Podcasts about heather you

When you quit drinking, the physical detox gets a lot of attention—but what about the emotional detox? In this episode of No More Wasted Days, Heather and Sara dive into what it really means to emotionally detox after quitting alcohol. They explore why emotions feel so intense in early sobriety, how to move through them without fear, and how emotional healing is not just necessary—it's transformational. If you've ever felt overwhelmed, irritable, tearful, or deeply vulnerable after quitting drinking, this episode will help you feel seen, supported, and empowered. What You'll Learn in This Episode:

Hi Babes!! Welcome to another episode of Empower Project Radio. Today we have special guest, Heather Ivany. Heather is a Spiritual Mentor, Akashic Guide, and Yoga Teacher with over twenty years of experience leading souls through life-altering transformation and growth that aligns them to their “current” purpose. Harnessing a radiant warmth and decades-long immersion in spirituality, Heather's intuitive and enveloping approach awakens those who are ready to release what is limiting them and expand into higher versions of themselves. Her teachings have left an imprint on thousands of students, granting them the practical skills to unconditionally embrace the fullness of the human experience. With the gentle wisdom and compassion of one who understands the nuances of spiritual practice, she opens students to the joy of exploring the deep and mysterious inner landscape of the heart, mind, and body. In this episode, we sit down to explore the profound realms of intuition and spiritual practice. With over two decades of experience, Heather shares her journey and the transformative work she does to help individuals align with their evolving purpose.Topics:The 4 Intuitive Indicators, also known as the clairs: clairvoyant (seeing), claircognizant (knowing), clairsentient (feeling), and clairaudient (hearing).The interplay between intuition, the head, and the heart.The role of discomfort in enhancing intuition.Spiritual practices including Yoga Nidra, Sankalpa (I Am affirmations), meditation, and energetics.Join us for a captivating discussion that promises to inspire and equip you with the insights and practices to deepen your spiritual journey and embrace your full human experience.Connect with Heather: You can find her at @heather_Ivany and HeatherIvany.com. Stay tuned until the end of the episode where Heather shares how you can connect with her and learn more about her transformative Alchemy Mentorship program.Take a screenshot and tag me on Instagram (@iamkcvolard)!Let me know what you're loving!Let's continue the conversation over inside our FREE telegram community - The 7-Figure Coven!

In this profound episode of the #SiblingsToo podcast, we are introduced to Heather, John, and their daughter Brooke, a family united by the turmoil of sibling sexual abuse and united in their journey toward justice and healing. Heather and John, parents grappling with the revelations of their son's actions toward his sister, embody the resolve to advocate for both their children amid an undeniably complex emotional landscape. Brooke emerges as a beacon of courage and a voice for survivors, sharing her experience with clarity and a hope to inspire change.   Episode Summary:   The SiblingsToo podcast embarks on an emotionally charged dialogue as we delve into the critical issue of sibling sexual abuse and its ramifications on the family unit. This episode welcomes Heather, John, and Brooke, who bravely share their family's tumultuous journey after Brooke's disclosure of her older brother's sexual abuse towards her. Their story sheds light on the under-recognized epidemic of sibling sexual abuse and the journey towards justice and healing. Heather reveals the omnipresent danger technology poses in our children's lives, especially with the ease of accessing potentially harmful content like pornography. John shares his paternal struggle, anchored by his commitment to both his children, while Brooke illuminates her personal evolution, from survivor dealing with blame and shame to advocate for awareness and prevention. Together, they explore the complex intersection of familial dynamics, mental health, technology, and societal norms that often converge in cases of sibling sexual abuse.   *   The episode opens with Heather expressing concern for the overexposure of today's youth to content beyond their mental processing capacity. *   The family discusses the influence of pornography on their son's behavior and the importance of open dialogues and preventative measures in family settings. *   A powerful perspective shift occurs as Brooke underscores the necessity of reclaiming one's power as a survivor, advocating for both victims and abusers in the quest for healing.   Key Takeaways: *   Children are being exposed to more content, such as pornography, than their brains are ready to handle, influencing behavior in harmful ways. *   The challenge of advocating for both the survivor and the abuser exists within the same family, emphasizing the unique dynamics present in sibling sexual abuse cases. *   Parents should consider contracts, monitoring, and conversations about internet safety as preventative measures against the dangers of unfettered technological access. *   Brooke, as a survivor, aims to push for educational change within the school system, advocating for personal space rules and anti-grooming information. *   There is a possibility for family healing and reunification post-disclosure, with the prerequisite of respecting the survivor's timing and comfort.   Notable Quotes:   *   "Children are seeing more than their brains are ready to handle." - Heather *   "You should always hand the shame back to the abuser because if you don't, you're thinking it's your fault." - Brooke *   "We need open conversations...educate our children more so on dangers of family. A family makes you feel uncomfortable. People need to know not to be scared to come forward." - Heather *   "It's a sticky situation...it's totally upon Brooke on how she feels." - John *   "Everything will be fine... eventually you will [find your voice] too." - Brooke   Engage with the full episode to join Heather, John, and Brooke on their compelling journey through the complexities of sibling sexual abuse. Their heartfelt narrative and insightful reflections promise to enlighten and encourage listeners navigating similar paths. Stay tuned for more eye-opening content from the #SiblingsToo podcast.     Timestamps:  0:00 The Family Confronts Sibling Sexual Abuse and Seeks Healing   4:09 The Impact of Pornography on Youth Behavior   7:59 Family Struggles With Teen's Secret Addictions   12:07 Protecting Children from Technology's Hidden Dangers   16:45 Confronting the Reality of Sibling Sexual Abuse   21:15 Praising Courageous Parenting and Judicial Intervention   22:34 Debating Age Restrictions for Technology and Pornography Access   24:16 Debating Cell Phone Use in Schools   27:32 Healing and Advocacy in Teen Mental Health   29:44 Empowering Youth with Body Safety and Anti-Grooming Education   31:58 Addressing Mental Health in the Judicial System   36:42 Parental Conflict in Advocating for Both Victim and Perpetrator   38:32 Addressing Pornography's Impact on Youth and Societal Norms   41:05 Family Healing and Advocacy After Abuse       Would you like to support the #SiblingsToo Podcast --> buymeacoffee.com/siblingstoo  

Embark on an enlightening conversation with Heather Mckenzie Patterson and Katherine Sandoval Taylor, co-founders of On Stage Collective, as they recount their journey from college vocal performance majors to pioneers in the immersive performance program landscape. From adapting to major changes during their studies to overcoming setbacks caused by COVID-19, their unwavering dedication and problem-solving spirit shine through. Through auditions and immersive learning, they've empowered aspiring performers, shaping the future of arts education. Join their exciting journey as they gear up for their upcoming New York show, continuing to offer aspiring artists a chance to shine and fulfill their dreams within a supportive and transformative community at On Stage Collective. Guests: Heather McKenzie Patterson and Katherine Sandoval Taylor Host: Mary Sturgill Producer: Isabella Martinez TRANSCRIPT MARY: Hi everyone. Welcome to this episode of the Class E Podcast. I am your host Mary Sturgill. This podcast is brought to you through a partnership between the Hill Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and the Communication Studies Department here at Furman University. This is also the podcast where we talk to entrepreneurs and innovative thinkers about their endeavors, and we share their stories with you in hopes of inspiring you. And today we welcome guests Katherine Sandoval Taylor and Heather Mckenzie Patterson, who are both Furman alumni and founders of the immersive production company On Stage Collective. Katherine and Heather, welcome to the show.  Katherine: Thank you for having us. Heather: Thank you so much, Mary.  Mary: Yeah, absolutely. I wanted to start because I was of course looking at your all's career paths and your accolades and stuff and you have been… both of you have been in some of my favorite operas and performances. Can you talk and Katherine, we'll start with you. Can you talk about some of your favorite shows that you've been in? Katherine: Yeah. So um, gosh, I've been so fortunate to really be able to check off a lot of bucket list roles in my career. Some of my favorites, I guess, have been Maria in West Side Story. That was a role that I was looking forward to playing my entire life. And I have played that role twice. Love. One of those was actually in South Carolina, with an opera company in South Carolina, and we rehearsed at Furman. So that was really cool. Another one of my favorite roles was from Light in the Piazza. I played Clara and that was a really beautiful production. Another favorite stage memory of mine was when I did two national tours, two national jazz tours. And that was a really great experience, kind of like living the tour bus life for a while. That was fun, and I really got to kind of explore a different side of my voice that I didn't… I haven't had the opportunity to perform that much with, but it was really… it was a really cool experience doing that tour. And I worked with some incredible musicians and singers that I learned a lot from. So yeah, those are some of my favorites.  Mary: Yeah, I love that. Okay. Heather, what about you? Heather: Sure. Um, I would say that, gosh, it's been a minute since I've sung any opera, but I would say that…I did that with Arbor Opera Theater up in Michigan. After I finished my master's up there at Michigan State. And another role that was… I actually only completed scenes of this but it was Sophie from Deb Rosenkavalier..and that's one my favorite operas of all time. So that was really fun. Got to revisit that a couple of times. And I would say one of my most like meaningful memories was singing at Carnegie Hall, which I had done a few times versus a chorister in high school. That was of course like, oh my gosh, I can't believe we're here on the stage. You know, really exciting. And then I went back as a singer with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and chorus. We went there a couple of times and we sang Peter Grimes, the full opera concert version of the opera there. And while we were in rehearsal for that, I was singing in the chorus it was a big chorus for that and I, the soprano walked down to the front and I was like, next time I'm on this stage, I'm going to be out front in a big poofy gown as a soloist and I even said it to a friend of mine and of course next year like that's, that's where I'm going to be next time and it was one of those like manifest moments where that's what happened. So the next time I got to perform there was as a soprano soloist with a big choral orchestral work, we were singing a Schubert mass, and I bought the big pink gown and sang at the front of the stage with one of my favorite conductors. And it was a blast and probably the best part was just that I had a lot of friends and family come to the performance from all over the country. We had a big party afterwards and so that was just really special to celebrate. Like I saw my parents, you know, in the 12th row like oh my gosh, freaking out. It was really nice to have that memory with people that I love.  Mary: Yeah, I love that idea of manifesting that, you know, speaking that into existence right? I think that's what well, I think a ton of artists do that no matter what, you know, whether they're performing arts or the you know, different kind of art, but I think that that spirit that comes with just being an artistic person kind of drives that in you and you and you have to believe them, right?  Katherine: Yeah, definitely.  Heather: And it can be scary, I think even like I would call myself a recovering perfectionist. And so I would be like, if those perfectionists out there know you don't want to even do something unless you know you're going to be awesome at it like the best perfect at it, right?  Mary: Yeah.  Heather: And so manifesting something like that or saying something out loud that could easily never happen. Like that could easily never work out for you. I wouldn't, it's not in my nature to want to really, like put it out there unless I knew for sure I could just make it happen. Mary: Right. Right. I don't think you're alone in that.  Heather: It was a leap of faith, you know? Mary: Yeah, for sure. I don't think you're alone in that. I think all entrepreneurs and innovative thinkers have that. I mean, we talk to other entrepreneurs on this podcast and they want to get the best, most perfect product or iteration of whatever their venture is right out there. When in fact, we should just literally just do it, right?  Katherine: Yeah, sometimes Heather and I joke about the phrase that we need to implement in our lives a bit more, which is better done than perfect. Because sometimes, as Heather said, being a perfectionist, I would also lope myself into that category of recovering perfectionist. I feel like being a perfectionist can sometimes hold you back from opportunities and, and at least taking that first step to try and that's important to kind of acknowledge that sometimes you do have to take that leap of faith just to maximize your potential.  Mary: Yeah, absolutely. 100% I love that. Say that phrase again. I want to make sure our listeners get that.  Katherine: Better done than perfect.  Mary: Yeah, better done than perfect. That's my new motto. Heather: Always within reason. Mary: Of course. Yes. Absolutely. We always put our best foot forward anyway. So you guys have known each other for a long time. You were roommates here at Furman?  Heather: Yes, we were. Longer ago than I care to say.  Mary: So you're both vocal performance majors while you were here. And of course, you both went on to get higher degrees and stuff. But was there any competition between you for roles and stuff while you're here?  Heather: Oh, that's so funny. Well, I want to clarify that I started out as a vocal performance major, but I did change my major to a BA in voice. And that was because I wanted to double major with psychology. Mary: Oh, that's great.  Heather: At least at the time, you couldn't get like a Bachelor of Music in one thing and a Bachelor of Arts in something else. You had to get a Bachelor of Music in two things and a Bachelor of Arts in two things. And I remember the conversation sitting down with Dr. Thomas, the department chair at the time, to like deliver this news that I wanted to change my major and how was that going to affect my scholarships and was I going to be allowed to do it, you know? And so I…he said, yes, of course, Heather, we will support you doing that and so I was able to shift. And as much as I could, I tried to take like the classes that the performance majors were taking. And so it was just a matter of like, oh, I guess I'll just overload every semester that I'm here to get in all of the credits for both majors. But there were things that I didn't get to take because I wasn't a performance major, just specific classes. One of them I think, Kat you'll know the…Was it a counterpoint class that you had to take a class…that I didn't have to take and by then we were roommates and so she was just like, I hate this. Katherine: She could have helped me. Heather: But to answer your question about competition… I mean, I don't think so. I never would… I'm very competitive with myself. But with the people that I love, like my my ride or die BFFs I don't want to compete with them at all, you know, like I want to celebrate them and to be honest, if there was ever a time where that might happen like, I mean Kat, you can say if this is not true, but I would just not want to audition like I would just want…if I knew it was something that best friend like Kat really wanted, like, I just wouldn't want to audition for that. I would be like, you know her hype girl for that role rather than like, out of my way let me try, you know. I don't recall any competition. Katherine: No, I don't…Heather and I aren't competitive with each other. And I feel like it's just kind of like a personality trait that we both share. We weren't competitive then with each other and we're not competitive now. I feel like you know, I feel very strongly about surrounding myself with strong, talented, passionate women. And being surrounded by strong, talented, passionate women encourages you to be better at what you do. It's not about competition. It's about lifting each other up and empowering each other and learning from each other. And that's something that Heather and I… I've always really respected and looked up to Heather and learned a lot from her and I feel like that hasn't changed. We did that in college. I felt the same way then that I do now… that we empower each other and motivate each other. So, no, there was never any competition between us.  Mary: Yeah, I love what you say about empowering each other and uplifting each other. And I think both of you have been teachers for close to 20 years now. What has informed… how is that experience and your performance experience informed On Stage Collective and what you're doing now? Katherine: Oh, 100% Yeah. Such a large can of worms.  Heather: Well, the reason that we began the company was out of our two studios. So just the background information is that yes, we both have been teaching in different iterations for years. Then we honed our own private studios. I taught at a few universities for over 10 years, 12,13 years, something like that, but we were both building our private studios of voice and piano. And we both think big and we want what we put out there to be excellent. And I think it's been important to both of us to provide great opportunities for our performers, our students to be able to do big things, big performances, big opportunities. And so before, before COVID, we were talking about like, where maybe if we partner up, we're in totally different cities, totally different states. But what if we brought our students together? And really this was… Kat brought this idea to me. What if we partnered together with the students in our studio? And could we do a performance somewhere excellent that they don't have access to and even we don't have access to on our own, but could we pool our resources, pool our students, our talent base, and make something really incredible? And that was like the first conversation. You know, how it started was just to do something with our own two studios that we couldn't do on our own. Kat,  would you agree with how that started? Katherine: Right. And it just kind of took off from there. So we were thinking big, and we took that leap of faith like we just talked about. It was a little bit scary. And I mean, honestly, it felt impossible to think about performing. I mean, fast forward to where we ultimately decided we wanted to try to perform which was 54 Below at Broadway's living room. I mean, every famous Broadway star you can think of has stood on that stage and has… and behind that microphone. And so that was a little bit intimidating and seemed out of reach. And we just put…we're such big thinkers…it was something we wanted to try for at least and then we surprised ourselves and then we had a full, all of a sudden, we had a full cast of people from all over the country ready to perform with us and make this big event happen. And it kind of just like snowballed from there.  Mary: So talk a little bit about that process. And how did you, you already had some of the students, but did all of your students participate in that and how did that kind of come to fruition?  Heather: Yeah, we auditioned them because, you know, I know what my students sound like, but not Kat's students and vice versa. So, we wanted to make it as fair as possible too, you know, and have an outside person judge and choose who would be performing. So we brought in a panel of people, not just the two of us, but other music directors to listen to all of the singers and they didn't know whose student was coming, you know which student was coming from which studio. And so the students submitted videos, I think two full songs, and we had the panel and ourselves rank the singers and came up with kind of like, okay, our max number of singers was such and such number. And so not everyone got to go from our studios and not everyone from our studios auditioned, but we selected people from that audition, and it was basically half and half. Half students from Kat's studio and half from mine. Now, this was pre COVID. And I did want to back up because when Kat mentioned the leap of faith…I feel like the first leap of faith was… I remember where I was standing. We were on a call and it was like should we just call 54 below like is that a thing? Can we just call them? Let's call them. So we did, you know, go to the website, call the number. This was a better done than perfect situation because we didn't we didn't have anything formulated yet or planned or when or who, what. We just called and that got the ball rolling and I think that built the confidence because it was just a normal person on the other side of the phone who just walked us through their requirements and what it would take to be selected, to be able to perform there. And then it's just steps, you know, one foot in front of the other, do this thing, and this thing, then this thing. And so that first cast, I think it was like 24,26, 28 singers, something in that number, and it's foggy because that group did not end up performing at 54 below. And that is because our first cast was set to perform July 2020. So we all know what that means. So we had planned and this was just the two of us putting on lots of different hats and utilizing every skill we'd ever learned or gained to auditioning singers to craft the show to pick the music to assign the songs to the singers to arrange songs like over the phone. How does this chord sound for this because that cannot be a trio… Mary: Wow. And you did that over the phone?  Heather: Yeah. Before zoom was a thing. We were just on the phone trying to arrange songs together. And we did and the singers learned the music. It was so exciting. And it was I think April 2020 that we had to go, all right, if we don't make a choice right now to postpone or cancel this production, like we'll be within the 90 days of owing all of the money that we owe to the hotel and all the things right so we have to call it at some point. And it's it felt still like oh so optimistic April 2020 us. You know, or maybe by July like this, this virus will just burn up in the summer heat and it'll go away. And that did not happen. And so we did. We postponed it at that point to say okay, cast, we're gonna we're gonna try to do this again, but we need to, you know, wait and we tried to do it the following summer, July 2021. But unfortunately, I think there was some kind of whatever strain had come out that previous winter by December 2020. It still wasn't looking good. Mary: Right.   Heather: And people were still worried about going. It was almost worse then. And so we decided to, at that point, sadly cancel. So we had to just say… just end it. And that was heartbreaking. Really difficult to deliver that news to the cast. And then that is when that was like a big shift for us, which was okay, we're not… that's over but we just can't give up on this dream. We've worked so hard. We've put all these pieces together. We know we can do it. But when and how? And we were watching our own students in our studios every performance that they were in that year got canceled. Every graduation, every prom, you know all of our events after the other. Yes, our college students, just devastating. And talking to our singer friends, our teacher friends, directors just, it's just obliterated and it was so so sad. And so then we were like, Gosh, why can't we just open this up to anyone? We don't have to limit this to our own students. Everybody is just dying for a chance to perform again. Why don't we contact everyone we know? All of the choir teachers, theater directors, singers, voice teachers across the country, this network of people that we now know from our performing and teaching and grad schools and stuff and ask them Hey, do you have students who would want to audition for this? We're going to do this. It's going to happen and now we're opening it up to anyone and everyone. And you know, the first iteration was video auditions. So we could still do that, you know, no problem, of course. And so we did, and we were able to build two casts of singers and perform two performances in 2022, which was so satisfying. Many of the singers were still coming from our own studios, so that was especially satisfying to see them performing after all this time. Even some of them who were in that first 2021 cast that was supposed to perform…sorry 2020. But now with singers who…Maine, California, Florida, Michigan, like all… Katherine: Washington State. Mary: All over the country.  Heather: Yeah. Singers from all over who were just craving performing again. And that was really, really nice to fulfill the dream that we had set out to accomplish and also be fulfilling the dreams of all of these young artists. That was just spectacular. Mary: You know, I think you know, 2020 threw a complete loop and especially for those of you who started companies quite right before and… but we do have a lot of entrepreneurs who really either started right before or during and it was a great time… I will say this, it was a great time for planning and for iterating right? Like figuring out okay, this didn't work because… obviously you guys ran into a brick wall, right? And, but so many people would stop at that point, right? That's.. We failed… you know, COVID took us out, you know, kind of thing. How did you and because I'm sure those thoughts entered your minds at some point. And Katherine, I'll start with you on this one. How did you kind of push those thoughts out and keep going? Katherine: Well, I mean, at the root of it, I feel like artists specifically, I can't speak to other entrepreneurs and different, on different platforms. But artists at the heart of everything are resilient. I mean, look at Broadway artists, Broadway was probably the last, the last group of people that went back to work. They were out the longest, and then… but resilience, you know, wins the race. So I feel like even in my own studio, we were.. I was creating opportunities for my students that were unique. And it pushed my thinking outside of the box in a really exceptional great way that I am grateful for, because it made me think about art, performance art, and singing and acting in a different way than I ever had to one thing that we… in my own studio we started doing during COVID, and we have maintained this project to date, was I produce professional music videos for my students, and I partner with a cinematographer. We started that because of COVID because all of our performances for the year shut down. I was on Zoom teaching all of my regular lessons. And so we decided to do these outdoor music video shoots with a cinematographer that I hired and I directed the shoots and every, every music video had a different theme and a different concept and a different aesthetic. And that was a product of COVID and that's the resilience in artists that you see. It doesn't surprise me that there are other entrepreneurs that kind of like… used the COVID time as a springboard to launch their dreams into reality to kind of regroup, put their nose down, and think about what they wanted to do and kind of get a plan and I feel like that's exactly what Heather and I did. We, you know, if we would have if COVID wouldn't have happened and we would have gone on to do the performance as we planned, it would have been about 25 of our singers from each of our studios and it would have been wonderful, and it would have been great. But what happened in 2022 was phenomenal. And we were so lucky to have so many of those same singers back with us and I was thrilled for them, but to also add other people into the mix, to give those people that we didn't know until now the same opportunity to fulfill those dreams was just… it's just so exciting and it's just it was an amazing experience for us to watch I think especially because Heather and I are both people who love being on the stage and we have had many, many opportunities to fulfill those dreams of our own being front and center performing on grand stages. But to give that back to not only our students, but to really any performing artist that is looking for that opportunity. That is just so fulfilling.  Mary: Yeah. And I think COVID showed us there are different ways of doing things. We don't always have to do things the conventional ways… we can work remotely or do things remotely and I mean, you might not have had the people from St. Louis or from Washington state if you had not had that experience maybe.  Katherine: Exactly.  Mary: Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Heather:  You know what, Mary, I was trying to think back to how long Kat and I were deliberating, giving up, you know, we're just not doing it when COVID hit and I can't even remember a single conversation that we had about not moving forward. Mary: I love that.  Heather: And not trying again. And that's not to say that we're special. I think it's exactly what Kat was saying about artists being resilient. It's, you know, how many times have we auditioned for things and gotten a no? If you aren't already thick skinned from getting rejections as a performer, maybe it would be difficult to persevere. But that's the name of the game. That's what this is like, you know how… so many no's before you get a yes. This was just another no that we just had to move past and maybe maybe it's rose colored glasses looking backwards. I know it was really scary. And I know there was some floundering as to you know, what does this look like next, but I just don't think we were ever ready to throw in the towel. It was just, it was just a wait and plan and ideate and come up with something better. So I'm very grateful. So so grateful to have a partner and best friend forever ride or die. That was my partner that just doesn't give up. No one I know… And this is just me. I'm just gonna like wax poetic here about Kat, but I don't know anyone..anyone, any person in my life who has persevered more than she has both professionally and personally. So I look up to her. I admire her so much for that. And that encourages me to not give up and to persevere. And so it was, although so scary, I wouldn't have wanted to face it with anyone else because I knew that she wasn't going to give up, I wasn't gonna give up, we're just going to, you know, keep moving forward. And I know that not all partnerships are rosy, or perfect and anything like that. And certainly we've had our conflicts and our challenges, but I think our relationship was forged at Furman in those beginning stages of really crafting who we are as people and artists and that just builds a beautiful foundation for our professional partnership. So I'm grateful for that. Mary: We've talked a lot on this podcast about especially when you're starting out on ventures you have to be extremely selective about who you partner with, who you hire, who are your first hires, and those kinds of things. And I think this is a prime example of, you know, this was probably a natural partnership just because you guys have been friends for so long and you both have the same interest and the same talents and want to get to the same place and help people get there too, right? One of the things that I was thinking about is that my students sometimes when I give them a project or they pitch their projects to me, right? And then they pitch their idea and then they start throwing up roadblocks about why they might not be able to do this idea. And my comment to them is don't place roadblocks where there aren't any right? And so I think that's a good kind of philosophy that you guys, you know, kind of have too, is that even though you know the 2020 one got shut down, that's a temporary, you know, thing, right? And we can work around it. We can go around that road that roadblock right? We've talked a little bit about the audition process and that kind of thing. What's so… I guess impressive to you guys about the just that immersive learning that you guys promote and supply the space for for your folks? Heather: Kat, do you want to take that or do you want me to? Katherine: Why don't you start Heather, I'll jump in though. Heather: Sure. Yeah, so that's really important to us. I think. And that comes from the fact that we have been performers and teachers. So we know in our own experience as performers that you learn by doing and every performance you learn something every show that you're in, you take away things that you use in the next project, the next contract and same with teaching. We're always learning as teachers, right? So I think that although we know how important training is and education, and what we do for a living is teach singers how to sing. But then you really have to do the thing to gain the most from it. It's also like learning a foreign language. How do you really establish fluency in that language? By immersing yourself, by going to that country, and being around people speaking that language. So it's the same with what we do. And that's what we were initially looking for for our own students… was an immersive experience. These students who say I want to go sing on Broadway. Well, have you been to Broadway? Have you walked the streets of New York City? Have you been in a New York City rehearsal space? Let's go do that. Let me take you there and you can experience that life and you can work with Broadway stars, guest artists to impart wisdom to you and then you can perform on that stage at 54 below where these other famous people have performed and decide for yourself is this really is this…do I want this more than anything? Now that I've been here now I'm inspired to go after it and really do the work that it takes to get here for real for real. So that's what we continue to aim for. And that's, you know, the mission is to for it to be immersive and experiential and, and, you know, there are a lot of programs out there that provide classes and you can go to even New York and do other camps and those kinds of things. And a lot of times it's classes and they bring in maybe also Broadway stars to teach classes and to do q&a sessions. And maybe they perform a song with these folks at the end or you know, but are they the stars of the show? That's what we wanted to do. We really wanted to make our performances feature these young artists. The young artists aren't the backup singers. They're not in the background. They are on the stage. They are doing the performing.  Katherine: They are the show. They're the show. Mary: Yeah, like that. Yeah.  Heather: And that's how they learn best and grow and are challenged and we've had singers come back and do the next year's show too, because they know that they will continue to gain experience and the education of a lifetime from doing the thing. And so that's been really encouraging to see as well. Mary: Yeah. Katherine, do you want to add anything to that? Or that was actually a pretty good answer.  Katherine: Heather was talking a bit about how giving them this real life New York experience. I feel like in a way not to say what we're what we do the week that we're in New York is perfect and glossy and there are no blood, sweat and tears put in. But I will say it's kind of giving these artists a taste of the New York experience the New York performing experience in New York rehearsal experience, the New York Broadway experience, the tourist experience, all of those things without moving to New York to have to, you know, pound the pavement and go to all the auditions and get a million nose in New York City. I will tell you getting a million no's is always difficult. But getting a million no's in New York City when you've moved there for you know, to pursue your dream is really difficult. So we're not saying that we're, we're, you know, pushing all of those things aside and giving them this path to Broadway. But what we are giving them is an opportunity to experience all of those things for a week without having to move to New York City to try to go to a million auditions to do one performance at 54 below. We're giving that to them kind of in a really neat little fun, awesome package with a bow on top. Mary: I always tell my students how do you know you want to do something until you actually do it? Right? You might think you want this this life, right? But you don't know until you actually do it and you're either gonna fall in love with it or decide that's not for me. Right? And this is a great way for your students to do that without the expense of living in New York. And like you say pounding the pavement working three or four jobs and going through auditions and classes and things like that. Heather: And I feel like you know, there we've had several, there are two people that are coming to mind, that have made life shifts, career shifts, school shifts based on our program, and that is incredible to see. I know. I know one person specifically I'm thinking of, she attended… She was one of our original cast members. Then she came back for our first actual performance in 2022. She performed again in 2023 and after the 2022 performance, she texted me and said, I've changed, I'm changing my major. I'm going to be a music major and I've decided I have to live in this city. I have to perform here and that is what I'm destined to do. And that was amazing. I've also seen people come, you know that said, you know, I'm not I'm specifically not pursuing a professional career and performing but I will be back to perform with you every year because this is the best of both worlds. I get to live my life as an accountant. And I get to come and perform in New York City, not just like in a church basement, but like on the stage of 54 Below. I mean, you're getting the best of both worlds. And so I love to hear stories like that, from either sides of that. People who are making a life shift and saying I have to do this for the rest of my life. Or people who are going to say, you know, I'm not going to do only this for the rest of my life. But this gives me that opportunity that I would never have if I didn't do your program.  Mary: And that's important too, right? Because it creates a life balance. It gives people that creative outlet, they get to hang out with people who have the same interest and work on their personal craft. I love that. So what's next for On Stage Collective? Heather:  We are excited to be opening auditions for our next New York cabaret, which is going to be next June. So the date of that performance will be June 15. So the week leading up to that will be our immersive week in New York City. And auditions are officially open already. So in the audition is filling out an application, attaching a photo of yourself, headshot type photo and uploading too, one minute video cuts and that's it. So we're excited about that. Mary: And they can do that at onstagecollective.com? Heather: They can. Yeah, they head to our website. Our social media handle is onstage collective official. And so we always post information there as well about what's upcoming. But really excited to go back. I think one thing that really solidified this past performance this past June in New York was our team. So that first go around, it was just Kat and me doing all the things and that was a fun time but what was really special is honing our full staff. So we have an incredible music director and an incredible production assistant stage manager. We have found great band members to join On Stage. We have an incredible photographer and videographer. And now we've got this beautiful group who work really well together. All creative, artistic, passionate, hard workers. And, and that's been really fun. So we're able to now continue with that same group rather than reinvent the wheel every time, which is exhausting like any listener knows. So this feels really good to settle into our group, our staff, and it feels like you know, a family of sorts. And so now we know I mean our music director Jeremy Jacobs is like Johnny on the spot. He's so creative, can do anything. Kat always jokes that whenever we ask him hey Jeremy, what do you think of this or can you do this? His answer is always absolutely. Like who doesn't love hearing that? You know? Right, he's ready for anything. He's so excellent with our  cast members, both our youngest members who are the youngest, 13 years old all the way through our adult members, you know, the accountants who are coming to live out their dreams in these performances. So that's been really fun. We had a great group for this past year and hoping to continue those collaborations with those artists. Mary: Yeah, those kind of yes-men are great.  Heather: Yes-men and women are wonderful to have around.  Katherine: I would like to add, you know, the auditions are open and sometimes a misconception that is out there. I'm not sure how it's out there but people kind of like select themselves out of these auditions by saying like, Oh my god, well, I'm too old. I can't do that. Like I mean that's I'm that's not for me. Or my daughter is too young. She's only 13. She can't perform in New York City. We this past cast I don't know if our youngest,  our youngest was 14. I mean, yeah. So we accept cast members for this same show from ages 13 through adults. And that's something that makes a show really exciting and interesting. These… it's a variety of people not only from different walks of life and different career paths in different parts of the country, but different ages in different places in their lives. And that's really cool.  Mary: Yeah, that is really cool. What, how many folks can you take at one time?  Heather: It's about 25 in a cast. It's all online. If you go to our website on stage collective.com, there's an auditions page that will show you what we are currently casting for… what opportunities are open. And you can click on the application there. Pretty short application. You upload a headshot, two videos, one minute cuts of two songs, and we accept singers on a rolling basis. So as we receive them, our panel will listen to the auditions and make casting decisions. And we'll cast them in specific types of roles whether it's a lead role or a supporting role, that kind of thing. And once our cast is full, it's full. Mary: All right, so before I let you guys go this afternoon, I want to have each of you give a piece of advice to a young entrepreneur in the arts. And when I… when I use the term entrepreneur, I'm talking about not just people who have created their own businesses, right, because I think that artists by nature are entrepreneurial in spirit because they have to go out and sell themselves you know, to the directors and the producers and the people who are making the decisions about roles and whatnot. So Kat, I'll start with you. Can you talk a little bit about some advice that you would give young artists and entrepreneurs? Katherine: Yeah, so I was thinking about this question earlier. And the fact is, so I have two pieces of advice. But the fact is, when I was thinking about it, I wanted… I was like, how can this advice not sound intimidating? Because the fact is, being an entrepreneur, being an artist, being a human nowadays, it's just hard. It's just really difficult. So there are challenges and they're low moments. But the two pieces of advice that I would say are really important, and I think about this all the time, like probably every single day. The first thing is, you've got to have hard work, dedication and commitment and those things pave your path to success. There are very few exceptions and very few shortcuts to a path to success. It really comes down to hard work, dedication, and commitment. If you want anything bad enough, you have to be ready to put the work in. There is no… there just not a lot of shortcuts. The second piece of advice that I would say… this applies to artists. When I first heard about this concept, it was about being an artist, being a singer, but I feel like it really applies to anyone either an entrepreneur or just a person living their life. I feel like it's really important… I tell my students this all the time, it's really important to establish a small inner circle of trusted people, colleagues, artists, coaches, therapists, friends that are there for you and help you in whatever you're doing, whether it's business, whether it's artistry, whether it's just your friends, but because the fact is, everyone has an opinion. And sometimes there are just too many cooks in the kitchen. And everyone's opinion is not always helpful to you on your journey. So it's important to have those trusted inner circle of people that you can go to and say, hey, like for instance, I have a business coach. I don't get business advice from just every person on the street, but I guarantee you every person on the street has an opinion on how I should run my business. That is not…that is not useful for me on my journey and, and in the worst case scenario, it's actually traumatizing to hear everyone's opinion about you at all times as an artist specifically, everyone has a thought on the way your voice sounds. Everyone has a thought on your performance. And if you listen to every single person who had an opinion about your voice, or your business or the way you're living your life, it would be traumatizing. So it's very useful for me as an artist and an entrepreneur and as a person in general to have an inner circle of people that I trust, that I know I can go to, and that their opinions are valuable to me. They matter and they affect me and everyone else gets a nice, very polite, thank you very much. I Mary: I think we should learn that phrase. Thank you very much and then take what we want, leave what we want, right? Because I believe what you say is so true about everyone's gonna give you an opinion. I don't know how many entrepreneurs I've talked to on this podcast that say that every single one of them have faced naysayers, you know, and if you face too many and you open that circle up too big then it can be paralyzing, in fact, right? Katherine: And I'm not saying that there shouldn't be people that tell you no… that tell you when you're making a mistake. Heather would be the first person to tell me if I was making a mistake, and I appreciate that. I don't build an inner circle based on people who are yes men. And yes women. I build my inner circle based on people that I trust, and that their opinions and their advice is valuable to me.  Mary: Yeah. All right, Heather, why don't you take that question? Heather: Yeah, I'll say that my first piece of advice because I've got two also…goes hand in hand with that, which is after you surround yourself with that inner circle of people whose advice you trust….after that, you have to trust your gut. What do you have without your gut? You know, you have to trust your gut and so take all of that information, hone all of that down and then believe it and trust what your gut is telling you to do. And sometimes it will go against some of the advice that you receive. And that can be really scary, but sometimes you have to do that. And the second piece of advice goes with that, which is don't be afraid to fail. So trusting your gut might mean making a mistake and having to learn from that. We have made mistakes in our business. We have hired people that didn't work out or spent money on things that didn't bring value to our company and to our clients. And those are hard lessons, but we improve… we get better because of them. So trust your gut and the fear is but what if I fail? Well, what if you do? Then you're going to learn and you're going to brush yourself off and do better the next time. So that's my advice for people, for students, for college kids, or especially artists and entrepreneurs. Mary: Yeah. Ladies, thank you so much. This has been a great conversation and I could probably talk to you all afternoon, but I know we're all busy. Katherine: Thank you for having us.  Heather: Thank you so much Mary. Mary: Yeah, absolutely. So just to remind everybody, you can get in touch with them. Just go to onstage collective.com If you want to find out more about those auditions and the kinds of things that they're doing with their students. So that does it for this episode of the Class E Podcast. Remember, this podcast is brought to you through a partnership between the Hill Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and the Communication Studies Department here at Furman University. Remember, you can catch the podcast two ways now. You can check us out on our YouTube channel as well as of course listening to wherever you listen to your podcast, but make sure that you don't miss an episode by hitting that subscribe button so you're notified when new episodes are released. This episode is produced by Communication Studies major Isabella Martinez. Thank you for tuning in. I'm Mary Sturgill. Until next time everybody, dream big.

Heather Hansen's burnout, like unfortunately so many others, landed her in the hospital. Her stress levels had become so extreme due to her career as a defense attorney that Heather's body responded with a severe allergic reaction. Afterward, Heather realized she needed to start advocating for herself with the same level of compassion, love, and loyalty that she had for her clients in the courtroom. Now, a Best-Selling author and speaker, Heather teaches others how to self-advocate through mastering the art of the ask and convincing their inner juries.    In a courtroom, both sides present the exact same evidence from different perspectives. It is up to the jury to consider that evidence and choose which side to support. The same is true for your inner jury. When you start looking for evidence of positive things about yourself, your inner jury will feel more confident about trusting you. This will make it easier for you to advocate for yourself. Give yourself permission to pursue what you want for now, knowing that it will change at some point. Once you know what it is you want, then it is time to ask for help or accommodations out loud and with delight. In order to ask effectively, you must speak with compassion, curiosity, and credibility. Approach your ask from the other person's perspective instead of your own by asking what they want and speaking to it.    Recovering from burnout requires that you be able to ask for help when you need it. Self-advocacy can be particularly challenging for perfectionists, but it does not have to be. When you can ask for what you need from a place of compassion rather than resentment, you are much more likely to get a ‘yes'.    Quotes • “What I decided to do was to start advocating for myself the way that I advocated for my clients in the courtroom.” (5:02-5:09 | Heather) • “You need to know what you want. You need to ask for it out loud and with delight. And you need to master the ask.” (8:55-9:02 | Heather) • “You've got to give your inner jury a different story.” (11:23-11:11:25 | Heather) • “For those of us who got to where we thought we wanted to be, and then it wasn't the right place for us anymore…that's okay. It just means that you are meant for more.” (13:29-13:42 | Heather) • “If you are asking with resentment, you are very unlikely to get the things that you want.” (16:27-16:34 | Heather) • “In the courtroom, both sides have the same evidence. And both sides use the same evidence to prove different things. So you need to decide what story you want to support.” (19:10-19:21 | Heather) • “If you're struggling with advocating for yourself, make it about something else…Sometimes if you can externalize it, it makes it easier to start advocating.” (48:10-48:37 | Heather)   Links Connect with Heather Hansen: https://advocatetowin.com/ https://www.instagram.com/anelegantwarrior/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/heather-hansen-84243512/ https://view.flodesk.com/pages/64710dde8533b6ba4f709de9   XOXO, C   If you know that it's time to actually DO something about the burnout cycle you've been in for too long - book your free consult today: bit.ly/callcait   https://friedtheburnoutpodcast.com/quiz   Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm  

Dentistry is a Team SportEpisode #513 with Kirk Behrendt & Heather CrockettYou're not just a dentist — you're also the player and the coach for your team! And to help you and your practice be on your A game, Kirk Behrendt brings back Heather Crockett, one of ACT's amazing coaches, to explain how football relates to a dental practice and the takeaway tips that you can start using today. You can't run your practice alone! To start becoming the best team possible, listen to Episode 513 of The Best Practices Show!Episode Resources:Heather's email: heather@actdental.com Heather's Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/heather.r.crockettHeather's social media: @actdentalSubscribe to the Best Practices Show PodcastJoin ACT's To The Top Study ClubJoin ACT's Master ClassSee our Live Events Schedule hereGet the Best Practices Magazine for Free!Write a Review on iTunesLinks Mentioned in This Episode:Traction by Gino Wickman: https://benbellabooks.com/shop/tractionMain Takeaways:Delegate and elevate. You can't do dentistry alone.Alignment with your team is essential.Have countermeasures in place.Positivity breeds positivity.Be a confident leader.Quotes:“Last night, I went to a football game with my husband, and I was thinking of a couple of my clients and some of the struggles that they've recently been having. And some of those struggles come from the fact that they — in my mind, I'm thinking that they're the quarterback, and they're going on the field, and they need their team to come with them, and they need their team. This is a huge deal. They need to have a team around them supporting them as they're going onto the field to play this team sport. They can't do it by themselves. And oftentimes, they carry too many of the things that they need to do with them.” (3:06—3:42) -Heather“I was just talking to a client this morning about how they could delegate using their digital printer to one of their team members. But sometimes, they're a little bit hesitant to let something like that go or to train their team on it. But they're doing one too many things. We talk about better practice, better life. Part of that better practice, better life is letting go, delegating and elevating to our other team members. And we need to be able to trust our team to take these tasks on, to protect us. Like, as the quarterback, we need the offensive line. We need that center to protect us so that we don't get sacked.” (4:06—4:42) -Heather“You're going to have plays. You go out, and each team member knows the play when the quarterback calls the play or when the coach calls the play. And so, then, the team knows how to execute that play. They know their role. They know exactly which route to run in that play. Well, if we don't tell our...

Heather Maio-Smith is the Co-Founder, President, and Chief Visionary Officer at StoryFile, bringing global audiences an interactive ecosystem that records and preserves human conversations in a way that removes the traditional boundaries of time and space. Victoria talks to Heather about why this product needed to exist in the world, supporting human connection and storytelling, and the journey to get funding, expand, and plan what's next for StoryFile. StoryFile (https://storyfile.com/) Follow StoryFile on Twitter (https://twitter.com/storyfile), Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/storyfile/), Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/StoryFileApp), or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/storyfile/), or TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@storyfile). Follow Heather on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/heather-maio-smith/). Follow thoughtbot on Twitter (https://twitter.com/thoughtbot) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/150727/). Become a Sponsor (https://thoughtbot.com/sponsorship) of Giant Robots! Transcript: VICTORIA: This is The Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Victoria Guido. And with us today is Heather Maio-Smith, Co-Founder, President, and Chief Visionary Officer at StoryFile, bringing global audiences an interactive ecosystem that records and preserves human conversations in a way that removes the traditional boundaries of time and space. Heather, thank you for joining us. HEATHER: Thank you for having me, Victoria. I'm excited to have a conversation with you. VICTORIA: Yes, I am really excited to learn about StoryFile and your product Conversa. Tell me a little bit about it. HEATHER: You did a great job on the introduction; thank you. The one thing that I would add is that it's very important that people know that this is video. And this is the differentiator between us and maybe a traditional chatbot, for example. We are video-based. That could mean an actual human being creates the content. The video content is always preferable. [laughs] But you can also do it in some sneaky other ways too [laughs], so it's very interesting. VICTORIA: Right. So as I understand it, and correct me if I'm wrong, you can record a video of a conversation and then use Conversa to turn that into an interactive video where a user has the freedom to ask their own questions. HEATHER: Correct. Essentially, what you do is you answer whatever questions that you like. You're in charge of the storyline script. You create all the questions. The interviewee answers all of the questions via video record, and then all of those video clips are put into a database. Anyone can ask you basically any conversation. Most of them are open-ended conversations. If there are shorter, like, let's say you've only [inaudible 02:03] questions, and it's kind of a focus, you have a point, and it's a focused line of questioning, then that's obviously going to be you can't ask anything. But we usually have the individual introduce it and say, "For example, this is my bio. I've answered a few questions about my life and my career and me personally, so feel free to ask me anything about my career or my life." Then the individuals will know what the parameters are for that conversation. And you could just ask anything, learn anything anytime you want. So it's in real-time for you. No going on Google and searching through 20 pages to get an answer anymore. You should be able to talk the ideas. You should be able to talk to someone who's lived that experience or has that knowledge, ask them a question, and find out the information that you want to find out, or get to know somebody that you would never have the opportunity to talk to. VICTORIA: What an interesting idea. And what led you to think that this was a product that needed to exist in the world? HEATHER: Well, they say that necessity is the mother of invention. I happened to be in Holocaust education back in the early 2000s. And one of the main things that the entire field was concerned about is what are we going to do when the Holocaust survivors are no longer alive? They had spent over 60 years in the public telling their story, talking to students, for example the public. They've done documentaries; they've done books; they've done interviews. The Shoah Foundation at USC has 55,000 narrative interviews. So it's very well-documented. But the one thing that we weren't able to replicate yet, and this is what we were worried about, was they couldn't make that personal connection. And how do they make that personal connection? It's through people asking their own questions and actually engaging with those individuals that that's when the real magic happened. I mean, that's when people felt connected to these individuals and that story, that history. That was what I didn't want to lose after they had passed away. And so I thought to myself, there's got to be a way to replicate the Q&A, you know, the question and answer conversation where I can ask my own question, which leads me to learn deeper than if I was passively watching a video or even listening to a lecture. So I went to the Shoah Foundation, and I said, "There's got to be a way to do this." They said after many conversations, "Okay. You might not be crazy. [laughs] or as crazy as we thought you were at the beginning. But we still don't know how you're going to do it. So go away and figure out how you're going to do it, and then come back to us when you've figured it out." That was my challenge. And luckily, I found an amazing team to help us all figure out how to do it. And we got to the part where we had to take these individuals, like, the video recordings, and we had to have people actually ask them questions and have these conversations so that we could populate the database for a more accurate conversation. And so I was in the public for a couple of years all over the world. And the one question I kept getting the most was, "This is amazing. Can I do this myself? And can I do this with my parents? Can I do this with my grandparents? Can I do this with the founder of our company?" And people came to me, and they had so many ideas. "This would be great for this. Oh my gosh, could you imagine doing this?" And after a while, you say to yourself, okay, what would it look like if we did this for everyone? What would it look like if we made it ubiquitous, allow everybody to replace their FAQs? Every leader in this country, every CEO, every influencer, or any individual who's got something to say that we can all learn from, which, by the way, is pretty much everyone on the planet. They can tell their story, and they can talk about their experiences, and we can learn from that. Even saving time on interviewing future candidates in person. You narrow it down to 10 people. You have them do StoryFiles. You actually engage with their StoryFile, and then you just choose two that you want to meet in person, possibly saving you hours and hours of time. It's just about asking questions and getting an answer in the moment when you need it, not waiting for an email, not going through 20 pages of Google. And it's also about connecting with a real person instead of these chatbots that everybody's trying to move away from. And I think they're trying to move towards avatars because they're more visual, but it's still not a human being. So it's still kind of an automated voice, and they're not real. And there's no emotion, and you don't have any body language. So what if you could just ask a person? You probably get asked some of the same questions. And in the next 2 minutes, you could probably think of 10 questions that you get asked almost daily. So what if you did a StoryFile? You answered all those ten questions and maybe more, and then you never had to have that conversation again. Think of all the time that those people now, if they get in front of you, they don't have to waste time asking any of those typical, basic questions. They can just get right into a deeper conversation with you. VICTORIA: I love it. Yeah, I'm already thinking in the back of my mind, like, oh, I could use these for what if you're trying to show what it's like to work at thoughtbot? And you just want to ask someone at thoughtbot a question, and you could play with StoryFile. Yeah, I think it's enormously useful. And I love the story starts with a hugely impactful mission of capturing those stories. And I wonder how that experience of the importance of storytelling has had on your ability to get funding and get this project through as a founder. HEATHER: It's been a journey. [laughter] First of all, let me say that I think it has been slightly more complex than most startups because, from the onset or the get-go, or whatever you want to call it, this technology has been meant for consumers and businesses alike. So you've got a B2C play, and you've got a B2B play, which is very complicated for investors to understand maybe and really get the vision in its totality. So it's been a struggle to communicate it in a way that people really understand this can be done. You're creating a whole new medium. This is not an I'm creating a new rocking chair type of thing that's better than the other chair that you had. I'm creating a chair. It's a new kind of chair. And you have to take these people on a journey to understanding how much better their lives can be and how much time they can save if they just invest a little bit of time, which they kind of have to do anyway. I mean, look at it, you spend so much time writing FAQs for a website and finding all the answers, and then putting them all together and putting them in the website. You could spend the same amount of time actually getting all those questions, recording yourself answering them. In fact, it probably would take less time. Record the answer, and then, bam, you have it. Everybody can actually talk to you, ask you those questions, and you can guide them. And they get the benefit of actually feeling as though they've talked to a human being. They've connected with you emotionally, and everyone's better off for it. The investors have been...they either absolutely get behind you 100% and love what you're doing and want to be on the journey with you, or they are a bit we'll wait and see. There hasn't been one investor, though, that has said, "You're not onto something. I don't believe in what you're doing, and your idea is not going to work," not one. So we know it has legs. And we just have to build the body and get it from the walking stage, walk to run. VICTORIA: Right. And I see you have quite an impressive client list already. And you recently won an award for best software as a service product for education and nonprofits in the learning and CSR category, so that's impressive. And I want to hear more about how that process has been scaling from you had one initial customer who was the Holocaust Museum, and now you've expanded, and what kind of lessons you might have about that experience, getting to the walking stage, and what you have planned coming ahead. HEATHER: I don't know if I have much advice, actually. [laughter] I could probably use more advice than I can give. Every day, you know, you take it one day at a time, and you move forward. We haven't forgotten where we started, which was in enabling audiences through museums and public spaces to enable them to have these conversations with people that they would not normally get to talk to. There's this studio professional services side of this as well. Then you have, all right, we had to have a back end. We had to have a platform in order to run our business. What if we made that platform available to other companies? Okay, what does that mean? And how does one build that? Then is it built intuitively and easily enough for people to actually do what they want to do with it, which is create these interactive conversational video AI modules (We call them StoryFiles.) for a variety of different cases? I mean, think about every kid can talk to one of the best teachers in the world and learn from them. Every possible person that wants to go on a date could actually talk to potential people. And those people don't even know that they're having these first-date conversations with them, so it saves you that first meeting, that awkward first date. But it also allows you to make a better choice for that first date or, like I said, screening or even onboarding and corporate training. All those manuals that people have written everything and all the information that's in there, nobody wants to go to a manual and look up an answer. No, you're going to go to someone that you think knows the answer, and you're going to ask them. So why not just pull out your phone and do that on your phone, you know? Like, Walmart has this amazing thing that they call financial mentor. They did StoryFiles for new store managers. It's all around answering those questions that you would get as a new manager that you would have running the day-to-day of a Walmart store. So they can literally pull out their phone. They've got their own Walmart learning management system on the phone, and they can talk to a financial mentor and ask them questions. So, what do I do if I have a register that's this? Or I forgot what the form is that you use for this. Or what do I do if my endcaps aren't really churning enough buzz and businesses I think it should be? All those questions that you're going to ask in the first couple of years of taking on a new position. So it's basically anywhere that you have questions and people normally give you answers, you can do a StoryFile. VICTORIA: Yeah, it sounds like a real change to the way people do business and how you can automate some of those conversations and provide a more human touch too. HEATHER: Yeah, it's all about that human touch, isn't it? The one reason I think that people now, you know, for the last three years, everybody's been obsessed with these avatar chatbots, but they're not really solving the problem. The problem is the chatbots don't seem real. You don't feel as if you're having a conversation with an actual person, and that's what frustrates you the most because they don't understand. They don't seem like they're being empathetic. They don't seem like you're relatable. And there's also the uncanny valley, and then the automated voices, and the cadence, and all of that. So this solves all that. VICTORIA: 80% of communication is non-verbal, right? HEATHER: Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly, but nobody really thinks about that. [laughter] We do digital recreations; notice I'm not calling it an avatar because we do an authentic version of an individual. And most of the time, 99% of the time, the person's not alive anymore. But we work with the archives; we work with the foundations; we work with the families. Nothing that we have that digital recreation say is anything that we've made up. It's always based on what they've actually said and the way that they've said it. So we review, like, we did one digital recreation that we reviewed over 1,700 hours of video. The key thing was getting an actor that physically looked like the individual, and it has to be a method actor. The method actor also reviews some of those videos and really gets a sense of who that individual was. Then they form the basis for the digital recreation for the body language, for the facial expressions, for the cadence of the voice. And then, you do the face mapping and other special effects that you might have to do to the body. Then you do the voice cloning so that you get the person's actual voice. So it's a really detailed process. And what you end up with is probably the most authentic version of an individual that can be created. MID-ROLL AD: Are you an entrepreneur or start-up founder looking to gain confidence in the way forward for your idea? At thoughtbot, we know you're tight on time and investment, which is why we've created targeted 1-hour remote workshops to help you develop a concrete plan for your product's next steps. Over four interactive sessions, we work with you on research, product design sprint, critical path, and presentation prep so that you and your team are better equipped with the skills and knowledge for success. Find out how we can help you move the needle at: tbot.io/entrepreneurs. VICTORIA: You mentioned avatars. But that process also sounds different than what I've heard about deepfakes as well. Do you want to -- HEATHER: Yeah. Well, our digital recreations are based on more authentic...they're probably as authentic as you can get to the actual individual. It's not based on, you know, avatars still; even if you do one that's based on 10 minutes of video of yourself, you will still have the uncanny valley. You will still have the broken cadence. You'll still have an automated voice where it sounds automated. They are getting better, and they'll continue to get better. But there's no avatar that you can honestly tell me is going to accurately convey emotion and those non-verbal cues. They can't do it. A computer cannot intuit it. You have to have the individual. You have to have something based from the actual person in order to get the most accurate you can get. An avatar who you're basically treating as a visual chatbot you're just typing in the answers. So there's no emotional connection. There's no body language or cadence that you can connect with in that. VICTORIA: That makes sense. And I can clearly see the...we've talked about the business use cases a little bit. But on the individual consumer side, I'm thinking about making a StoryFile of my grandpa from Pasadena and the value what that would be like to have that family member have a realistic portrayal of them for future generations to interact with. HEATHER: It's priceless. And he's still alive, right? VICTORIA: Yeah. HEATHER: So it's not a realistic portrait. It is him. You could do a StoryFile life. You'd go to StoryFile life. You'd pick out all the questions you wanted to ask him, add your own questions. Every family has got those five stories that individuals always tell at the dinner table during Thanksgiving or something. So you want to make sure you capture all of those. Let's say that he responds to a question that you've asked. And the beauty of it, by the way, is these are questions that you probably would not normally ask somebody in daily conversation. So you really get a sense of who they are from day one, you know, from their childhood all the way through their life today. If they say something that you're like, wait a minute, stop, [laughs] you've got to explain that, you can add a question, add a follow-up question and just say, "Can you tell me more about that?" or "Explain yourself. Like, how did you come to that? How did you make that decision? What went into this move and this shift?" or whatever you want to know more about. "Or how did that affect your family?" you know, so many questions. So it allows you to ask all of those questions. You record your grandfather, which, by the way, is an amazing experience for you; forget him, [laughter], but it's an amazing experience for you. And I guarantee you; you will learn something. To date, I have not had one family say that they haven't learned something or heard a story that they never heard before. So it's a really interesting process. And you feel bonded to that individual after you're done talking and doing this interview in a way that you didn't before. Then you have that recording of this individual that your grandchildren, your great-grandchildren will be able to get a sense of who this individual was, and what their life was like, and who they were to you even. That's priceless to be able to give, you know, we hang on, you go into ancestry.com; you pull up a ship's manifest. And you see your relative's signature. Okay, fine. But what do you really know about that person? Nothing. You know they came over on a ship. [laughs] And you see maybe how their signature looked, but that doesn't really tell you anything. So we want to change all that. We want to flip it all out. We want you to know all of your ancestors. We want your kids to know everybody and learn from them. VICTORIA: I love that. And it's an interesting intersection of this very core human emotion to AI technology or this leading-edge technology. And I wonder, what has surprised you in the technology building side about what ways it easily supports making this human connection and other ways where it's still a challenge to make everything connect? HEATHER: I would have loved to have gotten at least three PhDs [laughs], and then I can think over the last 12 years. Okay, so I started this in 2009. So you got to remember there was no Skype, really. I mean, Skype came into its own...it existed in 2008, but it didn't really come into its own until 2012. Speech recognition wasn't really a thing. We knew it was going to happen, but it wasn't there yet. That was one of the big things that people had to really take a leap of faith with me that we could even get this to work. We didn't know if it would do what we thought it would do. And we were doing this completely...it was a passion play. It was; let's see if we can do this type of thing. We actually did. It did fulfill what I envisioned it being and doing. It did finally fulfill, and I realized that in 2016, so it took that long. And in order to make it ubiquitous for everyone, and you know this because you build software, and you help people with products: to do something for the general public and to make it ubiquitous, and make it scalable, that's a whole nother ballgame. We're taking a process that was incredibly manual...everyone says, "Oh, AI is going to take over the world." No, it's not. No, it's not. It's not even close. It's still so manual. It's based on data. And whatever you manually put in is what you get out. In order to take that and make it automated in whatever ways you can and then keep dreaming about a day where, for example, the follow-up questions that I talked to you about. One day on our roadmap, God willing, next year, you will be able to get that follow-up question actually suggested to you because the computer will know what that individual has said. And the computer will figure out here's a question that you might want to ask, which has never been done before. And there are several things that we have on our roadmap that haven't been done before, but we've been in this zone where you know, other companies have tried. One of our advisors was president of Google Americas. And when she came on board with us, she said, "Google tried to do something similar to this in the early 2000s." But it was just a little too early, and they couldn't figure it out. So they scrapped the whole thing. And with software, timing has a lot to do with it. Your expectations and what you think you can do and when you can do it have to be constantly monitored and constantly re-evaluated. And do the best you can with what is technically available at the moment, and then plan to see how you might make that evolve or improve that or add to that. For example, the field of natural language processing it's at one stage right now, but we have things that we want to do with it and advances that we'd like to see happen. And we're going to have to make those happen if we want to see those happen. VICTORIA: You had both the timing and the need and just enough technology progression to make something happen when you did, and you were able to grow it. It sounds like your family is also involved in helping you along the journey. And I was curious to hear about how that has been for you and -- HEATHER: Okay, so it's not really fair because I grew up in a family-owned business. I'm totally used to it. Everybody asked me, "What's it like working with your husband, and what's it like?" You know, along this journey, we've had various family members working for us, and honestly, that's mostly been a necessity. They happened to be the most skilled and the most talented people to do the job at the moment that I had access to. They got it, you know, it's sort of like the game, okay, tag, you're it. [laughs] Some of them have gone on to do other things; one started her own app called Camber. The other started a PR agency and is doing very well. The other went on to do structural engineering, and the other one is still working for us. And Stephen's my husband's oldest, and I have told her many times even though she does want to go to law school at some point, I said, "No, I'm never letting you leave. [laughter] You're never leaving me." Yeah, it's kind of not fair because we happen to have the ideal situation where Stephen and I are both passionate and have a very clear vision of what we want to do and how to get there, which I think you do need. We respect each other tremendously. I'm in awe of him almost every day. I can see where in a lot of families, it would be problematic but somehow not for us. It worked really well. With investors, it is kind of tricky because you don't want to seem like you're a mom-and-pop shop, either. That's definitely not what we are. We're very focused, and we're very intentional. To some investors, it might seem like we're all over the place because of the B2C and the B2B thing, but it's really not. We explained to them that we're actually building one thing, and that's conversational video. That's what we're doing. It's a big vision, that's all, and it's a massive market. VICTORIA: Yeah, I believe it. I mean, having people in your corner who believe in your vision and you have respect for working for each other, whether they're your blood family or your chosen family, that's what really you need to be successful. And I think it's a common theme we see across people who are able to create these products is that they have a team around them. [laughs] It's never just one person. HEATHER: Yeah, no, it's never just one person. And I've been really, really fortunate. You talk about family that you've chosen. I've been really fortunate to have a lot of the team members who were on this journey with me back in 2010. So that's how far we all go with this and trying to evolve this technology and build this medium and this way of communicating. We're in it. We're all in it for better or worse. VICTORIA: Yeah, I agree. And I assume that that amount of loyalty from your team over that long time is a pro point for investors as well. And I'm curious, so if you could record a StoryFile for yourself now to send back in time to when you were first starting this up, I wonder what questions you would ask yourself [laughs] to be able to give you the advice you needed when you were just starting. HEATHER: To give me advice now? VICTORIA: If you were going to create a StoryFile for when you were starting out if you could be able to ask yourself questions from the future. [laughs] HEATHER: I think it would probably be very interesting to see where I was at, and what I was thinking, what we were dealing with at the time because I think it's some of the things you forget, you know, how you were feeling. We did a lot of video recording back in the early days, especially around different milestones and then different lows and highs. But if I could give myself some advice now, knowing what I know now, it would be your typical don't give up. There are days when you feel like that's it; I can't go any longer. It's not sustainable. You just don't know how it's going to turn out. And you have customers that you're really, really...we're very customer-oriented, so we work really closely with them to make them successful. And there have been times when what they've wanted to do hasn't been something that we were able to achieve entirely. So I would say just keep your head down, keep doing the work every day. Keep moving forward, and just believe in how you're ultimately going to change the world with this. So I think that I believed that 100% ten years ago as well. [laughs] I probably would have said the same thing, actually. There was a woman that had told me she wanted to do a StoryFile with her 10-year-old. And then she wanted to do the same script every five years, but especially do the same thing right before they go to college and then when they come back when they've finished college and do the same interview. I said, "It's a brilliant idea, but why specifically before they go to college and when they get back?" She says, "I want them to see how much they've changed." That makes me cry every time. It's so true. I don't know if you have kids; between Stephen and I, we have five, and they're all 20 to 31. And that time in their lives, from 17 to 22 to 24, you change so radically. I mean, it's almost like you go back, and it's almost like you've got a one-year-old to see how much they changed by the time they're six. It's that radical. I thought that was just a beautiful thing on her part to think of, you know, think of doing. VICTORIA: Yeah, that sounds great. I don't have any kids myself. I do have a two-year-old and a one-year-old niece and nephew. Maybe we'll create one for them when they get a little bit older. HEATHER: Well, then you have to do...is your grandfather their great-grandfather? VICTORIA: No, he's my husband's grandpa, actually. HEATHER: Because when you do your grandfather, then they'll get to know them. You know, there's something about our identity, and it's made up of our parents, you know, our lives, our influences on our lives, and everybody that lived before us. So our point is, why not get to know those people the best way you can? And is that by reading their story? Is it listening to a voicemail that they left you before they passed away in order to get a sense of who they are? Or is it a video of them on a vacation, you know, a video clip? Or is it a story? Or would you want a StoryFile where you can actually have a conversation? You can feel as if you're sitting down at a kitchen table, talking and asking them questions about their life. We want you to do it with everybody, [laughs] even your boss. [laughter] VICTORIA: Right? I think it's a hugely powerful way to connect with people. And if I can get my grandpa to stop watching tennis for long enough to do it, I'll do it. [laughs] HEATHER: I definitely guarantee you can do that. [laughs] VICTORIA: Right? I think we can. I think we can do it. I think you'll enjoy it as much as I will. So I really appreciate you sharing this capability with us. And is there a way you want to shout out how people can connect with the tool? HEATHER: Go to storyfile.com. If it's for your family, for you personally, go to StoryFile Life from that website. And if you're a business, you can go to Conversa also from that website and ask for a free demo. VICTORIA: Excellent. And is there anything you want to give as a final takeaway to our listeners today? HEATHER: It's easy to do. And it's always better to personally connect with someone if you can. Give them the opportunity to really see you, and listen to you, and hear you, the real you. And it doesn't take a lot of time. Everyone has a story to tell or knowledge to impart, experiences to talk about. There's no one on the planet that doesn't, honestly. But you probably doing these podcasts every one you talk to you learn from. It's sharing our knowledge. It's sharing humanity's experiences and knowledge so that we absorb that and we have that. It influences us, hopefully, in a good way. VICTORIA: I think that's beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing with us and being with us here today. HEATHER: Thank you for having me. Keep up the great work, you guys. VICTORIA: Oh, thank you. You can subscribe to the show and find notes along with a complete transcript for this episode at giantrobots.fm. If you have questions or comments, email us at hosts@giantrobots.fm. And you can find me on Twitter @victori_ousg. This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot and produced and edited by Mandy Moore. Thanks for listening. See you next time. ANNOUNCER: This podcast was brought to you by thoughtbot. thoughtbot is your expert design and development partner. Let's make your product and team a success. Special Guest: Heather Maio-Smith.

Heather Isch is CEO and President at LKF Marketing, a B2B-focused full-service marketing communications company that specializes in working with manufacturers with complex, often highly technical products and complicated sales channels; governmental agencies working on regional economic development; and local community-focused arts organizations and nonprofits (the agency's give-back “passion” projects). Heather describes the process of getting to know LKF clients as a “deep dive” – into understanding all of the different industries they work in, the “customer levels” within each of those industries, who clients are trying to reach (which may vary by product application), what clients are trying to sell, and how they are trying to solve their customers' problems – and compiling that information into “customer maps.” In addition to questioning clients, the agency gets industry information through accessing existing research, consulting with trade partners, following industry trade journals, through trade shows (when possible), or by, when something is completely new and needs to be “explored,” commissioning paid research. “We spend a lot of time with engineers,” Heather says.  Another piece of the “deep dive” is market research: finding and figuring out how to effectively reach target audiences – where these people are, how they make decisions, their internal “cultures” and inter-relationships, and the right media mix to support client messages. LKF started in 1989 with two partners, graphic designer Charlie King and strategist Brad Lawton – and soon added media buyer Carol Fricke. After a number of years, Carol bought out her partners and invited Heather on board. In 2015, after Heather had served in the role of vice president for about 8 years, Carol retired and Heather took over as owner. Heather says that this transition was “always part of the plan” and that “when you plan for . . . transitions, they go a lot smoother.” Even now, Heather is working with her team so that when it is time for her to go, her current team of leaders will have everything they need to make the transition seamless.  In this interview, Heather talks about how her team of 17, each of whom has a specific “area of expertise,” has maintained relevance through the years. She explains that the agency's culture supports “keeping ahead of trends” and not fearing trying new things or failure. The agency actively promotes continued training, attending seminars, and trying out and leveraging new client-appropriate tools and technology . . . all with a focus on delivering results for LKF's clients. A recent example: LKF developed a trademarked Content Management System, McConimore, to facilitate rapid/ agile Web development and overcome some of what Heather describes as WordPress's “intrinsic flaws.” Heather takes a very holistic view of her organization. She explains that LKF's passion statement, “Assisting the people in our family to thrive,” applies to the agency's clients as well as the agency's internal work family, employees' families, and the community the agency serves. Heather can be reached on her agency's website at: lkfmarketing.com and on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I'm excited to be joined today by Heather Isch. She is the CEO and President at LKF Marketing based in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Welcome to the podcast, Heather. HEATHER: Thanks. I'm glad to be here. ROB: Super great to have you here. Why don't you kick us off by telling us what LKF Marketing excels in? What's your specialty?  HEATHER: We are a full-service marketing communications company. We primarily serve B2B. We like really technical, confusing kinds of clients, so we have a lot of clients in the manufacturing space. We also have a lot of digital skills, so a lot of web development, that kind of thing. So helping clients with complicated sales channels, complicated products, that kind of thing. ROB: Got it. When you say “technical and confusing,” let's pull on that thread for a minute. What would something technical and confusing sound like? Even though once you describe it, it may not sound so technical and confusing. HEATHER: A lot of our clients serve highly technical clients. They might be working with highly engineered products that might be sold into packaging or beverage or wastewater treatment. Sometimes in the medical industry, like for MRI equipment. So a lot of our clients have technical products that you really have to dig in and understand, spend a lot of time with engineers so that you understand what you're talking about, first of all. But then those clients typically have very complicated sales channels, and it's understanding how to get to and share their messaging in a variety of different industries to a variety of different levels, whether they're influencers or the buyers. In other markets that we serve, we work in economic development, so we have a lot of development clients working with, in our case, the state of Michigan working to understand brownfields and redevelopment credits and all kinds of crazy stuff. And then we have some of our more fun clients that might be a little bit more – those are our passion projects, more in the community that we live in. We like to give back, so we'll be working with people in our arts community or some of our nonprofits. But we're not typically the consumer products group, if that makes any sense. ROB: It certainly does to an extent, although I'm now also contemplating who a wastewater influencer is. [HEATHER laughs] When we get into the particulars of it, take us down a layer on that. The complexity affects who you're targeting, it affects your marketing channels. How do you take a problem like wastewater treatment – I imagine the client is very helpful in informing you of what they know, but they also might not know, and the knowledge may not transfer over the same way as if you're in a core B2B context. HEATHER: Right. With a client like that, it could be a wastewater treatment plant, it could be – here's one for you. We've started working with some of the people that are trying to do extraction in the cannabis market. That's really been more of an exploration. Who is making these decisions? Same thing in wastewater treatment plant. It may be the facilities manager that we need to get to; it could be an operations person in a specific area, but then you may also need to be speaking with the director of public services, depending on the different cities and states. A lot of times it's doing a deep dive with our clients to really understand all of the different industries that they're working in, who they're trying to connect with, what we're trying to sell them, or how we're trying to solve their problems, and then really going to work and putting together all of those customer maps. Sometimes there's research that exists; a lot of times we rely heavily on some of our trade partners. We've spent a lot of time with engineers. And in some cases, there might be actual research that we commission because we're really in exploratory mode. If the client's trying to launch something new, then we have to go down that paid research path. ROB: It seems like some of these prospects for these products – they're almost going to be pleasantly surprised if you can reach them with a convincing message directly. But how do you think about reaching such a specific customer? This certainly doesn't sound like billboard and TV ad territory. HEATHER: Not typically billboards, no. Usually there's heavy emphasis in the different – there's trade journals for everything under the sun. We work with a client that makes products for linemen to keep them safe when they're up on utility poles. You would be amazed at how many trade journals there are for that industry and for very specific titles. So for that particular group, we might be doing a combination of traditional print mixed with some social media, heavy web presence. Honestly, it's trying to do the deep dive by industry, figuring out where these folks are, and doing the right media mix. Sometimes it's tradeshows thrown in there, although COVID has not done us any favors in that department, so we've had to get a little more creative with how to reach our customers. ROB: That's wild, because I'm also thinking that linemen are probably not on LinkedIn very much. Maybe less than other industries, if you will. HEATHER: Right. ROB: I can't imagine all the trade journals you get at your office. That must be a heck of a picture on its own. HEATHER: Yeah, we have a lot of trade journals that come here. Also, I think one of the things that has been fascinating is the connection that linemen have with each other. There's a very tight, almost like a brotherhood. There are a lot of ways to reach this group, but they're also very connected and become very attached to their brands, and we are lucky enough that our client is very, very well-known, and linemen ask for it by name. That's been an interesting little twist in their industry. And we find that across the board. Every industry is very different, so you really have to figure out what's going to get the best result based on the market. You learn to talk. You learn to figure out where these people are and how they make decisions. ROB: It's interesting, especially with the linemen. When someone's going to get up near high-energy power, downed lines, all that stuff, when they ask for safety equipment, I feel like you listen to them. [laughs] But I don't know. Also, you're talking about getting deep into an industry. It seems to me there could be some big opportunities – if somebody's been marketing with a firm that doesn't take the time to get in deep, there could be huge uncovered opportunities that are maybe even pretty low-hanging in the content and search world. Have you found examples of keywords that are lying out in the wide open for the taking, but weren't claimed by the industry? HEATHER: Absolutely. ROB: What's that look like? HEATHER: I think that's probably one of our key strengths. We are hell-bent on getting results for our clients, and the way you do that is really digging in deep and understanding their business and what they're making, what they're creating, what that end game is. We have search engine optimization talent on staff as well as usability experts, and a lot of this is really just years of learning to understand, I guess as best as anyone can, Google. They change everything every day. That's a full-time job. But I feel like we're pretty gifted in that department. ROB: Heather, let's rewind the clock a little bit on this. What is the origin story of LKF? Where did this business come from? HEATHER: This business was actually created in 1989, and there were two partners, Charlie King and Brad Lawton, the ‘L' and the ‘K' in LKF. Charlie was a graphic designer and Brad was a strategy guy. Then they met up with Carol Fricke, and she was a media buyer. She came to Kalamazoo after a long stint in Atlanta, Georgia, and she teamed up with this group. They formed the trio, Lawton, King, Fricke, and operated for quite a few years together. During that time, I was actually a kid fresh out of college and I met Carol while I was selling ad space for one of the papers. I continued to have that relationship with her for many years. I left publishing and became a marketing manager for a manufacturing company, which is where I probably learned to really love all of those nerdy technical things. She and I stayed in touch, and actually LKF did a lot of design work for the manufacturing company that I worked with. During one of our lunches one day, she told me she wondered what was happening with me. I said I was negotiating hopefully what I thought would be “the job” with a local agency, and she said, “I don't think so. I don't want you to go work for another agency. I just bought my partners out, so I think you should come and work for me.” So I did. I worked with her for many, many years, and in 2015 she was ready to retire, and I took over as owner. ROB: Congratulations. It's a good long story, and some of the best stories are those long stories. I find that every change of control of an agency is a little bit the same and a little bit different. What do the mechanics of assuming ownership, as it were, of an agency – I mean, you don't have to get into particulars and percentages, but how does that even work? These are often somebody's baby, but they also don't want to care for it anymore. So what does that look like? HEATHER: I think one of the things that was really beautiful about our transition is Carol and I had talked about that early on. That was always kind of the game plan. Neither one of us really had an end date, but we worked towards that, and I worked as the vice president for about eight years before taking over as owner. I think your point about the same yet different – there are so many things that make LKF who we are today, and we have always been uber-focused on delivering results for the client. That's just embedded in who we are. I think the culture piece also. We've always had this – it's overused, but “work hard, play hard” focus. We always enjoyed each other's company. Carol made it possible for me to be a vice president, help run the company, but also raise two small children. I had a very flexible schedule throughout that time. I think when I took over, I wanted to put a bigger light on that, taking that to the next level, really looking at giving our team the ability to take care of their own families but be wildly successful here at the agency. I think we've been doing flex schedules – it was fashionable before COVID made it fashionable. [laughs] So we're very blessed in that department. Our passion statement is “Assisting the people in our family to thrive,” and in the LKF bunch, we describe our family as our clients as well as our internal work family, their families, and the community that we serve. I feel like that has just gotten bigger, I think, in that transition. But it was planned for, and I think when you plan for those transitions, they go a lot smoother. ROB: How does that inform where you sit now? I'm sure someday you are planning to not run the agency anymore. How are you thinking about even the next generation? And really, you're talking about handling a 50-year-old agency before too long, 40 even sooner. HEATHER: That's my goal. I would say my vision is that my current team of leaders are getting everything that they need so that the day that it's time for me to go, it's really seamless. I think good leadership is not about the who or the personality cult of what's at the top; it's what has made us who we are. Is everybody trained and schooled in all things LKF Marketing, the LKF way? How do we push that down in the organization so that there's a seamless transition when the time comes? ROB: Nobody's surprised, right? HEATHER: Nobody's surprised. ROB: It makes logical sense to everybody involved. HEATHER: Yep. ROB: That is quite a journey, and congratulations on everything so far. In the time that you have been there, when you track back to 1989, in terms of skills of the team members, some things are still very valid and helpful. There are still media buying elements there. But how media is bought and the other marketing channels that are involved have shifted entirely. How has the team over time been able to continue to stay relevant? You mentioned even getting up into social, and then there's stuff beyond that. There are so many places where an agency can get stuck in media, in SEO, in PPC, and others keep going past that. How do you think about these practice areas, which ones are ready to adopt for the agency, and how to either upskill or add skills to the team to get there? HEATHER: I think that's always the question. How do you keep yourself relevant? One of the things that we've always been very good at is not being afraid to fail and not being afraid to try things. Having experts – our team is very small. There's 17 of us. But every person on the team has an area of expertise, and they're really charged with keeping ahead of trends. We put significant emphasis on training and making sure that we're attending seminars, that we're trying out tools, that we're figuring out which tools make sense for our client base and how to apply them so that they're getting the best results and we're leveraging the right technology, and we're not becoming irrelevant. I think that's also something that has happened during the past 18-20 months, this explosion of digital tools, technology. And that's what we're excited about: how are we going to harness some of this new technology and really apply it to our client base? One of the things we had started working on pre-COVID was a new web development platform. We in the past have had a proprietary development platform, and over the years we've realized that's just not a thing anymore. But we've also seen the need for some tools to allow rapid or agile development. WordPress is always the thing that people are all about, but we've always felt like it had some intrinsic flaws. [laughs] So we went to work and have come up with our own product in that category. It's been trademarked. We're really excited about using that, alongside many other tools. But I think that's a testament to how we're staying relevant. We're constantly saying, “This is good. We tried this; it didn't work. That's okay.” And honestly, every client, because of the industries that they're in, they're pushing us to try things that might work for them but don't work for one of our other clients. So I think that also helps us to stay relevant and on top of what's out there. ROB: Very, very interesting. Very tricky, of course. You're saying you've built a new CMS up from scratch? Is that my understanding, or did I miss a detail there? HEATHER: Say that again? ROB: You have a new CMS that you've put together? HEATHER: Yes. ROB: Wow. What's it called? HEATHER: It is called McConimore and we don't widely – it's really only available to our customers. ROB: Pretty interesting. There's always room for new ideas there. That's a category where everybody's always trying to dominate it and nobody ever does. It's sort of the tale as old as time. WordPress is always there, but you've got your GoDaddys, your Webflows – all of the things. But nothing ever dominates. It's pretty interesting. Heather, as you look at your tenure, as you look at your time in LKF and overall, what are some key lessons that you've learned as you've been leading that you might want to go back and tell yourself if you could rewind a little bit? HEATHER: I think for me personally, I am a thinker, a big picture person. I love data. But once I have enough data, I'm definitely ready to move, and I think my younger self could get talked out of moving as quick as she would like to go. [laughs] There has to be calculated risk. There has to be data, all of those things. But I think that is part of, in our industry, staying ahead of everybody else. Failure or trying things on, that's all part of the learning journey, and I hope that's one thing that we instill in our teams: to never be afraid to try something and see if it works. I think that's probably it. ROB: Very good. As you're looking forward at the future of LKF, the future of marketing in general, what are some things you are looking forward to? What's next? HEATHER: I think really taking our team to the next level. We are training up newer teams, and I'm looking forward to being able to serve more clients. We're ready. I also think harnessing all of these different technologies and leveraging them for our clients. There's been a really big shift over the last 20 months, and I think as people get back online, helping them to really innovate and think about how to solve some of their challenges – that's been a topic of discussion for us because I think we've been so focused over the past 18 months on tomorrow and next month. We've got to get people asking different questions, thinking about how we're going to do it differently, how we're going to tackle this problem in a different way. Some of the previous solutions just don't work. So I'm excited about what's next for our clients and how we might go to market and start looking at things from a different perspective. ROB: Absolutely. I always enjoy thinking through the individual contexts of where people are. It sounds like you are very aligned to your local community, to the art community. If someone has not been to visit you in the place that you call home in Kalamazoo, what should somebody go see? What are some of the highlight reels of your home? HEATHER: We have a beautiful downtown that is very vibrant with lots of fun little boutiques and breweries. Wonderful little shops. We also, on the outside edges of Kalamazoo, have a wonderful Air Zoo, which is a great museum to take your families to. We also are home to Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo College, Kalamazoo Valley Community College. We are a town that is very focused on education and keeping our talent here in Kalamazoo. We are also home to The Promise, if you've ever heard of that. The Kalamazoo Promise has been talked about all over the United States. We have a very philanthropic community. So lots of good reasons to come and visit. ROB: It sounds wonderful. I always like to dig in and honor – my team is around the country, and I just like to have us all think about what makes each other's homes special. So thank you for sharing that. I know we always see Western Michigan jumping up and biting some other team in college football that wasn't expecting to get beaten that week. They're one of those upstarts that likes to surprise people, but it sounds like the people there are not surprised. HEATHER: Kalamazoo is a great place to live. ROB: Heather, when people want to get in touch with you and with LKF, where should they go to find you? HEATHER: You can find us at lkfmarketing.com. You can also find us on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. ROB: Fantastic. Heather, thank you so much for your time, for sharing your journey, for sharing that unique depth of understanding that you get into with clients to sell things that I think are hard to sell by a formula. That is very much to your credit, so congratulations. HEATHER: Thank you. ROB: Be well, and we'll look for more great things from LKF. HEATHER: Thanks, Rob. It was great talking to you. ROB: Thanks, Heather. Take care. Bye. HEATHER: Bye. ROB: Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Heather Grzych is the author of The Ayurvedic Guide to Fertility. A board-certified Ayurvedic practitioner, she bridges the worlds of conventional and alternative medicine to help women and men heal their physical and emotional lives. Heather is on the board of directors for the National Ayurvedic Medical Association and has consulted with doctors, governments, and insurance companies. And in today’s episode we talk about the implications of Ayurvedic medicine for fertility. Today’s episode is sponsored by the Fertility Awareness Mastery LIVE 8 week group coaching program!  We start on May 4th! Will you be joining us? Click here to register now! Topics discussed in today's episode: What lead Heather to studying Ayurvedic Medicine and writing her bookWhat is Ayurvedic Medicine and where did it originate from How did Heather discover Ayurvedic Medicine and why did she choose it What is the difference between Ayurvedic and other modalities that we are familiar with The Five Elements in Ayurvedia Different Ayurvedic practices How does Ayurvedic Medicine relate to fertility What are the steps a women who is looking to get pregnant should take to get healthy using Ayurvedic Medicine Connect with Heather: You can connect with Heather on her Website, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Resources mentioned: The Ayurvedic Guide to Fertility Fertility Awareness Mastery Mentorship (FAMM) Class of 2021 The Fifth Vital Sign: Master Your Cycles & Optimize Your Fertility (Book) | Lisa Hendrickson-Jack Fertility Awareness Mastery Charting Workbook Fertility Awareness Mastery Online Self-Study Program Related podcasts & blog posts: FFP 308 | How Does Stress Impact The Menstrual Cycle? | Lisa | Fertility Friday FFP 287 | Conceiving with Love | Denise Wiesner, LAc. FFP 248 | Abdominal Therapy for Fertility, Conception, and Emotional Healing | Andrea Thompson FFP 245 | Essential Oils and Your Hormones | Dr Mariza Snyder FFP 195 | Ayurvedic Medicine | Managing The Postpartum Period | Stacy Claxton FFP 163 | PCOS & Fertility | Improving Fertility & Balancing Hormones with Diet & Lifestyle Changes | Robyn Srigley FFP 144 | Seed Cycling & Hormone Balance | Supporting Your Menstrual Cycle Naturally | Dr. Nicole Sandilands FFP 092 | Natural Fertility Info | Nutrition For Fertility | Smart Supplementation | Get Pregnant Naturally | Hethir Rodriguez FFP 089 | Treating Infertility Naturally | Natural Fertility Solutions | Getting to the Root Cause | Gabriela Rosa FFP 076 | The Emotional Connection to Fertility & Health | Aimee Raupp FFP 061 | How to Conceive Naturally and Have a Healthy Pregnancy after 30 | Willow Buckley FFP 049 | Improving Fertility Naturally by Optimizing Your Diet, Lifestyle, and Environment | Eleni Roumeliotou Join the community! Find us in the Fertility Friday Facebook Group. Subscribe to the Fertility Friday Podcast in Apple Podcasts! Music Credit: Intro/Outro music Produced by J-Gantic A Special Thank You to Our Show Sponsors: Fertility Friday | Fertility Awareness Programs This episode is sponsored by my Fertility Awareness Programs! Master Fertility Awareness and take a deep dive into your cycles and how they relate to your overall health! Click here to apply now! The Fertility Awareness Charting Workbook This episode is sponsored by my new book the Fertility Awareness Mastery Charting. Click here to buy now.

Heather Monahan is a Confidence Coach, or at least, that’s what people keep telling her. Truth be told, she’s a hustler that’s never had a problem landing on her feet. She’s also a best-selling author, keynote speaker, podcast host, entrepreneur, and the founder of Boss In Heels, among other things. And this week on Masters of Wealth, she’s sitting down with Johnny to talk about her struggles to hold on to her identity in a social-media hungry professional world, the challenges with turning your mess into a message, and why confidence will always be the one thing that can change everything. To find out more about Heather, follow her on Facebook at facebook.com/heathermonahanofficial or check out her podcast, Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan on your favorite podcasting platform. To learn more about Johnny and to hear more episodes of Masters of Wealth, follow him on Facebook at facebook.com/JohnnyWimbrey and check out his website at johnnywimbrey.com. And to find out how you can be a coauthor in Johnny and Heather’s next book, head to costarauthor.com to learn more. Show Notes & Show Quotes: ----5:45 (Johnny) - I didn’t realize that just because somebody’s clapping for you, it doesn’t mean they’re your confidante. 9:45 (Heather) - One of the beautiful things about growing up poor and being a hustler is that you know you’re always going to land on your feet. 17:15 (Heather) - I decided, like I think any good content creator should do, that you want to answer the questions your audience has, not what you think are the best questions. 18:15 (Johnny) - How do you know you had a good workout? You’re sore the next day. I was sore early on in life. I was lifting weights I didn’t ask to lift, but it created the character I am today.22:05 (Heather) - When you have so much failure, and then success and then failure and then success, it really teaches you and or equips you to further move forward and handle setbacks a bit more graciously.25:50 (Johnny) - When it comes to sales, I’m a killer. When it comes to converting, and y’know, if I can see it on the board, if I can see it on the board, I’m going to get it. But I do procrastinate in responding, when it comes to me wanting something from somebody.31:40(Heather) - You don’t have to be confident or secure in yourself to be wealthy.Heather Monahan: ---Podcast: https://spoti.fi/2v1PySmFacebook: facebook.com/heathermonahanofficialTwitter: @_heathermonahanInstagram: @heathermonahan/Website: heathermonahan.comJohnny Wimbrey: ---Facebook: facebook.com/JohnnyWimbreyInstagram: @wimbreyTwitter: @wimbreyWebsite: johnnywimbrey.comBooks featured in this Episode:---Heather Monahan - Confidence CreatorJohnny Wimbrey - From The Hood To Doing Good

In today's episode, we discuss: Identifying your strengths and how to position them How to handle time away from the traditional workforce The importance of shifting your mindset and how important it is when you are putting together your resumé    Rhonda: All right. Well thank you so much for joining us. Welcome to this episode of Divorce Conversations for Women. I'm your host, Rhonda Noordyk. You know there's one common thread facing everyone that's going through or contemplating divorce and that is you don't know what you don't know. So, I want to make sure that I help you ask the tough questions to get the answers that you need. Rhonda: In today's episode, we're going to be diving into the topic of... resumé writing, right? And what do you do if you need to go back into the workforce or you need to up-level your skills to be able to really live the life that you have been wanting to live during or post-divorce. So, this episode is sponsored by Courageous Contemplation. It's our online course. So, if you find yourself contemplating divorce, please check out womensfinancialwellnesscenter.com/events. So, I am here today with Dr. Heather Rothbauer-Wanish and she is, not only the owner of Feather Communications, but she's also a professional resumé writer and has been doing this since 2008. So, thank you so much for joining us today. Heather: Thanks, Rhonda. I'm glad to be here. Rhonda: So, tell us a little bit about... Before we dive into the tips that we have for our listeners today, if there are women that are listening, what are some of the things that you've seen as far as trends in resumé writing, basically, and let's let them know that they're not alone. Heather: Okay. Yeah. First of all, you are absolutely not alone. One of the trends that I've really noticed, whether I'm working with somebody that is getting divorced, maybe just stayed home raising kids, and is now entering the workforce, is probably 15 or 20 years ago. It's almost like we tried to hide that information, like, "Oh, I don't want them to know that I wasn't doing anything." Which by the way, we know you were doing a lot of different things, but now we address it. We just flat out address it in the resumé and say, "These five years, two years, whatever it was, here's what I was doing." And I think there's some value to that because people feel like they don't necessarily have to hide it and they can use those skills that they built during that time. Heather: Another trend that, you know, if somebody hasn't looked for a job for a really long time is understanding how the job search works today. It's important to know that resumés go through applicant tracking systems. You're not going to be physically handing your resumé to somebody anymore, so just understanding the different tips and tricks and ideas and being smart about how you're putting together your document to best identify your strengths and your skillset. Rhonda: I love that. And if you are listening, I hope that you find encouragement in that because things have shifted, and even in previous episodes that we've recorded, we've been talking about the importance of flexing. Like, hey, it's not that you have to be working in the nine-to-five jobs anymore in the corporate space. People are really starting to recognize, "Hey, what is it that I'm passionate about? What skills do I bring to the table? Gosh, could I turn that into a business?" Or, "Can I leverage some of those skills in the career space?" So, I love that. Rhonda: I remember... So, in teaching in higher education, I was teaching PowerPoint classes and Microsoft Office classes. And as part of that, I was encouraging my students to put together a resumé because I said, "You know what? The best time to put together a resumé is when you don't need one and you're not stressed- Heather: Exactly. Rhonda: ... and you're not feeling frustrated or bitter toward the employer that maybe had to part ways with you for various reasons." And so, I put as part of that process, I put together mine, and I thought, "Okay, I've got this really great chronological resumé." And the gal who was reviewing it at the college, their professional onsite resumé writer, said, "Yeah, Rhonda, I mean good information, but, man, this is an old-school format." Feeling like we need to put everything in chronological order and put as much as we can on there. And I want to say that I was clustered. But I think just also recognizing, what is it that really, we need to be putting on there and also realizing that we have control over what we put on there or don't put on there. Right? Heather: Exactly. And I always tell people, your resumé is meant to put enough out there that somebody is interested enough to call you for an interview to find out more. It's not your entire life story. It's not every single job that you've ever had since high school. Because people do it. It's not every single thing. It's what's relevant and thinking about what's relevant over a quantity of information is really, really important. And I think once people know that, once they realize that, "Oh, my gosh, you don't have to tell everybody every single thing. I can pick and choose what I want to share?" It changes how you look at the document, too. Rhonda: Yeah, absolutely. Well, so let's dive in a little bit. First of all, I would love for anybody that's listening to know, how do they identify really and document the skills and abilities that they have? How do they pick what cream should rise to the top, if you will? Heather: Well, the first thing I would tell you is that often when I'm working with clients and I say, "Oh, tell me your top three skills," or "Tell me your top few strengths." The typical response is, "Hmm, I don't know. Well, let me think about it." And they don't know. So, I think just getting into the mindset of thinking about, "Hey, what are my strengths?" And so, what I tell people is to look at some job postings. Figure out, "Hey, this job sounds kind of interesting." Don't even worry about the title of the job at this point. Just look at the job description and then look at the skillsets and the responsibilities that they're requiring of that candidate. And I bet you will find that those are some of your skills. Heather: So, it's really important to align your skills and your abilities and what you list on the document towards each job opportunity. A lot of times people will think that they have to reinvent the wheel every single time that they're sending the resumé out. And it's like, you don't have to start from scratch every time, but you might need to tweak some of those words. So just thinking about that, and then the one tip that I have found really, really works, works with myself, you can play a little mind trick on yourself, is instead of thinking about, "What are my skills? What are my strengths? What am I good at?" Shift it in your mind and think from the perspective of, "I wonder what my coworkers would say about me? What does my last job review say about me? What would my best friends say that are my top skills?" Heather: And all of a sudden you come to a place of, "Wow, that person would say I'm organized. I'm a good leader. I get along well with people. I have good communication skills," and all of these skills start tumbling out. So, sometimes it's just kind of thinking about it a little bit differently, too. But it's really, really important that you look at the skills that are required of the jobs and then match those skillsets to your resumé. Rhonda: Yeah, I love that. Well, and are there any assessments, third party assessments that you encourage people to take? Heather: Oh, my gosh, there are so many that are out there. One of the assessments that I'm sure a lot of your listeners have heard of is StrengthFinders. Rhonda: One of my favorites. Heather: Yeah. Mine too. Mine is actually sitting right over there. I think sometimes we think we know what our strengths are, but then when you see it worded from a third party, it's like, "Yeah, that is what I'm good at. That just totally describes me." So that would be one of them that I would recommend for a lot of people. There's also one of the places that I used to work at and we would give our interviewees a DiSC profile. So, D-i-S-C. Again, not that any of these tell you everything about yourself, but it's really nice to find some words that kind of describe your personality style. Heather: So that's another one. There's like three versions of it. They're not like super in-depth, but it gets you started on that path. Rhonda: Yeah. I think the self-awareness piece is huge, right? I mean, if you're somebody who is a D, a very direct person in the D for DiSC, and you're applying for a support role, well, depending on the dynamics and the culture, there might be a little bit of tension there because you're going to want to take charge and get stuff done, versus somebody who's maybe an S or a C, and more of, by nature, more of a support role, loves the analytical detail stuff, maybe a little bit more behind the scenes. Heather: Exactly. Exactly. Rhonda: I love the- Heather: It's funny that you said D because that is mine. And so, it's like sometimes I have to remember, "Okay, this is not the point to bring some of these things up." Or, "This is not a good time for the D part to come out". Yeah. Rhonda: Well, and I think, too, I encourage if you are listening, gosh, look up these assessments. The StrengthFinder is a Gallup poll assessment. It's so awesome. Of the 34 different themes, it's going to give you your top five so you can really start to internalize what you're good at and how you're wired. And then also, for the DiSC profile, I love that, too. And also knowing that, hey, we can flex that because there we'll have our dominant one and then one under stress. So, for me, I'm an "i", influencer, pretty outgoing, all that kind of stuff. Love getting people together. But then when I have to be, I'm a D. When I have to get stuff done or the hammer has to come down, I can be a D. Rhonda: But the nice thing is, once you become very aware of how you are and you can operate consistently in that, the other people around you also know what to expect from you. So, I think it can give you an added sense, from my perspective, an added sense of confidence when you're not only writing your resumé but if you get to the point where you're doing interviews where you can really walk in and say, "Here's who I am. Let's find out if this is a good fit or not." Heather: Right. Exactly. And I think there is something to be said for just being aware of it yourself, and just recognizing some of those traits in other people who, like, "Oh, I can tell from having a conversation with this person, this person is much more of an i, or a C," and you can kind of adjust. Not that you have to change everything, but you can kind of adjust your communication style to align better with that individual also. Rhonda: Yeah. Absolutely. I love that. So yes, so identifying their strengths. So, once they've identified them, how do they document them? Heather: So, your skills and strengths, what I tell people, is like on your resumé at the top, obviously we'll have your name, your contact information, and that sort of thing. Then I typically have a career summary, but immediately after that, so in the top third of the resumé, I put the skills section or the strengths because when you're going through these online applicant tracking systems that companies utilize on websites, you have to make sure it's frontloading the information. Make sure that you're dropping in all of these words at the beginning so that the software likes your document. That's important. Heather: And why would we want to bury our skills and strengths at the bottom anyway? Especially if you haven't been in the traditional workforce for quite a while, let's focus on those strengths and abilities and accomplishments, boom, right up the top, so that somebody is hooked enough that they want to keep reading about you. So, I definitely, definitely, consistently put it in the top third of the resumé. Rhonda: Awesome. And can you just share a little bit about how those systems work for... If you're listening and you're like, "Okay, what is she talking about?" Picking out keywords or whatever. Share with us a little bit about that. Heather: Yeah. So, a lot of people that I work with are 40 and up and they're like, "I don't even know exactly. I don't know what you're talking about." So, what happens is, on company websites instead of paying me or some other HR person to sit there and just sift through a hundred resumés or 200 or whatever, they have software on their website. So as soon as you click Upload, boom, there goes your resumé, like, what happens to it? I always joke, like does it just go into some abyss somewhere? Like what happens? Heather: Well, those companies have the software that as soon as the documents are coming through, it's scanning them and it's scanning them for a word match percentage to the job posting. So, for a lot of these different systems companies can set up, they have to match whatever, 50%. They have to match 60%. Whatever they decide they need. And if your resumé doesn't have enough of those same words in it, you're out. You're out before a human being even gets your document. Heather: So, the point is, is when you're reading an ad online, when you're reading something on Indeed or any of the other job boards, pay attention to the bullet points in the ad. Pay attention to the list where it says, key skills required, or applicants must have... And then there's a bullet list of 10 bullets. Those are the keywords. Those are your skills. And it can be something as simple as, let's say, you decide to put project management as one of your skills, and you read the job posting and it says you must have project leadership abilities. Then put project leadership. Heather: It can just be something as small as that. And I always caution people, within reason, obviously, you can't just throw stuff on there just for the heck of it. Cross your fingers to get through the system because anything that you put on there is fair game for them asking you about it during an interview, and you have to have something to back it up. You can't just say, "Oh, I'm a good project manager," and then they say, "Give me an example." And you're like, "Well, let me think." You have to have an example. So, it's just being smart about using a lot of the same verbiage that they have in their job posting and utilizing that on your document. Rhonda: Awesome. That's awesome. So, we've covered how to identify some of those skills and then really how to position them within the document itself. Talk to us about, for anybody who's listening. So, if you're listening right now and you say, "Hey, I've been away from the workforce for a while in a traditional sense." What is the, I guess, right way and what's the wrong way to address that time away? Heather: One of the things that I've seen a lot lately is, and maybe your listeners are familiar with it, but it's like the sandwich generation. It's the generation of people that are either A) taking care of kids, they're now they're returning to work, or they're taking care of kids and/or also taking care of a relative, an ailing parent or something. So, there's a lot of people that are out of the workforce for a couple of years, maybe 15 years, who knows? Instead of, again, ignoring that and not even addressing it, I will put a simple one-line line item on the document that says, "Stepped away from the traditional workforce from 2010 through 2015 to care for an ailing relative," or, "To provide healthcare for a parent," or whatever. Again, you don't have to go into drastic detail. People know that other people have lives, like things happen. Heather: You have kids. Our parents get sick. You have to take a year off; you have to take two years off. I think what's really changed in the more recent years is that there is a level of understanding that stuff happens, and you might have to step away for a while from the traditional workforce. Does that mean you weren't doing anything? Absolutely not. And so one of the things I'll do is, again, just put that one little sentence on it saying, "Cared for children from 2007 to 2017," and then go back into other things like maybe you were the fundraising chair at your kids' school. Maybe you volunteered at the nursing home 20 hours a week, whatever. Heather: One of the things I always tell people is, just because we're calling it professional history or work history or professional experience, it doesn't mean that it has to be paid work where you're getting a paycheck every other Friday. Like, this experience is experience. So, the volunteerism, put it in there because guess what, that shows you're organized, you can work with different team members, you can organize projects, coordinate things, all of that. So, don't be afraid to put things in there that aren't necessarily kind of that traditional work history. Rhonda: Awesome. Yeah, I think that's really great advice because there is value in those things and I think there has been this level of, "Okay, well, I don't want to lie and say that I was working when I wasn't, but I think there's value in that," and there's usually a good reason. So, what you're saying is, hey, just put it out there. Heather: Yep, exactly. Exactly. Rhonda: I love that. So, we have talked about some of the strengths and how to position those and then, also, how do you handle that time away? I want to take a brief break and then we'll come back and then we're going to talk about shifting your mindset. Okay? So, you want to make sure that you stay tuned for our third and final point together.     Rhonda: So, I am so excited to be able to share with you that today's show has been sponsored by Courageous Contemplations. It is our online course. It is perfect for women that are contemplating, "Should I stay, or should I go?" Right? And so, you have an opportunity to walk through eight modules, privately, without anybody knowing, so you can gather the information that you need to make a good decision. And at the end of that you will have an opportunity to decide, "Hey, do I need more time? Would I love to be able to connect with Rhonda and move forward, or am I just going to wait? And, you know what, maybe I'm going to stay in this relationship." So, if you have an opportunity to check out www.womensfinancialwellnesscenter.com/courses, make sure that you visit Courageous Contemplations to learn more.     Rhonda: So, let's jump back in. And, Heather, I want you to share a little bit about the importance of shifting your mindset and how important that is as you're putting together the resumé. Heather: Yes. Oh, this is my favorite topic, Rhonda. Oh, it's my favorite part. Okay. So, when I work with people, they are always concerned that I'm bragging. Oh, my gosh, I'm talking myself up so much. I talked to a lady last week and she said, "Oh, listen to me, talking about all these certifications." And I stopped her. That's probably my D coming out, but I stopped her in her phone call, and I said, "Is this a fact? That you have these three certifications?" And she said, "Well, yeah." And I said, "Then why do you feel bad about it? You're just simply stating a fact." Heather: So that's what I tell my clients, is like, you're not bragging if you're simply stating a fact. If you earned these three awards last year, okay, then it is what it is. You are stating a fact. It's just like saying, "I'm X, Y, Z years old." That's a fact. So, stop thinking about it as if you're bragging or that you're being boastful, because you're not. You're just saying what happened. And the other thing is, if you don't say what happened, if you're concerned that, "Oh, my goodness, I'm going to come across as being conceited and bragging," I guarantee you, I guarantee you that somebody else is putting their stuff on their resumé and they're going to get the interview and you are not, because you are so afraid of sounding like you're being boastful. Heather: If it's a fact, if it happened, put it on there. That's how I look at it. If it's something that actually happened, then why are we concerned about bragging? And, maybe I shouldn't say this, but I'm going to, whenever I've worked with a guy, they don't have that issue. Rhonda: Yeah, you read my mind. That was my follow-up question. Heather: No man that I have ever worked with has ever said, "Oh, my goodness, I probably shouldn't say that because I sound like I'm bragging." Not one in all of these years. So, I don't know, it's ingrained in us as women, whatever it is. But get over it because if it happened, it's a fact, and you're just putting that fact on paper. Rhonda: That's right. So, Heather and I, okay, ladies, are giving you permission, to state the facts and own how awesome you are. Right? Heather: Exactly. Exactly. Rhonda: I'm so glad that you addressed this because you're right. And then don't apologize for it. You've worked hard for the certifications, you worked hard for those awards, you worked hard for the experience and the time that you put in in whatever capacity that is. Let's just own it. Right? Heather: Mm-hmm. Exactly. Exactly. And so, my favorite thing is whenever I coach somebody and they say, "Oh, my gosh, I got my resumé, I would hire myself." That's how you have to think of this. Like, I want to look so awesome that of course people are going to call me. Why wouldn't they? Because I've done all of these things. And I think as the more you do it, you kind of think of that first, you probably will feel a little odd about it. But again, you're just saying what happened. It is what it is. Rhonda: And I think, too, it is hard to take a step back and really, even take an inventory of all the things that we've done, because sometimes in the midst of it, they either don't seem as important or we're emotional about certain aspects of it or whatever. And I remember one time I was talking to a friend; we were actually doing a similar exercise but for a different purpose. And the purpose was to put together a speaker profile and to say, "Okay, what experiences have I had and where have I spoken before?" And stuff like that. Rhonda: And one of the women in there said, "Well, oh, my gosh, I forgot about the fact that I was on the radio once a week for like eight years or whatever. And it was many years ago." And I'm like, "Who cares? You can still put it on there. You don't have to put a date and the fact that..." I mean, but until we went through that prompting exercise, I said, "Let's think about some of these things." And we were like, "That's totally cool." Clearly, I mean, you had something to say. You still have something to say. People recognize that. They invited you to be on their show. We need to highlight that kind of stuff, you know? Heather: Exactly, exactly. And the other thing too, is, when you're thinking about your jobs and taking care of your kids and being out of work for a while, one of the other things I'll hear is like, "Oh, well, I just did this," or, "I just did that." Like stop “justing” yourself. You did this. It's not, "Oh, I just stayed home with three kids for 15 years." Like, hello. That's a lot of work. So, yeah, don't use... If you catch yourself starting to use the word "just" in your vocabulary, even in your mind, stop doing that because you're minimizing whatever it is that you did accomplish. You're minimizing it to yourself, so you need to stop doing that and get the word "just" out of your vocabulary. Rhonda: Totally. Oh, my gosh. High five. I agree. It's like, yes. And any of us who have stayed home even for a short period of time, know that going to work is a far easier gig. Heather: It's a treat. It's like, I get to go to work. Rhonda: It's a treat. Oh, my gosh, yeah. Totally. Yeah, it's hard work. Right? Heather: Exactly. Rhonda: So, I love where we have been able to take our time together and a couple of things. I always say that the intention with this is to leave women with a couple of tips or tools or thoughts that they didn't have before they hopped onto this podcast. But I also want to keep it in bite-size pieces so they can listen while they're either on the way to work or scrubbing the floor or working out or whatever. And so, it has come time to what I call kind of land the plane, which means I always like to end our podcast episodes with two things. One is your favorite quote related to the work that you do. And then, lastly, a client success story. So, let's start with, what is your favorite quote? Heather: My favorite quote is actually a quote from Thomas Edison, and it says, "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." So, I actually toured his estate in Florida many years ago and I bought his biography and then I saw that quote and I was, "Yes. I love that quote." So that's kind of my motto, absolutely. So, it is work, but the thing is that it's also opportunities, so you need to take advantage of it. Rhonda: Awesome. That's awesome. Love that. And share with us a client success story. Heather: Sure. So, I worked with a lady that, she lives in the local area to me, so Northwestern Wisconsin where the weather is potentially less than desirable about six months out of the year. And she had gone through a divorce, she had raised her kids, and she was looking to get back into the workforce. She was very timid and almost afraid, again, of sharing her successes. And so, I worked with her, we went through this whole resumé process, building it from scratch because she didn't have one, she didn't need one. And to make a long story short, she actually got a new job and she now lives in California. So, she moved, which I think I should probably visit her, like in January. But, anyway... Rhonda: That's a good business right off. Right? Woo-Hoo. Heather: I know. I know. Yeah. But anyway, I mean, that changed her life. She moved. So, it had a really big impact. And if I even had a tiny bit of that, I love it. I absolutely love it. Rhonda: Oh, I love that story. And I think the thing that I was thinking of, that the whole essence of this is, yeah, it's about having something practical and tangible at the end of this process, but it's confidence. Heather: Mm-hmm. That's right. Exactly. Rhonda: I mean, you are a professional resumé writer and confidence builder, right? Those two things together are so important. And I know that as women have gone through divorce or going through divorce, I mean, the one thing that gets probably impacted the most is their confidence for a variety of different reasons. And so, if you're listening to this podcast, I want to encourage you to take that step and start doing some of the things that we talked about in this episode to move you in the right direction of rebuilding your confidence, taking some time to become aware of what are your strengths and what am I good at and shifting your mindset. And then certainly, we'll include Heather's contact information in the show notes, Heather, and they can reach out to you for some additional support. Rhonda: I know that you have a special offer here, which I'm super excited about. And so, for anybody that is listening, Heather has graciously offered to do a free resumé review. This is awesome. Thank you. Heather: You're welcome. Rhonda: So you can send your resumé to her, she'll provide you some information, tips and improvements so that you can move forward with your job search, and Heather's website …you know why don't you go ahead and share with us the website or the best way for them to contact you for the review. Heather: Sure. So, my website is feather. So, it rhymes with Heather, but, feather-communications.com, and there is the hyphen between feather and communications. But my email address is on there, my phone number, they can connect with me. I have a Facebook business page as well if they want to send their resumé. I love giving people advice. And so, if your resumé is one year old, six months old or 16 years old, I don't care. Send it to me, I will look at it and say, "Here's some ideas for you, make the changes that you want." We can talk further if you want, but either way, I want to give them helpful, concrete tips so that they can move forward. Rhonda: Thank you. It's women like you that I'm so grateful that we have in our community. It's like, "Hey, I'm going to give first and I know that women need what it is I have to offer and I'm willing to help them." So, thank you. Heather: Sure. Absolutely. Rhonda: Thank you for being one of our guests on the Divorce Conversations for Women podcast. And today's show has been sponsored by Courageous Contemplations, our online course. So, if you find yourself contemplating divorce, please check out www.womensfinancialwellnesscenter.com/courses. Thank you for listening to this episode. I'd love for you to be part of the conversation. So simply comment on this episode, drop us a review on iTunes or get involved anytime at womensfinancialwellnesscenter.com. I'm Rhonda Noordyk, and I hope you know what you don't know about divorce. ________________________________________ Contact Information and Other Resources Our guest today was Dr. Heather Rothbauer-Wanish Dr. Heather Rothbauer-Wanish has a BBA in management from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, an MBA from Lakeland College, and a Ph.D. in Organization and Management from Capella University. She LOVES helping people position themselves for today's job market. She can help boost your confidence by creating a resumé that helps you land your DREAM JOB.   Dr. Heather Rothbauer-Wanish PhD, MBA, and a Certified Professional Resumé Writer Owner and Founder | Feather Communications heather@feather-communications.com | (715) 559-6378 Facebook | LinkedIn | YouTube   Resources Mentioned: StrengthsFinder DiSC Assessment ____________________ Our host of Divorce Conversations for Women Podcast is Rhonda Noordyk, CFEI Rhonda Noordyk's relentless pursuit of financial justice for women going through divorce drove her to leave the financial industry in 2014 to open The Women's Financial Wellness Center. She was in search of a better way. She used her knowledge, passion, and experience to build a leading-edge business model. The intention was to create a business that provided a safe place for women - especially those in a vulnerable position - to find their paths, find their voices and find the financial confidence they need to lift themselves out of seemingly hopeless situations. Since starting the Women’s Financial Wellness Center, after a 10+ year career in the financial industry, she has helped alleviate financial vulnerability for thousands of women. ​In addition to being the Founder & CEO of The Women’s Financial Wellness Center, Rhonda is also a professional speaker. While her platform is women’s money wellness, it is not just about money. Her topics include: assertive communication, boundaries, leadership and overcoming financial myths. Her speaking experience includes: GE Healthcare, UWM Women’s Leadership Conference and Marquette Law School. In addition, she has appeared on Fox6 News, Real Milwaukee, and Morning Blend. Her dynamic and inspirational style leaves women with a sense of empowerment.   Rhonda Noordyk, CFEI  CEO | The Women's Financial Wellness Center rhonda@wfwcllc.com | (262) 522-1502 Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | LinkedIn | YouTube Schedule a FREE 30-Minute Phone Call ____________________ Sponsored by: Courageous Contemplation (online course) ____________________ Visit the Women’s Financial Wellness Center for a full directory listing of experts. Be sure to reach out if you would like to connect personally with the Women’s Financial Wellness Center. You can visit our website or grab a complimentary 30-minute consult. Leaving a positive podcast review is hugely important: they help the podcast get discovered by new people. Please spend 5 minutes of your time to leave a review on your preferred listening platform, we’d love to hear from you!  

Secretary Mattis's extraordinary resignation letter ... Why did Trump decide to withdraw from Syria now? ... Secretary of Defense David Petraeus? ... Other foreign policy news you may have missed this week ... Heather: You don't change Trump, Trump changes you ... Laughing and crying at the year in foreign policy ...

Welcome to this episode of the Smart Leaders Sell Podcast! I’m joined by Heather Gray today to talk about support. Heather is amazing. She gives practical and actionable mindset tips for overcoming different things life throws at us, and that is why she's the perfect person to have this discussion with.   In This Episode Mindset in real time without all of the fluff Doing the work versus talking about doing the work Constructive Support Following the right people, and asking the important question Taking ownership Talk about needing help, talk about having help   “People think about mindset as being positive all the time” - Heather “It means changing the stories we hold about ourselves” - Heather “What are you going to do to change that story?” - Heather “Don’t expect to be rescued, learn how to rescue yourself”- Heather “You have to get the right support for you” - Jess “It’s not about information, it’s about implementation” - Jess   Episodes mentioned SLS040 Follow Ups!   More Heather www.choosetohaveitall.com Business Mindset Mastery   More Jess!http://bit.ly/SLSGroup https://jessicalorimer.com/supersize-your-sales https://jessicalorimer.com/list-building-legend Content DisclaimerThe information contained above is provided for information purposes only. The contents of this article, video or audio are not intended to amount to advice and you should not rely on any of the contents of this article, video or audio. Professional advice should be obtained before taking or refraining from taking any action as a result of the contents of this article, video or audio. Jessica Lorimer disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on any of the contents of this article, video or audio.Disclaimer: Some of these links are for products and services offered by the podcast creator