Podcasts about heidi you

It can be difficult to find VBAC support with gestational diabetes and most who are supportive of VBAC highly recommend a 39-week induction. Heidi's first pregnancy/birth included gestational diabetes with daily insulin injections, a 39-week induction, Penicillin during labor for GBS, pushing for five hours, and a C-section for arrest of descent due to OP presentation. Heidi wasn't sure if she wanted to go through another birth after her first traumatic experience, but she found a very supportive practice that made her feel safe to go for it again. Though many practices would have risked her out of going for a VBAC due to her age and subsequent gestational diabetes diagnosis, her new practice was so reassuring, calm, and supportive of how Heidi wanted to birth. Heidi knew she wanted to go into spontaneous labor and try for an unmedicated VBAC. With the safety and support of her team, she was able to do just that. At just over 40 weeks, Heidi went into labor spontaneously and labored beautifully. Instead of pushing for over five hours, Heidi only pushed for 30 minutes! It was exactly the dreamy birth she hoped it would be. ThrombocytopeniaReal Food for Gestational Diabetes by Lily NicholsInformed Pregnancy Plus Needed WebsiteHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode Details 05:50 Review of the Week08:04 Heidi's first pregnancy with gestational diabetes12:05 Taking insulin18:08 39-week induction 20:59 Pushing 24:29 Arrest of descent and opting for a C-section27:06 Researching providers before second pregnancy38:04 Discussions around induction41:45 NSTs twice a week47:10 Testing for preeclampsia54:53 Spontaneous labor57:43 Going to the hospital1:02:03 Laboring in the tub1:06:22 Pushing for 30 minutesMeagan: Hello, Women of Strength. It is Meagan and we have a friend from New Hampshire. Her name is Heidi. Hello, how are you? Heidi: I'm doing great. How are you?Meagan: I am so great. I'm excited to record this story today because there are so many times in The VBAC Link Community on Facebook where we see people commenting about gestational diabetes and for a really long time on the podcast, we didn't have any stories about gestational diabetes. Just recently, this year really, we've had some gestational diabetes stories. I just love it because I think a lot of the time in the system, there is doubt placed with the ability to give birth with gestational diabetes or there is the whole will induce or won't induce type thing, and with gestational diabetes, you have to have a baby by 39 weeks if they won't induce you and it just goes. So I love hearing these stories and Heidi's story today– she actually had gestational diabetes with both so with her C-section and with her VBAC. It was controlled. It was amazing. That's another thing that I love hearing is that it is possible to control. We love Lily Nichols and the book about gestational diabetes and pregnancy. We will make sure to have it in the link, but it is so good to know that it doesn't have to be a big, overwhelming thing. It can be controlled and it doesn't have to be too crazy. Right? Did you find that along the way? Heidi: Yes. Yes, definitely. The first one was pretty scary, but then the second one, you know what you are doing and you can control it and you can keep advocating for yourself. Meagan: Absolutely. And then in addition to gestational diabetes, she had advanced maternal age barely with her second, but that is something that also gets thrown out. A lot of the time, we have providers saying, “We shouldn't have a vaginal birth. We should have a C-section by this time,” so that's another thing. If you are an advanced-maternal-age mama, listen up because here is another story for you as well. We don't have a lot of those on the podcast. We are so excited to welcome Heidi to the show. 05:50 Review of the WeekMeagan: Of course, we are going to do a Review of the Week and then we will dive right in. This was from stephaniet and it says, “Inspiring and Educational.” It says, “As a mother currently in her third trimester preparing for a VBAC, I was so happy to find this podcast. The stories shared are so encouraging and it is so comforting to know that I am not alone in feeling that once a Cesarean, always a Cesarean.” 100%. That is 100% true. You are not alone here. And once a Cesarean is not always a Cesarean. It says, “This does not have to be my story. Thanks, Meagan and Julie, for providing the support and education to women who are fighting for a chance to have a natural childbirth. I would love to encourage anyone wanting to learn more about VBAC to listen to this podcast.” Thank you, stephaniet. This was quite a few years ago, actually. This was in 2019. We still have some reviews in 2019 that weren't read. It's 2024, so that's really awesome and as usual, if you have a moment, we would love your reviews. Your reviews truly are what help more Women of Strength find these stories. We want these stories to be heard so leave us a review if you can on Apple Podcasts and Google. You can email us a review or whatever, but definitely if you listen to the podcast on a platform, leave a review and that would help. 08:04 Heidi's first pregnancy with gestational diabetesMeagan: All right, Ms. Heidi. Welcome to the show and thank you for being with us. Heidi: Thanks for having me. This is awesome. Meagan: Well, let's talk about it. Share your story with us with your C-section. Heidi: Yeah. We were planning for a child and we just decided. We were like, “Okay. Let's shoot for an April birthdate.” We just thought that we could just have a child, but we got lucky and we did on the first try. Meagan: Amazing. Heidi: We went to our local hospital that was about five minutes away for care and it just seemed good enough. At the time, I thought you just go to the hospital. You get care. You can trust the provider and you don't really need to do anything other than a hospital birth class for prepping. We just went along that journey. They assured me, “This will be a normal pregnancy. Everything is great.” The pregnancy was uneventful until about 20 weeks when I found out my baby was missing a kidney during a routine ultrasound. That sent us down Google rabbit holes and all kinds of fun things. Meagan: I'm sure, yeah. Heidi: Yeah. So at that point, we were assigned a Maternal-fetal medicine OB. I was offered an amniocentesis if we wanted to check and see what else was wrong and things like that. That was a major curveball. Meagan: Did you end up participating in the amnio? Heidi: No, we didn't. We had a couple of detailed ultrasounds after that. At first, they didn't actually tell me what they were looking for. I had three ultrasounds in a row that were not the more detailed ones. Meagan: Oh, okay. Heidi: I was like, “Why am I having all of these ultrasounds? Nobody is saying anything.” I finally got a phone call telling me that my daughter was missing a kidney so that's what they were looking for. I was like, “Okay. Good to know.” Meagan: Yeah. You would have thought some communication before then would have happened though. Heidi: Yeah. It was pretty scary. So what seemed pretty uneventful–Meagan: Got eventful. Heidi: Yeah, it did. So right around 28-30 weeks when they do the gestational diabetes check, I went in for my check and found that I would need to start tracking my blood sugar and diabetes does tend to kind of run in my family even though everybody is very healthy. I was wondering if it would come up and also being older, sometimes they say there is a link but it still took me by surprise because I'm a very active person and I eat really healthy. I felt like a failure basically. Meagan: I'm so sorry Heidi: Yeah. All of a sudden, I'm meeting with a nutritionist. They give me this whole package of a finger pricker. Yeah, exactly. All of a sudden, I'm submitting logs four times a day checking blood sugar, and the fasting numbers for me just weren't coming down so it was about one week of that, and then all of a sudden, they were saying, “Okay. You probably need insulin.” 12:05 Taking insulinHeidi: It came on so fast, so strong. Meagan: Wow. Heidi: It was really scary so then I found myself going to the pharmacy. I am a very healthy person so it was just all really weird going to the pharmacy buying insulin and learning all about insulin and learning almost how little the medical field understands about gestational diabetes. That was something bouncing in my head bouncing off the wall trying to understand the plan there. Meagan: Yeah. Heidi: Yeah, so after that, then I got phone calls from the nurses. They said, “You know, now you are on insulin. Now, you are going to have twice weekly NSTs required at 35 weeks.” I'm thinking, “Well, I'm working full time. How am I going to do all of this?” There is just so much sick time and it was really, really difficult to hear all of that. Meagan: Yeah. How do I have time for all of that? Plus just being pregnant. Heidi: Yeah. Yeah. Insulin and just for anyone that doesn't know, basically you inject yourself. I was injecting myself every night with an insulin pen and it was all just very weird because you're also thinking, “Well, I'm pregnant. I've never been on this medication. What is it going to do to me? What is it doing to my baby?” Very nervewracking. It's all normal to feel that way. Meagan: Yeah. I think sometimes when we get these diagnoses, we want to either recluse because it's so overwhelming, and sometimes then, our numbers can get a little wonky, or we dive in so much that it consumes us and we forget that we are still human and we don't have to do that. Heidi: Yeah. Now that you say that, I definitely did a little bit of both. Meagan: Did you? Heidi: I did a little bit of denial and then I did a little bit of obsessive researching. Meagan: Yeah, because you want to know. You want to be informed and that's super good, but sometimes it can control us. Heidi: Yes. Absolutely. You're watching every single thing that goes into your body. I probably didn't look at food normally until my second pregnancy to be honest with you. Meagan: Really? Heidi: Yeah. Meagan: Yeah. Yeah. So it was working. Things were being managed. Heidi: Yes. I was honestly very grateful for the insulin. Obviously, it took a little while to feel that way, but it was very well-managed. My numbers were right in range. My blood sugars were always normal throughout the day. I never had to do anything during the day. I just checked my blood sugars. Then the other thing that came as an alarm, they told me about the NSTs which are non-stress tests. They also mentioned that I would need an induction in the 39th week because–Meagan: 39 to be suggested, I should say. Heidi: Yeah. It wasn't explained to me that with that provider, it was a choice. It wasn't a suggestion. It was like, “You have to do this or you might have a stillbirth.” It was really scary. Meagan: Oh. Heidi: I didn't know I had a choice. Being a first-time mom and not knowing about evidence-based birth, this podcast, or all of it. I had no idea. So I was told I could schedule it anytime after my 36th week and for every appointment that I had as I started getting closer, I felt a lot of pressure from the providers to schedule the induction. They cited the ARRIVE trial. Meagan: Yes. Another thing I roll my eyes at. I don't hate all things. I just don't like when people call people old and when they tell people they have to do something because of a trial that really wasn't that great. But, okay. Heidi: Yep. Yeah. I mean, they didn't explain the details of it either. They just said, “Oh, it's the ARRIVE trial,” so I go and Google and try to make sense of it. They just say, “Stillbirth risk increases.” They say, “If you are induced at the 39th week, there is no increase and chance of a C-section,” so I thought, “Oh, okay. Sure.” Meagan: Right. Right, yeah. Heidi: I finally gave in near the end and I scheduled my induction for the 39th week and 6th day. Meagan: Okay, so almost 41. Heidi: Yep. So then I worked right up to the night before my induction. I was admitted to the hospital at 7:00 AM. I was planning for an unmedicated, uncomplicated delivery and an induction using a Cook balloon because my provider had checked me in the office the day before and they found that I was 1 centimeter dilated so they said they could probably get the balloon. I'm thinking, “Oh, it's going to be a mechanical induction. There's going to be no IV. It's going to be really as natural as possible.” 18:08 39-week induction Heidi: I get into triage and immediately, they start putting an IV in my right arm. I am right-handed. Meagan: Why do they do that? If you are listening and you are getting an IV, don't hesitate to say, “Hey, that's my dominant hand. Can we put it in the other one?” Also, don't hesitate to say, “Don't put it in my wrist where I'm going to try and be bending and breastfeeding a baby in the end. Put it in the hand or put it up in the arm.” Heidi: That's really good advice. I didn't know that the first time. Meagan: I didn't either. Heidi: I knew enough to say, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Put it in my left hand.” They ended up putting it in my forearm. So here I am. I was hooked up to Penicillin. I was GBS positive. I feel like I had all of the things. Meagan: Yes. We've got gestational diabetes, GBS, maternal age, and now we've got an induction. Heidi: Yeah. Oh yeah. So yeah. They put in Penicillin, Pitocin, and saline, and then they showed me how to move around while wheeling an IV pole. Meagan: Mmm, yeah. Fun.Heidi: Yeah. We felt a little gutted at that point. We are in the hospital and sorry, when I say we, it's my husband and I. Yeah. The midwife had trouble getting the Cook balloon in. We just sat around on Pitocin that first day. The OB finally got it in around 10:00 PM that night. It was her first visit to see us actually. She probably could have gotten it in earlier had she come earlier. It sped up the labor overnight as soon as the Cook balloon went in. It was a bit painful. They stopped the Pitocin the next morning. My water broke on its own. They were talking about coming in to break my water and I think my body probably heard them, so it broke on its own. Yeah. I was just laying in the bed and it happened. Then labor began to pick up, but the contractions were still not regular. Pitocin was increased and then the contractions got really intense, but still irregular until around 4:00 PM that day at which point, I just couldn't take it. I asked for the epidural. Meagan: That's a lot. That's a lot. Heidi: Yeah. It was intense. 20:59 Pushing Heidi: The shift changed and a new nurse had a student with her. So I consented to the student being there thinking, “Oh yeah. Come on. Come observe my awesome labor. This is going to be amazing. It's going to be a vaginal delivery and everything,” so I'm like, “Yeah, sure. Let them learn.” I achieved 10 centimeters dilation and full effacement around 9:00 PM that night so it was really exciting. Meagan: That's actually pretty fast. 10:00 is when the Cook was planned the night before. 9:00 PM, so hey, that's pretty good. Heidi: Yeah. I was happy about that. I was so excited to push. I couldn't feel a lot because I was on the epidural, but it really took the pain away and it helped a lot in the moment. So let's see, I was mostly on my back. I was tired. I was just really tired at this point. There was, the nurse that I had was pretty new. She had been there for I think 6 months and then she was also trying to juggle the student nurse. She didn't have a lot of knowledge of positioning. I thought going into it that all nurses were trained in Spinning Babies and all nurses had the knowledge of baby positioning and things like that, but I was wrong. Meagan: Yeah, unfortunately, they are not all. I don't think a lot of them have it actually. Most of them don't. Heidi: Yeah. I pushed mostly on my back and when the OB came in around 11:00, she noticed my pushing was not effective at 11:00 PM. Meagan: So two hours in. Heidi: Yes. My position needed to be changed. She got me up on the squat bar and then she left again, but she showed me how to push and everything in the meantime. When she came back in, she explained to me that I would probably need a C-section soon. I don't exactly remember that sequence of events because it is so intense. I felt really defeated. I was like, “I just started. What do you mean I will probably need a C-section?” Meagan: So you were still wanting to keep going?Heidi: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. She also explained that meconium started to show in the amniotic fluid. The OB explained to me that the baby was probably in distress because of that. That was all that was said. Heidi: I spiked a fever. They gave me Tylenol and then the baby's heart rate began to slow a little bit, just for a little bit. The OB inserted a monitor on the top of her head. At this point, I felt like I was pushing for my life. I was like, “Oh my gosh. I need to get this baby out. How do I do this?” But I still felt like, “I can do this. I can do this. I know I can do this.” Meagan: Yeah. Heidi: But there were definitely questions at this point. 24:29 Arrest of descent and opting for a C-sectionHeidi: Yeah, so then around 2:30 in the morning, I was told by the OB to get on all fours and try one last position and I could opt for a C-section at that point or I could push until the OB came back in. I was like, “You know what? I'm going to give it all I have. I'm going to work so hard and the baby is going to come out in the next 45 minutes. She's got to.” So I did. Honestly, I was so grateful that I had that last 45 minutes. I feel like if I didn't, it would have been stolen from me. I feel I was defeated when she came back in because she was still not out and I was exhausted, but I was ready. The baby was not going to come out any other way at this point for whatever reason. That was going to be dissected months later, years later by me, but in the moment, yeah. She was at station 0. I was told she wasn't far enough down to do an assisted delivery, so they wheeled me into the OR for the C-section. I requested that the baby have skin-to-skin as well as delayed cord clamping. Unfortunately, none of this happened and I guess I should also note that once they put the monitor on her head, she did great. She still was not in distress. I was doing great too. The C-section was just really for arrest of descent. They just thought it was taking too long because I had been pushing for a little over 5 hours at that point. Meagan: Yeah. Heidi: Yeah. She was born via C-section at 3:20 in the morning. She weighed 7 pounds, 1 ounce and she was in the OP position. Meagan: I was just going to say, was there a positional issue here? I always wonder when there's patterns like yours where I'm like, “That sounds like a positional thing.” Okay, so OP. Occiput posterior for anyone who is listening or sunny-side up. Baby just needed rotation. Heidi: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was that. Meagan: Yeah. So then did you end up when you got pregnant, did you end up staying with this provider? How did that journey begin? 27:06 Researching providers before second pregnancyHeidi: I went back– let's see. I'm trying to think. I went back for routine care almost a year later. I had care in between, but I had wanted to see that provider just to have closure. I asked her. At the time, I wasn't really sure that I wanted another child. My husband and I were just really thinking, “Is that what recovery is always like?” After the C-section, it was really hard. I asked her, “If I were to have another child, what would be my odds of delivering vaginally? Could I have another child that way instead of the C-section?” She said, “You probably would end up with another C-section if you even tried so you probably have about a 40% chance.” It was not based on anything. Meagan: Hmm. So she didn't even do the calculator, just gave you a percentage. Heidi: No. Just gave me a percentage. Meagan: Oh dear, okay. Heidi: So at the end of that appointment, again, I still had not really educated myself and knew that there were amazing resources out there, so I just said, “Okay. If I have another child, I'll have to have another C-section.” I went home and told my husband. I said, “If we have another child, we're going to have to have a C-section.” We were both like, “Okay, maybe we won't have another child.” Yeah, so then another year passed. We were beginning to get ready and slowly started to research other providers just for routine gynecological care. We ended up finding a hospital that was just about 25 minutes away just thinking, “Well, what if?” I had heard this hospital was well-known for VBACs and I had also started seeing a pelvic floor therapist prior to going to this hospital for care who was working at this hospital. It was kind of on my radar. Heidi: From there, I met the OB. I met the OB and then I was just really shocked at how supportive she was. In the past, you just go into the OB or gynecologist and they will put you in a gown and they do whatever they need to do, a pap smear or whatever. But this one, the nurse had said, “Don't get undressed. They want to meet you. They want to talk to you first.” Meagan: I love that so much. I love that. That's awesome. Heidi: It was so different. It was in a hospital, but it didn't feel like a medical office. The rooms were painted blues and greens. You could tell there was a lot of effort being made to make it feel like home. I began my journey. I had just met with her. This OB had talked to me about birth story processing. I had no idea what any of this was. I had no idea that I even had trauma from my last pregnancy at this point until I had just met with her and was talking with her. She said, “There is no pressure if you don't want to have another child.” I was just there to meet with her and have a check-up. I think I want to say a couple of months passed and actually, that night, I went home to see my husband. I was like, “You know if we do have another child, it's going to be here.” Yeah, so a couple of months went by and we did decide to have another child. Again, the baby was conceived right away. No complications. This time, we started working with a doula. I began birth story medicine at the same time. I did that for a couple of months in addition to my therapist to process the birth trauma and just everything. I was tested for gestational diabetes early during this pregnancy. I started insulin at 11 weeks and I was just kind of ready this time. It wasn't as scary honestly the second time. It's a lot of work. I would say that it was annoying, but it wasn't scary. Meagan: Well, and you're like, “I've done this before. I did a really good job last time. I learned a lot,” because you did go pretty deep into it, so you're like, “I can do this. I've got this.” Duh, this kind of sucks, but you know. You got it. No problem. Heidi: Right. My first baby was born at a really great weight and there were no complications at all. Meagan: Good. Did they already start talking about induction and things like that from the get-go? Did they talk about extra testing? Because at this point, you for sure have it. Earlier or later, did they talk about that stuff? Heidi: With this provider, I went in and they told me I was old last time, the other provider. I'm really old. They looked at me and were like, “No, you're not.” Meagan: No, you're not. Heidi: Yeah. They're like, “You're 37. That's not old.” Meagan: Yeah. Heidi: I'm like, “What?” Meagan: The other clinic, would they have wanted to do NSTs because of age and gestational diabetes? Heidi: I don't know. Meagan: Okay. But these guys were like, “No, we're good. We don't need to do any extra testing because of an early diagnosis of gestational diabetes and now you're 37.” Heidi: Yeah. They said what they do consider older but it's still not impossible was, I believe, over 40. Meagan: So you didn't even have that pressure from the get-go? Heidi: No, no. Meagan: What an amazing way to start. Heidi: Yeah. It was amazing. They also weren't concerned with the fact that I was on insulin. We did talk about NSTs because I asked because I knew it would come up and they had said, “You can have once a week as long as your sugars are in control, we are comfortable with that.” I felt so relieved. Yeah. It was such a holistic, relaxed approach. They trusted me to manage my body and to know what I needed and that was so empowering, the whole journey whereas before, I felt like I had a really short leash and they were basically managing everything for me as if they knew what was right for me and my body. Meagan: I was just looking. I'm just looking because I'm sure people are like where is this person? Where is this provider? Was it at the CMC? Is that where it was? Heidi: Yes. Yeah, Catholic Medical Center in Manchester. Meagan: Awesome. This is good. These are good vibes here with this provider. Heidi: Totally, yeah. Oh my gosh, yeah. 38:04 Discussions around inductionHeidi: So let's see. Once I'm diagnosed with gestational diabetes, I have maternal-fetal medicine ultrasounds, but that also was true because my first daughter was born missing a kidney. Again, she's totally healthy and totally great, but they wanted to make sure that nothing weird was going on, yeah. That was at about 32 weeks. They were also checking the baby's growth and baby's size at that point. Baby was measuring very average. She had two kidneys. Little things that we take for granted, we were so grateful for. Yeah. That went really well. The pregnancy was just progressing really well. In my third trimester, I was struggling with all of the extra appointments and the trauma that I was processing though from my last birth because I knew and my gut told me, “You need to work through this because if you don't, you have to be really strong to have a VBAC. You have to really work through a lot of mental blocks and things that come your way.” So I just started getting really stressed between work and the appointments will all the different therapies so I decided to take a couple of months away from work prior to the delivery in order to process everything and prepare myself. That was a really hard decision but it was probably one of the best decisions that I could make. Meagan: Good for you. Heidi: Yeah. At around 36 weeks, it was suggested to me by my provider that I could consider a 39-week induction, but it was delivered so differently. Meagan: Good. Heidi: Reasoning basically says that ACOG has a suggestion for insulin-controlled gestational diabetes. They basically told me the data. They told me why they are suggesting this, but ultimately it is my choice. It was a discussion that I just found to be so incredible and weird in a really good way. Meagan: Which in my opinion is so sad that these things happen that are good conversations have to feel weird to us because that should just be normal, but it's not a lot of the time, right? Heidi: Yeah. I was working with my doula at the time and she was a really big proponent of expectant management and letting everything happen naturally and honestly, that's all I ever wanted. I think that's what most people want. So I just explained, “I am not interested in induction. I want to do expectant management as long as everything progresses the way that it's going and it goes well. That's what I want to do.” They said, “Okay. We can do that.” Meagan: I love that. That's great. Heidi: It was amazing. It was really empowering. 41:45 NSTs twice a weekHeidi: So let's see. They suggested that I have a 36-week ultrasound to check my baby's size again. Actually, no sorry. They suggested it. I was actually able to negotiate my way out of it. I said, “You know, I just had one at 32 weeks. Is it really necessary to have another in 4 weeks?” I talked to the OB and she was like, “You know what? No. You don't have to do that.” Yeah. Meagan: Things are just getting better and better. Heidi: Oh, so good. Yeah. So right around then, the NSTs began. I'll just say also, I walk into– so NSTs were really awkward during my first pregnancy. I sat on the hospital bed so uncomfortable and sitting up with all of these things attached to me. At this provider, I go in. There is an NST room and it's painted blue and it's really common. There is a reclining chair and for me, it just really felt like they were normalizing the fact that NSTs do happen and it's okay and it's normal. Here's a special space for it. Meagan: Well, and almost like they are setting you up for success in those NSTs because in NSTs, when we are really uncomfortable and tense, overall, that's not going to be good for us or our babies. That's going to potentially give us readings that we don't want but when we are comfortable and we are feeling welcomed and we are like, “Yeah, we're not happy that we are here taking this test,” or sometimes we are, but when we are comfortable and we are feeling the beautiful colors and the nice, soft recliner, it's a very different situation to set you up for very different results. Heidi: Yes. Absolutely. Yeah, so then my journey just kept going. My NSTs were beautiful every week. It was really interesting how they set them up because they had the NSTs after the doctor's appointments because they weren't expecting. If they can get a good reading, I think the minimum is 20 minutes whereas I had the NSTs before so it was like they were looking for a problem then I had the doctor's appointment so I ended up being there for 2 hours during my first pregnancy. But these ones, I never sat more than 20 minutes.The nurses usually saw what they needed within 5 minutes and they said, “Your baby is doing great. You're out of here as soon as the time is up.” Meagan: That is amazing. Oh my gosh, 2 hours. That is a long time. Heidi: Yes. Yes. This pregnancy was really odd, but I'll take it. I stopped needing insulin during the last two weeks. Usually, there is a peak near the end of pregnancy, and then the need for insulin goes down in the last two weeks I want to say. For me, it actually just kept going down, down, down, and then all of a sudden, it was gone. That didn't happen last time. They were a little nervous about that because it didn't really happen. I explained to them, “I think it's honestly probably lack of stress,” because I wasn't working at my job at the time and I was moving a lot more too, so who knows? Meagan: Really interesting. Heidi: It did make them a little nervous because they said there is very limited data, but sometimes it can indicate an issue with the baby. Meagan: Oh, the placenta. Heidi: Sorry, I'm nervous so I'm forgetting. Meagan: There are times when it can be the placenta being affected. Is that what they were saying?Heidi: Yes, thank you. They said, “We could offer an induction at this point,” because I was at 39 weeks when they brought that up. I said, “I don't think so. I really want to stay the course. I want to do expectant management.” They said, “Okay, would you be open to twice-weekly NSTs?” I said, “Yes. If that lets me keep doing what I'm doing, we can do that and it's probably not a bad idea, because you never know.” 47:10 Testing for preeclampsiaHeidi: I woke up one morning at week 40 and thought my water was trickling out. I texted my doula and she was getting home from another birth and was going to rest, so I worked with my backup doula for that day which was a little scary. I didn't know what was going to happen from there. Around 6:00 PM that night, my husband and I arranged for my mom to watch our daughter because we needed to get to the hospital to get the amniotic fluid checked. We probably should have gone a little earlier, but the backup doula had suggested it might not be amniotic fluid. It might just be discharge. Meagan: Is there much going on labor-wise? Heidi: Not really. It was pretty quiet. Then I actually had an NST the day before that and there really wasn't much going on. I felt little Braxton Hicks-type things, but nothing much. We packed our bags, got ready, and got my mom. We arrived in triage. I had slightly elevated blood pressure which was just a routine check, but that basically led to them testing me for preeclampsia and then a urine test. Meagan: Hmm, a slight increase? Oh, man. Heidi: Yeah. It was slightly increased. You know, like a lot of people, hospitals make me nervous. Meagan: Yep. Yeah. They jumped right in and started going the moment you got there. Heidi: Yes. Yeah. It's different. It's still in the hospital, but it's separate. Labor and delivery is separate. They just had a very different mindset at the moment. I was sure that I didn't have preeclampsia. They asked me all of the questions and I'm like, “I really don't think that's what this is.” They were saying, “You're also post-date with gestational diabetes.” Meagan: Post-date by one? Heidi: Yes. Meagan: Or by 40 weeks. Heidi: Yeah. Yeah, so I would need an induction if I get preeclampsia and all of this. Who let this girl go this long? What the heck kind of thing? Meagan: Not helping your blood pressure, that's for sure. Heidi: I definitely started feeling PTSD. I was just like, “This again? Oh no. I feel like I'm in prison.” That's the way it felt last time. I knew I needed to get out of there fast. It wasn't good. The OB came in and lectured me. This was a different OB. She lectured me about preeclampsia and how I should really stay in the hospital. They were going to send for bloodwork even if it came back okay, I should stay the night. They drew the blood and I'm just beside myself at this point. I was like, “Well, when are they going to get the results back?” They said, “Probably about an hour or so.” You know how backed up the lab is. They were like, “Are you really going to drive home and come back?” I was like, “If I have to come back, which I really don't think I will, then yes, I will.” The blood was taken. The nurse ran back within– I want to say it was 10 minutes. It was really fast. She said, “You guys should really consider staying. Your platelets are low.” I said, “Okay.” Meagan: The labs came back that fast? Heidi: They came back really fast. Meagan: Because you were saying that you were maybe going to go back home? That's interesting. Heidi: Yeah. I said, “Okay. That's thrombocytopenia.” My provider had said I had that. We talked about it and I also had it during my last pregnancy. Meagan: Wait, what did you just call that? Heidi: Thrombocytopenia. Meagan: Thrombocytopenia. I've heard low platelets. I've never heard it called that. Heidi: Thrombocytopenia. I actually listened to a podcast oddly enough with Nr. Nathan Fox. Meagan: We love him. Heidi: Yeah, he's awesome. He was basically saying that it's common and it's generally not a big deal. Meagan: I just Googled it. Yeah, it says it's a condition where the platelets are low. It can result in bleeding problems. Yeah. Okay, all right. Keep going. Heidi: Yeah. It was interesting because he had said, “Within range,” and I was within that range, but I also talked to my provider about it months before and she said, “Oh yeah. This is common. We are not concerned with your levels.” Luckily, I was like, “Oh my gosh. I know enough.” I was like, “Nope. I know what that is. We are okay and we are going home. They can call us with the results.” So we went home. Meagan: That is amazing. Did they make you sign an AMA or anything like that? Were they just like, “Fine. We were going to have you stay, but you are good to go.” Heidi: Yeah. There was no paperwork. Meagan: Okay. Good. Heidi: I was free. Yeah. I was actually amazed at how– I mean, I was very firm with them. I was just like, “We are going home now.”Meagan: That is hard. That is really, really hard to do, like really, really hard so good for you for following your gut. Heidi: Yeah. It felt really good. Yeah. We got home. I started to feel some mild, irregular contractions and the same thing I had been feeling. We sent my mom home because she was still at my house. Like, “Go ahead. We've probably got another day.” I was like, “I know something is going to be happening soon. I feel it.” So around 10:30 that night, I got the call from the OB– Meagan: Yours? Heidi: Sorry, the one in the hospital that was treating me. She had said, “All right. You don't have preeclampsia. You don't have to come back.” I said, “Okay. We did it.” Meagan: Yep. Yep. Yep. Can you imagine having to be there that whole time? Heidi: No. Yeah. I'm sure they would have found something else. Who knows? Meagan: You never know. 54:53 Spontaneous laborHeidi: Yeah, so when we were home, we unpacked our bags, ate some food and sent my mom home. I bounced on my birth ball. I was pumped. I was so excited. We were like, “Okay. Back on the normal track.” Then around midnight, some contractions started that I figured would stop once I laid down for bed. I didn't really know. I never really had normal, non-Pitocin-induced contractions before, so I didn't really know what they would feel like. I was in denial, to be honest. I was like, “There's no way. I'm not going into labor right now. What are these? These are nothing. It's just cause I'm nervous or something.” I laid down. My husband was already asleep at this point and they didn't stop. They just kept getting stronger. I was lying there thinking, “No. I can't go into labor right now. I don't want to see that OB. I can't. I can't. This is not happening.” I was just willing my body, wishing and willing my body to wait until 6:00 AM or 7:00 AM until the shift change. So then I was like, “Okay. I should probably start timing these because this is no joke.” I found a timer and started timing them. They were spaced at 5 minutes apart lasting a minute each. I was like, “This is early labor. This is it.” I finally woke my husband up and I was like, “Hey. I think we're going.” Meagan: This is going to happen. Heidi: Yeah. I called my doula. I had been texting her meanwhile the whole time and she was super supportive throughout, then I finally was like, “I need to call her.” She talked me through what I was experiencing because I had no idea. She was like, “You guys should probably leave soon because this is your second baby and it could happen really fast.” I noticed there was pink discharge. Meagan: And you had made it to 10 before. Heidi: Yes, exactly. She was like, “This could happen really fast.” I noticed some discharge and it was pink. Contractions started to be really regular and really painful. She was like, “That's probably your cervix dilating.” I was like, “Why am I dragging my feet? We need to go. We need to go now.” 57:43 Going to the hospitalHeidi: We called my mom to have her come back to our house. I think it was 1:00 in the morning at this point. She didn't answer immediately probably because she was exhausted. Meagan: Probably asleep, yeah. Heidi: When she did, it was finally 2:00 AM and there was a bit of an ice storm outside, just a little one but just enough to make the roads slippery because she had texted me when she was going back home and she was like, “It's kind of icy. I just want to let you know.” So then I was like, “Oh no. My mom's on her way, but it's going to take her a while to get back to the house.” Then it's going to take us a while to get to the hospital. It was really getting pretty scary, but we were just like, “Okay. Let's just pack our bags again,” because we had started unpacking them. My provider had actually said that they were comfortable with me going until at least 41 weeks so I was like, “I could go until 41 weeks and then who knows?” Meagan: Right. Heidi: Anyway, so we put everything back. It was a really good distraction and then every single contraction, we would stop and brace ourselves. My mom got to our house at 3:15. We got to the hospital around 4:00 AM. It was the longest car ride of my life. My doula was like, “The contractions might slow down in the car.” I was secretly praying that they didn't because so many people that I knew had prodromal labor and I was like, “I want this to come like a freight train. I don't want it to stop.” It is so painful, then a lot of people say you get nervous when you get in the hospital. Things will slow down. I was just so nervous about all of that. I got to the hospital. My doula arrived soon after. We spent almost two hours in triage even though we were already there filling out paperwork. The contractions didn't stop or slow down during this. I was beside myself. I was like, “Oh my gosh. My body is ready. We are doing this.” The nurse in triage, at the time, was a different nurse. I think she worked a half shift or something, but she was really skeptical of VBAC. I was not comfortable with her. She said I couldn't eat. She had obviously outdated info. I asked her, “Why can't I eat?” She said, “Well, the odds of you needing another C-section are higher.” I'm like, “Well, how do you know that?” It was just really frustrating. I requested a midwife to deliver my midwife because the same OBs were on staff. I was going to a midwife for my care, a midwife, and an OB team. I actually ended up seeing the midwife even more than the OB so I really was comfortable with requesting a midwife to deliver, but the nurse really pushed back. She said, “You're a VBAC. I don't think you can have a midwife.” Yeah. She went into the hall, made a phone call with the midwife and the midwife on staff actually said no supposedly because I was a VBAC. Meagan: What? They had never said anything like this in your prenatals. Heidi: No. No. I think again, it's a little different. They also use other hospital staff at this hospital so you never know who you're going to get, but my doula is there and that's what matters. That's why I had a doula because you don't know. Meagan: You don't always know, yeah. 1:02:03 Laboring in the tubHeidi: They asked to do a cervical check. I was hesitant, but they said, “We have to do this to admit you.” I was like, “I'm not leaving at this point. I'm clearly in labor.” I consented to it and they found I was 4 centimeters dilated so I stayed. I got to my room around 6:30 and actually, I think I was about 80% effaced at this point. I got to my room around 6:30 and I just began setting it up to distract myself. My doula started setting up the bath for me. I was like, “I want to go to the bath.” I got to the tub around 7:00 AM to deal with the contractions because I really wanted a natural birth this time. My water broke 5 minutes after that. Shift changed at 7:00 AM. I feel like my body was like, “Okay, hey. Shift change at 7:00,” and then my water broke. Meagan: You said we were in triage for two hours and I was like, “Your body was waiting for shift change intuitively.” There you go. Heidi: I got in the tub. My water broke. A new nurse came in around 7:15. She had a trainee, but this was a nurse who had a lot of experience and she was just training to be in labor and delivery so it was basically like an extra set of experienced hands. She was also a nurse who had run a training for us a couple of months before and I was like, “I hope I get this nurse. I really, really hope I get this nurse.” In she walked, and I couldn't believe it. She came down to me at the tub. She started asking me questions right away about my birth plan. It's like she studied it. It was the most amazing thing. I can't exactly remember what she was asking, but just clarification and she was like, “Yes. We can do this. We can do this and we will do that.” I was like, “Wow.” The first time, I had a birth plan, but I'm pretty sure they burned it. Meagan: Aww. Heidi: Then she just started talking about how the birth process would go and how I would be feeling mentally more than likely and she also said that she is well-versed in Spinning Babies. Meagan: What you wanted! Heidi: Yeah. Yeah. I was like, “This is heaven.” I also took a short course in it to prep for this labor and I really was trying to do all of the things. I couldn't do all of the things, but I think there is a lot of science to Spinning Babies, especially having an OP baby the first time. Initially, I was experiencing back labor. She asked me, “Where do you feel your pain?” I said, “In my back.” She said, “Get on all fours. The baby could be OP.” I was just like, “Oh my gosh. I will do anything to not have another OP baby.” She said, “We're going to spin her.” I stayed on all fours. I just did this. I started using the nitrous. This hospital provided nitrous. Meagan: Nitrous oxide?Heidi: Yeah. The other hospital did not have that, but I was so excited for that. It helped me just breathe through my contractions, really get in tune with my body, and gave me a focus. I was able to move around really freely. When I was in the tub, I started to feel the urge to push so we moved out into the bed. I still stayed on all fours. But I was also just, I don't remember this, but my doula was saying that I really was kind of dancing. I was moving in the ways that my body told me to do. It felt so incredible and obviously painful. 1:06:22 Pushing for 30 minutesHeidi: Then it was about 9:15 and I was really, really wanting to push at this point. I was told to wait for a cervical check though and I was like, “Why do I need a cervical check? I'm ready.” Meagan: My body is saying I'm ready, yeah. Heidi: Yeah. A midwife came in. She introduced herself and she was like, “I'm going to be delivering your baby.” I was like, “Okay.” I couldn't believe it. It was a different midwife and she was like, “I want to check you because you could have a lip if you're not fully effaced. Your pushing will be ineffective.” She found that I was 10 centimeters dilated, fully effaced so then we went on and pushed. My daughter came out at 9:46 AM so we pushed for a half hour. Meagan: Oh my gosh! So you got baby in a good position and isn't there such a difference between pushing? Heidi: Yes. Not having the epidural, I could feel everything. It was so real. She was 7 pounds, 3 ounces. She did have a compound presentation. She was head down, but yeah. She came out with her hand pressed against her head. Meagan: Yes, come out thinking. Heidi: Yeah. I had really no tearing, very, very minimal. I achieved the delayed cord clamping. My husband got to cut the cord. We didn't have to remind them of our wishes. They just knew. We had a golden hour which I never had before, but I was told I could take as long as I wanted, and yeah. It was just the most beautiful thing I have ever experienced in my life and I just couldn't believe I did it. Meagan: Yeah, what a journey. I am so happy for you. Heidi: Thank you. Meagan: Congratulations. And now, at this time of recording, how old is your baby? Heidi: She is 8 weeks.Meagan: 8 weeks. Brand new! How has the postpartum been? Heidi: Oh my gosh. It's been amazing. I mean, as amazing as it can be. Let's be real, but compared to what it was. Meagan: Good. I'm so happy for you. You know, when you finished your first, you were like, “My husband and I didn't even know if we would ever want another kid.” I can just see this joy on your face right now. Where are you at in that stage now? Are you two and done or are you like, “I could do this again”? Heidi: We are two and done. Meagan: Hey. Heidi: Yeah, I mean it's funny because the nurse and my OB were like, “You really should have another one.” Meagan: This is what I did. I went out with a bang. You went out with a bang. Heidi: You can't top this. Meagan: You got the birth you wanted and all the things. You know, you advocated for yourself in the birth room. You left and then still advocated for yourself in the birth room. I mean, how amazing. How amazing. Heidi: Yeah. I ended up with the most supportive team. You do never know what you're going to get, but the team that came in at 7:00 AM, oh my goodness. They treated me like I was just a normal, vaginal birth. There was no VBAC. There was no jargon. It was beautiful. Meagan: I love hearing that. That is truly how it is supposed to be and it's so often not. Then yeah, then we learned more about the correct diagnosis or term of low platelets. I totally Googled it really quickly and it just said that gestational thrombocytopenia, how do you say it? Heidi: Thrombocytopenia. Meagan: Thrombocytopenia is a diagnosis of exclusion. The condition is asymptomatic. It usually occurs in the second half of pregnancy in the absence of a history of thrombocytopenia. Heidi: You got it. Meagan: It said, “The pregnancy and the platelet counts spontaneously return to normal within the first two months of postpartum.” We will make sure to have a little bit more reading. It will go back into some things, but one of the things it does say is that it is not necessarily an indication for a Cesarean delivery which is also important to know because I mean, there can be low platelet levels that are more intense like HELLP syndrome and things like that, but this is a really good things to know because that would have easily been something if it hadn't been for Dr. Nathan Fox and if it hadn't been for them talking to you about this. It could have scared you like, “Oh, okay. Okay. Let's stay.” But you were fully educated in the situation and were able to make a good choice for you and advocate for yourself and say, “I feel good about this. You can call me when the preeclampsia levels come back, but I feel good about this decision. We're moving on.” Then the amazing, miraculous, no insulin need, that's another really cool thing about your story, but I also wanted to share Lily Nichols. I don't know if you've ever heard of her. Heidi: Yes. For my first pregnancy, I read both of her books. She's amazing. Meagan: She's amazing. We'll be sure to link her books and stuff in the show notes as well so you can make sure to check it out. If you were given a diagnosis of gestational diabetes or even actually just in general, her books are amazing. You can read and be really, really well educated. Okay, well thank you so much for sharing your beautiful stories. Heidi: Yeah. Thank you for having me. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan's bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Tim is searching for solace amid the challenges he sees within the Catholic Church. Patrick offers insightful perspectives and words of encouragement for those feeling disheartened and helpless amidst the turmoil. Join us as we explore how to find strength and remain steadfast in our faith, even in the face of adversity. Carol (email) – Disagrees with Patrick about his advice to a young man on yesterday's show when Patrick suggested he should obey the priest Tim - The Catholic Church doesn't seem to be in existence in the way you talk about it. Where can I go to find the Catholic Church? (08:01) Heidi – You gave good advice regarding the 12-year-old boy who wanted to receive communion while kneeling; One thing that Jesus values in us is obedience. What is purpose of votive candles? Joseph - Is it every okay to pray to God to remove a leader who is doing bad things? Maria - What do you think about the results of the Ohio issue? Patrick - How do you talk with someone who is atheist and believes the bible is made up? Joanne - The bible talks about how God gave them over to their depravities. I think that is what is going on in OH with the vote.

Oliver: Welcome everyone. I’m delighted to be here with a couple of guests. Here at Highspot, we’re lucky enough to work with hundreds of enablement leaders from across the world and one of the key things that we’re seeing is that the function is really moving from tactically, owning some programs like maybe sales onboarding to truly becoming a strategic lever for growing the business. But when we talk to customers, it’s really all over the map still. Some companies are investing deeply, they’re aligning enablement with the business, other teams are underfunded, overwhelmed, and really just basically trying to keep their noses above the water line. So I’m here today with two seasoned experts in the enablement space who’ve really been helping to mature the discipline generally and especially within their companies. I’m really looking forward to hearing what they have to share with us. Heidi runs enablement at Nvidia and Bradford runs it for Slack. Thanks for joining the conversation and let’s dive in. So I want to start with what enablement really tries to do. One of the key things that it tries to do is help companies take on really hard challenges. Heidi, we were talking about this the other day, and you shared some of your experiences in helping to move Nvidia into this incredibly lucrative, but also incredibly complicated new market, which is to use GPU’s for AI and machine learning. How did you help the company which had traditionally focused on very different spaces, really try to enter this incredibly complicated, but exciting new space? Heidi: Thanks very much for the question Oliver, and you’re right. Embarking on sales into areas like artificial intelligence, which your customers are going to have potential fear or see some areas of risk has to be done in a very careful way and a very well-informed way. The way that that happened with Nvidia is that we would hire absolute experts, top of their craft in a specific industry area. For example, when we were embarking on introducing the power of AI into healthcare, we brought into our sales organization, heart surgeons. Somebody who had the credibility and had the language and understanding of the market to be able to connect the dots between the value of accelerated computing that Nvidia could offer in both hardware and software and putting that into play in specific healthcare use cases. That model has actually worked quite nicely by spreading into other industries. Nvidia isn’t a unique position where we’re not competing on price necessarily or just performance factors alone, but it’s really specifically meaning the challenges of an industry use case. So we’ve also brought in experts in the areas of, autonomous driving in the automotive industry or oil and gas and on and on. Now here’s the challenge though, that does not scale. We won’t have a team of sales leaders that come out of healthcare expertise, but we will have at least one. And that’s where enablement comes in. The enablement organization will partner with that subject matter expert on the sales team that understands the complexity of that industry really well. And they also understand what conversations resonate most, and what types of, enablement resources have the biggest impact. What kind of training really helps scale that knowledge and we’ll codify that and spread it across the rest of the sales organization. So we don’t have just one expert, but we have a team of experts that are tackling that industry. It’s made a big difference in our ability to grow and scale. And it’s happened through the enablement organization. Oliver: So that sounds like a really hard challenge because, you know, if a typical seller doesn’t know anything about heart surgery and you bring in this heart surgeon, I could imagine that those sellers would be really scared about engaging with people in this industry, in a space they really have no background in. How did you help them really overcome the fear of having those conversations in such a challenging area? Heidi: Another great question. And I would say that we would not be setting up our salesforce for success if we were bringing people in who had no expertise in the area of healthcare, into the healthcare sales team. So we might bring somebody who came from another organization, which is common in so many different tech companies in particular, but, but any industry. We might bring somebody who had been selling networking equipment, for example, or working with different software or working with different audiences within those different organizations. But what we’re looking to do is to scale the true understanding of connecting the value of NVIDIA’s offerings into these use cases. So you might understand healthcare, you may not understand the power of AI in medical imaging. Or the power of AI specific to, proteomics and, and the types of research that is being done. So what we’ll do is bring people who have general industry expertise and make them prepared to scale that very specialized expertise that we begin with. Oliver: Got it, that makes a lot of sense. When I talked to enablement leaders in a wide variety of industries, though, many of them are grappling with much more prosaic problems than the kinds of things that you’re describing. Many of them, you know, they’re just really struggling to get out of fire drill mode. They’re understaffed. They get hit by this constant succession of demand after demand. It feels like they’re on this sort of perpetual hamster wheel. You know, the business is saying, “I need you to do more of this and more of that and more initiatives and build more content.” Bradford, when we were talking about this and how you’ve seen enablement teams get out of that mode, one of the things you mentioned that really struck me, and I’ve always sort of kept thinking about is, turning that team into essentially a special ops teams for strategic initiatives. Tell us a little bit about what you meant by that and how can an enablement team really develop that ability? Bradford: Well, first, I’m just turning over in my head, the term proteomics. And what it must be like to have to learn how to sell to someone who’s asking about that, but I love what you shared Heidi, it’s fascinating. In terms of creating an enablement team that really is a special operations team for strategic initiatives, there are a few ways that I break that down. The first is that an enablement team above all can be uniquely positioned to harden the problem statement. What is it that we are trying to achieve? And how will we know if we were successful? Even in relatively mature sales organizations, that question is not asked enough and not interrogated with enough rigor. An effective special operations team like mine, dare I say. Practices that skill practices, the skill of asking that question and demanding an answer to that question in a consultative and supportive manner, because a special operations team for strategic initiatives is not an execution team. A special operations team is not simply carrying out a mission. What we are doing is upleveling a go-to-market organization to be successful against discrete objectives. And so for us, that means for enablement to be successful, we need product marketing to be successful. We need business operations to be successful. We need sales strategy to be in place. We need sellers to be communicated with. We need managers to be prepared. We need sales leaders to be providing air cover. And we can do that in a scramble mode, which certainly I think most enablement leaders have experienced, and it is transparently a scramble mode when that happens. It’s hard to target outcomes when you’re scrambling. I’ll give you an example, just perhaps if it’s helpful. We at Slack relatively recently went through a verticalization exercise. Similar to what you shared, Heidi, where we took our sales teams and moved them into a number of much more strategic verticals. The objective was sort of similar to what you shared, Oliver, enable people on these industries and we could have left it at that and said, okay, we’re going to go enable across 12 industries and 22 subsectors and a hundred subsectors, and we’ll get back to you when we’re done. Everyone involved in that initiative would have been set up for failure, if, in fact, that would have been our mandate. So we have to prioritize, we have to specify, we have to understand revenue goals and how those goals are going to be broken down from pipeline and targets. Then start at the top. Oliver: I love that example because I think it really puts your finger on something that a lot of companies struggle with, which is they have this new initiative, they get excited about it, they try to do a lot of things simultaneously, and then it just doesn’t land. It’s hard to prioritize because prioritizing means you have to say no to good ideas. How did you convince the organization to say no to good ideas when you were deciding which of those things to prioritize? Bradford: It’s a great question. And I’m very open to debate on this, but I don’t think it is enablement’s mandate, it should not be enablement’s mandate to be responsible for the decision-making. Enablement’s mandate is to facilitate decision-making and ensure that the decisions that have been made are actionable. But I do not see my team as responsible for saying healthcare is the focus over manufacturing. That’s simply not where we are positioned to have credibility. However, where we can be really good is saying okay, if healthcare is prioritized over manufacturing, here’s how we can action on enabling our healthcare teams to be effective against the defined goals. Oliver: Heidi, I’m curious if you’ve run into challenges where the business wasn’t making those hard trade-offs and decisions, and how do you go about really convincing people to do that if you need to? Heidi: In fact, I couldn’t agree more with what Bradford had just said, the decision does come from the business. Each of us are business people with a different perspective. We have opinions and that’s great, but when it comes to limited resources and important deliverables that need to be prioritized, the best way I’ve seen to do that is basically to go back to the business and those senior decision-makers to explain there’s four things we can do. Which four would we believe is going to move the needle most effectively and in the biggest way. And then it becomes a natural conversation about what gets left behind or what gets shifted out by whatever time period. But it’s a more logical conversation rather than the big conversation of I’ve got 22 things I could be doing, tell me in what order they ought to be. That that’s not necessary to get from senior leadership, but what is most important is if we can only do a few things, let’s agree on what those are. Oliver: When you started at Nvidia I think the team was pretty small and since then it’s grown quite a bit. I’m curious for those people in the audience who have a small team and who want to grow its capacity, what did you learn in the process of really building out the team that they could potentially get benefit from or learn some lessons from? Heidi: Well, what I learned is that you start at the beginning and you have to have a solid foundation. If your sellers are not clear on the basics of what your selling motion is, what resources help them with their product set, what the products are, and what the value is. Those are just the minimum requirements. So firstly doing that really, really well and really well means not only have great information and resources available but do it in a practical sense, such that people can find what they need easily. They know where to go. Where is the watering hole? Get what’s the easy button for me as a seller. So I’ll make sure I take advantage of those chest foundational resources. So I organize the team by product set. We had three significant product groups. My sales enablement leaders were each assigned to a different product group. They sat at the go-to-market and launch table so they understood what was happening when and they were constantly thinking about how to translate that into field readiness. For those launches and for the ongoing care and feeding of the product sets. So we started at the place where you can’t skip. We had to start with the product and as the team grew, because we became more complex. We went through something awhile ago that Bradford just mentioned that he went through and that is how do you then ensure that there’s another layer of sophistication and that is the map to your go-to-market. Our go-to-market is by industry use case. We needed to ensure that the next couple of headcount that joined the team could then take that product enablement and customize it really customize it for individuals who are focused on a specific industry verticle. And again, to do it in such a way that it felt like an easy button. If I was in the financial services industry, I knew exactly where to go, to get what I needed. I’m only being asked to be informed and educated in the things that I will actually deploy in the market. And then thirdly, to get even a little bit more sophisticated, we started to look at who are our key go-to-market partners and is there value in us investing dedicated enablement resources for some of those really important partners. With NVIDIA’s primary hardware side of our business being focused on chips and processors, major OEMs were really important to us, and we need to ensure that we’re connecting dots for our OEM sellers. In terms of the value of upselling, a GPU accelerated systems rather than something that might be CPU-based or other solutions. So we now have added additional resources to focus on each of the major OEMs so they’re speaking their language, their delivery and resources directly through OEM sellers and then onto those OEM seller partner community. So as you get more and more sophisticated and want to reach a more relevant and resonant message for those different markets and audiences. You start with a foundation and then you continue to move with your go-to-market model and your commercial strategy in order to ensure that you’re supporting the way that has the biggest impact. Oliver: That’s really interesting. The focus on partners is hugely relevant for some of our customers. Obviously, some of them are more of a direct business. Bradford, I’m curious, sort of building on that. What do you find is the best way to organize an enablement team because that’s a topic that a lot of our customers ask us about. What are the best practices, what do you think works really well? Bradford: It’s so interesting listening to you share, Heidi, because in some ways I just have a lot of feelings about this one. I think I’ll share my fear because I do think in some ways my organizational structure is oriented around compensating for my fear. And my fear is that enablement, as we grow drifts up into the clouds and becomes a high altitude, global scaled function that is out of touch with the seller. That is what I at all times want to mitigate against and am committed to mitigating against because I’ve seen that it’s scalable and maybe your metrics are easy to pull, but truly doesn’t matter on the ground. So for me, the foundation of my enablement organization is my field enablement team. Those are field-embedded, leader-aligned, enablement partners who are literally having daily conversations with ICS and managers, literally shadowing calls, literally hearing from customers that feedback loop back to the global enablement organization. There is pressure. There is a temptation to say, maybe I should divert some of that headcount up into a more scaled global role, because I need to be enabling all AEs rather than a specific team. But to date, you know, talk to me in a year. But to date, I really resisted that because a field-connected enablement team is a strong enablement team. In my opinion, it does add extra pressure to enablement to unlock that feedback loop. Right? So as we grow, as we scale, it is more and more important that the feedback loop with the field matches based on the conversations that any given enablement partner is having. But we have to aggregate what’s happening with customers and we can do that in a number of ways. Conversational intelligence has been a remarkable boon for enablement and our ability to aggregate insights from customers and use those to inform both our enabling roadmap, as well as our product roadmap, our product strategy, our go-to-market strategy, has been hugely impactful. So there may be a world in which someday we can tap into the minds and read the minds of sellers and managers, but in lieu of that, having enablement as considered to be part of the sales organization and living and breathing the experience of the sales organization is the most important piece. Oliver: That’s super interesting the way you couch that. Heidi, as you were thinking about scaling a small enablement team to make it larger. What are the key areas of expertise that you think the team really has to be or become great at kind of building a little bit on what Bradford was saying? Because I think that’s something a lot of enablement people struggle with a little bit is where should I try to get great. I’m curious as you scale a team, how do you think about that? Heidi: It’s not easy. I’d say that we typically when looking for a new team member or considering where we’ve got gaps and looking to close them, the term unicorn comes out of the mouth in every conversation because you really want somebody who has sales, empathy, and understanding. So you want somebody who’s been in this sales field and is interested in willing to move into an enablement role and that’s a bit of a unicorn. In our case, we also want somebody who’s got probably, some decent engineering chops. They may have also had either formal education or a deep experience in a very technical role in the past. Again, that adds another layer of that unicorn. But what we’re looking for, I think, is somebody who is empathetic and understands the reality of being in the field. And that’s where I resonate a hundred percent with what Bradford said, you can’t move your enablement focus away from the field in any way, shape, or form, it’s that honest advocacy for the field. And you can only be an advocate if you understand what the challenges are when you’re out there. So you’re looking for the ability to listen well, understand well, and then translate that into what the resources are that are provided to the field, whether it’s training or anything else, programs and sales motions, and so on. I think in addition to that, you also have to be that face back into the company. So we have a lot of forums where the sales organization has dialogue back with everybody from the product development teams to the product marketing team. So that there’s a lot of understanding of what’s working and what’s not working. That doesn’t always come into play, or it doesn’t translate into the final mile in enablement. What has to happen is I think that you’re looking for individuals who have the skill set to also negotiate internally. They’re also able to have the dialogue and educate the corporate headquarters in a lot of instances that you’re trying to create that sensitivity and empathy more broadly for a more efficient delivery against the support that the sales team needs. So those are somewhat soft answers, but that’s what makes up that unicorn. It’s skillset experience and the way that they go about that. That together makes the difference whether you’re really successful in enablement or not. Oliver: I want to pick up on something you mentioned earlier, Heidi, about the importance of really nailing the fundamentals. Bradford when we were talking recently you mentioned that you had a situation where you ran into some trouble because you kind of drifted away a little bit from the fundamentals. Can you tell us that story and what you learned from it? Bradford: It’s interesting. I think as we’ve grown and as some of our programs became more mature. You mentioned earlier onboarding, you said it’s probably the first thing you set up, and then to keep paying attention to it or not our onboarding program, didn’t keep up with the change that our organization was experiencing. We reached a moment, avery significant change in Slack as an example. Acquisition. Verticalization. Sales process changes, tooling changes, expectation, changes, and hiring profile changes. I think that we missed a little bit, the fact that we had turned a little bit more onboarding a little bit more into a cultural and product evangelism experience than a do my job and be successful in my role experience. There were lagging indicators in the business so what we’ve done is reapplied with rigor, our approach to onboarding, to say the purpose of onboarding is not purely to welcome people into the organization and make them feel part of a shared culture. Certainly, that is important, but even more important, is that they understand what differentiates Slack from other enterprise software organizations they may have seen or experienced before and what makes us successful when navigating and executing against defined goals, whether you are a success manager, solutions engineer, a BDR, or an AE. That reorientation has not been hard to sell to reps. That is in fact, what they ache for, help me understand how to do my job successfully and quickly. And that’s been a bit of an eye-opening moment for me. There are moments in enablement where you feel like you’re forcing content into the sales organization’s collective mind. And there are opportunities where it’s very fluid and the enablement that tends to go down very fluidly and where I’m going to continue to apply even more focus, is enablement that is incredibly actionable, incredibly relevant, and hopefully quite delightful in design. Oliver: How do you identify the enablement that meets those criteria? Because I think that everybody aspires to that, but I think that if for those of you out there who are sellers, you can attest to the fact that enablement doesn’t universally achieve that. So how do you do that? What are some ways you really make that happen? Bradford: So I will address that, but I will say we do aspire to that, but there are must dues and there are a lot of must do’s and enablement, which occupy enablement bandwidth. Whether that is a big product launch or some sort of organizational shift or restructure or a change to a particular system, which simply aren’t delightful experiences. There are things that aren’t delightful that occupy bandwidth and so I think in an ecosystem where that is true, it is setting a vision from people like me and Heidi, that the highest leverage and brand protecting elements of enablement are outside of that. There will be a temptation to focus on the big or either sexy or necessary kind of operational moments. But outside of that is the, how do I generate this order form where tons of sellers are falling down, potentially deals are getting posted because we haven’t created a simple two-minute video or experience, which walks them through that process. So some of that, those fundamentals, I don’t know that it’s, that we don’t know that they’re necessary. It’s that we get distracted from those things by the, um, kind of Olympics of enablement. The kickoffs and the launches and the other things. Oliver: Heidi, how do you make sure that you’re staying focused on and keeping fresh the basics at the same time that you’re exotically figuring out about heart surgery and entering entirely new industries, which sounds hard and super fun, but what about, you know, the order form and making sure quote to cash is in the right shape and so forth? Heidi: You know, as Bradford was talking through what the basics mean in Slack, we’re, we’re really living in different worlds in some ways. If I think about what the basics mean at Nvidia, the predominant value that enablement brings is in the form of education. Going back to the fact that our business model is to work through partners. So a lot of those steps in the sales process are done either differently or you’re relying upon your partners to fulfill so much of that. So what a lot of the objective around enablement is, is to ensure that both partners and sellers are doing a fantastic job of sharing the art of the possible. It does seem like it’s a very different role and a different world. And that’s probably partly the reason why so many enablement organizations have different definitions as to what enablement means. So for example, we do use a CRM, of course, and we’ve got a lot of rigor around the CRM and my team does support the aspect of training, whether it’s new hire onboarding or adjustment to process through CRM, we’ll, we’ll deliver the training and resources and all of that in that phase. But a lot of the traditional multi-step process that lives within an overall broader sales process looks dramatically different. For us, it’s more about deep proof of concept or it’s about bringing somebody into our executive briefing center as part of the sales motion. And we want to ensure that we have clarity for our sellers about all the different steps in those motions as well as resources available to them throughout and make that as simple as possible. But there is a lot more art than science in the type of sales motion that we’re supporting. Oliver: It’s really interesting to hear about the challenges that you’re both facing because in many ways, there are some really different aspects to it, depending on the nature of your go-to-market. And also the challenges that the business faces. Sometimes it’s really getting the very basic process pieces in place. In other cases, it’s mastering areas of knowledge that are novel and challenging for the sellers involved. And it really speaks to how enablement, I think has to be a bit of a chameleon and it has to figure out what does the organization need and how do you then go drive that? So Bradford, I’m curious if you were parachuted into a new company and you wanted to figure out what was most important for the sales organization and how could you deliver the most value, how would you go about figuring that out? Bradford: That’s a very good question. A tough question, Heidi, you said something earlier, focus on the process, right? Start with the basics. What is our selling motion? How do we execute against that selling motion? It’s interesting for me, certainly in my time at Slack that has evolved and changed so dramatically, that has never been one. Just as an example, when I started at slack, we didn’t have a professional services arm. Our executive briefing center was a kind of once a quarter, there’s an event type of thing. And so I really think it does depend so much on the size of the organization and the go-to-market. But for me, if I’m putting myself in a sales mindset rather than success for a moment, the most important thing is where are my leads? Are they good? Can I action on them? And that never goes away. That is always true. And sometimes that sits with enablement. Sometimes it sits with more than enablement, but it should never not sit with enablement. Our focus should always be on, are we supporting reps to have the right conversations, with the right people, based on the right attributes? And for a product-led growth organization like Slack, we have some real advantages in that regard in that we have what we call product qualified leads or signals based on usage of our free product or customers paying with a credit card. But even without that, in the broader ecosystem of pure green field accounts, the highest leverage thing that any sales organization or anyone attached to the go-to-market process can do, including enablement is support reps to disambiguate good from bed and to get in front of customers early with the right message. Oliver: Heidi, when we were talking about ways that the enablement team supports Nvidia’s go-to-market, you mentioned one of what is often a foundational piece for many sales organizations, which is the sales play. It’s an area that there’s a tremendous focus on right now because I think a lot of companies tell us that the sellers have a lot of resources, but they don’t always know what to do with them. And the company doesn’t always help them enough. They might say we’re launching a new product. Here’s a pitch deck. Here’s a description of it. Here’s a demo script, but they don’t give them really clear guidance about how to go sell the darn thing. You had a challenging experience with sales plays when you tried to address that, tell us a little bit about that and how you’ve evolved your approach on this? Heidi: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for bringing that up. I’m still feeling the bruises from that. What we found is for the most part, the way that we strive to operate within the bigger field organization is to understand what we, as a bigger Nvidia are trying to achieve. By understanding what we’re trying to achieve, that allows us to bring some recommendations and proposals as to how that might come to life. In the span of enablement, our sales play exercise many years ago now came in the opposite form. It was, Hey, I’ve got a great idea. It hit someone’s desk, and it was activated. This is as we became increasingly focused on this go-to-market by industry. So we used, as I mentioned earlier, these subject matter experts who truly understand, we used them to take their knowledge and create sales plays. Who do I talk to? What is the conversation? All of the great resources that really bring that to life. Years ago though, the size of the team that would be focused on each of these different industries was very small, which meant they were already experts. So we were preaching to the choir. We were burning a lot of cycles by going through the preparation of this sales play, delivered it to people who didn’t need help, they already understood these things and really kind of burned out the opportunity for us to do this in a more meaningful way. What we realized is we didn’t ask the right questions right up front. It really should have been more of a, what are we trying to accomplish? What is the strategic objective here and then figure out how to address it? Fast forward to today, the team has grown in size by at least double in the last five years. So we don’t have 1500 specialists around the world. We have a lot of account managers. We have a lot of partner managers, and then we’ve got a series of specialists as well. What we understand today is that sales play concept is going to be quite valuable and we’re at the early phases of reigniting. Now that we’ve got a bigger need, we have a better understanding of objectives. We’re early on in the process of defining what needs to be done, and what the value will be. So we’re now coming all the way back again, starting with those small groups of subject matter experts, but the audience who is eager to take this guidance from their peers and to do so in a way that is easily scaled. That audience is very hungry, so it’s rather than trying to feed a hunger that didn’t exist, we’ve got great demand. Oliver: That speaks also a little bit to some of the things that you were mentioning earlier, Bradford around making sure that the enablement team really stays connected to what’s happening on the ground. It doesn’t drift up into the cloud layer. One of the things that we’ve seen repeatedly is that sales plays are often built by people who really don’t understand the details of the go-to-market at the ground level and in some cases, have never actually sold anything. And those sales plays really struggle to land with the field. I’m curious, given your focus on connecting with what the field needs and what’s really going on, how do you think, providing guidance to them can be done in the most effective way? Bradford: I love that question, a lot. And I also love what you started Heidi, especially because what you shared, really proves to me that you are paying attention, which is the most important thing, right? And that you can try something, fail, learn, change, and come back to it because it was a good idea. It just wasn’t the right time. I think that is so important for all of us in enablement. To admit that we don’t know, and that there’s a lot of good ideas out there and sometimes you’re just going to have to try and learn and adapt. I like the sales play. I certainly liked the concept of a sales play less because it is the answer for a seller and more because it formalizes the coalescence of supporting teams across the GTM organization. So often what partner marketing, product marketing, solutions, strategy, are looking for is a way to tell a single story. The sales play has provided a mechanism by which enablement humans don’t have to serve that function, that there is an asset that there is collateralization of steps in a process and a suggested modality or motion to be successful. And I stress suggested there because rare is the seller who will look at a sales play and be like, they figured it out. Here we go. I’m in the money. That’s where my field team and sales leaders really have to pick up the ball. Right. What we’ve given you is a guide. What we’ve given you is a way to navigate through the forest, but what we haven’t given you is the answer. A sales play well-executed should accelerate, and mitigate against the time spent, not knowing where to look and not knowing what to do, but I don’t think we should fool ourselves into thinking it is the solution. Oliver: Let’s take a minute and look forward to where the discipline of enablement is headed. Heidi, what are you excited about in the future that you’re working towards to really take your organization and enablement generally to the next level? Heidi: Great question, and it’s a question that’s probably a different answer every six or 12 months. Today’s answer a couple of different things. Personally, Nvidia is at a point where we are, I feel that I’m constantly describing us as being at an inflection point, but we absolutely are. Where we are today is identifying the fact that we are growing the organization. One of the areas in doing so is to move to a more mainstream market. Nvidia tends to have very high share in some really high potency, but narrow markets. If you’re looking to expand more broadly, the things that Bradford just mentioned are really, really critical. What is the map through the forest? That’s going to allow somebody who’s new to the market, and more importantly, talking to customers who probably have not given these topics consideration. So they’re talking to more lay people, rather than those really fabulous lunatic fringe who finish your sentences for you. But instead, you’re talking to people who are in their early stages of consideration. So what I’m excited about is that we are, I see enablement is being very critical in codifying some of that map through the forest to help get that journey to success. The other thing is in going about that map, you need to understand what’s working and what’s not working. What I’m excited about going forward is more of the analytics that come back to us that say, do more of this and do less of that. Not only does that help you do a better job of defining either what your sales motion is or what your sales process ought to be, or where you’ve got the strengths and where you’ve got some gaps that allows all of us to become surgical in where we put our efforts as enablement professionals. It also allows you to avoid those pitfalls of here’s the laundry list of things that I’d like for you to deliver as an enablement organization. Instead, it puts the focus on what are we trying to accomplish and how do we believe based on data, data that comes from the different systems that we’re now using, the engagement with those systems, that tie between them that tell us the correlation between certain activities and the success of closing a sale. All of that is going to allow us to become much more strategic and much more aligned to the outcomes that the business is looking for. That’s what I’m excited about. Oliver: Bradford, same question for you. What are you excited about looking forward in terms of things that you want enablement generally to step up to, and specifically at Slack? Bradford: I think I’m pretty aligned with Heidi. I will own up to something that I would guess other enablement leaders do, but which just isn’t going to work in the long term for me is, I have a Slack channel called Bradford’s buds. In the Bradfords buds channel are a bunch of ICs, sales leaders, people who’ve collaborated with enablement in the past, people I trust, people who are generally high performers and what you might call enablement minded. I will confer with them on our prioritization, our suggested it’s kind of modalities and timing. I think historically I have over-relied on that group of people. What I would like and where we are moving forward, you know, we’re a seven year old kind of sales organization, and we are sitting on an enormous wealth of data and information in terms of what works and what doesn’t work. I alluded to conversational intelligence before I, we are sitting on just the world’s greatest trove of product metrics. But what we haven’t successfully done at scale, is provide a robust recommendation engine and an aggregation of winning tips built out of that mountain of data. And I see the technology like really moving in a direction and Highspot certainly is part of this, moving in a direction to provide people data-driven trend analysis and indicators. Discrete from what sales strategy and operations tend to look at that is built on the more qualitative aspects of the sales motion, which forever have been the hardest to unlock and why enabling organizations tend to rely so heavily on those five or six friendly SMEs who will come in and speak at your training is because we don’t know what else to do. That is changing and it’s changing very rapidly. I think enablement teams that can capitalize on creating intelligence out of information will really be the most successful. Oliver: Building on that, I think it’s a really interesting point. Doesn’t that call for the enablement team to have new skills? And how do you tackle that? Because traditionally enablement was, I would say, I think it’s fair to say a more intuitively. As it becomes more analytical and more anchored in data. That means you’ve got to have people who are able to do that. I’m curious how you think about that and how you take taking that on? Bradford: I would disagree, I think not fully Oliver, but I think the same could be said of sales, right? Sales used to be an intuitive art and we, there probably are sales organizations that put sellers through a data analytics bootcamp with some kind and certainly data of fluency is critical to be a seller of Slack. I don’t put the onus on enablement to learn how to pour through mountains of data and pivot and build a recommendation engines. I put the onus on the systems. We rely on to make that easier for us. And when I’m in conversations with vendors, for example, that is constantly where I’m pressing and probably what you hear a lot in your conversations. The hiring profile and sort of the enablement profile will change over time, much as it has with the AE. But for me, what will always be most important are the relational aspects of enablement. Someone who can build credibility with sales, someone who can lead and inspire a room. And I don’t want to trade that for someone who is a data analyst, I want to enrich that with someone who’s armed with insights. Oliver: Heidi. I’m curious how you respond to that answer and what your take on it is? Heidi: Similar and different. So I agree that the core enablement profile in terms of what kind of hiring profile you’re looking for, it won’t change much, but I do see augmentation in the organization. For years have worked through a mound of data and I’ll be quite transparent a couple of years ago, we would get reporting from Highspot and really do some gymnastics in order to figure out what the value and what was the message it was telling us. Now I’ve seen great improvements so that it’s more intuitive for us to take other reports directly and make some decisions with it. But I still think that, uh, you know, to Bradford’s point, we’ll continue to look to the vendors who are coming up with improved analytics that are actionable analytics, but there’s still multiple vendors that we’re working across. How do you decipher the key, um, connective tissue across those different solutions that you’re using? For us I would say I would augment my team and we have since done so by hiring somebody who’s really good with understanding data, even if it’s just wrangling data from different sources. Even creating high-level insights out of it, that’s a value we couldn’t operate without having a dedicated role like that. Oliver: One of the things that I find very interesting about what both of you bring up as we look forward in terms of where the discipline is headed is you both focus very much on analytics and data. That’s something that we’re hearing from many, many of our customers. It’s definitely one of the reasons why we’ve been making such really heavy investments in that space and we see huge promise from it. I was listening to a venture capitalist and I stole a phrase that he is, he described a lot of SAAS environments as moving from Madmen to Moneyball. The notion that you’re moving from a, you know, a world where it’s people who are making decisions on intuition and conviction and charisma, and have the ability to it’s way people to a world where you’re making decisions through a combination of intuition and data. That really unlocks possibilities that have been latent for so long because both enablement, marketing, all of these disciplines historically often just sort of threw things over the wall and hoped they were landing. Now you can know. And now you can make decisions based on that. So I think that’s really exciting and it’s an area that we, as a vendor are very heavily invested and encouraged by customers like yourselves. We’re really excited to see how that helps the teams that we serve to be able to really go to the next level in delivering strategic results, not just tactically running programs that are necessary, but that are just so much less than what enablement can offer to the organizations that they have. Bradford: Oliver, can I ask you a quick question? Oliver: Yeah, of course. Bradford: This is not been enablement driven, but certainly enablement supported. We’ve invested heavily in what we call a sales intelligence function at Slack. That is an organization that is separate from strategy, separate from enablement, and it is its own thing and they are product builders truly. What they’re building are Slack native products fed by information from multiple database, including Highspot and others. We surface signals from that data, both to enablement and directly to reps and managers, in Slack. And I think it is one of the greatest differentiators of selling in Slack is that we have that function. Would I want that function in enablement? Potentially I can see that, but I also really love having it as a district function within the organization. I wonder if you are seeing that or Heidi, how you think about that more in the marketplace? Oliver: Well, let’s let Heidi go first and then I’ll give you my take on it. Heidi: We haven’t been thinking about it in a discreet fashion. I’d say it seems to me Bradford that you’re in a really fantastic position in terms of your ability to get data and insights. It seems to me that you’ve got a more advanced situation than perhaps where we’re starting from and that’s probably why I emphasize that that’s something we’re looking forward to the evolution of in the future. So we do have sales analytics, but we don’t have a great way of connecting them. We don’t have a great way of connecting sales, analytics, enablement analytics, some marketing analytics, but I’d say that today, unfortunately they’re not fully integrated. It sounds like you’ve got a more holistic visibility of which I’m envious. Bradford: I don’t want to overplay it. Heidi: I like the aspiration. Oliver: What we’re seeing is people are experimenting with different models and nd also many people are struggling to be able to get access to the analytics and BI resources to do these kinds of experiments. We’ve had kind of funny situations where we have customers who are extremely large, extremely well-funded technology companies, and they struggle to get a very simple BI initiative really funded. We’ve seen some people experimenting with the kinds of things you’re talking about, Bradford. And then we’ve seen a lot of people say, can’t you just build some scorecards for us, so we don’t have to do any of that stuff. So we get a lot more of the latter. I think that the former, but there are definitely people exploring in this space and I think there’s just such possibility there I’m really eager to see those experiments begin to bear fruit. I think ultimately we will develop industry best practices for how to go pursue that. I think we’re very much in the early stages and we’re still experimenting, but I’m really excited about it and to see where it’s headed. So with that I would just like to say thank you to both of you for taking the time, love the insights that you shared with us and really appreciate you giving us a glimpse into what enablement is like at two of the very successful companies in the technology industry and how you’re tackling these problems and upleveling enablement functions in your company. So thanks very much. Heidi: I appreciate the opportunity, and Bradford, I was furtively taking notes. I’m sure we’ll be in contact. Bradford: Thank you, Oliver and thank you, Heidi.

Tuesday, December 17, 2019In this episode, we talk to a special friend of Rising Above Ministries, Heidi Clopton. As you’ll hear, Heidi was Jon Alex’s first occupational therapist and was there for the very beginning of Rising Above! You will also hear which annual event was Heidi’s idea. We are thankful for the many ways Heidi has blessed the ministry over the years, and we know you will love hearing from her today!Favorite Quotes:"The best thing you can do is find out if there is something that can help them... The most important thing though is to get answers and I feel like you don't need to stay in that place of, 'is there something wrong or not?'" -Heidi"Get an evaluation. A lot of people think they have to have a diagnosis first, but they don't." -Heidi"You need the team approach. That is so important." -Heidi"Therapy happens everyday...and be fun! And be something you enjoy doing with your child." -Heidi Related Links:Center of Development Pediatric Therapies http://www.developmental-delay.com/“Common Man, Extraordinary Call” book by Jeff Davidson with Becky Davidson

Join the marriage after God movement today. https://marriageaftergod.com Quote from Marriage After God chapter 6 "Walking in autonomy is not only dangerous for your marriage, it is also rebellious. Our relationship with Christ cannot be separate from our relationship with other believers." In this chapter of marriage after God we end with this encouragement: “Don’t wait to be pursued; be the pursuers. Don’t wait to be served; be the faithful servants. Don’t wait to be loved and invited. Love and invite. Be transparent with your marriage, be honest, and love well. We are all connected. We are all one in Jesus Christ, and He is our head, leading us and guiding us to do His will in this world.” Dear Lord, Thank you for the gift of your body. Thank you for the gift of fellowship and friendship. May we be people who are motivated by love to reach out and be a friend to others. We pray we would have the courage and confidence to be people who welcome others in, who are transparent, who are there for others, who lift others up and who pray for others. Use our marriages to be an encouragement to other marriages. Use us as a team to bring you glory, Lord. Help us to never live in isolation. Help us never to be divided. We pray the enemy and we pray our own flesh wouldn’t get in the way of fellowship. May our desire to participate in your body increase even more! May the way we treat one another be a light and an example to the rest of this world. In Jesus’ name, amen! READ: [Aaron] Hey, we're Aaron and Jennifer Smith with Marriage After God. [Jennifer] Helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage. [Aaron] And today we're on part six of the Marriage After God series and we're gonna be talking with Tom and Heidi Celaya about the importance of Christian fellowship. Welcome to the Marriage After God podcast where we believe that marriage was meant for more than just happily ever after. [Jennifer] I'm Jennifer, also known as Unveiled Wife. [Aaron] And I'm Aaron, also known as Husband Revolution. [Jennifer] We had been married for over a decade. [Aaron] And so far, we have four young children. [Jennifer] We have been doing marriage ministry online for over seven years through blogging and social media. [Aaron] With the desire to inspire couples to keep God at the center of their marriage, encouraging them to walk in faith every day. [Jennifer] We believe that Christian marriage should be an extraordinary one, full of life. [Aaron] Love. [Jennifer] And power. [Aaron] That can only be found by chasing after God. [Jennifer] Together. [Aaron] Thank you for joining us in this journey as we chase boldly after God's will for our life together. [Jennifer] This is Marriage After God. [Aaron] We just want to invite everyone that's listening to leave a review. That helps other people find the podcast. It's how iTunes works, it's how all the podcast apps work. A review helps us get reach. And also if you would like to support this podcast, we'd love to invite you to go to our store, shop.MarriageAfterGod.com, and pick up a copy of our new book, Marriage After God. It's what this whole series is about. It's our newest book and we're excited to get it into your hands. And yeah. [Jennifer] Okay. So Tom and Heidi, thank you so much for being with us today. [Heidi] Thanks for having us guys. [Jennifer] People don't know this, but we've been friends for a really long time. What is it like nine or 10 years? [Heidi] Nine years, actually this month. [Jennifer] Crazy. Okay, so why don't you just share a little bit about who you guys are, how long you've been married, and how many kids you have, what you do for work, that kind of thing. [Tom] Yeah, I guess this is my part, she said. So, we're Tom and Heidi. We've been married 11 years and three months, four months, October of '07. So we just yesterday passed our 14th dating anniversary, which she made me feel like garbage 'cause I didn't get her anything and she got me a couple things. [Heidi] I did not. [Aaron] You're like, I didn't know we were celebrating our dating anniversary-- [Heidi] I was at Sam's Club and got him a pair of shorts. [Tom] Yeah, I didn't know we were celebrating. And you got me cookies as well. But anyways, we have two kids, a nine-year-old daughter, eight-year-old son. And yeah, we've been living in our home currently for five years, and I'm in medical sales for a job and Heidi runs the house here and handles our crazy kids. So yeah, we're kind of a normal, somewhat normal family I think. [Jennifer] Awesome. Okay you guys, we're gonna go into our icebreaker question, which, Aaron, you want to ... [Aaron] Yeah. What is one of your favorite memories of us from our friendship over the years? [Heidi] Oh man. Favorite memory. [Tom] I don't know. [Jennifer] 'Cause there's so many. [Aaron] 'Cause all of your memories are your favorite of us. [Tom] Right, that's the whole-- [Woman] Yes. [Tom] I've got a few. I don't know exactly which one I would say my favorite is. Gosh. [Jennifer] I feel like when we think about this question, I was telling Aaron, all the late nights, all the late nights we spent at your guys' island eating ice cream and just chatting and laughing. [Aaron] They don't own an island. Their kitchen island. [Heidi] Yep. Thank you. I didn't understand what she was-- [Tom] I was gonna say, one of my, one of the ones I think of and laugh about, because I think it's disgusting, is the fact that we would go get ice cream and you would get a shake or a malt with half and half instead of, like, low fatter. I remember just thinking just, oh my gosh, that's disgusting, I can't believe he's drinking that. And we would probably-- [Aaron] Yeah, what was it? Circus animal ice cream? [Tom] Yes. [Heidi] Yes, with half and half. [Aaron] With half and half. Half and half cream-- [Tom] In Clairemont, yeah. And you would just, you loved it and you would feel a little sick afterwards, but it was, we were always just laughing about it for a long time. [Aaron] It was so worth it though. [Jennifer] I think that's really abnormal. I don't think a lot of people would relate to you on that, Aaron. [Tom] No. [Heidi] No. [Aaron] You're making me, I want one right now. [Heidi] I think my most-- [Aaron] That's a good memory-- [Heidi] Story of you two is how we were kind of desperate for friends, married couple friends, and when we met you at Fuse kind of offering, hey, if you guys ever want, we are about 20 minutes away, but we'd love to have you over for dinner. And you actually took us up on the offer and I think-- [Tom] A lot-- [Heidi] What was it, three to four times a week over at my house, and I loved it. I think when you throw out that, hey, we should have you guys over sometime, it never really ever happens and you kind of feel a little bit hurt that they didn't take you up on the offer, but to have you guys take us up on the offer and for us to get so close and dive so deep into both of our marriages was definitely my favorite because I mean, we both put ourselves out there and opened up so much that-- [Aaron] Yeah, we loved that-- [Heidi] It couldn't have happened otherwise. [Jennifer] And I think we were in a place in our marriage where we really needed it too. So I think that's really cool. [Aaron] We definitely were, yeah. That's what this episode's about, actually. [Jennifer] Yeah, this episode is all about friendship and fellowship and so we're gonna dive into a quote from Marriage After God from this chapter. [Aaron] And it's walking in autonomy is not only dangerous for your marriage, it is also rebellious. Our relationship with Christ cannot be separate from our relationship with other believers. [Heidi] So true. [Aaron] Yeah, so that's from chapter six of our book, Marriage After God, and the chapter title's called Walking Autonomously Doesn't Work. And when we thought about who we can interview for this episode, you guys were the first people that we thought of because in our life when we needed fellowship the most and when we were afraid of it the most, we found you guys and you found us. [Jennifer] Well, yeah, I was gonna say, it was that you guys wrapping your arms around us and inviting us to your table at that marriage bible study, which Heidi mentioned earlier, it's called Fuse. That was a turning point in our relationship and our marriage, and it just stands out to us and I think it forever will. And I'm just really excited about this because other people listening will be able to hear your guys' side of the story because if they read Unveiled Wife or if they're gonna read Marriage After God, we mention you guys and we mention your impact in our lives surrounding fellowship with other believers. And yeah-- [Aaron] Have they read what we wrote about them yet? [Jennifer] No. But now you're here and they get to hear from you guys. So I love that. [Aaron] Awesome. And you guys haven't read the chapter yet, right? [Tom] No. [Heidi] No. [Aaron] Okay, good. It's all good stuff, I promise. Yeah. [Jennifer] Okay, so speaking of that night at Fuse where we showed up, our marriage was in turmoil and we were just looking for that last ditch effort, kind of like, what are we doing? We step into this bible study, there's a lot of marriages and people there greeting one another and we're like freaking out on the inside. Kind of look at each other like, let's get out of here. [Aaron] It was terrifying. Walking into that big old, a huge open room, and how many people were there when we came? It was like probably-- [Heidi] Probably 600. [Tom] No, no. Probably about 350. [Heidi] You think so? [Tom] Yeah. [Aaron] Yeah, 350 people. It was a lot. It wasn't as full as it got, but it was pretty full when we came. [Tom] Yeah. [Jennifer] And anyways, we were trying to sneak out. We were trying to find a way to just walk back out the doors and Tom comes up and sticks his arms around Aaron and I and he's like, hey, you guys new? [Aaron] I remember getting startled by it actually. 'Cause we were walking backwards, which I know is-- [Heidi] And he's not a small guy either, so, big old mitts on your shoulders. [Jennifer] So you guys brought us to your table and that was kind of the beginning of our friendship together. So Tom, you've mentioned that Aaron's appearance at the time, he had plugs in his ears, he had a beard and-- [Aaron] Yeah, tattoos on my wrist. [Jennifer] Not the typical guy you would have been friends with back then. But can you just share, what was going through your mind at that moment? [Tom] Yeah, let's state for the record, clearly I'm not a very judgmental person. At least I don't think though, but yeah, at the time, just, here's ... I am the non-talkative one of Heidi and I's relationship. To be very clear, Heidi loves the talking and doesn't stop. So, and that's just not my style. And so God has placed us in this marriage, which is a story in and of itself or in this marriage ministry where we took over this table at this marriage group, and he just blessed it. It became a huge group of probably around 30 people, so about 15 couples, and they really, what they wanted was 10 couples or 10 people at each table, five couples. And so we were big and it was, it's something I loved. Most of those people are still friends to this day, but it was a lot for me and just how I like to operate, so yeah, I look up that night and see these two. And we are also one of the younger tables there at the time. [Aaron] Yeah, I remember that. [Tom] Seeing you guys walk in, I was like, oh gosh, they're our age group. They're probably our life experiences as of right now, whether it's young kids or no kids and some are looking over there and thinking, uh, no thanks. I don't know this girl who is an all American gal is standing next to this guy who's got plugs in his ear-- [Aaron] A little weird-- [Tom] Short hair, a beard, all these things, I'm looking. Like I am 100% as I said a minute ago, I'm not judgmental, I was 100% judging and thinking, I would never hang out with that guy. That gal looks like a great friend for my wife, but I would never hang out with that dude, we've got enough people at our table, I'm good. And there's those times that God whispers and you're not sure it's God, and there's other times where you just kind of move. You're like, what the heck is happening, because I don't really want to be doing this and perfectly honest, that's what was happening. Is I just felt the nudge and the pull, and so I got up and walked over and yeah, and you guys were ready to move out. You actually were on the way out. [Aaron] You saw it. [Tom] I remember Jen's face was one of sheer terror, of, oh God, we almost got out of here and this guy just ruined it. And Aaron's was more of a, okay, okay, good. This, okay, we'll do it. [Aaron] I needed it. I was, I needed someone to hold my hand in that moment because like, I wanted it, but I didn't know-- [Tom] Yeah, so we moved towards the table and that was literally one of those, it changed our life, changed our marriage, and it was one of those things, I'm darn glad I got out of my seat and went and did it. Because not only was that good for us, but I can also speak to others who have zero desire to include other people or you know, you hear a comment a lot like, I have enough friends or whatnot, which I think is a bad comment to make. One I've probably made my own, but it moved me out of my comfort zone and changed our lives for the better. [Jennifer] I love that you shared all of that. And so much of this book is about saying yes to God in moments like that where he nudges you or he pulls you out of your chair and you say yes to him and you do it anyways. And I'm just so you guys know, we still really appreciate that you did that for us. [Aaron] Yeah, and we not only have written about it extensively, but we share the story often and we, a part of the, what we talk about in this chapter, specifically with what you guys did in our life is when you, Tom and Heidi, said Yes to God in that one little moment, which was a series of yeses, becoming the leaders of that table and wherever God had led you before that, you wouldn't have known back then what kind of effect, lasting effect it would have in the fact that that one moment would not only turn into a lifetime friendship and relationship with us, but would also impact thousands and thousands of other marriages and people through your one act of obedience. [Tom] Yeah, there's-- [Aaron] So I, go ahead-- [Tom] We've met people, or not met, I shouldn't say that. Actually, we have. People we've met and then also people we knew that years later we talk to or run into or Heidi meets randomly in a grocery store and like I said, she talks to everybody. We're mentioned right, as you helped our marriage or you were instrumental and perfectly honest, we did nothing. We were fools, of sorts, used by God because we didn't even know we had any impact on these people, let alone strangers, but then people we knew years later say, you have no clue what you did for us. It's just, it's humbling, it's neat, and just to understand that if you allow God to use you, you have no clue what he's gonna do. And probably by the time Heidi and I are in graves, we'll have no clue what impact we had. But that's what we're supposed to do, we're supposed to be used by God for his greater good. [Aaron] Yeah, and I hope those that are listening right now, and that's exactly why I wanted to interview these people like you is because people don't know. They may think, what can I do? How can God use me? And you simply got up and said hi to us. Now, it's lots of laughter and tears after that, but still just that one act of obedience, the fruit from that is exactly what God's looking for from all of us and that's, I just love that you highlighted that. So, man, I'm loving this interview so far. Is this the one we want to go with? Okay. So what kind of barriers do you think keep believers from close fellowship with other believers? Because that's what we had. We grew in close fellowship with each other. What do you think it is that stops believers from making that deep connection and walking in obedience with fellowship with other believers? [Heidi] Oh, man. Honestly, I'd have to say pride. A lot of times, especially with social media age, you want to give your best face, you want to show pictures of your kids perfectly dressed and their hair perfectly done and you'll move things out of the background of the picture just so that way the background looks nice. But I think, unfortunately, I think people don't want to share their stink. They don't want to say, we're going through this issue or I have this deep seated issue or they just don't want their stuff out there for people to judge or question how perfect they thought their life was. And I think it's uncomfortable for people to let down that wall and share who they really are and share what their marriage is really going through. [Jennifer] Yeah, you guys have been really good at being an example of how to live transparently with other people, 'cause you guys were open with us and that opened the flood gates for us to be open with you guys because of that example. And I think it's so important for people to hear, how would you encourage someone to walk transparently with one another? How do you do that? [Tom] I think there's another aspect to it too, is from a good friend who joined the group as well that said he was tired of bible studies with people that weren't like him. And not necessarily weren't like him as in same exact life experiences, but as I kind of said with Aaron, looked at him and thought I'd never hang out with that guy. He was always turned off by, well, I tried this group, I tried that group, it didn't work. All those guys were nerds or none of those guys played sports or things of that nature. And there's a constant, I get that part, but if you're open to it, you might find that, as I tell my kids, right now in school, you may, there may be differences and clicks or different things like that, but as you get older, those things really do melt away. And especially if it's a brother or sister in Christ, you have a really deep bond that many don't understand. But there's a part to it too, when you hang out with those who aren't like you. For instance, Aaron, when you and I were in the men's fellowship group together, gosh, you were obviously younger than me, but we were both vastly younger than anyone else in that room and just-- [Aaron] Yeah, I remember that. [Tom] Stuff that we picked up from those guys who one was divorced, one was married, he was married but they were both from divorced families and kind of had a Brady Bunch type of union now. The things that I learned from that group, including on how not to talk to my wife and ended up actually causing some stress in my marriage when I told her how I shouldn't be talking to you, even though I have been, then all of a sudden she picked up on what a jerk I had been. [Aaron] She's like, yeah, you shouldn't talk to me like that. [Tom] Yeah, it was a total backfire move on my part. But it just, the things you learn from people when you continue to give it a shot and be open to it. If you go in with walls, you're gonna come out with walls. If you go in-- [Aaron] That's good-- [Tom] Being willing to hear or listen, I think everybody can find that community and like Heidi said, if you're willing to lower your walls and lower your pride, you'll find out everybody's just as jacked up as you are. It's just different levels, 'cause no marriage is perfect. [Aaron] Oh, I love that. And it's like the, it's this idea that recognizing what we do have in common, which is Christ, and being okay with that being the thing that we connect on because that's what God wants anyway and being able to throw out those preferences of like, well, I only want to spend time with this kind of person, which is hard to find the right person. It's rare that we have that kind of relationship, right. So I love that. How have you two navigated being a part of fellowship with the body of Christ? [Jennifer] And maybe how are you currently fellowshipping with other believers? [Tom] I got nudged, so this one's mine. So we no longer attend a church where it's facilitated by the church. So we met via a group that was facilitated by the church. And to be honest, thank God for them, they made it easy, right. Childcare and a building and all those things. So that doesn't exist where we live anymore, and so, and we don't attend a church that really has that. So now it's become harder work. It's no longer the ease of high school, seeing your friends every day and then you become an adult and go to different colleges or go to different jobs. It takes work for those relationships, and so that's where we are now. It's a lot of work to continue this. And so there's an aspect of that that's more rewarding. There's also an aspect that's more frustrating. So we totally get the part where continuing in this type of ministry or this type of group is not easy, but it's so important. When we take breaks from it, I don't want to call it a toll because it sounds negative or like it's destructive, but the toll it takes on our marriage is seen. It's very easily seen in that we just don't vibe as well. A marriage becomes more difficult than it has to be when we're not in fellowship with others. [Aaron] So even if it's not as easy as it was, you guys recognize that it's still a necessity and a vital part of your Christian faith is that you must be in fellowship, whatever that looks like. [Tom] Yeah, there's something to it when people ask, I work with so many people who will ask like, how often do you and Heidi fight or what do you do this, or how do you handle this? And yeah, and I explain that to them. There's a part where you share life with others and these can be people who are non Christians. Just when you share life with others and share your experiences, your victories, your struggles, that's what we were created for. And again, if I'm talking to a non Christian, I don't have, I throw God in there, but there's an aspect for them too, that even if you're not a believer in Christ, if you're not fellowshipping with people who help you get better or can take some of the load off or even just share life with, you're missing something. And so, yeah, there's a definite need for us every day, if not at least once a week, like a marriage group that we have now, we have to do it or else there's just a hole and there's a window that-- [Aaron] So you're saying is it's just a basic, it's the way God created us as humans is we need deep human connection, we need deep human relationships and that we can't just walk autonomously. And then especially for the believer, we need Christian fellowship to be around other Christians to sharpen us, to grow us. That's what I'm hearing you say. [Tom] Exactly what I'm saying-- [Aaron] Is that it's not something we can just, we can't just throw it out. Right, that's what, which is what a lot of Christians do. I use this word autonomous. A lot of believers are totally fine with autonomy because that seems easier. Like, oh, just, you can have what Heidi said. You can have this facade and long as you, let's be cordial and we'll be nice and all, we'll hug on Sundays, but then you're not allowed to know who I am, you're not allowed to see the dirt in my life, you're not allowed to call me out on anything, you're not allowed to know that the dark parts of me. [Jennifer] How do we grow and mature if we're not letting people see who we are? [Aaron] Well, we can't. [Heidi] We don't. [Aaron] That's the point is, I don't want to grow and therefore I don't tell anyone or show anyone who I am. [Jennifer] But a marriage after God wants to grow. [Aaron] Exactly. [Jennifer] So a marriage after God's going to be doing this. You touched on a point about your church not facilitating that easy fellowship time currently. And so for people who are listening right now, what would you say is an action step for them to be an initiator in this, so that they're not waiting around, waiting for an invitation or waiting for it to be easy. What can someone do today? What can a couple do today to-- [Aaron] Be the starters-- [Jennifer] To be the starters of-- [Aaron] Be the initiator. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] Do what Tom did and get up and walk over and put his arm around us. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Tom] Yeah, I think the first and easy start for me would be at a church you're at, you obviously, if you don't, if you go in and out of that building and don't connect or talk to anybody, you're doing yourself and that body a disservice. So it'd be just connecting very simply with people at the church. Again, maybe somebody that you have, when you pick up your kids from childcare, obviously there's somewhere you can connect. There's so many spots to just start there. The other might be just friends in general. And Aaron, you brought up a point, the autonomy. There's something to it, right, where there's a couple of good friends of mine who I'm not as extreme as this, but literally don't like to talk to somebody. And it's funny though when you ask the question, well, what happens when you're out in public and there's a Christian connection of sorts, like somebody mentions something or you see somebody praying and somebody mentions it to you. There's an instant spark, there's an instant connection because out in the world when you find somebody who has that fearlessness of being able to say, yeah, I'm a Christian, or lives it out in front of you, there's a spark that you automatically have a bond. And so at your church, I think it's the easiest spot to have where it's reached out, somebody needs somebody or friends that you have now that you know are believers. Talk to them about getting together in a marriage study, whether it be one of your guys' books, whether it be something on DVD where there's a series going on, just starting somewhere or getting together on a bi-weekly basis just to hang, to chat. Because from that, as you guys know we used to do, we used to have dinners at the house, from that just hanging out, will spur those conversations and start something that you can then morph into, hey, why don't we start getting together on a weekly basis or bi-weekly basis. [Aaron] So true. I'm gonna take one of your guys' strategies. You guys had an open invitation to us to come over to eat with you guys. And not everyone is gonna, like you said, not everyone takes you up, but you said, hey, come over. And we said yes. So there was times that we went over and you didn't even know we were coming over. We just, we just texted you when we were around the corner. Was like, hey, hope dinner's ready. [Tom] You guys make it sound like that's the exception. That might've been the rule, that it was, you guys popped in a lot, and again, we loved it. It was not, we do it to people now. We'll just show up at their house with ice cream or something. [Aaron] They're like, uh-- [Tom] Yeah, their faces, they're not happy to see us. And then it ends up being a half hour, hour visit and laughing and fun and then we leave, and we'll get a, hey, thanks for stopping by, even though we showed up at the door. There's been many wives who looked at me like, what are you doing here? So yeah, it's-- [Aaron] Yeah. I think it's just the, it's not common for people 'cause we think like, oh no, you don't want to bother, you don't want to invade someone's privacy. You don't want to. But I think that's what we're supposed to do as brothers and sisters. Now, we don't want to step over boundaries and be rude and be, but like actually go into, hey, I'm in the neighborhood, would you love, I'd love to bring you a coffee. Hey, I'm grabbing a doughnut, you want one? Or a breakfast sandwich or whatever it is, just to spark that. You guys were a great example of that, opening up your home to us, giving us an invitation to be over and actually following through with it and making a meal with us and making it a night. Like we would stay at your house until two o'clock in the morning sometimes. [Woman] Sometimes we-- [Aaron] This was before kids. [Woman] Yeah. [Aaron] But yeah, I think that's a great idea. Just starting where you're at, looking around at you and saying, hey, there's a bunch of believers around me. I should not be hiding. There should be no reason that I can't go spark up a conversation and say, who are you? How can we know each other more? [Jennifer] And in this chapter of the book, I share a story of when Heidi invited me over to her house for one of the first times that we would actually spend girl time together-- [Aaron] This is a good story, yeah. [Jennifer] And I don't want to give too much away because I want them to read it, but I basically said I was busy and felt the conviction of the Lord prompt my heart to call you back, Heidi, and I had to apologize for lying and I did go over there. And so I just want to share that briefly because I think so many times, we do excuse ourselves or justify why we can't hang out or maybe we're afraid or maybe it's too uncomfortable. But I just want the people listening right now to know it is so worth it. It's worth it to get out of your comfort zone and it's worth it to build these friendships and these relationships with other believers because they will impact our lives for the better. [Aaron] Yeah, just like you guys have impacted our life. And in what you're saying, Jennifer, it makes me think of this. How many times have I said, hey, why don't you call so and so and see if they want to hang out, and you say, no, they're doing this thing today or they have this-- [Jennifer] I give other people excuses. [Aaron] And I tell them, I'm like, did they say that? And she's like, well, no. And I'm like, so they didn't tell you no? So I think sometimes when we feel that nudge, that Holy Spirit draw to reach out and to call or to connect with, and we say, no, they're probably this or they're probably that, and we say no for people before they say no. And to avoid that, to let the person say no. [Tom] To this day, that's me and Heidi. I think one of the better compliments she was given, whether it was a compliment or not, was you're a spiritual nuisance, because she doesn't let, she won't let you off the hook. [Jennifer] That's true. [Tom] She'll keep coming-- [Aaron] It's true, Heidi's got a gift. [Tom] It's truly a gift of God to her. It annoys the heck out of me sometimes. But especially when we're trying to be somewhere. [Aaron] But look at the fruit in your life because of it. [Tom] Yeah, exactly. So I have to balance that when I do get annoyed and remember how it's blessed me. But yeah, I mean, she's very good at this and doesn't, kind of tracks people down. [Aaron] So cool. [Jennifer] Awesome. Okay you guys, well, as we wrap up this awesome interview, in your own words, what is a marriage after God? [Heidi] Honestly, I think a marriage after God is putting God first and not your spouse and not other people, not celebrities, not your own image, but putting God first in your marriage to bless yourself, bless your marriage, bless other people. Just really living for God and not for the world. [Tom] What does that look like? I had a conversation with our daughter two days ago. We were driving back from somewhere and she says, so you love God first and then mommy and then us. And I said, yeah, it doesn't make sense, does it. And she says, no, it doesn't. Because one time I was a stupid dad and I answered the question honestly when she said, well, who's your favorite girl? And I answered mommy immediately. To an eight year old at the time, that was a really stupid answer on my part. But I mean, it was just not smart because it broke her heart and I had to try to come back and explain that to her because she's eight, she's not supposed to completely grasp that yet-- [Aaron] I don't have faith like that yet-- [Tom] But yes, sure, and a couple of days ago in the car, I said, it doesn't make sense and here's why. It's because God wants your focus on him. But in doing that, he opens you up to everything else and gives you a greater appreciation, gives you a greater understanding and gives you a greater love for other things. And so by mommy and daddy focusing on God first, it allows us to be better husband and wife to each other and allows us to be a better mommy and daddy to you. Even though a lot of times you probably don't think we're that great, that's what it does. And I said, and it's hard for you understand, I understand that, and you won't until you are married or have kids, but in the end, people have asked, why have we had such a great marriage. And it hasn't been perfect, but it's been the best decision I ever made in my life. And for a male to say that to another male, in our day and age is, Aaron, I'm sure you see it on people's faces when you do it. They look at you like you're crazy. And yeah, it's the absolute best thing I ever did in my life, and we just, if we focus on God first, right, though Sunday mornings you don't feel like getting up and going to church and you do and you walk into a sermon that's on marriage and you get, and God just talks to you there. It's putting him first whether you want to or not on that particular day. None of us are perfect. And then it just, everything else unlocks. Churches, I know I'm rambling. Churches know this fact. If they want to grow their church, they can get the wife, that's fine, and you'll get the kids maybe. But if you get the husband, you get the entire family and that's how you grow your church number, and that's a different topic, but again, if as a husband-- [Aaron] No, what you're saying is husbands need to be leading spiritually and setting the tone in their home. That's good. [Tom] Yeah. Before you rudely cut me off, what I was saying is, if we as husbands lead, it's infectious. It doesn't always happen, but it's infectious. The wife then follows, then the kids then follow and it's a beautiful thing. And I've noticed for me, if I slip and I'm not focusing on God, my house slips. So long winded answer to your question is both of you focusing on God, it's funny how the rest just seems to, not easily sometimes, but it does, it falls into place. [Aaron] Good. Thank you, that was really good. [Jennifer] That's so good. Thank you guys so much for sharing with us today. We just want to invite everyone to take a moment to join us in prayer. Dear Lord, thank you for the gift of your body. Thank you for the gift of fellowship and friendship. May we be people who are motivated by love to reach out and be a friend to others. We pray we would have the courage and confidence to be people who welcome others in, who are transparent, who are there for others, who lift others up and who pray for others. Use our marriages to be an encouragement to other marriages. Use us as a team to bring you glory. Help us to never live in isolation. Help us to never be divided. We pray the enemy and we pray our own flesh wouldn't get it in the way of fellowship. May our desire to participate in your body increase even more. May the way we treat one another be a light and an example to the rest of the world. In Jesus' name. Amen. [Aaron] Amen. So Tom and Heidi, we love you guys. We miss you guys. [Tom] Thanks for having us. [Aaron] We need to see you soon. [Tom] Sincerely. [Woman] Miss you guys. [Aaron] And thank you so much for giving us some time today and in blessing everyone that's listening. So hey everyone that's listening, thank you so much for joining us on this sixth week of the series, and we look forward to having you next week. Did you enjoy today's show? If you did, it would mean the world to us if you could leave us a review on iTunes. Also, if you're interested, you can find many more encouraging stories and resources at MarriageAfterGod.com, and let us help you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.

Heidi is the CEO of Donor Egg Bank USA. Donor Egg Bank was launched to assist fertility patients in their dream of having a baby. Heidi struggled with infertility herself, and after many years of trying to conceive, she ultimately built her family through adoption and donor egg treatment. In today’s show, we talk about egg donation and the implications of using an egg donor when struggling with fertility challenges and contemplating IVF. If you have ever considered using IVF or have questions about egg donation you'll want to tune into this episode. Topics discussed in today's episode How has the technology changed to improve the quality of donor eggs? What is the average age of an egg donor? Why is IVF typically more successful when donor eggs are used vs using her own eggs? What is the difference between fresh and frozen donor egg cycles? What are the characteristics of an ideal egg donor? How are egg donors compensated? What is vitrification and how does it impact egg quality for donor eggs? Is it a good idea for women to freeze their eggs at a young age "just in case"? How many years can a frozen egg be stored and still be viable? How common is egg donation? Should parents who've used donor eggs be honest with their children? Connect with Heidi You can connect with Heidi on her website and on Facebook & Twitter Resources mentioned Heidi Hayes | Donor Egg Bank USA FFP 011 | Age-Related Fertility Decline | Using Reproductive Technologies | IVF IUI & IVM | Dr. Melanie McDowall Join the community! Find us on the Fertility Friday Facebook Fan Page Subscribe to the Fertility Friday Podcast on iTunes! Music Credit: Intro/Outro music Produced by J-Gantic

Heidi is an acupuncturist, herbalist, and fertility specialist with a background in Chinese medicine. She has over 10 years of experience helping women grow their families. She's supported hundreds of women in her clinic in San Diego, and thousands of women around the world in her online community. Heidi focuses on helping women create total fertility wellness by preparing the mind, body, and spirit for fertility and pregnancy through her virtual fertility self-acupressure program. In today’s show, we talk about miscarriage and the role that Chinese medicine can play in reducing the likelihood and improving the chances of carrying a baby to term. We also talk about the importance of having a fertile mindset when trying to conceive. Topics discussed in today's episode How does Chinese Medicine help women to cope with stress? What are some of the reasons women experience miscarriage? How is miscarriage looked at from a Traditional Chinese Medicine perspective? The connection between our hearts and our womb and why that matters when trying to conceive When is the right time to start trying for a baby after having a miscarriage? Is there a benefit to waiting a few months to try again? Why we should be thinking about the postpartum period when trying to conceive Why is it important for a woman to cultivate a positive mindset when trying to conceive? The role of meditation in mindset and stress reduction How to be successful when making dietary & lifestyle changes Connect with Heidi You can connect with Heidi on her website, and on Facebook & Twitter Resources mentioned Heidi Brockmyre | 3 Step Fertility Boost FFP 078 | Lunapads & The Diva Cup | Sustainable, Eco-friendly & Healthy Menstrual Products | Madeleine Shaw & Suzanne Siemens Join the community! Find us on the Fertility Friday Facebook Fan Page Subscribe to the Fertility Friday Podcast on iTunes! Music Credit: Intro/Outro music Produced by Sirc of (The Nock)

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Heidi Roizen Managing Director, Mobius Venture Capital Date: August 15, 2007 NCWIT Interview with Heidi Roizen BIO: Heidi Roizen has spent her entire life in the entrepreneurial ecosystem of Silicon Valley, first as an entrepreneur and ultimately as a venture capitalist helping other entrepreneurs build the great companies of tomorrow. She is currently a Managing Director of Mobius Venture Capital, a venture fund with over $2 billion under management. In that capacity, Heidi serves on the Boards of Directors of Reactrix, Ecast, Perpetual Entertainment and AuctionDrop. Heidi began her career in 1983 by co-founding T/Maker Company, a software publisher and developer for early personal computers including the IBM PC and the original Macintosh. As CEO, Heidi led the company for over a decade, raised two rounds of venture capital and ultimately consummated a successful acquisition of T/Maker by Deluxe Corporation. In 1996, she joined Apple Computer as VP of Worldwide Developer Relations. After one year at Apple, Heidi decided to return to her entrepreneurial roots, this time as a Mentor Capitalist and ultimately a Venture Capitalist. Heidi has also been actively involved in the trade associations critical to the Valley. She is a past president of the Software Publishers Association and served on its board from 1987 to 1994. She also represented the venture industry as a member of the Board of Directors of the National Venture Capital Association from 2003 to 2007. She also served on the board of Great Plains Software from 1997 until its acquisition by Microsoft in 2001, and is a past Public Governor of the Pacific Exchange. She is also a frequent guest lecturer at Stanford as well as a speaker at conferences for technologists, entrepreneurs, or women executives. Heidi holds a BA and an MBA from Stanford University. She is married to orthopedic surgeon David Mohler and has two daughters. Lee Kennedy: Hi. This is Lee Kennedy, board member of the National Center for Women and Information Technology, or NCWIT. And this is part of a series of interviews that we're having with fabulous entrepreneurs, women who have started IT companies in a variety of sectors, all of whom had insightful stories to tell us about being entrepreneurs. With me, I have Larry Nelson, from w3w3.com. Hi, Larry. How are you doing? Larry Nelson: Oh, great. It's wonderful to be here again. And one of the things that is so exciting for us at w3w3.com is that we are helping support, I think, the most fabulous program that we've experienced since we got in the radio business in '98, and the idea that we're helping inspire young women, girls, getting into IT, looking into that, as well as being an entrepreneur. But now, we're also getting phone calls from business leaders, people in schools, who say, "This is such a great program. We'd like to help promote it, too." Lee: Well, that's wonderful. Larry: One of the interesting things that we have here that's a little bit of a twist is that we're interviewing an entrepreneur who became a venture capitalist, and also, of course, then, therefore works and helps support entrepreneurs. And we're very pleased that we're interviewing Heidi Roizen, who is a managing director of Mobius Venture Capital. And we've got a little bit of a twist here. Lee and I are here in Colorado, and Lucy Sanders, the CEO and founder of NCWIT, is in California, at Heidi's home base. So, Lucy, let's get started. Lucy Sanders: All right. Hi, everyone. I'm sitting here with Heidi in her beautiful home in Atherton. I've been here a few times, and I just think it's so much fun to be here and interview you here in your office. Heidi Roizen: Well, thank you. I hope the dogs don't participate. Lucy: Or they might. They might have something profound to say. Heidi: They often do. Lucy: One of the things that makes it so exciting to interview you is that when I think, about Silicon Valley, I think, about you. And I think that you're synonymous with Silicon Valley. You've done a lot, as Larry mentioned. You've started companies. You're in venture capital. You were educated here at Stanford. You're a part of the community... Heidi: I was actually born at the Stanford Hospital, which I think, I'm probably the only one in Silicon Valley... Lucy: And why don't you spend a minute or two bringing us up to speed about what you've been doing lately? Heidi: Well, I am currently serving on four boards. They keep me very busy. They are all companies that are definitely not in their "two guys and a dog and a laptop" stage any longer, but they're all still companies that aren't through to the end of the road yet. So, lots of interesting challenges in terms of recruiting, customer acquisition, strategic business development, and all the normal things one goes through in startup land. So, I'm working on those companies, and then I'm working on a few entrepreneurial ventures on the side, helping out some friends. I always love having my fingers in the very, very early stages, and so I like having a few of those to work on as well. Lucy: Well, and I happen to know you're very generous with your time for nonprofits and for Stanford students. Heidi: Yeah. Lucy: The last time I was here, we had a great dinner, where you brought them back to your home. And I think, you're going to have some great advice for us, so why don't we just get right to the interview? Heidi: OK. Lee: Well, Heidi, I'll jump in and ask our first question, and that's: how did you first get into technology? Was it when you were a child or in college? And then, what technologies do you think are really cool today? Heidi: OK. Well, the first question is one that I think, if you're born and raised in Silicon Valley, at this time ‑ born in 1958, graduated from Stanford, undergrad in 1980 ‑ you couldn't help but apply for a job and end up at a tech company. So, even though I was not a technologist ‑ in fact, my undergraduate degree is in creative writing ‑ I ended up as the editor of the company newsletter for a little startup called Tandem Computers. Lee: Wow. Heidi: And that's really where I got my first inkling that there was something really exciting about the computer industry. What I realized, at that time, was I kind of looked around, and everybody getting ahead either had an engineering degree or an MBA. And it was a little late for me to go get an engineering degree, I thought, but I figured the MBA thing looked like a pretty good idea. So, I went back to Stanford and got that, and really fell in love with personal computing at the time. It's hard for people... I mean, I sound like such an old geezer when I say this. But, I was the class of 1983, and there were only three people ‑ I was one of them ‑ who owned their own personal computer at school. And now, can you imagine being a graduate student and not having a personal computer? You'd be hopeless. So, started my company right out of school and just never looked back. I had the good fortune to have a brilliant programmer as a brother, who really didn't like the business side, and I loved the business side. And the thing I like to tell people, often, who are non‑technologists, who wonder about being in the technology field, I tell them, "You know, need a mix of people." I don't have to know how to build a car to drive one. And in fact, I'd say, particularly in my early times working with my brother, who was the genius programmer, sometimes he'd build features that were so genius that only he could use them, and they weren't very practical. So, I think, sometimes it's good to be the petunia in the onion patch, as I used to call it in the development hall. Lucy: Tell us a little bit about the technology that you're thinking about as being the next wave of technical, cool gadgets. Heidi: I think, gadgets is always a slippery slope, because there are gadgets that I just love. I mean, we're investors in Sidekick and Sling, so we definitely have some gadgets companies out there. If any of you have seen a Reatrix system in the malls and in the theaters, and the Reactive television systems, or an Ecast jukebox ‑ we've got tons of portfolio companies I can tell you about that all have exciting gadgets and technologies. To me, where I'm focused right now is I've been thinking a lot about the demographic that is me ‑ the woman who still wants to look good and feel good, who has more free time, who has more money, who, however, still has family obligations, has a career. We're hitting 50, and when our parents hit 50, we thought they were pretty much close to death... Heidi: Now, we are shocked to find that we are 50. And I think, what's interesting is that the Silicon Valley ‑ and it's a little bit like Hollywood ‑ get so focused on youth and the youth culture and the spending money that youths have and advertising to youths. And while I've got nothing against young people, I think that the people my age and women my age have been an underserved demographic, when it comes to utilizing the web as a medium for exchange, as a community, as an outlet for all sorts of things and a place to go learn about things. And I'm seeing more and more activities around that, and I can't tell you how many times... this is probably hitting all of my same‑age brethren entrepreneurs, but we're all sort of getting up and saying, "I don't really want to start the next teen cell phone. I really want to start something that my friends and I could use." And so I'm seeing a lot of really interesting companies come about, a lot that combine community with some of the really innovative things that can be done online. Lucy: Give it some time. Heidi: Yeah. Lucy: Give it some time. Larry: Yeah, you bet. I'm not that old yet. But, anyhow... Lee: That's right, Larry. Larry: They're laughing... Heidi: Somebody once asked me to predict the future of venture investing, and I said, "Just about the time we finally invest in the ultimate weight‑loss pill and the instant‑tan pill, culture will change so that it's not cool to be thin and it's not cool to be tan, and we'll lose again." Larry: Oh, boy. My personal friend, Mark Twain, said, "Youth is wasted on the young." Heidi: That's right. Larry: Anyhow. I can't help but ask this, Heidi. Many people don't look at venture capitalists as entrepreneurs, but anybody who is a managing director, believe me, they are entrepreneur. But, of course, Heidi has the background and experience of being an entrepreneur. She's now continuing to support and work with entrepreneurs. What is it about you that makes this all happen? And what makes it tick, in terms of an entrepreneur? Heidi: Well, there are so many answers. And I've had the pleasure to listen to many of your wonderful speakers on this series before myself, and I think, a lot of things have been mentioned about tenacity and creativity and mission and a passion about what you're doing. There are so many things that I can think of. And of course, if you look me up on LinkedIn, I refer to myself as a "recovering entrepreneur," which is a little bit of an inside joke at Mobius. We're recovering entrepreneurs. Heidi: I think, what I had to learn, going from being an entrepreneur to being a venture capitalist, is it's like being the quarterback and then being the coach. When you're a venture capitalist, you do work behind the scene, you do help a lot. But, they're sort of not your losses, and they're not your victories. And if you're doing your job right, the entrepreneur is on the cover of "Time" magazine, not you. When you're an entrepreneur, the buck stops here. It's funny. I just went on a walk with a fellow entrepreneur of mine, and he was talking about a friend who used to be a vice president of a big company and is now the CEO of a small company, and one of the things he was saying to her is, "Now you understand how the buck really stops here." Heidi: And I think, for me, what really defines an entrepreneur is something that somebody said to me once. When I was running T/Maker, we had this product line called ClickArt, which is still around today, and it's basically electronic clip art. But, you have to remember, when we did that product in 1984, there were no scanners; there was no PostScript; there was no anything. We were literally sitting artists down, at 128K max. We didn't even have a stylus. They were drawing with the mouse in 72 DPI to create electronic clip art. I mean, that's as basic as it was. And when we shipped that product, I remember staying at a trade show, and I can't remember how many people came up to me and said, "Wow! You know, I thought of that, too." Right? And in the back of my mind, I thought, "Yeah, you thought of it. But, we did it." Heidi: And I think, for most of these things, it's that "one percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration." There are so many ideas that just die on the vine because a person doesn't go out and try to actually do them. They think they're a cool idea, but other things get in the way and they don't really work hard at it. And not only do they not work hard at the creative process, but the process I'll loosely call is the destructive process. With entrepreneurs, one of the things I respect the most is, when you come up with an idea, that instead of working on it for the first five days about how you're going to accomplish it, you spend five days trying to prove that it's already been done or it's not doable ‑ not because you're being pessimistic, but before you engage in the creative process, sometimes you have to go and say, "What else is already out there?" And one of my pet peeves as a venture capitalist is when somebody comes and pitches me an idea, and I say, "Have you ever heard about blahblah.com?" And they go, "What's that?" And I get on and I show them, and it's the exact company they were talking about building, but it already exists. My feeling is, today, particularly with Google and other search engines and the Internet, you can find a lot of this stuff out there, and you need to go out and look. But, I do think, ultimately, a long and winding answer, but the short answer is it's like Nike, man. It's "just do it." If you just do it, that's the only way to be an entrepreneur. If you're not willing to just do it, you're never going to be an entrepreneur. Lee: That is such great advice, Heidi, because so many people, even when they just go out and do it, it's not that first idea that they even end up doing sometimes. It's just having the guts to get out there and start the business and get in that industry and figure out what it is. Heidi: That's right. And ask a lot of questions and meet a lot of people and kiss a lot of frogs. Larry: Yeah. Heidi: It's always easy, in retrospect, to say, "Why did I take that meeting with that person?" But you don't know because, just as likely, you could take a meeting with another person. And I just had something happen this weekend, where I was helping someone on a music project. And we were talking to someone who was totally unrelated, and they just said, "Oh, what are you up to?" Totally unrelated to the music industry. And we told him what we were doing, and he said, "Hey, I'm good friends with..." And I won't name the names because it's all proprietary, but let's just say one of the most Grammy‑winning artists in the world. And he said, "I'll give him a call tomorrow and see if he's interested in helping you with this." So, it's like one of those random, like that's not what we were even there to talk about. But, that's how the conversation ended up going, and it could take us in a really exciting direction. You just never know when that kind of serendipitous stuff is going to occur. Lucy: Your remark about 1984, when you were doing T/Maker and you had to have the ClickArt, I just have to go back to that for a moment and say, in 1984, we were trying to draw things in P‑Roth inside... Lucy: That's not revolutionary. Heidi: Yeah, yeah. I remember the first time I showed my husband QuickTime, whenever it came out ‑ 1989, whatever. And I'd bring home my file, because we were under nondisclosure with Apple. And I'd show him this postage‑sized, grainy thing, and he goes, "Wow. I am really underwhelmed." Heidi: For me, as a computer geek, it was so exciting to see television on a computer. And for him, he was like, "Uh, honey? Have you looked at our TV set? It's like a lot better than this." Lucy: Because I know you, I think that one of the things that makes you a great entrepreneur is, in fact, you see potential, and you're willing to take the risk to develop the potential. Heidi: Yeah. It does make one quite dangerous. It's that joke about the person who buys houses because they see the good in every house. And I tend to be a person who sees the upside in things. Which I think, again, in order to be an entrepreneur, you have to be an optimist. You have to believe things are going to work out your way. But, you have to be realistic. And that's where I, again, for lack of a better word, call it the destructive process ‑ testing your idea, going out and thinking about the boundary cases: "What's the worse that could happen here? What's the worse that could happen here? How am I going to prepare for it?" And also going out and really combing the markets to make sure that what you're doing is unique, or, if not unique, that you're going to be the best somehow. Lucy: Well, along the way ‑ you've been here in Silicon Valley. You were born here. Heidi: Yeah. Lucy: And you've got a great network. And we are really curious to also understand who helped you the most. Who would you look to as being your mentor? Heidi: I was very fortunate to be born into a family where entrepreneurship was not a bad thing. I think, it's one of the things that makes California such a great place and will play a continuing role in the world economy is because we are just a culture, for 150‑plus years, of people striking out and doing something on their own, and failure not meaning social failure. You can be a business failure and still hold your head up and go to your kids' school and not be embarrassed about it. Lucy: "I failed today." Heidi: "I failed today." It's part of the process. I think that, for me, my father was a great role model for me because he was an entrepreneur. He was always thinking. He would say things to me like, "Today is the best day of my life because I have every day before today that I can draw on what I learned to apply to today." So, he was just that kind of person. And he wasn't like Mr. Rogers. I mean, he was just a great role model about how one could look for the opportunity in everything. And he was a very poor immigrant. I think, he graduated from high school. I'm not really sure. His dad died when he was 12, and he had to make money for the family to make ends meet. I mean, he had one of those really hard upbringings that made him very grateful and thankful, and very creative and resourceful. And he treated me like one of the boys. He never said to me, "Oh, you're a girl. You shouldn't do this," or "You can't go to graduate school," or "You can't do anything." In fact, if I said I couldn't do something because of being a woman, he would scoff at me. And my brothers joke that I'm the most like him... Heidi: So, he actually made me in his image, not my brothers. But, I was very lucky about that. I was very lucky, also, just to be in the computer industry in the late '70s and early '80s, because I really did get to grow up with the people who are the leaders in the industry. And so somebody said to me, "Wow! How did you get to be friends with Bill Gates?" And it's like, "Well, started 25 years ago." [laughs] Heidi: He was easier to get to then. But, it's things like that, that I think, I just had the great fortune to have a front‑row seat and be a participant in an industry that I really believe has changed the world. So, it gave me a lot of opportunities to learn from other people and have mentors and role models. Lee: So, Heidi, when you think about all you've done in your career ‑ building your own companies, being an investor ‑ what has been the toughest thing you've had to do in your career? Heidi: You know, you face so many tough challenges when you are the CEO and "the buck stops here." Someone once said to me, "Gosh, you're so lucky. You're the CEO. You have so much freedom." And I laughed, and I said, "You don't understand that when you're the CEO, you have the least freedom, because you can't just quit." I raised that money. I hired every one of these people. I gave those venture capitalists my commitment that I was going to bring it home for them. I'm not just going to walk out the door. I remember walking into my company every day. We had about 100 employees. And I would count the cars in the parking lot, and I would think about the car payments and the mortgage payments... Heidi: Everything that was dependent on this company. And so I would say, still, to this day, that the hardest thing you have to do is lay people off. I mean, the hardest thing you have to do is downsize your firm. It's not as hard to fire someone. This is an interesting thing. I would much rather terminate somebody for cause than lay people off because we can't afford it. When you terminate someone for cause ‑ and "for cause" is a real legal term. I don't want to use the legal definition of that. But, what I really mean is, when somebody's not a good fit for the job they're in, I find that it's really in their best interest to tell them and get them to move on to something else. And while that is sometimes hard, I think, it's the right thing to do, and I think, it's the right thing to do for the person. And I've often found that you check in with them a couple years later, they're better off where they are, even though this can be very difficult. I do think, going through the dot‑com bust and having to lay people off, knowing that there wasn't going to be another job they could just waltz into, was a really, really hard thing to do. To me, those were the hardest things I ever had to do. In fact, my T/Maker employees still joke about this time where we had our first loss ever and we had to lay off some people, and it was Christmas. I was about four‑months pregnant. I said to my husband, "I've got to do it myself. I hired all these people. I'm going to do it myself. I'm going to give each one of them the news." So I'm in my office, and they're coming in, or I'm going to their offices. And I'm pregnant, and so the hormones coursing through my veins. So, I am sobbing through these terminations, and they are comforting me. Heidi: They feel sorry for me. But, I have to lay them off. Sobbing, sobbing, sobbing. And I say to my husband, "This is the worst business day of my life, where I'm terminating some people who've been with me five, six years, and I just feel terrible. And it's Christmas, and I had to tell them, 'No bonuses for you guys, and you're getting laid off.'" I said, "Please go to Blockbuster and rent a funny movie so that when I get home, I can take my mind off of it." So, I come home, and what had he rented, but Chevy Chase's "Christmas Vacation." Heidi: And I don't know if you guys have seen this, but of course, the whole story is about a guy who believes he's getting a Christmas bonus and builds a swimming pool or something, and then he doesn't get the bonus, and he ends up kidnapping his boss. Heidi: It was just one of those moments: I just didn't know whether to laugh. I'll never forget that moment. I still cry when I see that show. It was on TV last Christmas, and I'm like crying through it. My kids are looking at me. They're like, "Mom, it's a comedy." Not for me. Lucy: Not for me. In fact, my answer to this question is the same. I think that laying people off is clearly one of the hardest things that I've ever had to do. Heidi: Absolutely. Lucy: We've heard a lot of great advice so far in this interview from you about entrepreneurship, and the Nike "just do it," and who cares if you've thought about it? Just get it done. Heidi: Yeah. Lucy: And other types of advice around doing your homework and seeing the potential. If you were sitting right here with a young person and you were giving them advice about entrepreneurship, what else would you tell them? And one of the things that comes to mind is a conversation we had sometime about networking. Heidi: Yeah. Lucy: And I thought you had some of the best advice about networking that I've ever heard. Heidi: Well, I have a ton of advice about networking. I'm a little typecast as a networking speaker because Harvard did a case on me a number of years ago that really is about my philosophy of networking. And when they approached me to do the case, I said, "Why would anyone want a case on this? It's all just common sense." It's kind of like that book: "Everything I needed to know about networking, I learned in the second grade." But, it's just commonsense and practical and courtesy. And so, they did do this case, and I do speak on the case a lot. And my fundamental belief is that it's very rare that anything happens as a singular effort. Yeah, you can go climb ‑ well, even climbing Mount Everest, it's a team, right? And entrepreneurship is a team sport with very many lonely moments. So, you have to be the one. I'm working on this project with someone. I got up at four o'clock in the morning a couple of days ago because I thought of something, and I knew if I waited till morning, it wasn't going to be the same. So, I had to get up and come down here and sit at the computer for an hour and write up my thoughts while they were fresh. I think, there are a lot of times when you're just singularly approaching something, but I think, you have to know how to ask for help, and how to give help. Students say this to me all the time, they say, "Well, I don't have anything to give." You always have something to give, everyone has something to give. Good lord, you can come and talk to me and baby‑sit my children while you're talking me. I had one guy who traded me, I would talk to him about his business and he was a personal trainer, so he would train me while I was talking to him about his business. Heidi: And I think that one of the errors that people make in networking is they try to hard to gather business cards, and they don't think about "What is my connection with this other person, and what do I have to give them? What in return am I going to ask them for?" Again, I will bring it back to this other comment, a lot of times you don't know how the other person is going to help you, and you're not quite sure always how you're going to help them. Sometimes, it's quite surprising, but if you put yourself open to that, and you use some of the modern tools ‑ like I've become a real LinkedIn convert, because I love being able to get on LinkedIn and see who my friends know that I might want to talk to about industries completely foreign to me and vice versa. If somebody has a good friend from college who now wants to do something in the out of home advertising market and sees I'm on the board of Aventure and would like to talk to me. I don't mind doing that stuff because I sort of feel like there's this great, you know, we all help each other in this community and I'm a little bit of a believer in that kind of pay it forward. It's interesting right now because in Aventure I'm working closely on, I have to reach out and ask for a lot of favors, and I've been very aware that for a lot of my current roles in life I'm the one that asks for the favors than asked. Now that I'm doing the asking it's interesting, I'm uncomfortable. I'd much rather do a favor for someone else than ask somebody for a favor. It's my nature, and it's the nature of many people. But, I think that you have to get good at understanding "What am I asking for? Is it appropriate for me to ask it? Is the person capable of delivering it? Is it an appropriate amount of time for them to send and do something for me? And what could I possibly do for them?" I always try to make sure that people know I'm quite open to doing something for you in exchange, and by the way, no is a perfectly good answer, too. If I ask you a favor and the answer is no, just tell me no. I'm very comfortable with that. Lucy: That's great advice because so many people they really are either afraid to network, or don't know how to network, and that just makes it really clear. Heidi: Networking is also very awkward; somebody from Stanford called me up once and said, "Can I network with you?" What is that is that like my pen pal or something? Lucy: Just network. Heidi: Let's say you want to meet someone, and I guess, with the powers of Google and the Internet and all that, you might want to meet some important person. If you have no context, it's going to be a very fruitless conversation. But, every one of them, their kids go to school, they are on a charitable board, they may enjoy a certain kind of athletic activity. I'm not saying become a stalker, but generally, for example, if you want to get to know a person and they happen to be on the board of a charitable organization go find out what the annual fundraiser is on that charitable organization and volunteer to work at it. Chances are you're going to be able to meet that person over time if you get involved in something like that. And, by the way, you're doing something good too. That's again, one of the powers of Silicon Valley ‑ both good and bad ‑ you've got to be careful, you've got to find out if other moms and dads on the soccer sidelines have MBAs because everybody's kind of in this business. Heidi: It is interesting that you have so many different places where you meet and run into people, and so many people I do business with are friends of mine in other context. Lucy: So Heidi, you had talked earlier in the interview about different characteristics that you thought were really important to help entrepreneurs grow and build companies, but when you think about yourself, what are some of your personal characteristics that you have that have helped you to be successful as an entrepreneur? Heidi: Certainly tenacity. I mean, I'm very tenacious about... you put me on something I'm on a mission and I'm not going to let it go. I like to learn new things, so I like to push myself and try to learn something new. I think, when you're constantly learning it helps you get a better job, [laughs] and in so many areas. I'm definitely a people person, I love talking with people, I love meeting people. I'm very comfortable asking people for their opinions and I think, I'm a pretty good listener. So, I think that that also helps me be an entrepreneur, because you learn from other people, you gather opinions, you mold what you're doing. Frankly, it helps you in terms of going back to asking for favors, giving favors, recruiting people. People generally want to work with people they like and people they respect, which is another thing. My belief is that I'm going to be in this world for, I hope, a pretty long time. One thing I've learned being almost 50 and being in the Valley all this time is that you run into the same people over and over and over again. So, don't burn a bridge unless you've decided that's the best course of action. I like to sleep at night. I don't like to do bad deals, and I don't like to squeeze the last nickel out of somebody just because I have the upper hand. I like to live that way. While there's always different opinions about anything you do, I try to test everything. Does this match my ethics? Can I sleep at night? If my husband or my kids knew I did this, would they think less of me as a person? I like to live that way. I think, an entrepreneurship is not a zero sum game. Your gain doesn't have to come out of somebody else's loss. Larry: Boy, I'll say. You know, Heidi, one thing I've learned to do is that I'm going to call you "Coach" from now on. I just want to clarify one little thing. You said something earlier about kissing the frogs, or was it kissing your dogs? Heidi: Yeah, kissing frogs. Although frogs wish it was kissing dogs. Larry: Yeah. And you also just mentioned that you should ask for help. Do you want to introduce me to Bill Gates? Heidi: No. Larry: No. OK. Heidi: That's a good one you bring up, because it is one of those, how do you manage a relationship towards a person who's very important or famous? One thing I had to decide early on is, I just set certain rules. And I've gotten very comfortable saying "No" to people. So, people will say to me, "Can you introduce me to Bill Gates?" And the answer is, "No, I can't," because if I did that for everybody, they would.... And the hardest part is people thinking, "I have the best charity in the world. I have something that would be so interesting to the Foundation. Please help me get to the right person. Can you please send this to Bill and Melinda?" And I say no. One of the things that gives me comfort in saying no is that I say, "Look my own husband runs a charitable organization called Refugee Relief that does medical assistance in countries under conflict. He'd be a perfect candidate, and he hasn't even asked Bill and Melinda for money." One of the things I try to do is live by my own rules. The other thing I try to do is, for example, when I sold a company from my portfolio to Microsoft I didn't even talk to Bill about it. I'm not going to mention, "Hey, I'm selling one of my portfolio companies" to him. It's not relevant. I really try to respect that, particularly people who are in positions like Bill where everyone's approaching you all of the time, you need to be respectful of the pressures on that person's time. I think, that's one of the reasons why Bill and Melinda and I have a good and long‑standing relationship. They know that I respect that there needs to be boundaries there, because they don't have the luxury of living normal lives. Larry: Yeah, that's fact. By the way, of course, you know I was just saying that to.... Heidi: Oh, I know. Larry: However, last week we interviewed Brad Feld and he did say, "Hi to Heidi." Heidi: Oh, that's so sweet. I adore Brad. Larry: All right. Let me ask you this question. In your approach to your professional life, you do so many things. How do you bring about balance? Heidi: That's an excellent question. If you'd like I can bring my 12 and 14 year olds in here right now to continue the counterpoint to that. Larry: oh. Heidi: I do try to set limits. In my house, although we have wireless access, I'm not the person who walks around with my laptop and uses it everywhere. We certainly have a "no laptop in the bedroom" rule. I don't tend to watch TV and do email at the same time. I have a home office that I come in to do my work and then I try to leave it. I also try to have a commitment with my kids. If I say, "I'm going to stop working at seven," then I'm going to stop working at seven. I mix business and pleasure a lot. I have a lot of social engagements with people. I have a lot of people over for dinner. I try to engage my kids in some of that, because luckily at their ages they find some of that very interesting. In one of the projects I'm working on right now, I ask them for advice a lot. I've been able to pick their brains a lot about it. And they've been really great. I tell them, you know, if I'm having a bad day, you know I had a bad day about a legal contract I was working on. And because it didn't get done I missed a window of production for something. And I said to them, they said you know, "Why are you in such a bad mood?" And instead of saying something like, "Well, I had a bad day at work." I said, "Well, let me explain to you. This company needs a piece of paperwork before we can contract this production facility. We didn't get the piece of paperwork. Now because this production facility can only do things in, you know, they have another client the next three weeks that pushed me out a month. So, here's a one day delay on a contract that's going to cost me a three week delay on the production. And that's why I'm so mad about this today." And so that what is the thing? A teachable moment right? You know, I try to bring them in to the things that I'm doing. But, it is important sometimes to just close the door and say, "I'm sorry I'm not going to do this." I try very hard not to schedule meetings on the weekends. I try very hard not to schedule meetings at night. I try to really limit my travel because it is very disruptive to my family when I travel. And so, I try to make accommodations. Lucy: Well, and your daughters are wonderful. And having seen them at a couple of dinners. I mean the integration works really well. Heidi: They're pretty cute. Yeah. Lucy: They're pretty cute. It works really well because they get to see a lot of different people over here. Heidi: Yes they do. Lucy: That they wouldn't ordinarily see. They lead unusual lives. Heidi: We had a nice conversation about Norwegian and other things this morning. So, it was very good. Lucy: They were very funny. Heidi: And they do provide very funny moments. One time actually, Bill and Melinda were coming over for dinner. And Nicky was playing on her Xbox. And she knew Bill was coming over and said like "Can I have him sign my Xbox?" "Oh, I guess, you can ask him to sign your Xbox." Which she didn't ultimately do when he came over because she was too embarrassed. But, she said to me, "Microsoft, yeah, they make the Xbox. Do they make any other products?" And I just had to laugh. Heidi: You know, the eyes of a thirteen year old is like all they make is the Xbox. Lucy: Well you really have achieved a lot. And you have front row seats to a lot. And I have no doubt, fifty or not, that you are going to be on the front row for many, many years. Heidi: Not done yet. Lucy: Not done yet. So, tell us what's next for you. Heidi: Oh, I'm so excited about what I'm doing. But, I can't tell you. Sorry. Lucy: I'm going to jump across the desk and strangle her. Heidi: I know. I know. I am. You know I'm continuing to do my work with Mobee and then a company that we work on. And Brad and Jake my partners there. I mean, you know, we have a great relationship and I'm enjoying that. But, I am definitely an entrepreneur at heart. In fact I've been thinking, at some point on my link and profile. Right now, it says venture capitalist and recovering entrepreneur. And someday soon it's going to say "Relapsed entrepreneur and venture capitalist" because I just can't help myself. Heidi: So, I just started a little company. I actually funded it yesterday. I'm fortunate enough to have provided my own seed capital. I joke to my husband. I said, "It's very important tonight because we're having cocktails with my lead investor," which of course was me. [laughter] So, we laughed about that. So, I have a little start up that I'm working on, which I will hope to tell you all about really soon. But, it's not quite baked enough yet. So, you'll just have to wait. Lucy: I just hope it's about fifty year old women. Heidi: You will, you will buy one of these products. Well, I'm going to give you one. And Lucy. Larry Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Heidi RoizenInterview Summary: Born and raised in Silicon Valley, Heidi spent the first part of her career founding and growing tech companies. Now she enjoys helping entrepreneurs build companies as a coach instead of a player. Release Date: August 15, 2007Interview Subject: Heidi RoizenInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry Nelson, Lee KennedyDuration: 34:33