount that it takes.   We're talking on the order of five percent of the natural gas on the planet every year is consumed to make fertilizer, three percent of the total energy output of the planet. On the other hand, there's a little, tiny anaerobic bacteria that sits in the root of all plants, that sits there happily at room temperature and room pressure, low energy and it takes air and breaks the nitrogen bond and makes fertilizer, makes ammonia.   We know we can do this, because it can do it, but we can't analyze the actual molecule that's in there, that causes the fertilizer to be made. We can't because it uses quantum effects that can't be analyzed on classical machines but can on quantum computers. So, you could make low-cost, artificial fertilizer if you had a quantum machine to analyze it.   Same problem for global warming. We could build a algorithm that looks at the global warming problem, and we know that you could make a paint that we paint everything in the world and it just sucks the carbon out of the air.   All of these take on the order of 200 logical qubits. So, we're not talking about giant machines, and we'll be able to solve first-world problems that we have no way of approaching today.   I'll give one more, is transmission lines the United State, 15 percent of our energy output is lost by just sending the energy from one place to another. If we can make room temperature superconductors, again type of problem we can analyze on a quantum computer, we'd get that 15 percent back. That's a large amount of energy that we lose every year.   Jason Howard: Just between the actual cost of generating the energy, obviously the extra work that goes directly, that gets put into trying to make it more efficient, to transfer it, you solve those problems and you kind of work backwards and there's kind of savings all the way up the chain until you know the actual energy creation process.   Dave Wecker: Exactly.   Jason Howard: Wow. These are like some real-world things that you're potentially solving here, this isn't just some hypothetical, "Hey, we think we could potentially try something crazy." Like they are actual problems that exist right now, then obviously there are some understanding behind, "Hey, once we crack this Quantum computing thing and get further with it, we're going to be able to tackle some pretty big things with it."   Dave Wecker: So we view it just like you view a co-processor in Azure—the way we use specialized GPUs, we use FPGA's, we use various processors in Azure to solve specialized problems. Like in machine learning, for example, the Quantum computer is not very good at the things the classical machine is good at. But it is good at the types of things that we're describing. By making it a co-processor in Azure, you wind up getting the best of both. You can do super-computing like classical work in Azure, and then offload the work that is best done on a quantum computer to it and now you can solve definitely real-world problems as soon as the technology becomes available.   Jason Howard: So, obviously knowing the problems that the world is facing, we could get into an all-day conversation about ideas you have, problems you want to tackle and things like that. But when it comes to doing your day to day job, what's your favorite part of it, what actually gets you up in the morning and gets you excited to work on these problems?   Dave Wecker: That's easy. The group I work with is some of the best people in the world in all the various areas you need. Everything from quantum physics, to materials design, to refrigeration of cryogenic systems, to cryogenic classical computing, to on and on and on, and I get free training.   I'm at the point now where if I wanted to, I could probably go back and easily get a PhD in various fields, because I've had the best people in the world hand me all the textbooks and say, "Here, read this, now read this, now do this." I get to work in the labs, I actually get to do these quantum experiments with the professionals that are there, I get to write software that analyzes the data, I get to work with building and growing materials that we use to make the devices.   So, I'm like a kid in a candy store, I get to do everything you could think of from top to bottom and I get to go all over the world at the same time and work with, like I said, the best people I've ever met.   Jason Howard: So, I want to highlight something because this definitely caught my attention as we've been talking here. So, you're not only working on the software side of things, you're creating the technology and the hardware being used to do this computing. So, you're building the platformsm on which you're then building the software on top of, to gain the outputs that you need to drive some of this technology?   Dave Wecker: That's completely correct. So, my backgrounds is electrical engineering originally. I also have a business degree, and so I actually work on what makes sense as a company that Microsoft should be doing and how we should do this and how we plan over the next decade of bringing this to fruition. And it's also the type of thing where it's like a Bell Labs or a NASA project. I can't go and buy the wires that I need to go from 15 Milli-Kelvin to 4 Kelvin. These are extremely cold, 100 times colder than outer space, and you can't even make normal wiring work, so we have to develop our own. We have to do our own connectors. We have to do our own boards, our own chips, our own materials, top to bottom. So, it's something where we really have to build all of it before we can write the software that goes on top of it.   Jason Howard: I thought it was bad trying to keep a computer cold to do basic overclocking.   Dave Wecker: Exactly. It's also the case that we really don't have to wait for the hardware. We can simulate a quantum computer up to a certain size, beyond a certain size is impossible on a classical machine, but up to about 30 qubits, it's not very hard.   So, we ship a Quantum Development Kit that we make available to the public, it's free, it's open source, it's available to the world. In that kit, you have a quantum simulator that let you write the algorithms and run them on the simulated quantum computer just like they would run on the real one. It would just have more qubits when we're done.   So, we have a very large software development effort that's going on in parallel with all the hardware and the devices, so when the hardware shows up, the software will be ready for it.   Jason Howard: Wow. Tyler.   Tyler Roush: Yes.   Jason Howard: Got to couple of questions for you.   Tyler Roush: Absolutely, let's go.   Jason Howard: Can you share a bit about what it's like to hire for the Quantum Team? Obviously, you have some pretty smart folks you're trying to bring in if they're writing their own software, creating their own hardware, obviously there's a lot of travel required to connect the dots with smart people all around the globe. This really is the cutting edge of the cutting edge. How is hiring for this Quantum Computing Team, what is it like? How do you source talent when you're talking about this level of expertise and knowledge that's required?   Tyler Roush: Sure, it's challenging, but it's the right type of challenge that I like to go after. So, when we think about the Seattle market in terms of talent, there's Amazon, there's Microsoft, it's a growing ecosystem of companies that are in the area. So, finding software engineers is relatively frequent for us to be able to go out and find people in the area, who are already located here. Even the Bay Area being really close. My experience with the Quantum Team the last two years has been a lot of international travel as well.   Most of these conferences, because it's such a small community, there's only a few that everyone will attend, and they're also located all over the world. So, Europe has been a location the last few years in trying to identify people. Then, also the types of people that are in the field right now, because it's just transitioning now into more of a product environment or heavily in academia.   So, when you think about having a conversation about career with someone, that conversation looks a lot different if they're coming from Amazon or another industry company that we're familiar with versus someone who might be a professor at an academic institution. The considerations they have to make, if they have PhD students, the considerations they have to make, if they're on tenure track, and so just that career conversation has been a really interesting perspective to have to learn the last two years.   Jason Howard: It sounds like there's a lot to be done between the theoretical side of things where people are exploring and trying to forge new ground and make a name for themselves. As opposed to jumping into what would be a more professional track, where you go and you're pouring your expertise into a company, actually doing some of the development there. How does the split work between doing it in a more academic environment versus a professional environment, like here at Microsoft?   Tyler Roush: So, from the conversations that I've had in the past with candidates, it's different, and I think there's a little bit of education that usually happens in the conversations as well. So, when people think about an industry company, they usually think about very product-oriented goals, tight deadlines, and in research, there's a lot of autonomy that you have to be able to draw your own research, and essentially go after topics that you really find interesting. In Microsoft Research as well as the Quantum Computing Group, that's still the case.   So, just having to really educate people about the experience of what it's like working at Microsoft. Some of the biggest advantages, as opposed to being a professor, is you don't have to raise money. When you are a professor, you have to go and find grants to your students all the time. That's a lot of work that professors don't tend to get associated with. But, for us in working for Microsoft, there's a lot more time that you could actually spend researching the topic that you want to research, whether some of the materials work that Dave was mentioning.   That was actually what I was thinking of as well when he gave his answer there. Quantum materials development, I think, is one of the most interesting areas that we'll see in quantum computing in the future, just because there's this convergence of the physical, digital, and biological worlds happening. I think quantum computing is really going to drive that more than ever. As we've seen things like retail go automated and digital more and more, it'll be about the biological worlds coming into some of the alloy development, or fertilizer work.   Dave Wecker: I'd also like to add that we have realized to go further in this, we really need to work tightly with academic institutions. So, as such, we've supported the labs at various locations especially in Delft in the Netherlands, in Copenhagen in Denmark, Purdue in the United States, Sydney in Australia.   At those sites, we've also created a Microsoft lab. So, you can be a Microsoft employee, work at the lab side-by-side with the academic lab, and actually go back and forth between the two. The principal investigators actually run both labs that we have at each site. So, this lets us also recruit locally. It lets us work very tightly with the university on the research they're doing, as well as working towards engineering the solutions we need that we could then bring back to Redmond, and actually do work here.   Jason Howard:  Oh, interesting. So, at least from what I'm picking up from the conversation so far, there's this nice balance that has been achieved, at least within this small community of-- being small currently, right? Who knows what the future holds? I expected to get much bigger over the course of time. It sounds like the candidates that exists in this field, some of them have some practical world experience of doing some development at a company, be it Microsoft or elsewhere, obviously. But, it sounds like it's not just people who've got electrical engineering degrees, right? Obviously there's computer sciences involved, but it sounds like there's a lot of physics involved here, probably some chemistry along the way. It isn't just, "Hey, I've been sitting at a keyboard punching away and learning a programming language." There's way more to this than that.   Dave Wecker: Very true. I've worked in a lot of fields that intersect with computer science over time, and we find it's actually easier to take computer science people and teach them, in this case the physics, versus taking physicists and teaching them computer science.   So, we don't try to turn the physicists into computer scientists, we instead take computer science, embed them in the labs with the physicists, and have them help. So, we've written entire software infrastructure just for running lab equipment, called Q codes, which is available open source on the net, that will run all of this various equipment from Python, let you run from a Jupyter Notebook, or anything internally.   You can also use the Quantum Development Kit that I mentioned at the beginning, and that is an environment that uses all the.NET languages. It also interfaces to Python as well and Jupyter Notebooks, but it actually is a new language called Q#, which we've shipped, that makes quantum computing as easy to implement as any of the other languages in computer science.   Jason Howard: Wait, so you're telling me there was a new programming language- excuse me programming language written?   Dave Wecker: For quantum.   Jason Howard:  Wow.   Dave Wecker: It's shipped at under Visual Studio. It runs under VS code, and actually if, Miles will mention, if we go to microsoft.com/quantum, that's everything we do in quantum. It's under there including how to get the development kit. You can also get to our blogs where we have the information on examples and samples and, for instance, all the different things in chemistry I mentioned: the materials, the examples of software written in Q#, and libraries that you can use to solve these kinds of problems.   Jason Howard: Wow, and the spreadsheets. So, Tyler I got another question for you. Obviously we've talked about some of the educational background that is involved in these type of fields and we listed some of those just a moment ago. What could be the potentially overlooked skills or personality type qualities in some of these candidates? Is there anything specific that you're finding in the candidates for these roles that would help somebody thrive in this type of environment?   Tyler Roush: I don't know that I could say that there's a hard skill associated with someone that does or is more apt to be in the quantum field. Honestly, I think our evangelism team is doing an excellent job when you talk about it being a growing field. They're working with a lot of universities and more and more so every day in trying to implement quantum education as part of the work that happens in masters and PhD programs now and specifically around our Q# programming language. So, University of Bristol, there was an event last month that we held where students were coming up and asking us about our Q# language.   To Dave's point, trying to teach computer scientists Q# and Quantum programming through normal mechanisms that computer scientists would use is the ultimate goal, so that you don't have to have as much inherent knowledge on physics, on quantum development in order to participate in the field.   Jason Howard:  So, I've got a question here that I'm super curious about. Say you were interviewing David here for Laurel, said he didn't work at Microsoft, what kind of questions would you ask him?   Tyler Roush: That's a great question I have to admit here. So, I guess my answer to that would be a little different than you might expect. So, obviously quantum computing is a very technical field, so most of the conversations that I have revolve around career and personal goals more so than the hard technical skills and what they're involved in. What I typically like to do is try to understand what someone might be working on in their publication work, start the conversation there as far as what their career topical interests and just beginning to understand the person and what they're looking for as far as employment contracts.   The reason for it is because it's such a small field, the idea is to screen people in, not to screen people out and so once we can identify people that are strong candidates in the field, it's more about trying to nurture our relationship with particular people then dismiss people who might not meet X, Y, Z requirement.    I think the paradigm of recruiting is supply and demand and so I think of it very similar to AI. Five years ago, AI was a very small field and now Microsoft has done things like implement the AI school in trying to broaden the people that are involved in the field. Quantum is going to I think take the same trajectory as followers growth and the people in it but yes, current state it's very opposite to how you might think of traditional recruiting work.   Jason Howard: So, Dave obviously we've talked a lot about education and past and histories and things like that. So, looking back on your education and career, what prepared you for the job that you have today? Did you see this coming a year, excuse me, even like a decade ago? Like did you know that this is what you would be working on?   Dave Wecker: No. Not even close. I actually had a career before Microsoft as an International Business Consultant, that where I ran around the world working in developing countries, bringing computer science there. When I came to Microsoft, I worked on all the little devices, handheld PC, Pocket PC, auto PC, I was the architect for all of those and development manager. Worked up to the Cloud, did a lot of work on the early cloud work page ranking, things like that efficiently. Along the way, the quantum team that was just beginning at that point didn't have any software tools.   It was all about the physics, it was all about the how do we make a device that will do what we want? Again, Microsoft has a very unique approach called topological quantum computing, which is a whole separate subject, but there was nothing to support what we were doing, so I wrote a simulator and that became what was known as Liquid that we shipped a number of years ago and was the predecessor to all the Q# work that you're seeing now and the QDK. But it was one of those things where all the software had been done, had been done by grad students as part of their doctorate.   What that means is they just did enough to get the doctorate and things that didn't work and things that were just cobbled together were left that way. There was no professional effort. The Liquid was the first example of what happens, we do professional computer science and apply it to the problem of quantum computing. And it was something that led us scale to approach some of the problems that we'll be able to solve on a real quantum computer someday.   So, my background was more of a generic type of thing, I've had all sorts of jobs over time, I used to say, “I just can't keep a job,” but it's also the case that my position as architect, architect is not a job you really train for. It something that along the way you've picked up the experience. You've gotten to the point where you understand how to build things that are going to last as opposed to, "I'm going to program something to a set of specs, get it done, get it out the door" which is more tactical, you have to get that done.   Architects are more looking at, "I want to build a framework that even if we only implement a little of it, leads to something that lasts for five years, ten years and beyond.” This is why things like internet protocols and the web standards and so forth are things that are architected, because they have to last for a long time.   Well, when you build a system this complex, you have to architect it, it has to be something that, you kind of have changed things but along the way you want to make sure much of it survives over time. I think it's more of an experience type of thing. You get as much training in many areas as you can, educationally, but you also get as much practical experience along the way. As I said, my backgrounds are in hardware, software business in all different areas and then I can pull it all together and use it in this position. So, this for me is the dream job. It's perfect for me.   Jason Howard: So, knowing how broad and diverse your background is, are there any specific skills that you found through your past and your jobs and the changes, the not keeping a job experience that you've had, are there any particular skills that have served you well but they are not to just served you well but it turns out that you may not have expected it but were actually super important to where you are right now.   Dave Wecker: Listening. Learning. In fact, my previous boss Burton Smith who kind of started a lot of this program, used to only ask me two questions on my review and the two questions were, "What have you learned, and are you having fun?" Because if you enjoy what you're doing and you keep learning and growing, the rest will come naturally. Those are the main skills. I really think I spend a lot of time getting educated, and there's always more, and applying it where I can and then training others.   A lot of my job is imparting this information. Quantum is something that doesn't come naturally to a lot of people. I think Feynman said it doesn't come naturally to anyone. So, it's one of those things where I spend a lot of time just linking up parts of the program and saying, "You should talk to you, because the two of you are actually working on things that intersect even though they don't look like it. And you really should talk to each other." That's a lot of my job.   Jason Howard: I find it utterly fascinating. Like you have this awesome job and I'm just like, "I didn't even know we were working on this stuff." Until Satya showed some of this stuff on stage, I was like, "Wait a minute, what are we doing?" I always use my mom as an example because she's just she's my mom, she's old school.   This is not anything that would ever cross her plate. It's not something she'd ever seek it on the internet. She would never do research on it. Every time we do these and I do the webcasts that we do, she learns a little something and then we end up having phone call she's like, "Okay. So, I didn't understand this, tell me about it."   So, it's like this whole trickle-down effect. I will never be as smart as you. I will never do a tenth of the things that you've done obviously, but you talking and having this conversation with me, gives me a few little nuggets of knowledge and then I'll go pass those to my mom and she can go talk to other people. I think just getting people interested in this, is enough to help get the wave going.   Dave Wecker: I spend a lot of time at parties with my wife's friends explaining quantum. I get a question almost at every party where, “I heard this, and I saw this in the press, what does it mean?” Most of all of it is explainable. None of it is really stuff that's over anyone's head. It's just you're not familiar with it. You haven't heard it.   If anyone's interested also on cloudblogs.microsoft.com/quantum, we have a whole bunch of information for everybody including, there's a talk by me that's an hour-long talk on the overview of quantum and how Microsoft's effort is different and how it fits in with the rest. But we've been doing quantum since the year 2000 and we created Station Q in 2006, it's just nobody knew it. So, we've been at this for a long time.   Tyler Roush: Not to overstate it but that Liquid system that Dave mentioned, I think it was one of two compiler systems in the entire industry at one point, not too long ago?   Jason Howard:  My goodness.   Tyler Roush: And this year, it was up to six. So, even over the last couple of years, it has grown significantly.   Jason Howard:  Wow. So, stepping back up a level, right? Obviously, in the technological sphere as a whole, we're in a period where technology is advancing at a much more rapid pace, which has happened since computing was invented. We're kind of always on this massive upward trajectory where something new is always around the corner.   Do either of you have any advice for new grads, people coming in right out of high school, or coming out of college who may not have known that this was a thing. It may have caught their interest if they had known about it beforehand. Any advice for those folks, or even some seasoned pros out there who are wondering how they can keep up. Obviously, you mentioned the Microsoft.com link earlier. If there's folks who want to decide what direction they should pursue their career, if this is something they’re interested in.   We talked about job roles versus candidates and things like that, but there's somebody out there who would be a good fit in this, but they don't know it yet. How do you get your foot in the door?   Dave Wecker: Well the easiest, using the Quantum Development Kit. Download it, and start writing some code, look at the examples. There's a large set of documentation with samples, with libraries, with all the things you need to get started.   Earlier this month there was a contest for people to just come in and write Q# code and compete in, and we're running events all the time. It's something that is free it's easy. If you write software, you'll find in five minutes you can be writing a quantum algorithm. It's not that hard to get the basics and to get started. Details are going take a little while, but everything does, that's why it needed a new language among other things, but it's also something that you can do easily on your own. You can get started, there's more and more college programs starting now for training.   If you're coming from the computer science side, that's happening. Coming from the physics side, quantum information is becoming more and more of a thing that's being trained. University of Washington has a class where they do quantum information now, and there's various places that you can move on to the computer science side from the physics. So you can go both directions and it's more just explore and see what's available.   Tyler Roush: I think the advice I'd give to any candidate is to continue to think of your career as retooling into the current world. For computer science in the case of quantum, one of the interesting conversations that I had with my boss recently was, when he had started his career in recruiting, Webmaster was the most sought after profession, because the internet had just come out everybody was going to be a Webmaster. And so you think about how computing is changed to more distributed systems, Cloud oriented environment, AI, which is prevailing more and more today, and then the future in quantum computing just to continue to think about the relevance of programming in these modern systems.   The way that I understand quantum computing too, there is going to be a particular market for it, and so it's not going to overhaul all of computing systems but there'll be a certain application for it.   Dave Wecker: It's worth mentioning that quantum computing is a different mindset when you write programs. There are certain things that don't work, and certain things that do work compared to classical that you're used to.   You can't make temporary variables, you can't make a temporary that you copy something into, do work, and throw it away, it's actually impossible on a quantum algorithm. Most of the algorithms you write have to be able to run forwards and backwards. You have to be able to start from a state, run your algorithm, and then run the whole algorithm backwards and get back to where you started. This is very different than classical.   So, the mindset is different. If you love solving puzzles, it's a great area because every program is a puzzle solution of how do I figure this out, how do I make it do something I want it to do within the restrictions. So, it is something that takes practice, that takes a mind shift.   But also we found that a lot of the things we do in quantum because they're so different, let us solve things on the classical side we couldn't before. Because you've now thought about the problem from a different way, and we have a whole effort on Azure in quantum inspired algorithms, things we've learned in quantum that we've brought back say for machine learning that we now do Quantum inspired algorithms for machine learning on classical machines. So it also will help classical programmers to have this idea of how you think differently for quantum, and then applying that back to classical.   Jason Howard: Well I've got to say this has been a completely fascinating conversation for me, I mean even just in this short little back and forth between us. I've learned a ton. There's way more to come in this field as you continue to make new hardware, and make new software, and apply it to the problems that actually exist out in the world. So, as we wrap up here, are there any parting words or tidbits of advice you'd like to share with our listeners?   Dave Wecker: I think that quantum gives us an opportunity. It's a paradigm shift. It gives us a different way to think about problems, different way to solve problems. And it's something that is new. We've been computing with the same types of bits and numbers for thousands of years and this is a different way to do it.   One area we've left out of all this is math.on't forget about this if you're a Math major also, because a lot of the things are fundamental things in math, especially in topology and various other areas that besides physics and computer science, there's another way to come at this. And we have a large group of theoreticians in Santa Barbara at Microsoft working in this area as well. This is the home of Station Q, where it started, so this actually started as a mathematical idea, and moved out into the rest of it.   Alexei Kitaev is probably the father of topological quantum computing, and has worked with us from the beginning on this. Michael Friedman who heads Station Q in Santa Barbara, is a Fields Medalist. In math, that's the equivalent of the Nobel Prize. He's the only one working in industry, and has been with Microsoft since around 2000, working on this problem and trying to turn it into a reality. So, these are some of the best people in the world.   When I said that at the beginning, I really meant it I mean these are the Nobel Prize level people that are solving the problem, and we get to work with them every day here. So, I think it's a great job and a great place to be.   Tyler Roush: I'm just impressed with the leap that quantum computing will take--no pun intended--but when I first started with this group, I was thinking of Moore's Law and the trajectory that computing power has taken every two years. Moore's Law it doubles, and we get more computing power now. We can do more on our phone than we could 30 years ago with a computer.   So to think about quantum computing, it is exponentially faster to the point of almost being unexplainably faster, and I think the power that will come along with that will create an entirely new job market for candidates. It'll be part of the computer scientists’ world to figure out how that new world develops, and if you are interested in looking for a job, Quantum Jobs at Microsoft.com is a great place to reach me.   Jason Howard:  Awesome.   Dave Wecker: I'll give one example of that exponential that we like to just let roll off our tongues. Two hundred and fifty qubits is enough to hold more information than there are particles in the universe.   Jason Howard: That's difficult just a fathom, as a statement much less the actual mathematical, volume and size that's inherent in what you just said.   That's right, so when we say exponential, it really means completely different. There are things that just cannot be done in any other computing paradigm that we have that could be done here. This is why I get up in the morning and go in and work on it every day.   Jason Howard:  Well I gotta say, I really appreciate both of you popping into the studio today. It's been completely my pleasure and hopefully the listeners have enjoyed the conversation as well. Thank you for taking the time. Thank you for being in the studio today. Really appreciate it.   Dave Wecker: My pleasure   Tyler Roush: Thank you.   (Music.)   Jason Howard: Up next, the Windows Insider Program’s Tyler Ahn gets the inside scoop on what it takes to land a coveted internship at Microsoft--and, how to turn that internship into a job offer. Here’s Tyler.   Tyler Ahn: Hello insiders, our next guest in the studio today is here to talk about his experience as a Microsoft intern, and how he was able to land a full-time job offer from Microsoft. Raymond, welcome to the show.   Raymond Ononiwu:  Hey Tyler. Thank you, thank you for having me.   Tyler Ahn: Could you introduce yourself to our listeners and share a few words on your background and what you do here at Microsoft.   Raymond Ononiwu: My name is Raymond Uchenna Ononiwu, and I was born and raised in Lagos Nigeria. The unique thing about Lagos is that it teaches you to dream. Most people who have been to Lagos have interactive with Lagosians know we have this dogged determination to succeed at things. At the age of 17, I moved across the world to go to college. I started out doing Civil Engineering at Michigan Tech and three years into Civil Engineering program, I switched to Computer Science. Everyone thought I was crazy, but I figured it was a feature. It was necessary for me to do. I'm currently a software engineer for the CoreOS and Intelligent Edge here at Microsoft.   Tyler Ahn: What prompted you to switch from Civil Engineering to Software Engineering?   Raymond Ononiwu: It was actually one of those things that happened by chance. I didn't get to use a computer till I was 15 and on the long list of things I thought I could do, working with computers and computer science was not one of them. I remember a friend of mine at some point handed me, this was interesting, he said to me, he said you'd be really good at this computer thing and I just waved it off as though we're nothing and he handed me a Cisco switch and a book about routing and it actually had never occurred to me how an email gets from one end to another.   After reading the book and playing around with the switch, something just changed. I became fascinated with how information moves, digital information moves from one point to another, and that spurred the change to figure out what career path I had to take or what I had to learn at school in order to make this a career path and that's what spurred the change to Computer Science.   Tyler Ahn: That's so cool. Well, so what I heard was that you were once upon a time an intern here and internships are incredibly competitive these days especially with technology companies like Microsoft. Can you share what your experience was like applying for that internship.   Raymond Ononiwu:  Well, it was quite an interesting one. I remember seeing a Microsoft recruiting booth on campus. It was during career fair I think, and I dropped off my resume, I didn't think much about it. I didn't actually think I had the opportunity. I didn't see a computer ‘till I was 15, and working with computers wasn't on my list of things to do.   When I got an email regarding the interview, I was quite elated because I didn't think I'd make it that far, and I remember my on-campus interview was with a guy named Jim Pemburton, and I spent about 35 minutes with Jim and I decided I wanted to work at Microsoft. He was excited and he had a lot of knowledge that he was willing to share which was quite frankly what I looked for in a company.   Past that point, we got invited, I got called for an on-campus interview which was, it was a little bit of a mix between, I would say being at the Grammy's and rigorous day, five 45-minute interviews to test our problem solving and design skills. I got my offer the same day at about midnight and I spent another 30 to 45 minutes convincing my parents that it was the same Microsoft that makes windows.   So it was quite an interesting process.   Tyler Ahn: That is so awesome. So what I guess you don't know really why they called you out of the stack of resumes, but in your view, what do you think helped you successfully land the internship? What made you stand out as a candidate?   Raymond Ononiwu:  I think through the course of the interviews, showing that I was a learner was very important. I asked for a lot of feedback and I was more, the interview quite frankly went both ways. I was being interviewed and the entire time, I was actually interviewing the people who I was talking to. I think the ability to show that you can embrace the future was quite important.   One of the key things I believe helped me make it through that interview was the fact that I had switched majors in my third year and decided you know what, this is what the future's going to be and I need to go down that direction. It was quite a bold move and I think that stood out through the course of the interview.   Tyler Ahn: The ability to embrace the future.   Raymond Ononiwu: Yes.   Tyler Ahn: And the unknown.   Raymond Ononiwu: And the unknown, yeah.   Tyler Ahn: Well looking back, what was your internship experience like? What was most valuable? What skills did you gain in the months that you were here?   Raymond Ononiwu: Let's see. So, the internship itself was quite fun because I had a few other people from my school who were interning at the same time. One of the things I realized quite early was that as an intern, you have a golden key that unlocks doors to different opportunities.   You have a company that has people who are experts in their field, and you can always reach out and say, hey, can I have lunch and pick your brain and just soak up as much knowledge as you can. I think that was the biggest takeaway for me. The caliber of people that I got to work with and meet was quite amazing.   Tyler Ahn:What was the best piece of advice that you received during your days here as an intern? Or maybe even as a career Microsofty?   Raymond Ononiwu: I think the best advice I received as an intern was from Felicia Guitti, I believe. She is the GM of marketing, worldwide marketing, she was at the time, and I remember having lunch with her and she said to me, you decide what comes off of this process. Do a lot of the hard work and when you have to engage with people be very direct about what it is you need them to do for you or what you can do for them.   It's important to know those things in any kind of engagement or interaction with people at the company. Don't waste people's time, but also always have value to offer in any situation.   Tyler Ahn: How have you used that piece of advice?   Raymond Ononiwu: Oh, interestingly, I'm more in the social end of things. I tend to chit chat a lot with people but I will say, through the course of my time here at Microsoft, being able to articulate what it is that I can do for people has been important. You tend to build a brand over time, right?   People start to figure out what they know you for, and for me it turned out to be network, and I seem to know practically everyone. It's gotten to a point where even when new people show up at the company, especially who are Africans, the first email is reach out to Raymond, he'll figure out who you need to meet or what you need to do. So, I think it's connecting people that has become sort of my brand here at the company.   Tyler Ahn: Fantastic. So, we know that many interns are dreaming of working full time for Microsoft and with so many bright candidates only few actually realize that dream. What in your view helped you land that job offer after the internship was over?   Raymond Ononiwu: The people you work with make a huge difference. So when you look at yourself as a candidate for employment anywhere, you need to think about why you would hire yourself and be very honest and critical about it. Are you willing to learn quickly? Can you share your knowledge with other people?   I tend to think of it as coming prepared with the right tools but still leave enough space in your toolbox for new things. I think one of the interesting things I saw when I started here was that everyone who worked here either as an engineer and any other role had life experience, they had other things in their lives that they did.   So, the crazy things that I do in my life, be it racing or playing soccer or playing music, still mattered. Those things are equally as important because, in order for us to build great products we need to experience life first and figure out how to improve life using engineering. So, I think that was quite important as well.   Tyler Ahn: Learning how to crash the Oscars perhaps?   Raymond Ononiwu:  Yes, that too.   Tyler Ahn: So any other wise and sage career advice you can offer new grads dreaming about working here at Microsoft?   Raymond Ononiwu: First off, join the Insider Program. That's important.   Tyler Ahn: Thanks for that plug.   Raymond Ononiwu: Form a habit of learning, not just the easy things but the difficult things as well. Learn to create clarity. Making complicated things simple is not an easy feat. So you have to practice a lot to be good at it. Practice everything. Be curious and don't just practice the engineering bit encoding, look into other aspects of life? How does your brain work? What is cancer? What makes it such a deadly disease, right?   Understanding those things that seem to be outliers usually are the key to solving a lot of problems. When you get there just enjoy it, time flies. It passes quickly, just enjoy it as much as you can.   Tyler Ahn: Raymond, that wasn't just great career advice, that was excellent life advice as well. Thank you so much for joining us today, and to all the new grads out there, we wish you the best on your career journey and thank you for listening today insiders.   (Music.)   Jason Howard: That’s a wrap for Episode 17. If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast app. You can also find all of our previous episodes on the Windows Insider website: Insider.windows.com. Thanks again for listening, and until next time!   (Music.)   NARRATION:  The Windows Insider Podcast is produced by Microsoft Production Studios and the Windows Insider team, which includes Tyler Ahn -- that's me -- Michelle Paison, Ande Harwood, and Kristie Wang.   Visit us on the Web at insider.windows.com.  Follow @windowsinsider on Instagram and Twitter.   Support for the Windows Insider Podcast comes from Microsoft -- empowering every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.   Please subscribe, rate, and review this podcast wherever you get your podcasts.   Moral support and inspiration come from Ninja Cat, reminding us to have fun and pursue our passions.   Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founders, Dona Sarkar and Jeremiah Marble. Join us next month for another fascinating discussion from the perspectives of Windows Insiders.   END

Roderick on the Line
Ep. 21: "Dead Rubber Girl in My Closet"

Roderick on the Line

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 17, 2012


Ep. 21: “Dead Rubber Girl in My Closet” - Roderick on the Line - Merlin Mann on Huffduffer The Problem: Oates, Alfalfa, and some numerous options for love. Episode Transcription by Max