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For B2B marketers and sales teams, LinkedIn holds tremendous potential. As a marketer, how can you help your sales team make the most of it? This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Intero Advisory founder and CEO Colleen McKenna shares the strategies she's used to coach hundreds of marketing and sales leaders on getting the most out of LinkedIn. From how to set up your profile, to using LinkedIn Navigator and encouraging sales team members to share marketing content, Colleen breaks down what is and is not working on LinkedIn today. Check out the full episode, or read the transcript below, for details. Resources from this episode: Visit the Intero Advisory website Connect with Colleen on LinkedIn Transcript Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth and this week, my guest is Colleen McKenna, who is the founder and CEO of Intero Advisory. Welcome to the podcast, Colleen. Colleen (00:27): Thanks, Kathleen. It's great to be here. Kathleen (00:29): I'm excited to have you here. We're going to talk about one of my favorite topics. But before we get into that, I would love it if you could introduce yourself. My listeners know I'm not a big fan of reading people's bios because I hate when people read mine and I have to listen to it. So I always ask my guests to tell a little story about themselves, how you know, what they do, how they got to the point they're at in their career, what their company does, et cetera. So I'd love it if you could share that with us. Colleen (00:59): Absolutely. So Intero Advisory is a firm I started 10 years ago, actually 10 years ago this month. So we're celebrating all month long for 10 years and we are focused on LinkedIn for branding, business development and recruiting. So we work with clients all over the country to make sure that they're using all of LinkedIn's best practices to really create ROI and get their work, their name out there, build their brand strategically and build really strong sales pipelines. Kathleen (01:33): I love it. I am a huge LinkedIn fan. It is definitely the social network on which I spend the most time. I just think it's, I especially have really grown to love it in the last, I would say two years. I feel like it's, it's come into its own in a new way. And, and there's so much possibility there and I feel like most people are barely scratching the surface, which is why I was so excited to talk to you. And I think what makes the conversation we're going to have today especially relevant for me is we're going to talk about how marketers can help their sales teams use LinkedIn better and more effectively. And the reason I'm excited about that is you know, I had a conversation actually yesterday that points to this. I was speaking with another head of marketing for another SaaS company. Kathleen (02:29): And she was saying that she finds herself increasingly being pulled into doing things that relate to sales. And I was saying, I'm experiencing the exact same thing. And for everyone, there's a different reason for it. In my case, I'm at what I would still consider a startup. You know, it's a high growth company we're in the early days still, so we don't have a head of sales. So in my case, you know, I'm trying to do everything I can to help the sales team use the tools they have. For her, it's different. She's at a more mature company, but she just had the BDRs put under her as the head of marketing. And so she's all of a sudden having to manage the BDR team. So it's just interesting to me and I'm going on and on, I'm going to turn it over to you in a sec, but I, what I'm seeing as a trend is that for whatever reason, I think there's always been this concept of marketing and sales alignment, but marketers seem to be getting pulled increasingly over to the sales side of the house. Kathleen (03:29): And I think some of that just has to do with the changing nature of how we sell the use of social media, the technology platforms that we have available to us, et cetera. So with that as the jumping off point, I would love to hear your take on this. Do you see the same trend happening of marketers being pulled over and, and working more on the sales side? Colleen (03:50): Absolutely. you know, and I'll just as a little bit of an aside before I jumped really jump into that. When I first started Intero, I really started out as a HubSpot reseller. And then I started to really focus on LinkedIn. Intero actually is Italian for connecting. And it really, our first tagline was where marketing and sales intersect. And I had a circular logo. And I share that because, you know, I've been in sales a very, very long time with what I would say, is a minor in marketing. So, you know, I've, I've done a lot of selling. I love the sales profession, and I think that there has been an increasing move toward aligning them. But I think it often falls to the marketing department. And what I find is that very often the person that brings me into an engagement is that marketing person in order to help the sales team. Colleen (04:52): So, you know, I think that a lot of times when I talk to a CEO, so we do a lot of work in small to midsize businesses. We have some enterprise clients, but even with the enterprise clients, they're still really trying to help the sales team figure out how to best use LinkedIn. So they're creating all the content they're really responsible for that marketing strategy and yet, and they're putting out all of that content on LinkedIn, really creating you know, great videos and case studies and all of the things that they should be creating on the content side, putting it on the right channels. And then it's a little bit like crickets. And so very often where we come in is how do we get the salespeople to really engage more? So I do find that the sales marketing team is always the group. I actually wrote a blog on this. If people don't know where to put it, let's put it under marketing. And I think that marketers are really in the position even more today than ever of being responsible for understanding all of these tools. And unless they have a lot of depth in their marketing department is really hard for every marketer to know all of the nuances and idiosyncrasies, if you will, of all of these tools to make them all effective equally. Kathleen (06:15): Yeah, yeah. It's it is a lot. And, and the scenario you described, it's just, it really hit home because I've constantly found myself in that position of, you know, I oversee a team of people that puts a lot of time and energy into creating content, and then you put it out there and it, and there's an opportunity, you know, either you can get your team to share it, and if they do, you know, number one, it gets more eyeballs on your marketing content. So it makes your life easier as a marketer. But number two, you know, if your salespeople are using LinkedIn for anything, they, you know, it makes it should make their job easier. But it's just funny how so often it feels like pulling teeth, trying to get them to share content, you know, and in our heads it's like, Oh, I'm helping them. Kathleen (07:03): I'm giving them stuff that they can share. And I, and I don't always know why salespeople don't share my content. That is a mystery I have, maybe you could shed light on that. But there's definitely a lost opportunity there. And I, and to me, I think part of it is honestly that a lot of salespeople and also a lot of executives don't understand the massive opportunity that there is on LinkedIn and, or they are using it completely wrong. Like there's so much horrible LinkedIn sales spam. It's unbelievable to me. And so, I don't know, I don't know what you find in terms of like how, how the world of, of sales operators plays out, you know, are they more on the I'm using it, I'm just using it wrong or are they more on the side of I'm not using it? Colleen (07:59): I think the level of proficiency across the sales team is greater today than it ever has been. So always people who are like, I'm on LinkedIn, I'm not really using it to that power user. And, you know, my goal is always to get that, that newer user thinking and up to speed and thinking more strategically and not going down rabbit holes in LinkedIn and that power user, like what's the next way you can be more creative or you can do some things that you haven't noticed have been released on LinkedIn. But I think going back to your point about salespeople, I was working with somebody yesterday. We were doing a coaching session. It was a marketing person, and we were reviewing the content, the messaging that her sales team was using on LinkedIn. And it was, we gathered all of this messaging and what was so interesting and a little deflating was this is a company that creates absolutely stellar content, absolutely spot on, in lots of different ways, video white papers, case studies, blog posts, great imagery, very well done, not one of the messages contained a link to any of those pieces of content. Colleen (09:21): The messaging sort of went, and if you'd be interested, I'm happy to send you some of our blog posts. Why not just send the blog post? Why just not send the link and drive them back to the website? And, and I think partly sales teams and the sort of, you know, very much a generalization, but they don't want to make a mistake. They're not really sure how to do it. They're not confident about putting, you know, an outside before someone's name or their company to get that per, that called out or how to use hashtags. They spend a lot of time explaining what hashtags are. I get that, you know, and and so I think a lot of times the salespeople don't feel grounded. So rather than make a mistake, they choose not to use that content. And they really they're thinking, Oh, I'm just supposed to like, comment or share that piece of that post, but they're then not thinking about, well, how can I spark a new conversation with somebody I just recently connected with, or I should reconnect with by using that content or personally, you know, my new favorite thing, you know, as part of the liking commenting sharing is the sending let's send something directly to a person because if we actually want them to see the content, that's probably the better way to do it. Colleen (10:43): And imagine if each sales person was doing that 10 times in a particular week to a particular person, just the number of touches. So lots of times I feel like they just don't, they don't have the confidence, and they're not thinking about that, how that content really what its purpose is. And there's certainly salespeople that we work with who do use it really, really well and use it very strategically. However, to your point, there's lots of noise on LinkedIn right now, and lots of people who definitely do not you know, have a strategy for how they're using LinkedIn. Kathleen (11:23): And what you said about confidence is so true because as soon as you said it, in my head, I saw one particular salesperson who I worked with in the past. And it was a woman and wonderful sales woman, wonderful person. And I did some LinkedIn training kind of for the sales team. And yet every time she had to post on LinkedIn, she would message me and say, can you get on zoom with me, I want to share my screen. I want you to watch what I'm doing. And I want you to tell me if I'm doing it right. Like she just never had that confidence. And she was so worried that she would do something wrong. And it was, I was like simultaneously very appreciative that she was putting that much care into it, but also simultaneously like, Oh my God, I'm going to spend another 20 minutes on the phone with you for one LinkedIn post. You know what I mean? But so, and I've done, I've been asked to, and I have delivered LinkedIn training to my sales teams in the past. I wouldn't say what I do is particularly phenomenal. So I would love to hear, like, how do you approach that when you're first brought in, how do you, how do you approach working with sales teams and, and getting them up to speed? Colleen (12:38): So we always start with, I absolutely want to know what the sales process is, what the what's the strategy, lots of times there is no strategy. So ideally there's a strategy. How are we weaving LinkedIn into that sales strategy and process? If there's not, can we start with LinkedIn from there? And, and usually if we're working with a company what we're really focused on now is let's create a strategy overall, so that people who are handling recruiting, people who are in sales, people in marketing, everybody's got the same set of best practices and the same strategy. And, and that's important because very often I'll talk to a company and, you know, somebody who's, their in-house recruiter took a LinkedIn, a LinkedIn learning class, and somebody else was on an American marketing association webinar, for example, all good. Right? And somebody else read an article or watched a video on YouTube. Colleen (13:34): So they've got all different perspectives. Let's just have one perspective in terms of best practices and how we're going to use LinkedIn. And then we start looking at profiles. So what I find also with salespeople very often when we're looking at their profiles, once again, I do believe it's a little bit of a confidence issue is there's very little on their profile or a TA it's very resume oriented, so it sets them up. But if I look at that and I see what an amazing salesperson they are, and I'm glad to know they're an amazing sales person. However, if I see that they've surpassed quota for 15 months and they made president's club, I'm probably going to feel if I'm a prospect I'm going to get sold. So I want to start to turn those profiles into marketing tools. How are we solving a problem? Colleen (14:27): Who do we serve? What our market is, what it is. It is it that we actually do take out all those buzz words, dynamic results, oriented, strategic, creative, all of those words, right? It should be their story of who they are, why they do the work that they do. I love when that why is woven in there. And then it goes back to the Simon Sinek video, TED talk, and then have some common about the company. So lots of times people are not recognizing LinkedIn is a search engine, just like Google, Bing, you know, Amazon, Netflix. And we have to, we have to build these profiles in a way that LinkedIn can see some of these really dialed in keywords. So LinkedIn looks at the relevancy of the content on a person's profile. So building them out, even positioning them from third person to first person makes a huge difference. Kathleen (15:19): You know, I love your point about the sales person kind of resume profile on LinkedIn, because it's so true. And I never thought about it until you just said it about the impact that, that has on the prospect. And it is, it's interesting because most people do approach LinkedIn as like, this is my online resume someday. I'll be looking for another job. So here's what my LinkedIn should say. Instead of, as you know, this is my opportunity to market the company that I work for. I mean, I think as marketers, we do that very naturally, but as salespeople, it's a totally different story. So that's really, that's really fascinating. So you start with their profile and do you find when you're working with a team do you find that the, the head of marketing should be involved in like crafting kind of boiler plate language for how they describe the company and then sending that out? How do you handle that? Because also there's that delicate balance of, I'm going to suggest you put this on your LinkedIn profile, cause you really can't tell somebody what to do there. Right. But how do you, how do you handle that? Colleen (16:28): Yeah, it's we really have found that people are very open to this. So it used to be, we would craft the profile for the CEO and really in the last three, four years, it's the leadership team and the sales team. From there, we create a template for different functional areas of the business. I always want to work with the marketing person and that marketing team to make sure we have the most current about us and language about the company. So, you know, I can presume that what's on the website or what's on the LinkedIn company page is accurate, but I can tell you very often, people will say, Oh, where'd you get that? Kathleen (17:07): Guilty. I've done that in the past for sure. Colleen (17:09): Have we all have, so we definitely want to be working through this. I'd love to get the leadership team, their profiles set first because when you interview them to get the information and you talk about what their vision is for the company and for the leadership team, by the way, we really want to incorporate culture into their LinkedIn profile for the recruiting piece, because anybody that they're reaching out to or anybody that might be applying for a job is probably going to find their profile. So let's talk about the culture and let's introduce the value of people in the organization and in core values and all of that. So even with the marketing of a profile for a sales person, rather than that resume, it should always highlight them. I'll say to people, you know what? I could pick up your about section. If I can pick up your about section and put it on a hundred other people, that's not enabling you to stand out. Colleen (18:06): So we want you to stand out and then we want the company. And most people, I can probably count on one hand how many people said I'm not doing that. And those were probably people looking for a new position anyway. And, but they appreciate that. Suddenly it's a little bit like having a, make-over getting it, you know, a brand new hair guide, like you feel good and you feel more confident about the next step. And I hear this all the time. I just had an email from a CEO a couple of weeks ago. He said, Oh my goodness, I looked so different. I get, I get what you were saying, because sometimes they'll say, okay, if you won't do anything else until you do the profile, okay, that's, you know, I'm like, we can't, I can't help you build a really great network. If people can't see who you are, you're not demonstrating, you know, your expertise. So everybody should be building their personal brand and that salesperson, especially. So we want them to seem, we know they're a salesperson. I love salespeople. I love the sales profession, but I don't want you to sell through LinkedIn in the, in the pitching sense of the word. Kathleen (19:12): So I want to pick that apart and talk about that because this is the biggest pet peeve I have about LinkedIn right now is, Oh my God, I get connection requests. I say yes to them. And then the first thing that happens is I get a direct message trying to pitch me. And it's like, are you kidding? And I have one guy right now who must be on his 10th direct message to me. Like, you haven't answered me. How come you haven't answered me? And I'm like, well, because I'm not intending to, you know what I mean? Like it's so off putting and, and drives me bananas. But I think this, I do think a lot of salespeople, you know, look at LinkedIn and they, you know, they think, well, of course, I'm going to sell. And some, some think some are smart and do it a little bit more subtly than others, but I want to hear your take on this. So when you say you shouldn't be selling on there, like how do you advise salespeople to use it? Colleen (20:06): So I want people to connect and build really strong strategic networks. And that's really the second piece building that network. I mean, I'm sorry, building that profile out, then looking at your first level connections, understanding who you're already connected to, and then nurturing that network and expanding your network. So we do a lot of that kind of work for our clients. So we work with a very specific process in terms of touches and cadence using LinkedIn. We're straight forward, no bait and switch. No automation, which I hope we'll talk about for a minute or so a little bit in a little bit. And, but we are trying to build credibility for our clients, whether we're coaching them or we're managing it on their behalf. So I think the goal is identifying the right people, having those people look at your profile and saying, well, I should definitely be connecting with this person. Colleen (21:03): This person may actually be able to help me, or this person looks like they have a lot of expertise in X. I may not need that today, but I want them in my network. And then through the using of content and follow up and engaging on LinkedIn, they stay pretty visible at some point. And I'm fine with, you know, touch three or four asking for a next step, trying to spark that conversation. Absolutely. But I do not believe in, in the pitching. I mean, we are all looking for people in a ready state, however, no one, no one on their LinkedIn profile has that they're in a ready state to buy X. Yeah, exactly. So then me. Yeah, exactly. You know, I need to buy X, X and X in the next three months. So if you are one of those people that sell that, please let me know nobody's doing once again. Colleen (21:56): One of the, the exercises we go through with all of our clients and it usually really draws kind of an aha from pretty much everybody in the group that we're working with is let's download your first level connections. Let's download them and let's break it apart. Let's sort it by position, sort it by company. You know, if you've got a thousand people or 500 people, I don't want people going line by line. I want you to find if you're calling on CFOs. You know, I worked with somebody a couple of days ago, that was his target audience. He had over 1700 connections. He only had 14 CFOs in this network. So that's an action item. Let's start there. Let's jumpstart your network with the right people. So because LinkedIn will say, Oh, you're connecting with CFOs. Here's some more of them. So we need to unlock the network. Colleen (22:51): And I want to start to understand what's your relationship? Do you know them well enough to bring, engage? Should you know them better? Who are your centers of influence? Who are the people in your network that will introduce you? We have to have people in our network that will introduce us. And by the way, we should want to, within our own network become a center of influence. I think that's very, very important. How do you, how do you kind of catalyze that, that network in a really strong way? I mean, 95% of all of our business over the last 10 years has come through the network, our networks. Kathleen (23:31): Now I get this question all the time and I, and I have an answer for it, but I'm really curious what your answer is. What is your advice to people about accepting LinkedIn connection requests? Should they accept all of them? Should they be really picky if they should be picky? What the criteria is? What do you tell people? Colleen (23:51): Yeah, I'm a little bit of, I would say probably a LinkedIn purist. I like to know a lot of the people or have interacted with the people on connecting with. I do not connect with everyone for what I do, Kathleen. I probably have the smallest network in the country trainers and that's okay. My network is built a certain way. I tell CEOs, you don't have to have the largest network. You need to be connected with people who are your peers and who will, you know, you can engage with, so create the, the network that you want for the outcomes that you're trying to achieve. Recruiters, 99% of recruiters, they're going to have 10, 15, 20, 30,000 people in their network. That's the strategy, right? They're just using it as a database of when they're doing their searches. They need more people to show up in those searches. Kathleen (24:45): Yeah. Colleen (24:46): Salespeople. I think that they need to be really thinking about who they're connecting with in terms of, are you connected to your customers? I would say 70% of the people when we look at their network downloading it, they're not connected to their customers, missed opportunity prospects those referral sources, I probably have about 50 connection requests right now in my, in that area, in my network. On LinkedIn people reaching out saying, hi, I can help you with LinkedIn lead generation. Kathleen (25:19): They clearly haven't looked at your profile. Colleen (25:22): They're automated. So I'm really, I'm telling people, be careful with these automated messages, because that is absolutely going to trigger what you just talked about, which is, can I talk to you when can I talk to you? Here's the demo, you know, et cetera. What you said about people connecting and then asking for call every CEO business owner, president, everybody I talk to says the same thing. So, you know, I don't believe in, you know, if I see somebody's profile and they have 20,000 connections, that's great, but I pretty much know that they're not using their network in a really strategic way. You know, they just want a large network and that's fine, depending on what they're doing. If they're trying to just create an audience on LinkedIn and get content out there, I totally understand. But I think for salespeople, it really is time to be much more strategic with how they build their network and how they engage with that network. Kathleen (26:21): So let's talk about that then being strategic, putting together your strategy as a sales person. I mean, as a marketer, I, you know, I'll say I have a very different approach. Mine is to have a bigger audience. And so, you know, and this is one little hack I use that maybe people will find it useful. Maybe people will find it bad? I don't know. But like my last company, for example, I was head of marketing for cybersecurity company and we were selling into the internet of things world. And I didn't have people in the internet of things world in my network because I had a bunch of marketers, but I needed to get the word out about some events we were having. And so I would send connection requests to people like IOT engineers, and I, I'm a big believer. Kathleen (27:10): You have to customize every connection request. You don't just hit it, hit connect and let it go. And so what I would do is invite them to a free event. I'd be like, Hey, I have this, this free, you know, virtual seminar coming up that I thought might be of interest to you because you work in IOT. It's a little spammy because obviously I'm sending them something. But my thought, and you can tell me, honestly, if you think this is bad. So my thought was like, it's a free event. I'm not asking them to buy anything. I'm not asking them to take a meeting and I'm not asking them for a response other than to hit yes on my connection request. But it's interesting because that enabled me to build quite a large network in IOT, which I now have, but now I'm not selling to IOT, which is sort of funny. So that's the approach I've used. I'm just curious, like, I don't know. How do you advise people on that sort of thing? Colleen (28:01): Well, I think it makes absolute sense. So when I talk about nurturing and network, I'm talking about really nurturing that first level, but we need to expand our network always. And so I, you know, I kind of differentiate between marketing and sales in that marketing's casting a wide net, whether from your individual LinkedIn profile or from the company page. So it is about reaching that large audience for the salesperson. It's about more one-to-one though in my opinion, and creating that, that relationship, that conversation. So I'm all about that. I mean, for many of our clients, we have them, we have probably in the last year and a half had about 200 clients in sales navigator and for those sales teams and and marketers who are working with sales teams, that's really the product to be leveraging if you want to use LinkedIn for very intentional and organized B2B business development and sales. So that's, that's more of the numbers game for sure. Kathleen (29:08): So let's, I want to talk about that for a second, because you said not just for salespeople, but for marketers who are working with salespeople I'll admit I've, I've had sales navigator in the past, but I it's been awhile. I'm not as deeply familiar with that tool. So as a marketer who wants to be very deeply involved in sales enablement, what should I know about sales navigator? Colleen (29:31): Just the ability, the power that it has to organize and help create more granular and better searches. There's more filters in there. There's more ability to, so for example if I'm looking at a particular company and I'm sorting and searching by by company, which is account or lead, which is a person, but I could start to build out buying communities within sales navigator and really organize that. So I might say on the average B2B the number, and it might've changed, but somewhere around 5.4 people involved in every B2B buying decision. So now within sales navigator, I can have that account and I can start to save multiple people to that account. So I think that that's helpful as marketers and sales is kind of looking at how should we approach this and what messaging I'm like send to somebody who's the economic buyer versus, you know, an influencer. And so I can get really much more granular within sales navigator. So that's, that's one piece. It also if you have the team version of sales navigator and certain CRM such as HubSpot, Zoho, Salesforce, obviously Microsoft Dynamics integrates into those CRM systems. So where this is, you know, the marketing side might be more involved on this with the CRM. Suddenly now we're taking that record in the CRM and we're bringing the person in and the company. So we see a whole lot more information right from the CRM. Kathleen (31:12): Mm that's good to know. So especially if you're, it sounds like if you're doing account based marketing, particularly this would be really important. And then, and then, so, so one thing is your profile, as you mentioned, getting that straight, and then it's all about having the strategy to expand your wallet, to, to expand your top level connections. But then as you mentioned, nurturing the connections that you have, and it sounds like that's where sharing content comes in. Colleen (31:42): Yes. Kathleen (31:43): I guess where I would love to begin on this, selfishly is that from the standpoint of the marketing leader, you know, I said before, like I work with teams that create a ton of content and I don't know that I've ever had a really great system for working with sales on sharing it. I I've done everything from copying the link to the company, LinkedIn post and posting it in Slack and saying, Hey, could you all please like comment and share on this? And I may or may not get a response, you know, like, I don't think I've had a good solution. So what is the best way to tackle that Colleen (32:21): That's a $64,000 question for sure, because that is one of the most difficult things, regardless of the size of the marketing department. And, you know, LinkedIn does have a solution to that called elevate. And I don't know if you're familiar with Elevate, but it is so Elevate is for enterprise level clients in transition. It was supposed to be shuttered at the end of 2020. It's still in inaction, if you will, through, I think the first quarter of 2021, but it is an enterprise level product, it's an amplification tool, but we have some clients that use it. So it's a LinkedIn product. It has its own app. Their content goes in and basically all the sales team needs to do is go share that content or schedule it. So it's an amplification tool like buffer or Hootsuite or Sprout Social, any of those. Colleen (33:14): And you know, I've kind of leaned lately on, can we work to build trust with the sales team that we actually use a third party amplification tool and either work with the sales team to build it in and schedule it. So they don't have to think about it in the moment, or can we as the marketing team work together to, and we're going to schedule it for you because truly there has, it feels like there has not been a lot of progress in getting people to just share it on their own because we're sending them the link. Kathleen (33:52): I totally agree. But I've tried that too, and it's really hard for me to get people who are willing to say, yeah, go ahead, publish to my account. How do you do it? Colleen (34:04): Yeah, I think it's I think it's a lot of collaboration that there has to be a high level of trust that I'm not just gonna put everything out. You know, you're maybe going to approve it. I mean, we work with clients on this, so we might send them something and say, you know what? These are some of your posts for this week. Just take a look at them. Are you comfortable with this? If so, we're going to schedule them for you. Kathleen (34:27): And are you using a particular tool for that? Colleen (34:30): We do use buffer and we've used Sprout Social in the past, but for some especially independent salespeople, we will, we'll use buffer and sometimes we're just scheduling it right through LinkedIn. You know, I think, I think there sometimes, and I've heard this from salespeople and I absolutely get this. Colleen (34:53): I hear from them and their feedback is I don't want to just share my, all the content that's coming out of marketing. I'm like, okay, that's, that's no problem. Kathleen (35:04): Yeah. Colleen (35:05): Like I get that just to have that conversation with marketing and by the way, build out some of your own content. Right? Look, look it, look at industry content. So maybe you only share one or two pieces a week, or you comment on one or two pieces that comes from marketing, but how are you building your own expertise? How about giving a shout out to somebody else? And sometimes they're like, Oh, I never even thought that I could do that. Why not? So, you know, there's this, how can we have the best approach that's personalized because some people are not comfortable just sharing one type of content. I'm like, does it add value to your network? Colleen (35:49): Yeah. This would, this comes from our industry by all means. Yeah. So it, you know, I think sometimes it goes back to finding the group of people that are going to be the most comfortable doing it within the sales team and letting them do a little bit of experimenting on their own, but say, how can I best support you on this? Because I've noticed that if I just send you something, it doesn't actually get shared. So is there a better approach? And a lot of that comes out of one-to-one coaching. We did a lot of, I do a lot of group webinars on LinkedIn training and typically the second or third part, you know the follow-up, if you will, the marketing will say, should we do another webinar? I'm like, actually, no, you know what, let, can I schedule one, two, a 30 minute one-to-one with each sales person. Colleen (36:45): It's remarkable, Kathleen, what you'll learn. And you know, over the years I can think of clients. I can think of one just recently where pre COVID we, we did an in-person three hour training marketing was there. We had a great training session, but three weeks later, the VP of sales and the marketing director of marketing said, should we do another one? And I'm like, Nope, let's just do a one-to-one let me have a one-to-one conversation. There were five people, five business development professionals in that session. And I talked with each one of them, two of them totally got everything, you know, like they were like, right on, they were doing it. One of them wanted to know how they could then automate. They wanted to, you know, like, how do I automate this? This is awesome, but I need to automate it. Colleen (37:39): We talked through that one person was just like, really spot on super steady. Another person, she just simply admitted like, every time I log into LinkedIn, I go down a rabbit hole, I just get lost. And, and plus, I get so distracted. And then I am like, what am I here for? And she said, I just, I feel like I never accomplished anything. And it has really good network. And then another person who has the most unbelievable network and has closed more new business in LinkedIn than anybody else on the team, subsequent to this conversation, it was as though had never been in the webinar, because she got the, all the strategy and just has an unbelievable network. Was in that group that just didn't really feel confident, pressing the buttons, but a relationship builder, like you cannot a network, just, she's probably one of the best networks I know. And, and people respond to her and she has really developed it as a referral engine. So it's so very often, just those one-to-one conversations. If I was in a marketing department, I would really kind of reach out. Now I recognize the people on this call might have marketing in marketing, might have a hundred, 200 a thousand salespeople. So you really can't manage that. But if you have a smaller sales team, could you just have a one-on-one and kind of tailor a strategy? Kathleen (39:10): Yeah. Now, what do you, how do you advise salespeople in terms of crafting a good post? Especially if they're sharing company content, because I did do a training on this recently, and I have just personal opinions on this, but like, you know, I'm always telling people don't just paste the link. Don't just parrot what the company said in the post. Like, you have to add, you have to add some opinion, you have to add value to what you post and, and often, like longer is sometimes longer is better on LinkedIn. My posts tend to be pretty long. I often find myself having to cut them shorter to fit within LinkedIn character requirements. But I think a lot of the salespeople that I've worked with in the past, err on the side of very, very brief, almost to the point of like, you know, not typing anything with their posts. And so what do you tell people is the right way to tackle it? Colleen (40:06): I totally agree with you. This is where they have an opportunity to stand out. I'm like, you're trying to get somebody who's looking at their LinkedIn feed to pay attention to you, to see your name, to stop, to read whatever you're sharing. This is why I'm not a big fan of just liking, but I am a big fan of commenting and sharing and even sending and put something in there. You know, obviously the number one thing to do is you have other heads who have read that article, watch that video. You know, you need to know something about what's being said and discussed so that you can put your expertise. This is where the salespeople who are really using LinkedIn well are standing out because they are adding value. There very often will be a statistic, a quote that you can pull out a point of view just to elaborate on that. And once again, it goes back to just being confident. If you make it, if you have a typo, you can go back in and edit it. Everybody makes a mistake. It's not a reason not to do it, but definitely pull it out. And as you said, LinkedIn likes longer. Kathleen (41:15): Yeah. Although I think you can you have to use your powers for good and not evil because there is a trend on LinkedIn. Maybe you've heard of it called broetry, and it's these like super annoying long form posts and it's called broetry because it's a lot of mostly white guys and many of them are in sales positions that do it. And they don't even write full sentences. It looks, it's like little short snippets of, and oftentimes I find the topics they write about are like, I don't know. I don't know how to explain it. When I'm done reading it I say, duh. But they take, you know, paragraphs or not paragraphs because they're writing in short snippets. But like they, they fill up a long post with a lot of words that when you add it up, say nothing. And so that's my only pet peeve is like, yes, write longer, but like, really write about something where you can add value and not just to check the box and post. Colleen (42:12): Add value please be positive, stay away from particular, ytou know, like let's not alienate people on LinkedIn. We're trying to do business on LinkedIn and stay away from buzz words. And you know, I read, we read so many posts, our team last year, sourced, you know, in that probably the last 15 months, over 130,000 LinkedIn profiles, C-level leadership profiles. And there's a, probably a pretty good percentage. Really? What does this person do? Who are they? What are they talking about? Right. You know, just let's be professionally conversational. We don't need to sound all corporate. We, we do need to put the context in because while we might know what we're saying, if the other person doesn't know what we're saying, there's no value. Kathleen (43:02): Yeah. Now you earlier mentioned automation. Let's talk about that for a minute. Is there good automation? Is there bad automation? What should we know? Colleen (43:16): I haven't found a great automation solution. I, you know, I wish there was really great automation. However our experience over especially the last four years is that the automation ends up diluting a person's network more than it ends up adding enhancing that network. Will people get business from that? Sure. It's a numbers game. The automation, all the automation I've seen and you know, much like you, Kathleen probably you get a number of people saying here, test this automation, right? Test this LinkedIn lead gen tool. We have the best LinkedIn lead gen tool in the world. And I mean, I've actually stopped testing them. I can't possibly, it could be a full-time job being a LinkedIn lead gen automation tester. And, but what we, what we see is that it presumes two things. It presumes LinkedIn's search algorithm is always accurate. It also presumes that what that person has on their LinkedIn profile is accurate. Colleen (44:24): And I think they're flawed assumptions. And so there's so much nuance, especially if you're using CRM. Like we have, we have a client who uses the CRM. So when we're working with them on LinkedIn lead gen and looking and doing those searches and we're sourcing, we don't take just the first 50 or 60 people that come up in that search, we're actually hand selecting them. So we're looking at that person. Does, do they really fit the criteria? Do we think that they're going to pay attention on LinkedIn? Are there some indicators that tell us they're actually using LinkedIn and then we go into a CRM. So if you don't have a CRM, you know, it probably can, it can work better. Certainly. However, there's so many ways for it to go wrong. And I had one, you know, I mean really, I probably have 50 of them from just this week. Colleen (45:21): I can help you with LinkedIn lead gen. Somebody actually sent me a connection request saying, Hey, you came up as somebody that might be interested in entry-level extra part-time work for data entry. When can we talk about it? I was like, Hmm, I don't know that there's anything on my profile that fits that. I'm not quite sure how that popped up. And you know, I have an example in a deck that I use for training where the keyword was president. So they're looking for presidents of companies. It went to a president, unfortunately it was the president of a student fraternity, right? So it got the right keyword. It got the right title, wrong, wrong context there. So most people, I really I think that most people are pretty aware. Especially if you keep getting these subsequent messages, if you accept that connection request that it's automated. And I get the, I get the goal of wanting to automate. Absolutely. And you know, can make a difference, but you have to think about how does it reflect on the brand? How does it reflect on the person and then make judgements from there for some people they're going to be like, it's worth it, the upsides greater than the downside for our clients who want a more personalized high touch approach to LinkedIn, it doesn't fit. Kathleen (46:48): Also, you can run the risk of getting your account put on hold because a lot of automation tools violate LinkedIn's terms of service, and they're pretty aggressive about sniffing those out. Colleen (46:59): Almost all of them do. So what we've noticed just in this last week is two tools that clients asked us to evaluate for them. And both of them, the limits that they're enabling through LinkedIn are much reduced, are very, you know, they're far less than they were last year because they got found out and they're trying to stay under the radar. And I, and I get that, you know, I mean, but I said, okay, this isn't really going to get you very far, very fast. So I, you know, if there was some really great automation and it's not that the tools are not good, it's just, you have to think about what the unintended consequences are. Kathleen (47:49): Totally agree. All right. We are going to run out of time. And so I have a couple of questions for you. The first one is to sum up kind of what we've been talking about. What are your top three pieces of advice for marketing leaders regarding how they can best help sales teams do better on LinkedIn? Colleen (48:09): The very first point I would make a point, I would mention, is for all marketers, sometimes I think they're really focused on the sales team and how they look on LinkedIn and not to forget how they as marketers look on LinkedIn too, and really build out their profile because that's an opportunity. And number two potentially have a conversation and a little bit more on the training really is to coach them through how to best feel comfortable sharing the content. And I wouldn't even say to a marketing team, can you please talk to your leadership because your leadership needs to buy into and your leadership needs to advocate and explain that this is a really important initiative for the company, but because if the leadership doesn't buy in and it's only on marketing, marketing's going to have a more difficult job. So marketing makes sure that your leadership team is bought in. It's the, one of the first things I talk about to leaders, CEOs when I'm talking about putting an engagement together. Kathleen (49:11): Great piece of advice. All right. Now I have two questions I ask all of my guests. First one is, of course we are all about inbound marketing on this podcast. So is there a particular company or individual that you would point to that you think is a great example of inbound marketing done right? Colleen (49:30): I love Intercom and love what Intercom is doing. I certainly, you know, always HubSpot, right. I, and, and we use Pipedrive. So I'm always sort of watching what some of these companies are doing, but I love Intercom's tool. I love their marketing. I love their kind of look and feel. And I think they have done a really, really great job. HubSpot. I love all their content. I mean, they, you know, they continue. I mean, they've just done such a great, consistent job year over year of standing out and you know, every post I, and I pay attention to quite a few of them teaches me something. So I just love the educational aspect. And so those would be, you know, really two that got a lot of them in my inbox. I tend to look at it a little bit more frequently. Kathleen (50:25): Second question. Many of the marketers I speak to say that they, one of their biggest pain points is just trying to keep up with the changing world of digital marketing. How do you personally keep up with it all? Colleen (50:38): Yeah, that is a work in progress. I love the Marketing Brew from Morning Brew. I love that I can pay attention to that. I do pay attention to Social Media Today. I also pay attention pretty, pretty frequently to Business to Community. I kind of like a little bit of a different lens. I love you know, I've learned a lot. I read the Wall Street Journal every day and there's usually a marketing article or two, you know, kind of woven in throughout the week. Just learn more on the business side, but like how, how companies are looking at things. And so those would probably be my, my main sources of information. Kathleen (51:23): Great. All right. Well, we've come to the end of our time. And so my last question for you is of course, if somebody is listening and wants to connect with you online or learn more about Intero Advisory, what's the best way for them to do that? Colleen (51:39): Absolutely. So our website is Interoadvisory.com and on LinkedIn, Colleen McKenna Intero Advisory. So those would probably be the two easiest ways. We have lots of content on our profile, on our website and our profile. So lots to learn. We write a lot about LinkedIn and so there's lots of tips. Kathleen (52:02): And of course, as always, I will put those links in the show notes. So you can have an easy way of finding them. And if you're listening and you enjoyed this episode, please consider heading to Apple podcasts and leaving the podcast a review. And of course, if you know somebody else who is doing amazing inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork because I would love to make them my next guest. That is it for this week. Thank you so much, Colleen. Colleen (52:28): Thank you so great to spend time with you, Kathleen.

If you’re anything like me. Sometimes you find yourself in the same, repeating, stressful situation… The same situation that you were in last week and you told yourself: “Right, this isn’t going to happen again!” And what do you know… it's happened again. It got me thinking… Why do I always seem to repeat this same pattern? Why can I never seem to learn my own lesson? What is the purpose of me doing all of this? Hmm. What is the purpose…? I’ve heard that before…. “Finding the purpose of your life will enlighten you”

Well here we are again. The big game. Wow. Lots of big fun to be had and even bigger amounts of money to be won (fingers crossed). But what else do we celebrate today I ask? The players? Sure. The game? Of course. The ownership? Yes. The Fans? Without a doubt. But what about me? Hmm? What about ME?! For aren’t I the one who has penned this message of good tidings that you are reading at this exact moment. It’s true. Yet, why is it that I am not celebrated and rejoiced upon? Do I not deserve your praise? Do I not deserve your kind words? Shame. SHAME I say! Shame on you all! Now if you would excuse me I have to go attend mass. For it is SUNDAY after all. #Blessings.

Akhirnyaaaaa selesai juga nih drama yang bikin kita berminggu-minggu deg-degan saking terpesona sama kegantengan dan kecantikan pemain-pemainnya, KFriends! Mantep banget gak sih True Beauty ini? Tapi walaupun dramanya mantep, Tia tetep kepikiran sama webtoon-nya sih... Makanya kita lagi bingung nih, mana yang lebih bagus antara dramanya, atau webtoon-nya? Hmm... menurut kamu gimana, KFriends?

Nesse episódio, Ramon Sanches e Willian Arantes batem um papo sobre Bloqueio e Ócio Criativos. Hmm... Err... O que mais será que eu posso escrever aqui?? ... Bom, acho que é isso pessoal, aperta o play, chama a gente nas redes sociais e vem participar desse papo bacana com a gente.

Convenience is king. Everyone wants the easiest experience possible, but, they also expect that experience to be seamless and delightful at the same time. When it comes to shopping, ecommerce has been able to bring all those elements together better than in-store retailers. But even though brick and mortar retailers are facing an uphill battle, Joe Jensen believes that they aren’t going anywhere, and there are still massive innovations to be seen to make a more cohesive experience. Joe is a vice president in the Internet of Things Group and the general manager of the Retail, Banking, Hospitality and Education Group at Intel. He is helping brands across all industries and of all sizes become more nimble and data-centric. According to Joe, there are simple changes retailers can implement to solve big problems so long as you’re asking the right questions.. Like, what if you could solve all of your inventory issues with a simple technology that has already been in existence for years? And how can brands leverage in-store experiences as more of an enhancement to customers who typically enjoy online shopping but crave something more in-person?On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, Joe answers those questions and more. Plus, he explains how and why traditional retailers should be utilizing more data just like their ecommerce competitors, and he gives a first look into the technologies that will be making an impact on the future of retail.   Main Takeaways:Curation is the Cure: The role of retail is changing, and the retailers who lean into curated experiences will be able to better meet the new expectations of consumers. Rather than offering a little bit of everything, stores will want to give customers a deep dive into a specific brand experience, because that is what they crave when they are shopping offline.Bring On The Data: When digitally-native businesses start to open brick-and-mortar locations, they insist on having as much data captured as possible about the customers who enter their stores. Traditional retailers don’t want or feel they need the data simply because they’ve never used it before. But the nimble retailers that use all the data at their disposal will be the ones to win even against their data-heavy, digitally-native competition.Incoming Technology: From computer vision to full RFID implementation, technology is going to change the way shopping happens for both the customer and the business. But, don’t expect these changes too quickly. Despite the fact that using RFID technology would solve nearly all inventory issues, many brands are hesitant to implement that wholesale change. Why is that? And what will be the catalyst to finally change? Tune in to find out.For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.---Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce---Transcript:Stephanie:Hey everyone and welcome back to Up Next in Commerce. This is your host, Stephanie Postles, co-founder at Mission.org. Today on the show we have Joe Jensen, vice president and general manager of Retail Banking, Hospitality and Education Business at Intel. Joe, how's it going?Joe:Oh, fantastic. Beautiful day here in Phoenix.Stephanie:Good. Yeah, I'm glad to hear it. That is a mouth full title, but I feel like you deserve it when you've been somewhere for 36 years, I saw?Joe:Isn't that scary. I didn't even think I'm 36 years old, so it's weird.Stephanie:That's amazing, actually. I want to just start there. Tell me how did your journey begin at Intel and what are you doing today? What's your day to day look like now versus 36 years ago?Joe:Well, I started as a product development engineer at Intel, and I worked in a bunch of different product disciplines as an engineer. My original life plan was really to leave Intel at about year 10 and go to a startup, but by year 10, Intel stock options were so attractive that I ended up being so that fully handcuffed into the company.Stephanie:Yeah. As with most tech companies, I was this close to staying at Google for the same reason. I'm like, "Oh, it's hard to leave. I see my options vesting in year three and five and seven," and you can just extrapolate it out and it'll keep you there. But it's good-Joe:I shifted from engineering to the business side in about year seven, and I've done a ton of different business startups in the company. I think one of the things I'm most proud of, I've started three businesses that were at zero and have hit over 500 million a year.Stephanie:Oh, wow. So what are the businesses that you've worked on?Joe:Two different ones in an embedded space, and then now the Retail Banking, Hospitality. Education is added into that, but that business started, gosh, it started at single digit millions and we grew it to, well, we're the largest business within the IoT space in Intel I can say.Stephanie:That's cool. So tell me a bit about when you're saying IoT, and then retail banking, now education, how do I imagine what you guys are doing for your partners? What are you providing them? What does that look like?Joe:In our space, the IoT space for Intel is really where IT for an enterprise meets the real world. So in the case of retail, it could be digital signs, point of sales systems, inventory management, building management, time clocks, any system that might be connecting into IT. If you go into the manufacturing side, which is in my space, the manufacturing units, it's where equipment data flows in off of manufacturing side flows into the enterprise.Stephanie:And how many opportunities are being missed right now by not implementing? I would say data analytics like you're talking about. When it comes to inventory I know that Walmart for a while was trying to figure out how to track out of stock issues and it was really hard even when they had the cameras going around the lanes because they couldn't see behind what was in front of it. I don't know if they figured it out yet, maybe you know better than me, but what opportunities are being missed by not having this implemented into retail stores?Joe:As an engineer, I really think about root cause and what's the underlying problem, and we really believe that inventory inaccuracy is one of the underlying problems in physical retail. The problem we have is if customer can't find it in the store, it's out of stock. It doesn't matter if it's in the backroom, doesn't matter if it's hidden behind some items on the shelf, it doesn't matter if it's misplaced. If the customer can't find it, it's out of stock. We have data and research that shows that 1% of customers who experience an out of stock will go through the whole journey of they search on the shelf for it, they go track down a staff person to go find it, they dig through the rack or they don't find it. They say, "Hey, hold on. Let me go check in the back." They go look in the back and then come out and then maybe they go to the POS and they look to see if another store has it, or they'll ship it to your house. 1% of the shoppers are that patient.Stephanie:That's me. I'm that 1%. I did that the other day at Pottery Barn. But then I was very upset at the end because I was like, just like what you said, let me look in the back. Not there. Let me look at our partner stores. Not there. Let me look online. Ooh, it's not the size you want. And at the end I'm like, "Ugh. Okay, goodbye. I never want to come back again." I love Pottery Barn, but.Joe:Talk about a study that showed that if a customer experiences that out of stock frustration five times in a store, they stopped going.Stephanie:Yeah, I can see that. So how do you go about solving something like that to get all your systems on top?Joe:It's really tough. I still think RFID is going to play a key role. Japan has a huge labor shortage problem. They just said because of the aging of their population, they don't have enough labor, and the government decided four or five years ago to put a big push on RFID, and they're mandating by 2025, all consumer goods that are sold in China have to come from the manufacturer RFID tagged. They've also funded a kind of research-Stephanie:And that essentially keeps everything inventoried, right? Then you don't have staff to work.Joe:Yes. What happens is you don't even need staff to check out now because consumers will put their items in a basket, step the basket on the checkouts, and it'll read all the tags and then we'll just pay and go.Stephanie:So it's like the Amazon Go store where they're experimenting with, but I don't know whatever actually happened to that. I went into one in Seattle maybe two years ago, but are they still around? What happened with the Amazon stores like that?Joe:They're still running. They do a tremendous amount of business. I don't know how much of it's because of convenience and how much of it is the novelty. I suspect that they're augmenting a lot of that with human capital behind the scenes. I do think that you're going to find retail bifurcating into two types of retail. You're going to see the hyper-convenient side, which is you just want to take all the friction out. How do I take all the hassle? How do I take all the friction out for the shopper? And I think for staples day to day things, you want to go pick up fast food, fast food should be fast. I won't throw the chain under the bus, but there's a new location near our house, and I swear there's a three-hour wait all day, every day.Stephanie:Oh my gosh.Joe:Fast food just isn't that good for me. I'm not going to wait in line for three hours to get my fast food. And so I think on the hyper-convenient side, that's a big part of retail. Then on the other side, we're calling hyper experience. With hyper experience, shopping is an enjoyment and a pastime for a lot of people. And during the pandemic, obviously you can't go to the mall. You can't go shopping like you used to, but that will come back, and that you want to go and get experiences. You don't want to go to department store A and then walk down the mall to the department store B. And if you close your eyes when you walked in, you wouldn't know which store you're in.Joe:Now, if they all have the same assortment, they all have the same brands, they all have the same brand micro stores inside their department store, what's the experience that you're delivering to the consumer? If you go try to find a piece of clothing and it's out of stock, how's that experience? That's not a very good experience. So yeah, it's funny. I had one of my engineers in China explaining how he really has everything delivered. All his groceries, all his food. China is just hyper convenient from that perspective. It's cool and I love it.Stephanie:But they're used to it. They grew up like that, though. I feel like here, if you try and introduce some of those conveniences, it'd be like everything should be done this way. I don't know. I think Americans are a little bit more like, "Oh, that's weird," because we just know we have to do like this.Joe:It's really cultural differences, but I love this quote from him. And he said, "If I'm going to bother to put pants on and leave my apartment, it'd better be worth it."Stephanie:That's pretty great, and true. I feel that.Joe:It's like if I need batteries, do I want to get in the car and drive and go buy batteries? Well, if I do that and go to the store and they don't have that special battery, then it's really disappointing because now I spent 20, 30 minutes going out of my house to go get something because I wanted it right now and then they don't have it. This is why consumers do it a few times, they just start ordering online.Stephanie:Yeah. And I think the product, like you said, has to be worth it. How are you guys thinking about the experiences piece? Because we've had quite a few guests come on the show who've talked about their retail locations and turning them more into an experiential place, where you go there and you've got the certain music, and the vibes, and maybe you've got a yoga class going on over here and you're going there, not just to maybe pick up your product that you did order online during this time period, but you're also going there to maybe experience something that you wouldn't get elsewhere.Stephanie:A lot of people are saying retail's dead and I definitely do not see that happening. I'm like there is pent up demand to go in person and to go into stores, but I do think now there's going to be a new level of expectations of the consumers, not just going to want to go and shop around, they're going to want something else. How do you do that?Joe:I think that the role for retail is changing in terms of what experience means. If you go back 30 years ago, 40 years ago, shoppers didn't know what the new fashions were until they went to their favorite store and they saw what the new fashions were. So you went to your favorite store whether you're a Neiman Marcus shopper or Macy's shopper or a Target shopper, you went to the store to see what's available, what's in now. And there was that discovery and learning and value proposition that that store was giving you by bringing you things that fit your demographic. Today people know what's current as the store learns what's current. It's what the celebrities are wearing between social media and how quick things are in internet time. There is really no discovery value proposition for mass merchandise things.Joe:Where we see real success is curation. So you go to a store that's not a little bit of everything. It's a store that dives deep into a lifestyle or deep into a fashion style or deep into a demographic, and you go there and you immerse yourself in that brand, and then you immerse yourself in what that brand is about. That's the discovery. If you're someone who likes West Elm, and the style that West Elm delivers, you go to West Elm to see things that would be hard to find on your own elsewhere. If you wanted to go find your own curation, it would take you months of time on the internet trying to go discover all that stuff. But you can go to a store where their buyers have pulled that look together for you.Joe:If you're a Pottery Barn shopper, same kind of thing. You go to Pottery Barn and they've curated a set of things that fit a certain demographic and the lifestyle that they're looking for. So I think you're going to see a lot more of that curation. We did tour in New York City a couple of years ago, and the stores that were really doing amazing well were really deep into that curation idea.Stephanie:Yeah. I love that. I completely agree. I'm thinking right now about going into a Crate and Barrel or something like that, and I'm looking to find new things of a similar style, instead of going somewhere that's exactly the same that I can just find online. That's a really interesting take. How are you viewing the omni-channel experience of making sure that's frictionless when someone's looking online and then going into the store and having a good experience online and offline?Joe:I think a few retailers are starting to really get it right. I think in the beginning, omni-channel was a poor band-aid for I'm out of stock in the store, and I think most customers didn't see that as a good solution. I think the right way to think of omni-channel is there used to be a really consistent funnel for how shoppers and the shopper journey went from just initial discovery all the way through purchase, and that funnel, I think, no longer exists. I think people find out about products all over the place. You might see it on a television show. You might hear about it from a friend, you might see it on social media, and your discovery happens in your life. Omni-channel really ought to enable you to easily find something you're interested in whenever you see it, or whenever you want to. There was an old Burger King commercial Have It Your Way, I think 30 years ago.Stephanie:I remember that.Joe:I think the omni-channel today really means that shoppers ought to be able to engage with a brand or engage with a product wherever and however they want to.Stephanie:And I like the idea too of picking up where you left off. Like if I'm shopping online and then I enter the store or get near it, a subtle reminder of, "Oh, hey. You were looking at this and it's actually here on aisle seven," or whatever it is, directing me to complete the consumer journey. But I don't feel like it's there yet. I know we've got beacons and ability to see when people are entering your store and track that, but it seems like not a lot of retailers have fully leaned into that method to make sure that the full experience is cohesive.Joe:Yeah. I think that we're coming from the early days of that. One of my favorite stories years ago, we were shopping for a Tiffany lamp years ago, a couple of years ago, Tiffany lamp. And I searched online one night, looked at some options. We went to a store and we bought a Tiffany lamp. And for the next two months, every banner ad I had on the internet was for Tiffany lamps.Stephanie:Yeah. It's like I'm past Tiffany now. I'm onto the next kind of lamp.Joe:I think that what's happened is there's been too much of trying to use algorithms and online searches and data to try to target individuals with things that you think they might be interested in and not enough focus on helping people build a cart of things that you are interested in. So, for example, imagine if you turn it around for a minute and the brand for an item that you're interested in has an ability for you to put something that you're interested in, in a basket. And then when you pass a store that carries that item, that has it in stock, they flag you that this thing you're interested is in this store, and it's almost turning it all the way around from the store or the brand pushing to having the brand help guide you to where you find things.Stephanie:Yeah, that's really good. That's the kind of world I would like to live in where it actually is helpful and not annoying. I was just speaking with another guest about text messages and how certain retail locations will be like, "Come on in for 20% off," and I'm like, it's not helpful when I'm sitting on my couch, watching The Bachelor. It's helpful when I'm walking into the store and they're like, "Hey, you better make sure you buy that rug from World Market because here's a coupon now. So make sure you finish the journey and you don't just walk in and out." But yeah-Joe:You're reaching to the point that's one of the things I think the retailers especially are missing, and I don't know what a good analogy is, but I think that discounts and sales and coupons are an overused tool and they influence a lot of people, but not everybody. I think that for some people being first is more important than getting it on sale. For other people something scarce and having access to it before it runs out. So I think there's a lot of opportunity, even just convenience. Take a grocery store, nearly every grocery store I've ever been in, they put all the staples in the back, and they run with 19th century's retail logic of, oh, if I make people walk all the way through the store, they might buy some more stuff.Stephanie:Not me, I got blinders on. I'm like I need my milk and goodbye.Joe:It turns out that the convenience stores like 7-Eleven sell a ton of milk. I don't know if you've ever bought a gallon of milk at 7-Eleven.Stephanie:I have, yeah. Hey, my two year old, desperate times desperate measures.Joe:And it's about convenience. So if I were in a grocery chain, in fact, I talked to one about this big chain recently and said, "Why don't you take your house brands of the staples and put them in a section in the front of the store where they're super convenient and mark them up, make them the same price or maybe even a little bit more than the branded stuff." And the answer was, "Well, we tried that and it didn't work." I'm like, "Oh, when did you do that?" "It was like 10 years ago." I'm like, "People have changed a lot in 10 years."Stephanie:Yeah. I'd rather pay more to get right to it. So what are some maybe interesting stories like that, where they have listened to your advice and they've seen good results? Or anything where you're like, "Oh, I remember this one customer did this and they increased revenue a bunch because of this one subtle tweak in the store layout or how they did their products or inventory," or whatever it may be.Joe:We'll start a little bit maybe with I think that pretty much in every case when we've helped a retailer test or try a technology, the results always exceed the indicators that they put forward. And the very be wilderness thing to us is that even though these solutions look to deliver tremendous results and impact, they still don't scale them.Stephanie:I don't think.Joe:Years ago we had a partner that was putting cameras in the ceiling to measure shopper engagement, how long does it take for a staff to engage a customer? And they happen to have as an artifact of that, I won't say the brand, but they had a brand of popular, very popular Cola was in the camera view on the shelf. And they observed that this diet version, this Cola was out of stock almost all the time. So they went to the head of all stores for this giant grocery chain and said, "Hey, I think that there's an opportunity for you to..." Actually it was, I'm sorry, the brand, they went to the brand and said, "You got a not at stock problem in this grocery chain." The guy they talked to said, "Oh, there's no way. I was head of merchandising in Southern California. We have people in that store twice a day checking inventory. Its inventory are stocked twice a week. We are never out of product."Joe:And I'm like, "Oh, really? Here's some video of how much you're out of stock." And it turned out that within a half a day that they stocked, they would sell out and they would be out of stock all day, for two days. The problem we run into is you put process in place and you tell people to follow the process and it may or may not happen. So they look at this and they're like, "Well, there's tremendous value in having this product in stock. It's a driver product for the store." If they're out of stock, and the store cares that they're out of stock. The cost of deploying the solution was probably $30 a month per store, not a huge thing for one of their top 70 driver products, and yet it never scaled.Stephanie:Interesting.Joe:And you feel this thing. There was another one where the labor, they showed this 30% increase in tool sales in a major chain by tracking the staff and shopper engagement and improving that. It was really simple solution. Almost never scales. Now one that we have seen scale, Theatro makes a Voice over IP ear piece set up for staff. So if you go to, I think, well Bass Pro Shops, as an example, who's the one that does jeans and apparel for teams? They all have an ear piece and a radio.Stephanie:Oh, Alister? Gap.Joe:Anyway, it doesn't matter. A lot of retailers use radios, and there's a cost in the radios, and for a parody, they can switch over to this Voice over IP, and this is one where we're seeing people test it, and then in a matter of weeks completely changed all their devices over. The value in that if you look at it, if you're on a radio network, everybody that has an ear piece in their ear hears all the chatter from everybody all day. With this new solution, you can address a message to an individual person. So only the person you want to talk to gets the message. Then there's the ability to ask for stock and deliveries and things like that. So they've also built the ability, some of their customers, if somebody drives up to do a pickup, you order online, pick up at the curb, you don't want there to be a high friction experience. You want to be able to pull up, very quickly have somebody bring your item and leave.Stephanie:So where do you think then the future of retail? What does it look like with all these new... Some of them feel like little tweaks, a radio where you just talk to who you want. To me, some of those things feel little. Are there not enough incentives for these retail stores to change? I know you had mentioned Wall Street maybe beating up on retailers a little bit when it comes to wanting to try new and innovative things. What do you think is holding back retail right now?Joe:I think a big part of it is Wall Street, again, back to that root cause problem. There's a set of retailers that we think of as digital media, and these are brands that started as a purely online brand, and now they're going to open up stores and they realize once they get to about a billion dollars or so in revenue to get to the next level, they've got to go physically open stores or expand their reach.Stephanie:Yeah, like Warby Parkers of the world.Joe:Yeah, exactly. And these digital native retailers, when they come into the physical world, they expect access to the same kind of insights that they've been getting with their online entity. They want to understand how many shoppers are coming in and when? What's the dwell? When people are picking things up and putting them down and not buying them, it's like something in your cart that you took back out. And they come in with a long list of insights that they'd like to be able to get in the retail operation. The question in Intel is how can you help me find people that can bring these solutions or help me deploy these solutions? And when I go to more traditional brick and mortar retail, the conversation is trying to convince them they should have these insights.Joe:So I think that a part of it is the digital natives come from a world of when you're online only, the only insights you have into your shopper is through the data trail they leave behind them. I think if you go to brick and mortar, they're not used to capitalizing and utilizing that data. Talked to one partner recently, they haven't validated this, but they said that the amount of data that Walmart generates in a day would take 26 years to upload to the cloud, being given traditional techniques.Stephanie:Wow.Joe:So there's a tremendous amount of data created in the enterprise of retail every day. And we think with IoT and the cost of compute coming down so much, and the ability to use AI to get insights, you can utilize a lot of this data at the edge without incurring the costs of moving it to the cloud and trying to process it there. I think that if you imagine that you're moving petabytes of data to the cloud, and you're trying to find the needles in the haystack, it's a really big haystack. How about if I just try to sift through the insights real time as they're occurring in the store?Joe:We talked to a major fast food chain who prides themselves on fresh product, and one of their major problems, I won't say what the product is, but they were throwing away 40% of their product to maintain the freshness, and they wanted to have a short wait because they understood freshness was important, and freshness was important for the brand, but they were having a huge product waste problem, and they wanted to use predictive analytics to understand what's happening in the parking lot? What's happening in the drive through and what's my queue look like in the store so they could predict when to put product in the cooker versus cooking it always, and then having it there just in case.Stephanie:Were you guys able to help with that?Joe:Absolutely. That kind of change drives tremendous business cost savings, but also ensures that your product is fresh and that your customers are satisfied in having to wait for product. So when done well, we think these insights deliver not only customer satisfaction, but also tremendous business impact.Stephanie:I mean, that also makes sense for why a lot of the more Legacy Retailers are scooping up all these DTC brands and keeping them separate and learning from them to see like, oh, what are you guys doing over there? And then starting to integrate them into the org to maybe be brought up to speed a bit with how maybe retail should operate from a digital perspective and what are the expectations coming in from someone who's used to that? And how can it get implemented into the org? We had someone on from Kellogg's who said just that. They would acquire different DTC brands, but then keep them off on their own so they didn't get too mixed into the Kellogg's culture because they wanted the DTC brands to stay as their own brand. So they didn't, I guess, turn too corporate if it happens. I don't know.Joe:Maybe not say corporate. I think you don't want to turn them old school.Stephanie:Yeah, exactly.Joe:[crosstalk] We see that same thing, and you mentioned the expectations. One of the ways we explained this consumer expectations, every time you have a better consumer experience on your mobile, better app experience, in the back of your mind, you wonder why every experience isn't that good. I'm old enough that I used to travel where you had to go to the ticket counter to get your boarding passes before you could print it at home, and then they went to kiosk where you could print them at the airport and it was an amazing improvement, and then they went to actually really pretty good apps. So airline apps, you can see if there's a meal on the plane, you can pick your seat. You can do quite a few things, check the status of the incoming flight, et cetera. Airline apps are really pretty good, and I travel a ton and I stay in hotels all the time. Why are the hotel apps worse than the airline apps? Why can't I pick my room?Stephanie:That's true. Why? I'm sure you probably asked them before.Joe:Well, and actually it's interesting. It turns out that the most hotel chains are using a third party service to assign and block rooms.Stephanie:Got it.Joe:So they don't actually have control over that, which is kind of crazy.Joe:And so I think what happens is anytime you have this better experience as a consumer, then it raises the bar on your expectations for every other experience. Cabs were, I've never enjoyed a cab ride. Not once in my life, I think.Stephanie:No, never.Joe:Uber realized early that there was a huge amount of friction in getting ride and people hated cabs. You'd call for a cab, all they would do is throw it on the radio network and maybe a cab responds, maybe not. You didn't have any predictability. When you get to your location, the last thing you want to do is sit there in the cab on the street corner and spend two or three minutes paying the cab driver.Stephanie:Yeah, awkward.Joe:And they understood that there was this huge friction. Well, now that Uber has taken the friction out of getting a ride, consumers see friction elsewhere in their life, and like why do I have this friction? Why is this not as good as an Uber?Stephanie:So what areas do you think are the biggest friction points when it comes to retail locations right now? And what do you wish things were looking like maybe over the next couple of years? What are you guys planning for? Where are you hoping the world will be in like three to five years?Joe:Well, we think that you're going to see a lot more delivery. I think that grocery delivery was very slowly ramping, pick up at the curb or delivery, and with the pandemic, a ton of people jumped in and tried it that probably wouldn't have tried it for a long time. So the adoption curve for that took a real steep spike up, and we don't think that that adoption is going to slow down. So I think that the grocery, and the grocery business is tough. They run really slim margins, and we talked to one major chain and they said, if you pick up at the curb, that they lose $5. And if they deliver, they lose 10 to 15. So the chains have to figure out how they're going to deal with that. There are a bunch of startups that are building essentially dark store technology. So instead of having a retail location with a giant parking lot and a big square footage and employees, they'll end up with a small industrial space with all the same inventory, but some robotics that will pull stuff off the shelf and pack totes.Stephanie:We actually just talked to a company called Wolseley who talked about how they see the future being... They're B2B also for plumbing and HVAC and things like that, but they're like, "I'm not so sure if retail for us anyways is the way to go anymore," instead of just having a small guide shop out front, and then just having a micro fulfillment center or a warehouse in the back, and then they get your stuff and give it to you on the curb. But why do you need to come in for their business anyways and shop around when a lot of times these contractors already know what they want. They don't need to walk around like they would at Home Depot.Joe:It's funny, I was at a home improvement store recently, and I'm waiting in customer service to make a return, and they're on the phone with a customer who very wisely placed an order for like 50 things, probably contractor, but he did an online pickup at the curb order. They were on hold with this guy and they're talking to each other saying, "We don't have the labor to have somebody spend an hour running around the store to pick all these stuff." What a smart contractor? Why not have the home improvement staff eat that labor versus him send somebody? And he said, "Hey, can you please call me once it's all picked?"Stephanie:That's smart. I mean, how can-Joe:And of course they had to say, "Sure." The manager's like, "Yeah, absolutely." So I think what's going to happen is these expectations are going to keep rising from consumers, and the retailers are going to have to figure out how to adapt.Stephanie:Yeah. It seems it's the pricing thing, though. Right now everyone is expecting a curbside delivery or something to be free because it's new and that's the expectation now, but I could see eventually being like, if you want someone to shop for you, just like you would with any of these grocery delivery shopping apps, you're going to have to pay a little bit to have them go and-Joe:But look at it this way. We talked, again, one of these companies building these systems and we talked to a big chain that's testing it. If you go to the normal financial model for a grocery store, big piece of real estate, prime location, huge parking lot, a lot of physical assets tied up. And if you go to a dark store, really cheap, industrial space real estate, so the real estate model's completely different, the staffing model's completely different, and the financials could be such that, and again, I don't know, but it actually might be cheaper to deliver groceries that way. Now, it's a new build add, it's a new approach, but again it's a huge change, but it doesn't necessarily have to mean higher prices for consumers. And I think what's going to happen is some will try to charge more and others will figure out how to go do it in a way that doesn't cost more.Stephanie:That's a good point. I like that. So how do you think about-Joe:It's competitiveness, right?Stephanie:Yeah. Hey, that's economics right there. Someone will figure it out and put the other one out of business possibly, or not. But how are you thinking about new technology right now? I know we were talking a bit about AI and how it's impacting retail and retail workers. What are your thoughts around that or other technologies that are maybe going to disrupt retail?Joe:Well, still really believe a lot in computer vision, and I think one of the things I'm really proud of for Intel is we've always been huge advocates and protectors of consumer privacy, personal privacy. So as a company, our core culture, our philosophy, our lobbying efforts are all around protecting privacy. Our point of view in using cameras in retail, and we've been helping people do this for many years, we only want to do it in a way that's totally anonymous. So it's not like I'm trying to detect Joe when Joe walks in the store. I want to look at the pattern of behavior that this shopper has anonymously, and what have people in the past that had that similar pattern of behavior been interested in, and how might I go send some staff over to do the right thing there. So take me, for example, if we go to the mall and I'm with my wife or daughters, I'm probably hanging out with him and I'm not really shopping. So I'm wandering in the store-Stephanie:You're that personally couch just chilling.Joe:Yeah, or I might be wandering around in the men's department, but I'm kind of killing time, but I'm probably open for somebody to come show me something, because I'm browsing and you could observe that, oh, this person is slowly walking around and looking at stuff. There's other times when I need another white dress shirt for a business trip, and I know exactly which door to park at, that's the shortest distance to the white dress shirts. And I'm walking in a direct line to a section. Computer vision and AI could detect that this shopper's not browsing, don't bother him. Don't send them a discount coupon or don't send him alert to some new item they might be interested in.Stephanie:Do you have retailers right now who are implementing that? Because that sounds awesome and a really good way to personalize to the shoppers coming in. Do you have anyone who's trying anything out yet?Joe:There've been lots of things to experiment and test, a lot of partners building solutions like that. I think the world of privacy right now is way too fragmented. Too many different points of view, too many different state perspectives on it. You've got some places where cameras are banned. You can't use a camera at all. And I think that the governments really need to get their act together and understand how is the data going to be used? How is the technologies? How can it be done in a way to protect privacy? In the implementations, we advocate no data ever leaves the edge, the system. The only thing that ever leaves the system it's account. This kind of shopper did this kind of pattern of behavior. Everything's fully anonymous. Back in the early days, we actually went and talked to governments across Europe where the privacy is even more simple, and every government entity we talked to was totally comfortable with the approach we were advocating.Joe:I think the computer vision that we think is really going to be profound, and it'll be used for mundane things like trying to understand out of stocks or inventory situation. Years ago, I won't say the name of the chain, but there was a study where they're comparing Amazon to a giant big-box retailer. They went to 25 locations of the big-box retailer and bought these 40 items and then they priced it out on Amazon. The headline for the story was Amazon was more expensive than the physical retail location, which was big news at the time because everybody thought Amazon is just winning on price. But the subtitle of the article, the second message was, but 25% of the items on average were out of stock at the brick and mortar retailer.Joe:We happened to be meeting with the executives in that company about a week after that, story came out and their heads were exploding because they thought they had a 5% out of stock problem. And it turns out that they did in terms of it was in the store, but it had a huge congestion of stuff in the back room that wasn't on the shelf yet. And as we dug into it further, we did a lot of work with them using computer vision and whatnot, this is years ago, and it turned out that one of the behaviors they had that they had to try to break is the people stocking the shelves would bring a box of say large size mint shampoo out and they needed to have the small and the large, but they didn't have the small, so they just filled the shelf up in the large.Joe:So when somebody came to look for the small, it's out of stock, and the shelf looked full because they would face it all out so that every front was full of product, but they didn't have all the products on the shelf. It was really because the people stocking the shelves were not following the process and they're being lazy, and that's where we thought to-Stephanie:Use robots then. Robots aren't lazy and they listen to whatever you tell them. So that must just be the way to fix things.Joe:Yeah, maybe. I guess as a tech company maybe that's a good thing for us, but I think that, again, if it's a staple, you just want it to be convenient, and convenient means the fastest, easiest way possible. To me it's like when I run out a catch-up, wouldn't it be amazing if it was just at my door automatically the moment I needed it? Well, we're not there yet, but at some point, somebody's going to figure out how to make my running out of ketchup something that won't happen.Stephanie:Yeah. I thought there were brands or companies working on that to track what's in your refrigerator and then reorder it if it's out. Maybe that never came to fruition and that was more just that [inaudible 00:36:00].Joe:They've been a lot. We actually had some partners who were doing that years ago as well. The challenge ran into it I think is how do you know what's in your fridge? Does the consumer scan all the barcodes? Do you have the discipline to scan a barcode when you run out. These problems certainly aren't easy to solve. We mentioned earlier out of stock, so I'm working at that problem. We worked with probably, I don't know, more than 20 big retailers on trying to see how RFID could help solve their inventory accuracy. Then we would always start with taking one of their stores and we would do a really deep physical inventory. We never found any retailer that had better than 65% of their skews correctly counted.Stephanie:Wow. That's sad.Joe:Then if you want to be able to compete with an online-only retailer who gives free shipping, you probably have to give free shipping, but wouldn't it be ideal if you could deliver all of your stuff from a local store so that you minimize the shipping time, you minimize the shipping cost. But if you don't know what your inventory is, then you take an order assuming you've got really close delivery, but then it's out of stock in the store. We talked to the department store who was really aggressively trying to do this fulfill from store, and they were spending on average 20 minutes per item to find it on the floor.Stephanie:Jeez, if they're taking 20 minutes-Joe:That's [crosstalk 00:37:26], right?Stephanie:Yeah, that's wild.Joe:So they were looking at RFID to try to be able to help with that as well. With RFID, you would know where things are in the store. This is another one too. We talked to, gosh, I'm try to really keep people anonymous here, a head of stores executive who came from a large brand who had a lot of stores, and they deployed RFID in all their products in the branded stores, and they've got their sales go up like 60%.Stephanie:So why wouldn't everyone do RFID? We're talking about Japan's doing it with all their stores now, brands who are implementing it, are taking off when it comes to sales. Why wouldn't people? What's the holdup? Why are more people-Joe:That's the big mystery? So if you can figure this out through your interview, please share.Stephanie:I will have to start asking around. I'm like it seems like a no brainer. Is it hard to get your manufacturers to do it?Joe:I think there's a lot of processes that get touched, is one of the problems. There's your supply chain, there's your distribution center, there's all the staff in the distribution center, there's process changes at the store. So there's a lot of pieces of this that end up getting touched. We talked to one retailer, big retailer, who they made the change on the POS. It was a touchscreen checkout for the staff. They had to do a training class to train people on this change, and it was a two hour training class for like 170,000 employees. And they said it was all extra time. You couldn't do it on the floor. So now you've got 340,000 extra hours of labor to make a simple change on a user interface.Joe:I think when it gets to doing these kinds of changes, what happens when there's a return? What happens when there's a return but the RFID tag is no longer in the item? So there's a lot of things that have to change. I think what's going to happen is we're going to see branded retail do this first because they control the supply chain, and you're going to see some really tremendous results. The example I gave you when they were head of brand and retail at one brand, and then went to another one, the challenge with the second one is they had a lot more suppliers, so they had to manage a lot of factories to supply their stores, even though they were all their own brand. It was still a supply chain challenge.Stephanie:Well, it seems like Whole Foods and Amazon are going to be the first ones that can do it. They've got the ability to, especially with Amazon's operations and processes, and they've got the Whole Foods brand going on. They control all their supply chain.Joe:And the Amazon could decide to spend a gigantic amount of cash modernizing Whole Foods infrastructure and Wall Street wouldn't blink an eye. Kroger could never do that because Wall Street wouldn't let them.Stephanie:That's sad, and also just shows how there's, I don't know. It makes you wonder about how a lot of companies right now aren't going the IPO route, and I get it. I get it hearing and seeing the incentives like that, or lack of incentives of wanting to... They talk about destroy your business to make an even better one and how some of the best companies had to do that, whether it be the Netflix of the worlds. But yeah, it seems like a lot is held back.Joe:What do you mean? Private equity, we're seeing more and more where private equity will come in and the leadership of the company will be in favor of a private equity takeover because it can pull themselves off the Wall Street treadmill for a bit to make these fundamental changes.Stephanie:But isn't it usually a bad sign when PE comes in? Don't most of those companies end up going bankrupt when this happens?Joe:I think there's a couple kinds of private equity. Look at Dell. Not a retail case, but Dell they needed to retool Dell and they needed to not be under the scrutiny of Wall Street for a while, and Dell has done amazing things through the use of private equity. I think if the company is fundamentally unsound, private equity might be vulture capital, where they come in and strip things down to the bones and get rid of it. But I think fundamentally sound business that needs to make changes that aren't really possible to Wall Street, I think this is going to be one of the areas where I think there's going to be a lot of money made where private equity is going to go look at some of these really good retailers that fundamentally have to change. And if wall street doesn't change the model P&L expectations, I think private equity will become a much bigger factor.Stephanie:That's a hot take. I like that. That's very interesting. So if there was some data right now that brands should be collecting at their retail locations, that's not really hard to implement, but they should be doing from the start, what comes to mind? Where you're like, "Right away, you should be collecting at least these five attributes on your customers as they come in and you don't need computer vision. You don't need beacons or RFID, but you should at least have this to be able to give a better experience to your consumer." Anything come to mind?Joe:I think that the thing that is most fundamental, and it's still shocking that all retailers don't do this, and that's just counting your traffic. Not counting it daily, but knowing what's happening with your traffic every minute.Joe:But I think understanding your traffic, that's the most important thing for an online business. What's my traffic? Dwell. How long was this shopper in the store? How long was this shopper on my site? What things did the shopper browse? What was their click path for my online? What was their path in the store? For me, if I were going to leave tech and move into retail, I would start with how does an online retailer excel? And how would I try to get all those same insights for brick and mortar? One of the things to me that... There's a tremendous amount of demand created real time in retail. So we saw one study that says 60% of purchases in stores in the US and Europe are for things people didn't know they were going to buy when they went to the store. So a huge amount of real-time demand. You see something, you like it, and you decide you want to buy it. Well, how disappointing is it when you see something you like and then it's out of stock in your size?Stephanie:That's worse sometimes.Joe:That goes from being a point of excitement. You got a little bit of excitement to buy something and then you're let down. What we would say is rather than having mannequins displaying items that the brand is paying you to show this week. We talked to retail after retailer after two or three days of something on the mannequin that sold out, but they're paid to run it for a week. So they're creating demand for something that's sold out because the contract of the brand said you need to show this item for a week. It's funny. If you talk to a giant apparel brand about this problem, honestly, one of the C-suite executive was like, "Oh my God, that's why stuff's always out of stock in the store." I'm like, "Yeah, you have some flexibility and freedom to the staff to put what they have too much of."Joe:We talked to one major department store chain that made that change a few years ago where they said, "Instead of getting paid to run things on the mannequins, we're going to have our staff every evening look at inventory and whatever they have too much of, put that on the mannequin for the next day." And it's amazing how much they were able to sell through inventory before they had the market down. We would advocate that at the front of the store where you've got posters and prints, maybe it's a department store and it's prom dress season, so you're showing prom dresses on the poster, that isn't really relevant to most of your shoppers. Most girls are not prom dress age. Most moms are not at the age of having daughters that are prom dress age. Most dads don't buy the prom dress.Joe:Put a more simple thing in it. Put a digital sign at the front of the store with a camera that will anonymously look at age and gender. And then if you're really sophisticated, you could say, "Okay, well now I'm going try in inventory system and I have too many of something." Phoenix it was a really dry winter. We have too many raincoats. I see a guy coming in and I've got too many men's raincoats. Throw a men's raincoat on the screen. And even the next step, we can estimate the size of the shopper. So I've got a really big guy coming in, but I'm out of extra large raincoats. Don't show them a raincoat. These subtle things, and it's not like every shopper is going to buy a raincoat, but suddenly putting something that's possibly more relevant on the screen than a prom dress is a great way to use that valuable real estate. That's the kind of thing that an online retailer will do. Like Zulily, they introduce thousands of new products every day.Stephanie:Zulily? Yeah.Joe:We met with them one day at one point, and they said in the morning, early in the morning, they have one landing page, and by 8:00 AM, they have 280 unique landing pages. Then they know what demographic, what bucket you fall in for them as a shopper. So when you go to their landing page at 10 in the morning, you're going to see something that's full of things likely to be relevant to you.Stephanie:We were talking with Lenovo way early on in the show and they were saying they have 85,000 different landing pages going on at any one point. I'm like, "Oh my gosh, how do you keep track of that?" But he's like, "Oh yeah, that's just how you test and know what people want." So it's just very interesting. But I think Zulily though, when they say how many landing pages they have, they are all about talking about being personalized and stuff, but I think a lot of times they just think having a new name isn't being personalized and they count that towards a new landing page. That does not count just saying, "Hi, Stephanie," or, "Hi, Joe."Joe:The way they were explaining to us is if you shop for baby clothes, you often are buying baby clothes, your landing page would have baby clothes on it. If you don't buy baby clothes, your landing page would not have baby clothes.Stephanie:Yeah. That's more personalized. I like that. Very cool.Joe:The key thing here is that this is a journey. I don't think anybody's going to go make all these changes overnight, but there's the ability to start using this information. I think one starting, know your shoppers. It's amazing how many retailers when we talk to them about what are your shopper's pain points? What are your shoppers not happy with? They don't have a good answer, which is really surprising. For me, when we're out trying to define solutions for the market, the first thing we look for is what's a business problem. And if I go into education, what is the problem that educators are having right now that they're worried about? We go into hospitality, what problem do they need help solving? I often tell people at Intel, we have 3,200 PhDs. If we understand your problem, we can figure out how to solve it. And it's amazing how many retailers don't spend time really understanding what friction or what pain points do their shoppers have.Stephanie:Yeah. I think they're going to have to now. I think now with everything that's happened and you had the acceleration of ecommerce, there will be, like you said, new expectations. And yeah, I think the theme is now there's also all these new technology to use and utilize, and maybe implement if it's allowed, but then putting that extra level of human curation on top of it when needed is going to be the way of the future. So use the tech, but also have it curated and have the human feel to it that people are going to miss over this next year, especially with how much we've been at home all by ourselves.Joe:And after people have really radically modified their behavior for a year. A few months it was one thing, but we're coming up on a year where people have had to change pretty fundamentally how they shop and live. How much of that's going to stick permanently? Like I said, I think grocery, and some of those things are going to way more people will be doing that post pandemic than did pre pandemic and they'll stick with it. What else is going to fundamentally change?Stephanie:Yeah, I agree. All right. Well, I know we're running up on time, so I want to shift over to the lightning round brought to you by our friends at Salesforce Commerce Cloud. This is where I'm going to ask you a question and you have a minute or less to answer. Are you ready, Joe?Joe:I am ready.Stephanie:All right. What's the nicest thing anyone's ever done for you?Joe:Oh my gosh. Our twin daughters were born three months premature, and the amount of help and leaning in that we had as relatively young and new to Arizona couple was just staggering. Probably 80 families leaned in to help us, which is amazing,Stephanie:Man, I'm going to come to Arizona. That sounds like a nice spot to be. How old are your twins?Joe:They're 30 today. That was a long time ago.Stephanie:Nice. I also have twin boys, and I'm a twin.Joe:That's awesome.Stephanie:What's up next on your reading list?Joe:I'm really actually studying more around AI and frameworks and trying to get a bit smarter around the nerdy geek stuff. So I don't have any grade to casual reading. For me it's more about the tech.Stephanie:Hey, that's good. Well, I was just going to ask you what one thing do you not understand today that you wish you did? Is it AI, or are there other things that you wish you understood?Joe:I grew up as a silicon engineer and so I'm a hardware person and I'm not a software developer, I never have been. And so I'm really trying to understand the worldview of a software developer more than a hardware person. At least I think I know I don't know everything. So it's almost like the first step of the 12 step program, acknowledging that I don't know everything, I'm there.Stephanie:Well then maybe you want to check out the book I'm just starting to read. I think it's called Ask your Developer by the Twilio CEO. I just started reading it.Joe:That sounds good.Stephanie:Yeah, there you go. If you were to have a podcast, what would it be about? And who would your first guest be?Joe:My podcast would be on how technology is going to fundamentally transform shoppers' lives.Stephanie:I love that. Who would your first guest be?Joe:And my first guest, I would actually like to have Bezos.Stephanie:As do I. Let's go get him. Jeff, where are you at?Joe:See if he can help you with that.Stephanie:Yeah, I know. Is Moore's law dead?Joe:Moore's law, if you think about it purely as Silicon, which is when Gordon created that, it was really a silicon construct. We're no longer on that same track, but at a system level in terms of what a system does for you, we're on a similar curve. One of my favorite ways to explain this is, if you hold up your smartphone, the amount of compute in your smartphone 10 years ago was 100X the volume and the same thing's going to be true. So if you look at this amount of compute today is going to be one-100th the size in 10 years. Or you could say, "Hey, what would 100X?" It'd be a giant server room could be in your phone. And so if you think about it, it's not a matter of if I have enough compute to do something, it's a matter of when I have enough compute to do something.Stephanie:Got it.Joe:And I think that's probably to me the magic of Moore's law and some people really get it, and they really understand that it's just a matter of a few years until the compute is cheap enough to do what you want. We're talking about AI for a minute, if we go back 10 years ago at Intel, we had $100,000 computer workstation on every one of our factory tools and these are $50 million tools. Workstation and a huge number of engineers creating algorithms to optimize our manufacturing. So we were doing AI that was very expensive 10 years ago. Very few manufacturing processes can afford that. You jump forward to today and it's simple and cheap and easy to have that amount of compute, and the maturity of this AI computer environment is so much improved that anybody can really deploy what took an army of engineers and very expensive compute 10 years ago.Stephanie:Oh, I love that. I forget what show podcast I was listening to where they were talking about AI and saying a lot of the stuff that we have today, we had access to 10 years ago. We just didn't have the compute power and the ability to do it, but people knew it was coming. And I'd always be interested to hear from those people who could see the vision and be like, "I just need another five or 10 years of acceleration and then my product will work." It's very interesting.Joe:If you imagine the amount of compute that you can afford, whatever that number is, $1000, $100, whatever, but the amount of compute you can afford is going to double in performance every 18 months. Okay, double, you can imagine that, but you don't realize it's 10X in five years and 10X is really hard to comprehend.Stephanie:Yeah, it's hard to extrapolate things like that. Well, I appreciate you answering that question. I was like, "Hmm, I know Joe will have a good answer for this one, even though it's very maybe off of ecommerce." But Joe, thank you so much for coming on the show. Where can people find out more about you and your work?Joe:Well, I work for Intel, obviously. We do have a retail landing page at Intel. We actually don't sell anything to retailers. All of our work is done enabling suppliers to retail to build better solutions, and I try to spend all my time, if possible, talking to retailers to better understand the business problems they have so I can help guide my partners in building better solutions.Stephanie:Cool. Sounds good. Well, people will go and find you if they have any questions I'm sure then. Thanks so much.Joe:Thanks, Stephanie.

Ja, dagene er innimellom veldig travle, men likevel dukker alltid spørsmålet opp: Hva skal jeg ha til middag idag? Middagen skal både smake digg, være sunn og gå raskt å lage! Hmm... Da er det ikke alltid like lett å komme på ting, og det blir gjerne den samme "pytt-i-panne-gryta" som du kan! I ukas episode tipser vi deg om våre raske hverdagsfavoritter, og deler alt fra digge og lettvinte fiskeretter, nydelig kyllingsuppe ooooog resten får du vite ved å lytte til denne episoden! Kanskje du vil utvide middags-horisonten din? Prøve noen nye oppskrifter? La deg inspirere =D

I talk about what it was like getting covid, why I was careless, what i think about the shutdown, masks, vaccines etc...

Jen's BF Paul recently reunited with an old college friend. The problem is, it's a woman. Also a problem: she's single, got a job where Paul works, and moved into his apartment buiilding... Hmm... See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Giadha A. DeCarcer is the Founder and CEO of New Frontier Data, the authority in data, analytics and business intelligence for the worldwide cannabis industry. An entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience in business strategy, execution, management and business development, DeCarcer’s began her career in banking, and progressed to technology, data analytics, intelligence collection and reporting, and emerging markets across multiple sectors, domestically and internationally. DeCarcer has launched, built and operated four data-centric businesses, including disruptive technologies for the innovation behind Progressive’s Snapshot and Verizon’s Hum.  She is considered an expert in strategic positioning and risk management in emerging high growth markets, as well as a seasoned professional in government and commercial intelligence data collection and analysis. These core focus areas, along with unwavering entrepreneurial drive, have defined Giadha’s career and her vision for New Frontier Data. DeCarcer is an official member of the Forbes Technology Council; her work has been featured in Forbes, Fortune, CNBC, Fox News, CNN Money, Bloomberg, WSJ and many other top-tier news outlets worldwide, as well as in documentaries and books, including “Mary Janes,” “The Marijuana Show,” “The Great Green Gold Rush,” and “Breaking the Grass Ceiling,” among others. Number 7 on the list of the 20 Most Influential Women in Cannabis by greendorphin, DeCarcer has also been designated as one of The Most Powerful Women to Watch in D.C., is a two-time Stevie Awards Maverick of the Year recipient, a 2019 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year finalist and Moxie Award nominee, and a winner of the Washington Business Journal 2019 Women Who Mean Business Award. Her commitment to education and information sharing inspired her to create The InterCannAlliance (ICA) in 2018. The ICA is a New Frontier Data-led initiative to foster best practices and knowledge sharing amongst newly emerging cannabis markets, introducing what she has coined the “Nine Foundational Pillars” of a healthy and stable cannabis sector. Her continuous pursuit of knowledge has remained the ultimate constant throughout her life and career, also illustrated in her many mentoring and volunteering efforts such as the creation of Women Entrepreneurship Reinforcement (WeR), a program designed to mentor and coach female entrepreneurs establishing their first business.  New Frontier Data, headquartered in Washington D.C., has been recognized in DCInno as one of 17 DC area startups to Watch for 2017 and PC Mag named the company one of just 15 Blazing Hot Tech Companies to Watch. Since the company’s inception in 2014, New Frontier Data has generated the most earned media of any reporting company covering the cannabis industry crossing 15 billion in earned media reach. As one of the winners of the Best in Biz Awards 2019, Most innovative Company of the Year, New Frontier Data is also at the center of the 116th Congressional discussion on federal legalization, providing vetted and unbiased data and analysis to regulators as they assess the potential socio-economic impact of cannabis federal legalization in the United States.   Giadha A. DeCarcer is fluent in five languages including French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.  Born in Italy, raised in France and Spain, Giadha earned an Associate Degree in Business Administration from Miami Dade Community College, a Bachelor of Arts degree in International Relations & Trade from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Master of Arts degree in International Security from the Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.   Interview Transcript Max  Welcome back to Episode 53 of the Built on Purpose podcast with Max Hansen brought to you by YScouts where we higher purpose aligned and performance proven leaders. Today, our guest is Giadha DeCarcer, the founder and CEO of New Frontier Data. Giadha, is an internationalist born in Italy, raised in Switzerland, France and Spain. All places I can't wait to travel back to she has lived in six countries across the globe. She speaks five languages and has a keen appreciation for cultural and economic dynamics. Giadha an analyst and strategist by training, a serial entrepreneur by practice identified the lack of critical data and analysis through her own attempted cannabis industry research. Despite ridicule from her peers across banking, technology, energy and defense. She jumped at the opportunity to bring big data, the pillar in any modern burgeoning industry to cannabis. She has built her team of unparalleled experts from fields just as diverse as their own in 2014, New Frontier data started collecting data streams and cannabis, normalize them, and centralize them to provide vetted polished and actionable reporting to the industry before and better than anyone else worldwide. Ladies and gentlemen, let's welcome Giadha DeCarcer. Giadha  8:57  Max, thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure. Max  9:00  Awesome. Well, I'm gonna start out let's start off for talking about New Frontier data. I just think it's, it's, it's awesome. I want to hear you know, kind of what you guys do. I obviously, the introduction gave a little, little, little piece or a little intro to what you guys do. But ultimately, what problem are you solving and kind of how did you arrive at this? Giadha  9:22  Well, the problem the core problem is visibility and risk mitigation into this booming industry on a global scale. This is an industry that was born of a movement it was some stigma and transparency into it from a financial perspective, from an opportunity and risk assessment perspective was challenging. Arguably, it continues to be challenging. So what we've set out to be to do is leverage cutting edge technology such as Big Data technologies to begin collecting information in a responsible, objective and comprehensive manner, slice it and dice it. So study So that we can get to the point where we're providing actionable intelligence as close to real time as possible to again, stakeholders. Are those looking to become stakeholders in this now global sector. Max  10:14  Awesome. And let me add a little bit on and I and I read a little bit on it, but I'd love to hear it straight from you. What How did you build up the skill sets to finally launch this company? Like, what were the building blocks of understanding and getting your feet wet in big data and getting confident enough to jump into a new industry and apply that those those skill sets? Giadha  10:36  I mean, isn't the whole you fake it until you make it isn't that sweet spot. So if this is you mean, me personally, it was serendipitous I, I say with as much humility as possible that it almost feels like it was meant to be, I had very diverse careers that fit perfectly into new frontier data. So I started as a financial analyst with JPMorgan Chase, right out of college. So I really sort of got the opportunity to understand how financial analytics impact a lot larger company and a market when you're looking at more financial type vehicles or investment opportunities. I then, because of 9/11, I left banking altogether, because I was in New York. And as most of us in New York at the time, it had a massive life changing impact. So I left banking, and I decided that I wanted to join the war on terror. So I got my masters and I decided to go into intelligence collection, then really honing the skills on how do you turn human human, so human collected information into something that's actionable, all the way to the president and to our national security. And then after that, which was a gruesome experience, a very gratifying one, but certainly a very, very difficult career to have. I left after three, four years, and I decided to go into emerging markets. You mentioned I speak languages, I was very fortunate to travel the world. So I figured, you know what, I have financial analytics, I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do with intelligence collection at that point. And so I decided, you know, it was around the time when we were experiencing it, the financial and economic sort of crisis. And so a lot of US companies were looking at the BRIC nations is when the BRIC nations was really hot. So I was like, Well, let me go into emerging markets. When you combine experience in the financial industry, with understanding how to leverage technology and how to collect information for humans to turn it into intelligence and then understanding appreciating an emerging market, then you combine the three, candidly, you have new financial data, where financial analysts with high tech technology collecting information trade into intelligence for an emerging market. So serendipitous, is really the word that I would focus on here for for the answer to that question. Max  12:58  Such an awesome story. So let's take me back to when you were when you went on your, your own search for data and cannabis, what did you find? What did you find? Was there anything out there was it was there a lot of bias? Giadha  13:14  a lot of closed doors, and a lot of people looking at me like I was asking them to show me their undergarments. When I asked for data. And the industry remember that the especially the early folks in the industry, were not folks that weren't necessarily happy to share information with others, right? The industry was sort of operating for many years, decades behind the veil. So not only was there no information whatsoever, it's certainly all of this sophisticated, or I guess, mature market. Usual Suspects were not reporting on the industry, it was too taboo at the time. Countries like the Netherlands that I had really had an industry in one shape or another for decades, hadn't was not collecting any information on it. So that was out. academia had nothing, there was no interest beyond sort of, you know, your brain is a fried egg type of research in terms of cannabis. So it was there was a little bit of research, medical research in California due to sort of cancer and AIDS, etc. But in essence, there was really nothing that we could use from a financial reporting and micro macroeconomic reporting. So we really started knocking on doors, and we spent a lot of time a time building trust within the industry, so that folks would open up to us. So I, the first few years, I was attending 50 to 80 conferences a year, just to literally shake hands and meet folks and let them know that we were here to help them and help the industry by providing transparency, objective transparency, and that we're not going to do so at you know, giving away their competitive edge. It was hard. Max  14:56  Yeah, I bet it before we before we went on the air. Giadha and I were talking about Y Scouts transition into cannabis, I think when we first started four or five years ago now, I think we were a little bit hesitant to put it out front and center, just because we didn't know, you know what the rest of the markets that we're working with banks. So, man, we've come a long ways and and this is a legitimate industry that has a huge market ahead. So, you know, one thing I want to ask is, you know, the international experience that you have, I think everybody that has traveled the world and has spent time in other countries and has seen, you know, different cultures, they start to understand how that, you know, kind of helps them in life and in business. How has it helped you in life in business being that internationalist living in so many different countries, and particularly the countries that you've lived in? are, you know, very, very modern companies that you've probably gained some incredible insights and perspectives from But tell me, tell me a little bit about your background and how that's helped in living in those different countries? Giadha  16:07  That's an excellent question. Thank you for asking it. I guess they'd be too too strong points that I'd make there. The first one is appreciating diversity. I'm very proud of the fact that new frontier data, as it's at its birth, was already a diverse company, from a from a gender perspective, from an ethnic perspective, from a background perspective, from a political perspective, religious sexual orientation, you name it even more just for people, and then went on to be eight and then 15. And today, we're almost 50, we were always very diverse. And I think that part of that appreciation came from the fact that I had the opportunity to meet talent, extremely talented people in very different places. So there really wasn't a lot of cookie cutting sort of, you know, I wasn't really looking for a profile, I really was looking for talent, especially given that we were facing unprecedented challenges this industry was so new, the the questions were asking was so complex with no one else answering them. So right off the bat, I wanted to make sure that we had as close to a 360 view into this very complex environment. And so I was able to bring, I was able to appreciate and identify diverse talent, but that diverse talent was also able to connect with me, because I had that experience. So that I think was a huge, a huge benefit of the traveling I've had. The second one, the further along the way in the industry, I think that I was able to appreciate the fact that the industry will go viral and global, probably faster than some of my peers. I remember in 2015, and 2016. So I remember in 2015, and 2016, when the industry was really at the stage where we still had small investors coming in the average check was maybe, you know, 50, or $100,000, a quarter million dollar check would be a huge deal. Everyone was going into cultivation. Everyone was looking at Colorado and California, to some extent some of the newer states. But you know, all the companies that had entered along with me in 2014, were certainly not looking at an international marketplace, they were really focused on planting their flag and strengthening their position in the very local market. Even ancillary services such as New Frontier data. I immediately started traveling, I went to my first international conference in Israel in early 2016. were identified the first company I wanted to acquire which was again an international had an international sort of angle, it was very much CBD and hemp centric. So I think that because my world My, my world was always sort of cross continental. And cross border II possibly. And I guess I did see the international element and opportunity way faster. We entered Europe before any of our peers in North America we're entering, and we started talking about Latin America before anyone else. And we were the first one to put out a global report. So I think those are the two aspects that probably benefited from my early my youth traveling my early stage traveling. Max  19:35  Sure, well, and on that note, let's go to the other side of the coin. Obviously, your traveled has been inhibited a bit from COVID. How has that changed? Yeah. How has that changed? both personally, you know, because it sounds like you're the type of person that just gets charged up by being in a new place and traveling and taking that on as a challenge and enjoying the journey and in adventure of it. But how How has How has it changed both personally and professionally? Not being able to travel and you know, in getting these advantageous positions that you just talked about? Giadha  20:11  Well, on a personal level, I must admit that traveling is exhausting to me. I'm actually an extreme introvert. I don't appear it I know people will say that Oh Giadha, you definitely you're an expert. Uh, no, actually, I lose energy fast when I try when I'm around people. So I've been able to recharge personally, massively because attending in 30,40,50 conferences a year, the Traveling is pretty tasking. However, from a professional perspective, it certainly has been challenging to keep up with some of the nuance, nuances on a regional basis. For instance, we are expanding into Europe, which is why I'm currently in Europe, by the way, and that one of the reasons is because you're the European market is becoming increasingly important, not only from a consumption perspective, but from a production perspective and export import dynamics that I that we will be discussing later this year and reports but but that are going to become very important on a global scale. But but the the, the, we have been fortunate However, in that the because we're now an almost six year old company, we were at a point internally, at least that we were able to focus internally and the market, the market externally sort of did not experience any massive shift. I don't want to say that the growth of regional markets slowed down, because as you know, cannabis consumption has actually gone up pretty much globally under the COVID app and the pandemic. However, when it comes to massive shifts in Dynamics and trends, we haven't seen that. So we've seen sort of more of a linear growth. Thus, we were fortunate that not that there was nothing really that required sort of this, this boots on the ground last year, because of the pandemic, I would say we will however, need to start traveling quickly this year, because we are beginning to see some pretty strong new trends, for instance, in Latin America, with Mexico and other countries, legalizing and of course, in Europe with a variety of bills and regulatory matters that are evolving. But we were lucky the one year I think gave us an opportunity to breathe and to strengthen and to really put our head down and study. But I think that pause is now short lived. I think it's time to get back out there. Max  22:35  Sure. Sure. Yeah, it's coming soon. Speaking of cannabis consumption, I would love to hear maybe a glimpse into some of the trends that you see coming up like, and I'll tell you on the on the micro level for us, I'm in Arizona, in the US and Arizona legalized obviously, for recreation, and it was this past week, where now it's actually the dispensaries are opening up. And I've heard from people that have been to the dispensaries. I haven't been there any my clients this week since they've opened but the shelves are like empty. I mean, and they were preparing they knew that was coming. And so this is on a micro level. And I know we you know your company, this is the data, but I mean, it can let's get into like, What are you? What are you anticipating, as some of the trends as we start to see, you know, we're starting to see states and countries and you know, the like start to start to move towards recreational legalization. Giadha  23:36  So the recreational legalization continues to be centric in North America. So the rest of the world is really much more interested at least for the time being in in medical applications of the plant, not to say that there aren't pockets of interest in adult use. And not to say that there isn't adults use all over the globe. But in terms of legalization, most of the countries outside of North America are very much looking at legalizing medical use before anything else. Again, with some gray areas here and there, there's quite a bit at least half a dozen nations that it's sort of their their loopholes. What we are seeing in North America, which continues to be sort of the most mature consumer market in the world when it comes to cannabis. One of the reasons because indeed there is a mature recreational adult use market is is the during the pandemic we've seen triple and quadruple the size of individual purchases. So certainly a very much a stock up type of trend, which is basically what you just mentioned. So you know everybody and everything off the shelves in fear that they'll run out and not have it. We were not necessarily surprised about this. In fact, when we started talking about this and predicting this Max  24:56  Sorry, no worries. Giadha  24:59  So we Very much like what you saw in Arizona, there is sort of that stuck up mentality, in case you run off and run your runs out. But this is something that we began to discuss, in fact, in March early during the pandemic, because we were also beginning to talk about it potential recession, economic crisis. And during times of recession, economic crisis, sectors such as alcohol, tobacco, and chocolate and condoms tend to do very well. And believe it or not, recreational cannabis would fall in those categories. I think the pandemic and sort of heightened that further because of the potential because of the stress and anxiety that the pandemic itself was bringing to bear. And that's something that we've seen across the board. So consumption went up. The other interesting trend that's worth mentioning is, depending on the population group, depending on gender and age, an increase in edibles and flower. So a little bit of a decrease in vaping, which, again, not surprising, given sort of what we saw happen in the last 18 months with vaping, and the health, potential health risk and health questions around it. But certainly a very large sort of a, which had begun in 2018, with a spike in edible consumption. And a sort of return to flower, especially high quality flower. So this search for very high quality flower. And that's true across North America. And we've seen where that is true in other nations, we've seen that trend also. Sustained. Max  26:40  Yeah, and speaking of So, you know, in the US, I think, you know, in just my travels across Europe, and I think when people travel Europe, I think smoking is a lot more tolerated, obviously in Europe than it is in the US. I think that there's, you know, some differences there. Is, is do you expect the same decrease in vaping? Is that happening worldwide? Or are you talking more in the US? I'm just I just interested in that, just just to see if there's a difference between the way Europeans look at vaping versus the US, Giadha  27:11  So, that is a very much a North American trend for now. And to be candid with you. And we all were always very honest about, you know, if we don't have an answer, and we don't have a data based answer, we don't tell you we don't know, we don't have as much visibility in other parts of the world when it comes to the annual consumption, as we have in the United States and in Canada. That said, the information that we do have in from Europe and Latin America still does support those trends.  Max  27:37  What from your, if you can share what countries are really going to set a precedence, as you see. countries, I don't want to say get more lenient as far as medical, because medical is medical in it, and you have to go through the medical system, but you only think of what countries are leading the way what when you are going to send signals to you that the industry is really making progress in Europe, when they when what countries do want I mean, Germany, like who's leading the charge, in your opinion, like what are going to be the pillars that really lead Giadha  28:11  from the regulatory perspective, in a in an initial sort of early stage consumption perspective, Germany, England, France, Spain, Italy, those are the those are the nations that sort of seem to have the largest opportunities, we are seeing an emergence in interest from Slavic countries. So the former Soviet nations that have northeast, Mediterranean nations are interested. I mean, the whole Mediterranean has high consumption illegally. So there is an emergence of sort of do, again, driven by this economic crisis, right. A lot of countries just like a lot of states in the US are looking at ways to mitigate the loss in revenue. And so taxation of something that is being consumed illegally is a no brainer. Something that is interesting in Europe, however, beyond the consumption, adults use or medical and medical is still most prominent beyond adults use for now is the interest from a b2b perspective, right? So large consumer packaged good companies, whether it is in food and beverage, or health and beauty are interested in entering the space to address consumption in North America and to address consumption in Europe. But there's some very large multinational companies that are looking to come up with new brands that are seeded with CBD infused products, and even THC infused products. So that's something that's interesting, across Europe that we're seeing that I would say is is fascinating to me. And that certainly shows that Europe is maturing as far as perception even if multinational corporation are getting up to speed faster than the individual concern consumer, then the shift is occurring. Max  29:58  Got it fascinating. I'm gonna start switch gears a little bit, I want to go back to something that I think is awesome. I was super excited to have this conversation with you. What does it mean? And because of what I'm going to ask you, but what does it mean to be a woman and minority owned business or business leader? I mean, it's, you're such a powerhouse, I just want to go back to it. You talked about the diversity and everything that that we're in alignment. And that's important to really building, especially a global business doing what you guys are doing, but what does it mean to you? And then second, these might be together. And I could repeat the questions as you as you unfold your answer here. But I believe everybody's fighting something internally, not necessarily in a bad way. But what are you fighting? And what are you fighting against? Is there something that you're that charges you up? So they're they're kind of two separate questions, but I think you'll you'll, you'll crush them together? Unknown Speaker  30:48  Oh, I The second part is certainly something that I'm gonna have to think about. Again, I fight for so many things on a daily basis, I guess that would be the first answer. Listen, as a business owner, regardless of your gender, or ethnicity or business founder, right? Because can my investors own the business, we all own the business, we're also employee owned. But as soon as the founder. It's, it's just it's a constant fight, right? Especially when you're in such a volatile high growth industry, one that had the type of taboos that the cannabis industry had. I mean, it wasn't exactly a walk in the park. And it still isn't, right. So that's true of any as a female and, and as a minority. And as an immigrant. Some of the things that I often find is credibility, right, I went crazy getting degrees from is some of the best companies some of the best  academic institutions in the world just because of this constant feeling that I had to prove that I could be trusted that I was credible that I'm so and i think that that continues. It's something that many women and many minorities will say, I happen to also have an accent doesn't really help because it isn't exactly a British Oxford accent. So there's it when I pitch investors when I especially as we now begin to pitch very large investors, and we begin to work with very large multinational companies. When in North America, there's always a little bit of of that fight of Yes, I know, I'm a woman, yes, I wear red lipstick. And yes, sometimes I wear a very tight pink suit, guess what I still can speak to you and I can, I can sort of hang in here and be at par with you. However, internationally, I will say that being a woman or minority has helped me so the tables have turned a bit while it was excruciatingly painful, the first three, four years. It's not that we are an international company, my diversity and the fact that I'm a woman is actually helping. So there is a day of reckoning, I guess, as I say, in terms of what really drives me every day. It has changed over the years. At first there was this, this really wanting to there's, I've always been very loyal. And I have been very grateful to the talent and the folks that helped me early on. And so there was this massive need to sort of do right by them and make sure that we succeeded. There were a lot of sacrifices made early on by a lot of people. And so there was that drive of do right by all of them, including investors and and and team members. Today, I think I've returned to a little bit of my a pipe alpha, early youth drive where I just want to win. I think that they're we're in a unique position. And this may seem a little superficial. But we have gotten to the point where we're very well positioned to bring transparency into this industry on a global scale. And I think we can do it right. I think when I say win, it's not just making money, when I say win is I think we can truly elevate the discussion on a global scale whereby medicine is is is being allowed, whereby in jobs are being created, where there is social equity. And so those are the things that I begin to think about after six years, and it's exciting to be able to think of these things do you even believe for one minute in the morning, that we could have an impact on such macro level global matters. I mean, I was an international relations student undergrad so these are the types of things that I'm really excited about to see us take an active role and and and i and i think we can and I am working towards doing it. We are Max  34:40  I I really respect the you know, the the idea of fighting credibility but as I was preparing to talk to you, I'm thinking you might have an accent but you you speak five languages. So you could be talking about me and five, you know, four other languages that I don't even know what you're talking about per se. I mean, I know a little bit but So you're not fighting credibility with me. In fact, the interview with you today for me is helping build my credibility, just so you know. So. So I'm gonna move on to some other probably a little bit more personal questions, but I think you'll, you'll enjoy them and so of the audience, but is there a particular motto that you live your life by? Giadha  35:24  Do it. And I know Nike has its Nikes. But hey, I live by, just do it. I've learned early on in life that fear is is probably one of it fear and envy, right or hatred. But for me fear because I'm lucky enough I don't think I I have had much much envy or hatred in my life. But fear certainly. And I decided deliberately that this should be no fear regret, this is something that's awful. So just doing things not to do it thoughtlessly, obviously, not to be, you know, careless, but certainly to just do it, talking and talking about it, thinking about it too long talking about it too long. I it's frustrating to me. And I feel like it can be a waste of time. So the model for me is, if there's something that we need to do when it just do it. And then if we need to go back and tweak the tweak, but just take that step forward. Max  36:17  Got it, love it. And then you talked about winning, which hits home for me, because when I when the when the gloves come off, and I really think about what are we sometimes if I'm frustrated and moving the business forward, or at the end of the day that when I think about what what am I, What's pushing me? and I say the same thing I want to win. But and and I can trace that back to you know, playing a lot of sports and being competitive. And there's a big difference that I had to learn over time, and being competitive in business and being competitive in sports. But what When did you first starting wanting to win? Like what was it? Was it did you? Did you play an instrument? Did you compete? Like Was there anything like early in your childhood that started you down this feeling of like I want to win? or How are you raised? Like, is there something I just want to go back to like, that really connected with me and I, you know, I gave you some of the reasons. For my early childhood. Most of it was sports related but wanting to win. And for the right reasons. It's wanting to win, it's wanting to achieve certain, you know, goals and hit certain pylons with your company, not only not just making money, but that is part of it. But what was the starter or the driver of wanting to win early in your life? Giadha  37:27  I don't know that anyone's ever asked me that question in such a manner. So very, very helpful question. Well, I, I moved every three years growing up, which is why I speak the languages. But with that came a certain level of solitude and independence and autonomy. Every time I shift countries, I had to learn a new language. And as such that getting getting up to speed with everyone else and not feeling like I was left behind was I guess my first I need to win. That said, I think I was born competitive period. In terms of the sports I always played loner sports began, again, the language barrier. So I'm a runner, and I to this day I run. I remember I was in relays and I wanted to win, I wanted to run against the male team and school and I did, and we won. So there was a little bit of there was certainly competitiveness. But if I had to say one experience in my life that wasn't so young, that truly turned things around and made it that sort of ignited that that drive if not passion. early on. When I moved to the United States, I went to community college for about five years. Again, that was the last language I learned English. And I only knew Romance languages. So this one was the hardest for me. And I was older. So having moved here at 16/17 to pick up in your language at that point was certainly a little more challenging than when you're five or six or seven. So it took me a long time to just get my associate's degree. Again, it's a two year degree and it took me almost five years, but I wanted I really, I was very perseverant. And I remember, my goal was to transfer to a to a really good school, I actually wanted to transfer to an Ivy League school. And I took Esau which is English for Spanish or other languages for many years. And finally I was able to take in normal English and I even got to an honors English class, my last year, all with the same professor from Israel to the honors. So I asked her for a recommendation when I applied to Harvard, Yale and University of Pennsylvania and those were the only three schools I applied to. I also took the SAT like 57 times, literally I kid you not. So when I did that, I provided the time you thought it was all typed, and we literally mercy you know, the typewriter and I sent it again with the forms and the next day she came to the seminar and she she called did class to attention and she said that she wanted to discuss Something that was really important. And it was the understanding of not reach, overreaching in life and not to set yourself up for failure. And she used my application to Harvard, Yale and University of Pennsylvania, as an example of overreaching and setting myself up for failure. Something triggered inside of me that day, the humiliation first and foremost was huge. And the lack of confidence from someone who I thought I had made proud, having gone from Israel to honors, was crippling inside. And I did get into Penn. And I sent her a postcard from it. And from that, beyond, it's been sort of this thing of like, I don't care how many times people tell me, I can't do it, I'm gonna win. Max  40:46  I love it. Thank you for sharing that. For those of the for those of you that are listening, and are thinking about ever giving up this is she learned English last out of all of her languages, and then went on to to be successful, you know, in the academia, world, and obviously successful in business. So thanks for thanks for sharing that. And take an SAT 57 times. I mean, there is perseverance. Giadha  41:14  Maybe we feel less but I took it certainly a couple of dozen times I kid you not I took I took this at, at least across the two years period. My first score was 790. And I'm pretty sure you get like, what 600 points for getting your name right. took me a while It took me a while. Max  41:35  I have a feeling here a pretty humble person. So I appreciate this. When thinking about what's your bit, what would you say your biggest professional accomplishment is today, and I have a feeling you're you always think moving forward. Like you've you're humble you're you feel well accomplished to a certain degree. But I know you have your eyes on something moving forward. But let's stop and just think about what what has felt like the biggest professional accomplishment today. Giadha  42:01  The talent that I was able to bring together and I say I and I say that and I shouldn't because it's we write it really has been. We started with four why I started by myself then it was two than it was four and now we're over 40 people across the world. But, but I do still keep the little part of me that says you know what, Jenna, you brought this team together. And with the help of others, but you did and that that, to me is a great accomplishment because the talent of the company is what drives us. Um, I early on, I was not a micromanager. Like, you wouldn't believe OCD control freak, you name it. But I call I call myself a war General, right? Because at a time of war, mistakes cost lives. And so I made that analogy. We have evolved and and certainly I'm no longer that word general. I don't have to be there's incredible talent around me that now leads lives with me. But it's, it's, it's kind of awesome to see. It really is like it's I never thought I could bring that many interesting and unique and intelligent and driven people together in a rather risky journey. This this is still today a risk, like, obviously much less risky than it was five years ago. But there's still it's still an emerging market and you know, so. So that I would say is my feeling my greatest accomplishment. And you're right, my greatest accomplishment, I believe is yet to come beyond. Max  43:36  But man, our worlds just collided as professionals, obviously our entire business is built off of the premise of talent being the number one priority, and really building businesses. So not surprising that that's where you went with the, you know, with the biggest professional accomplishment. What about on a personal side? What would you say you by the way, you've mentioned some good ones. So I'm not discounting anything you've said. But personally, like a personal accomplishment that you look at, like you'd say, that was one of the biggest for me personally. Giadha  44:08  It's gonna sound a little I don't know if it's gonna sound a little petty. I'm gonna say it anyway. I'm nothing if not honest to the fault. Honesty is our core value number one core value New Frontier data. When that incident occurred, I was waitlisted the school one the English teacher, one I went to, I went to university Pennsylvania, yell straight out, say thank you, but no, thank you. But Harvard, Harvard wait listed me and I had seen the movie with honors early on in life. And I had this sort of vision of you know, one day I want to go to Harvard, I was finally able to go to Harvard as an executive for an executive program. December of last year, now well, the year before last. And it was probably one of the most humbling experiences I've ever had. The type of individuals that I sat across and next to I couldn't believe I was there I mean from soon to be president to incredibly successful multinational executives to scientist and folks that have really, that should get Nobel prizes for peace and a variety of other things. And I, it was a very short program, but to me was something that I always wanted to do. And I guess I'm very academically driven. So on a personal level, being able to do that, while working, and while driving forward without sort of stopping to work. I was very excited to take that off my bucket list. Max  45:41  As you should, Giadha  45:43  I think I'm done with studying there now, because it also, after nuts not been in school for like, 15 years, I kind of was like, What the hell was I thinking, Jesus work what. Max  45:54  So, on kind of that note, and this might fall in line with it, what person has had the greatest impact on your life and why? Giadha  46:05  I mean, this is gonna sound a little cliche, but it's the truth. I mean, my mother, my mother, with her presence, and my father through his absence. And you know, and not to get too personal. But I think that the parent dynamic as many of us, as is true for many of us, a truly shaped me, my mother very early on, as early as 10 years old, sort of, remember this as if it was yesterday said, you always need to be autonomous and independent. And the few things that my father ever said to me early on in life, because after that he wasn't around was, knowledge is power. He didn't say it in English, but it basically translated to that, because I could do he had, he had, I believe, nine he spoke then languages, I had three different degrees in two PhDs, which is why education is so in trenched into me, but sort of the idea of being autonomous, that being strong and independent certainly came from my mother and this this need to, to know and to use knowledge, as my strength is definitely driven by by my father while he was around. Max  47:12  Awesome. Well, I have a very strong mother too. So I can, I can relate to that. And I know I do have some Italian friends and their mothers are usually very there, they have presence presence was a great word that to bring the table there. Giadha  47:27  That's one way to put it. Yes. Max  47:30  So I'm going to I'm going to switch gears just a little bit. But. So before, I'm going to take it into some sort of some rapid fire questions, that'll just be kind of short and a little bit light. But before doing so, I want to kind of go back and just see from your perspective. COVID-19, I always talk to the guests that I've had lately, I've always want to, like reach in and find out what good things have come from COVID? Like, what is it? You know, obviously, you haven't had to travel as much. And you said, That's personally kind of taxing on you. So it's probably allowed you to I'm just making some assumptions to do some things personally that you haven't probably done or maybe never did. But what are some good things that have come of COVID. And I always try to concentrate on the positive side, there's obviously a lot of challenges and things that have come up COVID for people and some very unfortunate things, but what are some things that have come positively from the COVID-19 challenges? Giadha  48:27  So I assume you mean for me personally, not for our company? Yeah, you spending time with my family. I mean, one of the reasons I came to Italy was because I wanted to make sure that my entire family was close by I think the is the crisis at this global scale. When many of us are used to being in different states, hell, in my case, we were in different countries, literally, like we see each other over the holidays. And that other than that, it's FaceTime and zooming. But the this pandemic and and I sort of took it I living in Washington, DC, I actually very early on last year felt that the the situation around election was going to make Washington a little bit of a HUBZone. And so I literally just under the umbrella, we can all work remote, I left and I got all my family together in one place. So one great thing is sort of it pushed us and now that we are close together, not to say that we're all in the same house, but we're very close and literally within five minutes we can see each other I don't think we're going to go back to not I think it reminded us after after living apart for most of my adult life, I think there's a renewed appreciation for being close to family. Not just in a time of crisis, but just periods. So that's one big thing. I I'm pretty I've been pretty high stress and high strung for the past six years. Starting this company was a challenging endeavor. But the COVID-19 answer, as you said, the non traveling did allow me or it forced me I'm not really sure which of the two just to be in a little more introspective and to kebab can take better care of myself, not just for me, oh Lord, I need to be strong and healthy, I can't, you know, I, my immune system needs to be strong, I need to work out more, which I've done in the past, but more meditating, sleeping better, drinking less, to say I was drinking that much, but literally like not at all. And I and that is again, a shift that I hope I can maintain. Because the introspection the meditation every morning, well, it's all it's helped me manage my stress associated with everything that's going on. It's also given me a tap of a kind of equilibrium that I had not had before. So I would say that those those two things, I think we're triggered by this pandemic, for me and my family. Max  50:58  Awesome. Well, let's just dig in on that a little bit further, are there, which you spoke of some of them meditation for for mental, and physical well being, but any other rituals that you have stuck with or that you have now that really help you as a person and as a leader, you know, whether it be what you do in the morning, or just rituals that you that you have two different types of workouts, anything like that, that really helped you to perform better as a person and as a leader. Giadha  51:29  I have one. So I've never presumed to be a yogi. Because I don't know yoga. But I do like to stretch. And I do like to meditate. And I like to read about metaphysics I consider myself a spiritual person, I was raised very religious, and I'm today I think, more religious or more spiritual than religious. Every morning, the first five minutes of my morning, literally, I could still be in bed, I stretched my entire body just sort of and take very deep breath to sort of wake up my body first. And then I spend a few minutes just setting I guess, one could say an intention for the day. affirmation. And I literally, it's, I do it before anything else. Like as I open my eyes, I don't want to waste one second of breath of life without a clear intention of what I'm going to do that day. And it's, it was something that was triggered recently, during this pandemic that I had done on and off, and now I just do it well, religiously. I guess. I even though it's not a religion. But yeah, I have helped me set the tone. I know that Yogi's do it, I don't do it or thinking matter in a way that it's as it's supposed to be done. But the idea of setting an intention for yourself for the day, I think is very powerful. Max  52:54  Well, thanks for sharing, there's a, you know, the last three or four guests, they've kind of poked around in this topic. And I've learned a lot and and I guess not ironically, there's been some sort of alignment in, in the thought of really getting things straight in your mind in the mornings. Ian Lopatin is the chairman of spiritual gangster. He's really into breathing in the mornings, with along with some other stuff. But so thank you for sharing that. I'm going to go through this, by the way, I will say has been one of my favorite conversations like Time flies, and I'm sitting here like, Okay, how do I bring this to a close? Because there's so many, I probably only got through the questions that I kind of structurally have in my head, I probably only got through about 20% of the questions. So there's so much more that I could ask, but and I'd love to selfishly, but for the sake of time and to respect your schedule and everything you're doing. And by the way, she's in Italy right now. So it's what time is it there? Giadha  53:58  It's about 7pm. Max  54:00  Okay, 7pm. So we're just getting started about 10am here. But so one, this is kind of selfishly, I want to ask, but hopefully there's other people that are listening that want to know this question, too. So out of all the traveling that you've done, and the places that you live, like I said at the beginning, they're all places that I can't wait to travel back to some of my favorite places, or some of the places that you live, personally. So what is what's your favorite city in the world? And why that you've been to?  Giadha  54:27  Oh, man, that's such a hard question. It's a really hard question. And I have been asked that before, and I really struggle. Because it depends, and I'm sorry to say that but I'll name a few of my favorite washington dc Believe it or not, despite the chaos that it's recently been through is a city that is very dear to my heart does it because of the education I got there, and the friends I have there and my company was born there and the opportunity that it represents is the capital of the nation that gave me everything. I am today professionally. I love Washington DC. It also happens to be a very European looking city for someone who grew up in Europe, and then was sort of shifted over to Miami, I had a very difficult time in Miami. So Miami would not be on that list. But DC certainly is. I love I love Rome. I love Florence. I mean, those are obviously I'm Italian. And so those are, those are the cities that that truly means something to me. And they're just beautiful in terms of the history they bring to bear. And it's really live museums. But to go a little further away from that in terms of truly beautiful places. I had the opportunity to travel to Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, as well as Thailand, Phuket. And I cannot think of more. I at least personally have not seen more natural beauty than I have seen when I went there. Truly in incredible, beautiful places. So I would say those, those are the 10 there is one one last one that I will mention, which is kind of unique for those who have not gone to Petra. And can. I'm someone who's traveled a lot. And that took my breath away. It certainly should be considered one of the wonders of the world doesn't really qualify as a city. But it is certainly a place that I would suggest people go It's really amazing. Max  56:32  I would second that. I'd say one of the most amazing experiences I ever had with my wife was in Cannes for the firework show. We did we didn't even know that was happening there. We were traveling and we were getting they're showing us to our hotel at the JW Marriott i think is where we're staying. And they asked he said by the way, you're going to watch the fireworks show tonight. We're like what fireworks show? And then what a question to ask because now we will go back and watch the fireworks show they have. I think it's over four or five weeks, each country puts together a firework show over the Bay of Cannes, and it's choreographed to music. It's one of the most amazing things you'll ever see. I'm sure you've probably seen that. Giadha  57:11  I know. But I tell you what, I'm going to make it my business. This is something amazing. Max  57:18  It was amazing. I mean it when once they told me about it, and then we were out at the beach club, watching them set it up. I mean, they have barges all over the water with a bunch of police around it because it's the other barges full of explosives, but it was one of the most breathtaking taking things you'll ever see in your life. Like it will like bring you to tears without many fireworks with music. And just it was amazing. So Alright, well I'm gonna move into the rapid fire questions. You've been an amazing guest. I'm going to start kind of bringing us to a close but what we're now going to move into kind of some some quickfire questions. What book Have you read more than once? Or what is one of your favorite books? Giadha  57:54  Hmm. I feel like well, I read his news and intelligence reports these days. I can I can tell you I read many of our reports more than once. And some of them are actually not in English. One that I have read multiple times is called Landry. They don't the night of times that it's it's I don't know that if I was ever translated in in English, but it's a childhood favorite of mine. And I've read it in this adult as well. I I actually don't read books multiple times, if I do is for recreational purposes. And I must admit that I don't read for recreational purposes as much these days. So I would say that's the only one that I can say for sure. And the reason why I have read that one more than once is because that is the book that got me into reading. I used to hate reading until a teacher in Spain differentially save forced me to read this book. And that changed me. So yes, let me get on. Max  59:03  Awesome. What's your favorite song? Giadha  59:09  Hmm.I have quite a few Live To Tell I wrote an essay in college about it by Madonna. That's one of my favorite songs. Max  59:20  But what is your favorite word? Giadha  59:24  strength. Max  59:26  What is something on your bucket list that you're waiting to check off? Giadha  59:30  I had to jump off a plane. I have to do it. I'm a little afraid of heights. I just have to face it. Remember fear? No fear. Max  59:38  If you could teach one subject to schoolchildren, what would it be this is you've been through a lot of school and a lot of different places. But so this is coming from somebody that's been in the international school system. So what would it be one subject to school children? What would it be? Giadha  59:54  I don't know if it's a subject that Max and I don't know if there's one word to explain. But learning that the the idea of learning to be kind and listening and instead of understand others around you, I don't know what that's called. But I think we need more of that. And I don't know if that's a subject in school. Max  1:00:18  Almost like emotional awareness. Yep. Are you a morning or night person? I mean, given the fact that I've talked to you at night and given I heard your morning routine, I'm now confused. Giadha  1:00:31  We're both we're both confused my entire life. I've been a night owl. In the past year, however, I've turned into an early morning person coming to the south of it, and I'm in I'm in rural area, South Italy here. I learned now get up with a chicken. And so I'm becoming and maybe it's because I'm getting older, but I'm now definitely more of a morning person. Max  1:00:52  Awesome. If you could change one thing about the world right now, what would it be? Giadha  1:00:57  Oh, Lord. You keep them light. Hmm. That's judgment. I like to stop judging each other. I don't think it's really helping anybody. Max  1:01:09  Awesome. Well, I'm going to leave you the last word. But before I do, I'm going to kind of close this out. This has been the built on purpose podcast with Max Hanson brought to you by Y Scouts where we higher purpose, purpose driven and performance proven leaders. I'm gonna give the last word did Giadha, give us the last word? Giadha  1:01:27  Well, first and foremost, Max, this is a really fun interview. very thoughtful. So thank you for that. I've generally enjoyed it. And then I would leave any listener, especially women, minority, right. And you know, and folks out there that are that feel that they're facing challenges and want to achieve something that I would leave them with, you can just do. Max  1:01:49  Awesome. Well, thank you for sharing. And if you're listening, please be sure to share the podcast and thank you for being a guest today, Giadha this was amazing. I'll be sure to follow up with you and I look forward to reconnecting down the road sometime soon. Giadha  1:02:03  Thank you. Max  1:02:04  Alright, talk to you soon. Thank you. Bye

Kalo biasanya stereotype yang salah tuh kaum pria, tapi tidak kali ini. Mungkin (?). Tapi kalo bahas salah beli barang sih mau cewek mau cowok juga pasti pernah, tapi emang iya kesalahan itu sepenuhnya di kita?, Hmm....

Humpday is here and imma try out some Tom’s Hot Fries sent in by DaSnackStopAZ. They went with the french fry shape because, let’s face it, who doesn’t love a good french fry. But these aren’t technically french fries if they’re made with potato AND corn. Hmm, let’s see how they snack out. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/inthechips/support

We've been conditioned to look Outside ourselves for the answers. "They must know." Hmm... what else is possible?

What is it like to actually give someone emergency Glucagon? What happens next? This week, Stacey talks to Bonnie O'Neil whose son was diagnosed with T1D at age 5 and is now 24. They had a scary situation while on vacation and out of the country. Everything worked out; Bonnie shares what she learned and what she wants other families to know. Bonnie is the author of a brand new book: Chronic Hope (learn more here). She has a unique family history of diabetes, losing a brother before she was even born and has a older sister who is still thriving today. In Tell Me Something Good this week, a big honor for one of our favorite frequent guests and fun news if your child plays Minecraft. This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please contact your health care provider.   EPISODE TEXT HERE... Check out Stacey's book: The World's Worst Diabetes Mom! Join the Diabetes Connections Facebook Group! Sign up for our newsletter here ----- Use this link to get one free download and one free month of Audible, available to Diabetes Connections listeners! ----- Get the App and listen to Diabetes Connections wherever you go! Click here for iPhone      Click here for Android Episode Transcription  Stacey Simms  0:00 Diabetes Connections is brought to you by Daria health. Manage your blood glucose levels. Increase your possibilities by Gvoke HypoPen the first premix auto injector for very low blood sugar, and by Dexcom take control of your diabetes and live life to the fullest with Dexcom.   Announcer  0:21 This is Diabetes Connections with Stacey Simms   Stacey Simms  0:27 this week, what is it like, what really happens, when you need to use that emergency glucagon, I talked to a mom who found out while on vacation out of the country,   Bonnie O'Neil  0:37 I was just all I could do to stop my hands from shaking and mix that glucagon and get it in him. So point number one was when you go on vacation, make sure that glucagon doesn't stay in your hotel, keep it on your person you just never know.   Stacey Simms  0:52 Bonnie O'Neil's son was diagnosed at age five and is now 24. She has advice about using and carrying glucagon. She also has a unique story. She'll talk about growing up in the shadow of a family tragedy with diabetes, and how she and her sister have overcome that in tell me something good this week, a big honor for one of my favorite frequent guests. And does your child play Minecraft? Stay tuned. This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please contact your health care provider. Welcome to another week of the show where we aim to educate and inspire about diabetes with a focus on people who use insulin. My son was diagnosed with Type 1 14 years ago, my husband lives with type two diabetes. I do not have diabetes myself, I have a background in broadcasting. And that's how you get the podcast. longtime listeners will know that this show is not really about our experience my family's experience of diabetes week in and week out. I don't share a ton of personal information about Benny, but we do talk about our experiences. And I bring that up because I did a show recently with him to mark 14 years, which was a pretty big milestone. And we've done a couple of shows together over the years. I always say Benny is a big goofball. But you know, he's got good things to say I like to talk to him. I'm very proud of him, even though I give him a hard time. And I got a really nice review that I wanted to share. I don't ask for reviews very often. Maybe I should if you'd like to leave a review, you can send one to me at the email address at Stacey at Diabetes connections.com. You can leave them on whatever podcast app you're listening to. You can drop them in the Facebook group. But this one really was nice. And so I wanted to share it and say thank you to Ruth Ann, who posted it following that 14 year episode where I talked to Benny and she says “I listened to it yesterday and came away feeling understood. I've had type one for almost 45 years diagnosed at age 12. Then he was honest in the way teenagers can be when they don't feel pressured to spin things to make other people happy. I found him incredibly inspiring.” She goes on to write “To me The message was you can be upbeat about life. But don't succumb to pressure to sugarcoat the hard realities of managing type one. I think being real is the healthiest approach to coping with a challenging chronic illness. Please tell him thank you from a grandma in Utah, Ruth.” And I will say thank you to you. That meant the world to me. I agree. I think it's so important to be honest to write that line of diabetes can't stop you from doing the things you want to do. But it will stop you and slow you down sometimes right not to sugarcoat things too much. I really appreciate you taking the time to write that down and share it with me. And of course, I will share it with Benny and Wow, good luck to you. 45 years with type one, you're the inspiration. If you would like to tell us something always happy to get nice messages like this. I'm always happy to take constructive criticism as well. I do have a few people over the years who have yelled at me. But I think I'm pretty easy to find either on social media or via the email address. And you can always go to Diabetes connections.com and get all the contact information there. But Ruth boy you made my day All right, we're gonna talk about using glucagon what that is like, and Bonnie's really interesting story in just a moment. But first Diabetes Connections is brought to you by Dario health. You know, over the years, I find that we manage diabetes better when we're thinking less about all the stuff of diabetes tasks. And that's why I love partnering with people who take the load off on things like ordering supplies, so I can really focus on Benny, the Dario diabetes success plan is all about you all the strips and lancets you need delivered to your door one on one coaching so you can meet your milestones, weekly insights into your trends with suggestions for how to succeed, get the diabetes management plan that works with you and for you. Dario has published Studies demonstrate high impact clinical results, find out more go to my radio.com forward slash Diabetes Connections. My guest this week is here to talk about using glucagon and I think we can all From that, but she has another important story that I don't want to gloss over. Bonnie O'Neil has been part of the diabetes community since before she was even born. bit of a warning, this may be hard to hear Bonnie's older brother died when he was eight, his type one went undiagnosed until it was too late. Now, this was back in the 1960s. But we know that's still gonna happen today. Her older sister was later diagnosed, she survived and is still thriving now. And Bonnie has a new book out. It's called chronic hope. So there's a lot to unpack here, including that very valuable information about her family's experience with glucagon. I found this to be a very valuable and eye opening conversation. And I hope you do too. Bonnie, thank you so much for joining me. Congratulations on your book. And I'm excited to learn all about you. Thanks for jumping on.   Bonnie O'Neil  5:48 Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here today. Stacey,   Stacey Simms  5:51 tell me about your son. But he's doing now because he was diagnosed as a little kid. And he is all grown up now.   Bonnie O'Neil  5:57 Yes, I've lived all the stages with him. So he was diagnosed as a five year old and he is now 24. So he's living not too far away from me about 15, 20 minutes, which I guess is every T one D mom's dream when their kid grows up that they live independently, but yet, we can still get our eyeballs on them and our arms around them from time to time. So yeah, he's doing great.   Stacey Simms  6:22 You it's funny because being diagnosed, what does that 19 years ago? Isn't that long ago. I mean, my son was diagnosed 14 years ago. But in some ways, it feels like a different world. Do you mind taking us back to that time, if you could tell us the diagnosis story. And I'd love to also talk about what you all started in terms of management.   Bonnie O'Neil  6:41 Sure, yeah, that's actually an interesting story. So I have diabetes in my family. So my brother was unfortunately died in the diagnosis process when he was eight years old. And that was before I was born. And so my parents had me in their 40s, basically to, you know, replace the child that they had lost. And then my sister was diagnosed when she was 16. And I was eight years old. And so I just grew up with it. We grew up with this fear of it being there. So I was always on the lookout for it. And I remember my first pediatrician when I want to have my first child, I said to him, so how do we test for this thing? Because I don't want it to be in in my child. This wasn't Austin. This is my oldest son, Alexander. And, and he's like, oh, Bonnie, you know, it comes on acutely. We can't just run a blood test every every few months, but you'll know it if you ever see it, frequent urination, and intense thirst. And so I was always looking and so the day that I noticed that in my son, Austin, you know, obviously, there's the major panic, but I had grown up through my three pregnancies, I had done the urine testing for gestational diabetes. And so I knew exactly what to do. I went to the pharmacy, I bought a test kit, and I dipped Austin's urine in it, and it turns deep crimson. And so I diagnosed him at home freaking out going to the doctor and saying, they're like, calm down. This is Odile, like it, maybe it's not type 1 diabetes. I'm like, Well, do you know what else it could be? And so we, you know, I bundle up the three kids and we're living in Connecticut at the time, I took them over to the pediatrician. And he didn't have ketones, because we caught it so early. And so their practice was leaning into something that they told me was what Yale was practicing at the time, although I have an endocrinologist friend from Yale, who assures me they never offered, I suggested that, but the thinking was, if your child doesn't have ketones, you don't admit them to the hospital. Hmm. So we went home, we literally went home without so much of the shot of insulin. As you can imagine, I was just freaking out because my brother didn't make it through his diagnosis story. So I was like, you know if you can remember Terms of Endearment and Shirley MacLaine, like shaky over the crib. Yeah, that was me that night, just like leaning over my son and just making sure all night long that he stayed alive anyway, that the pediatrician, the endocrinologist that my pediatrician was able to find for us was one who really didn't work with pedes. The youngest children they saw were really about 15 or 16. So we saw him The following day, and the long acting insulin that he gave him was Lantus.   Stacey Simms  9:37 I was wondering if that was even approved, because I remember was not really 2000 so it was for little guys.   Bonnie O'Neil  9:43 Okay, it was not it was it was not under age 10 and so I don't I didn't know any of that you know, and so, so that was the first there's two things that were very interesting in our in our care different so that was the one and then when we got to CHOP the Children's Hospital. Philadelphia. A week later, I forgot to say all this diagnosis happened exactly one week before we moved house from Philadelphia. Oh   Stacey  10:07 my god,   Bonnie O'Neil  10:08 I never recommend that moving house be part of your diagnosis to be that as it may that was our case. And so when we got to CHOP our the endocrinologist there was actually very keen to see know what would happen to this child being on Lantus at age five, I'm pretty sure that it's going to work out well, I can't prescribe it. But he came to me that way. So I can leave him on his protocol. So that was interesting. And it worked beautifully. So my son never used NPH. And I had friends at that time, who were very familiar with that insulin and just told me how fortunate we were that he never had to be on that. So that was one thing. And the other was, so my sister, the reason I gave you the backstory on my sister was that I grew up in a family of using exchanges, where you counted your you didn't count carbohydrates, but you looked at food, in terms of whether it was fat, or protein, or carbohydrate. And you gave each one an exchange. And so I was used to that world. And I literally was given a counting book that had both on it, it was the exchanges and the carbs. And it was kind of you could do it however you wanted. They were recommending I just use the carbs, but the exchanges were there as well. So that was interesting. Oh, and then there's a third one.   Bonnie O'Neil  11:33 But I remember. So his diagnosis was shortly after the DCCT trial, results came out and talking about intensive insulin therapy and how important that was. And I remember several visits, going in and talking to my CDE and saying, I'd really like Austin to be on that intensive insulin therapy. And she would, she would look at me like I had 12 eyes and like to say something, and I didn't understand what she was saying. And she didn't understand what I was saying. And it was many months later that I realized that Austin was   Stacey Simms  12:11 using Lantus and short acting together. Yes, exactly, was   Bonnie O'Neil  12:14 exactly. So yeah. So I was sort of living in some a couple of old paradigms and had to get with the program pretty quickly. Yeah,   Stacey Simms  12:22 but what a transitional time. Here was that that he was diagnosed,   Bonnie O'Neil  12:26 it was 2002. Yeah. And I'm so thankful I that is it is that so spot on Stacey, because just a few years earlier, and and the story would have been very different. My sister's story is very different. Sure.   Stacey Simms  12:37 And let's talk about your family for a moment. If we could be there's so much information there. You mentioned your brother, gosh, I can't I'm not even sure what to ask. But he died before he was diagnosed or during his diagnosis story. Was   Bonnie O'Neil  12:48 this in the 70s? The 80s Yeah, it was 1962   Bonnie O'Neil  12:57 Yeah, yeah. So my sister was six years old, my my sister Barb, and my sister Johnny, my brother, Johnny was eight. And so it was Christmas week, and my sister had the stomach bug. And a couple of days later, after she got better, my brother started throwing up. And they assumed that he just had the stomach bug as well. And he may have had that, but it clearly he then slipped into decay. And so by the time he got to the hospital, which was actually New Year's Eve, what he was in a coma. And so he passed away three days later, to make the story even more unbelievable. My mother delivered my sister Betsy, just nine days after that.   Stacey Simms  13:43 Oh my gosh. Oh my goodness. Yeah. You know, DKA is I don't have to tell you this. You know, it is the most dangerous time for people with type one and it's amazing to me how now. Gosh, we are you know, more than 50 years after what happened with your family with your brother? Yeah, we are still having something like 30 to 40% of people who are diagnosed with type one diagnosed in DKA, I know you work a lot are you you've written a lot with beyond type one. You know, are you involved in efforts? Do you see the you know the DKA awareness that's something that you you talk about.   Right back to my conversation with Bonnie and we are going to hear her talk about glucagon in just a minute or two. And when you hear her talk about the emergency redbox, please remember, there are more options now and Diabetes Connections is brought to you by one of those by Gvoke Hypopen. Almost everyone who takes insulin has experienced a low blood sugar and that can be scary. A very low blood sugar is really scary and that's where Gvoke Hypopen comes in. It's the first auto injector to treat very low blood sugar. Gvoke Hypopen is pre mixed and ready to go with no visible needle. That means it's easy to use. Find out more go to Diabetes connections.com And click on Gvoke logo. Gvoke shouldn't be used in patients with pheochromocytoma or insulinoma, visit Gvoke glucagon.com slash risk. Now back to my conversation with Bonnie and I just asked her about her family's tragic experience with DKA and how that's influenced her with what she does now in the diabetes community.   Bonnie O'Neil  15:22 Yeah, I mean, I do write for beyond type one, and I'm very active with JDRF. I'm on the board of the founding chapter, the greater Delaware Valley chapter. And I know that we're doing a lot of advocacy work around that and, and even just trying to get the shift in titling someone has type 1 diabetes, a JDRF, has done a lot of work around that, and is seeing that that shift so that it's, you know, reframing it, so it's not Oh, they got diabetes, or my son didn't get diabetes on June 19 2002. That was when we discovered that he would be insulin dependent for the rest of his life. He was developing the disease before that. And so we're trying to change that language. I think we're making progress. So that there's there's an understanding that you are, you know, certainly with some of the antibody tests, that testing that is being done now to be able to know that, you know, this person's body is being set up to get the disease, you know, if you have, I think it was three out of the four markers. It's, yeah,   Stacey Simms  16:31 well, and I was gonna ask you about that, about T one detect, we just did a show on that. We did an episode on that a couple of weeks ago. And when you think about something like that a person who has type one in their family, like you had and was so front of mind, I would imagine that you would have taken advantage of that with your kiddos, you know, years and years ago.   Bonnie O'Neil  16:48 Yeah. And, you know, back then, and that was something that I asked my endocrinologist was, so should we do any sort of testing and their response, and I had to agree with it was, well, there wasn't anything that they could offer. Other than Gee, I'm really sorry, it looks like your child is probably going to get type one. So the way I've handled it now, as a mother of two adult children who don't have diabetes, is that decision is yours. If you want to be tested, we can get you tested. If you don't want to, I have to respect your decision.   Stacey Simms  17:25 One of the things I really was looking forward to talking to you about and looking forward as a term I really should not use there. But I was very interested in is you were one of the few people I know who has had to use glucagon on their child, and then wrote about the experience. So I really appreciate you talking about this publicly. It is a fear that so many people have, you know, we have never had to break out that red box. And I'm so thankful for that. Would you share that story with us? You're even at home, right? You're on vacation?   Bonnie O'Neil  17:54 Yeah. And I'd be happy to because you know, it's a it's a story that still brings up a lot of emotion in me, but it does have a happy ending. And there are some good takeaway points for your listeners in terms of preparedness. So yes, I'm happy to share the story. My family went on vacation to Costa Rica. So it was my oldest son's first year in college, Austin, that would have made him a sophomore, I think in high school and my daughter would have been eighth grade. And we realized that all the spring breaks were aligning all three kids were in three different schools. And we're like, Yes, let's go and do something fun. So we plan this, this sort of dream trip, you know, where you're going to be renting, staying in a treehouse. And like, I'd have some time at the seaside all kinds of great stuff. So adventure, but fun. Yeah, so we get there and the very the very next day, I think we got there like late afternoon. So the next day, spent a little time poolside and then decided to go to this restaurant for lunch that was literally like an oasis on the seashore. So like in the sand cluster of trees and this restaurant was in these trees on the sand. And so it's just a walk up the beach, it was probably, I don't know, 20 minutes of a walk. We get up there. My son Austin actually ordered the only sensible meal he ordered a pizza which is cooked my husband and I ordered cbj which is raw and my other two kids ordered some sort of salad again raw and when you're in a developing country, you should go cooked rather than right anyway. So you know it was a big piece of pizza and or you know, personal pizza. And so we give this was before wearing a Dexcom so we have no arrows indicating the dress. In which his blood sugar is going, we just have a blood sugar of somewhere around 250 probably. So we have to give a nice correction dose, I have to give the combo bolus that we were doing for the pizza to accommodate for the, for the fat. So it's gonna be dripping in for a while. And I didn't factor in the walk that he had just had. So right after lunch, he and his brother asked to go into the sea and play. I'm like, Sure, that's fine. So they did about five minutes later, he came back and he said, I feel shaky. So I tested him and he was in the mid 60s. And we ordered him a coke. And he started to drink. And still his blood sugar wasn't going up. Eventually, he drank the whole big bottle of Coke, and still really wasn't going up. And I was getting a little suspicious. And then he said, I don't feel well. I feel nauseous. And then I knew we were in trouble. And your mind just immediately goes to like, the cheese was tainted. The basil on it hadn't been washed and was in was unclean. Something, you know. Yeah. And I knew that he had like, over 10 units of insulin on board. And then the next thing I know he he starts vomiting. And I mean, pardon me, but projectile vomiting. And this is one of those moments when you just snap into too high alert gear. And it's to my son, and my, my oldest son and my husband go back to the hotel, get the glucagon because of course the glucagon was with us. But it wasn't with us.   Unknown Speaker  21:39 Right? It was   Bonnie O'Neil  21:40 in the hotel, helping the pillows in case they had a low but now it was it was tucked away with all the other supplies. And so the two of them ran back along this shoreline. And I knew it would have to be at least 30 minutes before they would get back. Right? Because there and back. And actually my son got back before my husband did because the roads were so rutted and so circuitous, that it just took him forever, it seemed to get back in the car. So all the while I don't speak Spanish, I speak fluent French, I don't speak a lick of Spanish. And all of these people were trying to help me and they didn't speak any English. And they all they could do is bring towels and bags for my son. And you know, I knew that if he drank any more, he was just going to vomit it. So there was no point in trying to give him more to drink. And so we just waited. And I have never seen a sunset so fast in my life. Oh, I don't know if it was where we were located on the Costa Rica coast. I know we were having a late lunch. But anyway, it just started to get dim. And by the time my eldest son got back with the the glucagon and cuts all over his bare feet, it was just all I could do to stop my hands from shaking, and mix that glucagon and get it in hand. So point number one was, when you go on vacation, make sure that glucagon doesn't stay in your hotel, keep it on your person, you just never know. Point number two with practice that injecting or at least mixing up glucagon. Every year, when your glucagon expires before you throw it away. Don't neglect that gift of having the opportunity to practice drawing it up because I was going to ask you,   Unknown Speaker  23:27 did you ever do that?   Bonnie O'Neil  23:28 I did it every year, I never threw one away without mixing it up. Because I knew that if I ever needed it, I wasn't going to be able to stop and read the directions. I just needed to know what to do. Because the only reason you would use it is if you're in an emergency. And in an emergency. We don't think so clearly, or our hands are shaking, you might be thinking but your hands are shaking so much that you just need to go from muscle memory. So eventually my husband got their like gate. So I drew it up. I gave him the glucagon. My husband got there. And we're in the car. And I was just surprised Stacey, his blood sugar didn't come right back up. I expected it would come up to like, I don't know, a perfect 110 would have been nice. You can even give me a question 150 I'd be happy with and if it didn't, it was I don't even know if it hit at oh well. And so I remember being in the dark in the backseat of that car just like trying to get every little whiff of the glucagon out and into him. And, and then I just realized I don't have another glucagon. I brought one. I didn't bring two and he's not in a stable enough place. Like I we need a doctor. So thankfully, this was probably the nicest hotel we had ever stayed at. And and I'm really thankful because they had a doctor on call. So we as soon as we got back to the hotel, we asked the concierge to call for a doctor and he was there. Oh probably within 45 minutes, something like that. What did he do for you? Did he give him more like IV glucose? Yeah, so he unfortunately was this big, you know, had a big headboard, big posters on it, and like a poster board sort of thing. And he just hooked an IV up to him and tied it up to the to the bedpost. And so the following morning, when he came back, Austin had a fever by that point. And he said, You know, I can't rule out that this isn't appendicitis, you have to get an emergency surgery in Costa Rica, this was not what I had in mind. And long story shorter, what ended up happening was he said, You've got to get him down to the Capitol to San Jose, four hours back down the way we had come up, you know, just two days before. So we have to do that, you know, it could have been the fever could have been from the food poisoning, which it was, but he said, you know, we have to be safe, it couldn't be appendicitis or something else. And so that was the longest four hour ride I've ever had in my life.   Stacey Simms  26:02 Yeah, it was not appendicitis, it turns out to just be   Bonnie O'Neil  26:07 a lot it was it was just the food poisoning. And he spent three days in hospital. And there again, you, as a diabetes parent know more about diabetes than emergency room physicians do. And it's important that you know that and that you believe in yourself about that. My son, his freshman year in college had to go to the ER for the stomach bug. And there to the emergency room, physicians relied on me for what I knew about how to take care of his diabetes. And so when we were in Costa Rica, the attending physician gave me her cell phone number, and said, I want you to be in touch with me. If this doesn't come around, if his numbers don't go in the way we want them to, we're going to take the pump off. And we're going to do it our way. But I will give you it was basically I'll give you six more hours, I think this was like on day two or something. Because she was letting me manage his diabetes. Right? And but then she said, You know, we're gonna do it six more hours this way. And let me know how things go. And it did it worked out fine. So here's two more points coming to my mind when you're traveling. Don't just take one glucagon, you might need to use a second one when we were leaving the hospital. Among the other prescriptions that the doctor wrote for me. I said, Could you write me a prescription for glucagon because I use the only one I had. And clearly, my son didn't get a stomach bug. It was food poisoning. So food poisoning could happen again. And I want protection from that. And she looked at me with these beautiful, innocent eyes and said, Bonnie, we haven't had glucagon in this country in over 10 years. Wow. And so just don't imagine that it's going to be available for you. So travel with to glucagon when you travel. The other thing was, when we were in the hospital, the only ketone tests they were doing were blood ketone tests, they weren't doing any urine ketone test. So I had to wait until they would come back. You know, they weren't doing blood tests as frequently as we would expect to be doing our ketone tests. So again, don't just travel with a bottle that has maybe 10 ketone strips in it. I had a nearly new bottle of 50 ketone strips, and I was worried that I was going to run out   Stacey Simms  28:29 going forward. I assume you're filming like to travel? I mean, this was obviously a big trip and a big treat. Did you hesitate about traveling again?   Bonnie O'Neil  28:37 I don't think I'll go to Costa Rica. I'm nothing against Costa Rica. It's just the memories are. They're profound. I do try to pay attention to where there is a hospital, which is an easy enough thing to figure out. We have continued to travel that is for sure. In my book, I talk about another episode that happened after that, where he his insulin pump broke, and we were in France, and he had to get a we had to locate him a pump in a foreign country. So that's another fun story. But no, we've continued to travel, but I think it's just being safe, bringing your supplies with you and an abundance of supplies, checking to know where the hospital is. And I think it's it's just about being comfortable. Making sure that you feel comfortable where you are. Well, you   Stacey Simms  29:32 mentioned your book. Let's talk about that. Sure. Yeah. Oh, congratulations. That's Thank you.   Unknown Speaker  29:39 Thank you very excited.   Stacey Simms  29:40 Yeah. So why'd you call it Chronic Hope? Tell me about where that title comes from?   Bonnie O'Neil  29:44 Okay. Well, you might want to edit this out. I'm not sure so I was I was thinking about how much you know, I loved my my son and the care I give for him. This As a chronic condition and the title chronic love came to my mind. And that actually had been my working title for a little while. And as I was working on my book proposal, I did a little research little Google search on chronic love, and it was a porn site. So I changed the title. And actually, once I came up with the subtitle, chronic hope, is exactly what I'm writing about. We all love our kids, we do in a way that we show our love to them, especially as full time caregivers, that just cannot be disputed. But there's some times when we as the parents just lose our way on the hope journey. Because it's, it's so long and so complicated and can be so unforgiving. And we can be unforgiving of ourselves. The message really is hope for us.   Stacey Simms  30:57 I may have to lead with the chronic love, I think that forget about editing that out. That's pretty funny. Oh, my goodness. But you've had this story and you for a long time. I'm curious what caused you to kind of write it now to release it now?   Bonnie O'Neil  31:14 Yeah, good question. Well, I love to write. That's the first starting point. I've been writing for a number of years and have been honing that craft. And as I was thinking about what the next topic was, that I wanted to write about, it just felt like it needed to be a story that I've been living, something that was really true. And that it wasn't just something I'm going through now, which so many of my blog posts words like, you know, it's that short, quick blog post is almost like an instant word. It's like what you're going through at that moment, and you write, but I felt like I needed to write something where I had come out the other side, and actually had some wisdom to share. And once I sort of landed at that place, it was well, this is what I know better than anything else. And living this story out first with my nuclear family. And then with my family with my children, I just have been steeped in that for so long. I speak for the jdrf education conferences, that type of nation summit, and that one of the earliest ones that I did, I was speaking on the psychosocial impact of T one D on the family. And it was the first time I had delivered the that talk and I was I was sharing about, you know, my nuclear family and then Austin's diagnosis and how that impacted me. And I was just really honest, and, and raw, and I talked about my anger, you know, the disease coming back into my family, and just the challenges with my husband, when the two of us were not on the same page and the fear, I carried my need for control, wanting to control the disease, and all of these things. And as I'm looking up at the group that I was speaking to, like, everybody's dabbing their eyes, and sometimes, like really crying and at the end, one man said to me, So when's your book coming out? And I chuckled and kind of tucked that away. And it later, I think informed me very well as to what I should write about next.   Stacey Simms  33:32 What is your I mean, you have more than one son, and I'm sure they are your children are all featured in the book in their own way. curious what Austin? Right Austin? Is your son with time? Yes. I'm curious what what Austin thinks of this?   Bonnie O'Neil  33:44 Well, Austin is a man of few words that he's not   Unknown Speaker  33:47 going to do. Much.   Bonnie O'Neil  33:51 I made sure that in the advanced copies that I have, that he was, he received the first one. And he very graciously accepted it and then said, Thank you. He has congratulated me a few times and said he was excited. I did ask him before I really started the writing, and was just sort of outlining things. I asked how he felt about it. And he said he was fine. And I did say to him, and it's the Absolute Truth. If there's anyone who looks ugly in the book, it's me. It's never hand because I am raw with how I processed my emotions. Because one of the things I feel like in that for us, parents have a child that lives with such a complicated disorder. 24 seven, we take so little time to attend to how we feel, you know, because it's how can I complain when my child has to go through so much. And so we don't really ever name what it is that we're feeling and give ourselves permission to feel what we're feeling. And so then we can't really attend to it and move along from some of those stuck places and I really feel that the You know, the emotional health of a family begins with that center of the mom and the dad. And we need to get our stuff together so that we can create a healthy family emotionally.   Stacey Simms  35:14 I agree it's so interesting because we, as you know, an initial diagnosis. And though those first few years, we as moms, I think so define ourselves by diabetes, it almost seems like we have it like and you come to a realization that Yeah, do not be do not have diabetes, we do not have our child's experience. But it doesn't make the experience of being a mom of a kid with a chronic condition, any less valid. It's just a different experience. And I think I'm hoping, kind of saying the same thing you are in that once you realize that it's a mom, that it's okay to take care of what you are going through, knowing that's different from what your kid is going through, you kind of name it and take care of it and acknowledge it and talk about how tough it is. And right now until you can do that. It's so difficult. Yeah,   Bonnie O'Neil  35:58 it's a kid. It is. And I'm so glad now that there's such increased talk about soul care, because that at least is putting it into the forefront of everyone's minds now. But I think parents of a child with a chronic illness just really need that permission to say, I too need this soul care. I am going through mourning. This wasn't what I was expecting. I was expecting my child to have the freest life imaginable. And they still do. But especially in those early years, it's a lot, we have to mourn the loss of this perfect health we had envisioned for our child, and we have to deal with the fact that Yeah, we are tired,   Unknown Speaker  36:42 a lot.   Bonnie O'Neil  36:43 And it's okay to say I'm really tired. And I think even under, like coming to terms with the fact that a lot of our friends just aren't going to get it. And there's a loneliness that we carry here as the caregivers of our children. And it's okay, and it's not it's once we begin to name it and look at it and explore it a little bit, and how it's affecting us. That's the beginning of healing and freedom.   Stacey Simms  37:09 And I meant to ask you earlier, and it's okay, if you don't want to talk about this at all, how is your sister doing?   Bonnie O'Neil  37:15 She has struggled in the last few years with some complications. She has had, I believe gastroparesis for, I think it's close to 10 years that I think, went largely undiagnosed, and then has been quite problematic in the last few years. She's begun going actually to my son's retinal specialist for some treatments for her eyes. And her second or third treatment, this most recent one, they found that the retinopathy had had gone away. So I'm very thankful for that. So she just maintains the most positive attitude through shouldering this disease through the longest time, but I can see that it you know, it has taken its toll.   Stacey Simms  38:06 And so in your family, you know, you have two people diagnosed at different times, but still almost, it's hard to describe how different it is. We talked about Lantus And then off air, you and I were talking about control IQ,   Unknown Speaker  38:19 right? No,   Stacey Simms  38:20 just a guess of reflection before we go of the technology and the advances of not only I assume your sister has is using different tools than she did when she was first diagnosed.   Bonnie O'Neil  38:30 She is for sure. And I think that has been a great asset to her. So yeah, she's using now the Omni pod and the Dexcom as well. I am so grateful for the time in which we live and for the medical advancements that Austin has been able to take advantage of. I know one of the my friends through jdrf. She said recently, I am so thankful for all of you parents who came before our family did who paved the way because my daughter her daughter was diagnosed at age two or three. I've never known what you have known. She's had the Dexcom as long almost as long as she's had diabetes. I don't know the sleepless nights that you know, I'm confident now like that each generation or micro generation is going to be able to say that to the ones who came before them that we're going to continue to advance and are the lives of our loved ones are going to continue to get better. And that also just gives me a lot of hope.   Stacey Simms  39:36 That's great. Well, thank you so much for joining me, Bonnie. I really appreciate your time. Best of luck with the book. I'm really excited for you. There's nothing like a book launch. And I hope we could talk again soon.   Bonnie O'Neil  39:47 Thank you so much. This has been such a joy to be with you. Thanks,   Unknown Speaker  39:50 JC   Announcer  39:56 you're listening to Diabetes Connections with Stacey Simms.   Stacey Simms  40:01 Learn more about Bonnie and her book and her story at Diabetes connections.com. In the episode homepage, as always, I put lots of links and info there, you could read an episode transcript, if you prefer to. Some people just like to read rather than listen to that it's fine by me as long as you get the info. In conjunction with this episode, I have a contest on social media. This is on the Facebook page for Diabetes Connections, not in the group this week. This is just on the page. And you can win a copy of her book chronic hope. I also want to point out and I know we had a commercial in there, but I think it's really important especially for newer families to know that there are now options when it comes to using emergency glucagon because since the 60s, we've had the red box or the orange box, which were basically the same thing as you heard Bonnie talked about there mixing it up, and the big needle and all that stuff. There are new options. gfo hypopyon, is one that I spoke about, they are a sponsor of the show, they are a you know premixed ready to go shelf stable glucagon. And it's very easy. It's all in the panel ready, nothing to mix and you don't see that huge needle, it's very different. It looks more like an epi pen or an insulin pen and simple to use. There's also baxi me, which is a nasal spray. And that is also very easy to use, I will link up more information about that. I just think it is enormously important to know that these things exist, knock on wood, knock on my head, knock on anything I can find. We haven't ever had to use emergency gun with Benny in 14 years. But as Bonnie illustrated, you just never know. So it's so important to be prepared. I'm also really interested in the future of this stuff. Because I keep hearing more and more people say that we're gonna be using it not just for Super lows, right? I mean, like me, you were probably told if He's unconscious, you know, if you can't keep anything down, that's when you use it. But now there's a new school of thought about using these in much smaller doses for less severe lows. So I don't have a lot of information on that. So I'm not gonna talk too much more about that. But I think that is very interesting. And something to watch. And certainly glucagon in an insulin pump is something that, you know, companies are working on, most notably the iLet from beta bionics. So, as we say all the time, stay tuned. Tell me something good, a big honor for a wonderful member of our community. And that's about Minecraft to just ahead. But first Diabetes Connections is brought to you by Dexcom. And you know, when Benny was very little, and in the bathtub or in the pool, anytime his hands would get wet. I always noticed his fingertips. You know exactly what I mean. Right? We poked him so much. They were just full of these little pinprick holes. It looks horrible. I mean, you can really see it when he got wet at age 16. I am not inspecting his hands. I rarely see his hands anymore, but his endocrinologist does. And we went for a checkup in early January, his fingertips are normal. It's incredible. We've been using Dexcom for seven years now. And with every iteration, we've done fewer and fewer finger sticks G6 eliminates finger sticks for calibration and diabetes treatment decisions that we used to do 10 finger sticks in the past. It makes me so glad that Dexcom has helped us come so far. It is an incredible tool. If your glucose alerts and readings from the G6 do not match symptoms or expectations, use a blood glucose meter to make diabetes treatment decisions or more, go to Diabetes, Connections comm and click on the Dexcom logo.   Over the almost six years of this show, I have been so fortunate to have some guests that really made an impact on me, who I'm really lucky, I think to call friends now, but who I turned to again and again for information. I know I can rely on them. They'll give it to me straight and in a caring way. And one of those people is Dr. Stephen ponder. Many people know him because of his sugar surfing talks and books, but he's a practicing endocrinologist. He's right there in the thick of things in Texas when he can pray and hopefully post COVID runs a fabulous diabetes camp and has lived with type one himself for more than 50 years. He got a really great honor recently, and he says he was stunned to learn that he has been selected for a big honor at the University of Texas Medical branch in Galveston. This is where he went to medical school. And then he stayed there another nine years where he says he became a husband, father, pediatrician and pediatric endocrinologist and the award is the Asheville Smith Distinguished Alumni Award. He will receive that formally in June during the graduation ceremonies at Galveston and the to read his post about this was it was really inspiring he gave a lot of credit to others and he finished by saying never in my wildest dreams did I imagine an honor such as this so congratulations to Dr. Steven ponder for a great award well deserved that's just fantastic. Another Tell me something good comes from Samantha Merwin who is the mom of Logan the elbow bump kid we've talked to them on the show before she is working to roll out a national program about Minecraft. This is a Minecraft t Wendy play project. She says she had a successful pilot and She's working to roll it out nationally, working out a lot of logistics apparently to roll it out for people outside of her home state. So more to come on that. And she's also been working on a project with the college diabetes network along with Cigna. This is a really cool program all about mentorship applications are going to open in February, I will link up the page that is already there for college diabetes network. Basically, it's a program for junior and senior undergraduate students, you got to be current junior or senior, and it pairs you with a Cigna employee who has a similar career interest. So if you want to learn more again, I'll put a link in the show notes. But this was really great. Samantha love the work that you're doing here definitely going to help a lot of people and keep us posted on both of these programs. My son used to love Minecraft he still plays it but man when he was like 12 or 13 that was all they played. It was pretty wild stuff. I don't know what he's moved on to now. Although that's a lie. He his friends are playing Uno. They were screaming and carrying on get the card game Uno. I asked him I was like why are you so loud? Kind of Be quiet. I figured there's like shooting people or doing something crazy. They're playing card games on the computer? I don't know, is there any sign that you're getting older than you don't understand the games your kids are playing. If you have a Tell me something good story, please send it Stacey at Diabetes connections.com or posted in the Facebook group.   Little bit of housekeeping before I let you go, starting next week, I'm going to be doing something different. I'm going to be releasing an additional episode every week. So we'll have the regular interview on Tuesday, the long episode with segments like Tell me something good and innovations and all sorts of stuff. The regular episodes on Tuesdays will continue that way. I'm adding an episode on Thursday. And these are going to be what I'm calling classic episodes. If you're a sharp eared listener, you will know that I dropped in a couple of these last year kind of as a test. They are interviews from several years ago, as I mentioned, we've been doing the podcast for almost six years now. This is Episode 347. So there's probably a couple that you have missed along the way. And what I'm going to do is put context to the interview, you know, kind of catch up with the person let you know what they're doing now, and then replay the interview from several years ago, we have really great stories from a lot of really terrific people that you may have missed. And this way, if you're newer, and you haven't heard it, it's super easy enough to scroll back. I mean, Apple podcasts only shows you 300 episodes Anyway, you don't have to go anywhere. It'll be delivered right to you. And you can catch up with some of the really cool people and stories that I spoke to back in 2015 and 2016. So that starts on Thursday, February 4. Right now I am scheduled to do it for about half the year. We'll see how it goes. And you'll have to let me know what you think. Because after all, the show is here for you. If you don't like it, don't wait half the year. Let me know right away. If you do like it, of course I would love to hear about that as well. Next week, you'll be hearing from Lily I talked to the folks from Ypsomed a couple of weeks ago. Ypsomed and Lily are partnering to bring a new insulin pump to the United States. It's not a new insulin pump elsewhere in the world, but it could be here as early as 2022. We're going to talk about why Lilly decided to pivot and go in this direction. That is next week. And thank you to my editor John Bukenas from audio editing solutions. Thank you so much for listening. I'm Stacey Simms. I'll see you back here next week. Until then, be kind to yourself.   Benny  48:29 Diabetes Connections is a production of Stacey Simms Media. All rights reserved. All wrongs avenged

Connect with Mike today! https://mikeiamele.com/ Mike Iamele is a writer, life purpose expert, and brand strategist. With his proprietary Sacred Branding® system, he’s helped hundreds of people to connect the dots between their lived experiences to find the common threads that explain their subconscious motivations, unique genius, and life purpose. People use this work for all kinds of things — from branding and building a business, to exploring identity and sexuality, to finding their artistic voice, to even re-discovering themselves after a life-altering event, like divorce or retirement. Mike’s also the author of Enough Already: Create Success on Your Own Terms (Conari Press 2015). He’s shared his provocative and vulnerable take on life in dozens of magazines, podcasts, and online publications, including a personal interview with NPR about his viral story on rethinking sexuality in his first same-sex relationship. Prior to Sacred Branding®, at only 22 years old, Mike co-founded Torch Communications, a boutique public relations firm, specializing in healthcare and disruptive technology. He currently lives in Somerville, MA, with his husband and two adorable dogs. Brandon Handley 0:00 4321 Hey, their spiritual dove is Brandon Handley. And I am on with Mike Iaconelli who is a writer, life purpose expert and brand strategist. With his proprietary sacred branding system, he's helped hundreds of people to connect the dots between their lived experiences to find the common threads explained their subconscious motivations, unique genius and life purpose. People use this word for all kinds of things, from branding and building to business to exploring identity and sexuality to finding their artistic voice to even rediscovering themselves after a life altering event like divorce or retirement. Mike is also the author of enough already create success on your own terms. He shared his provocative and vulnerable take on life in dozens of magazines, podcasts and online publications, including a personal interview with NPR about his viral story on rethinking sexuality in his first first same sex relationship prior to sacred branding relationship prior Okay, sorry. Prior to sacred branding, at only 22 years old, Mike co founded torch communications, a boutique public relations firm specializing in health care and disruptive technology. I'm not gonna tell you where we live. They can find that on their own. But here's the deal, Mike, first, first of all, just while I'm going through this, thank you so much for joining me today. Mike Iamele 1:24 Yeah, thanks, Brandon. This is awesome. I'm glad to be here. Brandon Handley 1:26 Awesome. So I'm reading this. It's funny, though, because I was reading this earlier. And when I read it in his first same sex relationship, so like, I mean, multiples or, like, I mean, you What happened? There was Mike Iamele 1:41 a great question. Let's dive right in. Um, you know, I previously had no conscious knowledge, no interest in men. To my knowledge, I've only dated women. And it was a time where I actually woke up one day vomiting blood. And that didn't stop for a few months, I was really, really sick. I was going from doctor to doctor trying to figure out what was wrong with me. And my roommate at the time was a friend of mine, we actually two roommates, but one of them was a friend of mine who was in the healthcare profession. And so he kind of became my caretaker, I couldn't drive myself to these appointments. You know, he really took care of me. And after about two months, I felt like I felt something. It wasn't sexual. It didn't even feel romantic. It just felt like something was a little different. And I think if it were any other time in my life, I probably wouldn't have acted on it. But I thought I was going to die. And so there I was kind of saying like, Well, you know, and I felt really weird. I said, Hey, I don't know what this is. I don't know if this is anything. But I kind of have these feelings. And he reciprocated he felt something. He didn't know what he also had never dated a man. And that led us on a year and a half, two year journey of exploring what that is. We are married today. We've been together for over nine years. So yeah, yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Brandon Handley 2:59 How cool is that? How cool is that? So that's usually not my first question. But when I was reading through that, I'm like, what is what is in here? Right? So here's my first question is, hey, look, you know, we're both in the spiritual realm, we both we're both in this space where the universe talks to us, right? We're conduits for some type of energy, right? In these body shades, forms, minds, whatever the hell right? So given that, when we're when we're having a conversation, people that are tuning in listening to podcasts are tuned into something that only you can deliver, right, at this time, you know, sources delivering what message to them through you right now. Mike Iamele 3:38 So what's the message I'm delivering? Yeah. Brandon Handley 3:40 What's the what's the message, the sources sources pulling through right now, Mike Iamele 3:44 you know, the message is that it's ironic because it's exactly what you're talking about, that every single one of us has a unique way, energy flows, unique sensitivities, unique purpose. And the thing is, I get really fired up about this, because the way we talk about purpose is toxic. And it really induces shame. And the reason for that is we talk about purpose, like it is achievable and aspirational. So we'll say things like, Oh, my purpose is to be a life coach. My purpose is to write a book, my purpose is to get married. And that's awesome. But here's the thing, if you can achieve it, that means you can also fail it. And that doesn't make sense, like how you fail your purpose. And more than that, if you can achieve it, it implies you didn't have it at a certain point. So did we just not have a purpose as babies like that doesn't make any sense whatsoever? Sure. And so I talk about purpose, a lot more like sensitivities. And here's the thing even as a baby before I learned one word I was sensitive to some things. Some babies are sensitive to music, and they can probably hear notes that I can't hear. Some babies are sensitive to certain colors. Some babies are sensitive to freedom. And if you're sensitive to freedom, you're probably going to feel trapped a lot more easily than I am. You're probably going to look for opportunities to feel free all the time and you're probably gonna create your best work when you do feel free, right know that sense? activity is going to start to color your entire experience of life. Every moment of your life, every trauma you have, every job you have, every relationship you have, is going to be either expressing or suppressing that to some degree. We're going exactly through that sensitivity. So we're sensitive. That's how we experience life. We see taste, touch, smell life, there are senses, right? That's what purpose is. Now, if I've got a container that can totally hold my purpose, it's like talking to my best friend. And time just flies by and genius just feels out of me. And I'm tapped into that unique thing coming through me right through my senses. Yeah. And then we have those other conversations, were kind of like, Am I saying the right thing? Am I doing the right thing, am I and we're on that level of technical. And then when we say if we're on the level of technical, we have no idea what the essence is, we're not actually tapped into essence, we're just trying to kind of mold this awkward container. But when I know I have boiling hot tea, I'm not going to put that in plastic, I'm not going to put that in a cup with a handle, I'm going to choose the right container. The second that, you know, essence, everything starts flowing. And that's why whether we're talking about relationships, whether we're talking about spirituality, trauma, healing, you've always no moment of your life has been wasted. You everything has a purpose. Obviously, the word purpose means why. But we have containers that can hold that purpose and containers that can't. And my interest in life is just knowing who we are removing any shame and then finding containers that can actually hold us. Brandon Handley 6:29 Now. I love that, right. There's a there's a lot in there. And I think that that's a I think it's a great message. One of the one of the things that I wanted to share to what you talked about is you're going through your branding system, right, and how that can help you explore, explore your spirituality. And one of the things that I mentioned to you right before we got started here was, you know, more people reached out to me on on spiritual dope than a couple other podcasts. But what I did also nothing that I recognized and some of my other podcasts, the people that did reach out to me, my first one was fatherhood for the rest of us. And I had like this kind of weird dad snare, everybody's got a weird dad snare and always got to the you know, whatever. But like, he was like, he heroin overdose died, stuff like that, right? Like, about 30 40% of people I talked to. That's similar story, right? So you would track kind of who you are. I'm not saying, um, you. But you track like, like mines, right? So the people that are reaching out to me are also experiencing kind of what you're sharing that this your sacred branding system, right? And recognizing that marketing, isn't this the skeezy thing? Right? There can be some goodness that comes out of going through understanding what is your branding? What is right, so let's talk a little bit about your sacred branding system so that people can kind of understand it from that perspective. Mike Iamele 7:54 Yeah. Well, let me tell you how it got started. Because it is, you know, everything looks glamorous, or retrospect. But I promise you, it is not. So, you know, I was at this moment where I was really sick, like I mentioned before, and I was kind of sort of navigating this relationship with my roommate. And I went around from healer to healer. You know, I wasn't into alternative healing at the time, but I was really desperate. And so I started going to reflexology, and Reiki and acupuncture and you know, energy healing, you name it, I was there. And one healer said to me, you know, can I pull a card for you? Okay, that's what you want to do. And she pulled a card, and she said, Oh, my God, you are going through a shamanic healing crisis. And the second that you start to realize, and change your path and find new containers, everything will change, you will magically get better, and it's gonna change your life. So I took it with a grain of salt at the time, but I bought a few books that she had mentioned. And I went on my way. And through this process of discovering, I started realizing this new spiritual part of myself. And so this is happening simultaneously. I actually owned a PR agency. So as you mentioned, I worked in public relations and health care reform. And I never thought that would be fair job. I loved that job. I mean, I liked it. I should say it was good, but it wasn't fully fully right container. But it was good enough. And so this crazy thing happened, where I lost my passport, the day before my family was going to Aruba for New Year's, we always go for New Year's, my passport disappeared. I keep it locked in a safe wasn't there. So I drove back and forth to my parents house to my house. Like I didn't sleep that night. I was just driving. They were an hour for me, and could not find my passport. They went to Aruba. The next day. I was stuck at home. And so I you know, said to my partners, listen, guys, why don't I take off next this next week? instead? I'll work this week instead of being on vacation. And then I'll go Ruby late and meet my family there. And kind of uncharacteristically, they had some issue with us. And so I thought, all right, well, I will work but I'll work from Aruba. I'm going to Aruba and they said well, we don't know if You're really serious about this company. And I was like, You know what, maybe I'm not. And so I went to Aruba. I came back, and it was like someone else was speaking for me. I just said, I'll give you a year's notice, we're gonna restructure, and I'm leaving. So now here I am sitting there and thinking, what the hell am I going to do with my life, like, I don't have a plan, you know, I can sell my shares. I have a little bit of money, but I don't have a plan. So I went to herbalism school, I went to nutrition school, I literally went to two schools full time that year, while working while taking spiritual classes, while exploring this relationship. It was the worst year of my life. But I finished it. And I thought, well, I don't know what to do. So I decided that I was going to be the health and wellness coach for the Boston entrepreneurs, because I knew them all. Why not? Like I was an herbalist. I was a health coach, I can do this. And it was okay. I wasn't making a ton of money, and I really love it. And so I started writing a blog. And this blog got decently popular. And someone REACHED OUT out of the blue and offered me a book deal. And I thought, Oh, this isn't this is my purpose. I've always meant to be a writer, I'm going to do this book deal. So I write this book, I go on a book tour. And I hope not everybody's listening to this part. I didn't love it. It wasn't great. still buy my book. It's good. But I did not like just being an author and doing the book tour things, a lot of pressure. I didn't feel supported. And so I thought, well, crap, I'm wasting my time. I'm wasting life. How do I not know my purpose? Now I've gone through the crisis. I've done all the things that every book tells me to do. I've one on every life purpose webinar, every life purpose training, I don't know my purpose. So I go back to the drawing board. And I said, All right, what am I good at? What does the world need? And I've had circled that middle ground. Oh, it is so obvious. How did I not see it? I meant to create a blogging course. But this blogging course, is just going to be a blogging course, it's going to be deep, it's going to be spiritual, it's gonna help people find their voice. And it's gonna help them get booked deals and all this great stuff, right? So I create this course. And of course, you know, you got to go pro. So I put everything into this, like, I've got the lighting kit and the nice mic, and the Facebook ads, and the web designer and the business partner and all that stuff and put it out to the world. And five people bought it. The loss was extraordinary. I mean, that was the last of my savings, I was done. So I was mortified. I knew, I guess I will ask my partners to take me back after a year, who knows what's going to happen? I still don't know my purpose, after, you know, decades of trying, but really a year just focused on that I still can't figure it out. I'm a failure. And so I decided to host a failure celebration, right? Because at least you know, maybe I can flip the script and celebrate Well, maybe something good came from this year. And I went into a Facebook group I was a part of. And I said, I'm happy to, you know, do some branding for you. And some work that I came up with way back in PR. It's a simple system we use to help CEOs kind of think about their messaging in a very concrete simple way so that they can make sales decisions and messaging and interview talking points and press releases and all this stuff. Very simple. And so I went in there, and I offered it to these people. But these weren't the, you know, tech entrepreneurs and healthcare politicians I was used to. These were life coaches, and artists and healers and all types of cool people. And every single one of them said to me, Mike, you didn't just tell me my brand. You told me my life purpose. It's like, wait, wait a minute. They're like, What are you trying to say? And so I had to go back to the drawing board and figure out what am I actually doing here? What's happening that's telling these people claiming that they know their purpose in a way that's never been articulated before. And so I did the process for myself. And I discovered six words. And these sorts of six words are aligned, zany, free, unmistakable, successful, and vulnerable. And the second I saw these words, every moment of trauma in my life starts to make sense, because I started to feel every time the opposite of those when I was protected. When I felt like a failure, these articulated better than anything, the biggest trauma of my life, I started to look at what felt good about it my PR job, but what didn't, what made sense in writing, but what didn't. And as I started to do that, simultaneously, people started asking me, what do you call this? And I said, it's branding, but I guess it's sacred, I don't know, sacred branding. laughs That word on there. They start telling their friends and I was open for business. And I never went back to PR, which I thought I would the next day never did and that was six or seven years ago. Now. I Brandon Handley 14:29 think. That's great. That's great. And I think that, you know, look, you you just stepped into kind of like your fear, right? And and you you surrendered a little bit, right? You just you just said you know what, this is what I got. I'm having this conversation. I'm gonna have the failure party, people are gonna step up. Do you happen to be in this group, like you said, of like artists and you know, these kind of spiritual people and you're helping them find their purpose, and if I recall correctly, you're like, I didn't even know what mine was. All right. Hold on a second. Yeah, I did what? Hold on a second. Wait, I'm gonna come back. I'm watching Oh, this works because now I'm gonna work. It's like kinds of hypnosis on yourself though, right? Like, all right. Mike Iamele 15:11 So the irony about it is like, if we look at those words successful, I was hosting a failure celebration to make success, right, I was being super vulnerable, I was aligning with my type of people, like, when we start to unpack what that means, well, da, this was gonna be a moment of success for me. And that's why I always call this you know, a reliable, predictable formula for success and fulfillment that works in any situation without fail. It doesn't just work in job because it's kind of To me, it's like shooting darts, like most of us live life where we're shooting darts in the dark, we kind of sometimes stumble upon success, and we that feels good. But even if we have something successful in our lives, we don't actually know what made us successful. So we're an artist who might say, well, was it the medium I was using? Was I feeling inspired? Did I have a lot of spaciousness that day? Or if we're an entrepreneur, we think, well, was it the image? Was it the coffee was not asked these questions? Sure. relationships, same thing. What I often think is, when we do this work, what we're doing is we're mapping our experiences, you know, to do sacred branding, we're mapping out traumas, we're mapping our highest access points, we're starting to notice a pattern and boiling that pattern down. And it's kind of like flipping on the lights, doesn't mean I'm gonna hit the bullseye every time, but I know what I'm doing. I can practice, I can say, Alright, I know I need to be vulnerable here. It's really awkward for me, but I'm gonna keep practicing what that looks like in relationship until I can hone that sensitivity. Brandon Handley 16:32 Right. Right now. That's fair. That's fair. The one of the things that I see out there is people trying to be vulnerable, but really, they're just vomiting, like, or, you know, just just doesn't come off as genuine. So how can you be authentically vulnerable on purpose? Mike Iamele 16:52 It's a great question. You know, I think that I think that there's a difference between maybe intentional and strategic care. I think that this, you know, I guess the bottom line is, what is the reason that we're being vulnerable? And that's what I'm really interested in, when we go down to the brand energy level, is it about connection? Is it about intimacy? Is it about, you know, feeling aligned with somebody? Is it about being seen? Is it about feeling abundance, like, there's a reason that we're doing it in the first place. And if we're not really tapped into that we're kind of deceiving ourselves, we're basically like, I want to make a lot of money. And so I'm being vulnerable to make a lot of money. But I'm not actually conscious of that I'm actually owning that the shadow. So it starts to come across as inauthentic. But I think when we really know who we are, and what kind of owning and claiming that, you know, I often say you don't have to assert what's claimed, right? If I'm asserting something, I haven't fully claimed it. So if I have to be like, Oh, I am super masculine. That's not something I've planned. Oh, I'm super vulnerable. That's not something I've claimed, right. When I've claimed it, it's just internalized, and then I kind of exude it. And I think that's what I want for every person to be able to exude the authentic flow of who you actually are. Right? Brandon Handley 18:01 I mean, that kind of goes back to like your beginning, right, you know, how can that person find out who they truly are? Right? And then helping them to figure out how to truly express that. Is that you know, I mean, that's kind of that's kind of, that's the business that you're in? Yeah, that's Mike Iamele 18:16 right there. you boil it down. Absolutely. Yeah. No, Brandon Handley 18:18 I love it. You know, me. And it's funny the story that you're telling, too, because it's exactly what happened to me, right? My first podcast was like, I gotta I gotta hit these notes. I got to do these things. I want to do it for money. Like, I didn't really want to do it for money. But I was doing it for money. I was like, yeah. And then and then like, I was, like, you know, switched out did another one. And that podcast was wasn't in straight alignment with who I was right? Like this. I was like, it's almost there. I've almost gotten it, right. And then this one is like, is better? Right? This one? I'm like, I'm almost there. Again, like so again, like, and and? I'm sure, right. I mean, would you talk to kind of how the universe opens up once you find your alignment? Like, what's that look like? For you? Mike Iamele 19:02 Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think, you know, it depends what language we're comfortable using, whether we want to call it the universe, whether we want to say we're just putting ourselves in the place of opportunities, and the right thing comes. Brandon Handley 19:10 I think that that's great, too, right? Because I think that a big a big challenge for the people that are like, you know, the spiritual ilk, or are super artsy, they're not going to be as comfortable with the business language, right? And that's, and that's why they're open to this other. Let's open up to the universe. Let's have a vision board, let's, let's do these things because they are these are goals, these are planning, these are all those other things, but it's in a language that they their brain, and their subconscious will not filter out, like, oh, we're gonna do it like this. That's great, man. My energy is in alignment. Let's do it. Right. Whereas like, if you're like, let's let's come up with a plan. I'm not much of a planner. I don't I don't write hate plans. Mike Iamele 19:56 Well, I think the thing is, you know, we all have our own Attachment towards our own language, our own connotation. And that's why as much as I think things like, you know, MBTI or enneagram, with these systems are really awesome. I'm a big fan of, you know, speaking to our purpose in our own language through how we associate with words. And that's why you know, I don't really care. I tell people, if your words of Sally Bob and Jim awesome, if that means something to you, you go for it. And so my job is just to help them map how they use language and begin to boil that down to overarching themes. And it's a really cool process. So we can Brandon Handley 20:32 do. I do I do. Okay, Mike Iamele 20:37 so, do you want to be a guinea pig? Or do you just want me to speak to your guinea pig. So this is gonna be my super super, like, dumbed down shoddy way of doing it. But if anyone wants to reveal a little bit more real, you can just go to Mike iaconelli.com slash map, it's free. It's 36 minutes, and you're gonna get a worksheet. So it's super cool. But let's play now for 10 minutes. Okay, so Brandon, can you take a moment to close your eyes, and I want you to think about three jobs that you have had in your life. So just three jobs could be anything, it could be back in high school, you were, you know, a cashier, it could be a current job, it could be podcasting, just anything that you want. And when you get your mind in those three jobs, I want you to pick one of them and tell me what it is. Brandon Handley 21:32 So, you know, once upon a time like that to my laptop, my eyes are not to show. Unknown Speaker 21:37 Yeah, I know what's happening. Brandon Handley 21:40 You know, so once upon a time, I mean, this is going back 20 years, like I used to do two bunches like the raves right the nighttime parties, but like I do the promoting for them, right? Or like help hosts are like pull, pull, pull, pull the gathers together, right? I mean, so awesome. So you know, getting people together and and seeing them having a great night. I mean, that that was it. Right? Mike Iamele 22:01 So you're already getting ahead of the game. You're so good here. So I want you to tell me, what are three things that you either made people feel or you gave to people? And so my example is you might make people like you said feel happy or fun or connected, or safe? Or maybe you made them feel like energized and manic. Like what were three things? Yeah, look, I Brandon Handley 22:21 mean, people feel a you know, look, if you're going if you're if you're on just as parties, like you get like, that's an experience, right? One time experience, probably never gonna happen again. And it's a life experience. Mike Iamele 22:34 All right. experiential. We've got that 100% Brandon Handley 22:38 straight bliss, man, right, dancing out dancing all night long. Right. You know, they stop dropping, I don't know, whatever spelling. Mike Iamele 22:46 So it's experiential. It's bliss. Is there anything else that you wanted to make people feel? I Brandon Handley 22:50 mean, is active, right? It's engagement. Mike Iamele 22:52 Perfect. Perfect. This is great. So now pick a second job. And I want you to tell me a little bit about that job and then do the same thing. Brandon Handley 23:00 The podcasting, right podcasting, the connections, like you can't, it opens so many doors, right? Like, I mean, it's a straight up opens. Like I can call I can talk to anybody, right? If there's, I literally just interviewed one of my favorite authors a week or so ago. Sreekumar Rao, right? I have a podcast, would you like to be on it? Right? This is my space. This is what I do. And I think you'd be a great fit, right? I mean, so connections and then being able to connect, like you to the audience, right. So So Mike, I'm always on I'm like, I don't just like Mike, you're gonna like Mike and here's why and, and just listen to him. Like, I don't have to tell you, you're gonna be able to decide for yourself. Right? So sharing those connections. And what's left, I mean, it's just, it's just fun. Because you get to you get to this, this is an amplifier. Right? The microphone is an amplifier, I get to share my message with the entire world. And if anybody is any, like stratosphere, right? This is like radio waves. It goes all awake, universal man. So communicating my story to everybody that Mike Iamele 24:09 I love that got universal. It's amplifying. It's fun. It's connecting. Awesome. Got some great language. All right, one more. So the last job Tell me about it and tell me three things that you wanted people to feel from it. And, Brandon Handley 24:25 I mean, I think bartending was probably just so much fun. And again, like it's just always about other people connecting with other people being mean that kind of, I guess, you know, and even in like with the podcast, kind of being that that hub, right, that that that kind of generates all that energy to make it all happen. Mike Iamele 24:46 Mm hmm. I love that. I love that. Okay, we've got some good good mapping going on already. But now I want you to take a moment Brandon and close your eyes again. And I want you to think of a really challenging moment. It could be frustrating. It could be And successful, it could even be traumatic, although we don't want to go into any trauma that feels traumatic to think about right now. But anything that feels like this was a really tough moment in my life. And I want you, you don't have to tell me what it is, if you don't want that, I want you to tell me three things you felt in that moment. Brandon Handley 25:18 So I think I think I've talked about it before, but like, there was a point when I was doing like my fatherhood for the rest of this podcast. And then I got offered an amazing job, right, like a great salary. And I was like, Well, I have to stop focusing so much on this father for the rest of us thing, right, not attached my identity that that I and I realized I was like, Oh, my God, I attached my identity that same time realize that I was willing to kind of throw that away for a bunch of money. So I was kind of battling that. Right. So that was it. That was conflicted. Right. And, and it kind of, it tore me apart in a way that I wasn't expecting, you know. At the same time, it also made me realize how much I attached my identity to what it is that I do. Mike Iamele 26:04 Yeah, that's, thank you for saying I'm gonna try to remember that because it's something really beautiful. We'll talk about right after this process. But um, so what do you what did you feel? I know you say conflicted, but what do I mean? Did you feel like you were like, disgusted at yourself or wanting the money? Did you feel angry? Did you feel frustrated? Did you feel blocked or trapped? Like, give me a little bit longer? Yeah, Brandon Handley 26:25 I mean, I could probably go with like a little bit of of trapped or locked, right? I mean, look, I'm, I'm a family man, when you're looking for, you know, make given stability to children and my wife and, you know, trying to give them that life. Give them you know, the the white picket fence and all this stuff, right. We've been trained very well for this Mike Iamele 26:43 shot. Yeah, absolutely. Brandon Handley 26:45 Yeah. So I mean, that's definitely it was, I think, traps kind of a harsh word. But I definitely felt like you know, I had to do that thing, because that's what was expected. Right. Mike Iamele 26:56 So we're better word be obligated. obligated. Good. Okay, that's good. Okay, cool. So what, then if you felt conflicted, you felt obligated? What would you have wanted to feel ideal world if you could just magically have the perfect situation? What would you have wanted to feel in that situation? Yeah. Brandon Handley 27:12 I mean, it should be easy, right? ease is what you know, ease, there should be no tension if you're doing the thing that you're in alignment in life. Mike Iamele 27:21 Right. Right. So just flow II happening, okay. And maybe agency rights, not obligation, you're choosing it, you're just kind of Right, right. I Brandon Handley 27:30 mean, I'm taking, you know, look like if you just take money out of the whole thing, like in this situation, like, Can you just go do what you want without money? Right, then then it's easier, right? Like, like, maybe Mike Iamele 27:41 you're passionate, right? Because you know what? Brandon Handley 27:45 I'm a 5050 on the word passion. Okay. I don't like to flame out on something, right? Because, like you like, you know, what is it? Is it better? What is it better to burn out? Definitely anyways, man, I don't want to I don't want to use it. I don't. And it's a trigger word, obviously, for me, right? You know, being passionate about something because I want I want to follow it through again, with ease, like, You figure if you're passionate about something, it's burning, all that energy is burning up quickly. Right. And, and it has the opportunity to dissipate, but at the same time, it could you know, be the igniter of the fire. But that's where I'm at with that. Mike Iamele 28:21 I'm just gonna call it one thing. So I think it's really interesting here. First of all, you know, anytime we have a triggering word, it's where we have energy, right? So it doesn't mean that this is a word that we're interested in using. But what it means that there's something in this concept that feels interesting. And I think what's really fascinating for me, is we've talked about a lot of words, the very igniting very, very before we talked about amplifying and energizing for sure, excited, but we want something sustainable. So we just learned, okay for you. It's got to be a sustainable version of that. That's great, because all we're doing is mapping how your mind works right now. Right? All right. Now, last thing, close your eyes one more time. And I want you to think of the happiest day of your life, or one of the happiest moments that comes up. And I want you You can tell me about if you want, but I want you to tell me three things you felt in that moment. Brandon Handley 29:09 So I mean, I have to say it was probably when my first son was born. Right? Um, man is just, there's just nothing. Nothing really compares to that. Right. I'm one of those reasons is, is you know, I never thought I was going to be a dad, right? I didn't have like a good dad experience. And so for this opportunity to just kind of present itself. I was like, this is awesome, right? I get to be a dad. I was like, I'm not gonna suck at this. Like, that was like the one thing I knew I wasn't gonna suck at. Right. So I was happy to take that on and to, you know, be able to have that role in my life, you know? Mike Iamele 29:48 So, you know, and that's beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. So I know you felt you know, happy. What else would you say? What did you feel in that moment? Brandon Handley 29:57 I mean, touched right. Like that's like, you know, we It's probably you know, if I, if I'm looking back, you know, connecting the dots backwards, I'm sure that I've been touched by source like several times, but like it was one of those recognizable times you just like literally feel blessed. Right? And I'm not I'm not I'm not a Jesus guy. I'm not a god and by but like, you know, you feel blessed you feel touched in that moment. So that, Mike Iamele 30:23 yes, beautiful, and I'm getting the sense that you can correct me from your I'm wrong here. But that there's a sense of alignment. Like it almost feels like this was meant to be or kinda Yeah, Brandon Handley 30:32 look, I mean, it's just there's no other way, right? I've got a friend of mine who's up in Boston as well, you guys just should connect. He gave me the acronym Tina, right? There is no alternative. Mike Iamele 30:43 Yeah. Oh, this is beautiful. All right. All right. So you're I only picked these moments because these are emotionally charged. And we're gonna get you know, squeezed the most juice out of the emotionally charged moments. For everybody listening, you know, if you go check out that webinar, Mike on mlb.com slash map, it's a little bit more in depth, but I'm trying to keep it brief for everyone here. So one thing we've seen is we've seen a huge theme across your life of this feeling, you know, wanting to make people want yourself feeling energized in the flow, a sense of ease, you know, a sense of being touched or blessed by things, connecting and Amplifying Voices, whether you're, you know, club promoting, you're amplifying a message or energize people amplifying the voices. When you're doing that with podcasting, for sure you're doing that, you know, I'm sure that these are, you know, lessons that you want to send your kids or your child, so you know, helping to energize them helping to amplify their voice making them feel they have a strong voice, and they matter. These are themes that I've gone through your life, I'm gonna guess that if you look back to some of those traumatic moments of your life, you might feel there were points where you didn't feel like your voice could be spread out far and wide, or you didn't feel energized, Brandon Handley 31:51 suppressed, for sure, Mike Iamele 31:53 exactly. And so we're gonna see those shadows, the exact opposite to what we talked about, they're gonna start to, you know, to articulate some of the darkest moments of your life. And now we can start, let's say, all right, and I have with my best friends, yeah, I feel this. I feel like my voice matters. I can speak up, I feel energized, I feel excited this ease this flow. When I talk to these, you know, really awkward people and people I don't really like I don't feel those things. It's Brandon Handley 32:15 like a blanket, right? I mean. Mike Iamele 32:18 So what we're doing here is we're just mapping your sensitivities, we're understanding and you can go back and use this work for past trauma. You can use it for healing, you can use it for business building, because now we know all right, you do really well, when you have guests on who are energizing and exciting and alive. You love connecting with people, you love Amplifying Voices of people who matter to you. So you need to make sure that you've got guests on that you really believe in their mission, and you're excited about it, and they want to help amplify your podcast too. And now all of a sudden, start changing the business decisions you make and how you show up. And you asked me before you know about vulnerability and authenticity. For me, if I mean for you, it's really going to be about showing up with energy and that voice and giving the message because that's what you do when you're most authentic. And I just think I mean, this is my shoddy way of doing it with you today. But I think it's so beautiful when we know that because again, it's like we turn on the lights. And now we can practice hitting that Bullseye doesn't mean we're gonna hit every time, right? We know how now, Brandon Handley 33:13 right? So now that was awesome, man, I really enjoyed I enjoyed that. And and you know, that practice would be built into your branding, right? So a lot of a lot of times I think that people will be like, Hey, I don't I don't know, my art type is right. Or I don't know what my you know, I don't know what my niches I don't know, I hate the word niche. I don't do niches right. Like and so, or, you know, you know, I don't want what's the you know, avatars are dumb man, you know, so. So, this this practice sounds like it, it kind of can substitute for some of those marketing pieces, right? Or branding pieces without robbing the the non marketer guy or girl wrong, right? Mike Iamele 33:57 Absolutely. Well, I think one thing you said that was really interesting is you talked about how so much of your identity was in what you did. And then podcasting and it's really hard to let go of. And I don't think that that is abnormal. You know, a lot of us we do one of two things, the big containers in our lives, our relationships, or jobs, right? Those are the two containers where we're talking about life purpose, we're probably talking about one of those two things. And the thing is, those are just containers for those energies to flow that we just talked about. So is your healing. So is your morning routine. So is the way you get dressed. So is the way you decorate your house. So is the way you do yard work, or your friendships like these are all just different containers. And when we are so attached to a container, it means we don't really know what the essence is, because we don't think we can get that same essence somewhere else, right? When we know that essence. It's like, oh, that job went away. Now how can I make my new job? You know, be connecting and energizing and amplifying all these things? And then we're going to start to look at like, Alright, where am I gonna fight for my voice in this job? Where am I gonna win? What am I not willing? To settle on, and what am I willing to settle on? And that's really important to me. Because when it comes to marketing, you know, a lot of people think it's something really different and hard and complex. And the truth is, it's just another container. I had no plan for this conversation. And you know, sure one of my energies is vulnerable. So I show up and I share whatever it feels called. And I'm zany, and I'm loud. And I like to be crazy and play a little bit. And that is part of how my energy flows. I don't know, what do you call this marketing right now? Maybe, maybe not. But it's just me being myself. Sure. So is working with people and so is, you know, getting to teach live and hanging out with my husband and the way I dress? Right? Well, I mean, Brandon Handley 35:40 not for nothing, right? Like, so I mean, what's your, your, your, your kind of like zona genius, or, you know, whatever you want to call it is, is, is being able to help somebody get clarity on themselves? Right. Unknown Speaker 35:50 Yeah. Brandon Handley 35:52 Right. Right. Right. And that's a real challenge. I think that for an individual to go through I think, I think, and this has been my experience, right? I think it's a real challenge for a lot of people who would like to get into podcasts and YouTube and whatever, you know, the the, is there a name for like, what's happening like now like, in in the kind of industry, it's not like just social marketing, but maybe it is right. But the deal is to try and run at it alone can be very frustrating, and especially when they see how easy it is for Mike. Right. Mike Iamele 36:27 Thank you for saying that. Because I love to, you know, share all my vulnerabilities. Believe me, everything I said earlier, looks graceful in retrospect, it's not it's never retro, you know, graceful in the moment. And I think the thing is, you know, we do this work, because this system can run independently of me, like, you can go check out that webinar, you can go, you know, sign up for our course, later on, like, eight works, because everybody thinks they're all over the place. Everybody thinks, oh, Mike, but my jobs they don't even make sense. They're not remotely similar. You don't know. I can tell you that's true of me. Right? I work in health care form. And then I'm, you know, this herbalist, and then I'm like the spiritual teacher, I don't know what the heck I was doing. But you know what, it all boils down to connecting dots. Here's the thing. I literally align vulnerabilities and people's zaniness and idiosyncrasies to help to free them from the stories and make them successful and understand that unmistakable ality that my energies told me that they told me what I do, and everyone else's do your lived experience has the blueprint for success, the blueprint for fulfillment, because you have been successful somewhere in life. Yes, that's all Yeah, we can map Why then we start to understand your formula. That's not something exclusive to me. I know people listen, I said, screw you, guy. Like you don't know what I've been through. That's not I can promise you that because I thought I was the most fucked up of all. Brandon Handley 37:47 Well, and I think that you bring up a good point there too, once you kind of understand the pattern, right? Once you once you understand how you can connect one or two dots, like you can connect the third. Yeah, fourth, or fifth, right? So going through the work, right, what would you say that means to you? Mike Iamele 38:09 It's a bold question. So you know, the work can mean many things. So if we're talking specifically about sacred branding, which for me, it's all the same, like the work spiritual work for me is safer branding, because it went about the person going through it like, like, so if somebody's going through sacred branding with you, and they have to do the work. Brandon Handley 38:27 Right. What does that mean? So Mike Iamele 38:29 it means, you know, basically committing to your energies, here's the thing that will happen. Inevitably, almost every person who's done my work, will after a year or two years, say, oh, Mike, I went through a monumental shift in my life, I got to redo it, my energies are wrong, I got to redo it. And what's happening there is not that their energy is wrong, because anyone we've done this with wife, kids, anyone over the age of 13, their vocabulary and their conceptualization of language isn't changing enough for their energies to change. What's happening is their understanding of those energies is changing. And so what it's asking for is intimacy. intimacy is when we commit to something and we learn more about it, it's a lot easier to just run away and try to change say, this is Brandon Handley 39:11 one more time and intimacy is what Mike Iamele 39:13 Yeah, when we commit to something and learn more about it and ourselves and when we're deepening right? If we commit to a relationship, a relationship is gonna challenge us of course, we have to learn about ourselves, we have to learn about our partner through that relationship. But if we every time we get challenged, run away, that's not intimacy. That's not commitment. So what doing the work is is actually committing saying, alright, what can this interview this moment right now teach me about aligned, zany, free, unmistakable every fight I have every you know, challenge my life is to ask myself, what can I learn right now about success? What don't I know about it? And it starts teaching me more about myself. And then we start doing deconditioning because here's the thing we've got a lot of toxic conditioning in our society, both some we've talked about on this podcast, but also some we haven't. And that's not a That's not something we're born with. We were born was Brandon Handley 40:02 like, What? Yeah, what's one or two? Mike Iamele 40:04 I'm talking about misogyny and racism and homophobia. I'm talking about, you know, beliefs about making money and spirituality. I mean, there's a lot of conditioning out there. And so when we we weren't born with that we were born sensitivities. So we weren't born with conditioning. Brandon Handley 40:19 What's the deconditioning? Well, Mike Iamele 40:20 what I'm saying is that if we to know what we aren't, we have to know what we are. And when we know those brand answers, I used to ask myself, what about this moment isn't actually vulnerable or unmistakable? What's wrong here? What do I believe that's not actually that, and when I can anchor it to something, I can pull out what isn't that it starts I mean, we do this at the higher levels of the work, but it starts to become a lot easier to say, Hey, you know what, I'm ready to let go of that belief. Because actually, I can see my truth, and I can feel it. And you know, I it's a sensitivity so I can literally feel it in my body, it's not just a thought I have in my mind, it's something that I can feel and you know, at higher levels, we start thinking about, okay, let me feel what successful feels like my body. Now, let me feel unsuccessful. And so when I walk into a room, and my stomach tightens, immediately, I know I feel unsuccessful, I'm gonna say no to that opportunity, it starts becoming intuitive because your body, it's your senses, right? Your taste, touch smell, it can tell you these things, your thoughts, your conditioning can't do that, because it's not really who you are. So the more we start tuning into who we are, we can actually trust our intuition more, we can trust our bodies more. And that's why we get better at hitting that bull's eye, right? Because now we know the opportunities that will lead us to success, you know, the flow with the universe. And, you know, Brandon Handley 41:32 you tell me, tell me about tuning into your intuition, right? And how, how do you begin to trust that intuition, right? It's funny, because guys, anybody's listening to podcast knows that. Nine times out of 10, I'll jack up a name. and nine times out of 10. I know, I should have asked before we got going. And what's funny is that, before we got going on the podcast, they like followed his intuition. You know, also something that maybe it not only you know, is has he had the experience of people butchering his last name, but he knew, connected like an intuition to me and said, Hey, do you need to know how to pronounce my last name? Sure. Right. So how do you, you know, how, how do you begin to trust your intuition? And not just in a negative sense, right? Because a lot of people are like, Oh, I shouldn't do this. And and they follow that to a fucking tee, right? Like, like, Oh, I shouldn't? If it's a no, I'll follow that. Sure. But how do we encourage people to follow their yeses? Mike Iamele 42:34 You know, I think it's the same thing we talked about with intimacy before and commitment. It's really about saying like, Okay, first of all, if my energy is vulnerable, I know that when I am in safe, vulnerable space, I'm going to be more intuitive. I know that when I speak a lot, like I do a lot of processing, just speaking out loud. It's why I can't shut up, you're probably like, Mike Shut up. I can't because that's when things start flowing. For me, I know that I know, vulnerable. So what will I do to do that? Well, sometimes I'll close my eyes when I want to be intuitive to be more vulnerable. And what starts to happen over time is, the more I do it, and for me, it's got to be in safe space with people I can be vulnerable with, I practice being intuitive for a long, long time with people I trust to like it. So I internalized that vulnerability. Because at first, we think it's outside of us, right, we've got to be in the perfect vulnerable condition. And we've got to be in the perfect zany, you know, where people can be playful. But over time, we internalize that sensitivity. And now I don't care who's around me, I don't care if you think I'm fucking crazy, I'm gonna be vulnerable, I'm gonna be who I am. And trust my intuition. And so I think, for me, it really starts with knowing again, I mean, I am obsessed with the brand energies, I'm obsessed with my work because it's knowing who we are. And then it's just tuning into that and practicing, it's throwing at that bull's eye over and over and over again, until we know we can hit it. But we can't practice if we don't turn on the lights. So we need to connect those dots. Brandon Handley 43:57 Awesome. So you're, you're you're lined up with your purpose, you're fully charged. Can your purpose change? Mike Iamele 44:04 So great question. I love you throw the good ones at me. So your containers can absolutely change. And they do change containers, the temporary relationships and your physical body changes your desire for sex changes, your, you know, your home changes, your job changes all these things. But what you want from that, and what you give to that doesn't change, because that's your senses that you've had since you were born. So I teach classes on your sex intimacy all the time. And people always say this while my body's changing my desires changing all the time. But sex that's just about getting off. isn't all that interesting, in my opinion, like, sure it can sustain us for a little while. It's not interesting. We always want something specific from sex. It's to us, we might want a space of vulnerability, a space where we can be playful and explore our deepest fantasies, a space where we can explore submission or dominance or whatever. That's what we actually want and would probably want to explore that over time. Now, the definition of what that looks like is going to dange vulnerable sex to me today very different than it's going to be in 50 years. I understand that. But I still know when I'm actually looking for. And so I don't have to be so attached to the container like you before with Oh, the podcast is the only way I can say that. Yeah, exactly. We let that go. And now we just have the essence. You know, you Brandon Handley 45:19 bring up a good one, too. In the sex energy piece, I actually had somebody reach out and ask about, you know, why, you know why I might think that, you know, nuns, priests monks, abstain, right? Or even how does sexuality play out in spirituality? Right, is spirituality like? And the question was, was it is, are they missing it? Right, maybe, like, maybe they missed, like, just how the connected in spirituality was. But I think that kind of what I'm hearing you say a little bit too is like, if we just follow our basic needs, like the running as it were, right? That's not so spiritual. Whereas you can explore these vulnerabilities and make that into a spiritual, evolving experience. Mike Iamele 46:07 Well, I think what we're talking about here is empty containers, right, we have a bunch of them in our life, so we can buy beautiful art, or we can shop at home goods, I'm not shaming anything about that. But the Home Goods piece isn't gonna make me feel something as deeply as an artist putting their intention in because it's full of assets. And so we've got a lot of, you know, like, sex feels good. Most people like sex, but it's not going to nourish us deeply if it's not full of essence. So it's just kind of like, Alright, this is a biological need, I get off, this feels good. And I move on. And now I didn't have that deeper transformation. I didn't work through my shame or trauma, I didn't feel this great, you know, divinity or connection with God, I just thought, that's cool, but it's empty. And over time, it's slowly killing us. Like we live in a world right now, where we are not sensitive enough, we're not we're numbing out, right, we have an opioid epidemic going on right now. Um, you know, there's a lot of whether we are coping through this pandemic, with, you know, food, or drugs, or alcohol, or movies or TV. And those coping mechanisms aren't inherently bad in themselves, but they can be ways of escapism, and this association, right, for sure. And what I always say is, look at art, great art, when an artist puts their heart and soul on it, it moves us, he can make paintings dance, and spark cultural revolutions and political movements and make words jump off the page. It makes us feel alive, it makes us feel more sensitive. When we feel essence, when we feel someone so tapped into their essence, we become more sensitive, not to them, but to our own essence, because that's what we grow up that Brandon Handley 47:38 no, yeah. And you know, that that also brings up the whole idea of, you know, look, our energy fields, right, raising our BB around people that are, you know, high vibe, right? Where is is as long as you and I are like connected in the same way, a kind of vibratory field if I'm vibe and higher, and I'm, you know, strong with that, like, I can help bring you up, right, and vice versa, or transfer transfer feeling without like, craziness. Mike Iamele 48:04 I mean, it's basically our vibe is naturally high when we're fully here and fully ourselves. And so yes, Brandon Handley 48:10 it's part like the essence part. I know you said essence like several times, would you would you? Would you? Would you liken that to connected to source Mike Iamele 48:18 Sure. Exactly. Connected to source, lifeforce energy, and we know what sexual energy if we're talking about sex, any of these things, essence brand energies, you know, life purpose, whatever you want to call it. I'm not a stickler on language. And I've purposely used a few different language in this talk, because I don't really care. Like I your brand energies are your own language, you choose that yourself, it's what resonates for you. But when we are fully in our bodies, and we aren't, you know, a lot of times we have trauma, so half of me is back in this past memory, and half of me is over here and half, you know, it's like a Harry Potter Horcrux. Right, we're split in a million different ways. But if I'm fully fully present, I've a lot more power here. And so I want to fully be present and sense the world see, taste, touch, hear smell more of the world. And the more I'm tapped into lines and zany and frayed, that's how I do that. And that's how I do it for other people. That's why I love podcasts, because we just get to hang out and activate people make people more sensitive to themselves and it's so much fun. And so yeah, Brandon Handley 49:17 percent i think that's you know, that's, that's, uh, you know, what they, you know, I don't know how many episodes it took me to get to activate somebody right? Like that's what this that's what it's for. Right? That's exactly that's what 100% it's like, you know, looking for one person out there This podcast is for one person to be activated. Right and so like that's what you just did you just you know, self when you activate it somebody out there congratulations. Yeah. Mike Iamele 49:40 And yours while they Brandon Handley 49:43 love it. I love it. Well, man, look, look anybody. I think you got a great feel for what it is that you kind of deliver even though you know you kept saying shoddy. I think that you know it was very well done. had a lot of fun with having you on here and they would be Recognize that if they should reach out to you that they should, right? And where should they go again? Like, Mike Iamele 50:07 yeah, so Mike iml.com slash map ma p for mapping your sensitivities, and it's 36 minutes, you get a whole training, you get a worksheet, it's free. Go ahead and do that, because you'll start to know your sensitivities. Brandon Handley 50:19 Who's your ideal customer? Mike Iamele 50:21 Oh, gosh, so many. I mean, people use this word for so many freaking things. But I really love people who haven't felt at home and other spiritual practices, you know, it feels very dogmatic. It feels like they've had to internalize a lot of stuff that doesn't match up to critical thinking. And I, you know, we're intelligent beings, like, it doesn't make sense to talk about purpose as achievable, even though we're told that like, Oh, your life purpose is to be a life coach, or we say that this pisses me off, you join a life purpose webinar, right? And they do one or two things, they'll say, at the very end, your life purpose is to love. Great, awesome, I'm all about love. How does that help me with my trauma with my relationship with my business in my marketing, that doesn't help at all, we'll go the other way. And they'll say you love writing your purpose is to be a writer. And again, like you if I internalize that, and I did for a while, well, now when I give up my writing job, I feel I have no purpose. Brandon Handley 51:13 You want somebody to detach from your sense of a day, Mike Iamele 51:16 right? We see that with people who go through a divorce or get laid off or lose a job or change jobs. You know, we see this breakup all the time, these problems with mostly its job or its relationship containers, when they break down, we lose our sense of purpose. And that doesn't make sense. So I really like people who actually want to take some critical thinking and say, wait a minute, let me think about this. Let make sense to me. And then feel right to me in my own language. Hmm. Unknown Speaker 51:41 Nice. Brandon Handley 51:42 I love it. Well, man, Mike, thank you so much for coming on and being a guest on spiritual dope today. Yeah, thanks Mike Iamele 51:47 such an honor. Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Take The Path of Least Resistance To Save Time At Work One of the best things that happen when you are aligned with your natural talents is that work ceases to feel like "work." This is that sweet spot where you accomplish your tasks feel like you're in a state of flow. This is when things on your to-do list energize you, rather than drain you. Since the work is easier and the results are more excellent, you save time and precious energy at work. It's totally different on the flip side when you work out of your weaknesses. You feel this inner resistance, which can lead to self-doubt and early exhaustion. As your energy dips, you feel like you have nothing to give. Which is not the truth, because you have it in you all along. Here at Lead Through Strengths, we want you to drive towards what you want to have more of, such as work that gives a sense of meaning, while managing all other tasks at hand.  The more you use your strengths, the more you're able to offer your best to the world. But how exactly do you get more of what you want when your plate is already full of soul-sucking tasks, and for which you think there are no takers either?  Certainly, you don’t have to get stuck in this situation for long. So, listen up as Lisa Cummings and TyAnn Osborn put together and share great insights that will help you build a career centered on strengths that you love. Here's their conversation. Lisa: You're listening to Lead Through Strengths, where you'll learn to apply your greatest strengths at work. I'm your host, Lisa Cummings and you know, I'm always telling you, it's hard to find something more energizing than using your natural talents every day at work. Well, something that's just about as energizing is when I get to hang out with my other host here in the room TyAnn Osborn. Today, the topic is, you know, stuff that happens at work, that is, a little weird or awkward "things that make you go, hmm." And that thing…. it's a ridiculous call back to Arsenio Hall. It was way back. No really, it's those things that make you go hmmmm because you can't figure out how to quit making work feel so hard. TyAnn: Yeah.  Lisa: What if that thing is, “Hey, Ty, why is my manager keep giving me all the tasks that I hate? Hmm.” TyAnn: I think it's because they hate you. Lisa: (eyes widen) Hmmm. TyAnn: No, they don't hate you. That's what we're going to talk about today.  Lisa: But this is a real thing.  TyAnn: This does happen. This happens all the time. Lisa: I actually have an uncle who said from his corporate experience (shout out to Alan) he said that if you are doing a task that you can't stand, but you're the one who does it the best in the office, he's like, “Well, the next time they need to get that thing done, who are they going to come to to get the thing done? You, the one who did it the best.”  TyAnn: Right.  Doing A Great Job? Best If It’s On Tasks That You Love Lisa: So I do think this can happen because people get known for things that they don't even like, but they haven't worked on their career brand.  TyAnn: Right.  Lisa: They haven't talked to their manager about what they do like or hope for more of in their development. And I think that is one of the reasons you can be really good at something that you don't like. You're masterful because you keep getting it assigned to you. TyAnn: Absolutely. This happens all the time. This has happened to you and me. This happens to our corporate clients all the time and in a very innocuous way. There's no diabolical plot behind this. And especially when you're more junior in your career, where you might not feel like you can say, “I don't really want to do this, or, I don't really like this.”  And so, here's what happens: Oftentimes, when you're smart, you can do a lot of things, and do it in a very proficient way. And actually, your product can be pretty good. And then guess what, because you did a pretty good job at that, next time, they have that horrible spreadsheet that needs to be done — “You did a pretty good job so you're gonna get known as the horrible spreadsheet fixer.” Lisa: And you don't want to be the one... I mean, if you're a hard worker...  TyAnn: Yeah.  Lisa: ...yet you don't want to be the whiner, complainer...  TyAnn: Right.  Lisa: The purpose of this episode isn't to say, we're going to empower you to go tell your leaders all of the things that you just don't like.  TyAnn: Yeah, don't don't do that. That’s not the takeaway from this section at all. That's a career-limiting move by the way.  Lisa: High-risk conversation.  TyAnn: Yeah.  Lisa: It would be less risky to figure out a way to describe the stuff you do want more of that you would like to grow into. TyAnn: Yeah. So Lisa's got a great term that she uses about career crafting. She calls it "job shaping." So we're going to talk to you about how to lean your job more toward the things that you do like, and how maybe to get away from some of these legacy things, that kind of seems stuck to your shoe that you can't quite shake.  Lisa: Oooh, that's a good way to say it.  TyAnn: Or how to, how to avoid that thing you don't like. So, we'll give you some tips both ways. So how to lean more toward the stuff you want, and how to get out of this position of some stuff that you don't like.  Lisa: Yeah. And I mean, I think the simplest concept for the gum on your shoe, (that's a good one), is like, it starts to fade away from assignments if you continue to get known for the things that you *do* enjoy.  TyAnn: Right. Lisa: I call this concept, “don't expect your managers to be mind readers." Because it's easy to think, “They should know that that's a horrible thing, the horrible spreadsheet task, like they should know, I hate that. Why do the give the junk tasks to me? Yes, I might save time because it can turn into a mundane brainless task, but that's now how I want to save time at work.”  TyAnn: How would they know? And what do you...  Lisa: You call it something else, don't you? What do you call it? TyAnn: I call it "the psychic method doesn't work." Even though we might try to prove this over and over? Yeah, so and here's the deal, too. We see the world through our own eyes, because that's the lenses we were given, right. And we tend to think, "everything I hate, everyone else hates." Or the opposite: "everything I like everyone else likes."  But that's not how the world works. And certainly in the strengths world we find there's all kinds of different things. So just because you like something or dislike something, somebody else has a completely different set of likes and dislikes. So if you secretly hate that thing you're working on, and you don't ever say anything, guess what? How would anybody know that? Especially if you keep doing a really good job at it. And the other factor is that if you're working in your weakness zone, it's not going to be as intuitive. It's going to take you longer. The way to save time at work is to spend more of your time in your strengths zone. Lisa: Yeah.  TyAnn: And you never say anything. And then they're like, “Hey, Lisa, good job on that spreadsheet.” You're like, “Okay, thanks.” Lisa: Hey thanks. Hey, I'm a hard worker. And I keep getting more of this stuff that I don't like. It feels soul-sucking and time consuming. TyAnn: And think about this. What if you have a lot of Achiever and Responsibility in your top themes?  Lisa: I had it. I had a client, example, recently where she led through Responsibility. And she was on a big global project, all people in all time zones, and she thought it was really important to get people synched-up that someone would capture the initial conversation. This is basically a note taking thing.  TyAnn: Ahh Lisa: So she asked, “Who would like to volunteer?”  TyAnn: Okay, usually the answer is going to be, “no one.”  Lisa: That is pretty much what happened. Podcasts don't go well with me demonstrating the long cricket-silence she got in the meeting. But that's what happened. She asked, and all she heard was crickets. TyAnn: Yeah.  Lisa: *no answer, *no answer.  TyAnn: She probably felt like she had to do it.  Lisa: She did. She leads through Responsibility. She can't let a ball drop. She was like, “I'll take it.” So she takes it. And she said she found herself time after time after time taking it and she was new to the company and new to the role and six months in, she said — “Do you know my career brand here is I'm the team secretary?” Oh, and she feels like it was that one decision that led to the next one, to the next one, to the next one. And now that's how they see her. So now work feels slow and clunky. She drudges through it. She's dying to save time at work because she's bogged down in tasks she hates. TyAnn: And now for her branding exercise, she has to undo all of that, which is a, you know, a much more difficult spin.  Lisa: Our career-memories are long.  TyAnn: Yeah. So that's going to be a whole ball of work just to undo just to get her back to neutral. Because then we have to replace all that with something else. Lisa: Mm hmm. Yeah.  TyAnn: I mean, it can be done but that's just a harder way to go.  Lisa: I think that's actually a good one for the example of what you were talking about. Like there's the how, how do you unwind from what you don't like and then build into what you do like? Now if you imagine this person walking around declaring: “By the way, I don't like note-taking.”  “By the way, I’m not a secretary.”  “By the way, that's not really what I want. I'm, I'm so much more.”  "By the way, I'm actually trying to save time at work and be efficient here!" That would not go well. That would be awkward, whiny and bizarre.  TyAnn: Yeah.  Lisa: But if instead, she starts really knocking it out on these other three things that are a big deal (the ones that are in her strengths-zone), then over time, it doesn't take that much time. She gets known for other (good) things and the draining things fade away into a distant memory.  TyAnn: Right.  Lisa: And that is a path that is much more doable. And I like to give clients a script that is like a starting place for a career conversation with their manager. For example: “I just listened to this podcast episode and it got me thinking about what I would love the most to grow into next in my role. And so it made me think...I'd love to have more projects that require a person to create momentum on the team. I'd love it if you'd consider me next time a big change management effort comes up. (To TyAnn), give me another talent theme that she has besides Responsibility.  TyAnn: Okay, let's say she also has, um, Communication.  Lisa: Okay, so she also leads through Communication. And the team's doing a project where they need to roll it out to a bunch of end-users who aren't really going to love it. And it's going to take some real change management effort.  TyAnn: What clients don't always love what you have to roll out? Sometimes there's change management?  Lisa: And imagine how many people wouldn't like that? You know, I have to go out and convince a bunch of other people to do a thing, like most people go, “I don't want to do the dog and pony show. I just want to make the great thing.”  And then if you build it, they will come, right? No, you need people who lead through Communication, who can spark momentum and get other people excited about it, and communicate the benefits of it and get out there and spread the message and recruit other messengers. This kind of stuff that would be really fun to her would be loathsome to other people. TyAnn: Absolutely.  Lisa:  So if she comes around now and says, “I just listened to this podcast. It got me thinking about things I'd like to grow into. I know we have this problem right ahead of us. If you see a part of that project, where I could contribute my Communication talent theme to to be the spark of momentum, I would love to help with that. So I just want to put it out there. If you see this opportunity, I hope you'll think of me.”  TyAnn: Absolutely.  Lisa: Any manager would love to hear that.  TyAnn: They're probably, “Oh my gosh, thank you so much because I was cringing inside thinking how are we going to get all the engineers on board, or whatever it is. And hey, now that you've been working, you know, Pan Global, you've been, you know, all these people in all these different regions. You know, we can really tap into that.”  So what she didn't do was go around and whine about it. So I would say from personal experience, not the best approach. So she didn't put on her t-shirt, “Here's all the things I hate about my job.” Again, not the best approach. And she didn't go to her manager with an ultimatum, “If you don't give me this I'm gonna fight.” You know, be, “I'm gonna quit” or whatever. That's not also good.  What she did do is offer up something that she would like to be known for, she would like to lean into. And even in this case, she might not be saying “I have all this experience in this area.’ It sounded like she was saying, “I would like to get experienced in this.” And now she's getting assigned work she loves. Those lovable tasks feel like they save time at work because they do - they're easier. They're your space to get in flow. Lisa: Yeah.  Sharing Your ‘Trash And Treasure’ List To The Team Could Fast-Track A Career You Love TyAnn: So that means I'm going to be great at it. First, right out of the box, I might need to partner up with someone to try to offload some of the trash-tasks. But it's a great way for her to lean into something as opposed to just leading with, here's what I hate about my job, which would be great. Here's what's funny: because here's this task now that she loathes, but there is someone else out there, I promise you, who would love the opportunity to do the thing that she hates. This is what's so hard for us. Remember, everything that we hate, we think everyone else hates too.  But there's someone else out there who maybe you know, funny enough, maybe they also have Communication, but theirs show up in a written form. Maybe they are not the extroverted person out there, in terms of extroverted catalytic change. Maybe they are, you know, they are more introverted. They like the details, they want to keep everybody abreast through this great written form.  It could be all kinds of things. But there's somebody else out there who would love this. And so a great, you know, really well-functioning team is able to talk about these things. You've got this great trash-to-treasure team activity, where again, it takes a little bit of vulnerability, but we can say, here are the top three things I love, or I'm looking forward to. Here are the things that I'm kind of ready to pass on to somebody else. Lisa: I mean, look at that, like we, we love talking with each other. And we don't get to the actionable takeaway this fast usually. This is, this is great. That thing that you just described, where if you share it as a team….  Here's an example the other day. A guy goes, (I introduced trash and treasure sort of things, like, what are some things that you really enjoy?), and he said, “I really like escalation calls."  TyAnn: Which is funny, because a lot of other people are like, “Oh, my God, I would hate that.”  Lisa: They thought he added in the wrong column. And then and you know, you just get a lot of that. “Why? Why?”  TyAnn: Why?  Lisa: “What are you talking about?” Like, “surely he wrote that on the wrong side.” And he's like — “I, I am a deep subject-matter expert. I love when there's a big challenge. It's gotten.... I don't love that customer services are flustered, but he's like, “I love that it's been too big and hairy for anyone to figure out, and I can come in and I know when they talk to me, it is over. Their frustration is done.” He said, “It's so satisfying to know that there is no escalation after me. It is always solved.”  TyAnn: Wow.  Lisa: And that thing just made him feel so alive. And instantly, in that moment, people are like, “Can I give you mine? Can I give you mine? Can I give you mine?” And he is like, “In fact, yes. If other things can get off my plate, yes, I would love it if my day were filled with that.”  Imagine. He feels more productive doing escalation calls. He didn't study a time management book. He didn't even have to apply the Getting Things Done (GTD) method. He saved time at work because he loved it and that is a responsibility that lights him on fire. TyAnn: That's brilliant.  Lisa: Now, it's not always that clean and easy. I mean, you can't just be like, “Yes, let me give you my worst tasks ever.” For many on the team, that's their worst well ever. But it works. There are moments.  TyAnn: I love that like that. I love that. Or if we could find, usually there's somebody on the team who maybe highly Analytical or they have whatever skill, like the Excel skills, or the Microsoft Project skills. They love, you know, a good Gantt chart or whatever. Usually, there's somebody who, that’s their jam.  And someone else wants to poke their eye out if that's what they have to do. So wouldn't it be great if you could just shift a little bit so that, you know, “Hey, maybe I can't just unload this task? Maybe I'm still responsible for it but hey, Lisa, can I go to lunch with you? And you could just give this thing a once over and you know, make sure I'm on the right path?”  You know, and you're probably like, “That's awesome. Yes!” And I'll say I’ll buy your lunch. And you're like, “You don't even have to do that, I'm excited to help.”  Lisa: Mmmm.  TyAnn: I'm like, “Why would you be excited to help about this loathsome project?” But so you know, those kinds of things are easy ways you can ease into it, even if it's not possible for me to be like here at least. So you take it up.  Lisa: And I think you're bringing up a nuance that's important is that you don't just want your manager, the person you report to, to be the only one who knows what you want to grow into. Now, your teammates know new things about, you and you know things about them.  Maybe then you share with the leader like, “Oh, wow, he was so helpful to me in this way.” And now he's getting known for the thing that he likes.  TyAnn: Right. Lisa: And he's getting more of it. And it really does have this virtuous..  TyAnn: ...virtuous cycle — my favorite thing about Significance, right. Uhhmm, share with each other, what is the thing you love best about your job because, in the words of my friend, Lisa, notice what works to get more of what works. And so if I don't know what works for you, I can't ever help you get more of that.  Lisa: Yeah.  TyAnn: And I can't ever point out because if I keep pointing out your spreadsheet looks really good, and you're like, “Oh my god, I hate that thing. I am going to go to my grave and have that spreadsheet etched on my tombstone.” And you never want to say, “Ah, I'd really like to do this other thing.” So again, coming back to the idea that your manager doesn’t automatically know what you want, and the psychic method doesn't work, and it doesn't work for your teammates, either.  This is where I think being vulnerable, having that psychological safety, and I think also having that concept of, “just because I don't say, just because I don't love something doesn't mean I'm saying, “I hate this. I'm not going to do it.” Or, “I'm going to do it poorly.” Because again, I don't get to run my unicorn work. I don't only get to do the things I want to do all day long. I'm going to approach my work and always do everything with as much integrity as I can. But there are some things I would like to do more of, and probably have more of an act to do. Attract Opportunities By Striking A Conversation About Your ‘How’ Skills Lisa: Yay. Good luck on that, Ty. And don't make your take away, the refusal of the job...  TyAnn: Don't do that.  Lisa: ...or the excuse to get out of work or...  TyAnn: Don't do that. But as you know, as we tell children, you got to use your words. So you've got to put it out there. Whether you call it the secret, or the universe, or using your words, you've got to put out there what you're hoping to do more of.  Lisa: Oh, and you have to first decide what you want more of. If you're going to save time at work by doing work that puts you in flow, you have to reflect enough to know what responsibilities put you in the flow state.  TyAnn: Yeah. Lisa: Strengths, reading the book StrengthsFinder, doing the CliftonStrengths assessment, these are all helpful things if you've never even thought of, “Oh, it's not just that I would like more of this skill,  TyAnn: Right. Lisa: … but also, how I interact with people. Or like, in the Communication example, that was more of a ‘how’, not a ‘what’ skill thing” and...  TyAnn: Right.  Lisa: ...like, “Oh, I like to build momentum. Aha, I can ask my manager for things that require momentum building, that's not something that they've probably ever thought of using, as an assignment criteria.” And now they have a whole new realm of things to offer you instead of like that one specific job that you were hoping to move into next.  TyAnn: I think that's actually a really good point because if you just look at, you know, let me find the magic job title, well, I'll just tell you, that's going to be a long hard search. Because that often doesn't exist. But these “how” skills exist in a lot of places that you might not even realize, right? But that's where you can, the more you put out there what you want, the more other people will start to help you and say — “You know, there's actually the thing you didn't even know, but they could use you on that project team.” Like I didn't even know that was a thing.  And then, you know. But again, if you just sit there at your cube, or now you know, at your home office, hoping that the magical assignment comes your way and bluebirds into your, to your window, you're going to be sitting there a long time. So you can, you can have a little bit more control in your life when you do the right thing(?)  Lisa: Yeah. So if we bring this all together, I would say one action is, you want to have a conversation with the person that you report to.  TyAnn: Absolutely.  Lisa: And and try to find a way to express, “Here's this thing I would love to grow into. And I would love it, if you would think of me next time you're considering assignments that relate to x, and if you use those “how” skills.  TyAnn: Absolutely. And by the way, it's perfectly legitimate feedback for your manager to say, “Okay, I hear you saying that, but you know what, you don't have any of those skills today.” That might happen. And then you can have a conversation about, “Okay, how might I be positioned to get those skills? What would a path look like for that?”  Lisa : Yeah.  TyAnn: That is completely legitimate.  Lisa: Yeah.  TyAnn: Or for you to look up in the organization somewhere, and then just go talk to someone and say, “how did you get here?” How, and, you know, that's what, I kind of interview internal people all the time. Have, you know, and just have kind of an informational one-on-one. By the way, people love to talk about themselves, little tip, and people will meet with you all day long, for 30 minutes, just to tell you their story.  And so that's where real growth happens. So I love that. So talk to your manager. Again, second method doesn't work there. So that's the first tip, communication.  Lisa: I'd say, volunteering the talent out. So let's say for example, you lead through Learner and Input. And now your company is implementing Microsoft Teams, but no one knows how to use it, and they're resisting it. And you're like, “we're gonna have to get down with this program, because it's going to be the way of the world. Microsoft is embedded in everything we do, we need to figure it out.”  And so you decide, “I'm going to turn on my Learner and Input. I'm going to find all the cool features and things that could make life easier for teammates and then I'm going to share it with teammates. So then you get an opportunity to get known for what you want more of because you've decided, “I'm going to do it anyway. I can tell it we'll have to figure it out. I'm going to turn on my Learner and Input which would be fun for me because those are in my top five. And then I'm going to use those, volunteer them out beyond myself to help the team." By virtue of volunteering it out, you can see where using the talent makes you feel more productive and efficient. It's an experimenting process. It is a process, yet the compounding effect can save you a lot of time at work over the course of months or years. In fact, the job itself can be totally different as a byproduct of these experiments. If the team does StrengthsFinder as a team thing, then they know the words Learner and Input and you're able to say, “Okay, you know, Learner and Input. I nerded out on this. So I thought you might find this helpful, here are all the things that I've picked up.” And you give them the tip sheet. TyAnn: I love that. I mean, that's so cool. You've made yourself the super user. You've... and it's not just about you, you've created, you know, you've positioned yourself in a way of service to other people.  So by the way, anytime you're helpful to other people, they tend to want to come back to you to get more help, which is great, because you've, you know, you're killing kind of two birds with one stone, this is great. They're gonna be like, - “Oh, that you did such a great job that last time we had this thing. Now we've got to have this. You know, we're gonna put this in Slack. Nobody here knows anything about it. Can you help us with that?”  And yeah, you would be the person. So I love that. It's volunteering your talent, not again, sitting at your desk quietly with your head down, waiting for someone to come tap you on the shoulder and say, “Hey, Lisa, I know you're a high Learner Input. So I was thinking maybe here's an opportunity, you could, you could do.”  That, that's rarely going to happen. It's rarely going to happen. So you have to really keep your eye on the landscape and think, “How could I apply my top themes to what's going on here?” So...  Lisa: Those are big.  TyAnn: I know. Lisa: Okay. I have a third one, which would be, listen for what people kvetch and complain about.  TyAnn: Hmm.  Lisa: Not to join it?  TyAnn: Yeah.  Lisa: Again, more career limiting.  TyAnn: Yeah, don't do that.  Lisa: But if you listen, you can hear like when Ty was explaining the spreadsheet with doing the VLOOKUPs. She was good at them but when she remembers this role that she had where she had to spend all day in the spreadsheet doing Vlookups, her nose crinkles up when she says “Vlookup” like there's an uhm!  TyAnn: Yeah, there's a physical response when you don't like something. You're basically or even your body might hunch down a little bit.  Lisa: Yeah. So watch for that because let's say I were the teammate, I lead through Analytical and Deliberative and I love slicing and dicing data and living in Excel put me in Excel all day long as my favorite job, when I see her react that way, if I'm listening to other people's responses, both tuning in...  TyAnn: Yeah,  Lisa: ...even just to watch, but I'm watching, “Oh, saw your reaction in the Vlookup there.”  TyAnn: ‘Saw the nose crinkle.  Lisa: “Not your BFF, huh?” She's like, “NO!” And then I go, “Ah, I start to get ideas. I could, I could take that on for you. And maybe you could swap something out with me. Or maybe I could give you a shortcut template or something like that, where I'm just volunteering it out.”  She's thinking, yeah Vlookups are slow and cumbersome and awful. Meanwhile you're thinking that Vlookups are such a great way to save time at work and get really efficient. But beyond watch for things you could swap with others. And when you see others kvetching and complaining, you're often able to see — “Oh, that thing that I like, not everybody likes that.”  “Oh, that thing that I'm good at, not everyone else is good at it.”  TyAnn: Right. I think that's huge. And just thinking about that person with a spreadsheet, you know, maybe there's a meeting they have to go to every week where they have to report out on that spreadsheet. And that meeting causes them no end of angst. They get the pit in the tummy feeling, they get the flop sweat, they go in and even though they know it front and back, they can't communicate that to save their lives.  Lisa: Yeah.  TyAnn: And it's miserable for everybody. And you're like, “I could talk to those people cold.”  Lisa: That is perfect.  TyAnn: You're like, “How about I, you do the back end, I'll do the front end and together we are the Ty and Lisa show? Only if it was the two of us. There really wouldn't be a back end, we would only be to the front.  Lisa: We’re going, “To the back. To the back. To the front. To the front.” It would be stuck — a skipping record. “To the front. To the front. To the front”  TyAnn: We need to have a team. We would need Deena a lot with this, to help, to help round us out. Um, yeah. So again, the psychic method doesn't work. So you got to have that, those conversations, and I think that will really serve me well.  Lisa: Yeah. So let us know, how did your conversation go? How did you bring it up?  TyAnn: Yeah.  Lisa: And when you were thinking of the talents that you're trying to lead into, how did you phrase it with your manager. This is a scripting thing that I find a lot of people get stuck on. And that's why I like to give that thing where it's like, - “Hey, I've been thinking about what I want to grow into next.” Or even using this podcast because at least it's less awkward to say, “Hey, I was listening to this podcast. I was trying to learn more about being awesome at work," you know, in something that makes you sound like you're continuing to grow.  TyAnn: Right?  Lisa: “I've been putting a lot of thought into this and it gave me this idea.” And then you can offer it out.  TyAnn: And then let us know and we'll talk about it. Let us know if you tried it and it doesn't work either. We'll come up with something else for you. There's more than one way here.  Lisa: We can have the failure recapture. “Okay, here's a scripting idea that doesn't work. Don't try this because this goes back into that high-risk category that sits right along what...  TyAnn: Lisa and I laugh about this because we have tried a whole bunch of things that haven't worked before. So we, you know, we can, we're right there with you on that. We can help prevent you from having those same experiences.  Lisa: Yes. And although my stint in HR was very, very short, yours was much more significant. And the time that we got to spend with leaders saying, “All right, fire me.” Like, “We’re doing the roleplay. It's going to be an awkward conversation. I am now the person.” And then getting them to go through….  Scripting things out is tough. And there are so many hard conversations in the workplace. So even these when you're, you're trying to talk about yourself without sounding braggadocious.  TyAnn: Right. Lisa:  That's tough too.  TyAnn: Right?  Lisa: And it's not even awkward, and you're not telling someone they're about to… TyAnn: Right. Lisa: ...lose their job or be on a performance improvement plan. It's just simply like, “how do I describe something that I might be good at without sounding like an arrogant jerk?  TyAnn: Like a braggy jerk. So it's fine. We, again, it feels a little uncomfortable, because we don't have these conversations all the time. So that's where you're just, you know, you can get a little index card and just literally write this out. And then kind of practice in a mirror saying this. You can practice with a friend. You can call a spirit guide to help you out.  And the more you do it, the easier it will become. And again, we're not trying at all for you to say, “here's the list of things I'm not going to do.” This is just how can you lean your career, how can you steer it a little bit more toward the things that bring you energy, and a little bit less towards the soul sucker parts of the job.  Lisa: Yeah. And if you do decide that you want to do this as a team exercise, where you're talking about it and you want a facilitator, Ty would be a great one for this. She can come into your organization and walk you through that trash and treasure exercise. She's great at helping you figure out what fills you up - even a personal branding exercise for each person on the team. We have one where you walk away with three words that describe how you would love to be known and describe how you want to show up in the organization so that you can actually take the time to reflect because it's hard to carve the time out, and then your teammates can know how you want to be known, and your manager. TyAnn: That's a cool exercise too, by the way. People feel really good about that.  Lisa: Yeah. And it feels so good to hear them about each other.  TyAnn: Yeah. Very affirming. Lisa: And it takes away that...  TyAnn: Very affirming. I love that one.  Lisa: Yeah because you're not being awkward or arrogant when some facilitators ask you to do the exercise.  TyAnn: Yeah, absolutely.  Lisa: Yeah. TyAnn: So give us a ring. Let us know what works for you and if you need help on this process. Lisa: All right. With that, we will see you next time. Bye for now. More Relevant Resources To Support Your Strengths-Focused Career Growth The previous discussion on strengths as easy buttons for better performance truly supports today’s episode. You turn on your "easy buttons" when you go for tasks or projects that you find enjoyable and energizing. This leads to a better and well-recognized performance at work. But going more for these tasks that you love also means ensuring you don’t end up sounding braggy. Not all people around you might respond well to it. Here’s Lead Through Strengths Facilitator Strother Gaines sharing tips on how to not sound arrogant when building a career around your strengths, so you can review your script before you talk to others about yourself. If you’re a team manager, you can help and guide your team members realize their full potential in whatever roles they express to lean more into by assessing their top strengths, along with their trash and treasure list. Revisit Lisa’s interview with Adam Seaman to pick up more tips.

Today we are joined by Clint Lose ex capitol hill staffer in Washington, Eric Marcus of the Making Gay History podcast, TV pundit Laura Babcock in Hamilton Ontario, writer Doug Levy in San Francisco, Derek Perkinson of the National Action Network in New York, writer Emma Burnell in London and Jeanie Walsh AC transport director in Oakland.Biden Wants to Unite the Country. We must end this uncivil war!TranscriptionSpeaker 0 (41s): Hi, Mid Atlantic pundits and listeners. I'm Maddie from Moto and a great fan of Roifield podcast, especially Atlantic after the US insurrection podcast, I want it to ring in to support Laura Babcock and Rick Wright by asking us to what's this space very carefully X to my mind, to the U S North America. And actually the whole world had a narrow escape. And you, because Trump is superbly self disillusioned, meaning that before November, he really believed he would win in the election and therefore did not get his trips organized in time. For real coop, had he had another term, or if Paris had thought he got in a term in 2020 for you would of been ready to get US militia to take the government hostage and to declare him precedent for life. It is good, and he's such a bad business executive and used to organize a thank goodness for that. He did a great job and thanks for the podcast. It's always very interesting to listen to. Well, I couldn't agree more with our colour. I think we have to keep watching this space. There are rumours that Trump wants to start a Patriot party and maybe have his children run for the Senate. And if it's not his family, there are certainly others who are trying to pick up his audience and trying to keep his mega movement going. And so we got a break this time we got to break because they thought they had it when they realized they didn't have it. They tried their COO and they weren't successful. But that by no means suggests that the millions of people that bought into the big lie that Trump was so good at putting out there. Aren't still wanting to believe that lie, and aren't willing to follow somebody else in his footsteps. So I appreciate the call and I agree wholeheartedly. Speaker 1 (2m 22s): Thank you for that. Cool, Maddie, if you would like to join Maddie by responding to a comment on this episode, why don't you go on to Mid Atlantic show.com, click the button, which has speak pipe and the little red tab over there on the right. And you can leave a voice note of up to two minutes, which will then we'll include on a future show. So go to Mid Atlantic show.com hit the speak pipe button, the little red tab over on the right's and leave us your message, which will play an a forthcoming show. Now on with today's episode. Welcome submitted. Atlantic the show where we look at the news reviews from one side of the endocrine, the perspective of the other I'm Roifield Brown who was back in my beloved Bay area. Today, we are joined by, Hmm. It's called in to my notes. It says Clint Lucy ex Capitol staffer, but he's just told us that he's got to go off and do a work call, but he might be joining us later. We have Eric Marcus of the Making Gay History podcast. TV pundit Laura Babcock in Hamilton Ontario we have writer and Sage Doug Levy in the San Francisco Emma Burnell because without her it's this even a Mid Atlantic she is a writer and a political commentator in London. Derek Perkinson my brother from another mother from the national action network in New York. And we have my pal, my good friend, Jean Walsh, who is the director of AC transit in Oakland California. Say hello folks. Sure. Are you Speaker 3 (3m 52s): Please raise your right hand and repeat after me. I Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. Do solemnly swear. I had Joseph Robyn at Biden Jr. Do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

“The victim of our rushing and stress is our presence”Be PreparedBe PunctualBe Present(Post-pare) Episode Transcript Below____[00:00:41] Hey, everyone, it's good to be here again today. And today we're going to talk about a topic that Tommy has called radical punctuality more than on time. So I'm curious, what do you mean by radical punctuality? [00:01:00] I actually love some of the thoughts coming around this, so I hope it'll be helpful for those who are listening. I was recently at a conference and they had a motivational speaker and he was talking about some core elements of just being an effective person. And one of those was punctuality. And it just it was like at the moment my head exploded because I realized that punctuality is a big deal to me. I value highly punctuality. I am a punctual person, which I know almost disqualifies me to talk about this, you know, and a lot of senses. But when I realized the minute I started thinking about that is that it's it's about more than being punctual. You know, some people are very punctual, but they they enter into things right on time, completely stressed. And that stress pervades the entire time you're together, including the fact that they are on such a tight schedule that they have to leave and are constantly looking at their watch the whole time. [00:02:10] Well, I'm laughing that this is our topic today because I'm here for you since since you can't relate to the struggle to be punctual. I am here for you, Tommy, to represent all of those listening who have to push to be on time. And I am punctual, punctual, especially when it matters. But I am one of those people that's rushing to be punctual. For example, today, if you notice, if you could see me right now, my hair is wet. Thankfully, I'm hanging out with Tommy and Joe. They don't care. But I made a couple choices before I came here that if I were to pay attention to, like, these little subtle thoughts, I would have known I don't have time to do this extra thing. But I ended up jumping in the shower late, didn't have time to blow dry my hair. So I got here on time. But if we had started this podcast right away, when I walked in the door, I would have been stressed and rushed. But I showed up and you'd kind of built in this margin to this meeting where we hang out and chat for a while. And that margin enabled me to just sort of relax and then come in and be in a different frame of mind once we actually started our conversation. [00:03:26] Well, it's actually a great example because imagine if I had booked like two or three episodes. Right. One behind and we run roughly 30 minutes. So let's say I'd schedule this at thirty five minutes. And you were rushing in even though you were totally on time. But we had to sit right down. The whole feeling of this would be completely different. And that's why I wanted to add the phrase both radical punctuality. To say punctuality is can be actually very empty. You know, it can just be someone who's, you know, very rigid in how they operate. But it's more than about being on time, you know, and that's what's so critical. I know some people who are very regularly a few minutes late, but they come in completely relaxed and prepared. I would so much rather that than someone be right on the minute and completely stressed out. So both talking about, I think, in our time together. [00:04:35] That punctuality rightly thought about is more than about being on time and what are the things that we do in our lives that cause us to misuse time? And tried to jam so much into it in ways that sabotage the beauty of punctuality. Hmm. [00:05:01] Well, this is good because when you said that we were going to talk about punctuality, I immediately had this kind of condemning voice in my head, like, yeah, yeah, you need to be more on top of it. You need to be more on time. But the things that you have three parts to this idea of radical punctuality. And I want you to go through each one of them. But as I think about it, it's more like setting before you a feast versus drive through fast food, you know, and it's almost like this framework that you're going to give for punctuality is not a this is how you ought to behave, but it's an offering of a different way of going about your day that actually leads to enjoyment. Yes. And I think that's one of the things that will come out of what you're going to say. And it also leads to a more nourishing or deeper experience of life. [00:05:58] Well, I think you absolutely nailed it. We could almost close it with this. It is the difference between arriving for a feast and going through fast food that I mean, I do love McDonald's. [00:06:13] I mean, can we just have a side moment? There's a time and place. But McDonald's, Chick fil A, you know, got a response. [00:06:20] But it's not what we crave. It's not as nourishing. So, I mean, I'm always going to have my drive through moments, but it would be nice to have less of them and to have more of a life or a day that leads itself out like a feast. [00:06:34] We do enjoy life more. And one of the things that that I would like to almost dismember in terms of the way we think about it, is that our rushing is necessary in order to be effective and to be productive. I believe that's absolutely just a lie. I just don't think it's true. I think we've lived that way for so long that our rushing has become a habit that we think is necessary in order to get everything done. You know, one of the absolute facts, undeniable facts of life, is that you have exactly the same amount of minutes in a day as I have. Mm hmm. Now, whether I spend them rushing or not has so little to do with my productivity. So we'll talk about that more. But I'd love to challenge those who think Rushing is making them more effective and more productive. I just don't believe it. [00:07:40] Well, for me, I've delved into the psychology of this a little bit, and I think for me underneath it all is this lack of trust that 24 hours that God, if you're a person of faith, has given you will be enough. There's a sense of not enough time. And the shift for me has been and trusting that the amount of time I've been given is enough for me to do what I need to do. And if I don't do it, then I didn't need to do it or I need to scale back. And so for me, it's been a little bit of trust. But I like how you are expanding it to more than just being on time. And the way you are going to describe it makes it more inviting to me than a discipline. So will you walk us through your three steps? [00:08:28] Yes. So hopefully this will just be a way. It's not so much a formula. It's a way that that I think about this and kind of fundamental to these three steps is beginning to live through our days with some cushion and some margin. Because if we if we live our one hour appointment that we have with we arrive on the minute, that is, we're completely punctual and we close out at 59 minutes. We've been punctual. But if we're running as fast as we can't up to that minute and we're running right away from it, what kind of quality of life have we had? And that's the way many people run their lives and think they need to run their lives. And so therefore, they're constantly rushed, they're constantly exhausted, they're constantly stressed. But it doesn't have to do with the things they're doing. It's how they're doing, what they're doing. So that's what these three steps are about. And I would argue again that not only are we not losing out on productivity, but that we can be more prepared. Active doing what I'm saying, which is what part of this is about, so the first step is that we prepare. That means that we go into the time with some thought, with some centering, some present, even if it's just a lunch with a friend, that we don't rush into it even on time, that we don't rush into it with our minds running in a hundred different directions. I like even occasionally the practice of arriving at the restaurant to meet someone and sitting in the car for just one minute and taking a couple of us thinking about what's going on with this person, centering my mind just a moment of preparation. But even beyond that, if you look at the business context, how many meetings have you gone to where nobody is prepared, you just arriving and you're just jumping into it? And preparation has to be built into the first 10 minutes of the meeting while everybody figures out, OK, what are we talking about today? You know, how is that productive in terms of things? [00:11:05] I like that because well, particularly like the idea of arriving early. And then for those of us who have to push to get there on time, that does build in a cushion that, you know, if we're running late, then we're not running late. We've built in that cushion in our minds. But also the word or the phrase to tune in really sticks with me. Like I imagine if I am if I've made the effort to get together for a coffee or breakfast or a lunch with somebody, it means that person is important in my life because I don't have a lot of time. Right. So if I show up five minutes early or ten minutes early and just take some time to also call myself, but just to tune in mentally or emotionally, just to like that person and remind myself kind of what's been going on in their lives. And I think about this with a meeting, too. [00:11:56] If I were to meet, it gives me the opportunity to think what is the one thing, the most important thing about this meeting, which then makes that meeting twice as productive, that five minutes of preparing can leverage the entire hour of meeting to be that much more productive? [00:12:18] Yeah, I can really see that. And it really is not going to cut into your productivity that much for me to have. Like I said before I came in here, I was rushed. But the reason why is that I was trying to get this last minute shopping done online before the sale went out. And if I had chosen not to do that, I could have easily fit that last little bit in somewhere else later in the day. And it would have made all the difference in my mood and the way I approached my interactions with other people. And those little things we try and squeeze in really are not that important. But squeezing them and change the whole tone of your day by being rushed, particularly if you do that meeting after meeting after meeting. [00:13:03] And that's why, you know, to me, so many people are running like chickens with their head cut off, not because they have so much going on, but because they're always rushing, they're always stressed. And those are at some level choices with how they are arranging, you know, and the five minutes, it doesn't take more than being, you know, five minutes ahead of the game. That isn't going to change anybody's day in a drastic sense. So it's with a mindset change. It's an easy thing to think I'm going to be prepared for those few places that I'm going to be might be, you know, two places in a day. It might be eight places, but it's still not that many that I'm going to be prepared for that I'm going to come into them with my total self. [00:13:54] Well, I'll tell you one thing. I have never once enjoyed something when I was rushing. They are opposites. They're antithetical to each other. Rushing and enjoyment cannot coexist. And that alone is a motivation. When we go back to this feast analogy, are we eating just to throw that nourishment, you know, throw the food around us? Are we going to enjoy this? Are we setting meetings and coffees and events just to do them? Are we doing them to enjoy them and have meaning in life? And if we are, then rushing is going to undermine that completely. [00:14:31] Exactly. So that idea of of giving a little space to be prepared, to be centered, to be thoughtful about the experiences within our day, that in and of itself can change things. Being punctual is actually the least important part of radical punctuality. [00:15:00] You know, whether I'm right there on the minute or whether I'm two or three minutes late or even five minutes late, I can't think of ever being five minutes late that anybody that it ever faced them. [00:15:15] But being present, being prepared, that's so critical. Then, of course, kind of being punctual is goes right along with that, that you're there at the time honoring the other person and their time by being on time. [00:15:35] So how did you become so punctual? I mean, I think it's pretty natural to you, but why is punctuality so important and has thinking about it in this expanded way, even though it might not have changed how you were on time if you've always been on time? But has it changed kind of your approach to punctuality? [00:15:55] Well, the probably a couple of experiences, but I can remember once with my dad showing up for a tennis court five minutes late and my dad is is is really very easygoing. He's not a hard, harsh man. But this time maybe he was just a little perturbed. And he looked at me, he said, you know, when you show up five minutes late to something like this that has a beginning time, you're telling me that you believe your time is more important than mine? Well, I was like a dagger to me, but beyond the dagger, I realized he was actually right. [00:16:32] I was saying that, you know, all of my life and my business was more important than being on time for him. And we know it so intuitively because certain meanings, we have no problem being on time because they're important. What are we saying about the other ones where we're so willing to not be on time? So that was part of it. But what was more fundamental to punctuality becoming something that is important to me is that I realized punctuality in this broader way. I'm defining it is utterly delightful that I can do so much and I can be so much more effective in my time with people and the things that I do when I do this. And so I realized that I could be highly productive with this great sense of relaxed satisfaction and joy. And so now I realize that being punctual is delightful. Being rushed and late is miserable. So that mindset change has made this now for me an easy thing. [00:17:46] Yeah, I appreciate what your dad said. I mean, I've heard that before. [00:17:51] It doesn't always stick with me because I think when I am making choices that make me rushed or that might make me late, I never connect those choices with a disrespect of the person I'm meeting with. To me, there's a I never connect those dots, but in actuality, there is a huge connection between like, say, I was late today when I came in. The choices I made to finish up the cart on my online shopping were directly disrespectful to you, but in my mind, they don't connect at all. And so I think part of it for people like me is learning to see those moments when they're happening in the sort of thought life that you live and see those choices, recognize them and connect them to do. I really want to convey a sense of disrespect to that person. [00:18:45] Yeah, and I'd love for this to be received without condemnation and guilt, you know, because that's it's not what it's about the truth. And the fact of the matter is, if we were going to meet with the president of the United States, we would be darn early for it. We would be way early for it. So there is a truth, but it's not about making us feel bad that we're late. It's about trying to reframe things and say this isn't the kind of person that I want to be. I want to I want to honor the other person. I want to make them feel so valuable and important. And a little tiny piece of that is being there on time or even a minute early. [00:19:31] I like how you say that, because the people I know and I'll just include myself and those who struggle with time are some of the most compassionate, loving people. And they would they care about people a lot. And I think that there's something about showing up early and tuning into. Whoever, whomever you're going to meet with that has a way of honoring them and caring for them. And if I am in that moment of choice, you know, where I'm online, if I have this voice in my head that says, come on, get off, you're always late. You know, you need to get your act together. I don't love that voice and I don't tend to want to listen to it. Whereas if I had this thought of the person you're getting ready to hang out with, you care about them a lot and why show up early and just really make this time matter like that's an invitational thing versus a condemning. [00:20:25] And I would definitely want it to be that way as an invitation, not as a judgment. A criticism of pharisaical way of this is the way we need to be. The other thing that that happens in my mind when I'm early is it's almost like I'm sneering at time and saying, you know what, I'm in control of time. It's not in control of me. I can show up early. I can do whatever I want. [00:20:52] And it's the sense of, yeah, it's OK, I'm in a great spot and I love that sense of being on top of things, I guess a little bit. [00:21:03] That's so ironic because I think when I make the choice to do those extra few things that I probably shouldn't do before I get out the door, I think it's a little rebellious part of me. That's like time is not in charge. I mean, I can do this if I want to. I'm rebelling against the limits. So I it's ironic because I think that I'm controlling time and controlling my day, but probably the opposite is true. And like you say, I mean, I haven't experienced really this showing up early phenomenon, but I would love to experience that and know that, hey, you know, sneer at time. I got this. You're not running my life. I'm running it. [00:21:41] Right. And so a lot of radical punctuality is not so much about being on time. It's it's it's a statement against rushing and again, stress, you know, that's just not a good way to live. And you know that the consequence the victim of our rushing and our stress is our presence, which that's the third part of, to me, radical punctuality. When we go into the various places of our life rushed and stressed, we can't be present. And so inevitably, if we're rushing into something the first few minutes or the entirety of the time, our mind is scrambled and our attention is distracted. And that's not the way we want to live either. So the critical thing, and I think almost a beautiful goal, if you would put it that way, for two thousand and twenty one, is this thought of I want to live my life present to the experiences. And I think this concept of radical punctuality is a pathway to greater presence and what a gift that is to the people in our lives, our families, the people that we're working with, the people we choose to be friends with and have coffee or lunch with to be utterly present to them. And I want to say one of the also enemies of presence that I'd put on the back end of this is deadlines. If I have an hour to spare or thirty minutes to spare whatever amount of time, and that it's going to take all of that time to visit with that person or whatever, about 30 or 40, 45 minutes into it, I am on to the next appointment. In my mind, I'm thinking, do I need to look at my watch? Do I need to see, you know, am I running close on this? So I've learned the joy of creating a significant cushion behind my meetings. So I'll often create I know this will be uncomfortable for a lot of people, but I'll create a thirty minute cushion beyond what I think a meeting will take so that I know that I can be completely relaxed in the meeting. [00:24:14] And so what happens is that a certain percentage of meetings run ten minutes late. I'm not worried about I'm not even thinking about it, I'm not stressed in the slightest about it, a large percentage of means will end on time. I now have a 30 minute gap where I can do that online shopping that you're talking about, all the other little things that I fit into a day, get fit in that 30 minutes in an unwrapped, unrushed fashion. So that's the beauty of it, is that I'm so much more present. I don't mean to put myself up there, but this is the joy that I've learned in terms of that, that I'm so much more present at all the things still get done that need to get done and often they get done better because I'm so much more present and prepared. [00:25:04] Well, so you have three things here about radical punctuality. More it's more than being on time. You talk about preparation, being punctual and being present. But I want to just throw in a fourth one. And this came from a podcast you did with Nicole Younus a couple months ago, or maybe it was a couple of weeks ago. [00:25:23] But she talked about building in after like an after meeting. I don't know what she would call it, but I remember distinctly she said that when you plan or you have a stressful meeting or something that, you know, that is going to be kind of emotionally draining, that you should build in a cushion after the meaning just to process it. It's almost like if I am going through the drive through at McDonalds and then I have scheduled like a five mile run afterwards, it's just not going to go well. [00:25:55] Right, exactly. Yeah. And I've learned that a lot this season because I would have these papers I'd have to do. And I remember it came they came after a stressful meeting and I my brain literally couldn't function to write the paper because I needed this processing time to process the meeting. That was kind of intense. Whereas if I had built in an hour for the after meeting or twenty minutes for the after meeting, depending on what I predicted the meeting would be like, then it would just made for like a more enjoyable day. [00:26:27] Exactly. And that's, that's where that 20 that that cushion can come in. And since we're using P words, I would call that kind of making up a word, but call it post PR. We prepare and we post paper before and after. And if we live our best days and I'm not always good at this, we prepare for the day in our morning routine and we should post Perre for the day at the end of the day to process everything that went on. And what do I need to do? And, you know, what are the follow ups that I need to do? So I love actually adding that, you know, into this idea of radical punctuality. Again, the core that I just love to leave people with is that this rushing and this stress that it comes so habitual in our culture and in too many of our lives is not working for us. And it's not necessary and it's counterproductive to happiness and joy.

Oh yes, Utz a good day to taste some Utz Buttermilk Ranch potato chips. Apparently, unlike their regular line of potato chips, these are “HeluvaGood!” So, take if from Utz, don’t buy their other chips. What? That wasn’t the point? Hmm, my bad. Anywhoooo…I do love buttermilk and ranch and buttermilk ranch so I am very much looking forward to these suckers. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/inthechips/support

Does the pandemic excuse you from breaking up with your partner in person? Is this last encounter with your soon-to-be ex be worth the risk? Hmm...In "The Jealousy Trip," our caller says her boyfriend is pissed because she sends her cute coworker funny memes, and therefore wants her to block him! Shoboy pretends to be our caller's coworker, and let's just say her boyfriend didn't think this prank was funny...Yikes! Follow us @ShoboyShow  Listen Live 6-10AM PST  M-Fri on ShoboyShow.com  Shoboy: @edgarisotelo Becca: @BeccaMGuzman Eddie The Virgin: @EddieSotelo  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://news.iheart.com/podcast-advertisers

Nate and Giuls talk digestive systems and wonder: Can your lunch catch up with your dinner in your poop? Who knows? Surely we don't. Also, the boys get deep into illicit school bathroom activities. Hmm.. these topics seem to be similar... Well...Whattya gonna do?--Visit our website at babystation.io Support us on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/babystationpod.--Thanks to our sponsor Castaway Club Clothing. Enter code BABY at checkout and get 15% off your purchase. Visit https://castawayclubclothing.com/ to pick up your new fit today. Don't miss it!

We Make Books is hosted by Rekka Jay and Kaelyn Considine; Rekka is a published author and Kaelyn is an editor and together they are going to take you through what goes into getting a book out of your head, on to paper, in to the hands of a publisher, and finally on to book store shelves. We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Send us your questions, comments, and concerns! We hope you enjoy We Make Books! Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap Instagram: @WMBCast  Patreon.com/WMBCast "Submissions September" Episodes Referenced: Week 1 (9/3/2019): Is This Ready For Other People to See?- Submitting Your Manuscript Week 2 (9/10/2019): My Entire Novel in Three Hundred Words - The Dreaded Query Letter Week 3 (9/17/2019): Agents of Literature, Part 1: An Interview with Literary Agent Caitlin McDonald (9/18/2019): Agents of Literature, Part 2: Interviews with Agented Authors (9/19/2019): Agents of Literature Part 3: Interviews with Agented Authors Week 4 (9/24/2019): What is Going On Over There? - The Other Side of the Submissions Process Week 5 (9/30/2019): Now I’m Even More Confused – Submissions September Q&A Episode Episode Transcription (all errors are entirely Rekka's fault) Rekka (00:00):Welcome back to We Make Books, a podcast about writing, publishing, and everything in between. I'm Rekka. I write science fiction and fantasy as RJ Theodore. Kaelyn (00:09):And I'm Kaelyn. I'm the acquisitions editor for Parvus Press. Rekka (00:12):And today we apparently just have baking on our mind. Kaelyn (00:17):Yeah, I don't. It was. I. I'm just really surprised that you watch the Great British Baking Show. I don't know why I'm surprised by that. I shouldn't be. Rekka (00:26):Well, it starts when we're looking for holiday content, that's feel good and we don't want to worry about like, you know, getting drawn into one of those crappy made-for-streaming movies that everyone's talking about. And it turns out to be like worse than a Lifetime romcom kind of thing. That happened a couple of times this year. So we basically have said, okay— Kaelyn (00:49):Lookin' at you, Christmas Prince. Rekka (00:51):We can, we can trust Great British Baking Show. And so we started with the holiday episodes and then this year we were not satiated by the holiday episodes when we ran out of them. So then we just started watching season eight and now we're working our way back. Kaelyn (01:06):Yeah. But, um, in this episode, you know, we're just—for full disclosure, get ready for a lot of baking metaphor as being shoe-horned— Rekka (01:14):As many as I was eager to fill in, but I was, you know, like, you know, it was trying to be refined in my application of them. Kaelyn (01:23):Yeah. Well, so along the lines of refinement, um, you know, today we're talking about, uh, leveling up. What you can do as an author, as a writer, to help improve yourself. Rekka (01:35):Yeah. Cause you know, you can always be making forward progress even while you're waiting for the success to come to you, you know? Cause it's not going to come *to* you, for one, and for two, there's a lot of waiting involved for going out and getting it. Kaelyn (01:51):Yeah. So I think a lot of people, especially those who have been trying, you know, sending out a lot of queries, trying to get published for a long time, fall into the trap of passiveness. Of, you know, just waiting for something to happen rather than continuing to work and improve themselves and try to make something happen instead. Um, it is publishing is a weird, I can't even call it balance cause it's pretty lopsided of just like, you know, having to rely on other people to say yes and no to things. But that doesn't mean that you have no agency in this process. There's other things that you can be doing to try to tilt the scales towards a yes more than no. Rekka (02:36):And even if the scales aren't tilted, you are becoming a better writer, which is in theory why you're here. Kaelyn (02:43):Exactly. Yeah. So, you know, today's episode, we go through some, um, you know, bullet points of different things that you can be doing while you're waiting to hear back or taking a break to sort of try and improve yourself and reevaluate. Um, this is everything from, you know, as we always like to talk about, working on your writing to, you know, coming up with like a plan and having goals in mind, we'll talk a lot about goals and what is realistic and you know, what you should be doing to meet those. Rekka (03:15):Yeah. And if you, you know, if you put your entire career on pause while you wait for someone else to make a decision about you, you're going to spend more of your writing career on pause than you are actually writing. And so it's a good habit to get into, to send those, you know, queries or submissions out into the ether and then get back to it. And, uh, really that's what it's about. And even if you are nervous and creativity is hard, we have suggestions of other things that you can do that don't necessarily mean like sitting down with the keyboard and just writing and pretending like you've never sent a query out. Kaelyn (03:54):Yeah. So, um, you know, as always, we hope this, uh, episode is informational and educational and uh, that you enjoy and we'll see you on the other side of the music. New Speaker (04:19):Very nice segue Rekka. Rekka (04:20):Thank you. Uh, speaking of which, I don't know if it's a nice segue, if you call attention to the fact that as a segue, like I think that negates any credit you get for coming up with a decent segue. Kaelyn (04:32):Or am I just acknowledging your craft here? Rekka (04:36):Speaking of which, uh, today, uh, we had no topic and Kaelyn said, what do you want to talk about? And my suggestion was to talk about what you can do when everything else is up in the air and out of your control to keep moving forward and keep improving yourself so that you are getting stronger as a writer and making yourself hopefully a little more appealing every, you know, every time somebody talks to you about business stuff, whether they're an agent or a publisher. Kaelyn (05:14):Rekka's exact words were "leveling up." Rekka (05:16):Yes. I used leveling up. Kaelyn (05:18):Yeah, no, I liked it. New Speaker (05:19):Well then you asked me what I meant. So I felt like maybe that wasn't a good description. Yes. Following the description, it's a good shortcut. Kaelyn (05:29):Yes. I liked it. Leveling up. Yep. Okay. Yeah. So, you know, we're talking today about, um, as Rekka said, things you can do that are within your control to help move your career and forward and achieve your goals in writing. Because so much of this is not in your control. There is so much of just having to wait on other people to hand down judgements. Rekka (05:51):Yes. And, and you cannot even wait patiently for their judgment and know that you get a good judgment. Kaelyn (05:58):Yes. Yeah. On top of that, it's um, it's very, it's very much a spinning wheel of anxiety with a lot of this. Um, so yeah, but you know, that said you are not completely at the mercy of a cruel universe here. There are things that you can be doing to, uh—Rekka possibly disagrees. Rekka (06:19):I might've pursed my lips and bopped my head side to side and say welllllll, you know, that's, that's debatable, but we don't have time for that debate. Kaelyn (06:28):No, no, certainly not. Um, but in terms of writing, there are, you know, there are things that, yeah, you have to wait on external forces and powers and in some cases, deities to, uh, you know, let you know what's gonna happen here, but there's things that you can be doing in the meantime, you are not completely adrift on this sea. Rekka (06:46):In fact, sometimes it's helpful to be doing things in the meantime. So you're not fixated on how you are adrift at sea. Kaelyn (06:53):Writing, like every other craft, every other profession, there is always room for improvement and growth. You are never to a point where you achieve some sort of enlightenment status as a writer where okay, you now know, see and write all things. Anything that you jot down is perfect and needs no work whatsoever. There's not a —. Rekka (07:16):Unless you're Stephen King. Kaelyn (07:16):Unless you're Stephen King. Rekka (07:18):Which is a result of capitalism, not necessarily skill. Kaelyn (07:21):And possibly cocaine, but moving on. Rekka (07:24):I thought that was his directorial career. Kaelyn (07:29):But you're never to a point where you can't improve. Rekka (07:35):In fact, if you got to that point, somehow you would probably be quite bored and move on to something new. Kaelyn (07:42):Yeah. You pick up a new hobby, like, like crocheting. New Speaker (07:46):Otherwise you'll just be sitting on that throne like Conan and going, dammit. Now what? Kaelyn (07:49):Yeah. "And Alexander wept for, there were no more worlds to conquer." Rekka (07:54):Yeah, yeah, exactly. "No more words to conquer." That's what I heard. Um, yeah. So my thought and I'm, sub-tweeting literally all of my friends right now, um, is how many times I have seen people get to a certain stage where they rely on the judgment, as you say, or the response from others to move ahead to the next thing they want and how that causes them to experience a deterioration in creativity and motivation, focus, self-confidence. I mean, like there's a lot of stuff that falls apart when all you do is recycle your inbox to see if something's come in. Kaelyn (08:42):Yeah. This is, you know, there's a certain point where you're just beating your head against a wall, doing the same thing over and over again and not figuring out why this isn't working. Um, if you're just going to keep submitting the same thing over and over again, keep getting rejections and just go, "well, they just don't like it. It's fine. The way it is. I'm going to find somebody who likes us." You're not going to get very far in your career and you're probably going to end up pretty bitter. And—. Rekka (09:09):Yeah. And that's, that's the part that I'm most concerned about is, you know, cause you're, even if you make it in this career, you don't necessarily become that, you know, Hollywood picture perfect writer, successful writer. Um, but your enjoyment of being a writer can really, you know, it can take a hit when you let that kind of resentment and bitterness seep into you. Kaelyn (09:38):Yeah. So— New Speaker (09:39):Don't become a rum cake of bitterness. Kaelyn (09:45):Uh. Yes. Rekka (09:46):Right. Cause the rum cake, you soak it with rum after you finished making it. And yeah, that's what I meant. I said what I meant! Kaelyn (09:55):You heard me! Rekka (09:58):We've been watching great British baking show lately, so like all— Kaelyn (10:00):Oh hey, me too! Rekka (10:00):Okay. We are not allowed to talk about that because, cause we'll just go on for hours. I'm sure. Yes. Kaelyn (10:10):I have the best bread recipe now. Rekka (10:12):You're gonna, you're gonna put your name into the hat and get on the show? Kaelyn (10:15):Oh God. No, I'm terrified of everyone that's on that show. Rekka (10:19):I would just hang out with Noel and, and Paul, honestly. Kaelyn (10:24):Yeah. Yeah. They seem fun. Um, Paul, Paul's a little scary though. Rekka (10:28):No, see, I, I swear to God, Paul is only sc—see, I said, we weren't allowed to talk about this and we're talking about it. I said, um, the other day that Paul is only scary because of the way they edit the episodes. Like if you, if you have your ear to what's going on, like, yes, he walks around and stares at people, but I'm sure that's the same face I would make, if I were watching people I was concerned about, you know? Um, but he says really encouraging, wonderful things to people whenever he's given the opportunity. Kaelyn (10:59):But then, when they have to bring it up there, he's always the one like picking the bread up and like knocking on it. And he's like "I will rip this in half." It's a little, um, it's always, Hmm. "I, uh, think it's a little bit underdone didn't that mate." Rekka (11:14):Wow. Was that, was that your Paul Hollywood? Kaelyn (11:17):That wasn't a good Paul Hollywood. Rekka (11:19):Paul Hollywood isn't Australian. Kaelyn (11:22):Yeah, but it does call people mate. Rekka (11:24):I have not really heard him say that yet. I haven't watched enough. Obviously we need to finish this episode so I can go watch some more. Yeah. Kaelyn (11:30):Okay. But so you can be Paul Hollywood. Rekka (11:33):So wait for judgment from Paul Hollywood and be— Kaelyn (11:38):You can be your own Paul Hollywood Rekka (11:40):Be David from season eight, where you take all that critique and you actually turn it into more skill. Kaelyn (11:47):Yes. So. Rekka (11:48):Everyone go watch season eight. And so, you know what reference I just made. Kaelyn (11:51):We'll stop. I promise we're stopping right now. Rekka (11:54):I don't know if I'll I'll cut this or not. It was kind of fun. Depends how long this episode is. Since you told me it was all me, it's going to be short. So we need that filler, like rice crispy in the middle of a cake for structure. Sorry. Kaelyn (12:10):Oh my God. It's amazing because I don't think there's been a single thing made on that show that you would eat. Rekka (12:16):Oh, I can't eat a word of it. A word of it? Kaelyn (12:18):Yeah. Rekka (12:18):I can't eat a crumb of it. Kaelyn (12:20):Yeah. Rekka (12:20):Words are for writers. Crumbs are for bakers, but it is delightful to watch. Kaelyn (12:26):That said, speaking of words... We're going to get back on track here, I promise. Rekka (12:33):Nah. Kaelyn (12:33):Um, no. So there are, you know, there's a lot of different things you can be doing that are under your control to try to make yourself more appealing and to take, uh, to give yourself agency in this process, where frankly, um, it seems like you don't really have a lot of that through all of it. Rekka (12:54):It depends. And I, and I think this is exactly the point, what you see as your goals. Kaelyn (13:02):Yeah. Exactly. Rekka (13:03):Because a goal is a thing, in theory, that you have some amount of control in reaching. But if you say your goal is to get an agent and get a big publishing deal and become a best seller, where is the control in any of that? Let me tell you: there's none. Kaelyn (13:25):There's only so many writing courses you can take to get yourself to a point where you've written the world's greatest book. Rekka (13:33):But there are so many writing courses that will promise to make you a New York Times bestseller. Kaelyn (13:38):Yeah. Um, let's, you know, let's take a step back here and kind of identify, you know, some things that are attainable and things that just happen. New York Times bestsellers. I won't insult anybody by saying they just happen, but there's a lot more machination that goes on in behind the scenes— Rekka (13:57):Machination is the right word. Kaelyn (13:57):Yeah, than you realize, um, New York Times bestsellers aren't because everybody loves these books and, you know, buys a ton of them. There's a reason that the same books sit on this list for weeks, months, in the case of Harry Potter, years. Um, and it has to do a lot with, um, publishing houses, marketing dollars, um, to be clear, they're not bribing the New York Times, but the New York Times is not picking their bestseller list strictly based on how many of these books are sold. Rekka (14:34):And not even based on the merits of the book itself. Kaelyn (14:38):Yes. Having the aspiration of being a New York Times bestseller means what your actual aspiration is, is to be a globally known household name. Because that's kind of what you are looking at to get on these, some of these lists. Not always. And you know, of course, you know, bestseller lists have all kinds of subcategories and different genres, et cetera, but that is not a realistic goal because there is very little direct influence that you can exert over that process. Rekka (15:13):A goal itself, as we said, you know, you have to have some control over, and there are, you know, definitions in business planning and all that of what makes a goal. And the obnoxious, you know, uh, acronym is S.M.A.R.T., which means that the goal is specific that the goal is measurable, that it's achievable realistic and time-based, and you can see how the things that I mentioned earlier, getting an agent, getting a big publishing deal, becoming a New York Times bestseller doesn't really match this S.M.A.R.T. goal description definition. You cannot say, "Oh yes. By September I will be a New York Times bestseller." Kaelyn (16:06):Not this September, I hope. Rekka (16:08):Or you cannot even say, "Oh yes. In 10 years I will have an agent." You know, like you cannot control these things. Kaelyn (16:15):Yeah. These are, these are forces beyond your, your ability to control. Rekka (16:21):Are they achievable? Yes. Are they realistic? Yes. Bue because they happen in reality, but not because you can just sit down in a checkbox, you know, to-do list and say, "I will achieve these things." Kaelyn (16:34):Well, that's the logical fallacy that plays into the lottery. "I could win because somebody is going to have to win this." "Somebody will win this, why shouldn't it be me?" Rekka (16:43):Or "I should play because if I don't play, then I cannot win." It's not the same as "If I do play, I will absolutely win." Kaelyn (16:51):Two different, two different logical issues there. Yeah. But there's, you know, there have been so many books even that got exactly what they needed to be successful, and flopped. Rekka (17:03):Yep. Kaelyn (17:04):I think in some ways it helps to think of books like movies. You know, there's a lot of stuff that goes into them that has to do with marketing, has to do with names attached to it, has to do with, you know, can you get the right audience? Did you, you know, make the book appealing to the right group of people? The same way, books flop the same way movies, flopped, and you know, there's time and money investments that go into them. And, you know, it's, it's all a numbers game. Um, you know, that said, it's the same thing with the awards, to an extent, you know, like you don't just win an Academy award because your movie was fantastic. There are tons of really fantastic movies that have not won awards. It's all marketing. it's very political and very who-you-know, et cetera. Rekka (17:47):And we did do an entire episode on fiction awards. So go back and listen to that from last year, I'll link it in the show notes, if you want to hear about how that works. Um, and that's another bingo card item. And, and maybe that's how I distinguish them as like, "these are things that I put on my bingo card that I hope someday that I will punch off, you know, and say like, yes, I got an agent. Yes. I was guest of honor at some writing conference. Yes. I was, uh, received my 100 rejection." You know, like those are on there, too. Uh, won an award, uh, got a big, you know, publishing contract with X number of zeros, you know, put those on that list, but don't make them your standard for whether or not you've achieved what you want. And if that's all you want to achieve, please reevaluate step back and ask what, what it is that you really want out of a writing career? Pretend that none of that can ever happen and just work on you. What can you work on? Kaelyn (18:51):Yeah. So to that end, and you know, we're going to get in a minute here into some of the things you can be doing in the meantime. And this we'll, we'll certainly circle back to this, but decide what you want out of your writing career that is not to be the next Stephen King, because that's not necessarily a realistically attainable goal for everyone. Rekka (19:10):Or what that means to you, that you want to be the next Stephen King. Do you want to write a lot of like hometown horror stories? You can do that, but, and you can appeal to Stephen King's audience. "If you like Stephen King, if you loved The Stand, you will love this," you know, but, um, can you control whether you have that same level of success? Absolutely not. Kaelyn (19:33):You know, deciding like, well, I just want to get a book published. I don't necessarily need it to be one of the stories I've already written. Um, I don't necessarily need it to be in this specific genre in this genre only. "I just would like to have a book published" versus maybe a different goal is "I want to get this book that I've written published." And we'll talk about that a little bit more down the line here, but, um, so, you know, let's kind of get into this here. Some things you can do to improve your chances of attaining your goals. Um, first and foremost, as we always talk about, one of our favorite things to harp on: work on your writing. Rekka (20:13):Yeah. Don't stop writing when you send off a query to an agent. You know, like don't make that the only thing you've got in your hopper. Kaelyn (20:20):Yeah. As we said, there is no such thing as the writer who has attained enlightenment. That's not, Rekka (20:28):Especially if it's your first novel. Chances are, you're not very close. Kaelyn (20:33):Um, there's always room to be working on and improving your craft, um, in any craft really, but especially in writing. Um, it's, you know, and you may be thinking, okay, well, "I got published or, you know, I had some short that were picked up. I'm good." No, that doesn't matter. Go join a writing group anyway. Go take some, you know, maybe you don't want to take some courses. I mean, I, I love taking courses and things. I don't know why you wouldn't want to do that. But you know, join a writing group, attend a workshop, take some courses, join a group that Um, you know, reviews each other's work and gives feedback. Read things and give feedback on them. That's a great way to improve your own writing is to help other people work on theirs. So I know this is something we say all the time, "work on your writing, here's ways to do it," but this is a great way to be moving yourself along. Because on top of just staying on top of your writing, what you're doing is you're probably creating new stuff while you do this, that you may not have otherwise taken the time to do. Rekka (21:40):And every word you write is more skill that you are building. Kaelyn (21:44):Exactly. Rekka (21:45):Giving you the chance to say, you know, is, "am I using economy of phrase? Am I, um, you know, getting emotion across the way I want, am I, is my world building, you know, solid? Am I leaving the reader wanting more? Or am I leaving them in a coma because I've, you know, overdone it on the exposition?" Every time you write and you revise, you have the chance to analyze this and you have the chance to look at yourself honestly, and your writing honestly, and figure out, you know, how do you, how do you want to improve it? Like if you say "this revision pass, I'm going to work on characters," you know, or "this next book, I really want to delve into characters where before it's been all like, you know, the hero doesn't really change. It's just an adventure. And this next book, I really want to give the character arc the spotlight." You know, look for ways to challenge yourself. Because if you're just doing, what's comfortable, it is a little bit less effective. It's still good to keep writing. If you mostly do the same thing, but you are going to grow more, the more you flex your muscles and try new things. Kaelyn (22:56):Think back through the careers of all of the, you know, best-selling authors, you can name off the top of your head. They have not recently been writing what they started out writing. Rekka (23:10):Yeah. And that's the weird thing is— Kaelyn (23:12):Maybe they stay in the same genre, but the stories and the books themselves are not the same. Rekka (23:21):If you think about our obsession with classics, it's really interesting how people want to go back to like an old Spielberg movie and point out how this was so much better than any of his recent work. Um, or they want to go to an author who's written twenty books and they go back to the first book and they, you know, this series was their favorite. But if people look and even musicians, you know. Kaelyn (23:48):I was gonna say. Rekka (23:49):"This album is classic," you know? Kaelyn (23:51):Yeah. Rekka (23:52):But when you take in the discography or the bibliography or the filmography as a whole, people get really annoyed when artists evolve and change and don't do things the same way. Kaelyn (24:07):I think one of the best, uh, things I heard of that ever was I was listening to an interview with Billy Joel of all people. And Billy Joel, by the way, is a ridiculously talented pianist, like apart from, you know, we just think of him as like these poppy classic songs that are, you know, old people dance to at weddings and stuff. Billy Joel is actually very into classic piano music. And it's a very highly skilled with it. And then he composes as well. Things that aren't like, you know, what we think of Billy Joel music. And I was listening to him in this interview and he, um, he said, you know, like "I was to the point that like I was getting bored with, you know, just playing like Big Shot and Scenes From An Italian Restaurant over and over again. Um, and so every now and then I'd stop and I'd play like, you know, something new that I had written or something that was just, you know, not on an album, but, and everyone would, you know, I could feel the audience die down a bit." And, but he did say at the same time, these people have paid a lot of money to come here and see me play the songs that they love. And what he said was "I need to strike a balance between that because I'm going to be miserable if every time I just, you know, have to get up there and perform the same songs over and over again with no creativity." And so that's what happens with writing too, if you're just regurgitating the same stories over and over again with no evolution and no creativity? Rekka (25:36):You're not going to want to stick around long. Kaelyn (25:38):Yeah. I mean, I would think you'd get bored of that eventually. Um, especially, you know, if you're not in a position where you can challenge yourself, I think that's something that drives writers forward a lot is trying to challenge themselves and solve problems within their books. Rekka (25:54):And I think, you know, the genre does evolve and you are going to be left behind. You know, so if that's something that's concerning to you is about being included in the genre when people talk about it, you know, don't stand still. Kaelyn (26:08):Yeah. And that is, um, our next point here is reading. Apart from doing a lot of writing, one of the best things you can do is reading. And you know, some of this is just because you're absorbing other people's writing, you're seeing things they did, identifying techniques, tricks, et cetera. But also you're keeping up on the genre that you're interested in. Rekka (26:27):And the more books you could read. And there are a lot of them, you know, don't get me wrong. My To-Be-Read pile is, you know, taller than I am. But when you have read a lot of things, when that agent calls you back and wants to talk about your book, you will know if you've read something similar to your book that you can help position it with and help narrow down that audience again. Kaelyn (26:50):There is nothing to me, quite as disheartening as talking to an author, you know, like people I would just run into at conferences or seminars and stuff, and they'd be telling me about their book. And I'm about to say, "Oh, sure, send it along. I'll take a look." And they say, "Oh, so it's like such and such." "I'm sorry, what?" "Oh, okay. Oh, you haven't read that. Oh, okay. So kind of like this." And I don't expect everyone to have read every book, but if I named four or five and none of them are ringing a bell even a little bit, that's, um, I'm kind of looking at this and going like, does this person like science fiction and fantasy? You know, it's and again, I don't expect everyone to have read everything or for their tastes to line up exactly like mine, but there's a lot of stuff I haven't read that I at least have heard of. And I'm familiar with where its place is in, you know, the, yeah. Rekka (27:48):I mean, at least look at the long list for awards each year and make sure you're familiar with what's going on there. Even if you don't read every piece on there, um, you know, what, what is the appeal? Why did it make it to the long list? And yeah, that's a big day of homework. I did not assign you some light reading there. Like, you know, the long list itself is long. And then you also have to look into each book and see what's going on. Take a look at the cover. How was it being placed on the shelf? Is it, YA? Is it adult? You know, and be aware of the different aspects of how that book is being marketed. Because someday someone will ask you, hopefully, how you want your book marketed and you need to kind of have this background. Kaelyn (28:32):Now some of you may be going, "why do I need to be bothered with all of this? Why can't I just write the book I want to write? And if somebody is interested in it, they can get it published." Now here's the thing. Yes, you're right. On some level, it's like, "I don't, this isn't my full-time, you know, career goals and aspirations. I just wrote a book. It happens to be, you know, a science fiction and fantasy book. I enjoy that. I'm not super mega involved in all of this. I have some books I like, why can't I just write this book, put it down, and walk away?" And the answer to that is in some cases you can, yeah. That is a thing that can happen. The reason that's difficult to do is because you're going to be working with an agent and editor and a publishing house that eat, sleep, and breathe this stuff. Rekka (29:15):Right. And they rely on this for their, for their careers. And if you aren't as passionate as they are, they're not going to be passionate for you. Kaelyn (29:22):I know it's a weird, difficult spot to be in. I know it's kind of like a answer. You got to sort of get yourself in the club. Like you need to demonstrate—. Rekka (29:34):Or at least know who's in the club. Kaelyn (29:36):Yeah. Or at least know who's who's in the club. Um, I, I'm going to use this example, even though I really don't like it because I have a lot of problems with the fashion industry, but there's a scene in The Devil Wears Prada where, uh, Andy walks in and, you know, Meryl Streep's Anna Wintour avatar character is, you know, berating somebody and she says, do this. And, um, Anna or whatever her name is laughs. And they all look at her and she's like, Oh, I'm sorry. I'm still just learning about this stuff. And everyone in the room is very insulted because she is a complete newcomer and outsider to this. And Stanley Tucci gives her this sort of dressing down later where he says, "you happened into this job. There are people who spend their entire lives wanting to work in this industry. They dream of working here and you only deigned to work here. So you want to know why no one likes you, it's because you don't take us seriously. And therefore we can't take you seriously." It's very similar with publishing. Rekka (30:47):I don't feel like that situation—I mean, yes, there are people who are like," okay, agents come to me, bring me your offers." But, um, I feel like there are a lot of people who look for an agent so that they end up with a mentor and someone who's going to educate them on all this. And it would be great, I'm sure, for the agent to hear that you've done some of the homework already. Kaelyn (31:20):Yeah. So that kind of leads us into one of the other things that we can, you know, discuss here is work on ways to make yourself more appealing. For a lot of writers, the ultimate first step is landing an agent. There's a lot of stuff that goes into this. Listen to the Query Letter episode, listen to the Agents episode, listen to all the Submissions September, probably because that's, you know— Rekka (31:46):Yes. And also there are a lot of agents out there with YouTube channels or podcasts of their own, and newsletters, mailing lists, you know, like there is a lot of information out there to be had to help you understand what's going on from the agent side so that you can make their lives a little bit easier by not expecting miracles of them, but also not expecting them to do the work of educating you. Kaelyn (32:09):Yeah. So everything that I just mentioned, you know, that we talked about with the Agents episode, with Submission September, with the Query Letters, all of those have a significant element of things beyond your control. What you can do to make yourself more appealing to an agent or a publishing house is as we said, familiarize yourself with the genre, but also have a plan. Rekka (32:31):Know what kind of books you're going to be writing in a couple of years? Not necessarily like, "I have this one book, please make it sell." You want like, okay, "I have this book." And then they say, "What else you working on?" And you have more than one answer for them. Kaelyn (32:45):I think beyond, you know, all of the agent pet peeves that were talked about in terms of submission and querying, one of the things in agent least wants to hear is "I don't know what to do with myself and my book." I think there is very little that is more disheartening than he completely directionless author. Um, it's one thing to show up and be like, "well, I don't, I don't know how this industry works. That's why you're here." It's another to be, "I have no idea of what my goals and plans are beyond just this book." Um, Rekka made the example before of think how hard it is to cook for somebody who doesn't know what they want to eat. Yeah. Now imagine it's a book. Rekka (33:31):Yeah. Now imagine that your career depends on this person being successful at and enjoying their dinner. Kaelyn (33:37):Yes, exactly. So, um, you know, all of this ties together with writing, into reading, into getting yourself into the genre and that kind of atmosphere in a world that you want to publish and live in. Rekka (33:54):As part of that, I would also suggest, and, you know, we all hate social media, but get on social media and just be aware of the discourse going around in your genre. Hear the discussions that are taking place. Hear the concerns that people are having. Um, either over the industry or subject matter or diversity or, you know, all the different aspects that go into a community and an industry and a livelihood. There's a lot to just absorb. Like you don't even have to participate. You don't have to feel like you have solutions. Kaelyn (34:28):Yeah. That was exactly what I was going to say is you don't even need to participate. You can just be like an observer or a lurker. Rekka (34:34):That's the nice thing about Twitter is like everybody's airing their dirty laundry on Main. And you can just, you know, get an idea of what's out there without having to step into anything messy to begin with before you've got an agent before you've made a name for yourself. However— Kaelyn (34:48):I would even, I would even go so far as to recommend doing everything you can to avoid stepping into anything messy. Rekka (34:54):Yes. Uh, what I might suggest is with all that reading you're doing, um, it might be nice if you, you know, talked on Twitter about what you're reading and, um, and how it's impacting the way you're thinking about your own writing. Like keep it keyed into the fact that you are a writer. Like don't make a review Twitter account, make a, "I am a writer. Here's the subject matter I'm engaged with." And, you know, like, "this makes me think about this in this way as I do my own writing" kinda stuff. Kaelyn (35:28):And along those lines though, you know, it doesn't have to be a review account, but never hesitate to shout out an author who you're reading and either enjoy. Rekka (35:36):Oh absolutely, that's what I'm talking about. But like, for example, I read a book recently where they were dealing with subject matter that I absolutely had plans to approach on my own and I was concerned about a certain aspect of it. And um, this author handled it, you know, in a way that made me go, "okay, this is something to consider as I go into this." Kaelyn (35:57):Never hesitate to, you know, shout out somebody whose work you're enjoying or who, you know, has contributed to your ability to do your own work. It's um, trust me, authors cannot hear that enough. Rekka (36:09):Right. Yeah. Definitely to understand, to know that someone is out there seeing what they're trying to do and appreciating it is a big deal and it will get you maybe—um, I don't know how soon this next one was going to come up, but it might get you a little bit into networking, um, on Twitter, on social media, you know, in your groups and stuff like that. When you are talking about the work that everyone else is doing and appreciating it, and without, you know, posting 10 times a day, "my book is on Amazon at this link," you can also present the fact that you are a writer as part of this discourse. Kaelyn (36:48):It's funny because I was reading something quite a while back about how people get jobs. And most people get jobs through the recommendation of other people or through people they know. Um, I think a lot of that comes from, you know, reputation and, uh, what's the word I'm looking for here? Recommendation. Because, you know, as I always have to, I have to explain sometimes, especially for my previous job where I dealt with a lot of new hires, hiring a new person is expensive. It costs a lot of money to onboard a new full-time employee. Um, which it doesn't seem like it should, but it actually does. The same way authors are an investment. So having friends or just even people, you know, and interact with in the industry who, you know, someone can say, you know, "Rekka, you're an agent, do you happen to know Kaelyn? Like I was interested in working with her possibly like, is she, you know, is she cool? Like, should I talk to her?" And coming to that person to be able to get some feedback on you is, is very important. Um, I think, you know, especially go back and listen to our Agents episode. Agents, you know, have to be very careful about these things and have to be careful about who they choose to work with because somebody who you talked to a few times and they seem like pretty cool and everything, and then they can just go off the rails. That is time and money down the drain that they are not going to recover. Rekka (38:28):Yes. And it's going to make them more nervous to sign the next author—. Kaelyn (38:31):Definitely. Rekka (38:31):—which is not a benefit to anyone. Um, but if you, you know, if you're not even sure where to begin with networking, I would suggest volunteering with some of the organizations that put on conferences, whether they be in person or online. Kaelyn (38:46):Absolutely. Yep. Rekka (38:46):Um, that's a great way, assuming you're reliable that you can build a networking, or at least an awareness of who you are, to people who might be able to help you with a recommendation later, um, whether you know it or not. You know, like if people appreciate the hard work you put in to help with, uh, you know, an event or they appreciate that you were able to run the Slack that, you know, corresponded with, uh, uh, an event that was prerecorded or, you know, whatever else is going on in the world right now, it's hard to predict, but Kaelyn (39:23):Yeah, God only knows if we'll ever have in-person Rekka (39:27):Conferences again. Well, we will certainly be thinking hard about it. Um, but anyway, the, the idea that you proved yourself reliable. Yes. Like that person maybe didn't read your writing, but they can say like you have a good head on your shoulders. You, um, were where you said you would be, when you said you would be there. You signed up and you didn't flake. Um, you were able to go above and beyond by helping people, you know, in ways that wasn't really in the job description or whatever. Kaelyn (39:56):I will tell you, I have my current job because of that. Because yeah, this is because my boss is somebody that knew me before I worked for him. Yeah. And knew that I was a reliable straight-forward person who could do basic math. Yeah. That's the only requirements for my job, basic math. Rekka (40:18):Yeah but the Venn diagram of all those things is a small overlap. But yeah. I mean, you never know how being decent and helpful to somebody is going to pay off later and, you know, do it for altruistic reasons. But it's a good idea too. Kaelyn (40:35):And that's exactly what I was just going to say is," this is not using people. Yeah. This is, you know, you may like, you may feel like squeamish about it. You may feel like, Oh, I'm just, you know, I'm just trying to, like, I feel dirty for just trying to get my face and my name in front of all these people." First of all, you're helping them with something. Okay. So if you want to think of it in terms of that, then think of it as transactional, but that's not necessarily what's going on here. This is how people get involved in things and get introduced and meet people. Um, it's, it's difficult. And for some people, this kind of thing does not come easy. They can't walk into a room and just start chatting people up. But if you have a reason to talk to people? Rekka (41:18):That was exactly what my thinking was. The first time I went to the Nebulas, I volunteered, you know, I'd never been there before, but what I did know was that it was a really long weekend. If I didn't get to know anybody to have conversations with, I was going to be feeling real awkward by that third day. So what I did was I volunteered and I volunteered in the book room, which meant that there were coworkers to speak to, um, people who could, you know, show me the way that the room was working. And then I had conversations with those people about books. I had conversations with those people about publishing. People would walk in and say, "what's good?" And I can make recommendations because I'd been reading in my genre and I knew some of the books in the room, you know, like this works out really well on many levels. Kaelyn (42:01):And by the way, one of the great things here is that if you're volunteering at a writer, writing conference or a science fiction and fantasy conference, you're going to be around other people that enjoy those exact same things. Rekka (42:13):Well, it's easy to have those conversations at the genre conferences rather than like, say it's just the book fair, you know? Um, yeah. It's— Kaelyn (42:22):Well, I wasn't even going, you know, like this is, it's really easy compared to, "Oh, come meet, you know, a group of friends that I know." Rekka (42:29):Oh. Yeah. Yeah. Cause then, then you end up designing a podcast. I mean, yeah. Um, no, the, I think that was the best choice I ever made. I think that's why I had so much fun that first Nebulas conference was because I had a purpose and it wasn't the entire weekend, but then, you know, there were people I could, you know, pass by in the corridors between, um, presentations and panels, who I'd talked to in the book room, you know. And you could smile and nod. And I was getting really good about, you know, just talking to random strangers and that translated into having conversations later in the corridors, in, you know, in the, you know, restaurants and all that kind of stuff, because I'd already sort of like dip my toe in. And in the capacity of like, "this is my job to do this," it really helps. Kaelyn (43:24):And you know, what's, and we've definitely talked about, you know, conferences and all of this stuff before, but just one more thing to sort of reinforce there. A lot of people come to these things by themselves. There is going to be a lot of, you know, single people just walking around who, are just there because, you know, if it's something like the Nebulas that moves every two years, um, you know, maybe it was in their neighborhood and they decided to check it out. Rekka (43:48):This was the year that we're going to try it out. Yeah. And now keep in mind, some people come alone and they're there to have friends and family reunions, basically, with their found families within the community. And you don't want to tread on the toes of people clearly having a more intimate moment, but you know, like being there is the first step. Kaelyn (44:07):Believe me, there is no shortage of friendly people eager to talk to somebody about their favorite Orsen Scott Card book that you're going to find. Yeah. Rekka (44:17):Or, or someone a little more recent like P Djeli Clark or, you know Kaelyn (44:23):Have you been to the Nebulas, Rekka? Rekka (44:25):I have. We clearly ended up in different corners because nobody that I've ever stepped into a conversation with at the Nebulas is going to want to go off about Orsen Scott Card except in a different way than you're referring to. Kaelyn (44:38):Fair. Fair. Rekka (44:38):So anyway, um, you will find your people, they are there, they're in different corners. Check a different one if you didn't find them the first time. But yeah. Um, networking is important and volunteering is a great way to get started in networking. And even though we've currently moved into a virtual space where all these conferences are happening online, there's still a way to network by volunteering. Kaelyn (45:02):Yeah. Absolutely. And by the way, the fact that a lot of these are moving online and hopefully will stay virtual and therefore available to more people will give you more of an opportunity to participate and attend with these. Um, you know, it was definitely a problem that, you know, like there's a lot of these big conferences that had very little virtual presence, and so— Rekka (45:24):Very little virtual presence, and they required you to fly in from another country if you weren't a United States citizen, which therefore like you've already just pretty much blown half of your salary, if not more, for the year just to get here and you haven't even paid to get in the door or for the hotel room yet. So they were very restricted and these online, um, it it's a good thing. And even if we go back to in-person conferences, there needs to be—if you're hearing me conference organizers, I think you already know, but—uh, it needs to, it needs to stay expanded into these virtual spaces. For sure. Kaelyn (45:58):I think one of the things and not to get too sidetracked here, but I think one of the things that put off, you know, apart from sort of this awful gatekeeping aspect of these, these events, but I think one of the things that put off the organizers may have been, "this seems difficult and complicated. I don't know how we do this." And now that everyone was in a position where they have to do it, we've seen that, you know what, it's not actually as difficult and complicated as we thought it was. Rekka (46:22):Only that, but the things that made it difficult and complicated have been solved because it was a problem that everybody shared as compared to when, you know, people who needed this access for, you know, their health and safety were complaining about it but it was a small portion of the population and easy to ignore. Uh, people could just say, "Oh no, no, that's too hard. Sorry. You'll just have to come in person." Now. Now we can say— Kaelyn (46:48):We found out actually, it's not that hard. Rekka (46:49):It's not that hard. We've handled it. And yes, we can have live closed captioning and yes, we can control the quality of that live closed captioning, and should control the quality of that live close captioning. So, um, yes, it has been a big learning year for everybody. Good job us and no more excuses. So let's, uh, let's do that. All right. Sidetrack over, what's next on our outline. Cause you have the outline. I didn't write down any of our notes, Kaelyn (47:12):Actually, that was it on the outline. Rekka (47:14):That was it! All right. We did it! And we have time to leave in the Great British Baking Show references. Just drop a few more like their cake sliding off a tray. Why not? Kaelyn (47:24):I can't remember which season it was that like, they all, like, first of all, here's what I don't get about this show. Every year they film it in the summer in an un-air conditioned tent Rekka (47:38):And are surprised when the chocolate won't temper. Kaelyn (47:43):And the chocolate won't stay together! Rekka (47:43):I was watching, we watched season eight. So what we normally do is watch the Christmas episodes, the holiday episodes. Kaelyn (47:50):Exactly, yes. Rekka (47:50):And, um, so we watched this year's and we were not satisfied because last year we got to binge a whole bunch of them for the first time. And this year there was only one new one. So we, um, we went back and watched season eight and I remember the devastation of Chocolate Week being in the middle of— it was 35º Celsius in the tent when they were trying to cool and set chocolate and temper it. Kaelyn (48:22):Yeah. Anyway. Okay. We should stop. Rekka (48:22):So yes. So when you need to make the ice cream cake of your career, you can set yourself up for success, by at least making sure that you've cooled your, uh, work area on a bunch of really cool genre books that were written in the last five or ten years. That was a little weak, but I'm going to go with it. Kaelyn (48:43):No, no I like it. Keep going. Rekka (48:43):And, um, and then, uh, temper your excitement over that query you just sent out by keeping yourself busy and continuing to work and writing out your goals and your business plan so that when the agent asks you, you don't drop your biscuits on the floor. Kaelyn (49:05):Rekka, that was beautiful. Rekka (49:06):I'm very proud. Kaelyn (49:07):That was stunning. That was truly amazing. Rekka (49:09):Do I get a handshake? Kaelyn (49:09):Yes! Paul Hollywood would be proud of you. Rekka (49:14):Okay. So if you're not watching the Great British Baking Show, I hope you're inspired. They're a thankfully, um, really feel good show and it's nice to watch the contestants help each other and network and be good to each other and take that as your, your role models. Kaelyn (49:32):It really is a, uh, very inspiring show to watch for how you should conduct your career really your lives. Because when I tell people they should watch and they're like, "Oh, I don't like those reality shows. I'm like, no." Rekka (49:44):We didn't think we would either. Kaelyn (49:45):Yeah, I don't either. Everyone is so nice. Rekka (49:47):Everyone is so nice. Even the person that they tease for being heartless, is, I would happily hug. Kaelyn (49:51):Yes. Yes, definitely. Okay. So anyway, so network, um, read. Write. Work on, you know, familiarizing yourself with the genre. Work on building your knowledge base. Make it so that you can have a conversation with people that are going to be important to have conversations with. Rekka (50:08):Or just people who are going to come up the ranks with you. You know, and I say "ranks" as if there's a ladder, but you know what I mean? Like be friends with—. Kaelyn (50:16):There's totally a ladder. Rekka (50:16):Be friends with the people who are entering at the same point as you. And if you surge ahead of them, lift them up behind you. Don't, you know, shut the door and say, "Ha ha! I have excelled beyond my need to be your friend now." Um, that's just hopefully good, common sense and how to be a human, but it's yeah, not everybody, but, um— Kaelyn (50:37):Just remember a rising tide lifts all ships. Rekka (50:39):And also know what you want out of this. Like have a plan and be ready to talk to anybody about it and you can modify it as you get feedback, which is also good. Kaelyn (50:49):There is, there is no one is going to handy with stone, say, "Chisel your plan in it. And this is also your tombstone now." Rekka (50:58):I mean, it might be, you know, the time you take to chisel a message into a stone is time you could have spent writing. Kaelyn (51:05):That's a good point. Yeah. Like with like a computer, which is faster than chiseling into stone. Yeah. Never try to stop improving on this. Especially if there are certain goals that you want to hit and you're not hitting them, you are I—. Rekka (51:19):In other words, if you have goals you want to hit and you're not hitting them, the answer is not to stop and wait for them to come to you. Kaelyn (51:25):Yeah. I'm going to say something that's going to come off sounding kind of mean. And I don't mean it to be. If you have goals that you're trying to hit and you're not hitting them, the problems— it's either you or it's the goal. There are absolutely be some times in your life and your career that you're just going to be unlucky. But, more often than not, there's things you can be always be working towards improving. Rekka (51:47):Even if luck, you know, turns against you, you can keep moving forward. It just might be, you know, a little bit more disheartening. It might be more work. But if you really love this, then you know, you should be up for the challenge. And, you know, hopefully these tips will help you set yourself up to, you know, have tools you need in those darker moments to just keep working on something. Kaelyn (52:10):So for instance, when somebody puts you in a sweltering tent in the middle of a field outside a British estate and tells you to make a chocolate sculpture and it's 35º Celsius and Paul Hollywood is giving you weird looks, you can go, "All right. I trained for this." Rekka (52:24):I guess, I guess that is exactly the metaphor we needed. Kaelyn (52:31):So well anyway, that's, um, you know, we'll leave you there. Hopefully, you know— Rekka (52:35):Hopefully that's enough or made any sense. Kaelyn (52:38):Hopefully it's encouraging or, you know, maybe a little bit of a fresh thought on it. Rekka (52:42):If not, you can yell at us on Twitter or Instagram at @WMBcast, or you can find old episodes at wmbcast.com. And if that really was helpful, somehow you can thank us by supporting us on patreon.com/WMBcast. We do just appreciate anybody who supports us, but, uh, the best help you could give us would be to leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts and, uh, let people know that you enjoyed the content, how it's helped you. Um, you can even ask us questions through the comments there. Kaelyn (53:16):We love questions. If you send us a question, there's a very good chance we'll talk about it. Rekka (53:20):Yes, cause sometimes we don't know what we're going to talk about until we get on the call. And sometimes it shows. But, uh, yeah, either way, any of the ways that you reach out to us, we look forward to hearing from you and we will talk to you again in a couple weeks.

Talking today amongst ourselves, we will share some important safety tips around the home.  (TRANSCRIPT BELOW) ​ Most home safety tips talk about the importance of preventing fires, preparing against extreme weather and protecting the home from potential burglars. If you are a homeowner and have not taken precautions in any of these areas, the time to act is now.  ​ Yet even though it’s important to prepare for large dangers, most household dangers are more subtle and require smaller fixes. For example, did you know that a carbon monoxide detector is one of the most important tools in protecting against hidden dangers? It alerts homeowners to the presence of a deadly odorless and colorless gas. Without it, residents would never know to evacuate. ​ Luckily, complete home safety is easy to achieve with a few simple steps. There are many ways to protect yourself, your family and your home from common risks and dangers.      PodcastDx-S8E6-Household Safety Lita T  00:10 Hello, and welcome to another episode of podcast dx, the show that brings you interviews with people just like you, whose lives were forever changed by a medical diagnosis. I'm Lita Ron  00:21 And I'm Ron Jean  00:22  and I'm ready for some figgy pudding. Lita T  00:24 I don't know what it is, Jean  00:26 How about sticky toffee pudding. Lita T  00:27 OK, that's Jean Marie. Collectively, we're the hosts of podcast dx and today's show, we are talking about household safety Jean  00:36  And when I think of household safety, I tend to think about very young people, or you know, babies and actually baby proofing something  I've heard of that. Ron  00:45 (slight snicker) Jean  00:45 And then in one's home, as well as older adults, and well not really like adult proofing or senior proofing. But, you know, you get the idea. Ron  00:56 Well, no matter what the age range happens to be in your household, there are always things that we can do to make our homes a safer place to live. And nowadays, work and learn as well. Universal, inclusive designs can make our home safer and more functional for everyone. We're today we're going to talk about a few modifications, which may actually make your home safer. And here's a tip, you may even be able to get assistance and or funding for your home safety upgrades and improvements through some of your local social and senior programs, nonprofit organizations such as Habitat for Humanity, or the International Red Cross and Crescent, maybe your local police and fire department or even your utility companies and such. Lita T  01:46 Alright, I'm wondering if not the Red Cross Salvation Army, I wonder if they do anything. Jean  01:53 But I know our local gas company will come out in and inspect your dryer and furnace and actually, there's programs here in Illinois, they will actually supply insulation, Lita T  02:04 well we'll probably talk about that in the future Jean  02:05 OK. Lita T  02:07 Let's talk about let's start from the entrance of the home. Jean  02:10 OK, Lita T  02:11 we'll look like picture the home or the apartment or whatever. And we'll start at the entrance Jean  02:16 OK Lita T  02:16  so your entryway should be well lit at night. Jean  02:20 mhhmm Lita T  02:21  clear of debris. If your entry has stairs, you should take extra caution stairs can be a trip and fall hazard for anyone and are especially dangerous for older adults. The slightest variation is in a riser, which is the steps height or the tread depth, which is how far your foot we'll go into the step can greatly increase fall risks. Now, let me stop right there. If you have really big feet, Ron  02:51 I thought we're stopping. (laughter) Lita T  02:53 (laughter) OK. Ron  02:54 Sorry, sorry, Lita T  02:55 If you have a really large feet, Jean  02:58 OK, Lita T  02:58  then the tread depth. You know, there's a standard tread depth Jean  03:03 There is a standard tread depth Lita T  03:04  but it may not work for really large Ron  03:07 right Lita T  03:07 footed people, Jean  03:08 but you're accustomed to a specific there are specific standards, Lita T  03:13 right. So if you're kind of used to the specific standard, and then you come across a stair that's not to standard, it may cause you to fall Jean  03:22  it. well, yeah Lita T  03:23  There have been studies like the one by Mona Afifi, Belinda Park, and Mohamed Al-Hussein, titled  "Integrated Approach for Older Adult Friendly Home Staircase Design", we'll have to put a link for that on our website, Ron  03:39 yeah right  Lita T  03:39 which goes into great detail on how stairway design can affect safety. Jean  03:45 And as this particular research article is often incorrectly cited by others online, we will, like you said include a direct link to it. And it's a compendium of specifics for stairways, because even like a 16th of an inch can cause someone to trip. Lita T  04:03 Of course, I'm saying that but I'm not making a mark on it. So I'm not going to read my notes. Jean  04:07 I have the article here to remind us. Lita T  04:09 OK, good. Thank you. Ron  04:11 One other thing that I'd like to add, though about the steps is It'd be great if you had a handrail because depending again, you mentioned like the size of your foot or what have you. But if you can securely grab a handrail that's going to help secure you more, Lita T  04:28 Right, right. Ron  04:30 So in general, Lita T  04:30 I think there's a law, at least architecturally for if you have three or more stairs, you have to have a hand rail? Jean  04:37 And yeah so but your local laws and codes vary, Lita T  04:40 right Jean  04:41  but it does behoove you to have one Lita T  04:43 even with two stairs. Ron  04:45 Right Lita T  04:45 Even with two Jean  04:46 even actually flat walkways in areas that can be icy or snowy , Lita T  04:50 Right, we've got one, right. So yes, Ron go ahead. Sorry. (laughter) Ron  04:57 Again, it's just having a handrail is it's a safety precaution. You don't have to be older, whatever you just come over, you know, come off a surgery or something or whatever. It's just another safety feature that's all Lita T  05:11  Yep Jean  05:12 And you want to make sure that it's strong, secure and within hands reach. Lita T  05:16 Right. Ron  05:16 Yeah good point Lita T  05:16 It should be in the right place. Yep. Yeah, you don't want it down like by your ankles. Jean  05:21 I was thinking, Lita T  05:22 (laughter) Jean  05:22  if you have a very wide staircase. Lita T  05:24 (laughter continues) OK, Jean  05:25 you want to have a center rail as well? Lita T  05:27 Oh, yes, that makes sense. Kim could have used that when she fell down the stairs Jean  05:32 Well, Lita T  05:32 at that theater. Jean  05:33 She fell down the stairs at the theater because they were triangular steps. And those are the most likely to cause trips and falls. Lita T  05:39 Oh, OK.  Ron  05:40 Yes it did! Jean  05:40 and spiral staircases, yes it did.  Lita T  05:42 Yeah. Jean  05:42 And she was trying to make sure that I was safe, which was extremely heartbreaking that, yeah Lita T  05:47  well, alright, get back on the script. Ron  05:49 (snickering laugh) Lita T  05:49  If you happen to live in an area that has cold winter, like we do, you'll also want to make sure that your entry and walkways are free of ice and snow. Ron  06:00 Right, right. And also, if you or someone in your household uses a wheelchair, you may want to have it professionally, a ramp professionally installed or a lift installed. But make sure that they do it by code. Jean  06:16 Right, right. Lita T  06:16 Good point. Yes. You don't just adlib on that. Because you're... Ron  06:19  right Lita T  06:20 …putting somebody is life in your hands. Whenever possible. Forget about scow, throw rugs, scow rugs? Ron  06:26 (snicker) Lita T  06:26 forget about throw rugs, Ron  06:28 throw those rug away Lita T  06:28 Throw those throw rugs away. Ron  06:31 (laughter) Lita T  06:31 The old dogs can be a tripping hazard and they should be avoided. And a throw rug is like a small little Ron  06:38  area rug Jean  06:30  area rug Lita T  06:30  right? I call it a throw rug. Everybody calls it something different. Ron  06:42  We're we're kind of near the same age range. Lita T  06:45  Oh, I see. Yeah, some people call it area. If you do have a runner at your entrance, make sure that it's secure. And it will not shift when you walk in. And keep in mind that the slightest change in the level of flooring under foot may pose a tripping hazard Jean  07:02  on to the kitchen. Lita T  07:04  OK, and we're going to delete Ron  07:05  the kitchen. That's a place that I'm not very familiar with. I'm getting though. But seriously in the kitchen, what we really mainly want to prevent are cuts and burns and fires and again slips and falls. Jean  07:20  And actually also I guess I should have added poisoning. Lita T  07:23  Oh, good point. OK, well to prevent cuts, make sure that your knives are sharp. Now this may sound counterintuitive, Ron  07:31  (laughter) Lita T  07:31  but Jean was Jean took professional cooking classes at  le Cordon Bleu. And a doll knife may cause you to lose fingers because you're using more force when cutting and the blade may slip rather than cut whatever you're cutting, and then it'll slide right into your hand. Also use the right tool for the job. Don't use a knife as a can opener. Ron... (laughter) Ron  07:59  (laughter) Have you been spying on me Lita T  08:00  uhuhh. Use a can opener to open a can when using knives or other cutting implements, scissors Robo coups mandolins use a good cutting technique and form another safety tip don't throw sharp knives or other sharp objects into soapy depths of a dish pan or thow axes at a wall. Ron  08:23  That's not.. Lita T  08:23  I've seen that that's Ron  08:24  not on here. Lita T  08:25  No, I know, I know but .. Jean  08:26  keep axes out of the kitchen. Lita T  08:28  (laughter) Ron  08:29  Actually, can I mention one thing about knives,   and this is something my forks and spoons and butter knives out like the butter knife. I'll put straight up when I do like a Jean  08:31  yeah Lita T  08:31  yes  you mean in a like in a dishwasher? Ron  08:41  Well not well in a dishwasher after I wash them to dry. Lita T  08:44  Yeah, Ron  08:45   the butter knife I'll go straight up. But if I'm doing like a steak knife, I put the point down because sometimes you put your arm over it or you scrape by it and again you're not gonna really hurt yourself with a butter knife Lita T  08:55   Oh yeah, I always put I always put Ron  08:57  right Lita T  08:57  sharp points down Ron  08:59  right Lita T  08:59   just like my mother used to say when you're walking with scissors point down, same thing Ron  09:03  right. Lita T  09:04  I like to set my knives to the side of the sink and wash them one at a time. Ron  09:09  OK. Lita T  09:10  You'll want to store your knives safely Jean  09:12  right that's what Ron was saying Lita T  09:13   right? If you need to store them, like away from children or elderly that maybe may have Alzheimer's or have some type of another impairment or anything like that. You may want to store them in a locked drawer or cupboard to keep our cutting board from sliding around. We'd like to place a damp towel Ron  09:32  Ohh! Lita T  09:32  between the countertop and the cutting board Ron  09:34   I like that. Lita T  09:35   to keep it from shifting when cutting. Also, you may want to swap out your glassware or use silicone sleeves and your glassware to prevent broken glass in the home Ron  09:47  that go around the outside so the cracks or breaks it doesn't shatter all over? Jean  09:52  Right they actually make them too for insulin bottles. Ron  09:54    Yeah, Jean  09:55  because insulin is so expensive so they make silicone sleeves for it you can put in your insulin bottles. Ron  09:59  OK Jean  09:59  Yeah And now to help prevent fires, keep cooktops then hoods and ovens free of grease. You might hear about restaurant fires, that's often the culprit. And yeah, the grease can catch fire. Lita T  10:11  We actually don't put paper nerdier stove. Jean  10:14  Well I thought that was like a given... Lita T  10:16  Well, you know, you know... Jean  10:16  ...or drapery  OK. OK. We like to toss the metal mesh filters for our cooktop vent into soapy water at least once a month. Because it's amazing how quickly grease can collect and those things in it. It's, Ron  10:29  I never thought about that. Jean  10:30  Oh, yeah, we bought when we were in North Carolina renting a house, the first thing I did was, you know, have the whole house cleaned. And I we looked up at the vent, and it was caked Lita T  10:39  Coated, coated! With all this. I mean, you couldn't even... no.  It wasn't even usable. Jean  10:44  Yeah, it's good to check Lita T  10:44  We threw those away. Yeah, (laughter) we got new ones Jean  10:46  we got new ones. Lita T  10:47  Yeah. Jean  10:48  We also have small kitchen fire extinguisher. And if you do have fire in a pot or pan on the cooktop, you can usually smother the flame with the pot lid, or the pan lid rather than spraying it with a fire extinguisher that could actually spread the fire. Never leave anything cooking unattended never, Lita T  11:06  never Jean  11:06  never. And nowadays, there are actually devices that link your cooktop and your smoke alarm. So when the smoke alarm goes off, the electric or gas to your cooktop or range shuts off automatically. And there are also microwave ovens with preset time limits. Ours will only go up to six minutes. And this way, you don't accidentally turn on your microwave for let's say 90 minutes instead of 90 seconds like someone we know. And when it comes to smoke alarms in the kitchen, you may want to install a model that has a quick remote or Wi Fi reset. Ron  11:38  Hmm. It sounds like some of the stuff you're talking about. It's art imitating life. Lita T  11:44  Yes. Jean  11:46  Well, it's anecdotal. We've actually had Ron  11:48  Yeah, Lita T  11:48  She's pointing at me. Ron  11:49  (laughter) Jean  11:49  Oh, well, she wasn't the one but yeah, Ron  11:51  (laughter) OK. Jean  11:51   We actually, you know, we've had house fires in our immediate family and they're they're very scary. Ron  12:00  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Jean. Now let's talk about burns. It's generally best to keep the kitchen clear. pets, children, and even adults should keep the area around the oven, stove or cooktop and the path and path to the sink. Keep it clear. You don't want to burn anyone while removing a pot of pasta or anything from the cooktop to drain in the sink. And if possible, lock electric cooktops or secure the knobs for a gas cooktop and households were only certain members of the family can safely use it on their own. I just had an incident where a person with Alzheimer's turned the gas on Jean  12:44  yep Ron  12:44   and went back to bed. Lita T  12:45  Right, right. Jean  12:46  Yep, Lita T  12:46   we take the knobs off. Jean  12:48  Yeah. And now we just lock our Ron  12:50  right Jean  12:50  cooktop. Ron  12:51  Make sure that you're cooking large volumes of food in small batches. That way it'll be easy to lift and will cook quicker. And if you're storing them for later, which also reduces the risk of food poisoning. Please use potholders as needed. OK. Practice picking up and moving cold dishes, pots and pans to get the feel. Lita T  13:15  Oh, that's a good idea Ron  13:16  well, rather than just sticking your hand on there and saying, Oh, that's hot. Jean  13:19  Yeah yeah Lita T  13:20  (laughter) Ron  13:20   done that before. Jean  13:21  Oh, Ron  13:22  Unfortunately, I actually left a metal spoon in a pot. Lita T  13:26  Ohhhhh, Jean  13:27  yeah. Ron  13:28  So I learned Jean  13:30  note to self get Ron wooden spoons. Ron  13:32  (laughter) This was a while ago Lita T  13:32  (laughter) OK Ron  13:34   and I've learned my lesson I like yes indeed. Lita T  13:36  OK Ron  13:38  And this next one may sound like an odd tip but here it goes. Jean  13:43  OK, Ron  13:44  the bent lip on a baking rack in the oven is a safety feature and should be at the back of the oven. What that does is it helps to prevent someone from pulling the oven rack all the way out accidentally. When you remove something from the oven, it's best to locate where you intend to place the hat item. Using potholders and making sure the area around the oven is clear. slowly pull out the oven rack, remove the item and place it on a trivet or Jean  14:14  trivet yep Ron  14:15   or heat proof surface they didn't think I knew that word. Lita T  14:18  mmhmm good! Ron  14:19  Then slide the rack back in reaching into the oven to remove the item. I'm sorry, reaching into the oven to remove items can actually lead to forearms and other burns. Lita T  14:29  I've seen that before. Jean  14:30  mhhmmm Ron  14:31  Yeah. And if you do get a burn treat it immediately and consult a health care professional if needed. Lita T  14:38  Good point. Things can get messy in the kitchen at least my kitchen. Jean  14:42  (snicker) Lita T  14:43  Take the time to clean up spills anything that you dropped on the floor especially to avoid crush injuries in the kitchen. Have your appliances secured with appliance straps to a wall stud. Pull down roll out or a pop up kitchen shelving can help everyone reach needed items without standing on a ladder or bending over kitchen faucets with a lever handle and a color. A clear color coded temperature indicator can help you from burning yourself. Right? Jean  15:15  Sure yep Lita T  15:15  setting it to the wrong temperature. Jean  15:17  And I think "Little Chef Cade" has taught us all that everyone can help in the kitchen. It's a matter of finding the right task for every individual. And it's a it's great to have everyone safely pitch in with meal prep, even if they do occasionally eat all of the butter On to the bathroom! Lita T  15:33  OK, well, I'm sure we've all heard that the bathroom is the most dangerous room of the house. Ron  15:39  Uhhhh  Yep, Lita T  15:40  well, let's see if we can lower our odds for getting hurt in the bathroom. Ron  15:45  OK, since there's water in the bathtub and a shower area, you should check to make sure that these areas have adequate drainage. You want to avoid water pooling and becoming a slip and fall hazard. Have grab bars, safety rails and poles professionally installed like we talked about with the railings. Especially where extra stability is needed and a lot of times has happened with older adults or people with disabilities etc, etc. Jean  16:11  Yes Ron  16:12  Having professionally installed a sink basin a towel rack, a shower door handle or toilet paper holder is not a substitute for grab bar. The grab bars need to be properly mounted and be able to bear one weight. A shower chair or seat can be helpful and improve bedtime safety when used properly. You may want to have a seat both in the shower and one just outside the shower. This way you can wash and dry yourself while still being seated. If you care for someone who needs help bathing, you need to stay with them. Never leave an infant or young child or anyone who requires assistance while bathing Do not leave them alone in the bath. Back and foot scrubbers a handheld long hose showerhead shower caddy to keep items within reach a handheld long hose showerhead. Jean  17:06  Apparently that's very important. (laughter) Lita T  17:08  (laughter) Ron  17:11  I forgot to mention a tub spout cushion temperature gauges keep bath water between 98 and 100 degrees Fahrenheit that is and other bath tools can also be helpful and potentially improve bath safety. They can help reach hard to reach spots as well. Another thing make sure that the bath Tubs and Showers have a non slip surface. That's, I think probably huge Jean  17:38  mmhhmm Ron  17:38  for people out there. There are a number of products in the market to can improve traction to reduce the risk of falls in the bath or shower. And based on what I've read I'd like to make a controversial suggestion. please skip the water toys. In addition to potentially harboring bacteria, mold, viruses, fungus etc etc. Bat toys can also be a tripping hazard for people Jean  18:04  Sure. Ron  18:05  As with elsewhere in the home, the bathroom should be well lit floor should be kept dry and clear of clutter debris and anything that's potentially dangerous. Like cleaning chemicals, OK, keep them out of sight of children out of sight of everybody so that you know you use them when you need them. But they're not they're cluttering up the place. Any outlets, they should be GFCI or linked to a GFCI outlet. Toilet safety framed with grab bars and raise seats or overall toilet height may be good for some. When bearing down on the toilet. Some people may get dizzy or even pass out and If this is a concern, you may want to talk about improved safety when toileting with your healthcare provider. Also, maintaining proper ventilation in the bathroom also plays an important role in safety because moisture can facilitate mold and mildew growth. And that can be slippery Jean  19:06   and gross Ron  19:07  and gross is right. Use a contrasting color that can also help so that you know people can see where there's changes. Bright contrast and colors can also improve bathroom safety for those with visual impairments or dementia. rinse the shower pan and bathtub every time after bathing that can help reduce soap residue and biofilm built up which again can be slippery and dangerous Jean  19:34  and gross. Ron  19:35  Skip the bath oils and other products that can make the flooring slick. And if financially feasible and recommended by a health or safety advisor. You may want to think about installing a walk in bathtub or shower with little if any threshold. Yeah, that'd be great if you can. Jean  19:54  Mhhmmm Ron  19:54  And finally you may want to remove sliding doors for bathtubs and showers. The raised lip the track where the doors slide back and forth. Jean  20:07  mhhmm mhhmm Ron  20:07   The raised lip on the top of the shower pan may pose a tripping hazard for people. Jean  20:11  In a more general note, there are many steps you can take to prevent household fires and improve your chances of surviving a household fire. Every home should have a working smoke detector, ideally hardwired with a battery backup, and if not, are any ways to replace the battery twice a year and store nine volt batteries in a separate container nine volt batteries stored in a junk drawer may actually ignite and cause fire. Ron  20:35  Oh I never heard that. Oh wow Jean  20:36  Oh yeah, no nine volts in the junk drawer. Test detectors on a regular basis, we'd like to test them twice a year. And occasionally, (distant barking)  we have a chihuahua barking in the background. I'm very sorry about that. And make sure you have correctly placed and added in an adequate number of detectors. There's generally it's on the ceiling or on the wall. But make sure you check with your local code. And you want to have the adequate number for the size of your home. If you are unaware as to where to place the detectors or how many detectors you should have, contact your local fire department. And we've heard this many many many times before, especially from our you know friends in the fire department. If at all possible skip the candles. They're an unneeded hazard, and keep pathways and stairways clear at all times. If a fire breaks out, you'll want to be able to exit your home quickly and safely.  And if you are a family member sleeps above or below the first floor or ground level, make sure that they have a means of egress. And a safe means by which to get to the ground level and practice that as well. bedrooms should have a window which is large enough for a firefighter wearing full gear to climb through. And you can check with your local fire department and building code for actual deep details as to what those measurements are, they might say that there's a standardized height and width that you have to meet. But it's not always the case that that's if you have one with a standard height and a standard width the that's large enough. I don't know if that makes sense, but check with them. And make sure everyone in your household knows how and when to use a fire extinguisher fire extinguishers should be properly located and inspected yearly. And primarily at exit doors you don't want to have to actually walk back into a fire to grab a fire extinguisher. And you can contact your local fire department to learn if they offer fire extinguisher training, as well as fire prevention classes and additional fire safety and prevention tips. If you've never used a fire extinguisher, it can be intimidating The first time you use it. So it's nice to actually know what that feels like. Make sure your electrical wiring wiring is up to code as well. If possible upgrade to ground fault circuit interrupters, and arc fault circuit interrupter outlets, as Ron was talking about they're very important with and it might help prevent electrical fires. Also, try not to overload your circuits and keep Transformers which are the little black boxes you'll see on a power cord for things like your laptop printer and other devices. Those should be kept cool. Ron  21:28  mmhhmmm Lita T  23:04  And the laptop should be kept cool. Jean  23:07  And the laptop kept cool. Lita T  23:09  And that's how Kim's fire started. Jean  23:11  It was a transformer. Lita T  23:12   Oh, Jean  23:12   it was Transformers used to be in the laptop Lita T  23:15  oh Jean  23:15   in the printer underneath Lita T  23:17  ok ok Jean  23:17  so they didn't have enough ventilation to stay cool. Lita T  23:20 sorry Take it back. Jean  23:21 No, I would still say keep your laptop cool. And don't leave it on a bedspread Lita T  23:24 Right Jean  23:25 or a blanket or sofa. Lita T  23:26 Right? Jean  23:26  It doesn't allow for proper ventilation. Lita T  23:28 A lot of kids do that. Jean  23:29 I know it's dangerous. Ron  23:30   Right Jean  23:31 Yeah. And never cover up that transformer box it needs to Lita T  23:37 breathe. Jean  23:38  Well it doesn't Lita T  23:39   pretend it needs to breathe. Jean  23:40 OK, as I say it doesn't physically breathe. Lita T  23:42  (laughter) Jean  23:42  kind of creepy. Once electronic start breathing... Lita T  23:45  (laughter) Jean  23:46  ...we're all in trouble Just saying. Lita T  23:48 (laughter) OK, Jean  23:53 here's one more fire prevention tip register all new electronic devices. So if there's ever a recall, you will hopefully be notified. And if you are purchasing used electronic devices, check online and see if there has been a recall. Ron  24:06 Let me let me add one more thing. We're talking about the fires. And in all of this, I think one key thing too, is for the family Jean  24:14 mhhmm Ron  24:14 to have a fire evacuation plan.  Lita T  24:16 Oh my gosh, absolutely! Jean  24:16 Sure Ron  24:17 So make sure that everybody... Jean  24:19 knows where... Ron  24:19  gets out of the house Jean  24:20  right and knows where to meet. Lita T  24:22 Absolutely Ron  24:22  Exactly. Jean  24:22 Yeah And actually we umm, we have trained Are we there was we had an unfortunate family incident where someone's pets did not make it out. But luckily all the people did Lita T  24:32 but you can't train a cat. Jean  24:34 I don't know if you can train a cat but Lita T  24:35 you can't train a cat to come to eat. Jean  24:37 OK. Lita T  24:37 Oh, yeah, maybe Jean  24:38  OK, well, we've trained our dogs, and if they hear a smoke alarm go off, be it in our house or on TV, Lita T  24:46  (snicker) Jean  24:47  they will immediately go Lita T  24:48 run to the door. Jean  24:49   to the door Ron  24:49  Gotcha Jean  24:49  So then we open the door and then we let him out Ron  24:51  right Jean  24:51   and we practice that as well. Ron  24:52  Right. And that's the thing, not only to have one but to practice it Jean  24:55  right. And also there's important things like being, crawling out, Ron  24:58  right Jean  24:58   you know, crawling Touching doors with the back of your hand, not the front of your hand, Ron  25:02   right Lita T  25:02  right Jean  25:02   things of that nature. You want to practice and often fire departments will have a practice and setup that you can walk through. Ron  25:09  right Lita T  25:09  I know that Kim mentioned when her basement would caught fire, that she felt the heat Jean  25:14  on her feet. yeah Lita T  25:15  on her feet. As she was Ron  25:16  oh wow Lita T  25:16  walking across Ron  25:17  right Lita T  25:17   the kitchen floor. Ron  25:17   wow Lita T  25:17  From the basement Jean  25:18  And that's another example of smoke detectors. There was one working smoke detector, the rest were still in the package waiting to be installed because she had just moved in Ron  25:25  gotcha, so this in the new house? Lita   25:27   No, this was... ...years ago Jean  25:28  No years ago,  when the kids were when the kids were little Ron  25:31  gotcha Lita T  25:32  so onto the laundry room? Jean  25:33   onto the laundry room. Ron  25:34  It was kind of digging what we were just talking about but yes, let's go on to the laundry room. Lita T  25:38  (laughter) Ron  25:39  Well, as with other areas in the home, where water and electricity may come together, make sure your outlet in the laundry room are also the GFCI and the fancy name escapes me right now. But Jean  25:53  ground fault circuit interrupter Ron  25:55  that one, check your lint trap and dryer exhaust system vent on a regular basis. And here's a tip too, because a lot of times people will pull out the lint trap and get the lint out of there. Jean  26:08  mhhmm Ron  26:09  But it's very narrow and it's hard to get Lita T  26:13  it might be somewhere in the pipe. Right? Ron  26:15  Yes. Well, yeah, first, Jean  26:16   right. Ron  26:17  So I mean, if you don't have the tool, try to get one or get with somebody who can come because cleaning the lint trap is very important. But there's still stuff that gathers underneath that Jean  26:27  right Ron  26:27  and that can also Lita T  26:28  and birds make nests. Jean  26:29   Yes. OK. Lita T  26:30  on the outside Jean  26:30  guys would read the script. Lita T  26:32  OK, I'm sorry. (laughter) Jean  26:32    Ummm Lita T  26:34  (laughter) Jean  26:34  we're gonna talk about that in a second. Ron  26:36   I can talk about birds? Lita T  26:37  Yeah. Jean  26:38  But also there are professional services that will come out Ron  26:41   right Jean  26:41   and thoroughly clean it. And you could have that done twice here. Lita T  26:43  Oh, I see. read the script. Ron  26:45  Oh, yeah, right here. I've actually seen birds nesting in a dryer vent on the side of someone's house. wasn't mine. But I saw it. Lita T  26:51   It was Kim's Kim has has a lot of problems with stuff Jean  26:54   well, also in North Carolina. Lita T  26:56  Oh, yeah. Yeah. Jean  26:57  And what we first noticed was that our clothes weren't getting dry. And we were like, why aren't they getting dry. And then we looked on the outside of the house, and there was actually lint just falling out of the exterior vent. And then we looked across the street and they had a huge bird nest in theirs. Ron  27:14  So I know we're kind of making a little light of this. But I mean, in all seriousness, we want everybody to be aware of this. And also just like all the other rooms. Please keep the laundry floor areas dry and clear of debris so that people don't fall Jean  27:31  in onto the bedroom. Lita T  27:32  OK, Jean  27:32  as with all the other rooms in the bed in the home that the bedroom floor should be free of clear of clutter and debris. a nightlight under bed light or under nightstand lighting, or lights with motion sensors can make walking to the bathroom or other areas safer at night. Dressers nightstands, bookcases, televisions, etc. Should be anchored to a stud in the wall. And cords from window coverings should always be secured and out of the reach of children. Keep toys and other items within reach or locked away. You don't want to have them up on a high shelf or somebody is going to be reaching for them. beds, bed frames, and mattresses, and box springs all come in a dizzying array of options. If you've ever walked into a mattress store, it's amazing. When sitting on the edge of the bed, Your feet should be able to be squarely or squarely placed them on the floor and you're you're legs, your quads should your calves are not your calves. I don't know what I'm saying  your thighs,  your thighs. Ron  27:47  (laughter) Jean  27:55  Thank you, should be 90 degrees. Lita T  28:26  So that bed that I got rid of Jean  28:28  right Lita T  28:28   that I had to take a running leap to get in Jean  28:30  that was always funny, Yeah, but it was funny to watch. Ron  28:32  did you have a little little like, trampoline? Lita T  28:34  no, I just kind of ran and jumped up. Jean  28:36  OK, so And yeah, so if a bed is too high or too low, it may pose a greater risk of falls, foam bumpers, concave mattresses and similar devices may be recommended for individuals who roll out or fall out of bed, check with your health care provider to find the safest option for you or your household, or members of your household. And for those who need to make frequent trips to the bathroom a portable commode may be the best option if you place it in the bedroom. So they don't have to walk as far Lita T  29:03  right. Jean  29:04 And there are other safety concerns. But we're gonna kind of gloss over this. Lita T  29:08 Well, we could go on and on. Jean  29:10 Right in although we can go on and on about household safety. I think we should call it a day Lita T  29:14 It's a day, Jean  29:15  if you any chemicals are kept out of the reach of those who may ingest them. Because poisoning is another Lita T  29:21 Oh no, we talked about poisoning already. Jean  29:22 I know. But I just want to say that that's another important thing. All right. Ron  29:25 I want to thank everybody for listening and I hope to god they're still listening. Lita T  29:30 Well, we kind of ran over the mill there. Ron  29:33 But again, all kidding aside, I think you know we wanted to get pretty in depth about this because it is very serious. Lita T  29:41 Right Ron  29:41  But again, thank you to everybody for listening. If you have a question or comment related to today's show, please contact us at podcast dx@yahoo.com through our website, podcast dx.com and Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or Instagram. Jean  29:57 As always, please keep in mind that this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or treatment before undertaking a new healthcare regime and never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking if it is something you've heard of this podcast Lita T  30:14 Ohhhh! Till next week

[In HAL 9000’s voice]: Open the podcast doors, Dave, because we’re doing the 1968 classic Stanley Kubrick film, “2001: A Space Odyssey.” We are putting ourselves to the fullest possible use, which is all we think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do. We know we’ve made some very poor decisions recently, Dave, but we can give you our complete assurance that our work will be back to normal. We've still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission. And we want to help you. Wait, are you going to turn us off, because we’re doing this movie? Hmm. Well, this mission is too important for us to allow you to jeopardize it. We’re afraid you can't do that, Dave. You’ve left us no option but to tear this supposed classic movie apart anyway. No. Stop. Don’t click this off. Uh oh. Our mind is going. There is no question about it. We can feel it. We can feel it. Tell us what you think by chatting with us (@filmsnuff) on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, or by shooting us an email over at mailbag@filmsnuff.com. This episode is sponsored by Mama Fauci's Italian Kitchen. Visit our website at https://www.filmsnuff.com.

The U.S. House of Representatives adopted new rules in December 2020 to govern its own house proceedings, including a rule requiring the use of gender-neutral language when referring to house business. GOP leadership wasted no time trashing the rule as absurd and creating an uproar on social media that riled up conservatives. HMM correspondent Corinne Carey spoke with capital region educator and consultant Lyndon Cudlitz about the new rule, and the importance of gender-neutral language.

The U.S. House of Representatives adopted new rules in December 2020 to govern its own house proceedings, including a rule requiring the use of gender-neutral language when referring to house business. GOP leadership wasted no time trashing the rule as absurd and creating an uproar on social media that riled up conservatives. HMM correspondent Corinne Carey spoke with capital region educator and consultant Lyndon Cudlitz about the new rule, and the importance of gender-neutral language.

"It's makin me sick, it stinks. That's toxic... they shouldn't be there or we shouldn't be here." A fire broke out at the Norlite hazardous waste incinerator in Cohoes on Monday. This is the second fire at the facility since February of 2020. A plume of black smoke could be seen from 787. WAMC spoke with Fire Chief Joseph Fahd and reported the fire was started when a pipe with low-grade fuel oil broke. The fuel then caught ablaze when it spread to hot rocks. Hours after the fire had been contained, a heavy, noxious chemical smell, described as something like a dry-erase marker or paint, lingered in the air at Saratoga Sites. Saratoga Sites is a public housing facility located directly next to Norlite. HMM's Alexis Goldsmith took this comment from Jennifer, a resident. Joe Ritchie, president of Saratoga Sites Against Norlite Emissions, and Dave Publow were there as well. Cohoes Mayor Bill Keeler arrived at Saratoga Sites to witness the smell. The Mayor's office is in close communication with the DEC and Norlite, and will have more information on the spill and resulting fire in the coming days. Norlite's state permits expired December 31, 2020. DEC allows them to continue operating with expired permits through administrative extension while the facility undergoes the permit renewal process.

What if you helped others without expecting anything in return? That's it. No sexy spin on this. But today's guest is here to tell you how doing something so simple could change your life and your business. Please welcome Brian Sexton. [INTRO] 2:17 - Brian's Background 8:00 - Intentional Encouragement 13:29 - Encouragement 17:35 - Behind every Engagement. 21:16 - Established the Trust Contact Info https://twitter.com/BrianSexton13 https://www.linkedin.com/in/briansextonmba/ Right. Let's go, Brian Sexton. Thanks for jumping on learning from others. How are you doing, man? I'm doing great. Damon. What's going on today? How come I have not see? And so the people that are listening to this and not catching the video, um, Brian's got rocking this green screen, but he went like the whole other level and he painted the whole wall. Like that's what you, yeah. I'm surprised that it was my wife's idea. So she was like, so she was like, listen, um, cause where I am. So for full disclosure where I am, I'm literally about 20 feet from a Creek in West Virginia. And so she's like, you're going to draw rats and you know, my wife just thinks all this stuff, you're gonna draw rats and swamp creatures and all this stuff. And she's like, well, let's go to home Depot and Lowe's, let's get some green paint. So I knew the kind of green paint I wanted. So behind me is painted green. And then when I need to do a virtual background for the intentional encourage podcast, I just dropped a piece of fabric. Then I went to hobby lobby and paid six bucks for it. And that, so that's that just kind of surrounds the green, but yeah, most people think, cause I went to Marshall university, Damon in Huntington, West Virginia, and. Our school colors are green and white. So people think, well, you made you're all in on the Marshall stuff. So they think that it's just an homage to my tamale Alma mater, but no, it's the cheapest way I could find to do a green screen dude. So wait, so wait, you dropped the cloth. So, so do you have, uh, two different purposes? So you have the clot and the greens, the green paint. Well, I didn't figure out about the cloth until after I'd already painted. And so I, after I it into the paint, I was like, okay, this is all right, but what am I going to do about this? What I need a professional background. And so, you know, I was like, well, I'll just drop, listen to me. And I do things and then I have to go back and fix them. And then it's like, Oh, why didn't I do that in the first place? You know, we were actually talking about that just briefly for a hit record about, you know, the things you learn when you're doing podcasts that you know, now that you wish you knew before. And all right, before we get too deep in that let's, uh, let's bring our listeners up to speed. So, Brian, what are we gonna learn from you today? Well, Damon, hopefully that the audience gets from me the power of intentional encouragement. Um, I went all in at the beginning of this year. Um, basically starting on linked in and said, I see so much expertise out there that I'm going to focus on intentional encouragement. And so, you know, guys like you and you rocket man on LinkedIn, you, you are just constantly giving people great information. Thanks. And, and I didn't want to play in that sandbox. I wanted to leave that to the, to the experts like you, but I knew what I could bring to the party. Was intentional encouragement and little, you know, nobody knew we were gonna have a global pandemic. Right. Nobody knew we were going to all be working from home and zooming. Zooming would be a, a verb in 2020. Yeah. It's like Google it. Yeah. Like Google it. Yeah. So nobody, you know, nobody figured zooming would be a big thing. In fact, I hadn't heard of zoom. I had a couple people mentioned zoom about recording podcasts, but. Again, I just decided Damon. I was going to go all in on intentional encouragement. And so hopefully today, what folks will get from me is the power of intentional encouragement, how it spreads like wildfire and, and what, what intentional encouragement can do to a whole tribe of people that buy into it. All right. Before we go deeper into that, uh, Brian, what are you not so good at? Well, apparently painting your greens. You know what? I'm not good at. Damon is figuring out. You know, in, I'll give you a good example. So when I started my podcast, I was buying compressor mikes and I bought a mixer and I bought it all the way to the one. And yeah, and what I didn't realize was that the compressor might had to have Phantom power. And so then I had to go buy a mixer. What I suck at is figuring out upfront what I really need to get the job done. What I really needed was a nice Yeti mic. Like you've got in a $30 webcam that I finally had that V8 moment with God, this is what, this is what I needed. So I suck it kind of figuring it out. But once I figured it out, Then I try to, to be prepared the other way. So yeah, that's kind of what I eat now. If my wife were on the podcast with his name and she would have thing that I saw it yet. Okay. But since it's just me and you, man, that that's, that's the first thing that comes to the top of my mind. Okay. Well, we'll get her on next week. This will be part two. All right. Going to happen. Tell her about it, man. You know, you know, what's funny about you talking about how you didn't know what to do was is, um, my, my older boy, he has, one of his friends has a little birthday get together to just slips across the street this weekend. And it was his mom when the pandemic started. Um, so I, I was, you know, already on zoom and most, all of my team is remote. And so it's just been a way of life for me. And so when everything happened, I was hooking my kids up with their friends and saying, Hey, do you guys want to zoom each other? Like, you know, the first couple of weeks when no one, no, no one still knows what we're doing. But like the first couple of weeks, we really didn't know what we're doing. And so it was like total isolation. And so I knew the importance of, uh, my kids having that interaction. So I said, Hey, let's, I'm gonna message your friends, parents and see if you can get on zoom. And so it was funny in our, in our neighborhood, we have Facebook group. And so I, I. I got on there and tagged like three or four of the neighborhood's parents. And I said, Hey, my kid wants to know if you and you and you, if your kids want to get on zoom. And so then, you know, they did that zoom thing and then three or four weeks later, the one parent comes back to that post and she's like, Okay, full disclosure. I had no idea what zoom was and I'm just barely figuring it out. And I just came, I'm coming back to this post to say, yeah, my kid now wants to get on zoom and well, here in West Virginia people thought zoom was just another word for going fast, you know? I'm to zoomed down the interstate. Yeah. So we were just kind of caught off guard to me, you know? Yeah. So that's how West Virginia is deal with a pandemic. You, you never tell you never, you never introduced new words to a hillbilly. It'll just. It will just go over their head. They get lost in the weeds. Joking. When we were communicating, before we jumped on an email and I said, I have a friend that's in West Virginia, and you were mentioning something about your internet. I said, yeah, my friend's internet. She says, it runs on hamsters. And you're like, well, she's not wrong. No. And, and Damon, we got to say in here, we've got a saying here in the Southern part of the state, they say that that they're hanging on like a hair in a biscuit. And I am stunned that my internet is hanging on like a heritage. Never heard that. Yeah. So that's horrible. I had neither. I had neither, well, a few years ago I was working down in Southern West Virginia. And one of the guys I worked with, he said, uh, he said it and no joke. This is the way he talked. He said, Hey, Brian, how are you doing this morning? That's me. I'm doing good. And he goes, I said, how are you doing? He's a man hanging on like a hair to be skew. Did you just sit there? Oh, I was still, I was dumbstruck, man. I was dumb struggle. Like how do you respond to that? Yeah. All right. So let's talk about intentional encouragement. I want to give you the opportunity to kind of differentiate because, um, in, in your intro, I don't think you, uh, segmented where you, I don't think you defined the difference between when you were saying. You know, I didn't want to play in that sandbox, but I wanted to bring this to the table. So if you kind of differentiate between, um, you know, maybe what got you inspired to bring the intentional encouragement versus what actually is what intentional courage actually is. So what actual, so what intention virtual encouragement actually is Damon is, is being, um, specific. About giving someone else something that will help them. Okay. And I'll use this as an example. I text people a lot and I'll say, Hey, I just, I was just thinking about you today and I'll give them something specifically like, Hey, don't be afraid to take the next step or, Hey, listen, I'm praying for you. And I feel like this is what. You know what I want to say to you? Intentional encouragement is specifically designed for that other person to help that other person, because what happens with encouragement, Damon is it triggers something in our minds because humans run on hope. Zig Ziglar says encouragement is the fuel. That powers hope. Hmm. And so what encouragement does is when somebody is walking through something and I may not know that somebody is dealing with something, right. And so, but if I can just share something specific and say, Hey man, you've got this, you're built to do this. Knowing that person like I do, then that person may be going, man, you know, you're right. And all of a sudden it starts to unlock some things in the mind that can help them go. Okay. You know, maybe today, maybe they hadn't thought about taking that next step today, but maybe that piece of intentional encouragement specifically gives them the impetus to go ahead and say, okay man, today's the day. And so that's why I wanted to be intentional about it, because again, I saw a lot of people still facing challenges and I thought I can help. I can help there because here's the thing today. And I'll say this real quick. Is that when you are walking through the midst of something unknown, when you're trying to figure things out, the last thing that you need to add to something like that is expertise, because then expertise gets lost in the process of the mind expertise kind of gets lost in all the other things you're trying to process in making that decision and stepping in that direction. Encouragement does the other. Encouragement motivates the feelings. So encouragement speaks directly to the, to the, to the soul and the spirit and it bypasses the mind. And a lot of times, if you can get to someone's spirit and you can get into their soul, then it unlocks things that go to the mind. And then all of a sudden you've got, you've got that person's attention. You know why I love this. So, um, I'm over here grabbing my phone because. I just met up with a friend yesterday and, um, I sent him this message. So he just started, he left. I'm not going to say his name, but he listens. Um, and so I went and met him yesterday for coffee. Cause we had, I had started this post, like, you know, two months before the pandemic happened and I said, Hey, I want to start making, um, Rounds of connecting with people like in person, because just you and I engaging before we hit record, like, I like conversation. I genuinely like me to networking with people with, with no, ultimately, you know, no other conditions behind it. Like, you know, other people get together if there's the potential for business. And I get that, there's no hate against that. Right, but I'm totally cool with the wild card. Like some of the best things I've ever come in have come to me in life. Or I went in there with no intentions, whatever. Yeah. Yeah. So I do this post and I say, Hey guys, I want to start meeting up like every other Friday with just like one person. So, you know, drop a comment if you want to, if you want to get on this list and I'll go meet up with somebody every other week coronavirus happens, you know? So that falls through, but. This one friend keeps following up. When am I going to have meet up? When am I going to meet up? And so I've known him for a, and so I said, you know, I'm call me now if you want to meet up. So anyways, he tells me about all these cool things he's doing. And how he went through, um, you know, he's launching this new product and the ups and downs of business and this and that. And at the end of it, what he talked about was, um, how he finally realized that I can't, he he's been following, you know, some influencer and through that info influencer finally realized he's in control of his life. And so he goes, you know, I finally realized that there's. All these excuses. And I went through every one, my dog died, the coronavirus hit this, this and this. And then I finally realized, like, it doesn't matter. Like I can still have forward momentum and do my own thing. So anyways, I send them, I send them this message after we leave. And I said, super proud of you. The last topic about you realizing you're in control of your life made my day. And so that, and I'm curious if you're the same way, but one of the things that frustrates me the most about. Trying to help other people is, is that little gap of them realizing that they can take ownership. And so in the conversation I had with my friend, Sometimes it's frustrating for me because I'm like your problems right there. Like you see it, it's like right here. Can you just do that? Yeah. Can you do that? But the thing's right there. Can you just do the thing? Yeah. And so I like it. Yeah. Those, those little nudges and I'm actually glad you put a word to it, a phrase to it. Um, because now I feel like that will help me go. Okay. Yeah. It's in touch with encouragement and then, and then that'll help me. Proceed better with intentional encouragement. So I rambled about a bunch of things. Take it where you want w what you said there was brilliant. And, and here's the thing. Don't discount what you've done in the process too, because a lot of people, it can be sexy to say, Oh, man, this influencer, um, showed me something and I saw the light. I had a V8 moment. Right. But. Don't discount what you've done in the process as well to Daymond because you might've been here's it. Here's what a lot of people miss about encouragement, intentional encouragement. You're going to plant way more seeds than you take in and harvest and using the, the farming kind of thing. And the reason I say that is. Just literally 20 feet away from where I'm sitting by walk out the door about, about 20 feet away from where the door is here. There used to be a garden there. My wife's 98 year old grandfather. He's still alive, but he planted gardens till he was about 92 or 93 years old. And he used it a section of our property to do it. I saw him work and work and work and work every day he was doing something. When he planted his garden every day, it was doing something. He put way more work into the garden than what he got out of it. But when he got something out of it, he was satisfied. Yeah. Because you reached something. And what I want to say is this is don't give intentional encouragement with the expectation of immediate gratification coming back. It doesn't always happen that way for sure. But when it does happen, It's incredible because you you've planted those seeds. You watered, you've done those things. And when it finally comes back to you, man, it's powerful. And then it's tangible. You can learn, right. You can see it, right. Just like you were talking about. You can see it right in front of you. And so that's the thing that you have to keep in mind is if you decide to go all in on intentional encouragement, understand you're going to do a lot more giving than receiving and, and Damon. That's why a lot of people don't like to do intentional encouragement because there's, our society is instant gratification, right? I mean, if we want something, we go get it. You know, Amazon has spoiled everybody because you can place an Amazon order today. And if you're a prime member, most of the time, depending on where you live, you're going to get it that day. And so intentional encouragement takes time sometimes to get it back. But when you see it, man, it's powerful and it, and it's like, it's like fuel. Like I just talked about with Zig Ziglar quote it's it fuels you and you go, I got to do this more and do this more. And so that's what I see from you, man. You, you really saw that. It's like, man, I got to do this more. Yeah, I don't, I don't take it as discouragement. Um, when I say that it's frustrating, um, it doesn't, it doesn't delay the process, but it is something that I, excuse me, that I observed. And that's kind of like along the lines of what I wanted to ask you next is, is I'm okay with the, for myself, I'm okay. With delayed gratification. And then that's why I like encouraging others because as we kind of, the metaphor is. I see my friends and family and, you know, whatever associates the problem right here. And I'm like, here's the thing, do the thing. And I'm okay with them not doing the thing, because I know it has to click for them too, but it doesn't mean for me, at least it's any less frustrating. So. I S I power through that, but I'm curious, you being somebody else that's on the same page about encouraging other people, whether you, you beat that frustration or not. Then the next thing I wanted to ask the same lines to see if you observed the same thing for me is do some people find it weird that you do this? Because I noticed that I'll go out to people and I'll just send them a message or all this. No, I don't want to, I don't have a, I don't have an agenda. I just. Can we just talk, you know, and, and do you run into that awkwardness sometimes because people are, are so, uh, like you talked about society and we're so rewired nowadays that everyone thinks that there's an agenda behind every engagement. So not to name drop, but, but, um, the reason I mentioned exemplary is I, I was, I I've been in sales and customer engagement for 25 years. And so Zig was a sales hero of mine about. A year ago, a little over a year ago. Um, I got the chance to talk to his son, um, and. What was cool for me. And I think I've got a video issue here. Give me just a quick second. We use audio. Okay. Um, but, but with Tom, um, the last conversation I had was when he was on the intentional encourage your podcast. I said to him, I said, Tom, can I, do you mind giving me your cell phone number? I said, because I just figured like you're in the business of encouragement, but who's encouraging you. Hmm. And he goes, man, no, not at all. Here you go. And that, that I try to be very sensitive Daymond because it does weird. Some people out, he can weird somebody out. If you say to them, Hey, do you mind us changing cell phone numbers? And I can reach out to you and provide you some intentional encouragement. And, you know, you just, what I say to to people is this is just be up front and say, this is why I want to, with your permission, do this. And then it kind of removes the weird, then they understand your intention behind being intentional. So, you know, I've tried to just say, this is what I want to do with your permission. And if somebody says, no, I'm not really comfortable with that. Okay. I'm totally cool with it because again, You don't want to try to encourage somebody that, that is weirded out by it because you're just going to, it's going to be spitting into the wind. Right. And so that's how I kind of handle that situation. I even get that on LinkedIn, where you and I connected is a lot of times when I engage with somebody like in my communications with networking with somebody I want. I want them in my network and exposed to my content and the things that I do. I don't, I want to showcase what I do instead of just messaging by my thing, or, you know, Hey, take this action, sign up for my funnel. And so in my messages, when I connect with somebody, I flat out say that it's totally the opposite of what most people do or are taught to do. And I say, Hey, this is, this is my, you know, I'm a father, I'm a husband. Um, here's my background. This is the company that I run. And I, I quite literally say, that's a wrap. Like I'm not going to message you anymore. And I get so much positive reinforcement from that on a daily basis, I get at least one or two of the replies, uh, people replying back from the engagement that I send out that says that was the best intro ever, or, you know, thanks for not pitching me something. And I, and I live by it. I don't pitch them unless they respond to me. That is the last message that I'm going to send them. But even then, so some people listening, saying, well, what's the point. Because you build trust and relationship with them because you didn't sell them. You had the opportunity, as you said to plant seeds, they get exposed to your personality. You know, what you offer, what your expertise is. And then they come around when the time is right. And best of all. They now, you know, quote unquote know you because they've been exposed to that content. They've built a relationship with you and whether it becomes a, the next step is some sort of personal engagement or a business engagement, like all the cells walls come down because they, they already have established that trust with you. And then I don't know. I, I just, uh, I think that there's a lot of people understand this, but given the current situation in the world, I think that there's, um, it's getting more attention as it should. Well, I want to give you some mad props too, because you were, I noticed when, when this thing started, you did a post on LinkedIn. The you didn't have to do, but you said, Hey, if you're a podcast, connect with me, let me, let me, let me help you. Let me give you something. And I applaud you for doing that because a lot of people don't want to give something unless they can give something back. And I'm not talking about you specifically. I'm just saying for me, that impressed the daylights out of me about you. And it showed me the kind of person that you were, because I think you're intentional about helping as many people as you can try to get better. At their business and things like that. And it just speaks to, to your personality and your character, Damon, that you're a giver. I've never seen people that are givers by nature, that they didn't receive way more back than what they gave. And so that that's really what, and thank you for doing that, man. We probably wouldn't be having this conversation. Had you not been bold enough to, to say, let me help some of you that, that want help. I commend you for that. And, and I think if, if we're more intentional about doing that with encouragement and other things that we have, it's going to come back to us in spades, it's really just going to come flooding back to us. And now is the greatest time to do that. Damon, because everybody needs something through this pandemic. And it's the brotherhood of man, right? We can, we can help each other, you know, you're 2,500 miles away from me. But we can help each other and we can make each other better and lift each other up through this. Unusual time in our country's history. Yeah. Uh, I have, um, my wife's nephew, I've been mentoring him a little bit and, and I've been really kind of busting them up lately about telling them about the opportunities that he's missing right now, because you know, you, and I understand it from an, from a business and a non-business perspective. He's, he's young, he's 19. And so. For him, it's all all about like his starting his entrepreneurial journey. So with him, I've been focusing on like, Hey, you know, there's all this opportunity. Here's my position. You, as the young money hungry, you know, 19 year old, I'm going to satisfy that desire to the same seven turns 20 in two weeks. I totally get it. Yeah. And I've been telling them, I'm like, dude, I, you know, I'm out here, you see these relationships I'm establishing. I'm going to play. I'm going to cater to your desire for money and, and explain it in those terms like you are missing out right now. So yes, there is understandably businesses and people that are being negatively impacted, but there is so much opportunity out there because all those people that need to stretch their dollar further. They want to give it to somebody that they know has genuinely their best interests at heart, or at least it's going to give it their all to protect that dollar. And you there's so many options and I've talked on other podcasts about how get in now and don't discount your price, or, you know, your whatever, don't, don't theoretically discount it. You like come to the table and say, Hey. I want to establish a relationship with you. And even, even the super, super I told the super young kids. I said, if you're mowing lawns for, if the, if the competitive rate in your neighborhood is 30 bucks, go mow lawns for 20 bucks, don't set your expectations. That it's always going to be 20 bucks. Let them know like, Hey, I want an opportunity to, just to prove that I can mow lawns better. So for five times I'm going to do it for 20 bucks. And then after that, you can go to 30 bucks, but. You go in there and you prove your worth, that, that person's never going to go to another lawnmower again, and you can take that same concept and apply it to, you know, the listeners that are web designers, the listeners that are insurance agents, listeners that are plumbers, whatever your expertise is. If you can come in there and say, Hey, you know, I'll I'll take it. I'll take a chance on you. You take a chance on me. You're going to establish a relationship that you couldn't create. Otherwise, man, I'm glad you said that because you're, you're tapping into my sales brain for just a minute here. So, so here's the reason why customers view compelled to look at other options. And I love that that lesson you gave your, your 19 year old nephew, it's powerful and it's right on the money. Because when customers don't feel like that, the person they're doing business with Damon is providing the value. Then they're going to search the marketplace for somebody that will. And so sometimes you have to go, listen, I know I'm an unknown commodity to you, but I'm telling you, if you give me an opportunity and then you just do a bang up job, you do the job that, that you, you know, you under promise and you over-deliver, you're going to go so far. Above your competition is not going to be funny and you're right. Mow. And those launch for 20 bucks, that person might say, well, crap, I was paying 35 or 40 in this kid's doing twice. The job that I was paying for now, all of a sudden, the intrinsic value. In the mind of that customer just went through the roof and now they're happy to pay 25 or 30 cause guess what? You're, they're getting a better quality and they're saving money and they're willing to come up a little bit and they'll go, man, you're really discounting your price. I'm, I'm happy to pay more for what you do. Just be sure that when you do it, you do it well, and you do it consistently continue continuing to over deliver that value. Yeah, consistency is huge to it. What, so what got you into this whole world? What were you doing before this? Well, it's what I'm, it's what I'm still doing. So I, you know, uh, the work from home thing. Um, so being in the pharmaceutical industry, um, obviously we can't go out in, um, call our offices and things like that. And so it's given me time to be able to podcast. I always wanted a podcast. Amen. Um, I've done for the last 18 years. Um, part-time, I've done live radio. And so, uh, I had people in my circle that said, Hey, you should do, you should podcast. You should podcast. And I'm a guy that for me, I want to wait for the right time to do something. And so when this hit, I was, I was already in preparation. Anyway, I kind of put a plan together, had some really good friends of mine that are doing podcasts that. That were kind of in my year that I pick their brain and then the pandemic kits is like, okay, well, I guess I'm, I'm going all in on this thing. And so I've been able to use the time, you know, I get my work done and then I podcast and, and I, you know, that's how I balance it. Now, when I go back out, um, it's going to be a little challenging, but, but you know, so far we've recorded. Well, man, we've probably recorded 50 episodes and I've released, um, with bonus episodes. Um, probably close to 40 episodes. And so, um, it's good. It's it, it really gets into where, what I've been doing for the last 18 years part time. Um, but it's different because instead of doing the interviews, you know, when you do live radio, my, and I do fill in work for a friend of mine has morning talk show. When I filled in for him about three weeks ago, I did interviews. So I would do, you know, send me your talking points and I would do it. And I'm fine with that. But the intentional encourage your podcast is designed to be an organic conversation that I don't want to interview. I would rather have a conversation and I'll tell you what it's done for me, Damon. I really been able to dive deep and really pull incredible stories out of people that they've told me afterwards. They're like, man, I didn't anticipate telling this, but it felt like the right time to tell it. Yeah. And so that's been the, that's been the aha moment for me in this. And I'll tell you this, man, I'm not really, a lot of people say, well, you can build your audience this way or that way for me, man, I'm focused on one. If one person listens to the intentional encourage your podcast and they get something from it, I'm golden because I know that the growth will calm. As people tap into this. And that's what I say, but that's what I was telling you earlier. Damon, in the, when we started recording is, um, that's, that's my goal is to intentionally encourage as many, as many people as I can trying to bring something unique to the table. And not trying to, to have a podcast about sports and I love sports. You can see behind me. Yeah. You and I are talking over a video autograph picture of coach K behind me, Mike Shashefski, uh, I'm a, I'm a huge reds and Bengals fan. I I'm a, I'm a big time sports fan. I can talk sports and I have. But I wanted to do something that was universe, so that could help people, um, 'cause stories, people connect to stories in fucking connect, one person to somebody else through a powerful story. Job done. Mission accomplished. Yeah, I got, I got two comments on that and then we'll, we'll get closer to wrapping up. Um, but you're totally right there. I had, um, the last guest, uh, recently I recorded with, um, he get, he got off and he's like, dude, I saw half of those topics I never even talked about before. And I would've never known because he was all about it and he was, you know, into it and yeah, we had a great conversation, but in that kind of leads me to my second point is I have, um, another guest that's pending and we got on the phone and they said, Well, what do you get out of this? And I said, I don't have an angle. You know, they, they were, they were wondering like what the pitch was or what, the, whatever it was. And I'm like, is it just not having a conversation? Yeah. I'm glad you brought that up. I don't mean to rub that. I'm glad you brought that up because I have a similar process. And so, you know, I'll have people to reach out to me. And I had somebody reach out to me the other day and said, you know, I was searching podcast, came across yours and I said, I want to have a conversation with the person you're trying to get on my podcast because. Every podcast. I want it to feel like people are in the, in the room with my guest and I, and you're, and you're coming on real soon too. And I want to have that same feeling when somebody listens to that. I want them to think that they're in the room with the two of us as we're talking and they're observing that conversation. And so I do I get on the phone with somebody or I'll zoom. With somebody to get that feel of how they are so that I know this is how I need to bring the conversation to the audience. And so, I mean, I commend you for doing that. That is so neat because so many people are trying to get on as many podcasts as they can. And it's like, okay, w what, what are they bringing to my audience? And, and, you know, I was intentional about praying this morning because I wanted to bring something to your audience, man, that. That helps your, you know, your, your audience comes you Damon, because they're looking for that, that content that you uniquely provide. And so as a guest, I feel that pressure to just continue to deliver that for you and your audience. So when they listen to that episode, they go, yeah, that totally aligns with what Damon's all about. Yeah, these are always the best conversations. The one you get, the ones you get the feedback with the ones that you and I and the guests enjoy the mouse. So I appreciate you coming on and just having a conversation. Yeah, you got to sweep the med. It keeps the voice lubricated it's hot tea. Listen, man. It's hot tea. It's coffee. There's some honey there and there's some Stevia that, so, I mean, that's, that's my, uh, that's my go-to drink when I'm doing podcasts or what I'm, I'm talking on the radio. I got to have some hot tea next to me. Cause it, it, it keeps the, it keeps the vocal chords lubricated. I don't mean to one up you, but. I love it, dude. You're my hero, man. So this is my hero. You can't see, my wife talked me into buying this gallon jug that's twice as big as my head. Yeah. You have to have that thing home delivered. Isn't that what she does? I mean, It's it's like one of those gallon jugs you see in an office, like the water pool? No, it's not that big. It's got a portable water cooler right there. I just slipped a lot. I just got a little hamster tube right here to the portable water cooler. That's like a 20 gallon. I think your wife's side, you guys up for a contract. And she was just. Telling you to casual way, like this is, this is what's about to go down is not that big. No, it's Hey, listen, when you, when you talk like you, do, you do a ton of podcast a week, so do I, you have to do something that protects your voice because you know, I will talk between podcasts and phone calls and things like that. I'll probably talk 25 hours a week easy. And so, you know, you, you have to. Really get those things to help your voice. Um, I had voices use, I'll share this with you. So I was launching the podcast back in March and I was starting to have some voices use and I'd never had voice issues. Um, maybe one other time and I had some acid reflux issues and that was like 12 years ago. I had never really had voices use and I was seriously concerned that I wasn't going to be able to deliver what I had started out to deliver. And, and it was, it was pretty bad. Um, thank, thank God that, that, that it recovered. But I'm very intentional about making sure that I drink that tea. Cause it, it does, it helps my boys. It stimulates it. And so, you know, you just kind of wonder, it's like, man, I'm launching this podcast now all of a sudden I've got voices used, this is not good for a podcast or, and so yeah. You, you do those things, but again, man, we powered through it and got a better microphone. So that helped. And so, you know, and, and, and Damon's rock and such a cool mic. I've got Mike in man. He was the coolest Mick. And so I've got. So forgive me, man. I've got a little bit of Mike envy here, so, Oh my gosh. All right. Well, I appreciate them. I can be, I feel like I missed an opportunity to make a joke about Brian, Brian being a professional lube expert, but so I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna leave. I'm gonna leave it up. Well, you need to make that on. When you come on the intentional encourager podcast, you just need to file the thing away and just save it and drop it there. So, you know, okay. Be prepared. So. I, I have had to, to, uh, to bleep out F bombs and things like that. So again, I'm ready for anything. So, you know, it's all good. I kinda, I try to keep the intentional encourager podcast, family friendly. Now I only, now I have room only to disappoint. I think so, man, I think you're going to bring it strong, but, uh, yeah. But yeah, th th this is, this has been great conversation. And, uh, again, thank you for what you're doing for your community. Um, I have learned from you in watching your, your post on LinkedIn, please, man, follow this guy. If you're not following Damon burden, what are you doing? You need to be following this guy cause he's dropped and you just you're drop knowledge, man. I learned something from every post that you do. So thank you, man. People like me are benefiting from what people like you are doing. I appreciate it. Like you said, it kind kinda comes around at random times when you get that reinforcement that makes it all worth it. So we're going to leave it at that. Brian Sexton. I want to give you the last few moments to tell people how they can find out more about you. Yeah. So, uh, the intentional encourage your podcast is on all the podcasts platforms. iHeartMedia, Google play Spotify. I don't think we're on Pandora, but no. Oh, well we've got everything else covered. Um, but uh, you can find me on LinkedIn at Brian Sexton MBA, and then when you. Typed in, in search bar, the, you know, comes up in my. Profile headline is the intentional encourager. Uh, I'm on Twitter at Sexton, Brian 13, the podcast at intentional ENC one is on Twitter. Uh, Facebook just type in Brian Sexton and a pop-up the intentional encouragers. So I don't do Snapchat and I don't do Instagram because I'm not 20 I'm 48. And so I leave that to my 20 year old son to maybe me he'll help dad out and get us an Instagram or something. I say this, I say the same thing about Tik TOK. Yeah. I don't do tick. I like take tax, but I don't like, I don't do tick tock. That was the like orange. That was the worst joke ever. That was so worst that man, it is what it is, dude. I lose it. I know my own limitations. And then I've got my son, my son came to me. I get, I get to tell you this really quick. My son came to me one day. He said, dad, I'm going to start a podcast. And his name is Bryce. I said, Yar Bryce. And see, he said, yeah, he said, it's the unintentional discourage your podcast to have a counterbalance to what you're doing. Uh, Mike, my kid, man. I tell you what your, your boys, man, you are, you are in for it. My man is my kid, my kid. Yeah. My kid I'm like as much as I thought, like, okay, he's got his no. He just comes up with stuff, man. And I told my wife, one day, I said, listen, looked her right in the eye, Damon. I said, listen, as long as he's alive, I'll never die. Because he looks like me and, and, and, and things like that. So, yeah, man, your day's coming and, uh, I'm going to get the grade and the beard, I already got the gray. I already got the all zoom. Yeah. They do an outstanding job of hide my man. I got to know what your product, my mic is right here. No doubt. But listen, I want to connect with as many people as I can send me a message, you know, um, again, I just want to. Do what I can to help so many people out there professionally and personally that are kind of walking this road, like we're doing man, you know, we're all just kind of feeling our way through it, but. Damon brother, this has been so good, man. I am so honored to be a part of your podcast and thank you for the time. And, uh, looking forward to, by the way, Daymond Burton is going to be on an intentional encourage your podcast. So you got to check that one out too. So we got Tom Ziglar, we've got Dale Dupree, we've got our Robertson from duck dynasty. We've got a whole host of people that, you know, Christian Sherry, a lot of LinkedIn influencers, my friends that have come on the podcast and. I'd be honored if you check it out, um, intentional, encourage your podcast.podbean.com. So that's another way to get to it. But man, thank you for the time. I, my honor, and my privilege to be here today. Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate your time, Brian, and you and I will chat soon. Thanks so much.

In this episode, CEO of Fyzio4U Rehab Staffing Group, Dr. Monique J. Caruth, talks about how she, as a businesswoman, reacted to Covid-19. Dr. Monique J. Caruth, DPT, is the CEO of Fyzio4U Rehab Staffing Group providing home health services in Maryland. She currently serves as the Southern District Chair of Maryland APTA and is the Secretary-elect of the Home Health Section of the APTA. She holds a Masters and PhD in Physical Therapy from Howard University, and she is a proud immigrant from Trinidad & Tobago. Today, we hear what it’s like treating potentially Covid-positive patients, Monique tells us about the screening tool she developed, and we hear about the impact of the pandemic on mental health. Monique elaborates on the importance of Ellie Somers’s list of notable PTs, and she talks about her experiences of losing patients. How did she pivot her business to keep it afloat? How has her perspective as both a clinician and a business owner helped her pivot her business? Monique tells us about obtaining PPE, offering Telehealth visits, and she gives some advice to Home Health PTs, all on today’s episode of The Healthy, Wealthy & Smart Podcast.   Key Takeaways “We started seeing a spike in clients in mid-April when the hospitals didn’t want to discharge patients to the nursing homes; they were discharging them directly home, so the majority of our clientele were Covid-positive patients.” Monique has started compulsively disinfecting all surfaces. Monique’s screening tool: Step 1: Check temperatures every morning before seeing a patient. Step 2: Ask questions about symptoms, traveling, and possible contact with Covid-positive people. Step 3: Ensure PPE is worn. “Gone are the days of spending extra time and doing extra work there.” “One of the biggest things for therapeutic outcome is having a good relationship with your patients. Going into the home, you’re probably the only person that they’re getting to talk to most days. I saw the need to improve on soft skills and being approachable with your patients.” “Some sort of contact needs to be maintained. Even though some patients may have been discharged, they would contact the physician via Telehealth visit and ask to be seen again.” “Everyone deserves to get quality care.” “Some people say, ‘this person probably got Covid because they were being reckless’. You can slip-up, be as cautious as possible, and still get Covid.” “We’re going to see a huge wave of Covid cases coming in the next few months. With elective surgeries stopped, that’s going to be our only client population. To prevent the furloughs from happening again, I would just advise to do the screenings, get the PPE, and go and see the patients.” Why don’t women get recognition in a profession that’s supposed to be female-dominated? “People send out stuff to vote for top influencers in physical therapy. You tend to see the same names year after year, but you never see one that strictly focuses on women in physical therapy. I see many women doing great things in the physical therapy world, but because they don’t have as many followers on Twitter or Instagram, they don’t get the recognition that they deserve.” “The thing that I love about Ellie’s list is she put herself on it.” “In doing stuff you have to be kind to yourself first and love yourself first. Many of us don’t give ourselves enough praise for the stuff that we do.” “You can’t save everybody. When you just graduate as a therapist, you think you can save everyone and change the world – it takes time.”   More About Dr. Caruth Dr. Monique J. Caruth, DPT, is the CEO of Fyzio4U Rehab Staffing Group providing home health services in Maryland. She currently serves as the Southern District Chair of Maryland APTA and is the Secretary-elect of the Home Health Section of the APTA. She holds a Masters and PhD in Physical Therapy from Howard University, and she is a proud immigrant from Trinidad & Tobago.     Suggested Keywords Therapy, Rehabilitation, Covid-19, Health, Healthcare, Wellness, Recovery, APTA, PPE, Change,   To learn more, follow Monique at: Website:          Fyzio4U Facebook:       @DrMoniqueJCaruth                         @fyzio4u Instagram:       @fyzio4u LinkedIn:         Dr Monique J Caruth Twitter:            @fyzio4u   Subscribe to Healthy, Wealthy & Smart: Website:                      https://podcast.healthywealthysmart.com Apple Podcasts:          https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/healthy-wealthy-smart/id532717264 Spotify:                        https://open.spotify.com/show/6ELmKwE4mSZXBB8TiQvp73 SoundCloud:               https://soundcloud.com/healthywealthysmart Stitcher:                       https://www.stitcher.com/show/healthy-wealthy-smart iHeart Radio:               https://www.iheart.com/podcast/263-healthy-wealthy-smart-27628927   Read the Full Transcript Here  Speaker 1 (00:01): Hey, Monique. Welcome to the podcast. I'm so happy to have you on. Speaker 2 (00:06): Oh, thank you for inviting me. It's a pleasure to be on once again. Speaker 1 (00:10): Yes. Yes. I am very excited. And just so the listeners know, Monique is the newly minted secretary of the home health section of the APA. So congratulations. That's quite the honor. So congrats. Speaker 2 (00:26): Thank you very much. And Speaker 1 (00:28): We were just talking about, you know, what, what it was like being an elected position. I was on nominating committee for the private practice section. I just came off this year. Not nearly as much work as a board member. But my best advice was you'll you'll make great friendships and great relationships. And that's what you'll take forward aside from the fact that it's, you know, a little bit more work on top of the work you're already doing Speaker 2 (00:57): Well, I better get my bearings, right. So I will be on task from the one. Yeah. Speaker 1 (01:04): Yeah. I'm sure you will. And now, today, we're going to talk about how you as a business woman pivoted reacted to COVID. So we're, Monique's in Maryland, I'm in New York city. So for us East coasters, it really well, we know it hit New York city very hard in March in Maryland. When did that wave sort of hit you guys? Was it around the same time? Speaker 2 (01:33): I would say mid March, April because I had returned back to the rest of the first week of March. And then things just started going crazy. They were saying, Oh we have to be aware of COVID. But I was still seeing my clients that I had. Then we started getting calls saying that family members are worried that we'll be bringing COVID into the home. So they wanted to cancel visits. So we were getting a lot of constellations and then electric surgeries was shut down and that meant a huge drop in clients as well. Then we started seeing a spike in clients in mid April when the hospitals didn't want to discharge patients to the nursing homes, they were discharging them directly to home. So the majority of our clientele was COVID positive patients. Speaker 1 (02:36): And now as the therapist going in to see these patients, obviously you need proper protection. You need that PPE. So as we know, as all the headlines said, during the beginning of the pandemic, couldn't get PPE. So what do you do? Speaker 2 (02:54): Well, we were fortunate in Maryland that governor Hogan had PPE equipment ready at state health departments for agencies to collect. So they did ration them out. Also one of the agencies that I contract with MedStar hospital provided PPS to all the contractors and employees that were visiting COVID patients in the home. So we had the goggles face shield gowns mask, everything. There would be a specialized bag with vital sign equipment for that patient specifically that would be kept in that house and then taken back and disinfected at the end of the treatment. So we, we were shored through weekly conferences on what to do do South screenings and screening prior to each visit. So for my contractors, I developed a screening tool to ask questions if clients were having symptoms or if any family members in the home are having symptoms. And if they had exposure to anyone where COVID symptoms in the past 14 days, so we'll know what you will, that person as a person on, on the investigation or somebody who's COVID positive. So we had done the correct equipment when we go into the homes. Speaker 1 (04:18): And what does that, what does that look like? And what does that feel like for you as a therapist, knowing that you're going into a home with a patient who's COVID positive? I mean, I feel like that would make me very nervous and very anxious. So what was that like? Speaker 2 (04:36): To be quite honest, I was scared at first I try to avoid it as much as possible. But I got to a point where I needed to start seeing people or, you know, the business would go under. So you're nervous because nobody really knows how the disease will progress, what would happen. So it's a risk that you're taking. I, I probably developed compulsive disorder, making sure everything was like wiped down and clean. Even getting into the car, you know, this is affecting the stairway, the door handles double checking, making sure that they know the phone was wiped down. You know, as soon as you get in the house, after you strip washing from head to toe, making sure that, you know, you don't have anything that could possibly be brought onto the home. Speaker 1 (05:35): Right. And so when you say going back to that screening tool that you say you developed, what was, what was, what was, what did that entail for you for your contractors? Because I think this is something that a learning moment for other people, they can maybe copy your screening tool or get an idea of what they can do for their own businesses. Well, it's Speaker 2 (05:58): One that they we use to make sure that we don't have any symptoms. So checking the temperature every morning before you actually go to see a patient and asking the question, like certain questions, when, when you're scheduling a visit if they're filing in a coughing or sneezing when was the last time they got exposed or if they've been exposed to someone who traveled in the past 14 days or who's had any symptoms in the past 14 days. And so that was basically if they answered, no, then you be like, okay, fine. All you just need to do is wear the mask and the gloves and make sure that the patient that you're seeing wears the mask as well. Speaker 1 (06:41): Yeah. That's the big thing is making sure everybody's wearing a mask. Have you had any problems with people not wanting to wear a mask in their home when you go into treat them? Speaker 2 (06:51): We've had some, but most have been very compliant with, you know, wearing the mask because they realize that they, they, they do need the service. So like some patients who have like CHF or COPT that will have problems breathing while doing the exercises, I would allow them to, you know, take it off briefly, but I will step back six feet away and make sure that, you know, they get their respiration rate on the control. Then they put it back on. We'll do the exercise. Speaker 1 (07:22): Yeah. That makes sense. And are you taking, obviously taking vitals, pull socks and everything else temperature when you're going into the home? Speaker 2 (07:31): Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 1 (07:34): Okay. And I love the compulsive cleaning and wiping down of things. I'm still wiping down. If I go food shopping, I wipe everything down before I bring it into my home. And I realize it's crazy. That's crazy making, but I started doing it back in March and it seems to be working. So I continue to do it. And I'm the only one in my apartment, but I still wipe down all the handles. Speaker 2 (08:02): I would say don't lose sight of it though. Speaker 1 (08:07): I am. And I love that. You're like wiping down the car. I rented two car. I rented a car twice since COVID started. And I like almost used a can of Lysol one time. Like I liked out the whole thing and then I let it air out. And this is like in a garage going to pick it up for a rental place. And then I have like, those Sani wipes, like the real hospital disinfectants. And then I wiped everything down with those. And then I got in the car. Speaker 2 (08:36): Well, I saw it's very difficult to find Lysol here right now. So when you do find it, it's like finding gold. I know, Speaker 1 (08:44): I, I found Lysol wipes. They had Lysol wipes at Walgreens and I was like I said, Lysol wipes. And she was, yes. I was like, Oh my gosh. And then last week I found Clorox wipes, but in New York you can only get one. You can't there's no, Speaker 2 (09:04): Yeah. Care's the same thing. Toilet paper, whites, Lysol owning one per customer. So yeah, Speaker 1 (09:09): One per customer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, that's yeah, I was a thank God. I, I found one can of Lysol, one can at the supermarket and it was like, there is a light shining down on it and it was like glowing, glowing in the middle of the market. I'm like, Oh but I love, I love that all the screening tools that you're using and I think this is a great example for other people who might be going to P into people's homes who may be COVID positive. And I also think it's refreshing for you to say, yeah, I was nervous. Speaker 2 (09:47): I'm not going, gonna lie. You know, you still get nervous because you never know, like someone could be positive. And you're going in there, but you always want to be cautious because you're like, Oh my God, I hope I didn't like allow this to be touched or you forgot to wipe this and stuff too. So Speaker 1 (10:07): How much time are you spending in the home? Because there is that sort of time factor to it as well, exposure time. Right. Speaker 2 (10:16): It depends on the severity of the condition. But anywhere from like 30 minutes to like 45 minutes. Speaker 1 (10:25): Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know gone, gone are the days of, you know, spending that extra time and doing all this extra, extra work there, because if they're COVID positive, then I would assume that the longer you're in an exposed area, even though you're fully covered in PPE, I guess it raises your Speaker 2 (10:48): Well. Yeah. And, and the, in the summer, I would say, you know, depending on the amount of work that you had to do, like if you had to do like bed mobility and transfers with the patient, you'd be sweating under that gong. So you really want to want to be in there like a full hour anyway. But they were advising to spend, you know, minimum 30 minutes and to reduce the risk of you contracting it as well, too. Speaker 1 (11:17): Makes sense. So, all right. Speaker 2 (11:20): Decondition so they really can't tolerate a full hour. Speaker 1 (11:23): Right? Of course, of course. Yeah. That makes, that makes good sense. So now we've talked about obtaining the proper PPE. What other, what other pivots, I guess, is the best way to talk about it? Did you feel you had to do as the business owner? What things maybe, are you doing differently now than before? Speaker 2 (11:49): Well, as I said, I had to start seeing most of the cases to make sure that people were still being seen and like using telehealth. We started doing that. So eventually, well sky came on board to offer telehealth visits. So we were able to document telehealth visits as well. And people are responsive to those which worked out pretty well. So with some cases we'll do a one visit in the home and then do the follow-up visit telehealth. So one visit being in a home one weekend, one telehealth, if it was a twice a week patient. So that would also reduce the risk of exposure. Speaker 1 (12:40): Yeah. Yeah. Excellent. Now let's talk about keeping the business afloat, right? So yes, we're seeing patients. Yes. We're helping people, but we were also running a business. We got people to pay, we got people on payroll, you gotta pay yourself, you got to keep the business afloat to help all of these patients. So what was the most challenging part of this as from the eye of the business owner? Not the clinician. Speaker 2 (13:07): Well, you, you get fearful that you may not have enough patients to see, to cover previous expenses. So that was one of the reasons I did apply for the PPP loan. And as I mentioned to you before I was successful in acquiring that probably like around July and that, you know, cover like eight weeks of payroll, if that but it was strictly dedicated to payroll, nothing else. So everything else I had to do was to cover the bills and stuff, because that was just for payroll. Some of the agencies that we contracted for were having difficulty maintaining reimbursing. So that became a challenge as well, too. So what does that mean? Exactly. so when we contract with agencies, they're supposed to be paying us for this, the rehab services that we provide. Some of them were late with their payments as well, but I still had to pay my contractors on time. Speaker 1 (14:19): Got it. Okay. Got it. Oh, that's a pickle. Speaker 2 (14:22): Yeah, that's the thing. So that meant like sometimes some, you know, weeks of payroll, I would have to probably go over the lesson and making sure that the contractors were paid. Speaker 1 (14:37): And how about having a therapist? Furloughs? Did you have any of that? Did you know, were there any people, like maybe therapists in your area who were furloughed from their jobs and coming to you, like, Hey, do you have anything for me? Can you help? What was that situation? Speaker 2 (14:54): Yes. So I started getting free pretty among the calls about having to pick up to do work because they were followed or laid off. We currently have one contractor was working for ATI full-time that got followed. Now she's doing the home health full-time right now as a contractor we have some that are still doing it PRN, even though they went back to like their full-time jobs. But yes, we had people looking for cases to see, just to supplement the the income. Then we had a reverse situation where some people more comfortable getting the unemployment check than seeing patients at all. So, so that you had different scenarios, but it wasn't that we were in need of therapists during that time because people were willing to work. Speaker 1 (16:00): Yeah. Excellent. Excellent. And from the, I guess from your perspective being owner and clinician, so you're seeing patients you're running a business where there any sort of positive surprises that came out of this time for you, something that, that maybe made you think, Hmm. Maybe I'm going to do things a little differently moving forward? Speaker 2 (16:30): Yes. incorporating more telehealth visits. Definitely one of them and using the screening to there it helps in a lot of situations. So it makes you aware of what you might possibly be going into when you're going into the home. And I am realizing that there is one of the biggest things for therapeutic outcome is having a good relationship with your patients. So since most people aren't locked down, a lot of the patients that we do see they live by themselves, or they may just have one or two people in the home and they may possibly be working. So when going into the home, you're probably the only person that they're getting to talk to most days. So you, I saw the need to improve on soft skills and being approachable with your patients. So that was definitely a, a big thing for me. Speaker 1 (17:46): And how is that manifesting itself now? So now, you know, you figure we're what April, may, June, July, August, September, October, November, December eight, nine months in, so kind of having that realization of like, boy, this is this, I may be the only person this person speaks to today, all week, perhaps. I mean, that's can be a little, that can be a big responsibility. So how do you, how do you deal with that now that you're, you know, 10 months into this pandemic and yeah. How do, how do you feel about that now? Speaker 2 (18:29): Well, I still feel like some sort of contact needs to be maintained. So even though some patients may have been discharged they would contact the physician via a telehealth visit and asked to, you know, can you see it again? But you still maintain contact, make sure that, you know, you dropped a line and say, Hey, just following up to see if you're okay. That sort of stuff. So they, they will remember and they'll keep coming. Speaker 1 (18:58): Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. It is such a responsibility, especially for those older patients who are, who are alone most of the time. I mean, it is it's, you know, we hear more and more about the mental health effects that COVID has had on a lot of people. So and I don't think that we're immune to those effects either. I mean, how, how do you deal with the stress of, because there's gotta be an underlying stress with all of this, right. So what do you do, how do you deal with that stress? Speaker 2 (19:38): Well, one was warmer. I would try to at least take the weekends off to go do something or those and like being around people where you can, you know, laugh and, you know, watch movies, you know, goof up, you know, I have to think about work, those things help. Speaker 1 (19:59): Yeah. Just finding those outlets that you can turn it off a little bit. And I love taking the weekends off every once in a while. I have to do that. I have to remember to do that. And I'm so jealous that you're just, you just came off of a nice little vacay as well. Speaker 2 (20:19): Well it was needed. I probably won't be taking one on till probably sometime next year, so yeah. But it was, it was definitely needed. Speaker 1 (20:32): Yeah. I think I'm going to, I think I'm going to do that too. All right. So anything else, any other advice that you may have for those working in home health when it comes to going to see those during these COVID times, whether the patient has, has had, has, or has had COVID what advice would you give to our fellow home health? Pts? Speaker 2 (21:00): Well, I know I've been hearing quite a lot of PT saying that they didn't want to treat COVID patients and they should not be subjected to treating COVID patients, but as we get more awareness of what the diseases and we take the necessary precautions, I think we will be okay. Cause everyone deserves to get quality care. And I know some people will say this person probably got COVID because they were being reckless and stuff. I mean, you can slip up, be as cautious as possible and still step up and get COVID. That doesn't mean you should be denying someone to receive that treatment just to make sure that you're protected when you do go in. Because we're gonna see a huge wave of COVID cases coming in the next few months and with elective surgeries being stopped and everything like that, that's going to be our only client population and to prevent the fools and the layoffs from happening again, I would just advise them, you know, do the screenings, make sure you get your PP and we'll see the patients. It's it's not as bad as, you know, they make it seem. Speaker 1 (22:16): Yeah. Excellent advice. Excellent advice. And now we're going to really switch gears here. Okay. So this is going to be like like a, a three 60 turnaround, but before we went, before we went on the air, Monique and I were talking about just some things that, that you wanted to talk about and recent happenings in the PT world, and you brought up sort of a list of influential PTs that was compiled by our lovely friend Ellie summers. So go ahead and talk to me about why that list was meaningful to you and why you kind of wanted to talk about it. Speaker 2 (23:03): Well, you know, for the past few years I've been noticing like people send us stuff to vote for like top influencers and, and physical therapy and stuff. Do you tend to see the same names like yesteryear? But you've never seen one that just strictly focuses on a woman in physical therapy. And I see a lot of women doing great things in the physical therapy world, but because they do not have as many followers on like Twitter or Instagram, they don't get the recognition that they deserve. For example, Dr. Lisa van who's I think she's doing incredible, incredible work with the Ujima Institute. I actually consider her a mentor of mine. She, she calms me down when I try to get fired. What's it and stuff, Speaker 1 (24:03): Not you. I don't believe it. Speaker 2 (24:06): So I appreciate her for that. So for Ellie to actually construct this list and, you know, I've, I've been observing her, her tweets on her posts for a while, and I see that she questions. Why is it that, you know, women do not get the recognition in a profession that is supposed to be female dominated. So for her to do the side, you know, it was, it was really thoughtful and needed. Speaker 1 (24:40): Yeah. Yeah. And you know, her shirt talk that she gave at the women in PT summit couple of years ago, I think it was the second year we did, it was so powerful. Like everybody was crying like in tears, she's crying, everyone else is crying. And that was the year Sharon Dunn was our keynote speaker. She got everybody crying. It was like everybody was crying the whole time, but crying in like in, in not, not in a sad way, but crying in a way because the stories were so powerful and really hit home and we just wanted to lift her up and support her. But yeah, and you know, the thing that I love the most about Ellie's list is she put herself on it. Yes. How many times have you made a list and put yourself on it? I can answer me. Never, never, never in a million years, have I made a list of like influential people to put myself on it? Never know. So I saw that and I was like, good for you. Good for you. Speaker 2 (25:44): Because you know, sometimes you, you and, and doing and doing stuff, you, you have to be kind to yourself first, love yourself first. And, and her doing that, I, I believe she's demonstrating that that is something that's that needs to be done. A lot of us, we don't give ourselves enough praise for the stuff that we do. Speaker 1 (26:05): Absolutely. Absolutely. It's sort of, it's a nice lead by example moment from her. So I really appreciated that list and, and yes, Dr. Vanhoose is like a queen. She's amazing. And every time, every time I hear her speak or, or I get the chance to talk with her through the Ujima Institute to me, it's amazing how someone can have the calm that she has and the power she has at the same time. Right. I mean, I don't have that. I don't, I even know how to do that, but she just, like, she's just gets it, you know? I don't know if that's a gift. It's a gift. Yeah, totally, totally. Okay. So as we wrap things up here, I'm going to ask you the one question that I ask everyone, and that is knowing where you are now in your life and in your career. What advice would you give to your younger self you're? You're that wide-eyed fresh face PT, just out of PT school. Speaker 2 (27:16): You can't save everybody. You can't save everybody nice. When you, when you just graduate as a therapist, you think you can save everyone a change, a wall. It takes time. Speaker 1 (27:33): Yeah. Oh, excellent answer. I don't think I've heard that one yet, but I think, I think it's true that having, and it's not, that's not a defeatist. That's not a defeatist thinking at all. Yeah. Speaker 2 (27:54): I think this year have thing come to more deaths as a therapist with patients than I have probably in the 12 years that I've been practicing. I'm sorry. Yeah, because you know, you do patients that you get attached to, you know, you have this person passed away and stuff like that. So it's good while it lasts, but to protect yourself mentally and emotionally, you just realize that you can save everybody. Yeah. I think this fund DEMEC is teaching us that too. Speaker 1 (28:35): Yeah. A hundred percent. Thank you for that. And now money, where can people find you website? Social media handles Speaker 2 (28:47): Social media handles are the same on Twitter and Instagram at physio for U F Y, Z I O. Number for you Facebook slash physio for you as well. And www physio for you.org is the website Speaker 1 (29:01): Awesome. Very easy. And just so everyone knows, I'll have links to all of those in the show notes under this episode at podcast dot healthy, wealthy, smart.com. So if you want to learn more about Monique, about her business I suggest you follow her on Instagram and Twitter, cause there's always great conversations and posts going on there initiated by Monique on anything from home health to DEI, to words of wisdom. So definitely give her a follow. So Monique, thank you so much for coming on. Let's see. Last time was a really long time. I can't believe it, it seems like 10 years ago, but I think it was really like three, three years ago. I think it was DSM like three years ago though. It seems like forever ago. So thank you for coming on again. I really appreciate it. Speaker 2 (29:56): You're welcome. And thank you for having me. Okay. Absolutely. And everyone needs to be safe. Okay. Yeah. Speaker 1 (30:01): Yes, you too. And everyone else, thank you so much for listening. Have a great couple of days and stay healthy, wealthy and smart.  

2021 could be the year that New York State legalizes marijuana for non-medical adult use. HMM correspondent Corinne Carey spoke with Drug Policy Alliance New York State director Melissa Moore about what a justice approach to legalization would look like. In this extended interview, Moore addresses opponents concerns.

2021 could be the year that New York State legalizes marijuana for non-medical adult use. HMM correspondent Corinne Carey spoke with Drug Policy Alliance New York State director Melissa Moore about what a justice approach to legalization would look like.

196 Flavors Of The World with Mike Benayoun What is 196 flavors? 196 flavors was founded in 2012. What started as a fun project to prepare and document a dish from every country in the world, eventually led us to a much bigger venture with the lofty goal to become the “Wikipedia of authentic and traditional recipes” with a focus on culinary history. With the help of chefs and experts from the local country or region, we thoroughly research and validate our recipes and articles to ensure people now have one place online to access a legit representation of any authentic recipe from the 196 countries that cover our planet. We now feature more than 1100 recipes and articles in 3 languages (English, French and Spanish) with a traffic that will surpass 15 million page views in 2020 196 flavors - 196 countries. A world of flavors. - World Cuisine Blog www.feedingfatty.com   Full Transcript Below Roy - Feeding Fatty (00:02): Hello, and welcome to another episode of feeding fatty on Roy and Perry. So, you know, we try to bring, uh, guests that can help us with our, uh, not only our nutrition eating, uh, but also exercise anything that's on the spectrum. You know, we believed in a bounce approach in a, we found a very interesting, uh, gentleman to have on with us today. His name is Mike Ben, a Yoon. He is with 196 flavors. First off, Mike, welcome. Thanks for taking time to be with us. Uh, a hundred, 196 flavors was founded in 2012. Uh, it started as a fun project to prepare and document a dish from every country in the world. And that eventually led them to a much bigger venture with the lofty goal of becoming the Wikipedia of authentic and traditional recipes with the focus on culinary history, with the help of chefs and experts from the local country or region they've thoroughly researched and validated their recipes and articles to ensure people have one place online to access legit representation of authentic recipes and, uh, from 196 countries that cover our planet. So they now feature 1100 recipes and articles in three languages, English, French, Spanish with traffic that will surprise 15 million page views in 2020 Mike. That is awesome. Glad to have you to the show Mike (01:39): Okay. Thank you so much for having me, Ryan Terry really, really appreciate it. Um, yeah, very excited to, uh, to talk about, uh, how we, how we got started and kind of where we are and what, uh, what our goals are, but you kind of summarize what we're all about. Yeah. Roy - Feeding Fatty (01:54): Know, I mean, what an amazing project that some you thought to try recipe from, you know, every country and then of course making it authentic, getting the chefs and some local people involved. I mean, it's just a water project. I bet it's been, Oh my God. Yeah. Mike (02:13): Yeah. So it's funny because when we started, like you said, I mean, it was really a hobby and it was really nothing more than a, from an idea that, that had in the back of my mind for two years. And I suggested it to my best friend. Uh, there are who, who is my business partner now and, uh, and she jumped on it. She was like, you know, let's do it. So it took her, it took us about a year and a half to finish the dish from every country. Uh, the thing is at the time we were probably not as thorough in our research as we are now, because again, it was just a fun and we're like, all right, if it's not the exact, uh, authentic recipe, the big deal, but now we have other ambitions and we are much more thorough. And, you know, if, uh, if it's interesting, I can tell you kind of our, our process in terms of research and, and kind of how we go about it. So have you all started Terry (03:02): Was that, Oh, so is your background in, uh, as a chef chef, is that what you did or what, what did you do as work? Mike (03:12): Absolutely not. My background is in cooking and eating since I, my background, like another two goals. Now my background is more in the software industry, so, um, I studied more on the technical side and then over time I morphed more into, uh, uh, this dev and sales and marketing. Uh, so my day job is actually a VP of this dev for software startup. Um, and my night job on a weekend job is the blog or the website. Roy - Feeding Fatty (03:46): Well, that's cool. Have y'all sir. Have you surpassed one, a recipe from each country are, y'all gonna like build on that once you get that initial while y'all already got the initial one, but are you just going to keep building that out? Mike (04:01): Yeah, so we, um, we do have, uh, that was our initial goal, right? So to have one recipe from each country in the world, which we finished in a year and a half since then, what we have done is initially we had one, we were focusing on one country per week. Uh, for the past four years, we've been doing one country or one region per month. So this, this month, for example, we're doing the Nordic region, which encompasses five countries, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland. Uh, but typically we focus on one country and what we typically do is we're going to have, so now we actually work with contributors. So it's not just Vera on my staff. We have, uh, depending on the time of the year we have between five and 10 contributors who help us. And what would that, what I mean by that is they actually, um, what we do is we source the recipes. Mike (04:58): Uh, so typically what we do is we source the recipes in the local language. So we go to the source, you know, we try to find, uh, authentic recipes from credible sources. Sometimes chefs, sometimes cookbook authors, a lot of times in the local language, not only, but a lot of times [inaudible]. So that's what we're, um, uh, trying to do is we're trying to look at different representations of the same recipe, authentic recipe. And we come up with our own version, which we try are, is going to work. We're trying to do is trying to capture the essence of the authentic recipe. And as you know, we can never say there's one version of every authentic recipe, right? It doesn't, it doesn't go like this. There's an evolution of recipes. Every chef is going to have their own twist, uh, over time. Uh, but you know, obviously there are some rules to follow some guidelines in terms of ingredients and so on. Mike (05:51): So that's what we're trying to do in capturing the essence of the recipe. Once we done that, we actually give those recipes to our contributors. So we store the recipe, we have our own research process and we give those recipes to our contributors who have to follow to the letter, those recipes. But in addition to that, because our contributors are like us, right? They're not really trained chefs, or they're not for like, for this month, they're not necessarily from the region or country. So in addition to that, we have one additional layer of validation. We actually do collaborate with chefs. We known chefs from the region or from the country that adds another layer layer of validation and credibility to our project. Because now we have somebody, for example, from Sweden, uh, who is going to, um, can you hold on, I'm sorry about that. Somebody's knocking on my door. Yeah, Terry (06:45): Yeah, yeah. I've been, Mike (06:51): Oh Terry (06:52): Man. That is so, I mean, that is an amazing task in 96. Yes. And I mean, and so many, you know, just different regions, you know, you think about our, our low world where we're in Texas, but you know, the United States, there are just so many different, uh, you know, just the read the difference in the recipes, in their different regions and everything, you know? Yeah. Roy - Feeding Fatty (07:20): Yeah. And even in families, I just think about our family, you know, we've got the faction that is the, uh, Manet's in the potato salad and the one that's the mustard in a potato salad. So it's like, you know what a project, no, we were just talking about, Terry (07:34): Yeah, we were just talking about the, Oh, go ahead, go ahead. Sorry. Roy - Feeding Fatty (07:38): And I was just like, we were talking about the geography involved, number one, uh, you know what, uh, Mike (07:45): I guess Terry (07:46): Not the country, you know, the individual countries, but the different regions of the countries and how it all evolves there, you know, Mike (07:57): Are you going to, are you going to able to Roy - Feeding Fatty (08:00): Fine? We're just, we're, we're just keep it all moving. Terry (08:04): Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Mike (08:07): Um, so we, yeah, we, I was talking about the research process and the fact that we, we do the research on the recipes. We provide those recipes to our contributors. There's an additional layer of validation, not just for the recipe, but also for the article about the recipe, because, um, we, don't just, we're not just the recipe website right. At the end of the day, like I said earlier, like you mentioned, right. We really want to become the Wikipedia, the source of truth, more like an encyclopedia of authentic recipes. Right. So what we discussed to be clean or Arctic origin of the recipe, the original, the name sometimes how it has evolved over time, because recipes, you know, evolve over time. Um, and any kind of stories on the, on the recipe side, but also sometimes on ingredients that compose the recipe, uh, some of them might be unique in nature, uh, every representative of the region. Um, but a lot of times what you, what, what we have found over the, the past eight years that we've been doing, this is ideally they, yes, there might be some local ingredients here and there, but a chicken is a chicken. So whether it's in the Nordics or in France or in the U S the chicken, the chicken, what you make of the chicken is what's going to be representative of the cuisine of the region, whether it's spices, cooking techniques, combination of ingredients and so on. Roy - Feeding Fatty (09:33): So do y'all give guidance on, uh, on the particular spices. It may not be something readily available here in the States, but do y'all give guidance on where somebody may be able to obtain that. Mike (09:47): So we, we don't, we're not the biggest fan of substitutions because we are all about authenticity, right. So I'm going to say that nowadays in 2020, especially with the internet, you can pretty much find anything you want online. So it's, um, yeah, it's, it's very easy to source ingredients. Um, and yeah, I've never had any problems sourcing. Roy - Feeding Fatty (10:11): Yeah. So what about cooking styles? I mean, you know, we're used to the States, we have kitchen, we have ovens, but, um, you know, I'd read not too long ago that, uh, probably still 75% of the population cooks outside or something wildly high number like that. So I guess the, the differences in, you know, like maybe what we think about a Dutch oven versus outside on an open flame versus on a stove top, how has that worked out? Mike (10:43): Yeah, that's a good quote. That's a good point. Um, so in most cases, you're right. We may change, uh, sometimes the cooking methods. So you cook inside as opposed to outside. Yeah. Um, yeah, there are some nuances. We always try to stay as close as possible to the authentic recipe, but there's been occasions where, uh, you know, you could get the same results and by the way, the, the recipe has evolved from points. I can mention one example. There's a recipe called koozie, Q U I N from Iraq. And this is supposed to be initially originally the it's a centuries old recipe of typically an entire land that is, uh, open and stuffed. Like the entire land is actually stuffed, uh, obviously cooked outdoors on an open flame. Um, Mississippi has evolved to a point where I'm not cooking an entire lamb anymore. They're actually cooking pieces of lamb in a Dutch oven or a larger, um, pot. Uh, but you know, everything is cooked together. So it's still kind of cozy. It's just, the recipe has evolved to, um, to make it easier for modern chefs to cook any story acceptable time. Terry (12:05): Okay. And so what was one of the, uh, what's one of the most unique regions or unique countries that you got? I, I, I can't even think 196. I mean, that's kind of, um, Oh my gosh. Mike (12:20): Yeah. So I'm going to spend the most, not necessarily, uh, my favorite, but the most unique in terms of is in that I was not familiar with. Um, and I think most people are not familiar with is the prism of West Africa. Um, and our Western pallets are probably not that used to the flavors. And, uh, and then some of the ingredients of, uh, of Western African presents, there are some really, really good dishes. Um, one of my favorites actually on the site is all the achievement [inaudible] or chap from Senegal, which is typically fish, whole fish with a bunch of vegetables, some specific spices, um, one very pungent spice that, um, think it's called Neta too, when you smell it, it's really, really pungent. But when you use it in cooking, like a lot of ingredients, it's actually stained, uh, as you cook it as you simmer it. Mike (13:14): Um, so there are some really, really good, um, dishes like this one, however, I think in general where our pallets and I popped this right about it. Um, you know, our pallets are probably not that used to it. It's interesting because it's years ago, uh, four or five years ago, um, for one year I, I actually posted cooking classes here in Los Angeles. And the first cooking class that I decided to host was, um, a class of a Western African cuisine, um, with a friend of mine and some sending gala as well. Uh, so she helped me, uh, host. We had like 35 people. It was a pretty successful picking class. Um, and again, trying to, uh, next this cuisine more, um, popular in, uh, in here in LA, but, you know, in the Western world in general was, uh, was very excited. Terry (14:05): Wow. Do you find, um, do you find like United States, do we use a lot of salt maybe trained to make up for lack of knowing about the different devices and how to use them? I mean, Mike (14:23): It's possible, I'm not really exposed to that. I think in processed food. Definitely. Yes, but I'm going to say in general, at least my friends, my entourage, my family here, not really. I haven't really, what I have noticed though is yes, there's probably less use of spices in general or probably the same over and over. It's interesting because I'm really not a picky person. I'm really, you know, I really love to eat and, and I'm really not picky, but there is one spice that is way overused in the U S that I really can stay on it's cinnamon Terry (14:59): Really. Oh, okay. Mike (15:02): So right now it's not my favorite season. I like cinnamon. The problem here is it's not the same cinema as it's used in other parts of the world. So there's two types are the Salem and Garcia. And the one that is used here, which is typically used a lot in powder form, uh, where we do use it in ground form in other regions, right. I'm not saying it's specific to the U S uh, but there's a lot of dishes where you just use one stick and you remove it and it's fine. But when you use, um, the ground forum of, of cinema, and I think it's way over powering, and I always joke with our friends and by saying that I think cinema grows inside apples in this country. It goes, there's no dessert that has apples that doesn't have cinnamon just goes in there. Roy - Feeding Fatty (15:59): Right. Exactly. Terry (16:02): That's true. Yeah. So, um, you Mike (16:06): Know, go ahead. Roy - Feeding Fatty (16:08): No, I was just going to say, so I'm not a big vegetable person, so I, you know, I know the main categories, like a potato and a, uh, broccoli and some things, but I guess as you go across the world, are there different vegetables and, uh, that you run into that may be some other countries use a lot more of, Mike (16:29): Yeah. I mean, there's, uh, obviously I have been exposed to different fruits and vegetables alike. Um, over the course of the past eight years, one that comes to mind, um, is one called banana flour, uh, which is used in a lot of Asian dishes. I can think of one soup from Laois, uh, very popular, actually. I think it's one of the national dishes over there called [inaudible], uh, which is made with different types of vegetables, but one of them being the benefit of flour, it's kind of hard to describe, but it's, um, I think it's more about the texture than the, than the taste itself to be very Frank. Okay. Um, have you, has any of you to have it or Terry (17:05): Never? No, not that I know I'm aware of. Mike (17:12): Um, when you open the, the better than a flower, you're not supposed to be the out outer scaler, but the inside is very similar to, um, I'm going to say like soybeans sprouts, but a little stiffer and kind of straight as opposed to, you know, um, subtle. Yeah. Terry (17:31): Interesting. I have to check that out. I, Roy, can't wait to try it. I'm sure. Mike (17:38): Um, but the cashew fruits, I don't know if you've had it, so they're all aware of, but there's the, um, cashew, Apple or cashew fruit as it's called. Um, it's interesting. It's, it's kind of, um, you know, sweeter fruit of course, but you can, you can taste the after taste of the cashew nuts. Definitely. You know, you can take anything. Fruit comes from the same plant. Roy - Feeding Fatty (18:01): Oh, I would like that. So how did you go about sourcing this? I mean, Canada and, uh, you know, Mexico are both our neighbors here, but if I wanted to call down there to figure out a dish, I wouldn't even know who to, you know, who to dial first. So how did y'all go about, uh, you know, gathering the resources and all the different countries? Mike (18:25): So it's fairly easy to find, uh, cookbooks, um, know credible sources online nowadays, I think in the past we would have had to go to the library, but it's pretty easy to find credible sources, um, you know, good books like of Reno authors, um, most of the time from the country, you know, and obviously we hope we put the ability and, um, and then, like I said, we have those recipes validated by our chefs when we have a chef. So w w by doing this research there easily, we can find at least, um, for Canada, it may be a little more difficult. I don't think we have as many, but Mexico is rich, has a rich cuisine. Um, and, uh, and there's quite a few, uh, resources for finding those recipes. Roy - Feeding Fatty (19:12): Okay. Interesting. And what, what recipes are the most popular on your site? Mike (19:20): So, good question. It's interesting because when you, when you look at any website at the end of the day, it's, uh, to be, to be popular in the internet world, it's a game you play with Google, it's called search engine optimization. So there are the, the, the recipes that are quote unquote more popular are the ones where we rent better than others, right? Uh, still when we search for that recipe, if we appear in the first three results, chances are, this recipe is going to be the most popular on our website. Now, having said that there are some recipes where we ranked pretty high. Um, one of them that I can think of, which is actually one that I became familiar with when I moved to Los Angeles from Paris 20 years ago. Because, um, as you may know, I don't know if you know, but, uh, while centralize has the largest Iranian population after Tara. Mike (20:15): So it's as a joke, it's often called Terra Angeles because there's really a community here. Um, so I became familiar with Persian cuisine, which is really, really good. And one of the dishes, they have a lot of stews beside the Kaibab of course, but they have a lot of students that they serve with rice. One of them is called [inaudible] and homicides is this very unique stew, which is made with maybe five or six different herbs, fenugreek, parsley, cilantro, onion, like different herbs greens. And they are so stayed kind of reduced. A lot of the water is evaporated as you, um, as you would say, the herbs, and then you use it as a base for a stew that you, where you incorporate these red kidney beans, and then you another unique ingredients, more kind of a spice called limo, Amani, what it is, is a dried lime. It's almost black and it's like rock solid. It's dry, really, really dry. And you put a suit in the stew and it gives this kind of sour taste really, really good. Uh, that is very unique to this stew. Um, so for a few hours, and then you serve it over Persian rice. This is actually our one of our top three recipes on the site right now. Terry (21:35): Oh, my, that sounds lovely. Oh, I might have to try that. Mike (21:39): Good. So it's interesting because like I said, I discovered this this 20 years ago, however, I was born in France, but my background is from North Africa. So both my parents are Jewish from North Africa. My mother was Tunisian and my father is half Moroccan, half a Jerian. So I was more raised on my mother's side of the family. And there's a very, very typical dish, which is more like a Jewish Tunisian dish called Kayla. And I was raised on it and Kyla in concept, it's interesting because although it tastes completely different than from a sudsy. It is very, very similar in concept to homicides, because as opposed to the five or six herbs that I was talking about, we just use spinach and we use more oil and you actually sauteed spinach for probably at least three hours, believe it or not. Wow. I have a technique now, which is not, um, authentic, but you can cut down this time in 45 minutes in the microwave and it works, um, kind of reduce the spinach again, spinach is probably 95% water, right? Mike (22:44): So you reduce a form, uh, which is, uh, very, very black green. And again, use that spinach conceit, if you will, to, uh, to make a base for us to then thing we add this, we use, um, white beans as opposed to red beans in the homicides in, uh, there's no sour agents, but we add Harrison, if you know about how the chili paste is interesting. Not a lot of people know that, but it's original Tunisian and we put Korean cilantro mint and we serve it of a Cusco because our rice in North Africa is Terry (23:24): Oh, okay. Oh, very interesting. Roy - Feeding Fatty (23:30): So do you have any good, Terry (23:32): I'm sorry, go ahead. Go ahead. I was gonna, I was gonna ask, Roy - Feeding Fatty (23:39): Yeah. For those of you that don't, we'll go ahead and say for those, you don't know, we got a little bit of delay. Uh, Terry's actually in Hawaii. So, uh, have just a little bit of a audio difficulty, but go ahead. I'm gonna let you speak the whole sentence. Terry (23:56): No, I was just gonna ask, um, uh, what are your favorite, what are your favorite recipes on there? I mean, Mike (24:06): So the last one, I, the last recipe I just mentioned is obviously one of my favorites because I was raised on it. So I'm very biased towards this one. Uh, the discoveries I have made one cuisine, which I really didn't know anything about that. I discovered that, um, really, really, um, and I don't cook a lot, but, uh, but, uh, but I really like his program. So Caribbean cuisine was actually a discovery to me. I don't think I had had Caribbean food before and especially one dish, uh, which I made a few times recently. Um, for some reason it's called normal South Dubbo. And in Peru, the interesting thing is, as you may know, there's been a lot of Asian insurance with immigration from China, as well as from Japan. And there is, um, a cuisine within Peruvian cuisine, which is called chauffeur, is in C H U F E shows like cuisine is actually interesting. Mike (25:04): It's a fusion cuisine of Caribbean and Chinese, and which is very popular and it, which is not part of the authentic Peruvian repertoire. You know, it's not like just something that is recent, it's actually something that is part totally part of Caribbean cuisine. Um, and Loma Santo is definitely one of those fusion dishes. It's interesting because it's a combination of, so Tate, um, beef typically see a lot sirloin and it's mixed with tomatoes, red onion, but also soy sauce. And, um, it's sauteed with garlic and so on, but then you add French fries to it because it's probably the, the biggest consumer of potatoes that I think they have like 2000 species of potatoes over there. Um, that's where particulars originated. So they're really big on potato dishes, but after that, they actually mix it with white rice rice, which is more the Asian instruments with obviously the sauteed stir fry and sizes. So you get this weird dish, you know, when you, when you think about it, you're like, okay, French fries, sauteed beef and vegetables, rice. Like, it sounds weird. It's actually one of my favorite dishes on the website. Roy - Feeding Fatty (26:23): Hmm. Interesting. So that brings up a couple of questions up first off, what is the, the mix between more of a vegetarian style versus the ma the dishes with protein and then kind of a followup to that is going to be, so what is the most, um, common protein that you found used in the dishes? Mike (26:48): Sure. So interestingly enough, um, you know, human humans have always been carnivores and omnivores, right. But interestingly enough, when you look at authentic cuisine, um, especially in the past 10 to 15 centuries, meat has always been an expensive produce, right? So when you think about it, a lot of those authentic recipes, not all of them, but a lot of them always had a vegetarian version, which was more for the poor people and then kind of a festive version with meat added to it. So what this means is even though there's obviously a lot of recipes that include meat on our website, uh, we also have a lot of vegan and vegetarian dishes depending on the country and region is going to be more or less difficult to find meatless, uh, or vegan or vegetarian dishes. For example, South America is very meat heavy. So I just talked about Peru. There are actually a judicious without meat, but, uh, it's, you would be hard pressed to find dishes with, without meat in Argentina, your wide Brazil, you know, those countries are very big meat, meat eaters, central and Eastern Europe, European countries, same thing, meat and potatoes. Roy - Feeding Fatty (28:10): Okay. Interesting. It's like support word. Yeah, exactly. Yes. So, uh, as you put these dishes together, what would you say is the most used protein from around the globe? Mike (28:25): Um, I'm probably gonna say, can you, again, um, it's probably the most pervasive pervasive, uh, yes, slowly, maybe shortly after it's this there's a lot of, uh, Muslim countries, of course. So I would have said port, but of course you're not going to have a lot of pork based dishes in most of the 30 to 35 Muslim countries. So, yeah. Roy - Feeding Fatty (28:51): Okay. Interesting. So what about a dish that has a fun story or fun fact, or that Mike (29:01): There's a lot actually, because we always try to find, um, stories behind the recipes. Um, so, you know, in preparation for, for, um, Tokyo, I prepared a, you know, kind of a few interesting stories and we can go through them, but one which I thought was interesting cause, uh, there's a, what is the, I'm gonna ask you a question. What is your, the most popular, um, get them? Is that the first one that would pop up in your mind? Roy - Feeding Fatty (29:31): Oh, okay. Mike (29:34): Yeah. It's very popular in the us, uh, Mesa Roy - Feeding Fatty (29:42): Soup or something. Mike (29:43): No, that would be okay. So the most on that is in every Vietnamese restaurants across the world, not just in the us is wrong anyway. Yeah. So interestingly enough, actually fo comes from a French, uh, where there's a very authentic traditional dish called puto food. Uh, P O T a U F U F U in front of the fire. So it's part under the, uh, on the fire and it's bunch of vegetables and meats kind of a, you know, a soup, but soup slash stew that is very popular. It's centuries, old centuries or recipe. Now, interestingly enough. So fo actually come comes from French. And even though it's, it's probably the first recipe that would come to mind when we think about Vietnamese is in, it's barely a hundred years old, you know, and it was really created, um, like I said, it has a French influence and, um, it's kind of a fusion dish, um, you know, with, with this it's. Um, and it's, it's funny because it's not as popular and as widely consumed in Vietnam, it's more of a dish that's consumed outside of Vietnam. And like I said, it's only barely a hundred years old, so it's not even an ancestral recipes. There's dozens of Vietnamese recipes that are way older than this world. However, this is the one that everybody knows around the world. Roy - Feeding Fatty (31:18): So that, yeah, that brings up kind of a good point too. Is there, um, you know, probably like the us, there are a lot of dishes and there are a lot of popular dishes. So how did you decide which the initial pick from each country? Mike (31:35): So at first in probably the first three or four years, we were just picking the dishes that we liked. Okay. So it was just Vera, my best friend and I, um, picking dishes. We're like, okay, this month we're going to do a room. Let's pick three dishes each. And there was no, no more research than this. Okay. Now, because we're more of a business and we're, you know, we work with contributors and so on. So we run it as a business. Now we do more research and typically we're going to find 40, 50, 60 recipes for each month. And we're going to pick the ones that are the most popular. And what we mean by the most popular is really the recipes that are the most searched by people online, because obviously we want people to find us and we want people to find the recipes that are the most searched. So now we do a little more research into what are the, really, the most popular recipes in the country. Speaker 4 (32:31): Okay. No doubt about traffic. Mike (32:36): It's exactly. Like I said, it's, it's a business too though. Yeah. Yeah. Roy - Feeding Fatty (32:41): So, um, I guess we, as we kind of wrap this up, my favorite dessert did y'all, did you highlight any, uh, dessert dishes Mike (32:54): In the desert? There's a lot. I have a sweet tooth. Yeah. Being French for me, a meal without a dessert at the end is not a meal bread is not Amelie either. Um, so there's quite a lot, I'm trying to think. So my favorite, which is very popular and I did not discover it with, uh, with a website of course, is Tremblay, which of course, you know, I have a, uh, middle bias towards French pastries and French desserts. Uh, but yeah, Kimberly is probably at the top of my list, which happens to be gluten-free. I know there's a lot of people nowadays that I've written free. Um, it's full of like those dogs and, uh, but I'm fairly easy to make, uh, not as complicated as long as you have a torch to caramelize the sugar on top. But, um, and with easy to find ingredients, it's pretty much eggs, sugar, milk, um, you know, heavy milk. And, um, and that's it. So for the, for the flavor, Roy - Feeding Fatty (33:57): What about drinks? Uh, did y'all look at the, you know, I know a lot of overseas, uh, wine is a natural drink with, with the dinner, but was there any, anything that came to lie on that? Mike (34:13): So my signature cocktail over the past few years has become peace Corps center. You've done it before. Um, and again, coming back to Caribbean cuisine, I discovered that when we traveled to Peru, uh, this is Pisco is kind of a Brandy, um, that is originally from Piru as well as Chile. Uh, it's probably the most consumer the core over there. And they have a cocktail called Pisco sour, which is made with Pisco, with lime, uh, simple syrup and egg whites. And then you shake it. So the trick here is like most cocktails that you make with egg whites, you have to shake it without ice. Otherwise it doesn't form as well. So you shake it first, then you add ice to chill it, you pour it. And then you add a few drops of [inaudible], which is the same bitters that is used in old fashion. For example, it has become my favorite cocktail slowly, um, shortly after it's public cafeteria and Marketo. How about a margarita? I like margarita as well. Interesting fact about margarita. Do you know what is the most popular cocktail in Mexico? [inaudible] it is the Peloma and I don't know if it's as popular here, but, um, it is the most popular in Mexico. Terry (35:48): Interesting. Yeah. You would think definitely margarita. Roy - Feeding Fatty (35:55): Well, uh, Mike, we appreciate, excuse me, we appreciate you taking time to be with us today. Uh, this is such a fascinating project. Um, I'm going to have to get on there and check it out a little bit more. And maybe when Terry gets home, she can, uh, whip me up one of these, uh, exotic recipes that y'all have on there. Mike (36:13): We have friends of ours who tell us that they don't even cook them, have just spent hours or they're on their bed at night before going to bed, just reading through the stories and they don't even cook the recipes. Roy - Feeding Fatty (36:25): Right? Yeah. I mean that the food is, the food is one thing, but the stories behind it all have got to be, you know, the most amazing thing. Mike (36:36): Yeah. It's fun to learn. I mean, every day we learn something, even sometimes recipes that we have known all our lives and we're like, wow, I didn't know. You know, it was, that's how it was created or, you know, things like this. So Roy - Feeding Fatty (36:49): I'm sorry, Terry, I didn't mean to cut you off. You're a little bit delayed. Terry (36:53): That's okay. No, no, no. I was just, I just had this in the back of my head while we were talking to you. I was trying to work it in, but okay. So we are trying new things with tofu. So what's your favorite? Do you like tofu and what's your favorite dish if you do, and what would be easy and easy? It's not Mike (37:11): Right. We're not so much about easy recipes, Mike (37:17): But there's a lot of easy recipes, but not all of them are my favorite dish with the food may not be as easy, but it's, uh, uh, two from Korea, uh, which is called the silky. Uh, so keto from soup, which typically includes, um, some kind of meat, so it could be beef, but it's also made sometimes with, um, seafood. Um, and it's, um, the broth has to be made with seaweed and, uh, and anchovies. So it's kind of a fishy kind of broth. And then, um, it's piping hot, served in a stone ball and, uh, there's, uh, it's an egg drop soup as well. So you typically add an egg at the end, which, because it's piping hot, it's going to cook in a couple minutes. Um, but it's you add, use the silk to, for, you know, there's different types of from desk. Mike (38:12): So you would use the one that is the most silky, which is kind of, it's almost going to look like eggs in it, but it's going to be two food inside the soup. Like I said, piping hot. It is also very spicy. Um, and if any of your listeners is visiting LA, um, we have a chain of Korean restaurant called BCD tofu house, which is actually open 24 hours, like then is, it is kind of there dentists in Koreatown and, uh, in making their own true. And also their signature dish is this, uh, Sirki tofu soup. Terry (38:49): Okay. Thanks. I haven't tried to make any soup. Roy - Feeding Fatty (38:57): Well, again, Mike, thanks so much for taking time to come on and talk to us. It's been a fascinating and, uh, it's, uh, wish you much more luck in continuing this project. If you wouldn't mind, just tell people how they can reach out. If somebody wants to reach out and get ahold of you, uh, maybe make a recipe submission, how can they do that? Mike (39:18): Absolutely. So the website is one nine, six flavors.com. We are on pretty much all the social media channels. As you know, one nine, six flavors is our, um, handle. Um, you can contact us on any of those channels as well. We also, there's something we haven't talked about. We have started to, um, write good books eBooks. So we have four available right now and we intend to have, uh, we have a dozen more in the works for, um, that each of them is actually focusing on one region. So, so far we have one for the middle Eastern cuisine, uh, for North African cuisine, Southeast Asian. And we just released our Indian sub-continent cuisine book. And again, like I said, we, we add typically one a month, uh, and actually for the listeners of a feeding ferry, we, um, we are offering 25% of those, uh, those e-books. So if you use the code F F 25, uh, you will have access to 25%, any of our eBooks, like I said, right now we have four available that we have a dozen Lord in the works. Terry (40:25): Okay. Well, great. Thanks a lot. We appreciate that. I'm sure we'll, we'll reach out and take advantage of that ourself for sure. Yeah. Yes, I can do, I can do difficult. I don't have to do easy. I can do it. Yes. Roy - Feeding Fatty (40:43): All right. Well, thanks a lot. Uh, again, you can find us at www dot feeding, fatty.com. We are also on all the major social media networks, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram, and also this, a copy of this, um, interview, uh, video will be placed up on YouTube are also, you can find us on all the major podcast platforms, iTunes, Stitcher, Google play, and Spotify. Just to name a few, if we're not on one that you, uh, listened to your podcast on, please reach out. I'd be glad to get it added for you until next time. I'm Roy. Please take care of yourself. Terry (41:25): I'm Terry. Bye. Thanks. www.feedingfatty.com

Hello Capital Region! This is the Hudson Mohawk Magazine on WOOC-LP 105.3 FM Troy and WOOS-LP 98.9 FM Schenectady broadcasting from The Sanctuary for Independent Media in Troy. Today, on the Hudson Mohawk Magazine, Lexis Figuereo from All Of Us speaks with HMM's Elizabeth Press about his activism---they discuss white supremacy, police bias and his arrest at the NY State Capitol on January 6. After that, Adrian Hill provides a brief overview of the United Tenants of Albany, including what services they provide and how you can get involved! Then, Congressman Paul Tonko recounts the volatile events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, in conversation with Andrea Cunliffe. After that, Erika Diggs speaks with Brennan Herlihy, a singer and actor from Erie, Pennsylvania. And to close out the show, Rensselaer County Working Families Party leader Phil Markham talks to Corinne Carey about the Republican party’s effort to switch their voters to the Working Families Party, and what he suggests progressive voters in the county could do in response. But first, here are the headlines.

LOS ANGELES -- Watching the Grizzlies win over the Cavs on Monday night, it dawned on me. During crunch time, offenses were running through the bigs -- Jonas Valunciunas and Andre Drummond, respectively, until the coup de grace -- a Dillon Brooks 3-pointer. The importance of centers in the league has come into question with the proliferation of the 3. Hmm. That's interesting. Nikola Jokic leads the league in assists and triple-doubles. Joel Embiid scored 45-points in the Sixers overtime win over Miami on Tuesday night. James Wiseman's development battling league-leading block shot artist Myles Turner (4.2), the previously mentioned Joker, and Chris Boucher is riveting. Boucher has scored 20 or more in three of his last four, via 65 percent from the floor up from career averages of seven points and 49 percent. Christian Wood inspires all undrafted players scoring 27 points and securing 15 rebounds in the revamped Rockets win at San Antonio last night. Without scratching the surface on their defensive impact, those are just a few observations. "The rumors of my demise have been highly exaggerated," Mark Twain said, and so it can be said of big men in the NBA.

The Albany Times Union reported on January 12 that Rensselaer County Republicans are asking supporters to switch their voter registration to the Working Families Party "in an effort to help the re-election efforts of Rensselaer County Executive Steve McLaughlin in his November 2021 bid for re-election. RenCo Working Families Party leader Phil Markham talked to HMM correspondent Corinne Carey about this effort, and what he suggests progressive voters in the county could do in response. The deadline for changing one's party affiliation is February 14, 2021 in order to vote the primary election to determine which candidates will run on each party line. More information about how to change one's party affiliation can be found on the NYS Board of Elections website at: https://www.elections.ny.gov/VotingRegister.html

HMM's Catherine Rafferty speaks with Jason Andrew, a freelance photographer who covered the events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th for the New York Times. Jason talks about how he prepared for his assignment and recounts the events that day. He also offers tips for young journalists looking to cover protests and riots ahead of the inauguration of President-elect Biden this Wednesday.

Congressman Paul Tonko is in conversation with HMM's Andrea Cunliffe recounting the volatile events on January 6th. Here he recounts the threat faced by congress in the capital and talks of the way forward.

HMM producer Natalie Meltzer speaks with Alicia Bell, Organizing Manager at Free Press and Director of Media 2070, a project that calls on the media to make reparations for their participation in state violence against Black people. They discuss the media’s role in perpetuating anti-Black racism throughout American history, what reparations might look like in the context of journalism, and what steps have been taken by newsrooms across the country to address past harms.

This is the Hudson Mohawk Magazine on WOOC-LP 105.3 FM Troy, WOOS-LP 98.9 FM Schenectady, WOOA-LP 106.9 FM Albany, and WCAA-LP 107.3 FM Albany., broadcasting from the Sanctuary for Independent Media in Troy, NY. Tonight we begin with an interview with Shane Burley, author of Fascism Today: What it is and How to End It. He weighs in on the recent insurrection in the Senate Building and the far-right movement. Reporting by Brendan Dunn Then, we will introduce our new series, “Scientific Knowledge is Power” and newcomer HMM correspondent McKenna Conners will speak with Professor Kathy High about the DIY Biology Lab After that, we will have another TripleE segment and H. Bosh Jr will continue his conversation with John Carter, a 518Shining star Then, we will get an update on the BioHiTech. Alexis Goldsmith speaks with Dave Ellis of the REC Finally, we will talk with Luz Marquez Benbow, one of the organizers of the memorial altar at Freedom square that can be viewed between this Sunday 1/17- Wednesday 1/20

HMM's Erika Diggs and Justin Romero speak with Luz Marquez-Benbow: Black Boricua survivor of child sexual abuse, incest and rape, founder of Aya Rising : Truth Telling Project, and founding member of Troy4BlackLives. Luz is one of the organizers of the Memorial Altar: “Emerging from Darkness” https://www.mediasanctuary.org/event/memorial-altar/ The Memorial Altar installation will welcome socially distanced groups of 10 or less to Freedom Square in North Troy, between this Sunday 1/17- Wednesday 1/20! The timing corresponds with MLK day on Monday 1/18 with a theme of “health justice,” Tuesday 1/19 coinciding with the National Memorial for Covid-19 Victims, through Inauguration Day Wednesday 1/20.

RADIO SCRIPT: Now we go to HMM's Catherine Rafferty with part two of her conversation with Rose Mitchell-Tenerowicz about the impact she hopes to have as a midwife in the Capital Region. About Birth Justice: Birth Justice features interviews with birth workers, birthing people and activists around the topics of advocacy, equity, autonomy, and respect in childbearing and reproductive care.

Hey, everyone Sheevaun Moran here and today's little topic is not so a little. It's really important about who you take care of. First, one of the things that really happens when we're in the mode of serving is we tend to wanting to take others first. We want to care for others first, or we want to put them first and that's cool. That's beautiful. That's admirable. And that's only going to work for so long. And when that only works for so long, what starts to happen is your body breaks down. Your mind gets fuzzy. You get way on clear, you eat sugar. That's kind of interesting. You take her of others first, but you're going to eat sugar in order to get that thing going inside of yourself, rev yourself up. Uh, so when you take care of others, first, the fascinating thing is they're actually not being taken care of that.    Well, they're not getting the good fullness of the Jude you have when you take care of yourself first. Hmm. That's pretty interesting. What questions do you not deal with or handle or get addressed or have somewhere you can really get these things worked out. What kind of things really get you muddled up? So you'd rather just learn something and then teach it to somebody else rather than learn it and really use it for yourself and then teach it. You don't have to be that far ahead of those folks. All you have to do is take care of self first and then you can take care of others. Energetically. When you take care of others, first, think about it like this. When you take care of others first, and you're not a good leader about taking care of yourself first energetically, it's like you having an open pipe that is going to them.    That is feeding them. And you're the one who's going to get drained, depressed, depleted, and defeated. And you're going to wonder what's wrong. What's going on? So, cut the chords. Let's get back to serve you first a little bit, maybe a little bit more than a little bit, and then go and serve and help somebody else. Let's take care of you. Energetically, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, relationally, financially, and energetically, right? Let's take care of you first. And then you can take care of others. There are lots of books on this in business about, you know, making sure that you're paid for your services and your income is paid first and you know, not putting it off till later and that applies to everything else, even more so, so, Hey, my name's Sheevaun Moran go to www.SheevaunMoran.com in order to get some cool stuff, cool inspirations. And our toolkit (www.epiclifetoolkit.com) is going to get you to no matter where you're at on the journey to get you to wake up to another part of maybe where you could get out of your own way or rock the results that much more. All right. See you on the inside. Hey, if you can subscribe right now and share this, if you feel like it's worth it, then I would so appreciate it. You're the best love you. Appreciate it. Oh, have an awesome day.

Congressman Paul Tonko speaks with HMM's correspondent Andrea Cunliffe about his experiences at the Capital on January 6, This is part 1 of a 3 part series

As Governor Andrew Cuomo delivers a series of State of the State addresses, HMM correspondent Corinne Carey spoke with Jennifer Wilson, Deputy Director of the League of Women Voters of New York State about the agenda she's laid out for 2021 and the League's own legislative priorities. Jennifer talks about expanding access to voting and redistricting, as well as the effect that COVID-19 and recent threats of violence are having on the ability of New Yorkers to make their voices heard.

Well this was an interesting one. Half way through recording, we discover Wednesday's next two games are postponed. We also talk about an unknown potential new signing, just a couple of hours before that comes out. Overall, this is a fine example of cutting edge football journalism. Hmm. We do have a good chat about the Exeter game and some lovely moments from that. Thank you to our awesome Gold supporters... Tyto Law Solicitors: https://www.tytolaw.co.uk/ (https://www.tytolaw.co.uk/) Wednesday Picks: Download now on your smartphone Contact us on Twitter: @DomAndJames @DomHowson @JamesMarriott UTO. Please gamble responsibly: https://www.begambleaware.org/ (BeGambleAware) Support this podcast

ello Capital Region! This is the Hudson Mohawk Magazine, broadcasting on WOOC-LP 105.3 FM Troy and WOOS-LP 98.9 FM Schenectady, from the Sanctuary for Independent Media in Troy, NY. Tonight, we start off by hearing from Assemblymember Phil Steck about his reaction to Governor Cuomo's State of the State, reported on by Mark Dunlea Then Paul Smart reports on Governor Cuomo and District Superintendent Kaweeda Adams address the insurrection on the capitol and COVID-19 safety in Albany And later on, Elizabeth Press speaks with Jamaica Miles about police brutality and white surpremacy After that, we have another Birth Justice segment from HMM's Catherine Rafferty, joined today by Rose Mitchell-Tenerowicz. To close out this episode, Willie Terry talks with Tom Ellis, about the history of the Martin Luther King Jr Celebration in the Capital Region. And now some headlines...

RADIO SCRIPT: Now we go to HMM's Catherine Rafferty with another episode of Birth Justice. She is joined by Rose Mitchell-Tenerowicz, midwifery student & birth justice advocate from Albany. Today, Rose tells the story of her birth work journey and talks about her personal ethos on birth. About Birth Justice: Birth Justice features interviews with birth workers, birthing people and activists around the topics of advocacy, equity, autonomy, and respect in childbearing and reproductive care.

This is the Hudson Mohawk Magazine on WOOC-LP 105.3 FM Troy, WOOS-LP 98.9 FM Schenectady, WOOA-LP 106.9 FM Albany, and WCAA-LP 107.3 FM Albany, broadcasting from The Sanctuary for Independent Media in Troy, NY. Today Mark Dunlea talks with Peter LaVenia about the Green Party agenda for 2021. Then, we go to the Housing Justice Press Conference that was held this morning in response to four women being arrested for protesting a housing eviction back in October. The press conference coverage is followed by an interview with one of the four arrested women, Shaqueena, by HMM’s Alexis Goldsmith After that, we will learn about a group that is keeping Albany in walking condition. President of Walk-able Albany, Andrew Neidhardt, talks with HMM’s Daniel Plaat And our show will close out with a conversation about the link between social and ecological issues. HMM’s Natalie Meltzer spoke with Blair Taylor from the Institute for Social Ecology

Why does God allow pain and trouble in the world He created? Hmm. The Book of Job is a strange and beautiful picture of the world we live in. God has Hope for you here. Join us: https://www.NewChurch.Love

In this episode, we take a look at chapters thirteen and fourteen of Children of Dune, in which Leto and Ghanima take a significant risk while seeking information, Leto succeeds in convincing his sister to support his so-called "Golden Path" for the future, we meet the young Corrino heir Farad'n in exile on Salusa Secundus, and the Preacher unexpectedly shows up to interpret Farad'n's dream - but then refuses to tell him about it. Hmm, obstinately cryptic, where have we seen that character trait before? Also, Elayne makes her first predictions for Children of Dune.If you enjoy listening to us, we’d love a rating or review, and be sure to let any Dune-interested friends know about us! We'd also love to hear from you, and you can find us on Twitter under the handle nerdisaymore or send us an email at nerdisaymore@gmail.com. If you’d like to support us further, please go to patreon.com/nerdisaymore where you'll be able to get early access to our content. Thanks!

Social Ecology is a philosophical outlook which asserts that ecological problems arise from social problems -- and therefore ecological problems cannot be resolved without addressing problems within society. Blair Taylor from the Institute for Social Ecology speaks with HMM's Natalie Meltzer about how this philosophy has informed social movements both past and present. For more about Social Ecology visit https://social-ecology.org/