Podcasts about Honestly

How happy are you with your current banking situation? Are you getting real value out of your checking and savings accounts? Or do you feel like you're getting nickeled and dimed?  Today we'll go over how to find a better banking option and how to seamlessly move your money!  Why It Matters Where You Bank These are all important to your financial health and making progress on your goals, however we left the biggest piece of the puzzle last – your day to day bank accounts.  Your check and savings accounts are the backbone to your family's financial system, but for most of us, it's almost like an afterthought. Much of this goes back to how we chose our accounts in the first place. For my husband and I, with our first accounts, it was based on who we were already banking with. And at the time we had bank accounts with two of the major banks, we had opened student checking accounts. When I say they were basic accounts, that's exactly what they were. Honestly, we just settled with it for way too long. After getting frustrated with the horrible customer service, ridiculous fees. And not seeing any real progress with our financial goals. We decided it was time to change. We moved our money to an online bank and credit union and i have to say we are so much happier for it. We feel that our banking partners are actually partners that they're helping us reach our financial goals faster. And make our lives easier with managing our money. So if you feel that way about your bank or credit union, fantastic. However, there are plenty of families that feel like they're banking options are hurting them rather than helping. According to a recent Magnify Money survey, 68% of consumers are frustrated and feel like their savings isn't growing. When you consider that 18% of those said they get less than .05% APY, it's understandable. What makes it worse are those minimum balances and fees added on their accounts.  Bankrate reported that the average maintenance fee on a checking account that earns interest totaled $196.20/year.  So if you're feeling squeezed, you probably are. That doesn't have to be the case though.  With 2021 winding down, now is a great time to set the pieces up for you to have an incredible year in 2022. In this episode, we'll go over:  What to look for in your next bank or credit union How to move your money and switch accounts (and deal with a reluctant spouse) How to set up your new accounts for your best year ever Are you ready?  Let's get started!  Resources to Easily Manage Your Money Best Budget and Money Apps: Personal Capital, Tiller, Mint Grab Your Copy: Jumpstart Your Marriage and Your Money Join Our Thriving Families Community on Facebook Free 401(k) Analysis: blooom Thank You to Our Sponsor Coastal! Support for this podcast comes from Coastal Credit Union! If you're living in the Raleigh Durham area and looking to bank better, come check out Coastal today. We've been Coastal members for a few years have been happy with their services. Did you know that Coastal offers a Health Savings Account? If you have a high deductible health plan, you need to take advantage of an HSA. Find out more about what Coastal offers here! Support the Podcast! Thank you so much for listening to the podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and found it helpful, here are some ways to support it. Spread the word! If you enjoyed this episode and think it can help a buddy get on the path to dumping debt and become financially free, please share. Leave a review. Honest feedback and reviews make a big difference and gets the word out about the podcast. Leave your rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Grab a copy of Jumpstart Your Marriage and Your Money. My book is designed for a busy couple to set up their finances in 4 weeks. Get tips and tools that have worked for other couples on their journey of building their marriage and wealth together! Photo by Adrien Olichon from Pexels

Honestly, it's basically everything. TODAY ON THE SHOW: Another edition of the Bradfisch Family Vacation! HUMPDAY DUMPDAY! Payton knows she's a good girlfriend because _______! TRUE CRIME TRIVIA! Kyle's TV watching! Grant's cat and so.much.more!!

When I work in a coffee shop, I don't get much done. Honestly, I didn't go to the coffee shop to work. That's just a little white lie I tell myself to get out of the house.  Coffee shops might be the easiest place to track down if you travel for work. You know there's wifi, but the environment can be unpredictable. Is the cappuccino machine too loud? Too bad. Well, what if you could plug into a space meant for work. Not easy to do unless you know somebody in town. You've heard of co-working spaces like WeWork, but that's still a commitment. When you travel a lot you need something for 20 minutes, an hour, half a day and you're gone.  Clerc Bertrand has a solution for that. Workaroo: a network of office space for those of us hopping from place to place. Workaroo uses an app to connect itinerant workers with office space. Clerc lives in the Lake Charles area, but has grown Workaroo on the go herself, dodging lockdowns and hurricanes. Today, Workaroo has spaces in Lake Charles, Lafayette and Baton Rouge. Clerc plans to grow the company to stretch the I-10 corridor. When she's not building workaroo, Clerc runs the McNeese State University Athletic Foundation. If your workspace is the great outdoors, maybe this isn't so much a problem for you. Anywhere is the place to be. Artist and muralist Hannah Gumbo is building a career for herself with the world outside as her canvas. An avid traveler herself, Hannah is passionate about Louisiana and creating vibrant spaces that tease out our traditions with abstract flourishes and surprising detail.  You can find Hannah's work on Downtown brick walls or barns scattered around Acadiana, and her work bubbles against the backdrop of our region's rustic colors. She got her start with an ArtSpark grant from the Lafayette Economic Development Authority and recently won a second one to expand her work to business portraits. Hannah will also shake up the stuffy headshot with a portable wooden booth packed with fun backdrops to make portraits of Louisiana business owners. Out to Lunch Acadiana is recorded live over lunch at Tula Tacos + Amigos in Downtown Lafayette. You can see photos from this show by Astor Morgan at our website. Here's more lunchtime conversation about other work options in which one of Lafayette's most successful college dropouts talks with the dean of the UL grad school. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Holistic nutritionist and author Tahlia Mynott understands the importance of nourishing the mother through every phase of the birthing journey; So much so, that she has dedicated her career to it, along with women's health. In this very special Women's Series episode, Tahnee and Tahlia (both mothers) take us on a journey through the beautiful expanse that is motherhood. From the highs of postpartum oxytocin joy to the depths of menstrual healing and processing miscarriage (a topic that isn't talked about enough). In 2021 Tahlia self-published her first book, Nourishing Those Who Nurture, co-authored with doula and trauma-informed kinesiologist Caitlin Priday; The book is both a bible and an accessible guide for all women, regardless of their circumstances. The beautiful intention behind Nourishing Those Who Nurture is to take the overwhelm out of the postpartum rollercoaster through easy, nourishing, warming recipes (tailored to the needs of the postpartum mother) and preparation guidance for managing the massive shifts mother's traverse in their postpartum period. Tahlia and Tahnee dive deep into prenatal preparation, PCOS and menstrual cycle healing, the power of food as medicine, restoring the integrity of the pelvis after birth, postnatal care, and the emotional/physical complexities that come with experiencing a miscarriage. Tune in!   “I think it's important to be real that it does happen and that there's a spiritual aspect to miscarriage as well. You can be totally supported in what you've done, in terms of detoxing, nourishing, and it could still happen”.    - Tahlia Mynott     Host and Guest discuss: Healing PCOS. Dysmenorrhea. Preconception. Miscarriage and healing. The Postpartum phase. Restoring the pelvic floor. Seed Cycling for hormones. Healing the menstrual cycle. Phases of the menstrual cycle. The transition from maiden to mother. Supporting hormonal health through food.   Who is Tahlia Mynott? Tahlia is a Mother of two beautiful boys, Luca Mayar and Oka Sol. She birthed both of these beautiful beings into the world at her rainforest home at the base of Wollumbin. Tahlia is a clinical nutritionist specifically interested in women's health; however, she brings much more than nutrition information to her clinic. She conducts her work through her online clinic and workshops, online booklets, and podcasts with both her businesses Luna Holistic Nutrition and Living Hormoniously. In 2021, Tahlia released her first book, "Nourishing Those Who Nurture" - More than A Food Bible for New Mums.   CLICK HERE TO LISTEN ON APPLE PODCAST    Resources: @livinghormoniously @lunaholisticnutrition @nourishingthosewhonurture www.lunaholisticnutrition.com Reishi for helping heal PCOS Schisandra for preconception Seed Cycling for hormone balance Nourishing Those Who Nurture Book Mothering From Your Center Book Brighton Baby book by Roy Dittmann Spirit Babies book by Walter Makichen Pregnancy Preparation with Tahnee (EP#14)     Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast?   A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We'd also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or  check us out on Stitcher, CastBox, iHeart RADIO:)! Plus  we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Tahnee: (00:00) Hi, everybody. Welcome to the SuperFeast Podcast. I'm here today with Tahlia Mynott, and she's the mama of her two gorgeous boys, Luca and Oka, who were birthed up near our magical local mountain, Wollumbin. Tahlia's a clinical nutritionist and she has a special interest in women's health. She's bringing all of this work that she's done in clinic but also her work that she does workshops and offers a lot of support and coaching through her partnerships. You do some yoga stuff. You do a whole bunch of awesome things.   Tahnee: (00:32) Now she's an incredible author of this book, Nourishing Those Who Nurture, which I'm really happy to have beside me and I've just finished reading this week. We're going to talk a little bit about the book today and about Tahlia's journey toward health and wellbeing, so thanks for having us here. I'm saying that backwards. Thanks for being here.   Tahlia Mynott: (00:50) Thanks for having me. I know, that was a lot. I mean, my bio, there's a lot going on in my life at the moment. So when I hear it, I'm like, "Whoa, there's little bits and pieces everywhere."   Tahnee: (01:01) I always feel like that too. I'm like, "I've done a thousand things." But I really love you guys. You had your really beautiful business made with your love and you brought that sort of clinical nutrition aspect to crafting product. And now you're more supporting women, so I think there's this really beautiful journey you guys have been on and now being a mummer of two.   Tahnee: (01:22) Yeah. Tell us a little bit about how did you come to be a clinical nutritionist and how did you end up being where you are right now talking to me? How did we get here?   Tahlia Mynott: (01:30) Yeah. Cool. Love this. I actually, well, I say I was gifted or blessed. Because well, I chose, I guess, and they chose somewhat to be in a family that was quite health conscious. So growing up, particularly my mom, and that's because of a story that she's had with the medical system in her life. She had something happen there that was quite intense, so then she went down a more natural course herself.   Tahlia Mynott: (01:59) When she had me and my two sisters, she brought us up really natural. We had a lot of homoeopaths and naturopaths and all those awesome things that I'm so grateful that I was introduced to so early. I actually did my first liver cleanse, which is hilarious, in year 10.   Tahnee: (02:19) Oh, no.   Tahlia Mynott: (02:21) Which is so funny. At the time it didn't seem that big, but when I look back on it, I was like, "Wow, so I did my first liver cleanse in year 10." Probs didn't need it, but it was a thing we did as a family. That's, I guess, a little bit of background of my growing up. When I went to uni, it just made sense. I actually first started studying psychology and, oh gosh, I can't even remember the name of it. I think it was neuropsych, so a lot of brain stuff.   Tahlia Mynott: (02:50) But I just still had so much interest in health and nutrition, so I actually switched degrees and actually did a double degree in psychology and nutrition thinking that I was going to finish and work with eating disorders, which I did do a little bit of work with, but it definitely wasn't where I saw myself. It didn't fit. I went there, did a little bit of work there and it didn't quite fit. Actually, in relation to women's health, it wasn't until about six years ago. So I actually graduated in 2018, which seems like aeons ago now. No, 2008. Sorry, not 2018, 2008.   Tahlia Mynott: (03:33) It wasn't until roughly five or six years ago that I actually found the niche with women's health. The reason I found it is because I had suffered through my menstruating years a lot with dysmenorrhea, which is a really painful periods. And I also had amenorrhea for years, so that was absence of a cycle for... probably actually was more than a year. It was probably closer to 18 months. I was diagnosed with PCOS in my early 20s. And then around about the time that I really stepped into this work, I was going on my fertility journey. So I had started my preconception journey around that time, and I was just... I guess I wanted to heal parts of my menstrual cycle and then the things I was learning, I was just like, "Oh my gosh, how is this not taught to us? How as women do we not know these?"   Tahlia Mynott: (04:22) I remember being with my mum one day walking, and I was like, "Mum, did you know there was four phases to women's menstrual cycle?" She was like, "No, I had no idea." I'm like, "How? How are you a 50-year-old woman and you have no idea about this?" I was like, "Okay, this is it." I was just so passionate about it that I was like, "This is where I'm meant to be.   Tahlia Mynott: (04:46) Once I get passionate about something, I'm in. I'm all in. It was like podcasts, books, scientific literature, everything I could possibly read and get stuck into. It was my life. Yeah, I guess that's where I'm at today in many little facets, like you said. I do workshops with living harmoniously and also I do postpartum workshops with Esther, a friend of mind, but then I also have my clinic, which is Luna Holistic Nutrition. Now I have a postpartum book that I've co-authored, Nourishing Those Who Nurture. I mean, I guess there's a main section there, but there's all these little divots, which if I look back in my life, it's how my life has always been.   Tahnee: (05:33) Yeah. I think it's so funny, though, every time I talk to people, I see this tapestry of... You can see the dots that connect when you look back, but when you're in it, I mean, I know for me it's like, "I don't know where I'm going." Then you turn around and you're like, "Ah, that led to that, which led to that." You know?   Tahlia Mynott: (05:51) Totally.   Tahnee: (05:51) I think I just see that in your journey. You've had that background in health, but then you still had some things to work through. And so you've used that kind of catalyst to develop your own offerings. Yeah, it's really beautiful. Because coming full circle like you've had to, really healthy boys, and you've got this gorgeous book and you're working with all these women. It's just yeah, it's a really exciting time for you, I think.   Tahlia Mynott: (06:14) Yeah. Lots of birthings.   Tahnee: (06:17) Yeah. I feel like you spoke a little bit about preconception there and it's a question we get asked a lot at SuperFeast. I had my own journey with that, but I'm curious, for you, how long was that period of time and what did you really focus on in terms of your preconception? Was there sort of a practise or protocol you followed, or was it just a bit more intuitive? How did you navigate that?   Tahlia Mynott: (06:39) Yeah. I've actually listened to your... Was that one of your first podcasts that you did?   Tahnee: (06:43) I think it was my first ever podcast.   Tahlia Mynott: (06:45) Yeah. I loved that.   Tahnee: (06:46) The weak and worst into it.   Tahlia Mynott: (06:48) I actually think I've listened to that podcast twice. For those of you who haven't listened, if it's still up, it's amazing.   Tahnee: (06:55) We will link in the show notes.   Tahlia Mynott: (06:57) Yeah. I actually think I had quite a similar preconception journey to you and even the same book was gifted to me, so the Brighton Baby Method. I hope I've said that correctly. It's been a while since I've looked at it. I guess a little background. I was in my late 20s, early 30s, when I really decided that I wanted to have kids.   Tahlia Mynott: (07:22) Pre-that, I actually wasn't sure that I wanted to have children. I didn't know if it was going to be part of my journey. But my partner who I'm with now, we actually thought we were pregnant very early on in our relationship, and the pregnancy test came back saying negative. The feeling I had was like a disappointment was the initial first feeling that was like, "Okay, I actually want to have kids."   Tahlia Mynott: (07:50) I'd grown up really healthy, but I definitely had gone through my 20s with some partying, which was really fun at the time. But I knew there was a bit of detoxing to do. For me, the Brighton Baby Method was a beautiful book but a little bit overwhelming. It's quite in depth. So I guess I did gentle forms of that, I would say. It was around about 18 months, the whole preconception journey for me, 18 months to two years, roughly. I did a bit of gentle detoxing of the liver, a little bit of the kidneys, and then I did some focus on my colon as well and my gut health because they were places that were quite sensitive for me.   Tahlia Mynott: (08:38) Oh, and something that's really important, I definitely did some heavy metal detoxing. But I guess the biggest thing for me was actually learning how to chart my cycle and learning much more in depth about the phases of my cycle and how to support those phases in terms of nutrition and movement and emotionally and just knowing exactly when I ovulated each month and knowing how long my phases were and supporting my hormones through those phases was probably... Well, I mean, I guess every element was big, but that was probably the biggest element for me and really healing those parts of my menstrual cycle that I'd had issues with previously.   Tahlia Mynott: (09:21) I'd say I first got my first bleed when I was around about 15. I would say pretty much every bleed I had, so I never went on contraception because, thankfully, looking back, I actually turned into an absolute psycho when I was on it. I did try it, but mentally, it just didn't work for me so I actually didn't do it. I think every bleed I had up until I started healing was probably extremely painful. I had dysmenorrhea the whole way through. It would be really foreign to have a monthly bleed that didn't cause me pain.   Tahlia Mynott: (10:01) In terms of the pain, it was like I'd have to take a day off work, for sure. There would be sometimes I vomited, but that wasn't often. But definitely enough pain to just keep me bedridden. So I knew that there was something not quite aligned, but I hadn't really had the support from doctors and I guess the people that I was seeing. I actually worked really closely with an acupuncturist and that was definitely just working out my hormones and my gut health and all of those things that were, I guess, the root cause of that was really pivotal for me.   Tahnee: (10:38) I mean, in terms of did that resolve before you conceived or was it something...   Tahlia Mynott: (10:44) Yes, yeah. I think, gosh, it's a while now ago before my first conception. Because my first conception too, I actually did miscarry, so that was around about five years ago, I think. I think I roughly had pain-free cycles for one to two years, which was incredible for me because I had gone around 14, 15 years of quite debilitating pain.   Tahnee: (11:11) Yeah. It's one of these things I'm super passionate about communicating to women is you don't have to be in pain. But I also really appreciate the effort and the energy involved in transforming that, and it's this touchy subject, I think, because you don't want to be like, "You don't have to bleed and suffer. I don't bleed and suffer." I'm not trying to be a patronising pain in the ass, but it's an option to dig really deep and work out what's going on.   Tahlia Mynott: (11:39) It's such and important thing you've said there too, because for many of those years too I thought it was normal. Because it's almost considered to be a normal aspect of your menstrual cycle, and it simply is not. It's okay to be having probably 30 to 60 minutes of very light cramping at the start where the uterus is starting to contract and the lining is shedding, but that really significant pain which quite a few women experience is simply not normal. We shouldn't be putting that in that category at all.   Tahnee: (12:15) Yeah. You're absolutely right in terms of how we culturally... It's such an interesting thing because you see... I remember tampon ads growing up and these girls like, "Woo," with their tampon or whatever. But then also, the flip side of that is all of my friends, my mum, everyone bitching about their period, how much pain they're in, their emotional state. It's like you grow up in this context of suffering and even the monthly curse and all of this is a narrative, certainly for me in the '90s.   Tahnee: (12:47) Then I get to university to study biology and the lecturers are telling us, "You don't need to have periods. Just use the pill to stop them." It's this really kind of interesting cultural thing around periods being so negative. And then full circle, here I am in my mid-30s going like... When my period came back after, I was like, "Oh. Hello, old friend." It's this really welcome visit.   Tahnee: (13:14) For me, it's become so much of a, Lara Briden uses the term report card, but it's this sense of if I get my period and I'm angry or I'm feeling stressed or I get a headache or something, I know I've pushed myself too hard the month before. And I know that I've overdone it, and it's just a reminder for me that this is coming up for me and I need to address this with my next cycle. I've found that to be such a useful kind of personal development tool, I suppose, in just being really conscious of those warning signs. I've never had worse than a headache, and I think it's such a helpful thing to know how to come back.   Tahnee: (13:55) So you did acupuncture. Were there other things? Like, you said you addressed your gut health, those kinds of things. What else was there that helped, do you think?   Tahlia Mynott: (14:05) Yeah. I think that in terms of are you speaking just in relation to my menstrual cycle or the preconception more so?   Tahnee: (14:11) Yeah. More the menstrual cycle healing. I guess I'm just really interested in if you have any tips or-   Tahlia Mynott: (14:18) Definitely, I mean coming from a background of nutrition as well, definitely the food aspect was really important for me. I had been vegetarian for about 20 years, maybe slightly less, and also vegan and raw vegan for around five or six years, so raw vegan for about 12 months of that. I started introducing animal foods back into my diet, which was definitely really important and quite gradual for me. First fish, then eggs, then liver capsules.   Tahlia Mynott: (14:52) Then actually not until I was pregnant with my second child did I actually start actually consuming meat, but that was definitely really supportive of my hormonal system just for me as an individual. I know that's really important to state probably while we're chatting is that everyone's very different. So for me as an individual, that was really supportive for me. Also, just specific foods that are in relation to hormones. It's just amazing. I'm always so amazed with myself and with clients and friends and all of that how powerful food as medicine is.   Tahlia Mynott: (15:32) There were specific herbs that I was taking. Specifically, Schisandra I found to be really incredible, and I got quite into all the medicinal mushrooms, which is actually how you and I first met many, many years ago. They definitely, particularly reishi, there's been a lot of studies around reishi and PCOS. Which just quickly on that topic, I didn't have any PCOS symptoms for around about two years prior to conceiving as well, so I believe I completely healed all of that as well.   Tahlia Mynott: (16:11) Some of the really amazing foods that I recommend for a lot of my clients are cruciferous vegetables in relation to hormonal health and always having them warmed or heated, cruciferous vegetables, trying never to have them raw. So things like broccoli, kale, cabbage, mustard greens. I know I'm missing some.   Tahnee: (16:32) Cauli.   Tahlia Mynott: (16:34) Yeah. There's such a big list of them. You can simply Google cruciferous vegetables. So ensuring that I had at least half a cup of cooked cruciferous vegetables daily and then also using specific seeds, which you would probably know about seed cycling. I actually have found that in my journey to be a really supportive tool too. So using specific seeds in the first two stages of the cycle and then others in the second two stages of the cycle to support both oestrogen and progesterone.   Tahlia Mynott: (17:07) For me, I had, which is quite common, I had more of an oestrogen dominance so I focus more on supporting progesterone and ensuring that I had really good luteal phases, which is that phase just before the bleed. Because if that phase isn't supported, then conception is really challenging. Also, you want it to all be in flow as well, but specifically for the preconception journey, it was important for me to have that phase really supported.   Tahnee: (17:38) Yeah. Seed cycling is sunflower seeds and pepitas. Actually, I've never personally done it, but I've read about it. But yeah, does it vary depending on the hormonal profile or is it pretty standard for the two phases? Or how do you approach that?   Tahlia Mynott: (17:53) No. It's standard for the two phases, and I hope I get this right.   Tahnee: (17:56) I won't hold you to it.   Tahlia Mynott: (18:00) I'm pretty sure and you could Google seed cycling. It's flax seeds and pepitas for the first phase, which is more about oestrogen support. And then it's sunflower and sesame seeds for the second phase, which is more about progesterone support. It's such a simple... I recommend usually a tablespoon of ground seeds per day and a mix of both of those.   Tahlia Mynott: (18:25) I say to my clients, "Just get a jar, roughly a 50/50 mix of your flaxseeds and your pepitas. Ground them up and then every day for those first two phases, so the follicular and the ovulation phase, be having a tablespoon of those seeds in whatever you can." Then similar with the sesame and sunflower in the progesterone supporting phase. So in your luteal and your menstruation phase, have a tablespoon of those ground every day.   Tahnee: (18:53) Typically, if people have longer luteal phases or whatever, it doesn't matter? They're just still carrying on with that process through the whole time?   Tahlia Mynott: (18:59) Yes. I still usually get them doing those things just because they're supportive overall anyway of colon health and zinc levels, which are really important for the menstruation cycle as well. Yeah, generally speaking, I would have them doing that whichever way their hormonal profile is going.   Tahnee: (19:20) Yeah. I think seeds are such an underrated superfood. We're all into these bougie and expensive things, but it's like you've got this incredibly nutritious, easy to obtain, quite cheap products there. Yeah, really excited to talk about those. One thing, I mean, I really got out of your book is the simplicity of, and I don't mean this in a negative way, but I mean it in a, thank God, I don't have to spend hours in the kitchen kind of a way.   Tahnee: (19:50) But I think being a mum yourself and actually, yes, you're a clinical nutritionist, but you know what it's like to be busy and you know what it's like to have a business and kids. It's like there was a real sense of reality in the book. Everything I could make and I could see myself making. I'm a good cook, but I'm like, "I don't have time." I get home at 5:00 and I have to have dinner on the table really fast. Yeah, is that something you've picked up from clinic is that you have to be realistic about what people can achieve?   Tahlia Mynott: (20:20) 100%. Honestly, it starts with yourself, right? So even myself, I'm very similar to you in that it's like I don't have the time to be creating extravagant meals. And if I'm frank, I actually don't enjoy it. I would prefer to be reading a book, doing some yoga, going for a swim in the beach, all those types of things rather than just spending hours in the kitchen. I mean sure, every now and then I love spending it, but on a daily basis that's not where I want to be focusing most of my time.   Tahlia Mynott: (20:50) I'm so glad that you found that with the book. Because that was something that was really important to both Caitlin and I, who wrote the book, was that the meals, although we ensured that the nutrition profile was there and that the meals, they have the ingredients to support the postpartum phase, we wanted to ensure that they were simple and the ingredients were easy to obtain. And also, that they wouldn't take long in the kitchen and yeah, so that they weren't overwhelming because I think that's really important during this time.   Tahlia Mynott: (21:24) You don't want to be opening a book, and any time in a mother's life, you don't want to be opening a recipe book or any type of book and looking at the recipe and just feeling totally overwhelmed by 20 ingredients and a method that goes over three pages. And you're just like, "Oh my God."   Tahnee: (21:42) I mean you've had the raw phase, I've had the raw phase, the sprouting. God bless us and I mean, I still value that kind of food. We eat sprouts and things, but we do tend to buy them more these days. But I think there's just this reality around how much time food prep can take. The thing I liked is everything's really nutritionally dense. It's not like it's toast and toast for dinner. But yeah, it's really nutritionally dense.   Tahnee: (22:10) I loved the key that you guys had with anti-inflammatory and all the different things. I thought that was really helpful. And I really liked how you classified the three sections of healing as well postpartum, to get a little bit into the book, but that was something I thought was really smart. Because yeah, there are really quite different phases, and I can even think about them even now. I have had these times where I've been like, "Oh, I'm back in this quite depleted state and I almost need to address myself like I'm postpartum again." Then it's like, no, I'm really abundant and vital and I can be a bit more loose with eating cold foods or whatever.   Tahnee: (22:48) I think it's something people can take into their lives and be like, if you're convalescing or you've just been through some kind of big emotional process, lost somebody, whatever, you can go through using that same structure. Yeah, I thought that was a really cool way and a bit different for me. I've not seen that in other postpartum books.   Tahlia Mynott: (23:05) Yeah. That was... Sorry.   Tahnee: (23:08) How did you get to that? No, no.   Tahlia Mynott: (23:09) I was just going to add to your question without you asking.   Tahnee: (23:11) Well, you're reading my mind, so just go for it.   Tahlia Mynott: (23:17) That's actually Caitlin had thought of that. That was an element that she brought to the book which I really loved as well. Yeah, we talk about four stages of the healing stages of the postpartum over the period over five weeks. Yeah, we've segmented different recipes into each phase as to what's going on during that phase. Obviously, it's amazing that you've actually...   Tahlia Mynott: (23:47) What we were envisioning too is that, of course, this book is for postpartum, but this book can be used at any time that you are feeling slightly overwhelmed or depleted or your immune function is low. Whatever is going on, these types of foods are really supportive of that phase. The reason, I guess, why we segmented it as well was because for me personally, and I don't know if you can attest to this, but in the phase of postpartum, making decisions for self, because we've got so much going on, is sometimes tricky.   Tahlia Mynott: (24:23) Even segmenting it is like, okay, there's not as many recipes so you're not going to open up the recipe part section of the book and be like, "Oh my gosh, there's 50 recipes. Which one do I do?" Each section has, I think it's around 10 recipes in each section, so it also takes a little bit of the overwhelm out of it as well and the decision making. But you can switch to any of those sections and we do say at the start to use your intuition about what you're feeling as well. I don't like being rigid at all, so we're not saying, "Hey, you have to be doing those recipes in that week and then when you switch, you need to be doing the recipes the next week." But if it's supportive of you to actually just be sticking to those weeks and those recipes, then absolutely.   Tahlia Mynott: (25:07) As it gets further on, so in week five we do talk a little bit more about recipes that are a little bit more cooling on the system, like smoothies and salads, which we always say to try and have room temperature. But those types of recipes you probably, majority of people, again not all but majority of people really don't want to be doing those types of recipes in relation to healing and all of that in those first two weeks or three weeks which are really vital for the healing of the body.   Tahnee: (25:36) Yeah. I mean, I picked that up from your book and it's great. There's such an emphasis on it because we both know from all the traditions, staying warm is so important postpartum. Can you speak a little bit to that just from your experience and what you've seen in clients and your own research? What's the meaning of that?   Tahlia Mynott: (25:57) Yeah. It comes from a couple of traditions, mainly the TCM background and the Ayurvedic, which I can't speak to too much because that's definitely not where I've come from in terms of my learnings. But obviously, I've had a browse over them over the years. But all of the traditions just speak of the importance of staying warm during this time, and the reason is to keep the warmth inside the body in relation to healing.   Tahlia Mynott: (26:24) That cool energy can cause, is it vata in the system? I think it's more vata in the terms of Ayurveda. That can be that feeling of feeling quite ungrounded or a little bit sketchy, and that can already be there in that postpartum phase, so you also want to calm that as well. Yeah, it's important for healing not just of the organs and everything that's going on in relation to the uterus and all of that, but it's also really healing in terms of the mental state as well and for production of milk if you are breastfeeding. There's many elements to keeping warmth in.   Tahlia Mynott: (27:05) Obviously, we talk of it in terms of food and in the front section we do talk a little bit in terms of some traditions where they use scarves and beanies and all of that. Obviously, it's relative to your climate. So where we are, it's a little bit more tropical. When I birthed both my boys, it was beautiful spring and summer days. I definitely didn't want to be getting a beanie and scarf on, but I'm sure that I kept warm in terms of...   Tahlia Mynott: (27:32) Actually, even one thing I'd love to chat about is the postpartum pads. Even with the postpartum pads, I see a lot of people talking about them now, which is incredible in terms of using witch hazel and aloe vera, all of these things, which are amazing. But there's quite an emphasis about putting them in the freezer I've seen going around. Even something like that, I think it's really important that women are actually not putting them in the freezer and actually having them warm so that the warmth isn't getting inside the uterus, which then can affect the healing somewhat.   Tahlia Mynott: (28:09) Yeah, you don't necessarily have to be covering yourself up completely but just little elements of your postpartum phase, thinking about trying not to allow coolness into the system.   Tahnee: (28:22) Yeah. I mean, that's a real issue. Even icing of injury is not okay in Chinese medicine, which obviously is really common practise here. They say that it causes chi and blood stagnation, which leads to slow healing. I've had the experience of twisting my ankle, so I didn't ice it. I actually heated it and I had heaps of acupuncture, and it healed really, really fast. We took lots of herbs and all those things. I'm like, really had that experience of the warmth is super important. And like you, I had Aiya in the bloody peak summer. It was impossible to wear clothes, but I did make an effort to still wear socks and stay pretty warm and obviously try to keep the food as warm as possible as well.   Tahnee: (29:04) Yeah, I think it's just I've noticed a huge difference in my digestion from my 20s when I'd drink smoothies at least a couple of times a week, maybe daily, and cold, icy, thick, those delicious smoothies. But yeah, they just ruined my digestion and I'd be bloated. I'd have cold poos. It was just not a good situation. Yeah, I've really noticed a difference with myself. You mentioned that in the book that postpartum is a time of weakened digestive fire, so it's a time of convalescence and recovery. It's not a time to be using your resources digesting or using your resources doing even too much thinking or anything else. Yeah, I think it makes a lot of sense to be mindful of that kind of stuff.   Tahlia Mynott: (29:48) Yeah. It's really like gentle, gentle, gentle with everything is how I think of it. Gentle with the food that you're consuming. Gentle with the visitors that you're allowing. Gentle with the warmth that's around you. Yeah, just keeping yourself in that beautiful cocoon for as long as possible.   Tahnee: (30:07) Yeah. That's actually, non-visitor boundaries were really great and I think a really important one to read to everybody.   Tahlia Mynott: (30:15) That was actually a big learning for me and why I really wanted to add that in there. So yeah, there is a page about visitor boundaries and we make some suggestions and questions in there. Because that was a big learning for me in my journey of postpartum with my firstborn, Luca, where I allowed people. And it was only family, but I did allow family. He was born at 2:00 AM after 30 hours of labour, so I was obviously exhausted but also running on a lot of adrenaline.   Tahlia Mynott: (30:42) I had family come for the next couple of days, and I significantly noticed my depletion more so after having visitors there. I'm a very hostess of the house too, so it was me going up and getting cups of tea and all those types of things. So the second time round we didn't even have really family or visitors for I think around three to four weeks. We had beautiful people dropping food to us, but they rarely came in or we might just say hi through the door. Just looking at both those postpartum journeys and the second one I also had a toddler running around too, but I actually felt so much more supported in that second postpartum journey than the first.   Tahlia Mynott: (31:29) It's a big learning. I went into that first one with... I had read a lot and I had studied a lot around it, so I had some ideas about it. But it's not until you go through it that you actually really understand how significant and dynamic that phase is.   Tahnee: (31:48) I was chatting to Caitlin about that when she came round the other day to drop the books off, your co-author. And I thought, it's beautiful that you have both perspectives. You have someone who's a doula and who cares for women but who hasn't really had the experience, and then you've been through it and you have that lived visceral experience of what's happened. Yeah, I actually think it's a really beautiful combination of energies because you've got that maiden energy in there and then the mother energy. I think it's really special.   Tahnee: (32:18) I think that transition, and you speak to that in the book as well, Caitlin and I were talking about it. It's like you know it's going to be big, but until you actually live it, you don't know how it's going to be big and what's going to show up for you. Yeah, I was surprised. I felt a little grief actually before Aiya was born, not so much when she was born. But I do remember looking at her and being like, "Oh my God, I've signed up for a lifetime of care and maybe I'm not ready for that."   Tahnee: (32:43) I was like, "Ah!" And I didn't have all these blissful... I mean, I had a little blissful feelings, but I wasn't feeling them toward to her at the time. I was like, "Oh my God, this is a big commitment." That shifted over a few days, but I'll never forget that. And I was like, "Well, that's not what I expected when I looked at my new baby." Yeah, I think it's a really interesting-   Tahlia Mynott: (33:09) But it's real and I'm sure that a lot of women experience that too. I actually remember my partner very significantly experiencing that. So like I said, Luca was born at 2:00 AM, and we birthed at home. It was all beautiful and amazing. We blissfully feel asleep. We woke up in the morning and I remember him looking at Luca. I still remember this and Luca's now nearly four, so this was nearly four years ago. He looked at Luca and looked at me and he's like, "Whoa, this is a lot, isn't it?" I'm like, "Um, just processing this now? Great."   Tahnee: (33:49) Well, it's funny because I think too, and I've had a really different journey in each pregnancy and I'd love to hear a little bit about the differences, other things you learned from postpartum that was different for you from Luca to Oka and also your pregnancies. I had such, honestly, blissful pregnancy with Aiya. I was floating around like a fairy the whole time just being like, "Life is so magical." I just was in awe of my body and it was a very psychic experience for me. It was really different.   Tahnee: (34:24) Whereas this one, I've been angry. Physically, I feel fine but I've been an emotional kind of machine of rage. Yeah, it's such a different pregnancy for me so I'm curious for you, how did those pregnancies alter your perspective and clinical practise and what you're sharing with us today? How did that change for you?   Tahlia Mynott: (34:44) I'm always so grateful for every experience I have, particularly in this women's health region, because it allows me to have so much more empathy for other women, although I did hit a point a couple years ago where I was like, "Okay, I'm done with the lessons. Let's just stop for a little bit, universe. I think I've got enough empathy right now." But I actually, so I've been pregnant three times.   Tahlia Mynott: (35:09) I miscarried the first pregnancy and that was such a pivotal moment and experience for me, which actually had a really positive outcome. Obviously, at the time there was a lot of grief, but I now can see why that was part of my story and why I needed to have that as part of my story.   Tahnee: (35:29) Do you mind speaking to that a little? I really feel passionately that we don't talk about miscarriage enough, and you don't have to share anything that you're not comfortable with. But it's this one in four women, you say it in your book, experience miscarriage. That's a quarter of us walking around with this story. We don't speak of spirit babies as real babies even though they are. I know in certain circles we do, but it's something I've really observed.   Tahnee: (35:56) I did a women's circle with 60 women last year in November two days before my wedding. I reckon at least 45 of those women had had a miscarriage or some kind of traumatic stillbirth or something that just was huge and so much to carry. I was humbled, really humbled by how common it was and how many women in that room had shared that. I'd be really interested if you could go deeper on that topic. I know it's a bit of a segue.   Tahlia Mynott: (36:30) Yeah, absolutely. I'm very open with my life.   Tahnee: (36:30) Fortunately.   Tahlia Mynott: (36:37) Yeah. You're right, it's not something that's really commonly talked about and happens to so many women and I think something that we need to be more open about and real about. It was actually such a healing component for me was I just remember getting onto the computer and Googling miscarriage stories and trying to find as many miscarriage stories as I could to read. I was ringing friends that I knew who had had it and I also had friends reach out to me who I didn't know who had had it say, "Oh, I had a miscarriage too. I would ring them and just listen to their stories. And actually, having those women and their journeys actually really helped me as well.   Tahlia Mynott: (37:20) I guess it was an interesting time because there it was definitely I had done the preconception journey, so in my head I was like, "Yeah, I've got this. I'm all good. Everything's sweet." Then I actually even got through the first trimester, so I miscarried the baby at 14 weeks so I was just into that second trimester. I guess also I'd hit that point of thinking, "Everything's totally... " The first trimester can be a little bit like, "Oh, I hope it's okay. Yeah, everything's fine." But once you get into that second trimester there's definitely a relief, I guess, or for me a little bit of relief like, "Okay, yeah. Everything should be sweet from here on in."   Tahlia Mynott: (38:02) So miscarrying at 14 weeks was definitely a surprise, but I actually intuitively knew that something wasn't right at about nine weeks. When I miscarried at 14 weeks, they did an ultrasound. And when they did the ultrasound, they actually, the guy said, "Oh, the sac's only actually nine weeks old." It was such an interesting... At the time, obviously I couldn't really focus and think about all that. But looking back on it, I was like, "Wow, I intuitively knew that something wasn't right from that nine weeks."   Tahlia Mynott: (38:35) I started bleeding a couple of days before I miscarried, and I had a bit of cramping throughout that first trimester, which can be completely normal. I actually had quite a bit of cramping with my recent pregnancy, Oka. It can be completely normal, so for anyone listening that's like, "Oh my gosh, I'm cramping," that's okay. I just want to say that so no one's freaking out. But yeah, I had quite a bit of cramping leading up.   Tahlia Mynott: (38:59) Then I remember we were at a friend's house and I'd had a bit of brown spotting. I knew deep down but I was also being optimistic and hoping that it wasn't just my mind playing tricks. I was like, "Oh, maybe that's just a bit of stagnation from my last bleed and that's okay just because there's obviously a bit of weight with my uterus and baby and all of that kind of stuff." Then I remember yeah, being at a friend's house and wiping and seeing the red blood, and I knew. I did have quite a bit of cramping as well, and I knew red blood, cramping, those two together probably not a good sign.   Tahlia Mynott: (39:34) Over the course of the next 24 hours, it did take a while, the bleeding started to intensify. We went to hospital just to confirm that I was having a miscarriage and then went back home. It was actually a full moon the day that I miscarried, which being in this field as well and very connected to the moons and the menstrual cycle, and the full moon is often, as you would know, in spiritual talk the letting go.   Tahlia Mynott: (40:06) It was a full moon and I'd found out that the baby, there was no heartbeat. But my body was still holding on to the baby, so we went to the beach that day and obviously cried and kept setting intentions of... I really wanted to miscarry naturally. I didn't want to have to go to hospital, although I had booked in for a day in say two days later. The doctor really wanted me to book it in the next day because it was actually a Sunday that we went in, so they couldn't do it on a Sunday. I was like, "No, no. I just want to give it a little bit of time and see if this can happen naturally."   Tahlia Mynott: (40:42) So yes, we went to the beach that day, got home that night. Then I really started to bleed quite heavily. There's two really significant parts to it. I still remember bleeding. For some reason, Scott and I had not got pads. Even though we knew I was going to miscarry, we hadn't got pads. So he went out to get pads, and I was sitting on the bed just on some towels. I actually just remember I had beautiful music on and so it was like we'd set up this space for a home birth almost but obviously thinking of it as a miscarriage.   Tahlia Mynott: (41:21) Mentally, we were somewhat prepared. I remember sitting on the bed and when the bleed really came actually feeling a sense of relief and just a real letting go. It happened on that full moon, so letting go and actually felt really at peace with it. I can still significantly tune back into that moment. Most of my miscarriage did happen at home and I passed the sac at home, which was really beautiful that that happened there.   Tahlia Mynott: (41:51) But it did get quite intense and that can be quite normal for... I've forgotten the phrase exactly. Oh, a missed miscarriage is what they usually call it where the sac is actually or the baby has actually passed a lot earlier than what you've miscarried. So there can be a lot of tissue and stagnation and a lot of things happening in the uterus. The bleed was very substantial for me. I was losing clots the size of my hand nearly every 15 to 20 minutes, so we did have to go to hospital. I spent 16 hours in emergency, but that also was a very significant time for me.   Tahlia Mynott: (42:35) I had had quite an aversion to hospitals in general growing up with what my mom had been through. Yeah, I actually felt, anxiety is not something that I really attune to too much, but I actually would have anxiety going near hospitals. When I fell pregnant that first time, I had a planned home birth, but I definitely had this fear around hospitals. And even when I was miscarrying, I really was trying to stay at home, but I did call my home birth midwife and she was like, "Look, you're bleeding a lot, losing these clots. It's definitely important for you to get to emergency now."   Tahlia Mynott: (43:12) My partner was like, "Look, we really need to go." And I was feeling quite light-headed obviously and not amazing. Just even actually going to emergency was a big component for me, but the women that I had, the nurses that I somehow manifested on that night were just the most beautiful women and they were like my mothers. My mum wasn't near. Just my partner was with me at the time. They really, their support was just so pivotal in my journey.   Tahlia Mynott: (43:43) Also, I had quite a significant amount of pain, which can be similar if you've had a missed miscarriage and even for other miscarriages because the uterus is really contracting to get out that stagnation and tissue and all the blood. But I was really rejecting the pain medication. I was like, "No, no, no." And they actually had to transfer me to a hospital because they thought I might have to have a blood transfusion, so they transferred me to the hospital. And during the transfer I had this really beautiful ambulance nurse, doctor, whatever he was, next to me, probably nurse or paramedic. I was breathing through them and I was like, "It's okay." Because I was having almost contractions, and I was just breathing through them.   Tahlia Mynott: (44:28) He could obviously tell I was in some kind of discomfort, and he's like, "Would you like some pain relief?" I was like, "No, no." I still remember this. He said to me, "Look, I understand where you're coming from, but there is a time and a place, and I have a feeling that for where you are now, this would be really supportive of you." I just remember being like, "Okay, yep. I think that the pain relief would be really helpful." I'm so grateful for that because it was really helpful for that, and I went on for another 16 hours of that so it was quite intense. Yeah, it was really supportive of me.   Tahlia Mynott: (45:08) I left that experience with just seeing the way that in crisis the medical system can be really amazing and supportive. I let go of a lot of fear, so I believe that my next two home births were so magical and amazing because I really had dispersed that fear of the hospital system during that miscarriage. So it was such a pivotal component of my entirety of birthing, I believe.   Tahnee: (45:39) Yeah. It's really powerful, I think, and something I pick up a lot on in this community that we're in where there's this right and wrong way to birth or to miscarry or whatever. Really, to actually have the freedom to do the thing, the home birth or whatever, you do need to have, I think, an acceptance of the potential outcomes which might mean transfer and might mean being in a hospital.   Tahnee: (46:08) I know for me, that was a big part of my home birth journey was really sitting in, am I going to be okay in myself if I end up birthing in a hospital? It took me a few days of really sitting with that to get to a place of like, yes, that's a yes for me. Because there was resistance and, I guess, an ego attachment to birthing in a certain way and all that kind of stuff and also not even wanting to let it in because I didn't want to pollute my mind with that kind of thought or whatever.   Tahnee: (46:40) I've spoken to a lot of women that have miscarried, especially in the last 10 years, and a lot of them say that it's more painful than childbirth, which I find really interesting. But I imagine the hormonal cascade is different. There's not that sort of trigger from the baby and all of those other things that happen with birth and how long the process can be and how tricky it can be. It's not always straightforward miscarriage, so I really appreciate you sharing all of that because I know it's a lot. But, yeah.   Tahnee: (47:13) So you had the miscarriage. How much longer after that was Luca conceived? Is it another year? I'm trying to remember your timeline.   Tahlia Mynott: (47:24) I conceived Luca about eight months after that miscarriage. I did another six months of rebuilding myself, so abstained from intercourse for six months and I really didn't want to conceive straight away. But I definitely have many clients and friends, and I have a lot of compassion around this, which again, I'm really grateful for, I can understand why women want to conceive the next month because this bizarre timeframe lapse where you're like, "Oh, I should be 14 weeks pregnant and I'm not pregnant. Oh, I should be 15 now and I'm not pregnant at all." So I have compassion around that, but for me it was really important to wait for...   Tahlia Mynott: (48:11) The egg that is released from the ovary, the largest stage of maturation, is around 90 days, so it was really important for me to wait at least one of those cycles of 90 days. But I actually decided to wait two of those cycles of 90 days. Because I had such an extensive bleed, I actually was anaemic as well, so there was a lot of blood building that I was doing during that time as well. So lots and lots of building in those six months and then yeah, it took about two to three months to conceive Luca.   Tahnee: (48:42) That's interesting. So you've done the preconception and a lot of that is detoxifying and cleansing. And then you've had the miscarriage and then you're rebuilding, so you've had this kind of... Because that's something Mason and I talk about a lot with people, it's like, "Yes, it's great to cleanse, but if you don't have that phase of making sure your tissue's really strong, making sure your nutrition is really high, to go from cleansing into conception can be, I think, not a great thing."   Tahnee: (49:11) Yeah, have you had that experience with... Because I've seen it with a lot of people we know who live a really high alkaline, clean diet, and then have a lot of trouble coming to conception time. I'm like, "Good time to build up some fat tissue and some muscle and reserves."   Tahlia Mynott: (49:28) Yes. That was definitely a component of my preconception was building as well, but I have to admit that definitely I was more focused on the building between those two pregnancies and the importance of that 100% and ensuring fat tissue and iron and blood building and zinc. Yeah, there's so many components of that building that are really, really important, definitely.   Tahnee: (49:58) And do you work with someone or do you do your own care? Because I mean, I'll usually order blood tests and stuff but typically do the interpretations and things myself. What's your approach to that? Do you tend to... Other people love support, so I don't want to say there's a right or wrong. Yeah.   Tahlia Mynott: (50:14) Yeah. I do, absolutely, that. I actually work with an incredible doctor up here. Well, in terms of working with her, I'm not working in clinic with her, but she knows who I am and I send a lot of clients to her. Yeah, we're looking at people's blood profiles and then suggesting from there, so she'll do all the blood profile panels for me.   Tahlia Mynott: (50:34) I think it's important in these phases too, so whether you've had a miscarriage or you're in your preconception phase is actually finding a team of support. I don't think you can support all elements that need to be supported with just one person. I think it's important to have a team of either an acupuncturist or a naturopath or a nutritionist.   Tahlia Mynott: (50:57) Yeah, there's so many elements to this. A lot of women come to me and they want to fall pregnant in the next month. That's not my ideal. My ideal would be probably six to 12 months to work on some things, but you've got to also be supportive of where that person is at as well. Yeah, if they have the time and the space, then having a support team I think is really crucial.   Tahnee: (51:23) Yeah, I agree. I mean, I'm big on having those. Especially body work practitioners and energetic practitioners, I think to me are amazing. I see an acupuncturist fortnightly for this pregnancy and I did similar with Aiya. I guess I'm curious about that with Oka, did you guys do a similar preconception? We were a lot gentler, I noticed, with this baby in our preconception approach that we just really took it a lot easier. I wonder if you guys were the same or if you still had quite an intensive preconception phase?   Tahlia Mynott: (51:54) No. We were exactly the same. I actually was still breastfeeding Luca when I fell pregnant with Oka as well, so there was definitely no detoxifying happening there. But pregnancy and birth is one of the biggest detoxifications of a woman anyway, which is why I really like to support women in trying to do some gentle detoxifying before that. But because I'd had the miscarry as well, I actually felt like, and this might for some people be quite triggering, but for me it was almost a bit of a cleanse as well. Obviously, at the time not so much but in hindsight.   Tahlia Mynott: (52:39) Because I'd had those processes as well, yeah, I was super gentle with Oka. It was more about building because I was still breastfeeding and obviously giving a lot to Luca at that time, which in hindsight, I'm not sure that I would fall pregnant again while breastfeeding because I definitely noticed the difference in my pregnancies. And potentially, I was still slightly depleted from the breastfeeding, so going into Oka's pregnancy, yeah, it was different to Luca's.   Tahlia Mynott: (53:15) Luca's was more like your Aiya's one that you mentioned, so really blissful, felt amazing. Was doing hill walks all the time around our property. Was just in love with life and just actually wanted to be pregnant forever. I was like, "This is incredible. I feel amazing."   Tahnee: (53:29) Right. I know.   Tahlia Mynott: (53:30) Yeah. I actually was worried at the end because he was 41 plus five. I was a little bit concerned that I was holding onto him because I was loving it so much. I was definitely not like those women that are like, "Okay, I'm so ready to birth." I was actually like, "No, I love this. I'm not sure I want to get rid of this."   Tahnee: (53:48) Yeah. Aiya was 42 and I wanted the same. I'm like, yeah, it was such a nice experience.   Tahlia Mynott: (53:55) Yeah. I mean, Luca... Sorry, Oka. Oka still had its beauty, but I definitely felt more tired. And I definitely felt that real hormonal surge at the start, and emotionally that was quite challenging for me, particularly for that first trimester. I didn't have anything severe, but there was definitely a lot more niggles with Oka.   Tahlia Mynott: (54:25) I did prenatal yoga with both my babies, and I remember the first one. Our teacher, Esther, who's incredible, she would go around and just say, "Is anyone experiencing reflux or hip joint pain," or whatever it was. With Luca, I was like, "No, no. I feel great." Then with Oka, I was like, "Yep, yep. Oh, yeah. That's me. Yep, that's me again."   Tahnee: (54:50) All of the above.   Tahlia Mynott: (54:52) Yeah. Very minor but still, there was just a lot more niggles with him. Obviously, the body had done it all before, and I obviously didn't have the strength that I'd had going into Luca's in terms of my movement. Yeah, I'm sure there were many elements to that, and I was a little bit older as well.   Tahnee: (55:12) Did you approach Luca's postpartum with all that in mind? I'm sorry, Oka's postpartum, a little bit more, I guess gently? Because that's something I remember with Aiya, being very aware of all of the should-dos and then still, "But it's such a nice day. I'm just going to go to the beach." Or, "Oh, I'm going to go to the markets and catch up with people." Just letting it slip a little bit because I felt so good and it felt easy.   Tahnee: (55:41) But I think in hindsight, I'm like, we travelled when I was three months for a month and things like that, which they were really exhausting times. I think I'm definitely gearing up to be a lot more low energy this time around, so I wonder if that was the same sort of thing with you?   Tahlia Mynott: (55:57) I absolutely did that and was very similar. We've got very similar journeys. I felt so great with Luca that even when I was having the visitors, I continued to have the visitors because I felt really good. But in hindsight, yeah, it was definitely taking a lot from me. So with Oka, I was much more gentler. We didn't have the visitors. The foods I was consuming were definitely slightly different to what they had been with Luca.   Tahlia Mynott: (56:27) I was asking, so that was a big thing for me, so I really struggled to ask for support from people. But with Oka, I was definitely asking for more support. We actually even got a cleaner, which our house is tiny, so I was a little bit embarrassed by this one. But just the support of that cleaner once a week was really important for us. I just didn't have to do those things and could solely focus on the children.   Tahlia Mynott: (56:52) One thing that was really important for us was just really encapsulating that family unit. And for Luca as well, he'd just become a big brother and I didn't want too many people coming into that energy and space. I really wanted him to feel included and that he was also really important and also for him and Oka to form their bond. So we encapsulated our little space or house for that month. Yeah, that was very different to how I was with Luca.   Tahlia Mynott: (57:22) Even with my movement, I think with Luca, because I felt so amazing, I started not vigorous movement, but I started walking probably a week postpartum, doing walks. It's quite hilly where we are, but with Oka, I was just so much more gentle. I did a lot of five minutes of stretching and yoga, but really hardly moving. Yeah, I noticed such a significant difference in just that, in my movement practises and how that supported me in that second postpartum.   Tahnee: (57:51) It's such a shift and I think I relate to all of that. I've had to let go of how, I guess, pre-children and being a yoga teacher, because I was full time moving seven days a week a lot of the day. It's been full circle for me back to an office job, back to having a kid to run around after but not as much time to practise. It's like I might get an hour in a day if I'm lucky these days. I think it's a really humbling experience and also, yeah, recognising how much the body changes after birth.   Tahnee: (58:24) I loved that you guys address that in the book where you speak about closing the bones and how important that is. Because that was one of the things for me, I think my pelvis changed dramatically after having Aiya, and I just think those things, they're not addressed enough in our culture around... You guys emphasise this a lot. It's like birth and the child and the baby is really emphasised, but there's culture in France where they give women pelvic floor rehab for, I think it's six sessions for free as a part of their government healthcare. It's like I've had to pay for that. It's fine, but it's like, that's not cheap.   Tahnee: (59:02) It's made a huge difference to my overall wellbeing, but it's like if I didn't have that education and know to seek out that care... I have friends that have whispered to me like, "Oh, yeah. I'm 45 and I still wet my pants most of the time." It's like, why aren't we talking about this? You can't go back and jump up and down at the gym without a pelvic floor. You need to restore that tissue. Yeah, I think it's a really big and challenging conversation.   Tahnee: (59:29) But yeah, a lot of the stuff you speak about, the rebozo, which I hadn't actually heard of, that sounds cool. These things are all designed to restore the integrity of the pelvis and the SI joint and to help to start to bring that pelvic floor tissue back into place.   Tahlia Mynott: (59:44) There are so many amazing supportive tools from many traditions and even what's available here. But yeah, many women aren't really aware of all these supportive tools, so we definitely have tried to encapsulate them in the front section of the book. I'm sure we've missed something. I'm sure there's other amazing supportive tools, but they're the ones that we know of. Yeah, it's so important.   Tahlia Mynott: (01:00:08) It's that whole concept too of a nourished mum nourishes her family and children. Yeah, I just want to scream that every day. I just think that's so important to ensure that the mother is nourished. It's not just about what food she's eating. It's about the people that are around her and it's about her body, which you would know more about than me with your line of expertise. But yeah, all those elements are just so significant and so important.   Tahnee: (01:00:36) I think that's what I really enjoyed about your book was yeah, I guess I had read a lot of postpartum books and they're either a lot of theory, which is really great, or they're sort of... But it's almost yeah, it's written by women who know it, who've been through it. And I think the things you've chosen and highlighted are really, like belly binding, those kinds of things, they're really accessible. Abhyanga postpartum, really accessible. These are all things that you don't need to spend a lot of money on. You can tend to yourself or have someone tend to you easily at home. Yeah. I'm really happy for you guys.   Tahlia Mynott: (01:01:13) Thanks, darling. Hopefully, all those things are really simple too. That was a really important... along with the recipes. All of it, you can go into so much detail in all these areas and aspects of everything we talked about today, but I don't actually like to do that. I don't like going into such detail because I sometimes believe you're speaking to the minority when you go into all that and it can be a little bit overwhelming.   Tahlia Mynott: (01:01:37) So I like to take it back to what's really, really simple, and that's a lot of the basis of the book too. I hope that all these things are accessible and simple because the last thing we want to do is overwhelm any woman with these tools and practises and food.   Tahnee: (01:01:53) Yeah. No, I definitely feel that. It's in depth, but it's an easy read. It's digestible. It's not, like you were saying before we got on this call, often you get a postpartum book and it's like, "Wow, that all looks amazing, but I'm not going to do any of it." I'm sitting here with a baby and I can't move for the next two hours.   Tahlia Mynott: (01:02:16) Totally.   Tahnee: (01:02:17) Yeah. Gotta keep it realistic, I think. Yeah. So, where can people get a copy of this? Because you guys self-publish, which is awesome and the way of the future for someone who's from publishing.   Tahlia Mynott: (01:02:28) Which is quite a journey in itself, which you obviously know, but an incredible one. We learn a lot of lessons on the way. We're still learning all the time. But you can purchase it via our website, which is www.nourishingthosewhonurture.com. We've had such an overwhelming amount of support, which has been absolutely beautiful, so we've actually had a few wholesalers take us on. Yeah, which is incredible.   Tahlia Mynott: (01:02:58) We actually haven't reached out to anyone because we've just been overwhelmed by all the support we're getting. There's a few fertility practitioners and actually TCM practitioners and a few other places you might see us, but mainly via our website at this point.   Tahnee: (01:03:15) Yeah. That's so great. And you guys are on social media. I'll link to all of your different platforms, but, so your work, if people want to talk to you about your nutrition work, that's through Luna Holistic, yeah?   Tahlia Mynott: (01:03:27) Yeah. That's @lunaholisticnutrition. I've actually in my bio got all my other little avenues in there as well, so you can link to me through all those spots. Yeah.   Tahnee: (01:03:38) Okay, awesome. Yeah. Well, I think we're going to have Caitlin on the podcast as well because-   Tahlia Mynott: (01:03:42) Amazing.   Tahnee: (01:03:42) ... she's got her own crazy journey to share.   Tahlia Mynott: (01:03:45) And she is so incredible, Caitlin, who I co-authored it with. She's just, you know those women who

Ben Newman - Uncommon Leadership during Uncommon Times -- Ben Newman is a highly regarded Performance Coach, International Speaker and Best-Selling Author, whose clients include Fortune 500 companies around the world, business executives, sales organizations and professional athletes in the NFL, PGA, NBA, MLB, UFC and NCAA.   Ben serves as a Mental Conditioning Coach for the 18-time National Champion Alabama Crimson Tide football team and has worked with players from the last 3 Super Bowl Champion teams. He was recently selected by Influencive.com as one of the TOP 10 Motivators in Sports and Real Leaders Magazine selected him as one of their 2019 and 2020 TOP 50 Speakers in the World.   In 2021 Ben's highly anticipated new book UNCOMMON LEADERSHIP will be released and through the adversities of Covid-19. The BNC Speakers group and BNC Coaching group have had a tremendous impact on organizations finding alternative ways to drive growth.   His clients have included: Microsoft, United States Army, Anheuser-Busch InBev, Quicken Loans, Miami Dolphins, MARS Snackfoods, Kansas State Football, St. Louis Cardinals, North Dakota State Bison Football, Northwestern Mutual, AFA Singapore, Mass Financial Group, Wells Fargo Advisors, Great West Life Canada, Boston Medical Center, Boys & Girls Club of America, St. Croix, Missouri Tigers Basketball, New York Life, The University of Iowa and The Minnesota Vikings…as well as thousands of executives, entrepreneurs, athletes and sales teams from around the globe.   Ben's authentic, powerful, and engaging storytelling has become internationally recognized and he has shared the stage with Jerry Rice, Ray Lewis, Tony Dungy, Colin Powell, Brian Tracy, Ken Blanchard, Jon Gordon, Dr. Jason Selk, Floyd Little, Aeneas Williams, Walt Jocketty and other leaders and legends in the world.   Ben lives in his hometown of St. Louis, Missouri with the true measure of his success, his wife, Ami, and their children, J. Isaac and Kennedy Rose. You can learn more about Ben at www.BenNewman.net or follow him on Social Media @ContinuedFight. -- SPONSORS Chili Sleep Welcome to the BEST night of sleep, EVERY night!!! Wellness isn't all about having the perfect diet or the best trainers. It's about recovering + adding to your overall health with sufficient quality sleep. Cooling in the middle of the night not only keeps you sleeping but can also up to double your deep sleep. You pay more for cooling your home in six months than you do for a chili pad or ooler that can last for a long long time! Honestly the biggest difference maker I ever made in optimizing my sleep to the MAX!   NURSE20  20%  Cube Sleep System with Chilipad® Cool Mesh™ NURSE15   15% OOLER® Sleep System with Chilipad® Cool Mesh™   Click the link below!! https://www.chilisleep.com/pages/nurse ----------- LMNT DrinkLMNT.com/DavidNurse  Popular electrolyte drinks on the market have low amounts of electrolytes and miss the mark on the “optimal ratio”. LMNT Recharge gives you more electrolytes in the ideal ratio. 1000 mgSODIUM 200 mgPOTASSIUM 60 mgMAGNESIUM WITHOUT THE DODGY STUFF What we DON'T consume is just as important as what we DO consume. No Sugar No Gluten No Fillers No Artificial Ingredients Paleo & Keto Friendly ----------- Wrkout https://www.wrkout.com/ 'WRKOUT provides the convenience of working out with your personal trainer LIVE from anywhere, on any device.' Train Your Way. No Equipment Necessary. Connect and train with a real live personal trainer and get started on a personalized fitness plan designed just for you. Training is delivered 100% online in a completely live, one-one-one format that connects you and your personal trainer together screen-to-screen using a browser, completely from the comfort of your home. No more driving to the gym. No more on-demand videos. I was always a gym guy - so I was skeptical about virtual training.  But It has delivered!  Let me tell you… you definitely don't need to worry about getting a good workout!  And my lifestyle is hectic!  ...with lots of travel and hotels - it used to be so hard to keep consistent... now with WRKOUT it's easy for me to get a session in with my trainer wherever I am. If you want to see what virtual personal training with a live trainer can do for you then check out WRKOUT.com, tell them I sent you and you'll get your first 3 sessions free and 20% off your first training package!"       Assault Fitness https://glnk.io/k5p5/davidnursenba   Magic Spoon CODE -  DAVIDNURSE magicspoon.com/davidnurse   

Jonathan Walker, Johnnie to his friends, has been making Scotch for hundreds of years. It was probably your first Scotch, whether it was red, black, or Blue. Honestly, it feels like the Budweiser of Scotch. You'll find it anywhere and everyone's had it. Is there more to this brand than the marketing, we'll look at that more. And it should go without saying, but we'll have a drink.

You might be asking yourself, isn't it the shadow realm? The truth is, if this were a normal MMA podcast, the answer would be "yes." But this isn't a normal MMA podcast. You knew that already though. Honestly who even reads these? Slide in my DMs if you do. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/fightingwithmyself/support

Show Noted Episode 335: Them Creepy Ass Kids (Spooktacular 2021) This week Host Dave Bledsoe just wants your creepy ass kid to STOP STARING AT HIM! (It isn't the kid's fault, they've just never seen a drunk man take a dump in the sandbox before!) On the show this week we keep Spooktacular 2021 rolling with talkies of kids who see ghosts and remember their past lives! (As if this one life isn't bad enough!) Along the way we learn all we never wanted to know about the Holy Ghost (We call him God's Goon!) and from there we dive right into spooky tales of kids who see dead people! (Spoiler Alert: Bruce Willis was dead all along!) Then we take a peek into the fascinating world of kids who remember their past lives! (Honestly, this is a legit thing with real scientists studying it!) Of all the stupid paranormal nonsense we've covered on this show, we finally find one we can't debunk outright by just saying the people involved are either liars or morons. (Though, we cannot definitely say they are NOT either!) Our Sponsor this week is Tangina Barrons' Housekeeping Service, your house will be clean physically AND spiritually. We open the show with Eddie Murphy explaining why only White People stay in haunted houses and close with Night Sabers who have a question for you. Show Theme: https://www.jamendo.com/track/421668/prelude-to-common-sense The Show on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheHell_Podcast The Show on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/whatthehellpodcast/ www.whatthehellpodcast.com Give us your money on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/Whatthehellpodcast The Show Line: 347 687 9601 Closing Music:https://youtu.be/bw5zXJ59Oi0?t=57 We are a proud member of the Seltzer Kings Podcast Network! http://seltzerkings.com/ Citations Needed:   Why do so many kids ‘see ghosts'? We asked some psychologists. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2019/10/28/why-do-so-many-kids-see-ghosts-we-asked-some-psychologists/ Here's Why Children Are More Sensitive To Spirits Than Adults https://thoughtcatalog.com/emily-heron/2019/11/heres-why-children-are-more-sensitive-to-spirits-than-adults/ SERIOUS] What was your creepy, unexplainable story as a child that was confirmed by your parents to have happened? https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ixk1ox/serious_what_was_your_creepy_unexplainable_story/ Reddit Stories https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ixk1ox/serious_what_was_your_creepy_unexplainable_story/g67w45m/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ixk1ox/serious_what_was_your_creepy_unexplainable_story/g6b65er/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1d2v7i/parents_of_reddit_what_is_the_creepiest_thing/c9mhcrw/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/mkru9p/parents_what_spooky_past_life_memory_did_your_kid/gtj02f5/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 Dr Jim Tucker https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/dops-staff/jim-tuckers-bio/ https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/our-research/children-who-report-memories-of-previous-lives/ https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/wp-content/uploads/sites/360/2017/04/REI42-Tucker-James-LeiningerPIIS1550830716000331.pdf Chilling Reincarnation Stories: Meet 6 People Who Lived Before https://www.rd.com/article/chilling-reincarnation-stories/ Creepy Things Kids Have Said About Their Past Lives https://www.ranker.com/list/kids-past-lives-stories/mariel-loveland Uncited Additional Reading:   https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/dops-media/video-reincarnation-research/ https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/feeling-too-much/201412/children-who-seemingly-remember-past-lives https://slate.com/human-interest/2020/10/creepy-toddler-should-you-run.html https://www.scarymommy.com/your-kid-sees-ghosts/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Paranormal/comments/5rm3ig/any_stories_of_your_children_seeing_ghosts/?sort=new Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

WE'RE BACK B*TCHES. Welcome to Season 2. Today we're talking about BDE and some sort of COVID variant that comes from....Sharks? Honestly, just have a headphone warning because we forgot how sensitive the mics are. Enjoy...or not?

It's been awhile. Are we back at 100%? We'll see. Honestly if you're reading this you are a stronger person than I am. And Dawson. And anyone really. But we hope you enjoy none the less whoever you are.

We're very sorry, we truly are, because two thirds through this week's podcast Alex and Jesse make the biggest mess of the Endless Starch. Honestly, it's embarrassing. Thankfully, there's plenty of other good stuff to fill you ears with, from the latest info on Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, Ted Lasso season 2 thoughts and The Definitive Review of Far Cry 6.

In this interview former NFL player, American Ninja athlete, and transformational public speaker Anthony Trucks breaks down the three phases of his "Shift Method".  See, Shift, Sustain.  And the best part, he gives actionable steps within each phase.  You can literally listen to this interview and begin to transform your life.  And he tells amazing stories about crushing quarterbacks in front of 50,000 people!  Um…it's amazing. Administrative: (See episode transcript below)Check out Anthony Trucks here: https://anthonytrucks.com/Take his Identity Quiz that helped me so much here: https://go2.bucketquizzes.com/sf/4e63da08Get his book and free gifts here: https://identityshiftbook.com/Check out the Tools For A Good Life Summit here: Virtually and FOR FREE https://bit.ly/ToolsForAGoodLifeSummitStart podcasting!  These are the best mobile mic's for IOS and Android phones.  You can literally take them anywhere on the fly.Get the Shure MV88 mobile mic for IOS,  https://amzn.to/3z2NrIJGet the Shure MV88+ for  mobile mic for Android  https://amzn.to/3ly8SNjGet A Course In Miracles Here! https://amzn.to/3hoE7sAAccess my “Insiders Guide to Finding Peace” here: https://belove.media/peaceSee more resources at https://belove.media/resourcesEmail me: contact@belove.mediaFor social Media:      https://www.instagram.com/mrmischaz/https://www.facebook.com/MischaZvegintzovSubscribe and share to help spread the love for a better world!As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.Transcript: [music]0:00:06.4 Mischa Z: Welcome back to The Tools For A Good Life Summit. Right now, I would like to introduce to you Anthony Trucks, Ex-NFL player. This is a foster kid turned NFL athlete and serial entrepreneur with one serious superpower; making shift happen no matter what, by assessing the power of identity. You have overcome 30-plus traumatic life events, navigating the identity shifts that followed. Anthony has come to be known as the leading expert in shifting, which is making a shift internally to elevate how you operate externally, which in turn changes your life. Your system is called the Shift Method, and you weave together neuroscience, psychology, technology, and hard fought life lessons to help anyone with a desire for more in their life, achieve any goal they want or have ever wanted. I especially like this next sentence, "Before making it apparent that their goals were actually set far below their true potential in the first place." I love that. Like tapping into the potential that people don't even know that's there, it's beautiful.0:01:29.0 Anthony Trucks: And it's beyond, yeah.0:01:30.2 Mischa: Yeah.0:01:30.5 Anthony Trucks: Usually, it's far beyond their thoughts. We set limitations on our dreams without even knowing it.0:01:35.2 Mischa: Yeah, it's amazing. Buckle up, it's time to make shift happen.0:01:39.5 Anthony Trucks: Shift, shift and move.0:01:43.6 Mischa: [laughter] So first off, thank you so much for jumping in the fray with me. Very excited. And let's just maybe spend a few minutes, we can talk a little bit about your history and your 30-plus traumatic life events. I just... Looking at your history, one thing that jumped out at me was, you were 14, perhaps struggling a little bit in the foster home system. Yes, and then...0:02:09.6 Anthony Trucks: Yeah.0:02:10.3 Mischa: I read a note, you said, "Hey, I was a self-aware kid," and I recognized your pattern and you perhaps needed to change at that point. Maybe speak to that just quickly.0:02:21.5 Anthony Trucks: Yeah, well it's interesting, when I got to the age of 14, I'd already gone through years of crazy, We'll call it. I was given away at three, so I had a lot of different dynamics woven all into the personality and identity of who I was. It took a lot of years, but after a while, you start to see yourself for who you are. The problem is, I think, we are all self-aware, but we're aware of a self that we've crafted that's not always the most positive, so that's where why we beat ourselves up, "And we're not that good, not that great." And I think there's a separation when you can... In a positive way, a separation when you understand who you are seeing yourself through of the filter of the world, and then who you actually are. There is a difference. And so I think at 14, 15, I was still developing that. It wasn't until I was really like 15, that I got a chance to really see who I was. And I was like, "Oh, that's who you are," 'cause prior to that moment, I saw myself in a light that wasn't the best.0:03:15.3 Mischa: And was this a conscious change? Or was it sort of it just happened and looking back on it, hindsight, you're like, "Oh." Or was it... Does that question make sense, or...0:03:31.7 Anthony Trucks: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it does make sense. It was more of a hindsight, I think it took time and in the distance, and the background to get it.0:03:38.6 Mischa: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're just on the phone there, now you wanna put the...0:03:42.3 Anthony Trucks: Yeah, there's someone at the front door, but I'm not gonna talk to him.0:03:44.9 Mischa: Okay.0:03:45.6 Anthony Trucks: Somebody delivered flowers to my house, and it was the wrong person. So I think she's taking them, which is good, I hope she takes them to the person that deserves them 'cause someone deserves them, and they were not my flowers, but I'm good now.[chuckle]0:03:58.9 Mischa: All good. I'll be able to... We'll strike that. Strike that.0:04:02.1 Anthony Trucks: Yeah, yeah. Well, we could leave it in, it would just be weird, but that's the scatter brain-brain that is my brain. I'm the only one home, so my dog started barking, I gotta like, "Is someone at the door?" So yeah.0:04:10.9 Mischa: Yeah, yeah, yeah.0:04:11.9 Anthony Trucks: Now, we're good though. That's part of my identity. I can keep rolling, man. I mean you can keep it in, you don't have to keep it in.0:04:17.9 Mischa: Yeah, no, I love it. And we'll keep rolling. I think it's good.0:04:21.0 Anthony Trucks: Yeah, it's life.0:04:21.7 Anthony Trucks: What's that?0:04:22.4 Mischa: It's life, man.0:04:23.2 Mischa: That's life, especially these days.0:04:25.7 Anthony Trucks: Yeah, seriously.0:04:27.5 Mischa: Yeah. And then of course there was the, your very brief stint in the NFL. And I think the...0:04:37.5 Anthony Trucks: Yes, three years.0:04:39.3 Mischa: Yeah, yeah, the striking part there was you only got to play in one pre-season game and then you had an injury, or?0:04:44.8 Anthony Trucks: Well, my third year, I got hurt in my first pre-season game. So my first year, second year, I was cut the first year, cut the second year, third year, I was finally looking like I was about to make the team. And then I tore my shoulder and the season was over. So that was the first pre-season game. So no, I played in games. It wasn't like I just was there for a year and out of there, but it was, it's unfortunate man, there's a lot of build up to that whole situation, but the NFL is an interesting beast. It's the highest level in the world. So any time you get to the highest level in the world for anything, I don't care if it's the highest level of the world for, I don't know, kitten sock knitting, there's gonna be crazy things that go on, 'cause you got so many people involved, it's cutthroat.0:05:25.3 Mischa: Cutthroat.0:05:26.1 Anthony Trucks: It's ruthless. It is demanding at levels that are beyond human typical logic. 'Cause the typical human, I don't think that they... And this is not like saying people are better, right? But you're not typically in a race or in a competition to be the best in the world out of seven billion people, you know what I'm saying? So you're not... You're not at that... So now that you do, it's like the average human doesn't get the logic behind, why would you subject yourself to so much difficulty and pain and anguish? Why would you do that? It doesn't make sense. And I'm like, "It's right, it doesn't make sense that I would live a mediocre life, that is one I don't want to see what I'm fully capable of." It's a back and forth, you know what I'm saying?0:06:05.6 Mischa: Yeah.0:06:06.5 Anthony Trucks: So it's not that anybody is right or wrong, it's just, what's logic. And I don't think people use that... "Well, it's not logical." No, it's not logical to your brain, and that's okay. It's not logical that you would marry that person because they're a horrible person. There's just different things that are logic, and so I just... I've got to the point of realizing in life, the beauty is the difference. What is good for me isn't good for everybody else. I'm not a good fit for everybody, and that's okay. That's completely okay, and if you can get to that point, it alleviates so much more stress and anxiety and just weirdness that happens in life.0:06:40.3 Mischa: It's so empowering, it's very empowering.0:06:42.4 Anthony Trucks: Freeing, yeah.0:06:43.1 Mischa: A Place to be. Yeah, frank, I love that. I was curious, did you have any glory moments, sort of those stadium, 50,000 people.0:06:53.2 Anthony Trucks: Did I? Oh man.0:06:55.9 Mischa: Yeah.0:06:56.1 Anthony Trucks: How many do you wanna know about, man?0:06:57.3 Mischa: Tell me a couple. Tell me, I wanna know.0:07:00.7 Anthony Trucks: Here's a good one. Here's a good one. Here's a good one. It's two. These two are gonna be Oregon ones 'cause I had fun in Oregon. I had fun everywhere else but Oregon was a good one. So there's one play where we're playing against Arizona State, they had come to our house, junior year, and I'm trying to find, we're trying ball, right? And what happens, it was junior year, it's what it was. And they're at our house and we gotta beat them, we're trying to obviously make our way to get to another level and trying to get some ball game stuff going on, and they come to our house. And there's just this one specific play to where if they line up a certain way I blitz, and if they shift out of that, I don't blitz anymore because they have an extra person. Because if I blitz, somebody's open, so we'd be screwed. It's like 3rd and 12 or something, and the ball is... They get up to the ball, they get lined up. I'm supposed... Slits, they move. I don't realize it. So I am supposed to cover and in my head, I'm like, "I'm going, I'm going, I'm going, I'm going, I'm going."0:07:52.5 Anthony Trucks: I can see in the video, my line back with a mic sitting next going, "Don't go." You could see his hand motion, but it's Austin Stadium and Austin Stadium is one of the loudest in the country. You can't hear anything. So you gotta know it, and I'm just dialed, "I'm gonna get this dang court," as my head's here. And all of a sudden like you can see me in the balls hike, and I take off. Now, I don't know how that's happened, but their right guard was the guy who's supposed to guard me, guard or tackle, completely misses me, doesn't whatever it is, and the quarterback rolls out to me, and as he's rolling out, I barely... And he gets like a step away, I have to leave my feet, and if both of my hands don't grab this man in mid-air and grab him like a carnival game. You Know. I jump out, I'm in full Superman, I get one hand on his shoulder, one hand on his hip, I take him down and I celebrate, and the whole stadium just erupts, turn over on run downs, and we get the ball back. It was crazy. That was one of them. Another one...0:08:52.6 Mischa: So first of, wait, wait a minute. So that's on accident that that happens?0:08:56.0 Anthony Trucks: Oh yeah. After the play, if you look at the video, we have it after the play, I'm cheering my linebacker guy comes up, grabs my helmet, and you can see him yelling at me, "You've messed up, but you didn't mess up. Great job. Don't do that ever again."[chuckle]0:09:07.5 Mischa: That's so good. Okay, next one. Okay.0:09:09.8 Anthony Trucks: Yeah, and then other one was, we're playing against... So at my senior year, I'm balling against... All the teams are playing. I end up leading my senior year, the Pack-10 at the time, in sacks, tackles for loss, forced fumbles and fumbles recovered, I was like 6th in total tackles, but I missed a game against USC to a high ankle sprain, but I was balling that year. And I was doing well, I had three sacks against ASU, as a matter of fact, the next year at their place, and so I'm feeling good about myself and my coach ran a meeting one time we were about to play Cow, Cow is coming up to Oregon. And I'm talking I'm proud of how good I am, he's like great job. He goes, "Hey I don't want you to think you're the greatest," he says, "You ain't the greatest until you go in there, you sack, you force a fumble, you recovered the fumble, you pick it up and score a touchdown. Then you can start talking, right? So he says this and he's serious, but joking at the same time.0:10:00.5 Mischa: Of course.0:10:00.6 Anthony Trucks: This was like early in the week. Now we come to the game, I was like the second or third quarter, I can't remember what it was. And they line me up and they give me a blitz, so I'm like, "I'm gonna go get this guy," right? And in my head, I'm not thinking about what he said earlier in the week, I'm just doing my thing. So I come around the bend and the running back goes to block me. Somehow, he misses me completely. I sidestep him, he goes flying by. So I go up, the quarterback doesn't see me, blind sight, sack him. Forced ball comes out, forced the fumble. Fumbles on the ground. We both go to the ground. I recovered the fumble. Now it's college football, so your knee is down, so I didn't score a touchdown. I mean, the whole crowd's erupted. Everybody is crazy. Everybody's... I'm excited, I come to the sideline. I'm high five'ing. Hey man. Hey man, I come to a coach. He looks me dead in eyes, and he goes, "But you didn't score a touchdown." That was Don Kellum.0:10:54.0 Mischa: Ruthless. Don.0:10:54.3 Anthony Trucks: Ruthless dude. That's how he was. He was the hard-nosed dude. But he...0:10:57.3 Mischa: That's cold-blooded.0:10:57.9 Anthony Trucks: Yeah, I got a whole bunch of weird ones like that. I got stuff from the NFL, High School. We got a whole bunch, but those are two of my fun ones.0:11:01.3 Mischa: That's beautiful. Yeah. And so when you hurt your shoulder, and career is over, that's pretty deflating to go from those highs to those lows, obviously.0:11:14.5 Anthony Trucks: Pretty much though. Yeah, you go from being somebody to being nobody, at least in your head, internally. Any time a human being has put their heart into something, whether it's being a parent and the kid goes to college, leave the military, you leave sports, you lose a job, you leave a job, you sell a business. When you no longer can show up in the capacity of that role anymore, you lose a sense of yourself. And so for me, it was football and I've lost a sense of myself in that realm, and so yeah, I definitely had a little downward spiral, we'll call it.0:11:43.0 Mischa: Yes, and then you were able to make it through a dark time, come out the other side. Have a pivot point where, "Hey, I think coming through that perhaps close to suicide moment," yeah?0:12:00.3 Anthony Trucks: Most definitely. Yeah, unfortunately.0:12:01.9 Mischa: Yeah, unfortunately, it's a dark place to be. So you create a tool, which I'm staring at, at least the result of the tool, so now you...0:12:12.2 Anthony Trucks: One of them.0:12:12.7 Mischa: What's that?0:12:12.8 Anthony Trucks: Yeah, it's one of them for sure. I make a whole bunch of weird stuff now.0:12:15.5 Mischa: Yeah, cool. Oh, go ahead.0:12:17.5 Anthony Trucks: That's a good tool you got right there. That's the slow or go identity. It's a good grid right there.0:12:22.3 Mischa: Yeah, it's great. I just wanna tell you that, as I said before we started recording that you are very influential in me helping get the summit.0:12:33.1 Anthony Trucks: Nice.0:12:34.2 Mischa: Continuing with the summit process, because I took your little... You go to... Anybody can do this. They can go to Anthonytrucks.com and click on the what's my identity type button.0:12:46.8 Anthony Trucks: Easy.0:12:47.8 Mischa: Yeah, super easy. And the quiz I was taking it like... Yeah, we'll see. Honestly, I was like, "Yeah, what's this?" And I took it and that it was right on the money, my friend, and I was [0:13:00.4] ____.0:13:00.4 Anthony Trucks: Is it kinda weird?0:13:00.4 Mischa: Yes, it's very weird. Turns out, I hate to admit it, but I will, I'm a dabbler. And so it helped me... One thing you have on the dabbler is to find little successes to help propel you forward and to have a contingency plan for when you go into that dark spot, that shiny object.0:13:27.2 Anthony Trucks: Yeah, 'cause dabblers are people who chase opportunity, but they shut down in oppositions sometimes.0:13:31.3 Mischa: Yes.0:13:31.7 Anthony Trucks: So in order to push forward to be a doer, all you have to do is spend time doing more, which means you have to tackle the oppositions.0:13:39.6 Mischa: Yeah, perfect. Love it. So that moment helped me progress forward with my summit, 'cause it's lots of inviting and potentials for rejection and stretching, right?0:13:53.2 Anthony Trucks: Yeah, I agree.0:13:54.3 Mischa: So thank you for that, Anthony.0:13:54.4 Anthony Trucks: You're very welcome, man. What it's for? What I made it for, man. Yeah.0:13:57.8 Mischa: Yeah. So that was... I just... Beautiful. So I'm gonna get to the point here. So you're gonna answer a question for me. I'm gonna set up a scenario and why we're all here. So here's the scenario. We've got somebody... And it sounds like you have been through it multiple times in your life, so you are gonna be familiar with it, so we've got... Let's look at life, the three-legged stool, relationships, finance and health, and then... Yep, now, so now someone who is successful or once successful, and they... You have two legs of those stool come out from under you, that can be a very dark place, and you were there.0:14:40.1 Mischa: And so for me, I had that. I had had success in my 20-year sales career, all of a sudden, career upheaval. I went through a divorce out of nowhere, financial distress, and both my parents died in rapid succession within two weeks of each other, and it was a very dark time. And the thing was, was that to pull myself up from my bootstraps attitude that, "Work your way through it," wasn't working. I needed extra, I needed a little nudge, I needed something like this. So my question to you is, thinking of your tool, your modality, all your bag of tricks, what are the exact next steps you would offer a person like me that was in that scenario, so that I know that I'm headed in the new, right direction, that I'll have positive momentum towards getting my life back on track?0:15:36.4 Anthony Trucks: Yeah, so the one thing that's good about this is it's not a guessing game. I think some people, they will navigate this by guessing little pieces that could be beneficial, and for me it's like, I look at the whole revamp. See you've mentioned and alluded to earlier, I've had 30-plus randomly weird situations that have... I could say each one of them would have... Has knocked other people off track for an entire lifetime.0:15:56.2 Mischa: Yes.0:15:58.7 Anthony Trucks: Very odd. It's very odd, and I didn't even think of it and notice it until I was in my early 30s, to be quite honest. I was like, somebody else brought it to the forefront and I was like, "Yeah, I did, oddly have a way of doing this, and so I'll tell you what I've done every time that that's happened to me."0:16:12.0 Mischa: Fantastic.0:16:12.7 Anthony Trucks: So I did it accidentally at first, and now I do it proactively. I think we do have that unfortunate life, we do proactively choose to eat healthy sometimes, but most of the time we react to life, we're not responding in a chosen manner. So what I've done is I've gone back and said in those moments, I needed to look at who I was, not so much what I knew or what I had access to. And in my life now, I'm always like, "I got a problem. Who is Anthony right now? My wife and I are arguing, who am I? I'm not the best father. Who am I? I'm not working out the way I'd like to, Who am I?" And there's a reason why I say, "Who am I?", not, "What do I gotta do?" Because if you are the person to do those things, you wouldn't even question what you have to do, you just do that stuff. That's just the simple nature of it. Like if I'm the person who just... If it's who I am to work out every day, I'm gonna work out every day, I'm not gonna worry about that. If it's who I am to be the most amazing, loving, caring, paying attention husband, that's who I'll be every day.0:17:09.5 Anthony Trucks: And so when someone's in that space, typically we say, "What's wrong? What do I gotta fix? What do I gotta do?" And I'm more like, "Who do you gotta be?" 'Cause if you don't realize that there's a certain core person of you running all this, then you're gonna keep repeating the same situation, you'll keep landing in the same place. And this is why a lot of my work is in identity, it's all in that realm of, "Who are you?" So what I first have people do is you have to have them see. And the see phase... It's a three-step phase called the shift method. The first stage is the see phase, and the see phase is where you get to go in and take a look at what is really going on, and it usually isn't fun to see. It's the stuff where you get exposed to the true aspect of your humanity and you go, "Yeah, I don't like that part of me," but for the first time in your life, maybe you actually accept it and go, "I gotta work on that." 'Cause not everybody does.0:17:58.4 Mischa: Oh, absolutely. It can be hard. Can I ask you a question in that regard?0:18:01.6 Anthony Trucks: Please.0:18:02.0 Mischa: So is there like... Give my audience an actionable step in that regard to...[overlapping conversation]0:18:06.7 Mischa: Yeah, absolutely.0:18:07.6 Anthony Trucks: Here we go. So this is dead serious, is we have something we call triad talks, and it's a certain series of questions in a certain order and a specific way we do it, but I'll give you the overarching. What you do is you go and select a group of questions that essentially would get to the root of you, that you don't even... That you'd be scared to hear the answer to. We'll call it that. Get to the root of the questions. And then what you do is you go find people who you know and that you like and that they're positive humans, and you ask them, "Hey, can you answer these questions for me, about me?" And this is something where there's a way you go through it to where you do certain things to where you're not actually, we'll call it, cannibalizing your ability to get great answers, but what you'll do is you'll get feedback if you do it the right way. You'll get feedback from people that is really hard to swallow.0:19:00.0 Mischa: And usable, so let's just... I wanna tackle that. So we've got step one of the see... Step one is the see phase and a tool within that is a triad talk, and so... Fantastic. So give me an example of one, two or three questions, so like...0:19:19.3 Anthony Trucks: Yeah, easy. So I guess, well, one question I ask them is, if you were to get rid of a part of me, like, okay, you'll remove a certain part of how I do things. What would it be and why? If you were to rate my... If you could do this actually. Rating is usually fun. If you were to rate and you'll give me a number based from zero to 10 on how good of a friend I am or how good of a blank I am, is a good question there. What is the most frustrating thing about me that you feel like you have to endure, and I'll never change? Like little stuff like this.0:19:56.2 Mischa: Oh, those are good.0:19:57.1 Anthony Trucks: And they let them... And you ask the questions, but you have to be prepared for the answers. You have to actually absorb those answers a certain way, and if you do it right, it will break your heart, you'll feel like you wanna retort and you can't, but you'll get gold, you'll start to see yourself, and that's I think one of the biggest gifts is to see through the veil of really what's going on that other people can see, but I'm just blind to it, there's a statement that I love is you can't see the label when you're inside the jar. And a lot of us are in that jar and we don't even know what's going on or operating.0:20:33.2 Anthony Trucks: It's like, "How come no one's coming around? 'Cause it says poison on the outside," dude.[chuckle]0:20:36.5 Anthony Trucks: Like, Have you seen yourself?[laughter]0:20:38.2 Mischa: Right. Oh my God.0:20:38.7 Anthony Trucks: You gotta figure that out.[laughter]0:20:40.4 Mischa: Oh my gosh, that is amazing.0:20:43.6 Anthony Trucks: That's one of the first pieces, man, is, is going to a level of actually, that's the tactical thing is, What in the world do I gotta work on? And then the second thing that we do is we go through the shift phase, which really is where the action is taken, we are shifting internally and making shifts actionably externally because of those internal ones. And what it allows us to do is take a look at our life and then you actually change your life, 'cause shifts make the change, right? If I wanna change the destination of a plane, I am shifting the trajectory, right? I'm not... I wouldn't call it like I'm gonna change the trajectory. You'd kinda shift it like, I'm gonna go a little bit one degree this way. And I'll change the destination, right? That's what we're doing, we're trying to change the destination in your life. It's just a shift, not crazy.0:21:25.2 Mischa: You know what's so good about that and so hopeful about that is we don't necessarily need to do a 100, we don't need to move the ship completely.0:21:33.7 Anthony Trucks: No.0:21:33.8 Mischa: Right, it's like, "Hey, let's take those next little incremental things to get us going in that right direction, Right?."0:21:40.0 Anthony Trucks: Yeah, if you go... I literally Googled this, if you were to choose to go from San Francisco to the, say, Orlando Airport, if you on the way there made a one degree shift in trajectory from the get-go you would land 40 miles south in Lakeland, Florida.0:21:57.5 Mischa: Wow.0:21:58.3 Anthony Trucks: One degree.[laughter]0:21:58.9 Anthony Trucks: Isn't that crazy?[chuckle]0:22:00.2 Mischa: It's crazy, one degree.0:22:01.0 Anthony Trucks: That's the difference. So people are like, you don't gotta go and overhaul your entire life, man, just... 'cause the plane's always in the air. It's always going somewhere. Just adjust the trajectory. It's a shift and you're good.0:22:15.1 Mischa: I love it. So let me ask, how about an actionable step in the action step phase, so you've gone out and you gave me a few questions, so give me like an action step to help make that degree change.0:22:27.7 Anthony Trucks: Oh, yeah. So it's just fun but everybody can do this. All you gotta do is ask yourself, what's that one thing that's been lingering, and I'm gonna say why this is important. Let's purpose it with this, if something didn't scare you, it wouldn't be important to you. There are things that scare you that wouldn't scare me because they're important to you, and vice versa, there's things that I would be deadly afraid, deathly afraid to do it. You wouldn't even care. Like surfing, I'm gonna get eaten by a shark. I'm not gonna do that. But you're like, "No, bro this is easy." You see what I'm saying.0:22:55.5 Mischa: Yes.0:22:56.0 Anthony Trucks: The difference is, it's because what's important to you. Now, here's the thing, if that thing is lingering didn't scare you, it would already be done by now. It just would. If I'm like, "Hey, I want a hamburger and a milkshake," and I'm not gonna feel guilty, I'm going to the store right now.[chuckle]0:23:12.1 Anthony Trucks: I'm going to get it now... Any of you've done, I'm not afraid of it, I'm looking forward to it.[laughter]0:23:16.2 Mischa: Yes. Yes.0:23:16.6 Anthony Trucks: So a lot of these ideas and things that linger for a lot of folks, they're like, "I'm good, I just gotta get... " No you're afraid of it, and that's okay.0:23:25.2 Anthony Trucks: Right? So the first action you take is in the direction of the fear, and if you don't know how to do that, you take the fear and you find ways to open it up until you find the smallest pieces of it and then start attacking the small pieces, right? It's... What is that earth invaders? When you hit the...0:23:42.7 Mischa: Oh, space invaders?0:23:42.8 Anthony Trucks: And it turns into little ones and little ones...0:23:44.0 Mischa: Yeah, yeah, yeah.0:23:44.8 Anthony Trucks: You gotta make it the small ones, that's obviously the wrong game to do that, but when you can make things small. 15 minutes, it's much easier to overcome the fear for that 15 minutes than it is to perceive, "I gotta do this for the next week. Oh my God, okay, I'm gonna do that next week," and then next week and the next month, and then... So chunk it down to the smallest minute steps and then attack it that way, but it's usually gotta be in the direction of something that scares you or could linger for too long.0:24:12.1 Mischa: So any real-life example you've seen recently or you see...0:24:14.9 Anthony Trucks: Yeah, you wanna launch a podcast, you wanna launch a summit, right? Summit or podcast, right? And I'm not saying you're afraid of it at all, but I'm just saying, this is what... Some people are probably afraid of doing it. Yeah, he's maybe a little bit afraid, right?[laughter]0:24:25.8 Mischa: Yeah, maybe.0:24:26.5 Anthony Trucks: So you didn't just one day go, "Alright, I'm gonna do everything today," you're like, "Alright, I'm gonna send an email first." Small step.0:24:32.6 Mischa: Yeah.0:24:33.0 Anthony Trucks: Write the email, send it out, you wanna do it. Okay, great, okay, okay, now I gotta buy some equipment, I gotta figure out what the email thing look like. I gotta say, Okay, how do I time this? How am I gonna deliver it? How people are gonna opt in? When they opt in what are they gonna get? How I set a checkout page? How am I gonna get 'em to pay for this? Do I do a PayPal? This is all the stuff that goes into it. It's minute little steps, but you didn't just wake up one day, say I'm gonna figure it out today, you looked at little by little by little, and chunked it apart to where now it's real, it's live and it's coming to fruition.0:25:01.7 Mischa: I love that. Yes, thank you. Perfect, so then, so we've got the see phase, the action phase or the stuff... What did you define?0:25:11.2 Anthony Trucks: Shift. The see and shift.0:25:12.3 Mischa: Yes, yes.0:25:12.8 Anthony Trucks: And the last stage is sustain.0:25:19.7 Mischa: Sustain.0:25:19.9 Anthony Trucks: The sustain phase. See, Shift, Sustain.0:25:20.7 Mischa: See, shift, I couldn't read my own writing. See, shift.0:25:25.3 Anthony Trucks: Me either.[laughter]0:25:25.4 Mischa: Sustain. Sustain. So tell me about sustain.0:25:27.2 Anthony Trucks: Sustain phase is the one where... We as people unfortunately get to the point of we have success and then we stop doing what it took to get there because it either wasn't who we were, we just were pushing, or we got lazy. We're like, "I'll have this and maintain it'll be there," but we don't realize that you've gotta sustain the amount of effort to sustain a level of success and if you wanna have more success, you have to sustain the drive to continue to keep achieving more. So what happens is some people will... Like I had my gym business. I would focus on, "Let me get past this hump, I gotta make some money." And I would do all these things to get to the point that I make that money to pay the bills and go, "Oh, I can relax now." And then three months later, I'm in the exact same place. I gotta fight real hard because every time I would get to the top, I would stop doing what it took to get to the top.0:26:13.7 Anthony Trucks: Imagine if I just kept doing that stuff, the amount of momentum. So people don't have sustainability in life and it's not because they don't know how or don't have the skillsets, they just stop when they feel like they don't need to have that kind of effort and push 'cause they're not looking at shifting into being that person. And there's reasons that this happens. I think sometimes we lose sight of why we're doing things. It's not anchored consciously as to why I'm moving every day, I'm just getting up and doing it 'cause it's what my job is now.0:26:41.0 Mischa: Yep.0:26:41.0 Anthony Trucks: And then also I think sometimes we float around the wrong people. I think the hive, the environment's difficult 'cause there's a statement of, "You are the average of the five people you surround yourself with." And I think it's halfway right. I think you're the average of the expectations of the five people you surround yourself with. If you think about it, if I wanna... Say I have a million dollars and I wanna make $2 million dollars. Well, there's people I could hang out with that maybe have a million dollars, but what if it's a person that makes a half a million dollars, but they wanna make 2 and the million dollar people are content?0:27:15.7 Mischa: Yeah.0:27:16.5 Anthony Trucks: Well, the expectation of the half a million dollar person, they're like, "Look, I'm not shooting for 1, I'm shooting for 2." "Well, I'm shooting for 2 also. Let's figure it out." Whereas the million dollar people are like, "We've got a million dollars, we're cool." There's nothing wrong with them, but for what I want, I need to be around the expectations of what it takes to get there 'cause that half a million dollar person is not gonna let me sit idle at 1.2 or 1.3. They're gonna be like, "No, you keep pushing. You gotta get to 2." Whereas the 1 million dollar people, they're like, "Well, you're good. Slow down. What are you doing? Are you crazy?" So I think when you get into the sustain phase, if I'm gonna sustain my trajectory, I must consistently have a hive of people who have expectations at a level that are at or above where I wanna have them myself.0:28:00.0 Mischa: That's a great... I like the expectation piece in there because the... I like that added bit because the perception is, "If I hang out with a millionaire, bam, that's gonna... That is gonna help me elevate." Not that that's the all end all, but as an example.0:28:16.3 Anthony Trucks: Yeah. You'll get there. You can, but then, you can, but it's hard to get past there. Not that you can't, but it's hard to get past there 'cause you'll get to the point of... Think about what I just... Logically. "I got a million. Alright, cool. I'm gonna hang out, put my feet up. I'm gonna golf with Bob." And I'm like, "No, bro, I wanna make a $2 million dollar business. I can't go golfing and do that. I gotta go keep working." You know what I mean? There's just things you gotta look at. And so it is. It's an expectation piece and then if you don't sustain it, man, you'll lose it.0:28:44.8 Anthony Trucks: You'll just lose to be in place. And then I think at a certain level, for me, the sustain phase is, "I gotta find out why I gotta keep growing." And what I've found is anybody that's had a nominal level of success, there's a certain heart, for the majority in my opinion, to give back. They thrive, they wanna do well, and I found that there's this thing called marginal utility. And if I have 10 hamburgers, well, if I eat one 'cause I'm starving, that first one is delicious. Now the second one, it's still pretty good. Third one, I don't know. Fourth one, I can't do it, I can't do it. I got seven more hamburgers, what am I doing right now? I wanna feel good though. What do I do? I can't keep eating hamburgers.0:29:23.7 Anthony Trucks: Well, if I wanna feel good, what if I give them to somebody else who's starving? Different kind of good, but I feel good, so I give him the hamburgers. He does the same thing. He eats three and he's like, "Alright, I got four more." He keeps on passing it along. Well, the idea is if you do that, you'll notice, "Wow, I really like how it feels to give back and to serve. Who do I have to be, to be able to do that at a higher level?" And guess what it does? Puts you right back to seeing who you are and who that next person is that can do that. It's a cycle.0:29:54.6 Mischa: I think that's such a great space to work from as well. It's initially where perhaps when we're younger or what have you, it's that financial, build the family, find that success that pulls us forward and then it can be such a great place to work from, to shift to that, "Alright, how can I be of service on a broader scale?" So that's a great... That's a great thought as far as sustaining. So what are two or three habits that you have to help propel you on a daily basis or perhaps to find that...0:30:38.8 Mischa: That service piece, yeah. Go.0:30:40.3 Anthony Trucks: Yeah, yeah. So here's one thing is I fall in love with the day, not the destination. I think sometimes we spend way too much time looking at, "Well, am I there yet? Am I there yet?" like a 5-year-old in the car. But I love the days and I have a certain amount of space and time in my day that I operate and I love it. I love to be in motion. I think all humans... We love the motion. There's magic in the motion. There's something too... Like I can sit here with all this stuff off in my office and hang out, but there's more joy talking to you. Just like you. I'm sure before you could be in your house and be content, but when we get on like this, it's a different kind of joy we get to hang out in. There's no anxiety, there's no stress, we're just chatting, two guys talking. This is the motion of the magic, right?0:31:25.2 Mischa: Yeah.0:31:25.6 Anthony Trucks: And so what I look at is I need to be always in a position where I'm doing things that are keeping me moving, but the right things. So when you say, "How do I keep that consistent?" I just... I have a certain block of my day. I love being in the groove of working, but I make sure the things inside that groove are the ones that still scare me, are the ones that move that move the needle, are the ones that are useful to what I'm doing and habitually I just commit to falling in love with the day. And if I do that enough and if I have things that I enjoy, eventually, 'cause they're the right things, I end up at a destination and then I'm like, "Cool. I wanna get back to climbing the mountain." You spend way less time at the peak than you do on the journey. I want to enjoy the journey. So that's a big piece of it. And then if I'm hiking a mountain, I don't wanna be with a person who won't shut up that's annoying.0:32:17.9 Anthony Trucks: I wanna be with people who are like... Cheer me on, who could have similar conversations. 'Cause the thing about whenever you're out for a hike, time flies by with great conversation.0:32:27.6 Mischa: It does.0:32:28.6 Anthony Trucks: It melts away. So if I'm gonna be on this hike and I'm gonna enjoy the journey, I wanna have people that I can enjoy it with. And then when I get to the peak, I get to celebrate. They're taking a picture of me, I'm taking a picture of them. We get some lady I don't know to take a picture of us. It's this cool experience because you have the people and you are loving every step of the journey, quite literally.0:32:49.3 Mischa: Yeah, that's great. Do you calendar your sustainability, those activities?0:32:57.3 Anthony Trucks: Oh, man. I have a very ridiculous dialed in calendar for how my life is. It's right here. It's like my life is rolling it's... But here's the beauty of it, I have the method I use that I teach people, it boils down to execution. I think that's the one thing. Some people give a lot of insight, information, theory, and then leave it on you to figure out how to make it real in your life. Whereas for me, we teach, we talk, we boil things down to very specific actions, and even then I don't leave you hanging. Then I'm like, "Alright, great. We're gonna go... We're gonna put them in your life now, we're gonna make sure... " I just had a client call today, we broke down her entire morning routine down to the exact hour and a half she'll do it. I think an hour and half's kinda long, but for her it fits. But the idea's like I'm not just saying, "Go make a morning routine," and she's like, "Alright," and then walks away. We work through all of it, every piece, so there's understanding for it and the timing behind it, and then it's like, "Alright, now we take the action on it."0:33:54.6 Anthony Trucks: And it's that action that creates the difference, it creates a change. And so when I'm doing these things, I'm not just theory, man. I'm like, "I want you to finally have these things real in your life, because when they are that's when the true confidence comes in, the transformation comes in. It's not in the planning." We as humans feel better there. I think people fall in love with a safe work. "I wanna start a business." "Okay, start a business. What are you gonna do?" "Okay, I'm gonna get my business cards done, I'm gonna make a landing page, I'm gonna think of a name, I'm gonna, follow the... " That's not the stuff that you need to do to make the business. It sounds like it is. It's the safe work, though. You could do it in your house at night, making a little website, it looks pretty.0:34:29.0 Anthony Trucks: But the scary thing that actually makes it a real business, not you in the background, or having a hobby, getting bored, is when you can go, "Okay, pay me for this. This is what it's gonna cost you to actually get this improvement in your life." It's a business and that's the scary work. Now, the safe work and the fun work that has a place, but that's not what does it, man. And that's the thing is people are afraid of doing the scary work. They don't understand the sacrifice that it takes sometimes.0:34:58.3 Mischa: Yeah. It sounds like you are not only gifted at doing that scary work yourself, but you've systemized a way to...0:35:08.0 Anthony Trucks: Oh, very much.0:35:09.7 Mischa: Yeah, to pass it on to other people.0:35:10.2 Anthony Trucks: I have to. If I don't, then I'm just talking. If I was to sit here and give people all this information and not give them some way to apply it, I have done a massive disservice. I think we have a lot of people in this space that are doing a disservice because all they do is talk. Which means all you do is point the problem out and you inspire and motivate, but then you don't tell them what to do. It's kind of like people leave events and they're, "I'm excited. I'm gonna do this." And they're all gripping the steering wheel, they can't... They go to bed and one day they wake up like, "Where did it go? What do I do now? I don't feel completely inspired. I forgot how I'm supposed to feel, what's the next step?" And then it turns into this, I think, an immediate switch, it turns into, I don't know, sadness, a lack of self-esteem because I'm like, "Man, I didn't even do anything. I suck." And now it's even worse.0:36:00.5 Mischa: Yeah, it's like that emotional roller coaster, right? The one that... Yeah, I get that.0:36:05.2 Anthony Trucks: Yeah. I'll inspire you, but I'm gonna be very clear. The real motivation comes from “can you get up in the morning and do something?” And it's like that will come from, did you do it? Did you take an action? Because the moment I can give someone a guiding point and then they go execute on it, they feel amazing. It's palpable. You can't take it from them. That person is the one that's gonna get up every day because they're looking forward to that feeling. It's not how I yelled at them or that video that I made that was super cool with great drone shots. That's alright, but the thing is “is did you do something with your life that I guided you to do yourself so you created the pride that you get to keep”?0:36:42.6 Mischa: Anthony, that's beautiful. I think that that is a great place to end this section. Don't forget, we're gonna do another interview, but I just wanna say quick to everybody watching and listening to Anthony and I, if this was fantastic and you want to get more of what Anthony has to offer and see more, upgrade to the All-access pass for the bonus interview because Anthony and I are going to go even deeper. And I have a few more amazing questions and I'm gonna go let you pick what we wanna talk about. Before we end this section, is there anything that you think we missed or you wanted to say before we stop this bit?0:37:27.9 Anthony Trucks: I don't. No. I believe those who wanna be better will go join. There's always this thing that years ago someone explained to me was like, "You wanna make an investment, but you can go and try to invest in a company, right? But the best investment is always in yourself." And those who pay, pay attention, because it's worth more. And if it's worth more, you'll do more with it. So those who are like, "I really wanna commit to doing something great," yeah, go ahead and take that next step because we're gonna get in here in a second and those are the people that can raise their hand and we'll look back years ago and go, "That person is successful." Why? It's not by accident. They took those next steps.0:38:04.1 Mischa: Yeah, thank you so much for that, Anthony. And then again, a quick reminder to everybody, you can go to anthonytrucks.com, click on the, “What's my identity?” Take this test. It is awesome. It helped me. And then you can also book a call, there's a link to book a call with you. So I would encourage anybody, if they don't upgrade and see the next section, to at least click on anthonytrucks.com and take the identity type quiz.[music]——————-

On this week's episode we're continuing our Halloween Spooktacular and talking all about the various ghosts and spirits that are said to haunt Queen's Park and the Fairmont Banff Springs! -- Honestly?! is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. You can find more outstanding podcasts to subscribe to at www.frolic.media/podcasts ! Music by Purple Planet Music: www.purple-planet.com Avatars by Julie Campbell: www.thingsbyjulie.com/ Like us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/honestlypod/ Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/honestlypod Listen to us on Apple Podcasts: itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/hones…d1241566221?mt=2 Listen to us on Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/4etPaklp2SYw7g8Z4WcMWJ Follow us on Instagram: www.instagram.com/honestlypod/ Visit Our Website: thehonestlypodcast.wixsite.com/home Email Us: thehonestlypodcast@gmail.com Listen to Our Spotify Playlists: open.spotify.com/user/honestlypod

Honestly folks, we cover some pretty wild stuff with our good friend Ryan Crowe this week. We get into degloving, poop, golf ball murder, and a lot more besides. It's a hoot and a half! See Crowe online! Drunk Theatre Company | Twitter | Insta Black Lives Matter Resource List | Pro-AAPI Resource List Fight Court!

At the very end of Chapter 7 of Forever Alone (tiny spoiler alert, I guess!), I said:   We don't all have the same amount of ambition in every area of life, and that's OK. Some of us are perfectly content with a small, modest townhouse: Comfortable, safe, not flashy, but warm and homey. Honestly, my career ambitions are probably somewhere in that realm—it matters to me, but it's not where my big, big dreams have ever lived. But man, I've got skyscraper ambitions when it comes to love. And I'm not talking some ugly thing that doesn't even win skyscraper of the year award in Architectural Digest. It's gotta be beautiful and impressive and very much larger than life. I think I might have more ambition in love than just about anyone I know.   I've been sitting with this and thinking about it so much that I decided it deserved more than just a single paragraph of attention.   So, in this month's brand-new Side Chat Kristen and I are digging into …   How Passion Profiles show up outside of your career—in relationships, family, and more Examples of how our Passion Profiles differ between business and personal life Why it's OK to have varying levels of ambition across different areas of your life And of course, our ongoing debate on how many men Kristen would have to meet before she'd marry one of them (I say 25, she disagrees)   Come leave a comment after you've listened to share what your scale of ambition across the different areas of your life!   P.S. We're taking a short podcasting break while I'm jaunting around the UK, so we'll see you again on Friday the 29th for our Bonus Book Club episode about Effortless! Until then, if you get bored, pull up Clarity on Fire on your podcast feed, close your eyes, and scroll until you feel the urge to stop—consider that the episode you needed to listen to. ;)   WANT TO READ A WITCHY BOOK WITH US?   The Clarity on Fire Community is hosting a book club on Sunday, October 24, at 7:00pm EST! This month, in honor of the season, we're reading a novel—The Nature of Witches—and getting together to discuss it.   Join the $3/month tier (The Spark) for access to occasional bonus episodes and other special content. Think of this like our virtual “tip jar.” If you're not interested in the community aspect, but appreciate our work and want to send a little love our way every month, plus get access to bonus content, this is for you!   Join the $6/month tier (The Flame) for occasional bonus content, access to monthly patron-only Zoom meetups (hosted by our Community Ambassador, Alyx), quarterly Zoom hangs with Krachel, and Discord server where members chat in depth!   Become a patron, here!   LISTEN TO THESE EPISODES NEXT   Side Chat: The 4 Passion Profiles (December 2018)   Sorting Harry Potter characters by Passion Profile (2019)   Side Chat: How to figure out what to do with your life (June 2018)   Side Chat: Does life purpose even exist? (January 2021)   LINKS   Leave us a comment on this episode   Take the Passion Profile Quiz   Submit your question for a future episode of Dear Krachel    Join our Patreon community   Check out our YouTube channel

Mr. Gene and I are back. Honestly, we didn’t have a plan on what to talk about since it’s been a long time since we last recorded a podcast. What you are about to hear is a very real conversation that Gene and I have had on many occasions either in person and over the phone. … The Monster Scifi Show – Scifi Potpourri Read More » The post The Monster Scifi Show – Scifi Potpourri appeared first on The ESO Network.

Host: Andrew Crowe  |  Released Thursday, October 14, 2021 1.      Honestly, I could have put all four of these together as they all connect together. 2.      If you are lacking in one area, you will likely miss out on being empathetic. 3.      We should try to understand what someone else is feeling. a.       Let me […]

Host: Andrew Crowe  |  Released Thursday, October 14, 2021 1.      Honestly, I could have put all four of these together as they all connect together. 2.      If you are lacking in one area, you will likely miss out on being empathetic. 3.      We should try to understand what someone else is feeling. a.       Let me […]

Honestly... I don't know what this show was about. It was ALL OVER the place. But it had Marsh, Kevlar, and The Sports Beard having drinks and talking hijinks! Come have. drink with us at the Dive Bar of the IWC! Sponsored by Flow State Coffee NooWave.co promo code "cheers" ---------------------------------------   Marsh, Kevlar and The Sports Beard (@Beard_Sports) discuss this past week in wrestling.. Recorded October 13, 2021 Just a couple of friends having drinks and talking wrestling. We review WWE and AEW. As well as go over what's happening in the wrestling news. We don't pretend to have inside knowledge and we still seem to guess whats happening next with about the same accuracy as everyone who claims they do. So tune in and tip your glass with us as we cover what we like, what we don't, and how we see things from the outside looking in! If you've got no one to talk wrestling with then be we will be your Drinking Buddies!   Twitter for hosts @RefMarsh @Kevlarontherox @CrybabyKlump @AmandaJayne https://www.twitch.tv/wrestlingontherocks for live streams every Tuesday and Thursday where you can join the chat and be apart of the show! www.prowrestlingtees.com/wrestlingontherocks to support! Official website WrestlingOnTheRocks.com!   Lifelong wrestling fans finally got together on WrestleMania 2019 to record what they do after work-- drink and talk wrestling! ​

This is a very special episode! We hear this a lot, "I can't deal with Amazon!" or "Amazon won't help me!"  And guess what? We face this, too! Penny's new release, From Book to Bestseller, was denied for publishing by KDP and this episode breaks down what happens when you have to battle the 10,000 pound gorilla, plus constructive and helpful ways to work within the (often confusing) Amazon system and how to WIN.   October Promotion:Book to Bestseller Pre-Order Giveaway and Prizes!It's finally here – Book to Bestseller: The Savvy Author's Guide to Book Promotion, Smart Branding, and Longterm Success is up on Amazon for pre-order and that means it's time to announce all the fantastic promotions we've been planning to celebrate!Honestly, this has been the most exciting release yet, so I encourage you to read through this post twice to ensure you know what's on the table!

We had the pleasure of interviewing The Zolas over Zoom video! From of the far-flung shores of British Columbia and two decades late for the cover of Select Magazine, The Zolas prove with Come Back to Life that you can take a step back to move forward.“In our jam space we started fucking around with this nostalgic vibe: like a warped memory of the Britpop music we obsessed over as kids but never got to make. Eventually it seemed obvious we had to follow that feeling and make an album of it. I had just come off a long period of writing pop music for other people [including ‘L.A. Hallucinations' from Carly Rae Jepsen's critically acclaimed album Emotion] and a co-writing trip in Europe [with artists such as Starsailor's James Walsh] and it was a spiritual thing to be in a dank room playing loud with our band again.”Several years since the release of 2016's radio-smashing, Juno-nominated breakthrough Swooner, the group was ready to start a new cycle and a new direction. “We thought it was hilarious to make a Britpop record at a time when nobody but us is listening to that,” Gray muses. “but we have our little clique and that made us more excited to do what we want and say fuck it to how it might be received.”The frontman describes Come Back to Life as a collision between the soundtracks for Danny Boyle's culture-jamming Trainspotting and Baz Luhrmann's radical re-imagining of Romeo + Juliet. “This is the 21st century heir to those soundtracks,” he declares. But for all the swaggeringly self-confident vocals and soaring wonderwall guitars on epics like “Yung Dicaprio” and “Miles Away”, the Zolas aimed for more than carbon copying a classic sound.“There's so many sounds we love that came out of the mid-90s UK; britpop and acid-house and trip-hop all carrying on in parallel scenes.  If felt right to cross-pollinate this album with all of that,” Gray says. “So we'd write simple songs in our jam space and then steal sounds from the Prodigy or Primal Scream or the Happy Mondays or Tricky whenever it felt good.”While Come Back to Life is an unrepentantly joyful sonic love letter to a magical time, the Zolas aren't afraid to get serious on the lyrical side of things.“Honestly every album I've ever written is about nostalgia and the apocalypse and this one's no different” Gray laughs, “but looking at it now these songs feel really specific to our moment in time. It's a cross-section of conversations I've had  and overheard in these past few years. Conversations we've all been a part of whether we like it or not.”Come Back to Life touches on everything from waking up to Canada's appalling treatment of its First Nations (“Wreck Beach/Totem Park”) to global wealth disparity (“I Feel the Transition”) to artists being priced out of the cities they've helped make great (“Bombs Away”).Gray is at his most potently poignant on “PrEP”, which came out of a reddit thread asking users to share their first-hand accounts of the '80s AIDS epidemic. “I've cried at more than a few reddit threads, but never like this. Everybody should read this.”“My dad [playwright John MacLachlan Gray] was in theatre, so in lots of baby photos I'm being held by friends of his I don't recognize,” Gray reminisces. “One day I asked him about them, and it turns out every one of them are gone. They were probably gone within five years of the pictures being taken. Now by some miracle HIV is totally manageable and it pisses me off that we're not all out there celebrating the light at the end of such a long, dark tunnel.”Consider, then, Come Back to Life being inspired by the past on multiple levels, quite rightly making the Zolas thrilled about the band's future.“I'm dead happy just being in this band right now. We love making noise together, we're chasing the same vision, and lyrically I've never felt more on it,” Gray says with a brashness straight from the bucket-hatted heyday of Britpop. “It's nice to have a Kanye moment where you look at your output and go ‘This is the greatest shit that's coming out this year.' As cute Canadians we tend to shy away from feeling ourselves like that but it's the truth.”We want to hear from you! Please email Tera@BringinitBackwards.com.www.BringinitBackwards.com#podcast #interview #bringinbackpod #TheZolas #zoomListen & Subscribe to BiBFollow our podcast on Instagram and Twitter! 

Like it or not, the Destiny Content Vault (DCV) is back and badder than ever. Did you enjoy playing Forsaken, hunting barons, and winding your way through the Tangled Shore? Well too bad, Bungie's got new stuff to sell you. But as we look at questions of contract law, business models, good faith and more, one thing remains true - it's certainly a bold maneuver for the long time video game maker. Vault of Glass? More like vault of...in Virtual Legality. CHECK OUT THE VIDEO AT: https://youtu.be/jOaDc6O24nY #Bungie #Forsaken #Vault *** SUPPORT THE CHANNEL PATREON - https://www.patreon.com/VirtualLegality STREAMLABS - https://streamlabs.com/richardhoeg STORE - https://teespring.com/stores/hoeg-law-store *** CHAPTERS 00:00 Introduction 01:09 The Destiny Content Vault 07:34 An Expansion Forsaken 16:05 License Terms and Live Content 28:38 Good Faith and Fair Dealing 34:10 Conclusion *** Discussed in this episode: "BUILDING A VIABLE FUTURE IN DESTINY 2" Bungie Blog - June 9, 2020 https://www.bungie.net/en/News/Article/49189 "DESTINY CONTENT VAULT UPDATE" Bungie Blog - October 7, 2021 https://www.bungie.net/en-us/Explore/Detail/News/50752 "Destiny 2: Forsaken (Steam Code For PC)" Bungie Store Page https://bungiestore.com/destiny-2-forsaken-steam-code-for-pc "Embracing its destiny, a support act takes centre stage." Excerpt - Edge Magazine - NOvember 2018 https://www.magzter.com/stories/Business/Edge/High-Moon-Studios "Limited Software License Agreement" Updated "2 months ago" https://www.bungie.net/7/en/Legal/sla Nova Contracting v City of Olympia April 18, 2017 (WA) https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=2778468726736877436 "Honestly don't think you were harsh enough." Twitter Thread - October 9, 2021 - Hoeg Law https://twitter.com/HoegLaw/status/1446863328823980034 *** "Virtual Legality" is a continuing series discussing the law, video games, software, and everything digital, hosted by Richard Hoeg, of the Hoeg Law Business Law Firm (Hoeg Law). CHECK OUT THE REST OF VIRTUAL LEGALITY HERE: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1zDCgJzZUy9YAU61GoW-00K0TJOGnPCo DISCUSSION IS PROVIDED FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY AND IS NOT TO BE CONSTRUED AS LEGAL ADVICE. INDIVIDUALS INTERESTED IN THE LEGAL TOPICS DISCUSSED IN THIS VIDEO SHOULD CONSULT WITH THEIR OWN COUNSEL. *** Twitter: @hoeglaw Web: hoeglaw.com

Show Resources Here were the resources we covered in the episode: Article on LinkedIn Audience Network Measurement Error NEW LinkedIn Learning course about LinkedIn Ads by AJ Wilcox Contact us at Podcast@B2Linked.com with ideas for what you'd like AJ to cover.   Show Transcript Matched audiences aren't new in social advertising. But LinkedIn gave us something special that no other platform has. What is it you ask? Listen, find out. Welcome to the LinkedIn Ads Show. Here's your host, AJ Wilcox. Hey there LinkedIn Ads fanatics! So Facebook blew us all away by offering custom audiences back in 2013. That allowed us to upload lists of individuals for targeting of ads. It also included website retargeting through the facebook pixel, which was very cool indeed. Then Google Ads released customer match in 2015, it was a lot more limited, but still pretty cool. Ever late to the game, LinkedIn released matched audiences in 2017, with very little fanfare, but this was the most epic release to date. Not only could we upload individuals, which was a total game changer, and we can of course do website retargeting. But we got a feature that no other platform can match, account matching, or company name, uploads, whatever you want to call it. Today, we're going to discuss why this is the most important feature you'll ever use on LinkedIn Ads. This month, I listened to a podcast by a woman named Lisanne Murphy. And it's called The Marketing Matrix podcast. It's really good. If you're into Facebook ads, it inspired me to do my episodes a little bit less like a Wikipedia article where I just toss everything out there that you could ever imagine about a topic and make it so you have to take tons and tons of notes, and instead focus more on individual features that you can walk away and focus on much smaller facets of the LinkedIn Ads platform. So I would love your feedback as you listen to the next few episodes. If this is a little bit easier to listen to a little bit less Wikipediaish. Or if you still found yourself scrambling for a pen. Lee Gannon, who's a friend of mine and a friend of the show, he found out something that was pointed out to him by LinkedIn support, he was asking about skills targeting and when he found the documentation that the support was referring to, it said something about how skills targeting is done. It reads, "skills include those explicitly added by members in their skill section, as well as keywords and phrases mentioned throughout their profile and summary." Okay, just capitalizing on what this means. This means not only are we targeting people with the skills listed in their skill section that they themselves added, but LinkedIn is also apparently looking for keywords and key phrases throughout the profile. I'm imagining in your about section, or maybe even in your headline or title. It goes on to say, "LinkedIn uses modeling to infer skills from a members job title and job description." Alright, this was a big shocker to me. And actually, one that I don't know is actually out there in the wild. I have a feeling that this is actually not something that has been rolled out yet, but probably will in the future. And the reason I say this is because when we have leads come in to one of our clients accounts that are of poor quality, we asked the client to bring us a link to the the client's profile, and we go figure out which campaign was targeting them, and what sort of targeting we were using. And every once in a while we will find skills targeting that brings in someone who was of lower quality, but we haven't yet experienced where when we look for the skill that we were targeting and we look down into their skills that that particular skill is not there. So that leads me to believe that this either happens very, very rarely, or it's just not happening yet. I would absolutely love it. If any of you listening, if you have any evidence of this happening, maybe a skills campaign was targeting someone that you cannot find that skill in their profile, please, please please reach out and let me know that would be really great to know. And then Rishabh Rastogi from India, he put in the LinkedIn Ads support group, which is a LinkedIn group. If you're not already a member of it, I highly recommend it. I'll link to that in the show notes. He pointed out an ad format that looks like a text ad, but it was actually in his newsfeed. And he provided a screenshot of it. It was in the newsfeed right in between two posts. And it was actually right above a promoted post, a sponsored content. And because we know sponsored content only goes at max one out of every five slots in the newsfeed and this was right above it. We know this wasn't sponsored content. So he reached out about it. And this one in particular, the headline says LinkedIn ads drive business results reach buyers with the power to act. And then it does have an image and it's around image and the call to action says Create Ad so this is obviously one that LinkedIn is using for themselves to market their own LinkedIn Marketing Solutions products. This was pretty interesting. And I would absolutely love it if we got this kind of an ad format in the future, because I don't know about you, but text ads are one of my favorite ad formats on LinkedIn. They're inexpensive, they're really good for branding, they do such a good job of propping up all the other ad formats that I'm running at the time. And the only problem is that because they're way over in the right rail, and they're on desktop only, so most users aren't seeing them that they get clicked on very, very little. So if I could have a text ad that was in the newsfeed, I think that would probably be really, really powerful. And then Tamas Banki from Budapest, he shot me a private message. He saw this new ad format and wondered what it was. So what it is, it's a sponsored content post that says it's from LinkedIn. And it does say promoted. And then it asks, How familiar are you with and then lists the company name. And then there's some, it's like a poll, like a sponsored poll where they can click very familiar, somewhat familiar, I've only heard the name, and not at all familiar. And he hadn't seen this anywhere. So he was wondering, is there any way that this is a new ad format. And the truth is, this is an ad format that everyone can get access to, if you're spending at least $90,000 per quarter. And maybe you've even seen it inside of campaign manager, there's a new heading right at the top there. It's right in between campaign performance and website demographics. And it's called testing. When you click it, it will come up with the ability to create a test. Now we've been able to run these tests if you are spending high budget and had a LinkedIn Rep for quite a while. But this is now right on the front end where anyone can run these. The way it works is if you're spending at least $90,000 per quarter, as you spend, LinkedIn is going to ask people questions about your brand. There are six different studies that you can run and if you want to run all six of them, you just have to make sure that you have a minimum budget of $270k for the 90 day period. So immediately the small spenders are out. But you large spenders, this is actually really fun to run. The first is a brand lift test. And then there's also an aided awareness test, a brand familiarity test, a brand favorability test, a brand recommendation test, and product consideration test. And what it does is as you are advertising at obviously high volumes, it's asking people how familiar they are with your brand. And by doing that, you'll get data back about how effective your ads are from a branding perspective. It's really cool. Next, just this week, LinkedIn started notifying their customers who were using the LinkedIn audience network. There was a measurement issue we had to do quite a bit of digging for because if you go to the Adweek article that LinkedIn published, there is like zero information about what actually happened. It just says that this mis measurement applied to roughly 8% of LinkedIn Marketing Solutions customers, and for 66% of them, the impact was less than $25. So of course, LinkedIn is crediting that back, some of our clients were getting refunds in the $1,000s of dollars, which obviously made us really curious about what caused this. So in doing a little bit of digging, a source at LinkedIn responded that the effective timeframe is a little over two years, with a heavier impact occurring during the two months leading up to the discovery of the issue. If you want to calculate the impact, basically, you look at the total number of LinkedIn audience network clicks, and basically discount 1.21% of them for any date that was from June of 2021 to before that. This is the average impact that could be on some smaller campaigns. They said this is the average impact so some accounts could see a much smaller effect, and some could be higher. And the effect was higher here in May and June. It seems like every time an ad platform comes out and admits that they had some kind of a mistake, and they go to credit their advertisers, which I think is really awesome because they could just as easily just not tell anyone and let it go. But they do they more or less fess up to it. They give people refunds, which I think is super honorable, but then some jerk or some set of jerks. always end up suing them over it. So please, please, please do not join a class action lawsuit against LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. I would reserve those kinds of actions for companies who do terrible things to you and then don't admit it and you have to find it out yourself. Okay, that's it for the news. Then we've got a couple of reviews that came in one by the user wixfi. It says, "The authority and LinkedIn ads. AJ is a great voice on running LinkedIn campaigns and doesn't hold back. He gives strategic and tactical tips on how you run the ROI positive campaigns for your business." Wixfi, thank you so much for saying that. I really do try to not hold back and just share everything I know. And of course, our goal is always ROI. And then Betsy Hyndman, from Nashville wrote, "AJ is the real deal. Great podcast, super guy, very knowledgeable. I've learned a ton from AJ generously sharing his deep expertise." Betsy, I'm glad to call you a friend. Thanks so much for leaving such a kind review. All right for you right now who are listening. Yes, you! You're listening, you haven't left a review, please go do it. Honestly, it helps the show a lot. It's going to get more people to listen to the show. And plus, I get to shout you out and tell people how awesome you are for saying such awesome stuff about us. So here we go. But honestly, please go do leave a review, I would love to feature you. Okay, with that being said, let's hit it. We're getting right into the meat of the show today. So we're talking about matched audiences. And my favorite part about matched audiences are the list uploads. And so there are two different kinds of list uploads you can do one is a contact list, which you think of as maybe email matching, but I'll tell you why that's not, it's a little bit of a misnomer. And the next one is the company name list upload or the account list. Sometimes you'll hear it referred to as the ABM account targeting list. It's important to understand that with all of these list uploads, there are three things that you can do with it. You can either include that list in your targeting, just targeting those who are on your list. You can exclude those from your targeting. And then you can also use that to create a look alike audience. As long as you're listening to this since 2019, you've been able to do that. So let's touch on the the individuals the contact list upload, there are so many different uses that you can have for uploading a list of individuals. You can use this to target individuals who've joined your email list, that's pretty cool. You can use it to exclude your current customers from seeing your ads. How awesome is that, that you can avoid showing ads to someone and having them pay or you know, charge you, to click on your ads when they're already a customer. So lots of different uses. Now, it's a little known fact that you don't actually need an email address for targeting here, more info on that later. Then you've got the company name list upload. And this is, like I said in the intro, my favorite part of LinkedIn Ads in general. What this allows us to do is upload lists of accounts for inclusion or for exclusion. So inclusion would be like if I had a list of companies on my account based marketing list, and I wanted to fire out some ground cover across those audiences so that when they see our next ads, they're much more likely to interact. They're one of our target accounts, we want them. You can also do the same thing of uploading a list of let's say, your competitors, the competitors by company name, and then you could exclude that list from all of your campaigns. And now all of a sudden, your competitors have no idea what you're advertising, you're flying completely under the radar. That's pretty cool. You can also exclude your current customer list, the companies they work at, or how about you could include a list of all of the companies who've become a lead for your organization, but haven't yet closed. So this becomes kind of a lead acceleration or a sales acceleration type of campaign. Alright, so why is this feature so sexy? Why is it my favorite part of LinkedIn Ads? Well, here's the reason. This is the one feature that no other platform can touch. Facebook, they allowed us to target for a long time people's organizations and their job titles, but guess what, so few people on Facebook ended up putting their professional information in. Facebook is just not the place where you have that kind of data. And so even if Facebook released the ability to target by company in bulk, it would just give you access to such a small percent of the population, it just wouldn't even be worth it. But hey, everyone on LinkedIn tends to list the company they work for. That's kind of the point. Add that to the fact that when you're doing account based marketing targeting, you're targeting a much smaller population. And what that means is, it's not going to allow you to spend as much money. This is a downside for the larger advertisers. But for the smaller advertisers, this is something really powerful you can do and it doesn't take much budget budget. I firmly believe that every B2B company on the planet should be doing this, targeting their absolutely ideal accounts that they want to go after. And it doesn't cost very much, just a few bucks here and there to reach your absolutely ideal audience so they know who you are. That's pretty awesome. Also in the LinkedIn Ads support group on LinkedIn, Jennifer Karos asked this question. She said, "Hey, guys quick question, we uploaded a list with roughly 12,000 contacts. The system recognized about 6,000 of them, but it says it matched 85%. Do you know how this inconsistency could be?" And then Joanna from LinkedIn came in and said, "Hi, Jennifer. I'm Joanna. from our Product Marketing Team at LinkedIn, we see this when we find a match to multiple inputs. For example, if a personal and business email was provided, and we found a single member match to both records, you would see a higher match rate versus the member count." So to put that into perspective, if you upload a list with let's say, first name, last name, company, and title, if it found a match with the company name, and the title on, let's say, half of everyone, it could still say 100% match, but you'd only end up with half of the contacts in your list being represented in your targeting. This was absolutely news to me. So thank you, Joanna, for explaining this to us. We'll come back to this for sure. The next is, it's really important to understand when you upload a list of any kind, it goes through a processing stage. If you've uploaded one of these, you'll see the words "your audience is currently building and may take up to 48 hours or on rare occasion longer to start delivery". One thing I really like about this is you can attach an audience to a campaign even before it's finished building. And what's going to happen is as soon as it's done building, it will immediately start serving the ads. So you don't have to be watching for the status to change, and then go and launch your own ads. Okay, so LinkedIn says right there in their documentation, "It may take up to 48 hours, or on rare occasion longer for a list of process." I call bs on this, I have never ever seen a list to finish processing in under 48 hours. Most of the time it goes to 72 hours and beyond. There's obviously not much I can do. But that's pretty disappointing. I would love to see LinkedIn do something about that. Okay, here's a quick sponsor break. And then we'll dive into some research about what I found that gets lists to match at a higher rate. The LinkedIn Ads Show is proudly brought to you by B2Linked.com, the LinkedIn Ads experts. If the performance of your LinkedIn Ads is important to you B2Linked is the agency you'll want to work with. We've spent over $140 million dollars on LinkedIn Ads, and no one outperforms us on getting you the lowest cost per lead at the most scale. We're official LinkedIn partners, and you'll only deal with LinkedIn Ads experts from day one, Fill out the contact form on any page of B2linked.com to chat about your campaigns. We'd absolutely love to work with you. All right, let's jump into it. So I've been doing audience research now for years. And what I share with you this certainly isn't like a benchmark data by any means, but they should help you understand a little bit about how the matching algorithm works. So a couple years ago, when LinkedIn stopped including email addresses in our connections export, I exported all of my connections on LinkedIn without their email address, and then uploaded it to LinkedIn. This was so interesting, because it reported a 90 plus percent match rate, but then the resulting audience that it gave me was only a quarter of the size of my network. So that means there were a lot of those records matching on other things, but a whole bunch that matched on none, at least from what Joanna from LinkedIn shared. So then what I did is I uploaded a list of all of my followers, and this was just their first and last names. And I just wanted to see what it did. It matched it only 50%. But it did return about half the number of my followers. Because first and last names really aren't all that unique. I would not be surprised at all, if some of these were matching people who had the same name as my followers, but weren't actually the followers. I didn't actually advertise this audience. That would be, I don't know, I'm not very confident in that one. And then me and my team found out that you can get a much higher match rate by including in addition to first and last name, also job title and company name. By doing this, we ended up finding that we got a 90% plus match rate, which is awesome. And then just last week for fun, I uploaded my followers list again, my most updated one,, and I wanted to test two things. I included in both of them first name, last name, and company. But for the job title field, I wanted to see if LinkedIn pulled more from their actual job title in the experience section or if it was their headline. My hypothesis was actually that LinkedIn was going to pull more from their headline because more people use their headline I feel like, but boy was I wrong. When I use the headline as the job title, LinkedIn reported that it matched 85%. But it only matched just a little over 61% of the contacts that I uploaded. Okay, that's interesting 61%. Then I uploaded that same list, but with the job title field as the job title. LinkedIn reported this as matching at 90%, but it actually matched 75%. So that's 14 more percent of a match, just by using the job title field instead of the headline. That was really interesting to me. So the takeaway is here, the now what, when you go and upload individual lists, make sure you include first name, last name, job title, their actual job title would help, and their company name, that's going to help you get a much, much higher match rate. One thing you'll notice if you go in and export a list of connections from LinkedIn, if LinkedIn sees an @ in any other field, except for the email address field, it's going to fire off an error. So for instance, if someone has the @ in their headline, because they're saying, I'm the VP at this company, you're gonna have to get rid of that before the list will even validate to process. The way I do that is right inside of Excel, I just do a search and replace on every column except for email address, where I search for the app sign and replace it with nothing. Okay, I know the LinkedIn products team listens to the show. So I'm going to give you and everyone else here, my wish list for how LinkedIn can make their matched audiences product even better. The first is, like I mentioned before, faster processing. It really shouldn't take 72 hours to process lines of text, I would expect it to take that long, if there was a human in the background, like manually doing things in Excel before the list could be processed. That would make a lot more sense. If the list has 300,000 rows, which is the maximum, I could understand it going longer. But like I said, I've literally never seen any list finished processing under 72 hours. And most of the lists that we upload are in the 10,000 to 30,000 rows range so we're not maxing it out by any means. Something else I would absolutely love in the contact list. I want to be able to target by LinkedIn URL. Forget matching by first name, last name, company name, email, job title, if you have the LinkedIn URL for the person that you're going after, even better, I would much rather use that, it would match it 100%. Please LinkedIn give us that. Then back in 2017, when we got the matched audiences feature, I asked why LinkedIn just shows 90% or higher as a match rate for company names. Why can't they show us the actual if it's really 100%. And LinkedIn replied that it was because they were worried about privacy. Now I get it being a privacy issue, if you are showing an exact match for individuals for a contact list. But there is absolutely no privacy issue with company names and targeting. A company name is public. I just think that's totally a non issue here. So I would absolutely love it. If we got a real match rate for company match. Show us the exact percentage matched. Now recently, if you go into your your list uploads, there will be a tab for companies matched and companies not matched. And that's really cool. If I targeted let's say I was targeting IBM, and I typed in just the letters IBM, but LinkedIn was only going to match it if it was i dot b dot m dot, then if you go into that list, it will tell you that IBM did not match on your list. And that's pretty cool, you can fix it, but I just don't see why the general percentage match shouldn't reflect the exact match for company. And finally here, we've talked about this a little bit, but the match rate really should be based on the number of matches that occurred out of the total number of rows uploaded, I definitely shouldn't have LinkedIn reporting to me 85% match rate to do my own calculation and find out it's actually 61%. That one definitely seems like a product that was built by engineers, not advertisers, I would love to see that one fixed, or heck give us both metrics. Maybe one shows the number of rows that resulted in a match and another one that shows the strength of each match. That could be cool, but I'd want to see both. I don't want to just have the strength of the match shown to me instead of the raw number. Alright, I've got the episode resources coming right up for you. So stick around 25:01 Thank you for listening to the LinkedIn Ads Show. Hungry for more? AJ Wilcox, take it away. All right, first of all, there's that article that LinkedIn published about the LinkedIn Audience Network, and its measurement glitch. So I'll link to that it's on Adweek.com. Just be prepared, the article says absolutely nothing, but you're welcome to take a look at it. Also, if you're trying to learn LinkedIn Ads better or have a colleague or a coworker who is make sure to point them towards the LinkedIn Learning course that I'm the the author of. It just got a refresh early this year and we added about 25 extra minutes of content plus updating everything. It's really good. If I don't say so myself. If this is your first time listening to the show, thanks for tuning in. please do hit that subscribe button on whatever podcast player you're listening with. Please do rate the podcast and like I said before, it really helps the show if you review. That's exactly how you can repay me for dropping all this knowledge, those are knowledge bombs. Okay, so if you want to reach out to us, give us any ideas or any feedback for the show hit us up at podcast@B2Linked.com. And with that being said, we'll see you back here next week. I sure hope. We're working on more consistency here. I'm cheering you on in your LinkedIn Ads initiatives.

Honestly, we're still riding the high of new Survivor episodes coming each week & enjoying recapping all the action for you! The season continues to roll along in episode 3 at it's promised break-neck pace, but is it what we want? Hear from all 4 of us about how we're feeling about all the aspects making this game shorter & faster.  It's clear we're in the New Era of Survivor now, but we're feeling like the show may be in it's Impressionist Era -- looks great from a distance, but when you start to get close & analyze it... things get a little messy. With that, we're talking all about the stylistic editing choices, what we're being shown & not shown of alliance building, the state of the challenge, and the continued saga of new advantages. Plus, as always, Vibe checking our pal Jeff, and running through our picks for Castaways of the week. If you're looking for a specific segment, here's a break down: Intro: (start - 2:34) One Minute Thoughts (2:34 - 8:58) The Fans Have Spoken (8:58 - 15:59) Episode 3 Recap (15:59 - 50:24) Castaways of the Week (50:24 - 52:57) Jeff Needs a Vibe Check (52:57 - 55:52) Rapid Fire (55:52 - end)  Be sure to give us a follow as well on Instagram @EscapingRealityPod and on Twitter @EscRealityPod --  If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe & leave us a rating/review on Apple Podcasts and/or follow us on Spotify! Make sure to tell your friends about the pod and have them join you (and us) on our journey through reality competition shows. And tune in next week (and each week after) as we recap Survivor 41.  As always, thanks for listening & thanks for Escaping Reality with us!

Greetings boys and ghouls! Today we will chat about the most divisive movie to come out in awhile: Malignant. A movie that is either super entertaining, or so stupid it will make your head spin so far around that you will start walking backwards. Honestly we still don't even know where we ended up on this debate, so grab a coldie and let's get to it!

I'm gonna repeat myself from last week, because it bears repeating. Would you just quit dealing with your finances alone and hire Mollie Morris already? Honestly what do you have to lose by just setting up a consult? Nothing, that's what. Stop being contrary and just do it. https://www.m3virtualaccounting.com/bookingIt's time for some pretty painful chapters, y'all.This illustration of Nicodemus and Anduriel with one of the Swords is by u/Abraxas_1134 and you can see it here! https://www.reddit.com/r/dresdenfiles/comments/24t61o/nicodemus_archleone_and_anduriel/

Hollis Carter is an entrepreneur and avid skier who, after founding many companies in his career, recently became the co-founder of the Baby Bathwater Institute, a membership-based community of entrepreneurs with a focus on cultivating natural, mutually beneficial relationships. Since his business relied on many in-person events, it was quite affected by the Covid 19 pandemic and subsequent restrictions. During this time of cancellations and being stuck at home, Hollis thought of a way to add value to the members during this new situation and started to offer a series of services with a performance-based model. This model quickly grew and he ended up selling it before actually having to fully build an agency. In this interview, he talked about the process of building and growing an agency to over $4 million and then selling it, all during a pandemic. 3 Golden Nuggets Growing an agency during Covid. Before the pandemic, Hollis was organizing many in-person events. Once they were canceled because of this new situation, he realized he had a perfect opportunity to offer a new service that would offer value to members of his mastermind. There was already a business relationship and he knew their products and believed in them. So he got ready to work under a performance-based model. “It was really very simple,” he says. The offer included podcast interviews, email lists, and content sites. He spent on setting up all the automation and tracking and found someone to handle that. And of course, under this model he was working with clients, not for them. Simplifying the offer. How can you make things simpler for you? First of all, don't just take a good deal. This agency had the advantage of having a group of companies whose product they trusted. Even then, our guest says, they took people who were so product-focused that we were going to get the content and the angles they needed. People who knew they needed to be told how to market this product. They also let clients use the work they were creating and focused on the 10% that drove revenue. However, there are some things they would do differently a second time around: setting a flat fee and, instead of complicated spreadsheets just telling the client “here's the number that came in, this is our cut,” would save a lot of time. Finally, figuring out how to set expectations of timeline, having a written document with a timeline that the client can reread instead of emailing you questions. Pulling from other industries. Hollis believes in taking knowledge from other industries into your own. He makes sure to have participants from different types of businesses in his masterminds and sustains there's always nuggets that you can pull from other industry practices that might not exist in a niche that you're opening, like what he has learned about hiring from the hotel space. He encourages others to give themselves a chance step outside what they know and learn something new that they can implement in their business from an unexpected source. Sponsors and Resources Ninja Cat: Today's episode is sponsored by Ninja Cat, a digital marketing performance management platform where you can unify your data, create beautiful, insightful reports and presentations that will help you grow your business. Head over to ninjacat.io/masterclass to enjoy an exclusive offer for podcast listeners. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Growing an Agency Fast to Over $4 Million and Selling Quick Jason: [00:00:00] What's up, agency owners? Jason Swenk here. I have another amazing show guest. We're going to talk about how when COVID hit, they formed an agency and ramped it up to over $4 million and sold it, during COVID. So it's a really cool episode and you're going to enjoy my guest. So let's go ahead and get into it. Hey, Hollis. Welcome to the show. Hollis: [00:00:29] Hey, man. Thanks for having me. Jason: [00:00:30] Pleasure to have you on. So for the people that have not heard of you or met you at one of your cool events, tell us who you are and what do you guys do? Hollis: [00:00:39] Yeah. My name is Hollis Carter. Living in Boulder, Colorado, but originally from Georgia, where I kind of got my first start in internet marketing stuff. I was like early in college and built a couple of online businesses and luckily had one that did pretty well and sold that. And then I moved to Colorado and did this skiing thing for a while and, uh, living in the mountains and it was great, but I could only talk about skiing and snowboarding and mountain biking with people. So, I'm now a front ranger living in Boulder and enjoy it and got back in the mix of things. Our main business is called the Baby Bathwater Institute. You've come out to one of our events that we had at out mountain. And, uh, I started, my other businesses based on the thing that I use to learn… Like no one was really teaching relevant stuff in the late nineties, early two thousands. So to do it, I thought let's sit at the bar and a lobby at a conference and got most of my nuggets. And so when we had some free time, me and my now business partner who were lobby con buddies for like a decade… We started hosting these events and the whole idea was curating nice people who are in the grow and scale phase and the actual founders of their business. And in a lot of different industries that we could draw knowledge from different places, less of a kind of echo chamber mastermind of people doing the same thing. Cause there's a lot of value in those, but it's very linear. This was more of organic group meetings to have fun and, um, draw things from other industries and stuff. But we have agency people, we've got guys from hotels, we've got guys from e comm businesses… I guess I say people, not guys, cause we have plenty of girls too. We've been doing it for about eight years and I love it. Compared to the businesses I've done before, it's probably the dumbest business model. Cause it's overhead-intensive, time-intensive, relationship intensive. But I actually like it. So we're doing it for years and we'll probably do it for a very long time and really enjoy it. Jason: [00:02:37] Very cool. And COVID hit you guys really hard because your whole thing is about live experiences and that kind of stuff, uh, which are a lot of fun. And so tell us about like… cause we were talking a couple of weeks ago, you were like, man, I couldn't do these live events and that's really what the membership was for. So we gave all this money back to the members because we couldn't do live events. But I started an agency kind of by accident and it quickly grew. So talk about how did you grow the agency so quick? What did you do? Because a lot of people are looking at going, and I've seen a lot of growth in agencies over during COVID, but yours was really pretty, pretty good. So tell us a little bit more about that. Hollis: [00:03:18] I think it was, it was different because much of it was born out just starting that momentum sort of grew versus sitting with a very particular plan. Where Baby Bathwater came less out of need more out of want, this came out of need. And so there… Also, we are locked in our house and I could stay focused on, cause I wasn't doing… Going to conferences or traveling or doing things. But I think the main frame was okay, just postpone slash canceled, who knows a handful of events. We basically lost about two and a half million bucks in that decision. Which happened before people in the states even believed that this COVID thing was gonna affect us because our president was in Italy. And so we saw it a little early. We knew we didn't want to let people go. There was no PPP stuff yet. And me and my partner, Michael, we always knew we could always fall back on our marketing skills, which is kind of what got us to a place to even know what people wanted from a mastermind. So our personal interests has been in the health and wellness sort of space. We see lots of stuff that's crap. And we see lots of stuff that's good. And we happened to know a few people who have amazing products that are members. But they're product guys, they're not marketing people at all. And so we kind of went in with the thesis of how do we enhance the people who are already members value and we can't do anything for 'em, but also don't run any risk of screwing up the relationship if we get in bed with them and do something different than what we already have a good relationship with. So, I mean, it basically started with four products. I knew we had people in the group who had platforms. That love the products, cause they give them out at events. They love them. And I know they have a lot of traffic and I knew these people have great products. Didn't even know what I'm talking about. Like you should just set up this campaign and get them on the podcast and set up an email. You can track it with affiliate links… And all like, can you just do that for me? Kind of thing. So, I mean, it was actually super, super simple. Essentially, out of a network license for post affiliate pro so that we could track all of the clicks and conversions and build it very slowly, not a lot of overhead. It costed maybe like five grand or something we spent getting set up and all that automation and tracking. We did have a really hard time finding someone to help us run that once it worked. We ended up finding the guy who made the tutorial videos for the original version of it and tracked him down. And it was the first hire because it was complicated and how he set up the company structure. But the basics of it was we had people get podcast, email lists and content sites. I mean, people have great products that had a unique hook. It couldn't just be like, like we did have a CBD, which is a crowded market with a bunch of people at all look the same. But this had clinical trials, some studies, so I could go get functional medicine doctors to say something unique about it and they could write a real piece of content. So really we just took the friction out of the middle, which was, it's hard for the product owners to focus on these things that are ancillary. Then buy an ad that are not doing very diligent tasks that can scale these like one-off promotions and managing people is hectic. Like if I had a brand, I wouldn't want to do stuff we were doing because I know the costliness of managing all these relationships and getting it on the calendar and getting all the stuff they need. But in our unique situation, we had time. We… the money. We wanted to serve the people who we wanted to have back when things came back online. And so it made sense to keep calling them chatting and working it out and figuring it out. So our deal is that we took... it's very minimal, it's just an average, about 10% of the revenue for 12 months of the customer. And we would do a, you know, a multi-tiered campaign where, you know, perhaps the person to get on a podcast and do an interview about the product that was very educational and content-heavy. So it didn't just come out of the blue of this promotion. It was like ease into with good questions and then we'd do an article. And then eventually kind of like an email with a special offer and a landing page just for that person. And like something I've been back in early on was when one big person promotes the rest. So we usually just go for, you know, one or two people we have a good relationship that have a big audience and then their affiliates would see it happen. And we'd get a few more of those. But we did, because it was so hands-on, mess around with people who could send, you know, thousands and thousands and thousands of clicks and had an audience that already trusted them. So very boutique, very niche, but where it worked, very effective. I'd say the biggest bottleneck was calendars. You could lock in a deal and they might not have three months so they could do it. But we hit a point where we were going to have to start hiring more people, we had a tech guy, an administrative helper in an industry that me and Michael were putting together. Then we hired someone to go start recruiting more promoters, and then we need to start hiring writers and creatives. At that point, we actually ended up selling the business so that we didn't have to build an agency. The hard part of building an agency, managing the creatives, training, we never really hit that point. Although it looks like I'll go back to the trough and do it again. But I mean, really it was about that simple. It was like performance-based so we couldn't mess up relationships. And also we didn't want anyone to ever tell us, hey, you have to do this for me. Uh, it usually mostly came from the merchants with the products. They'd be like, hey, where are the traffic? And we're like, hey, we don't, we don't work for you. We're not on a retainer, but it's coming, it's coming. Then we'll get paid. Well, we only get paid when we make sales. So that helped us not get stress out. Jason: [00:09:32] Do you feel like you have to comb through mountains of data, jumping between multiple platforms to spreadsheets, to slide decks and backing in, in order to create performance reports for your clients? It's a constant drain on your agency's time and resources. And that's where our friends at Ninja Cat can help. Ninja Cat is a digital marketing performance management platform that really unifies your marketing data and empowers your agency to automate insightful, beautiful client reports that scale. Now Ninja Cat cat keeps your marketing performance and presentation tools in one place, freeing you up from manual data wrangling. And it really gives your team more time to focus on strategy and growing your business. And for a limited time, my smart agency podcast listeners will receive $500 ninja credit. When you go to ninjacat.io/masterclass to claim your offer and schedule a demo. That's ninjacat.io/masterclass. Yeah, I see a lot of people going the performance route. You know, one of our mastermind members, David, he was always constantly under the million mark and just trying to figure out how to get over it. And he switched to this model and got a million dollars last year during COVID, just from one client for the performance deal. Kind of like what you guys are doing, or you guys did or about to do again. I guess we can talk about that. But I liked how, when you're the performance model, they can't tell you what you can and can't do, or a timeline. You're just like, I'm putting a campaign together on our own dime, our own resources. This is what you're agreed to pay. I really like that. But I also like too, that, you know, this is a home run. Like it's a good product. I want people to not kind of overlook that and just don't go up to anybody and go give me 10% of all your sales. And plus too, you guys had relationships with them so you knew you could trust them. Because it gets really tricky sometimes when you're like, yeah, give me 10% of sales and they could the books however they want. Hollis: [00:11:54] Yes. So that was an interesting piece of... The one thing that I guess is there is we did have these relationships we've built over almost 20 years now. Which, if you just do it on the street, we couldn't start from scratch with that. So that was like our one… competitively used to do something here, but the book side of things, we actually knew how bad that can get. So we control that this was a bottleneck and business model, as far as administration and just workload. I kept everything clean, but we were starting to get super risky. So we invoiced the merchant for the payments and wrote to the affiliates. We did everything. So we essentially became a bank taking the money, moving the money versus paying out of their own affiliate program. It started to get pretty hectic. You get one monthly payment. We're trying to keep the relationships paying on time. We never ran into any issues, but you could see it coming as things got more complex. Jason: [00:12:52] Well, I'm sure the IRS probably set up red flags of all the money moving around. Hollis: [00:12:57] Oh, it was crazy that was passing through and yeah… And so like in hindsight, if we do this again, won't do the complicated equation where we have 12 months tail customer. We also calculated a refund risk thing. You know, now it's going to be one time upfront with a small fee for us that continues, but like the calculating the refund piece to try to mitigate risks. Like I think we went into it wanting to be like a no-brainer where it's like, hey, we've taken all the risks where X, Y, and Z, that you won't have to do anything for. Our contract is like the nicest thing in the world. If this was the only thing we were doing, and we were focused on it that thing would have sort of bit us in the ass, as it started to grow. But it worked well. It was boutique small. And we only did this from March to October. So it was like a significant period of time, but you can see all the forethought we didn't put into it with, oh man, the amount of time to calculate these things if I would've... There's a bunch of things we do if we really want to scale it simpler. If we do this again, you know. Jason: [00:14:05] What are some of the other things that you do simpler. Because most people listening here, this is their full-time gig. They weren't just looking at like, well, let's just try this project out, which that's really pretty cool that you guys are able to do that. Hollis: [00:14:19] Yeah. I think, you know… fed the horse because we had all the relationships and we knew this I'd stayed up drinking wine with every person in the thing all night. I knew we could do well with good products, which you highlighted, is like products that kind of sell themselves. And then the owner of those products, I think this is the simplest thing is don't just take a good deal. We only took people who were so product-focused that we were going to get the content and the angles we needed. All they cared about is being the best. But they didn't care about was telling us how to market it, that they actually wanted us to tell them. They would use the campaigns to inform all of the rest of their staff. One thing we did do well and make it easy was, hey, use the work we're creating. We don't need any cut of it. You can take our landing pages, reuse them. If you get your own affiliates, you can run them through your program. You know, just do that. Cause we only focused on that 10% that drove our revenue. The things we probably would have done different or not such a complicated calculation of the things. I remember when I first started in some of the affiliate stuff, people would hold back a percentage for refunds. There was like a whole equation. But we made everything else so simple for them. We didn't need to go, that… We could have just said here's a flat fee. Here's a number. Honestly, it would have saved one employee 40 hours a month in weird stuff. And in places where ambiguity… where also the customer on both sides has to read a spreadsheet that's complicated versus like here's the number that came in and here is the cut… over. I think simplicity would have helped a lot in that sense. And then other simplicity things, I think just figuring out how to set expectations of timeline. Even though we didn't work for those people, said it on the phone, in the conversations of like, hey, we might get a campaign locked in that's going to be out this far. But then they get in their own world. Like, where's the stuff? And I'm like, no, we already told you this. And so, one outline. Here's how this works, one the phone. Before you email me any questions, reread this. This is the rules of engagement and how it works. But that I would say once it worked and had momentum, changing the relationships from I work for you to we work together changed the whole dynamic of it versus, you know, just collecting a flat fee. Jason: [00:16:49] Yeah. I love that of like we work together rather than you're the dog barking orders to me. And even if you don't do a performance model. Hollis: [00:16:58] Yeah. It feels like you kind of got to do that sometimes. Cause I feel like that's how we like learned. If you worked in a restaurant going up or we… Whatever, like that's how it was. When you're getting paid, you just got to say yes, please, and as you wish. Which honestly doesn't even serve the client that well. Sometimes you're doing shit that they don't even need to get done. They just wanted to show that they tell you to do something. But we're only going to focus on brings in dollars. It doesn't bog down either of our teams. And that's why we switched the contract that you can leave whenever you want. You know, the psychology there was great because it was like, we're paying equally versus that, you know, walked into some long retainer and some big set up fees and things like that. Obviously you have to have some results for that to be worth it, um, for the relationship to stay. But if you know you can deliver on it, then it's probably better to be in a, a mutual relationship where either party can leave in 30 days notice versus trying to lock in really long-term deals. Jason: [00:17:58] Yeah, exactly. Well, awesome. Well, this is amazing, Hollis. Is there anything I didn't ask you that you think would benefit the audience listening in? Hollis: [00:18:05] Listen, I mean, it's funny just because it's a friend of mine that just got off a call with one of our members who, who set them up on like a little dinner in the same town. And I forget the book references basically it's about taking knowledge from other industries and bringing them into your own. So what I saw was great was a lot of the product companies who were here like some of them were in retail and other things. They just didn't know how to pull stuff from other areas. There's always like these levers that you can pull from other industry practices that might not exist in a niche that you're opening that you're trying to mark it as that in. And so I was really, all we did was just start reaching into other tools that there's no way they're ever going to get to this. So obviously we can take over this part for them and we're not also dealing with the dynamics. So there's someone in the house already being paid to do this or anything like that. It's pretty clean that way. But I think we just learned that from sitting in these events from people like, you know, we have some hiring stuff we've learned from guys in the hotel space, which I never would have thought to learn that until I sat into that at one of these events or whatever. So I've never seen through blinders. Like it's good to be focused and linear, but I think there's just so many cool nuggets in different industries you can pull and bring in that we all just kind of forget to take a glance at. Jason: [00:19:30] Awesome. Well, cool. Well, what's a website people go and check you guys out? Hollis: [00:19:35] Just babybathwater.com. Jason: [00:19:37] Awesome. Well, thanks so much for coming on the show. If you guys enjoyed this episode, make sure you go to their website. They have really cool events. I went to the one in, in Utah. And it was really pretty amazing. And if you guys want to really grow and scale your agency faster, what got you here is not going to get you to the next level and you need to do a number of different things. Because probably what got you to this level is from referrals and word of mouth, or maybe you selling, or maybe one salesperson. The biggest thing that you need is systems in place in order to grow and scale faster and get to the point where you can pick and choose. If you want to do that, I want you guys to check out our agency playbook. Go to jasonswenk.com/playbook and check it out. And it might just be the thing that will get you to the next level. So go do that now. And until next time, have a Swenk day.

Imke Feldmann is among the first few to have recognized the incredible value and potential of this thing called Power Pivot in Excel (which was the precursor to Power BI).  And did she ever run with it, launching quite the successful solo consultancy and training service!  She exemplifies the helpful nature of the data community through her blog, The BIccountant, where she shares her amazing Microsoft BI tool knowledge. Her background is in Finance and Accounting, but you'll quickly realize she knows a great deal more than just Finance and Accounting! Contact Imke: The BIccountant Imke's Twitter References in this Episode: Imke's Github MS Power BI Idea - Customizable Ribbon - Please Upvote :) MS Power BI Idea - Speed Up PQ By Breaking Refresh Chain - Please Upvote :) Episode Timeline: 3:00 - The value of outsourcing certain business functions, Imke's path to Power BI starts with Rob's blog, a multi-dimensional cube discussion breaks out! 19:45 - One of Power BI's strengths is collaboration, Imke LOVES her some Power Query and M and loves DAX not so much 33:45 - Imke has a BRILLIANT idea about how to improve Power Query and some other improvements that we'd like to see in PQ 52:30 -  Rob's VS code experience, how COVID has affected the consulting business, Staying solo vs growing a company and how Imke determines which clients she takes on Episode Transcript: Rob Collie (00:00:00): Hello friends. Today's guest is Imke Feldmann. We've been working for a long time, nearly a year to arrange the schedules to get her on the show, and I'm so glad that we finally managed to do it. For a moment, imagine that it's 2010, 2011, that era. During that timeframe, I felt not quite alone, but a member of a very slowly growing and small community of people who had glimpsed what Power Pivot could do. And for those of you who don't know what Power Pivot is, and that was the version of Power BI, the first version that was embedded only in Excel. And at the time, the way the community grew, we'll use a metaphor for this. Imagine that the community was a map of the world and the map is all dark, but slowly, you'd see these little dim lights lighting up like one over here in the UK, one in the Southwest corner of the United States, very faintly. Rob Collie (00:00:51): And these would be people who were just becoming aware of this thing, this Power Pivot thing, and you'd watch them. They'd sort of show up on the radar, very tentatively at first kind of dipping their toe, and then that light would get brighter, and brighter, and brighter over time, as they really leaned in, and they learned more and more, and they became more adept at it. And this was the way things went for a long time. And then in 2011, out of nowhere in Germany on the map, this light comes on at full intensity, brightly declaring itself as super talented and powerful. And that was what it felt like to come across Imke Feldmann. Rob Collie (00:01:27): Like all of our guests, there's a little bit of that accidental path in her career, but also a tremendous sense of being deliberate. When this stuff crossed her radar, she appreciated it immediately. And I didn't know this until this conversation, but she quit her corporate job in 2013, the same year that I founded P3 as a real company, and became a freelancer. So for eight plus years, she has been a full time Power BI professional. There truly aren't that many people who can say that in the world. Our conversation predictably wandered. At one point, we got pretty deep into the notion of M and Power Query and it's screaming need for more buttons on its ribbon. And Imke has some fantastic ideas on how they should be addressing that. Rob Collie (00:02:14): We also, of course, naturally talked about the differences between remaining a solo freelancer as she has, in contrast to the path that I chose, which is scaling up a consulting practice business. Along the way we reprised the old and completely pointless debate of DAX versus M, I even try to get Tom hooked on M as his new obsession. We'll see how well that goes. Most importantly though, it was just a tremendous pleasure to finally get to talk to Imke at length for the first time after all these years, we literally crossed paths 10 years ago. So it was a conversation 10 years in the making compress down to an hour and change. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did, so let's get into it. Announcer (00:02:56): Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please? Announcer (00:03:00): This is The Raw Data by P3 Adaptive podcast, with your host Rod Collie, and your cohost Thomas LaRock. Find out what the experts at P3 Adaptive can do for your business. Just go to P3adaptive.com. Raw Data by P3 Adaptive is data with the human element. Rob Collie (00:03:24): Welcome to the show Imke Feldmann. How are you today? Imke Feldmann (00:03:27): Thank you, Rob. Great. It's a great day here over in Germany. Rob Collie (00:03:30): We have been talking about doing this for the better part of a year. So I'm glad that we're landing the guest, Imke is here. I really appreciate you doing this. So why don't we start with the basics. What are you up to these days? What do you do for a living? Imke Feldmann (00:03:48): I have people building great Power BI solutions these days. Rob Collie (00:03:55): Ah, yes. Imke Feldmann (00:03:55): That's how I fill my days. Rob Collie (00:03:58): I hear that that's a good business. Imke Feldmann (00:03:58): Yeah, it is. Rob Collie (00:04:03): So, and your website is? Imke Feldmann (00:04:06): Thebiaccountant.com. Rob Collie (00:04:07): Is that what you are on Twitter as well? Imke Feldmann (00:04:08): Yes. That's also my Twitter handle theBIccountant without an A in the middle. I just replaced the A from accountant with a BI. Rob Collie (00:04:17): There you go. Imke Feldmann (00:04:18): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:04:18): That's right. So that means that I'm going to make a tremendous leap here, wait till you see these powers of observation and deduction. You must have an accounting background? Imke Feldmann (00:04:29): I do, yes. Rob Collie (00:04:30): See you look at that. That's why I make the money. Okay, let's start there, was accounting your first career out of school? Imke Feldmann (00:04:39): Yes. I went to university and studied some economics or business stuff there, they'll know it's translated into English. And then I worked as a business controller. After that, I took over a job to lead a bookkeeping departments or to work with an area where the numbers came from basically. And then after that, I worked as the finance director, where I was responsible for a whole bunch of areas, controlling bookkeeping, IT, HR, and production. So that was quite a job with a broad range of responsibilities. Rob Collie (00:05:18): So you mentioned, kind of slipped IT into that list, right? Imke Feldmann (00:05:23): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:05:23): There's all these things in that list of responsibilities that all seemed they belong together, right? Bookkeeping, accounting, control or finance, IT. We've run into this before, with actually a number of people, that a lot of times the accounting or finance function in a company kind of wins the job of IT by default. Imke Feldmann (00:05:45): Yeah. It seems quite common in Germany, at least I would say. Rob Collie (00:05:48): I get multiple examples, but one that I can absolutely point to is Trevor Hardy from the Canadian Football League, he is in accounting, accounting and finance. And just by default, well, that's close to computers. Imke Feldmann (00:06:00): Yes. Rob Collie (00:06:01): And so it just kind of pulls the IT function in. Now is that true at really large organizations in Germany or is it a mid market thing? Imke Feldmann (00:06:09): No I would say a mid market thing. Rob Collie (00:06:12): That's true here too. So when there isn't an IT org yet it ends up being, oftentimes it falls to the finance and accounting function. Hey, that's familiar. It's kind of funny when you think about it, but it's familiar. And isn't finance itself pretty different from accounting? How much of a leap is that? What was that transition like for you taking over the finance function as well? We tend to talk about these things, at least in the US, is like almost like completely separate functions at times. Imke Feldmann (00:06:43): It depends, but at least it had something to do with my former education, which wasn't the case with IT. So, I mean, of course on a certain management level, you are responsible for things that you're not necessarily familiar with in detail. You just have to manage the people that know the details and do the jobs for you. So that was not too big an issue I must admit. Rob Collie (00:07:10): My first job out of school was Microsoft, an organization of that size, I was hyper specialized in terms of what I did. At this company at P, we are nowhere near that scale, and there's a lot more of that multiple hat wearing. I've definitely been getting used to that over the last decade, the first decade plus of my career, not so much. Imke Feldmann (00:07:31): Yeah. That's interesting because I basically went completely the other way around. I see myself now as working as a technical specialist and as a freelancer, I don't have to manage any employees anymore. Rob Collie (00:07:47): Well, so now you wear all the hats? Imke Feldmann (00:07:49): Yes. In a certain way, yes. Rob Collie (00:07:51): Okay. There's no HR department necessarily, right, so it's just you. But marketing, sales, delivery, everything. Imke Feldmann (00:08:01): Yep, that's true. Yep. And when I first started, I tried to do everything by myself, but the test changed as well. So in the past I started to outsource more things, but to external companies, not internal staff. Rob Collie (00:08:17): So you're talking about outsourcing certain functions in your current business, is that correct? Imke Feldmann (00:08:22): Yes, yes. Rob Collie (00:08:22): So it's interesting, right? Even that comes with tremendous risk when you delegate a certain function to an outside party whose incentives and interests they are never going to be 100% aligned with yours. Even we have been taken for a ride multiple times by third-party consulting firms that we've hired to perform certain functions for us. Imke Feldmann (00:08:46): Oh, no I don't outsource and your services that I directly provide to my clients. Rob Collie (00:08:49): Oh, no, no. Imke Feldmann (00:08:50): No. Rob Collie (00:08:50): No, we don't either. But I'm saying for example, our Salesforce implementation for instance- Imke Feldmann (00:08:56): Okay, mm-hmm (affirmative). Rob Collie (00:08:57): ... Has been a tremendous money sink for us over the years. Where we're at is good, but the ROI on that spend has been pretty poor. It's really easy to throw a bunch of money at that and it just grinds and grinds and grinds. And so this contrast that I'm getting around to is really important because that's not what it's like to be a good Power BI consultant, right? You're not that kind of risk for your clients. But if you go out and hire out some sort of IT related services for example, like Salesforce development, we're exposed to that same sort of drag you out into the deep water and drown you business model, that's not how we operate. I'm pretty sure that's not how you operate either. And so anyway, when you start talking about outsourcing, I just thought, oh, we should probably talk about that. Have you outsourced anything for your own sort of back office? Imke Feldmann (00:09:52): Back office stuff, yeah. My blog, WordPress stuff, or computer stuff in the background. So security [inaudible 00:09:59] the stuff and things like that, things that are not my core, I hire consultants to help me out with things that I would formally Google, spend hours Googling with. Rob Collie (00:10:09): Yes. Imke Feldmann (00:10:10): Now I just hire consultants to do that. Or for example, for Power Automate, this is something that I wanted to learn and I saw the big potential for clients. And there I also did private training basically, or coaching, or how you called it, hire specialists. Rob Collie (00:10:27): To kind of getting you going? Imke Feldmann (00:10:29): Exactly, exactly. Rob Collie (00:10:30): And those things that you've outsourced for your back office, have there been any that felt like what I described you end up deep in the spend and deepen the project going, "What's going on here?" Imke Feldmann (00:10:41): I'm usually looking for freelancers on that. And I made quiet good experiences with it, I must say. Rob Collie (00:10:49): Well done. Well done. All right. So let's rewind a bit, we'll get to the point where you're in charge of the finance department, which of course includes IT. Imke Feldmann (00:10:58): Not necessarily so. I felt quite sad for the guys who I had to manage because I said, "Well, I'm really sorry, but you will hear a lot of questions from me, especially at the beginning of our journey," because I had to learn so much in order to be a good manager for them. So that was quite different situation compared to the management roles in finance that I had before, because there I had the impression that I knew something, but IT was basically blank. Rob Collie (00:11:30): I would imagine that that experience turned out to be very important, the good cross pollination, the exposure to the IT function and sort of like seeing it from their side of the table, how valuable is that turned out to be for your career? Imke Feldmann (00:11:45): I think it was a good learning and really interesting experience for me just to feel comfortable with saying that I have no clue and ask the people how things work and just feel relaxed about not being the expert in a certain area and just be open to ask, to get a general understanding of things. Rob Collie (00:12:09): That's definitely the way to do it, is to be honest and transparent and ask all the questions you need to do. It's easier said than done. I think a lot of people feel the need to bluff in those sorts of situations. And that usually comes back to haunt them, not always. Imke Feldmann (00:12:25): No, that's true. Rob Collie (00:12:27): Some people do get away with it, which is a little sad. So at what point did you discover Power BI? Imke Feldmann (00:12:35): I didn't discover Power BI, I discovered Power Pivot, for your blog of course. Rob Collie (00:12:41): Oh, really? Imke Feldmann (00:12:43): Yes, yes, yes, yes. I think it was in, must be 2011, something like that. Rob Collie (00:12:50): Early, yeah. Imke Feldmann (00:12:51): Yeah. Quite early. When I was building a multidimensional cube with a freelancer for our finance department, then I was just searching a bit what is possible, how we should approach this and things like that. So we started with multi-dimensional cube because that was something where I could find literature about and also find experts who could have me building that. But when doing so, I really liked the whole experience and it was a really excellent project that I liked very much. And so I just searched around in the internet and tried to find out what's going on in that area. And this is where I discovered your blog. Rob Collie (00:13:35): I have no idea. First of all, I had no idea that my old blog was where you first crossed paths with this. Imke Feldmann (00:13:42): I think [inaudible 00:13:43]. Rob Collie (00:13:44): And secondly, I had no idea that it was that early. I mean, I remember when you showed up on the radar, Scott [inaudible 00:13:51] had discovered your blog and said, "Hey, Rob, have you seen this? Have you seen what she is doing? She is amazing." That wasn't 2011, that was a little bit later. I don't remember when but... Imke Feldmann (00:14:06): No, I think we've met first. I think we met on the Mr. XR Forum on some crazy stuff I did there. I cannot even remember what that was, but I started blogging in 2015 and we definitely met before. Rob Collie (00:14:21): That's what it was. It was the forums. And Scott was the one that had stumbled upon what you were doing there and brought my attention to it. I was like, whoa. It was like... Imke Feldmann (00:14:34): That last really some crazy stuff. I think I was moving data models from one Excel file to another or something like that. Some crazy stuff with [inaudible 00:14:43] and so on. Rob Collie (00:14:44): You obviously remember a better than I do. But I just remember being jaw dropped, blown away, impressed, by what you were doing. And the thing is the world of Power Pivot interest at that point in time still seems so small. The community still seems so small that for you to emerge on our radar fully formed, already blowing our minds, that was the first thing we ever heard from you. That was a real outlier because usually the way the curve of awareness went with other members of the community is that like, you'd see something modest from them. And you'd sorta like witnessed their upward trajectory as they developed. Of course, you've continued to improve and learn and all of that since then. But as far as our experience of it, it was you just showed up already at the graduate level, just like where did she come from? So cool. So you said that you enjoyed the multi-dimensional cube project? Imke Feldmann (00:15:43): Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yes. I don't know MDX, but I totally enjoyed the project. So being able to build a reporting solution for my own company, basically then for the company I worked for, and doing it live with a consultant with a freelancer on my hand, discussing how things should look like and just seeing the thing form before my eyes and grow. And this was just such an enjoyable experience for me. Rob Collie (00:16:11): So the thing that's striking about that for me is, there's no doubt that the multi-dimensional product from Microsoft was a valuable product. It did good things. But I never have heard someone say that they really enjoyed the implementation process as a client, right? Imke Feldmann (00:16:31): Okay. Rob Collie (00:16:31): You had a freelancer doing the work. So something you said there really jumped out at me, it was, sort of like doing the project live. So the way that this worked traditionally, at least in the US, is the consultant would interview you about your requirements and write a big long requirements document and then disappear and go build a whole bunch of stuff and come back and show it to you, and it's completely not what anyone expected. It's almost like you're on completely different planets. Obviously, if you'd had that experience, you would not be saying that you enjoyed it. So there had to be something different about the way that you and that freelancer interacted. Do you remember what the workflow was like? Imke Feldmann (00:17:16): What we did is that we often met together and just looked at where we're at and what the next steps should be. And we definitely had specific targets in mind. So there were some reports that I had defined as a target, and around these reports I was aware that we needed something that a proper data model, because I also knew that I wanted to have some sort of a general set up that could be carried from Excel as well. So I knew about cube functions, and I knew that on one hand I needed these reports that had formerly been within our ERP system. Also, I wanted them to be in a separate solution that was under my control and independent from the ERP system. And on the other hand, I wanted some more. So I wanted the flexibility to be able to vary this data and for certain other purposes in the controlling department as well. So basically being able to do ad hoc analysis on it. Imke Feldmann (00:18:23): And we met often and I showed a certain interest in how the table logic was created. So I knew that the MDX was over my head at the time, but I showed a very strong interest in which table are created, how they relate to each other, and that was quite unusual. At least this is what the [inaudible 00:18:47] the freelancer told me. Rob Collie (00:18:49): I bet. Imke Feldmann (00:18:50): He said that he doesn't see that very often that clients showed this sort of interest. Rob Collie (00:18:56): Did he say, "Yeah. You really seem to be having fun with this. Most of my clients don't enjoy this." You said that you met very often, so were there times where he was writing MDX while you were in the room? Imke Feldmann (00:19:10): Sometimes yes, because I said, "Well, can we switch this a bit or make some changes?" And sometimes he said, "Well, I can try adjust now." Because he came over for one day or half a day, and then we spoke things through and defined further things. And if we were finishing early, he would just stay and do some coding there. But apart from that, he would work from home and do the big stuff. Rob Collie (00:19:37): OLAP originally it stands for online analytical processing, where online meant not batch, right? It meant you could ask a question and get the answer while you were still sitting there. Imke Feldmann (00:19:51): Okay. Oh, really? Rob Collie (00:19:53): That's what online meant. Imke Feldmann (00:19:54): It's interesting. Rob Collie (00:19:56): It basically meant almost like real time. It's a cousin of real time, that's what online meant at that point, as opposed to offline where you write a query and submit it and come back next week right? So that's what the online and OLAP comes from. Imke Feldmann (00:20:12): Oh, interesting. Rob Collie (00:20:13): We would pick a different terminology of OLAP were it invented today. So something interesting about, it sounds like your experience, and I did not anticipate drilling into your experience with multi-dimensional on this conversation, but I think it's really important is that at least some portion of that project that you sponsored and implemented with the freelancer, at least some portion of the work was similarly performed online. Meaning the two of you were sort of in real time communication as things evolved. And the old model and the vast majority of multidimensional solutions that have ever been built in the world, the MDX powered solutions, were built and an offline model, where the majority of the communication supposedly takes place in the form of a requirements document. Rob Collie (00:21:05): And that was a deeply, deeply, deeply flawed approach to the problem, that just doesn't actually work. So I guess it's not surprising to me that the one time I've ever heard someone say they really enjoyed that multi-dimensional project, that at least a portion of that multidimensional project was sort of almost like real-time collaboratively performed rather than completely asynchronous, right? I guess we want to be really geeky, we could say it was a synchronous model of communication as opposed to an asynchronous one. And Power BI really facilitates that kind of interaction. Imke Feldmann (00:21:41): Absolutely. Rob Collie (00:21:42): The reason why the MDX multi-dimensional model worked the way it did, or there was two reasons, one is a legitimate one on one of them is more cynical. So the legitimate reason is, is that it required reprocessing of the cube for every change, it's just too slow, right? The stakeholder, the business stakeholder doesn't typically have the time or the patience to sit there while the code's being written, because it's so long between even just implementing a formula change sometimes would be, well, we need to wait an hour. And so the attention span of the business person can't be held for good reason there, right? And so that sort of drove it into an asynchronous model. Rob Collie (00:22:23): The other reason is, is that that is asynchronous model turned out to be a really good business model for the consultants, because the fact that it didn't work meant that every project lasted forever. And so that's the cynical reason. But Power BI is not long delays. You change the measure formula, or you add an extra relationship, or heck even bringing in a new table, just a brand new table, bring it in, it wasn't even in the model, now it's in the model. End to end that can sometimes be measured in minutes or even seconds. And so you can retain engaged collaborative interest. Now it's not like you're always doing that, right? There's still room for offline asynchronous work in our business, but really critical portions of it can be performed the other way. And I think that makes a huge difference. Imke Feldmann (00:23:13): Yep. And that's what I like about it. So it's so great to be able to have, as a consultant, to perform really relatively large tasks without any further involvement of other people. Which, I mean, honestly, I don't call myself a team worker, not because I don't love other people also, but teamwork means you have to communicate with other people, make sure that they know what you're working on. So there are so many interfaces that have to be maintained if you're working with other people. And so I really laugh the way I work currently being able to deliver full solutions as a one woman show consultant. That is really a pleasure for me. That's really my preferred way of work, I must say. Because I can really focus on the things that have to be done and I'm able to deliver value in a relatively short time for the clients. Rob Collie (00:24:14): That's a really interesting concept. There are certain kinds of problems in which collaboration, a team collaboration is absolutely necessary. The magic of collaboration sometimes can beat problems that no individual could ever beat. At the same time though, there's this other dynamic, right, where having a team working on a problem is actually a real liability because the communication complexity between the people becomes the majority of the work. Here's a really hyper simplified example. There used to be sort of a three-person committee, if you will, that was running our company P3, me and two other people. Imke Feldmann (00:24:57): Mm-hmm (affirmative). Rob Collie (00:24:58): And so all leadership decisions were essentially handled at that level. Well, things change, people move on, right? And so we went from a three person committee to a two person committee. We didn't anticipate the two of us who stayed, right? We did not anticipate how much simpler that was going to make things. We thought, just do the math, right, it's going to be like, well, it's one less person to get on the same page. So it's going to be a one-third reduction in complexity. It was actually double that because we went from having three pairs of communication, right, the triangle has three sides, to a line that only has one side, right? So there was only one linkage that needed to be maintained as opposed to three geometrically, combinatorially, whatever we're going to say, right? It just became- Imke Feldmann (00:25:45): Exponential. Rob Collie (00:25:45): ... Exponetially simpler. And so for problems that can be soloed, you have this amazing savings in efficiency, in clarity, even, right? Imke Feldmann (00:25:59): Yup. Rob Collie (00:25:59): There's just so many advantages when you can execute as one person, then there's the other examples like our company at our size now, even ignoring the number of consultants that we need to do our business, just the back office alone, we need the difference in skills. We need the difference in talents and interests and everything. We simply could not exist without that kind of collaboration. However, when our consultants were working with a client, usually it's essentially a one-on-one type of thing, right? We don't typically put teams of consultants on the same project. We might have multiple consultants working for the same client and they might be building something that's somehow integrated, but it's still very similar, I think to your model, when you actually watch sort of the work being done, there's this amazing savings and complexities. Imke Feldmann (00:26:50): Yup, that's true. Of course I have a network in the background. So when big problems arise where I need brain input, of course, I have a network, but it's not a former company. Rob Collie (00:27:02): And that's how we work too, right? We have all kinds of internal Slack channels. For some reason we adopted Slack years ago before Teams was really a thing. So Slack is sort of like our internal social network. There's a lot of discussion of problems, and solutions, and a lot of knowledge sharing, and people helping each other out behind the scenes in that same way. Again, we do bring multiple consultants into particularly large projects, but it's not like there's three people working together on the same formula. In Power BI, the things that you do in ETL, the things that you do in power query are intimately interrelated with the data model and the decks that you need to create. And imagine parceling that out to three different people. You have one formula writer, one data modeler, one ETL specialist, you would never ever get anywhere in that kind of approach. Imke Feldmann (00:28:00): Not necessarily. I mean, the tax people are the person responsible for the data model. He could write down his requirements. He could define the tables basically. And then someone could try to get the data from the sources. But of course, then you get some feedback that the data isn't there or that the model has to be shaped in a different way. So it has two sides to it. But that's interesting to see that you have the same experience, that Power BI models or solutions of a certain size that can very well be handled by one person alone. And that really brings speed, and flexibility, and agility to the whole development process I think. Rob Collie (00:28:41): You communicate with yourself at what's above giga? Peta, petabit? you communicate with yourself at petabit speed and you communicate with others through a noisy 2,400 baud modem that's constantly breaking up. It's amazing what that can do for you sometimes. So there comes a point in your journey where you decide to go freelance. Imke Feldmann (00:29:07): Yup. Rob Collie (00:29:08): That's a courageous leap. When did that happen and what led you to that conclusion? Imke Feldmann (00:29:13): I made the decision in 2012 already to do that. Rob Collie (00:29:19): Wow. Imke Feldmann (00:29:20): And I just saw the light. I just saw the light in Power Pivot and then Power Query came along and I saw what Microsoft was after. And as I said, I enjoyed the building of the cube, getting my hands dirty, reading about the technologies behind it and so on. And this was what I felt passionate about. And I also had the idea that I needed some break from company politics. And so I just thought, well, I give it a try. And if it doesn't work, I can find a job after that or find a company where I work for at any time after that. So I just tried it and it worked. Rob Collie (00:30:05): So you decided in 2012, did you make the break in 2012 as well? Imke Feldmann (00:30:12): I prepared it, and then I just in 2013, I started solo. Rob Collie (00:30:18): Okay. 2013 is also when we formally formed our company. For 2010-2013, it was a blog. I had other jobs. I had other clients essentially, but I wasn't really hanging out the shingle so to speak, as you know, we're not an actual business really until 2013. And I guess it's not much accident that we both kind of did the same thing about the same time, it's that demand was finally sufficient I think in 2013 to support going solo. In 2012, there weren't enough clients to even support one consultant. And so, oh, that's great. And I think you really liked Power Query too, does M speak to you? Imke Feldmann (00:31:02): Yes. Yes. Yeah. Rob Collie (00:31:03): It does, doesn't it? Imke Feldmann (00:31:04): I really prefer Power Query or M over DAX, I must admit. It has been much more liable to me than DAX. Rob Collie (00:31:15): Oh, and I liked you so much before you said that. I'm team DAX all the way. Imke Feldmann (00:31:23): I know. I know. I know. I mean, of course I love to use DAX as well, but I really feel very, very strong about Power Query. And I mean, I had such a great journey with it. I mean, it was really [inaudible 00:31:35] work for me personally, that I did with it. And it was just a great journey to understand how things work. I mean, this has been the first coding language for me that I really learned. And it was just a great journey to learn all the things and starting to blog about it. And of course, I started basically helping people in the forum, that's where I basically built my knowledge about it, solving other people's problems. And this was just a great journey. And Polar Query has always been good to me than DAX. Rob Collie (00:32:14): This is really cool, right? So you fell in love with Power Pivot, so DAX and data model, right? There was no Power Query. Imke Feldmann (00:32:21): Mm-hmm (affirmative)-, that's true. Rob Collie (00:32:23): Okay. And because we had no Power Query, there were many, many, many things you couldn't do in Power Pivot unless your data source was a database. Imke Feldmann (00:32:30): Yup. Rob Collie (00:32:31): Because you needed views created that gave you the right shape tables, right? If your original data source didn't have a lookup table, a dimension table, you had to make one. And how are you going to make one without Power Query? It gets crazy, right? At least unbelievable. So try to mentally travel back for a moment to the point in time where you're willing to, and not just, it doesn't sound like you were just willing to, you were eager to go solo to become a freelancer, right, with just DAX and data modeling. And then after that, this thing comes along that you light up when you talk about. You didn't have this thing that you love, but you were already in, that doesn't happen very often. Imke Feldmann (00:33:18): It could be that loved DAX at the beginning, but it just started to disappoint me at sometimes. Rob Collie (00:33:29): Oh, okay. Thomas LaRock (00:33:29): It disappoints everyone. Rob Collie (00:33:29): I'm just devastated. Imke Feldmann (00:33:35): No, I mean, it's amazing what DAX can do, but I mean, we all know it looks easy at the beginning, but then you can really get trapped in certain situations. Rob Collie (00:33:46): Yeah. I described these two things is like the length and width of a rectangle, Power Query and DAX. Take your pick, which one's the width, which one's the length? I don't care. And then we ask which one is more responsible for the area of the rectangle, right? Neither. You can double the length of either of them and it doubles the area of the rectangle. So it's really ironic that I'm so sort of firmly on team DAX for a number of reasons. Number one, is that I'm really not actually that good at it compared to the people who've come along since. Like my book, for instance, I think, I look at it as this is the 100 and maybe the 200 level course at university, maybe the first in the second course, maybe, but it's definitely not the third course. The thing that you take in your third or fourth year of university, that's not covered in my book in terms of DAX. Rob Collie (00:34:44): And basically every one of the consultants at our company is better at DAX than I am. And that's great. That's really good. And the other thing that's ironic about my love of DAX over M, is if these two were in conflict, which they aren't. Imke Feldmann (00:35:00): No they are. Rob Collie (00:35:02): Is that I actually was trying for years to get a Power Query like project started on the Excel team. I knew how much time was being chewed up in the world just transforming data, not analyzing it even, just getting things ready for analysis. It's just ungodly amounts of time. And so I was obsessed with end-user ETL. When I was on the Excel team, it was like a running joke, someone would mention in a meeting, "Well, that's kind of like ETL," and other people would go, "Oh no, no, don't say that in front of Rob, he's going to get started and he won't shut up about it for the next 30 minutes." On the podcast with the Power Query team, I told them I'm really glad that no one ever agreed to fund my project on the Excel team because now that I see what Power Query is like I grossly underestimated how much work needed to go into something like that. And I'm glad that Microsoft isn't saddled with some old and completely inadequate solution to the Power Query space, because now that I've seen what the real thing looks like, I'm like, "Oh my gosh, we would've never been able to pull that off." Rob Collie (00:36:14): So the thing that I was most obsessed with is the thing that now that it's actually been built, for some reason, I just find M to be, I don't know, there's like a reverse gravity there that pushes me away. Imke Feldmann (00:36:26): What I actually would like to see is that there's less need to use M in the Power Query product. So first, the only thing I was dreaming about was finally to have a function library that can easily be shipped from then, or that you can download from internet or wherever, where you can use additional functions in your M code. So this was the first thing that I was really passionate about and thought that we should have such a thing in Power Query to be able to make more cool things, or group steps together. But now what I really think we should actually have and see in Power Query is the ability to build our own ribbons and to the query editor. Rob Collie (00:37:13): Yes. Imke Feldmann (00:37:13): Like we have in an Excel. So this is something that in my eyes would really bring a big push to the product and actually would make so much sense for the people who start using these products. I mean the whole Power platform can have so many benefits for finance department, all departments, but I mean, I'm passionate about finance departments. But have you counted how many low-code languages are in there, if you include Power Apps and Power Automate and all these things? Rob Collie (00:37:50): Low-code. Imke Feldmann (00:37:50): And honestly, in order to come up with any solution that makes sense in a business environment, I would say in all of these solutions, there is no way around the code at the end. I mean, you get quite far with clicky, clicky, but I haven't seen solutions where you get around the languages. And now imagine the typical finance people who really they know the Excel formulas and some of them might know VBA as well. And now their server uses new low-code, no-code word, and just get your head around about five or six new languages that you all have to know and learn in order to get something useful and so on. So I think that's just not feasible for people who have real jobs in the business to learn all that. Rob Collie (00:38:42): Well, that's what you're here for, right? That's what your business is for and that's what P3 is for. Imke Feldmann (00:38:48): We get them started and the products are great. And if there are people in the companies who have a drive to learn things and take the time they get their heads around it, but it could be easier. It could be easier with things like that, where we could provide additional user interfaces and just make it even easier for people to build great solutions for them or adapt solutions that consultants had build initially, but to maintain them by themselves and make adjustments to them if needed. Rob Collie (00:39:19): So [inaudible 00:39:20] has an old joke where he says, when he's doing a presentation or something, he says, "That's a good question. And I define good question as a question I know the answer to, right." And then he says, "But then a great question is a question that is covered by the very next slide." So there's a similar parallel joke to make here, which is that, that idea you just talked about with the ribbons and everything, right? So if I said, it's a smart idea, what I would mean is, again, this is a joke, right? I would mean that that's an idea that I agree with and have kind of already had. But if I say it's a brilliant idea- Imke Feldmann (00:39:55): Okay. Rob Collie (00:39:56): ... Then it's an even better version of an idea that I've already had that has never occurred to me. Your idea is a brilliant idea. Imke Feldmann (00:40:02): Okay. Rob Collie (00:40:06): It goes beyond. So I have been advocating privately behind the scenes with the Power Query team forever telling them that they need about three or four more ribbon tabs. There's just way too many commonly encountered problems for which you can imagine there being a button for, and there's no button. Imke Feldmann (00:40:28): Exactly. Rob Collie (00:40:29): And it's like, I don't understand. I used to be on teams like that, but I don't understand why they haven't gotten to this. Because it seems so low hanging fruit. They've already built the engine, they've built the language, right? The language can already handle this, but you actually had two brilliant ideas in there that had never occurred to me. First of all, I'm used to the idea that the community can't contribute libraries of functions, they can't do that for DAX. Imke Feldmann (00:40:57): Mm-hmm (affirmative). Rob Collie (00:40:58): That's not even like engineering possible for DAX. And the reason for it is, is that the DAX engine is so heavily optimized in so many ways that there'd be no way to plug in some new function that's unpredictable in terms of what it needs to do. All of these things, they're all inherently interrelated and they make changes in the storage and the query engine to make this function work better and vice versa, because it has to take advantage of the index compression scheme and all of that kind of stuff. It's actually not possible, is the wrong word, but it's actually orders of magnitude more difficult, if not impossible to allow DAX to have UDF, user-defined function type of feature. Rob Collie (00:41:42): I don't think Power Query is like that though. Maybe naively, because again, I'm not on the internals team on the Power Query side. But it does seem like a UDF capability is at least much more feasible- Imke Feldmann (00:41:53): Absolutely. Rob Collie (00:41:54): ... For Power Query, which does execute row by row essentially. Other languages have this, right? One of the reasons that R is so popular is not that R is so awesome, is that R has tremendous libraries of commonly solved problems that you can just go grab off the internet or off the shelf and plug into your solution. Imke Feldmann (00:42:14): I have my own library I've created. You can go to my GitHub and you'll see 50, 60 custom M functions. You can package them in a record and [inaudible 00:42:24] them as a library and your M code, or you could even connect live to them and run them with an execute statement. But this is too difficult, although it's just a couple of clicks, but it's too difficult or at least intimidating for the beginners, who really Power Query beginners who start with the products, I think there's so much potential to make their life easier. And that's not through some coding stuff, or I know this function, I know that function, that's really can only come in my eyes through user interface with buttons. Rob Collie (00:42:59): Yeah, I agree. And just as importantly for me, is that I might actually come around and be like, just as much team Power Query as team DAX. Honestly, my frustration is just the M language and just my total lack of desire to learn it. [crosstalk 00:43:16]. It is what it really comes down to. It's not about M, it's not about Power Query, it's about me. Whereas again, I know the need that it fills is massively important. So it's not that I think it's a bad mission, I think it's like the mission in a lot of ways. I was obsessed with it long before I ever crossed paths with business intelligence, I was obsessed with data transformation, end user data transformation. It's just a problem that's about as ubiquitous as it gets. So let's make it happen. We agree, the two of us, that's it, right? It's like we need to go provide a unified front. Imke Feldmann (00:43:52): I think that that's an idea in the idea forum, I might send the link that you can maybe post. Rob Collie (00:43:56): We want that thing up, voted to the moon. I'll even go figure out what my sign in is on the ideas side. Imke Feldmann (00:44:08): Oh, good luck with it. Rob Collie (00:44:09): Which is absolutely impossible. I have no idea which of the 14 counts. And then I'll try to create a new one and it'll go, "Nah, you're not allowed to. We know it's you, but we won't tell you who it is, what your email address is." So I completely agree. So there's so many problems. I always struggle to produce the list. It's like I need to be writing down the list of things that are crucial, but here's an example. Remove duplicates, but control which duplicate you keep. That's a problem that can't be solved in the GUI today. Imke Feldmann (00:44:48): And you need the intimidating type of buffer that you have to write by hand around it, which is just pain. Rob Collie (00:44:56): Remove dups and don't care which one you keep. Okay, fine. That's a great simple button. There should be an advanced section that allows you to specify, oh, but before you keep the dups, sort by this column or sort in the following manner. Imke Feldmann (00:45:10): Exactly. Rob Collie (00:45:10): And then keep the first one of each group. It's easy for us to say outside the team, but apparently that is a, we just make a joke, right? That's apparently a Manhattan project level of software to add that extra button. Anyway, we'll get that. Thomas LaRock (00:45:27): That doesn't make sense to me though. I'm fascinated by all of your conversation and you guys are a hundred miles away from me in a lot of this stuff, but I could listen to it all day. But no, the fact that Excel can't do the remove duplicates, except for like the first of each one of something, that's a simple group by. In my head, I sit there and go that's easily solvable because Excel and DAX does such great stuff that I would never want to do in TSQL, how the hell do we stumble across a thing that's been solved by straight up SQL language that somehow can't get into an Excel? Rob Collie (00:46:01): Well, let's explain the problem very clearly and see if we're on the same page as to what the problem is, but either way it'll be valuable. So let's say you have a whole bunch of orders, a table full of orders. That is a really wide Franken table. It's got things like customer ID, customer address, customer phone number, but also what product they ordered, and how much of it, and how much it cost. Okay, and a date, a date of the order. All right. And you've been given this table because the people that are responsible for this system, they think that what you want is a report and not a data source. And this is incredibly common. Okay. So you need to extract a customer's dimension or lookup table out of this. You need to create a customer's table so that you can build a good star schema model. Okay. And Power Query is right there to help you. Power Query will help you invent a customer's look up table where one wasn't provided, and that's awesome. Rob Collie (00:46:58): Okay. So you say, okay, see customer ID this column. I want to remove duplicates based on that column. Okay, great. But now it's just that the order that the data came in from the report file or the database or whatever that will determine which duplicate is kept. What you really want to do of course is take the most recent customer order of each customer ID because they've probably moved. They may have changed phone numbers, whatever, right? You want their most recent contact information. You don't want their contact information for 15 years ago. And the M language allows you to solve this problem essentially sort by date, and then keep the most recent, but only if you get into the code manually, and as Imke points out, it's not even if you go into the code, the things that you would want to do, if you do a sort, you can add a sort step to the Power Query with the buttons, with the GUI, and then you do the remove duplicates and it ignores the source. Imke Feldmann (00:47:59): Yes. Rob Collie (00:48:02): The GUI almost tries to tell you that it's impossible, but if you know about table dot buffer. Imke Feldmann (00:48:07): So the question is why do we have a sort command in Power Query when it doesn't give the sort order? I mean, that is the question to ask. But that's how it is. Rob Collie (00:48:16): It sorts the results. It sorts the results, it just doesn't sort for the intermediate steps. Imke Feldmann (00:48:20): Why? No, that's quite technical. But would just be great if such a common task could be done with buttons that is reliable at the end. I fully agree. Rob Collie (00:48:35): So Tom, I think this one's really just an example of, again, I truly think that M and Power Query, just like DAX and data modeling, the Power BI data modeling, both of these things belong in the software hall of fame of all time. It is amazing, Power Query, M, is just ridiculously amazing. It's one of the best things ever invented. Remember this is someone who's associated with being a critic of it. Imke Feldmann (00:49:04): Yeah, you're making progress, it's great to see. Rob Collie (00:49:07): And yet I'm telling you that it's one of the top five things ever invented probably. And I think there's a certain tendency when you've done something that amazing to lose track of the last mile. I think it's more of a human thing. Imke Feldmann (00:49:19): Maybe, but I mean, what I see is that they are investing quite a lot in data flows, which makes a lot of sense as well in my eyes. Rob Collie (00:49:27): All that really does though, as far as you and I are concerned, Imke, is it makes it even more important that they solve this problem. Because it's now exposed in two different usage scenarios. Imke Feldmann (00:49:37): Yeah, you're right. Rob Collie (00:49:39): And I want my data flow to be able to control which duplicates are kept too. So that's what I'm saying. There's all these big sort of infrastructural technical challenges that do tend to draw resources. And it's not a neglect thing. Imke Feldmann (00:49:54): No, no. Rob Collie (00:49:54): It isn't like a willful failure or anything like that, I don't want to paint that kind of negative of a picture. Imke Feldmann (00:49:59): No. Rob Collie (00:50:00): It's just that out here in reality, the inability to do, even if we just identified the top 10 things like this, addressing those top 10 things with GUI, with buttons, what have I think in the world, maybe even a bigger impact than the entire data flows project, right? Because you would expand the footprint of human beings that are advocates of this stuff and then you go build data flows. You don't have to think of it as either or, right? They should do both. It's just that I think it's hard to appreciate the impact of those 10 buttons when you're on the software team. It's easier to appreciate the impact of data flows, which is massive. I don't mean to denigrate that. I think it's crazy good. It's just that this other thing is of a similar magnitude in terms of benefit, but it's harder to appreciate when you're on the software team. It's easier to appreciate when you're out here in the trenches, living it every single day. And every time I run into a problem like this, I have to put my hand up and say to my own team, I have to say, " Help." Thomas LaRock (00:51:02): So a casual observation I have is that you wish for there to exist one tool that will handle all of your data janitorial needs. And that tool doesn't necessarily exist because life is dirty, so is your data and you're never going to anticipate everything possible. Now, should that sorting functionality exist in that duplicates, the scenario gave me? Yeah, probably. But there's always going to be something next. And that's why I go to you and I say, the thing that you've described to me is you need your data to be tidy so that it can be consumed and used by a lot of these features that we've talked about today. And in order to get to tidy data, there's no necessarily one tool. Thomas LaRock (00:51:48): You're a big fan of the ETL, Rob. You know that, hey, maybe I need to take the source data and run it through some Python scripts, or some M, or something first before it goes to this next thing. And that's the reality that we really have. What you're wishing for is the one tool, the one button to rule it all. And that's going to take a while before that ever comes around. Rob Collie (00:52:09): The thing is though, is that M is ridiculously complete. Imke Feldmann (00:52:14): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:52:15): You can do anything with it. And it's a language that's optimized for data transformation. So I know you can do anything with C++ too, right? But this is a data crunching, data transformation, specialized language that is really complete. And its UI is woefully under serving the capabilities of the engine. And so I suppose we could imagine and deliberately design a data transformation scenario that maybe M couldn't do it. Imke Feldmann (00:52:45): No. Rob Collie (00:52:46): I think that'd be a very difficult challenge considering how good M is. Imke Feldmann (00:52:49): I think in terms of logic, M can do anything, but in terms of performance, there is some room for improvements. So because there's a streaming semantic running in the background, and as long as the stream runs through all the steps, if you have complex queries, this can really slow things down. And currently there is no button or command in the M language to cut the stream and say, well, stop it here and buffer what you have calculated until here, and then continue from there. So if you have really complex stuff that would benefit from an intermediate buffer, then you can store that in an Azure blob or CSV, or whatever. Specifically if you're working with data flows, you can create some automatic processes that would enable this kind of buffering. Imke Feldmann (00:53:45): And then you will see that the speed of the whole process that can really increase dramatically because in some situations, the speed in M drops exponentially. And these are occasions where a buffer would really helped things, but we don't have it yet in the engine of Power Query. So this was what really be something else that would be fairly beneficial if we wouldn't have to make these work-arounds through things. Rob Collie (00:54:14): Tom, that just occurred to me, I can't believe this is the first time that this thought has crossed my mind. But I think that you might fall into an abyss of love with M. Thomas LaRock (00:54:28): Well, I'm a huge James Bond fan, but... Rob Collie (00:54:30): Oh, no. I think you would really, really just dig it. Thomas LaRock (00:54:38): I don't think I have time to take on a new relationship at this point. I'm still with Python and R, so I mean, I don't know. I'm not going to disagree, I'm just, please don't start a new addiction for me. Rob Collie (00:54:51): Think of the content though, that you could produce over time. The M versus SQL versus Python treatises. Thomas LaRock (00:54:59): Cookbook. Rob Collie (00:55:00): You were made for this mission Tom. Thomas LaRock (00:55:03): Okay. So we'll have to talk later about it. You can sweet talk me. You know I've let you sweet talk me into any [inaudible 00:55:08]. Rob Collie (00:55:08): That's right, that's right. Come on, Tom. Get into M, you know that thing that I have nothing but praise for, that I just love to death, you need to do that. Thomas LaRock (00:55:18): For you. That's what you want to do, is you want to learn it but [inaudible 00:55:21] through me. Rob Collie (00:55:22): Oh, that wouldn't work. I would be, "Oh yeah, well this is still M." Thomas LaRock (00:55:29): You're going to be like, "Tom, where's your latest blog post on M so I can read it and hate upon it even more?" Rob Collie (00:55:37): No, I would not read. Just as the first step. Thomas LaRock (00:55:42): I'm going to read it, but not leave a comment about how much I hate it. Rob Collie (00:55:45): Let's go back to talking about how we did a bunch of big fat Fisher-Price buttons for me to mash my thumbs in the UI. That's what I need. Thomas LaRock (00:55:54): You know what? I'll do that. I'll open up VS code and I'll just build this one big button, it's Rob's button. Rob Collie (00:56:00): Hey, you won't believe this, but I recently installed VS code. Thomas LaRock (00:56:03): I don't believe it, why? Rob Collie (00:56:05): Well, because I needed to edit, not even write, because I'm not capable of it. I needed to edit an interface, add on customization for World of Warcraft. And the only purpose of this World of Warcraft add on interface modification was to allow me to drop snarky comments into a particular channel of the conversation based on the button that I press. I needed a menu of snarky comments to drop at particular points in time. It's hard to type them out all the time, right? So it's just like, now here we go. I dropped one of those. I dropped one of those. Thomas LaRock (00:56:37): We got to get you a real job or something. You got way too much time on your hands. Rob Collie (00:56:42): That was my number one contribution to the World of Warcraft Guild. For a couple of months, there was the snarky rogue chat. Thomas LaRock (00:56:48): You know that is on brand. Rob Collie (00:56:56): It prefixed every comment in the chat with a prefix, you came from rogue chat 9,000. So that people who aren't on the joke were like, "Why is this guy, he's usually very quiet, become so obnoxious. Look at the things he's saying." Anyway. So VS code. And that also involved GitHub. Because my friend who wrote the stub, the shell of this add on for me is a vice president at GitHub. So of course he puts the code in GitHub and points me to it and then points me to VS code, and I'm like, "Oh, you're making me work now? Okay. But you wrote the shell for me, so okay. All right. I'll play ball." So it doesn't sound like you regret your decision to go solo. Imke Feldmann (00:57:40): Absolutely. Rob Collie (00:57:41): You're not looking to go back to corporate life. Imke Feldmann (00:57:43): Absolutely not. Rob Collie (00:57:44): Not missing that. So what can you tell us about the last year or two? What impact, if any, did COVID have on your business? Imke Feldmann (00:57:52): Business has grown especially the last year. So people needed more reports than ever and solutions. So it really, I don't know whether it was COVID effect or just the fact that Power BI is growing and growing. Rob Collie (00:58:07): I'm sure it's both. So the dynamic we saw during 2020. So 2020 would be the, if you're going to have a year that was negatively impacted by COVID, it would have been 2020. And what we saw in 2020 was that we were definitely not acquiring new clients. We weren't making new relationships at nearly the rate we had been people weren't taking risks on meeting a new BI firm. That wasn't something that there was as much appetite for as there had been. However, amongst the clients where we already had a good relationship, we'd already been working with them for a while, their needs for data work expanded as a result of COVID because it did, it created all kinds of new problems and it invalidated so many existing blueprints of tribal knowledge of how we run the business. When reality changes, you need new maps, you need new campuses. Rob Collie (00:59:04): And so on net, we ended up our overall business still grew modestly over the course of 2020, year over year compared to 2019. But then when the new clients started to become viable again, people started looking, we're interested in making new relationships, 2021 has been a very, very strong year of growth, not moderate, really kind of crazy. How do you keep up with increased demand as a one person shop? Imke Feldmann (00:59:35): Saying no. Rob Collie (00:59:36): You have to make your peace with saying no. At one point in my history, I faced sort of the same thing and I decided not to say no, and instead decided to grow the company. That brought an enormous amount of risk and stress- Imke Feldmann (00:59:55): I can imagine. Rob Collie (00:59:55): ... Into my life that I did not anticipate its magnitude. I'm sure I anticipated it, but I didn't anticipate the magnitude of it. I'm very grateful that I'd made that decision though, because where we are today is incredible. That's a rocky transition. So today everything runs like clockwork basically. We have a lot of growth ahead of us that seems almost like it's just going to happen, we're just going to keep growing for a long time. But we had to set the table we had to build our organism as a company into a very different form than what it had been when it was just me. And that molting process it was very painful. I don't pretend that the scaling decision is the right decision, it's very much a personal one. I've certainly lived that. If the version of me that made the decision to scale the company knew everything that was coming, it would have been a much harder decision to make. You kind of have to have a little bit of naive optimism even to make that leap. Imke Feldmann (01:00:57): I can imagine that once you get these things figured out and with the dynamic that the product has, that has a good chance to get it going into a very successful business, I believe. Rob Collie (01:01:10): Well, with your profile and with the growing demand for these sorts of services, the percentage of no that you have to say is just going to keep going up. Imke Feldmann (01:01:20): Yeah. But I made my decision and that's just fine. Rob Collie (01:01:25): I'm very supportive of that decision. I don't have any criticism of it, again, especially knowing what I know now. But if there's going to be come a point where you're going to be saying yes 1% of the time, and the answer to that is ultimately, well, you just raise your rates, which is also very difficult to do. In the end, it's almost like an auction for your services. You need to run yourself like Google. There's a 40 hour block of Imke time coming up for availability. We'll just put it on eBay. Imke Feldmann (01:01:59): I mean, it's just nice to be able to choose with whom you work with. That's just nice. And I earned enough money, so that's fine. So I'm happy with that. Rob Collie (01:02:12): How do you choose who you work with? Is it mostly based on industry? Is it mostly based on job function that you're helping? Or is it more about the specific people? There's all kinds of things that could... Let's say if I came to your website today, I filled out your contact form, what are the things that I could say in that contact for a message that would lead you to say no, versus leads you to say maybe? Imke Feldmann (01:02:37): What I really like to do is to work with finance directors. So basically not people exactly like me, but I like to see that the managers approached me and they have an interest in the product itself and also therefore an interest to push it into their departments. So this is for me, a very, very good starting point because it's an area I'm familiar with. I know that there's enough critical support to get the decisions that have to be made and maybe also push IT to help with certain things. This is really one of my favorite set ups, I would say. Rob Collie (01:03:19): Yeah, we do a lot of work with finance departments as well. How long does sort of your average relationship run with a client? How long do you end up working with the same organization on average? Imke Feldmann (01:03:31): That's hard to say, that's really completely different. It can be the initial five days kickoff where we set up a PNL statement connect all the finance data and they go along with that. And basically, never hear again, or just occasionally hear again, "Can you help me with this problem or that problem?" And it could also be going on for years, basically with breaks in between of course, but some customers, they come every now and then when they want to expand things. Now I have a customer that I'm working on some hours or even days ever week since over a year by now. Rob Collie (01:04:15): That sounds similar to my experience as a freelancer, when it was just me, less similar to our business today, a little bit less. I mean, I think it's still more similar than not. It's just that the dial has moved a little bit. Imke Feldmann (01:04:32): So how long are your engagements then, usually? Rob Collie (01:04:35): Most of our engagements are, if we start out doing kind of that kickoff you're talking about, we started like a project with people, that tends to not be the end. We don't typically have people just immediately vanish after that because that's usually the point at which, I mean, they've got something working already, very often after the first week or so of working with a client, they've usually got some really amazing things built already at that point. But at the same time, that's really just at the beginning of the appetite. Usually there are things that are

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Christina Vitagliano shares her story from enduring child abuse to going on to start a multimillion-dollar business and publishing her own memoir. She breaks down the ripple effects that child abuse had on her life and why some of the effects of child abuse hit much so much harder in adulthood. Support the Podcast Light After Trauma website   Christina's Website   Transcript:   Alyssa Scolari [00:23]: Hey, warriors. Welcome back to another episode of Light After Trauma. I'm your host, Alyssa Scolari, and we have with us today, Christina Vitagliano. Now, Christina is an author, entrepreneur and the founder of a successful family entertainment concept, Monster Mini Golf. Having spent three decades working on her memoir, Christina hopes to share her story and touch the hearts of readers with her account of childhood abuse, empowering survivors to reclaim their lives and learn to thrive, despite their trauma. Her passion is to provide affordable, fun entertainment that the whole family can enjoy. Monster Mini Golf is a multi-million dollar company with 30 locations across the USA and Canada. Without any further ado, I would love to introduce our guest today. We're going to be talking about childhood trauma with Christina. Welcome, Christina, how are you today? Christina Vitagliano [01:31]: I am good. How are you? Alyssa Scolari [01:33]: I am good. Really happy just to update the listeners. I just learned that while Christina is currently in Vegas, she's originally from the New England area, which I love. As all the listeners know, I'm a Jersey girl through and through, even though I live in PA now. Christina's accent feels like a warm cup of tea for me. Thank you for being here. I'm really happy to have you on the show. Christina Vitagliano [02:02]: Oh, thank you for inviting me. Alyssa Scolari [02:04]: Yeah, of course. You're spreading awareness about, I think, one of the most taboo topics in the field, people really shy away from talking about child abuse. Christina Vitagliano [02:19]: They do. Alyssa Scolari [02:21]: You are doing anything but shying away from that. Christina Vitagliano [02:26]: Took me a while, but yes. Alyssa Scolari [02:28]: I think that's important to point out, right? That it doesn't happen overnight for sure. Christina Vitagliano [02:33]: No. Alyssa Scolari [02:35]: I guess let's start with take me back to how you even became somebody who spreads awareness on childhood abuse. What is your story? Where did you come from? How did you get to where you are today? Christina Vitagliano [02:53]: Well, a quick overview. It started when I was about four years old and it lasted until I left home, which was around 16/17 years old. Actually I didn't move out until I was 18, but it was that whole period. Alyssa Scolari [03:06]: That was the whole period that you ... So you started being abused around the age of four? Christina Vitagliano [03:06]: Yep. Alyssa Scolari [03:06]: Okay. Christina Vitagliano [03:11]: Then I left home around 18 or when I legally could, I was out the door. Then I didn't tell anybody. I didn't talk about it. I didn't do anything. I'm sorry. That's my doorbell. Until I decided to sit down and write about it, which was about 20 something years ago. I sat down and just put it all on paper and then I sat on that for the last 20 years, and then finally published my memoir this year. Alyssa Scolari [03:42]: Wow. Christina Vitagliano [03:43]: Yeah. Yeah. Alyssa Scolari [03:45]: Okay. You escaped your abusive environment. Now, when you were in your abusive environment, did you know at the time that that was abuse? When did you make that connection like, "Oh, this is what's happening here." Christina Vitagliano [03:58]: Well, God, at four years old I try to ... I remember ... I have a very, very good memory on some things, but I couldn't tell you what I had for lunch yesterday, but- Alyssa Scolari [04:06]: Same here. Christina Vitagliano [04:06]: ... I do. I have such vivid ... That's a curse and a blessing at times, but very vivid memories. I remember being that young, knowing that what was happening wasn't right. I didn't know why it wasn't right. I didn't know ... Because you're four. I mean, you only know so much, but whatever it was, was wrong. On the flip side, I didn't want to mess up our family. My mom ... This was my stepdad and they had just gotten married. My big thing was, "Don't make mom unhappy because she was so unhappy before and now this man makes her happy and I don't want to mess things up." You know? That's how it started. I think once you start down that path, and I don't know why, you just continue down that path of, "I am going to handle this myself. I'm not going to mess things up for anybody." I was terrified that I would get taken away from the family and thrown into an orphanage, which to me was worse than what I was dealing with. Kind of short version of that whole story. Alyssa Scolari [05:16]: You're speaking such universal feelings and thoughts that children have, which is children have this concept that the devil you know ... And even adults, right? Christina Vitagliano [05:16]: Yeah. Alyssa Scolari [05:28]: The devil you know is better than the one that you don't. I think so many children endure what they need to endure for the sake of keeping the family together and not risking being pulled away from their family. Christina Vitagliano [05:48]: Yeah. Oh, yeah. I think as a child, it's instinctive that you want to make your mom or your dad, whoever it is you're bonded to, or even if it's both of them, instinctively your job is to make sure that you do what you're supposed to do and make them happy because that makes you happy. I don't know. I mean, it's a vicious circle, but that's not true. You shouldn't do some things just to make other people happy. It took me 30 years to figure that out. Yeah. Alyssa Scolari [06:21]: Yeah. Honestly, it takes some of us so much longer because that's what we think. You're right. It's, "I want to make this person happy. I see how happy my mom is. I don't want to be the bearer of bad news. I don't want to stir the pot." It's so difficult. How did you get ... Was it just that with age you began to change and then when you became a teenager, you were like, "I got to get out of here." Christina Vitagliano [06:49]: No. A couple of things. Like you said, you know it was wrong. I did know it was wrong at a very young age, and as you get older, boy, do you learn it's more wrong. I mean, so now this ridiculous thing of, "Wow, I'm going to protect everybody else." The wrong part gets so hard and as you get older, much harder because you learn more, but you keep dealing with it. Then when I met my now husband, he was the first one that I ever told and he's the first one that ever approached me and said, "Hey, what's wrong with you?" I mean, short version, you know? Alyssa Scolari [07:25]: Right. Christina Vitagliano [07:25]: Hey, what the hell's wrong with you? He just did it in such a blunt way. We were young. We had been dating for maybe, I don't know, weeks. I had been previously married and divorced. Didn't tell him, didn't tell anybody I'd ever dated. Now I was about 30 years old, so I don't know if it was him in my face being so blunt and the only one who said, "What the hell happened to you?" Or if it was a combination of that and at 30 years old, you kind of ... I don't know what it is. You hit these milestones in life. 30 is one of them though. You say, "What am I doing with my life?" You think you're an adult and you're not an adult at 30 because that's bullshit. I don't even know if I'm an adult at my age and I'm in my 50s. It's just, you start to question yourself as to what you think you know and, "Hey, maybe it's time I stand up and stop doing what I've been doing to myself." You're abusing yourself really for so many years. I listened to one of your podcasts where you went through your relationship and I was like, "Dear God, how many of us have been down that same exact path with the same exact reasoning within ourselves?" Then one day you wake up and say, "Holy cow, I'm a dummy." In a good way though, it's a good thing to say because you realize you don't need to be that dummy all the time, you know? Alyssa Scolari [08:50]: Right. It's not like I'm a dummy in a disparaging- Christina Vitagliano [08:55]: No. Alyssa Scolari [08:55]: ... a self-disparaging way. It's almost like you wake up one day and the pieces fall together and you're like, "Oh, God." Christina Vitagliano [09:04]: Where was I, man? I know. Alyssa Scolari [09:07]: Right. I feel so disconnected from the person that I was when I was in it and in those bad relationships. You also realize that the bad relationships that you then continue to have in your teens and 20s are because you didn't really know any better. Christina Vitagliano [09:28]: Yeah. Yeah. Alyssa Scolari [09:29]: [crosstalk 00:09:29]. Christina Vitagliano [09:29]: Or you've conditioned yourself to be who you are and it's instinctive, "Well, I'm going to make this person happy. I don't want to upset the applecart." I do that to this day. I still do that. Yeah. Alyssa Scolari [09:42]: Oh, yes. The chronic people-pleasing and not wanting to upset anybody. There are people ... I say this all the time, especially with, oh, one of my clients in particular where we talk about the red flags and how all the red flags look green. Even the red flags that are so bad, they're on fire we choose to look past. Christina Vitagliano [10:03]: Yep. It's almost you'll do anything to avoid turmoil. I don't even know why that is, but it is a common thing like, "Oh, geez, I don't want to make anything bad." You know? I don't know. Alyssa Scolari [10:14]: Yeah. I think it's because we're taught when we're so young that other people's feelings matter more than our trauma and what happens to us. That's the narrative that we carry around, that it doesn't matter. Yes. I'm unhappy and yes, maybe this person is hurting me, but this person is giving me love, some sort of love. Even if it's not what I really truly need or want, it's something and something is better than nothing. At the end of the day, my partner's feelings matter more than mine so I stay. Christina Vitagliano [10:50]: I remember. I went through a similar relationship that you spoke of in one of your podcasts and I thought to myself, "Oh, you can relate to every single word that you were saying." Then you wake up one day and say, "Hey, I know this sucks. I know I'm in a bad relationship. I know that he's really f'ing with me. You know what I mean? But I'm afraid to live alone. I'm terrified to be on my own. What would I do by myself?" Then one day you wake up and say, "I don't care what I do by myself." I remember saying to myself, "If I sit in a room and I'm stuck watching TV for 12 hours a day because I have nothing else to do, I don't have any friends anymore because he's alienated everybody, then that's okay with me." As soon as you decide that whatever it is, is okay, and is better than what you were dealing with, the door opens. Then you're just like, "Well, this is all good." You realize everything you thought was complete bullshit." Because it's not that bad out there by yourself. You know? Alyssa Scolari [11:52]: Yeah. Eventually you'll get to a point ... Well, I shouldn't say everybody because some people spend their whole lives in- Christina Vitagliano [12:00]: Oh, you're right. Alyssa Scolari [12:01]: ... one toxic relationship to the next, which breaks my heart and is part of the reason why we sit here and talk about this. It's just about awareness. Yeah. I think some people do get to a point where the pain of being in the situation is greater than the pain that it would take to change. That's when change comes. I guess I'm wondering for you, what do you think got you to a point where you were like, "Okay. I'm going to sit down and I'm going to write all of this out." Because you said this was what? Like 20 years ago that you wrote all this down? Christina Vitagliano [12:37]: Yeah. I don't know because once my ... It wasn't my husband then, but once he asked me, "Hey, what happened to you?" When I answered that, you've held that in for that long. Now all of a sudden it's raw and it's in your face and he's the kind of guy that just asked and asked and asked. He won't stop asking. Alyssa Scolari [12:57]: He doesn't let it go. Christina Vitagliano [12:58]: He doesn't let it go, and I'm the person, and on the flip side, I'm still the people-pleaser so I answered all of those questions that I probably didn't want to answer at the time, but I did, which is a good thing I think in the long run because it was ... But once it was all out there, I was like, "Wow." As I'm talking about it, I'm teaching myself, "Wow. There's a lot of things I should have done differently and I don't want anyone else to have to deal with any of this. If you could help anybody at that point, you're like, "Holy cow, nobody should have to deal with some of this." I started to put it down on paper and I said, "I'm going to start from the beginning." And I just kept going. My husband, he teases me. He said, "For six months, all I saw was the back of your head on the computer." Because it's all I was doing, was writing, writing, writing. Then when I got done, I was like, "All right, now I want to publish this." Now, of course knew nothing about publishing, and 20 something years ago, self-publishing didn't really exist like it does now. I learned, "Holy cow, I have to have this professionally edited." Then I learned that cost about $5,000 plus at the time. I didn't have any money. Then that was the next hurdle. How do you get from this raw bunch of words to it being fine-tuned and ready to go to a publisher? Then, will anybody even want to publish it? I sat on that. I didn't have the $5,000. I had left my career when I married my husband because I didn't want to be a workaholic. There's a lot of things I think that when you come out of an abusive relationship, whether it's child abuse or whatever that's happened over a long period of time, you're not just affected with who you are mentally, but I don't know, my vice was working. I didn't drink. I didn't do any drugs, nothing like that, but I worked because work consumed my brain. When this all came out, I learned that I also have to fix that. I can't be working 70 hours a week and married to my job because if you're going to have a relationship, that person deserves some of you too. I wasn't capable of doing both of them. I knew that. I literally quit my career. Said, "I'm going to give this relationship thing a shot because I failed so many other times." I left that and went to work with my husband and started doing some things in odds and ends. Of course, we had no money. We're living on like peanut butter. After I wrote the book, I'm like, "I need $5,000. I don't have $5,000." I created a company called Monster Mini Golf and- Alyssa Scolari [15:34]: That's how you became the accidental entrepreneur. Christina Vitagliano [15:37]: Yes. In my head I was like, "I'm going to raise $5,000. I can do mini golf indoors, me and a friend, and when I raise the five grand, maybe I can get it published and then I'll be able to make enough money to live on too in the meantime. That was almost 20 years ago. Now we have 30 Monster Mini Golf locations. We franchised it. We've got two crazy locations in casinos in Vegas here, one with KISS and one with the Twilight Zone. I got sucked in and I became a workaholic and my husband owns this company with me so I kind of turned him into one now. Now he wants to be the workaholic and I don't want to be so that's its own battle. Yeah. Then when the pandemic hit, I sat down and said, "Oh, okay, we're closed. There's nothing to do. Hey, self-publishing is amazing. Look at all of this." I self-published. Alyssa Scolari [16:38]: Yeah. Yes. Now you have this book out titled Every 9 Minutes. Christina Vitagliano [16:45]: Yep. Yep. Alyssa Scolari [16:46]: Can you tell us a little bit about this book? Is this detailing your life- Christina Vitagliano [16:51]: It is. Alyssa Scolari [16:52]: ... and what you went through? Christina Vitagliano [16:54]: It is. It's titled Every 9 Minutes because every nine minutes there is a reported case of child abuse in the United States. Just in the United States, the rest of the world I can't even imagine, and that's reported. Alyssa Scolari [17:10]: Right. That's what's reported. Christina Vitagliano [17:12]: Child abuse, I think the majority is not ... I never reported mine because it's so taboo and you just condition nobody tells anybody about it and all kinds of very bad things are wrong with the whole subject. Anyway, that's where the title came from. The book is a memoir. I've changed a lot of names. I've changed a lot of places, just because respect for people that I ... Other people, good people. But I kept my name in it. It starts in 1969, which is when I'm four years old and it ends when I met my husband and how the whole thing came to light and I talked it. It spans 30 years, but I think a lot of people ... And I apologize with my dogs upstairs. I think- Alyssa Scolari [17:57]: Oh, is that what that is? Is that your dog? Christina Vitagliano [17:59]: We have two bulldog pups and they're insane. I think a lot of folks will ... And it's getting better. People will talk about child abuse and they'll talk about their experience of abuse. I think when I wrote this book, it spans that long because it's not just about the abuse. It's about the effect that the abuse has on you for that period of time. Alyssa Scolari [18:24]: That is so important that you said that because yes, when we talk about abuse, we cannot just talk about the incidents themselves. Christina Vitagliano [18:36]: No. Alyssa Scolari [18:36]: Because they have ripple effects onto your life for decades and ages to come. I love that you said that. I mean, it's so important not to just talk about, "Oh, this is what happens to me." But then what happened after. Christina Vitagliano [18:50]: This is what happened to me as a result of what happened to me. Alyssa Scolari [18:52]: Yes. Yeah. Christina Vitagliano [18:54]: This is why all these things happen. Yeah. Alyssa Scolari [18:57]: You said it best. You said it best. Christina Vitagliano [19:01]: A lot of people don't talk about that because ... and there's nothing ... I think it's because when somebody hears that subject, it just is like, "Wow." It's so big on its own that people have to get what happened out. To me, and this is a really weird thing, what was happening was the abuse became so routine to me that, yeah, I'm like, "I can handle that crap." It's everything else that's happening to me that I couldn't figure out until I was old enough to say, "Oh, it's all because of that crap." You know? Alyssa Scolari [19:35]: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I mean, you're exactly right. I think it's so important and I guess one of the questions that I have for you is, what is your goal with this book? Are you trying to show people that they're not alone? Are you trying to show people that they can survive this? What was the goal for publishing this? Christina Vitagliano [20:02]: Yeah. I think you hit the nail on the head there. A few things. One, we're not alone. Two, I'm okay to talk about it if you guys can't, because there's a lot of people who can't talk about it. It doesn't matter whether we should or shouldn't. They just never will be able to. Sometimes knowing that somebody else is talking about it makes life a little bit better and yes, you can ... You know what's weird? I don't like the word survive it because I hate surviving shit. Surviving, it hurts. I don't want to hurt anymore and it's going to hurt forever and ever that never goes away. I think you have to try to overcome the intensity of it and overcome, you will never overcome it, but you have to outbalance it. You know what I mean? Yes, it's there, but I'm going to stay a step above it and keep it in check. Surviving it is bullshit because you never survive it. That's crap I think. Alyssa Scolari [21:02]: Yeah. Absolutely. I like what you said there, that it's not so much about surviving it as it is about managing the intensity of it. It's about not letting the memories and the flashbacks and the feelings and the urges swallow you whole and take over your entire life. Christina Vitagliano [21:23]: Yep. There are ... And it's weird. I think ... Some of it, I wrote about and some of it I don't because you can't write everything and you don't want to share literally everything. It's a hard subject to actually write about because people have a hard time reading about it too. You had to balance, "Hey, I have to share it and I don't want to share everything." I remember my editor when she went through it and you go through a child abuse scene in the book. She would come back to me and she would say, "Okay. Well, this is good. Change this. You have errors here and whatever." Then once in a while, she'll go, "Hey, detail this scene more." I'm like, "No. I'm not going to detail that scene more. Are you out of your mind? It's amazing that those words are there." But it was- Alyssa Scolari [22:03]: Right. Like, "You're lucky I even got this much. There's no way I can detail this." Christina Vitagliano [22:09]: Man, that was, I think ... You're like, "How was it writing it?" Writing it was one thing, dealing with the editing and having somebody above you or with you on your team say, "This is good but if you really want to share, and you want somebody to understand that you can outbalance this or do whatever, you have to show them what happened." Some of that stuff came back to me four and five times and finally ... It was over Christmas, this past Christmas before I published, right before I published. I sat on that book for about six weeks because of her notes. I was like, "I can't do it. I can't do what she's asking me to do." Another part of me was saying, "If you want this to be published and you want to share it and you want people to see what happened to actually make the point come across, then you have to do what she asked." It took six weeks and one day I got up. Just like I think we always ... Hey, you get up and all the puzzle pieces fell into place or kind of, and I said, "I'm going to give it a shot." I did, and when I got done it was like I had to go shower. I'm like, "I just got to walk away from that. Just don't ask me to read it again." You got the words, but somebody else read it now because I've just lived it too many times. Alyssa Scolari [23:24]: Yeah. That's I think another really important point, is I'm sure as you were writing it, or even going through the editing process, you find yourself right back in it. Christina Vitagliano [23:36]: Oh, it's brutal. The editing process was the worst because when you edit ... My book is about 370 pages. It started at 600 because for me to break from the time I was four, until whenever I thought the end was, I literally had to go through my entire life. Then somebody picks it up and says, "We don't need to know what you had for lunch one day." But I couldn't get from AA to B. We had to get rid of all that crap. Because it took me 20 years to publish, by the time I actually got it published, I had read that thing so many times it's just reliving it and reliving it and reliving it. Yes, it was good, but in some ways now, and I'm going to be honest, I'm very, very angry at things that I ... They just make you angry. It's like, "Why did these people let this happen? Why are these people today still siding with that guy?" Family members that were like "Oh, he's a saint." I'm like, "You're choosing not to see reality." That's a very hard thing to deal with. I have to be the person that says, "Well, that's your problem now." My issue is let's help people who want to be helped and band together. Alyssa Scolari [24:52]: That's the hardest part, is it's the reactions of the other people, right? Christina Vitagliano [24:52]: Oh, it's horrible. Alyssa Scolari [25:03]: You're bearing your soul and then there are people that go, "What are you talking about? He was a great guy. What are you doing this for?" That pure unfiltered rage, rage that you must feel like ... Yet, in this moment, you're in these moments where you are being almost like ... not forced, but you have the pressure on to share more and be a little bit more vulnerable. Then you're met with opposition from people, family members or friends or people who know you that are like, "What are you talking about? This is a good guy." In those moments, what kept you going? How did you stay true to the fact that this was right for you? Christina Vitagliano [25:55]: Anger. Alyssa Scolari [25:57]: Turning that rage into something productive. Christina Vitagliano [25:59]: Yeah. You say persevere, survive, overcome. Yeah, sure. All of that. Anger. I'm like, "No. You're wrong." More that I'm not the only one. I mean, nobody talks about this and in this day and age where we have ... And I will give ... Like well, let's say the millennials, because they want to cancel everything. On the flip side, people are speaking out more than anything in the world, but they won't speak about this. How do you want to do everything in the world and fix it all, ooh, but not that subject? That's too cool. That's too taboo. I don't want to do that. I want to get to the point where screaming about this too. Alyssa Scolari [26:39]: Yes. Christina Vitagliano [26:39]: You know? Alyssa Scolari [26:41]: Yeah. We're going to scream about this too. Christina Vitagliano [26:44]: Yeah. We're at that point where if enough of us are yelling, somebody will, people will say, "Okay. Well, it is about time." Celebrities have definitely been more vocal about it, and I think that's great that they are. I think being a normal person and not that celebrity and everybody protects ... not protects them, but they have the voice. I think that when you see a celebrity come out and say, "I was abused or this is happening in Hollywood." You're like, "Well, that's good. I'm glad somebody is talking about it." But you still feel like, "I'm just a normal person and nobody listened to me." I want to be the normal person that speaks out kind of. You know? Alyssa Scolari [27:24]: Yes. The thing is survivors of childhood abuse, we've all got rage and if we're not taking that rage and if we're not using it to speak up and speak out about this taboo topic and shout it from the rooftops, what child abuse is, how it affects people in the long-term, what this does to us, then that rage is still going to be there. It's still going to go somewhere and nine times out of 10, we're going to take it out on ourselves in ways that are self-destructive. Christina Vitagliano [27:56]: You are a hundred percent correct. Yep. Alyssa Scolari [27:59]: That rage has to go somewhere. There's so much power in using your voice, whether it's through writing, whether it's through speaking, taking that rage that you're talking about, which I'm glad you said it, because honestly that is what keeps us going. Rage. Christina Vitagliano [28:15]: It is. [crosstalk 00:28:15]. Alyssa Scolari [28:15]: Pure rage. Christina Vitagliano [28:17]: Yep. You have to keep it in check because we can't go running around with knives and guns, even though your head says, "Well, I wish I could." But you can't. Alyssa Scolari [28:24]: I wish I could. Christina Vitagliano [28:25]: I wish I could. Alyssa Scolari [28:25]: I wish I could. Christina Vitagliano [28:27]: Yep. Alyssa Scolari [28:27]: I wish I could. Christina Vitagliano [28:28]: Yep, but this isn't the cartoons. Alyssa Scolari [28:29]: Right. You have managed to take all of that anger, all of that grief and turn it into something that this is your voice. Your voice. I have to ask you, when you look back on the years in which you were enduring abuse, were there times where you just wanted to completely give up? Christina Vitagliano [28:59]: Oh, of course. Yes. Just yes. Yeah. I think more as ... That's weird because even after I've talked about it and it was out in the open and I wrote it down before I published, more as I got older. I think there's something about this subject, well abusive of any kind, the older you get, it seems like because you get smarter and wisdom kicks in. I think when you're younger, you don't realize how bad it is or how wrong it is. Then you get more educated on people and then you realize how jaded adults are and they're teaching their children the wrong thing. You get angrier. In some ways it's harder to deal with the older I get, but because you're smarter and because you've learned a lot, you learn to balance it better. It's not easy by any means though. Alyssa Scolari [30:05]: I love that you're saying this because this is what happens. It's fantastic because I think that so many people scratch their heads over why adults tend to be so distraught about abuse that happened to them when they were younger. I think a lot of people ... I've seen a lot of people, even people when talking about themselves, and even me personally, when I started a lot of my memories were repressed. When I started to have all of these memories, I was an adult. There were moments that I've had, and I know a lot of my clients have had, where it's like, "Why am I so upset about this now? Why am I more upset about this today than I was 25 years ago when this happened?" It's because the older you get, the more you know, the more you understand and the more you feel and the more you have language to be able to put to what you feel. It's actually very, very natural. It's actually harder when you're older, so [crosstalk 00:31:16]. Christina Vitagliano [31:15]: Yeah. What makes me anger is as you know all of that and you say to yourself, "Goddammit, that's why these adults are abusing children because they know that." I got angrier and still get angry because I'm like, "Well, this person was a full grown adult and what they were doing was bad, but they were a hundred percent aware of what they were doing too and I think that's what makes you angrier as you get older, is you really, really did something terrible to a child with full knowledge of what you were doing. You know? Alyssa Scolari [31:53]: Yes. There's no excuse. No excuse for it. You knew, you know, you took full advantage. Christina Vitagliano [32:01]: You chose to do that. That's a choice. You know what I mean? It's not a sickness. That's a bunch of bullshit. You've chosen to do that. If it was carried on from your parents, then that's a shame, but this is why we're standing here today talking about it so that maybe it doesn't keep going because nobody seems to care that it is going. Alyssa Scolari [32:21]: Yeah. You know? When you talk about the whole, it's a sickness type thing. You know what? Whether it's a sickness or not, I don't give a fuck because you know what? I have a sickness. I have complex trauma and do I walk around hurting people? No. Christina Vitagliano [32:37]: Exactly. I don't care if it's a sickness. It still shouldn't happen. You know? Alyssa Scolari [32:42]: There's no excuse. It's not an excuse. Christina Vitagliano [32:43]: No. No. Alyssa Scolari [32:44]: Right? Christina Vitagliano [32:45]: Yep. Alyssa Scolari [32:46]: It wouldn't be an excuse for me to get drunk and get in my car because I had a night where I was traumatized. That's not an excuse, so why- Christina Vitagliano [32:57]: Yeah. Why is it okay for these other people? Alyssa Scolari [32:58]: ... why do we make excuses? Why do we excuse child abusers so often? It's infuriating. I could scream about it from the rooftops. Christina Vitagliano [33:09]: It really is. It really is. Alyssa Scolari [33:11]: It really is. This book that you've written, it feels like it's a message, not just for other people, but also for your younger self. Like a message to hang on because look at ... Could you ever have imagined the life that you have for yourself now? Would you ever have pictured it? Christina Vitagliano [33:29]: No. Not in a million years. Not even close. Yeah. Yeah, so weird. Alyssa Scolari [33:36]: I'm going to ask you another pretty candid question. Knowing what you know now about how your life was going to turn out, are you glad you stayed? Are you glad you hung on? Christina Vitagliano [33:52]: Through all of it, you mean? Alyssa Scolari [33:53]: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Christina Vitagliano [33:55]: Yeah. I mean, not glad that it happened obviously, but yes. Yes. I always ... Part of me, I think survived ... And this is my individual case, I think is because my father was so jealous in some weird way that if I got a better grade in school than his crazy son did, that would piss him off. I learned, "Oh, well, then fuck you. I'm going to piss you off." In a lot of ways, I was like, "Oh, yeah, he's failing and you want me to fail too? I'm not going to fail." There's a lot of things that ... And I think a lot of us do that is, "Oh, you don't like that. There's a way I can piss you off, but not piss you off." You know what I mean? Alyssa Scolari [34:41]: Yeah. Christina Vitagliano [34:41]: I just became this driven, crazy person to not be like the rest of my family. I don't want to say there's good that comes out of bad because nobody wants to go through that bad. Nobody should ever go through that bad, but because of the abuse there are, I don't know, things about me that I'm glad that they're like that, you know? I don't know. It's a hard thing to explain. Not that I'm thankful for him for anything, but you know? Alyssa Scolari [35:17]: No. Right. We're not thankful. It's not like we're glad that it happened because it taught us a lesson. Christina Vitagliano [35:24]: [crosstalk 00:35:24]. Alyssa Scolari [35:23]: None of that. It's just a matter of I think for the people out there who are in this, in the thick of it and just want to give up and want to end their lives, and want to throw in the towel and say, "Fuck it." It's like, I think about you and your story and you've managed to go from being severely abused, to getting out, getting married, starting a multi-million dollar business, writing a book, being a voice for those who don't have a voice. I think to myself like, "If that's not a message for the listeners out there to keep going, I don't know what is." Because look at where you're at now. It's so inspirational and it gives so much hope, even though, you're very real about, listen, some days are bullshit. Some of this sucks. This sucks. It's still infuriating and I'm not over it because we don't get over it. We do not get over it, but we learn how to not let it consume us. Christina Vitagliano [36:43]: Yeah. That's the balance. Alyssa Scolari [36:46]: That's the balance. Christina Vitagliano [36:49]: Yep. It is. Alyssa Scolari [36:52]: Now, if people ... Because I just feel like this book ... First of all, for the listeners out there, this book has like well over a hundred reviews, I think I was looking on Amazon. Christina Vitagliano [36:52]: Yeah. Yeah. Alyssa Scolari [37:06]: Yeah. This book has well over ... almost 120 reviews on Amazon, extremely high-rated book. If people want to find more about you, want to find your book, what's the best place they should go? Should they go right to Amazon? You tell us. Christina Vitagliano [37:29]: Amazon's definitely the easiest so if you're in Amazon and search Every 9 Minutes, it pops up. My social media, I'm always obviously promoting my book, but if you look up Every 9 Minutes on anything, Twitter or anybody, it'll obviously pop up. My website and all my social media handles are 123ChristinaV, so whether you're on Twitter or Instagram or Facebook, or my website is 123christinav.com, you can find me there. You can message me from anything anywhere. I'm very responsive. Alyssa Scolari [38:03]: Fantastic. You said that's 123ChristinaV? Christina Vitagliano [38:08]: Yep. And .com is my website. Yep. Alyssa Scolari [38:13]: Okay. Okay. For the listeners out there, I'm going to link that in the show notes. Head on over to the show notes so you can find that. You'll have access there to everything. Christina is also ... She's a speaker. She does so much. Check out this book. The link will be in there. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. Christina Vitagliano [38:36]: Thank you. Alyssa Scolari [38:37]: It was an honor to talk to you. I think you're shedding light on the ripple effects of childhood abuse and you're screaming it from the rooftops. Christina Vitagliano [38:47]: Thank you for having me. Alyssa Scolari [38:49]: Of course. It was a pleasure. Thanks for listening everyone. For more information, please head over to lightaftertrauma.com or you can also follow us on social media. On Instagram, we are @lightaftertrauma and on Twitter it is @lightafterpod. Lastly, please head over to patreon.com/lightaftertrauma to support our show. We are asking for $5 a month, which is the equivalent to a cup of coffee at Starbucks. Please head on over. Again, that's patreon.com/lightaftertrauma. Thank you. We appreciate your support.

Today I will discuss different negative mindset & behaviors that suck the joy out of our marriages... Rear view mirror syndrome Do You Focus On Things You Cannot Change? Do You Rarely have Good Thoughts About Yourself? Support the show: https://marclucasradio.com/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Rayln Gladue joined me on the podcast this week to talk about a lot of things! Blood Quantum, The Insider, Kanehsatake: 270 Years Of Resistance, and much much more! Honestly half this podcast is about Michael Mann so enjoy! Episode sponsored by www.brewquet.ca  Promo Code: Letswatchpod Rate! Review! Subscribe! *NEW EPISODES EVERY MONDAY* Email: letswatchthatpodcast@gmail.com Twitter/Instagram: @letswatchpod Cover Art: Bryce Logan (Created in app Studio) Music By: "Celebration" by Good Comedy ( https://goodcomedy.bandcamp.com/album/quarantine-jams ) film, movies, humor, tv, reviews, podcast, Bryce Logan, Vancouver, guests, film school, arts, jokes, funny, entertainment, podcast, theatre, DVD, Blu-ray, Netflix, screening, question, interview, Oscars, humour, actors, film festival, film review, IMDB, lets watch that, podcasting, pod, cast, director, writer, scripts, screenplay, iTunes, google play, Spotify, Reddit, BC, Canada, New Westminster, comedy, horror, action, drama, romance, sci-fi, mystery

Shaquille O'Neal. Many of you know him from his Icy Hot and auto insurance commercials but did you know he can act and rap as well?? This needed to be fervently discussed so Chris picked Steel (Music From and Inspired by the Motion Picture) for this week's episode. For the game, Nick put together an edition of Super Group that was both challenging and really fun. There are some wild tracks on this album by some familiar artists (Ice Cube, Mobb Depp, Tevin Campbell and of course Shaquille himself). We get deep into this movie on this ep. Joking aside this movie is trash. It is a bad bad movie, and not even really the fun kind of bad. You can't even watch it in HD. But we still love Shaq! Consider this our love letter to the big guy. His rhymes hold up! Honestly, he can do no wrong. Enjoy!

Happy Sunday, Transitters! ☀️ This week looks interesting. Honestly, we'll see some tense lunar activity earlier on in the week, and some beautiful levity with the transits toward the end of it. Now that Saturn and Pluto have both stationed direct, we've got plenty of momentum starting to build... Can you feel it? This week we see Venus newly in Sagittarius forming a sextile with both Mercury and Saturn, so we've got a lot of lovely energy to look forward to! So throw on your headphones and get yourself prepared for the week ahead.

To Be Honest (TBH) Series

Join me and my guest, Duran Smith, as we explore life and talk about his unique mission field and the new adventures that he has started with VerMyth. In this podcast, Duran shares stories from his life as an uber driver for the last three years, we talk about theology, philosophy building your faith, and even talk about Ultimate Frisbee. Honestly, you don't want to miss this one. 

This week on Episode 526 of Priority One:  the Next Generation of tours is in full swing at Ticonderoga, set photos from Picard Season 3, Star Trek Online gets spoOoOoOoky in their first Halloween special, and we review the latest episode of Lower Decks: "wej Duj"! TREK IT OUT Edited by Thomas Reynolds Touring the Next Generation in Ticonderoga By Elio Lleo Over the years, we've had the privilege of attending some phenomenal Star Trek themed events and exhibits [or seething with jealousy at it–Ed.], but few are as spectacular as what you'll find in the sleepy town of Ticonderoga, New York. You see, James Cawley–who grew to fame as an Elvis impersonator–is also a die-hard Trekkie. His passion was so great that he decided to rebuild the sets for The Original Series where an old retail store used to be. He didn't just want to build the Enterprise…he wanted to recreate the old Desilu Set. Closest we'll probably come to having a religious experience. Image: Star Trek Set Tours. Now, after 4 years of being open to the public, Cawley is expanding! As they work to acquire an adjacent building, Cawley and his team have begun diligently recreating the sets from The Next Generation. Local news station WCAX got a sneak peak of their progress: when speaking to reporter Cat Viglienzoni, Cawley explains he has all the original blueprints as well as a direct line to Star Trek's legendary creators Mike and Denise Okuda. Star Trek: Picard Producer's Sweet Sneak Peek Pics By Cat Hough If you've been following Star Trek: Picard executive producer and co-showrunner, Terry Matalas on Twitter, then you've seen the images he's been sharing from the set of the show. If you are not following him, then you may want to. Since Season 2 has wrapped filming, the images he posted are likely sneak peaks from season three–either way, they are definitely interesting.  https://twitter.com/TerryMatalas/status/1442660363573465090?s=20 The images are all from what appears to be a Starfleet vessel from the late 24th century: the first image features the helm console for the ship, with Matalas noting the LCARS interface introduced on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Also of particular interest: the replicator display and table setting that includes a 24th-century Starfleet emblem and some new sci-fi cutlery. We still don't know what the second season holds, but we have been told that the Q storyline will wrap up in Season 2. It's also very likely that Jonathan Frakes will return to direct some episodes of Season 3.  https://twitter.com/TerryMatalas/status/1445033217875070977?s=20 Episodic Season Habit (It Becomes Automatic) By Cat Hough Anson Mount recently spoke about Strange New Worlds, echoing Akiva Goldsman's description of the show: “we wanted our show to be more or less a throwback in every way we could... which meant more of an episodic structure. And so every episode is a distinct story...but the star of the show is the ship and the big idea of the week.” Bridge to Astrocartography, figure out why we keep getting lost in those eyes. Image: TrekMovie.com As we've also discussed on prior episodes, filming for Strange New Worlds was done using Augmented Reality and Mount also spoke about that experience, saying, “It's wild, man. Imagine an entire soundstage where the walls are all high-definition screens and there's a ceiling projection...it's really interesting to be in these environments because it's a whole other level of filmmaking than I've ever seen before.”  A release date for Strange New Worlds has not been announced, yet. A big thanks to TrekMovie for sharing this exclusive interview from their coverage of Star Trek Day. Quick News Roundup Here are a few headlines that we didn't discuss but might interest you. In book news, the first novel in the Star Trek: Coda series has been released. This trilogy continues the adventures of characters from The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager. The three books in the trilogy are Moments Asunder by Dayton Ward, The Ashes of Tomorrow by James Swallow, and Oblivion's Gate by David Mack. Moments Asunder is already available, with the two sequels following in October and November. The pre-order pages include synopses for the books, revealing a plot dealing in time travel. Plus, we got another glimpse at the upcoming Prodigy animated series. Nickelodeon recently tweeted a new trailer with the announcement that the show premieres on October 28. Finally, are you ready to take flight on a midlife crisis of cosmic proportions? Then you should definitely trek out the series idea from the creators of Saturday Night Live. This new show would be titled “Star Trek: Ego Quest,” following the voyages of the SS New Shepard and its crew of random weirdos. Its mission: to just...sort of fly around space goofing off in a ship that looks like a penis. https://youtu.be/XD66suMp3J4 STAR TREK GAMING NEWS Edited by Thomas Reynolds By the Spiking of My DPS, Something Wicked This Way Leaps By Rosco McQueen Replicate yourself a pumpkin spice raktajino and prepare to carve out a new experience in Star Trek Online:  the MMO announced this week it will hold its first ever Halloween event!   “Captains will find themselves transported to an ancient castle on Pyris VII. The classic aliens from the Original Series episode ‘Catspaw', the Old Ones, have returned once again to study humanity–but their plans have been disrupted by the Devidians!” Honestly the idea of redoing "Knowledge is Power" is scarier. Image: Cryptic Studios. The three week event will be a single activity, where playing the event TFO “Cat's Tale!” every 20 hours rewards you with the usual one daily progress token. After 14 days of progress you unlock the event rewards: the Transmuter Wand Universal Kit Module, the Old One Vanity Pet, with the first character receiving 25,000 Dilithium Ore, and 3 Featured Episode Reward Boxes. The Universal Kit Module - Transmuter Wand will transform your target into a sentient black cat, complete with Bad Luck Aura! The aura disables shields and most powers to nearby allies, who will flee in fear from the frightful feline.   What every kid wants this Halloween, a subspace bubble wand. Image: Cryptic Studios. The event will be available on all platforms on October 13. An interesting note is that this will become a regular annual event, similar to First Contact Day. The article notes it begins with the one TFO, with plans to grow the event year-on-year with more content.

This week on Episode 526 of Priority One:  the Next Generation of tours is in full swing at Ticonderoga, set photos from Picard Season 3, Star Trek Online gets spoOoOoOoky in their first Halloween special, and we review the latest episode of Lower Decks: "wej Duj"! TREK IT OUT Edited by Thomas Reynolds Touring the Next Generation in Ticonderoga By Elio Lleo Over the years, we've had the privilege of attending some phenomenal Star Trek themed events and exhibits [or seething with jealousy at it–Ed.], but few are as spectacular as what you'll find in the sleepy town of Ticonderoga, New York. You see, James Cawley–who grew to fame as an Elvis impersonator–is also a die-hard Trekkie. His passion was so great that he decided to rebuild the sets for The Original Series where an old retail store used to be. He didn't just want to build the Enterprise…he wanted to recreate the old Desilu Set. Closest we'll probably come to having a religious experience. Image: Star Trek Set Tours. Now, after 4 years of being open to the public, Cawley is expanding! As they work to acquire an adjacent building, Cawley and his team have begun diligently recreating the sets from The Next Generation. Local news station WCAX got a sneak peak of their progress: when speaking to reporter Cat Viglienzoni, Cawley explains he has all the original blueprints as well as a direct line to Star Trek's legendary creators Mike and Denise Okuda. Star Trek: Picard Producer's Sweet Sneak Peek Pics By Cat Hough If you've been following Star Trek: Picard executive producer and co-showrunner, Terry Matalas on Twitter, then you've seen the images he's been sharing from the set of the show. If you are not following him, then you may want to. Since Season 2 has wrapped filming, the images he posted are likely sneak peaks from season three–either way, they are definitely interesting.  https://twitter.com/TerryMatalas/status/1442660363573465090?s=20 The images are all from what appears to be a Starfleet vessel from the late 24th century: the first image features the helm console for the ship, with Matalas noting the LCARS interface introduced on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Also of particular interest: the replicator display and table setting that includes a 24th-century Starfleet emblem and some new sci-fi cutlery. We still don't know what the second season holds, but we have been told that the Q storyline will wrap up in Season 2. It's also very likely that Jonathan Frakes will return to direct some episodes of Season 3.  https://twitter.com/TerryMatalas/status/1445033217875070977?s=20 Episodic Season Habit (It Becomes Automatic) By Cat Hough Anson Mount recently spoke about Strange New Worlds, echoing Akiva Goldsman's description of the show: “we wanted our show to be more or less a throwback in every way we could... which meant more of an episodic structure. And so every episode is a distinct story...but the star of the show is the ship and the big idea of the week.” Bridge to Astrocartography, figure out why we keep getting lost in those eyes. Image: TrekMovie.com As we've also discussed on prior episodes, filming for Strange New Worlds was done using Augmented Reality and Mount also spoke about that experience, saying, “It's wild, man. Imagine an entire soundstage where the walls are all high-definition screens and there's a ceiling projection...it's really interesting to be in these environments because it's a whole other level of filmmaking than I've ever seen before.”  A release date for Strange New Worlds has not been announced, yet. A big thanks to TrekMovie for sharing this exclusive interview from their coverage of Star Trek Day. Quick News Roundup Here are a few headlines that we didn't discuss but might interest you. In book news, the first novel in the Star Trek: Coda series has been released. This trilogy continues the adventures of characters from The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager. The three books in the trilogy are Moments Asunder by Dayton Ward, The Ashes of Tomorrow by James Swallow, and Oblivion's Gate by David Mack. Moments Asunder is already available, with the two sequels following in October and November. The pre-order pages include synopses for the books, revealing a plot dealing in time travel. Plus, we got another glimpse at the upcoming Prodigy animated series. Nickelodeon recently tweeted a new trailer with the announcement that the show premieres on October 28. Finally, are you ready to take flight on a midlife crisis of cosmic proportions? Then you should definitely trek out the series idea from the creators of Saturday Night Live. This new show would be titled “Star Trek: Ego Quest,” following the voyages of the SS New Shepard and its crew of random weirdos. Its mission: to just...sort of fly around space goofing off in a ship that looks like a penis. https://youtu.be/XD66suMp3J4 STAR TREK GAMING NEWS Edited by Thomas Reynolds By the Spiking of My DPS, Something Wicked This Way Leaps By Rosco McQueen Replicate yourself a pumpkin spice raktajino and prepare to carve out a new experience in Star Trek Online:  the MMO announced this week it will hold its first ever Halloween event!   “Captains will find themselves transported to an ancient castle on Pyris VII. The classic aliens from the Original Series episode ‘Catspaw', the Old Ones, have returned once again to study humanity–but their plans have been disrupted by the Devidians!” Honestly the idea of redoing "Knowledge is Power" is scarier. Image: Cryptic Studios. The three week event will be a single activity, where playing the event TFO “Cat's Tale!” every 20 hours rewards you with the usual one daily progress token. After 14 days of progress you unlock the event rewards: the Transmuter Wand Universal Kit Module, the Old One Vanity Pet, with the first character receiving 25,000 Dilithium Ore, and 3 Featured Episode Reward Boxes. The Universal Kit Module - Transmuter Wand will transform your target into a sentient black cat, complete with Bad Luck Aura! The aura disables shields and most powers to nearby allies, who will flee in fear from the frightful feline.   What every kid wants this Halloween, a subspace bubble wand. Image: Cryptic Studios. The event will be available on all platforms on October 13. An interesting note is that this will become a regular annual event, similar to First Contact Day. The article notes it begins with the one TFO, with plans to grow the event year-on-year with more content.

Honestly. I am NOT moving again.  www.ghostsintheburbs.com

On today's show, we discuss Perry's recent trip to get the vaccine and the side effects he's currently experiencing including waking up deaf in one ear. Don't be alarmed folks, but he'll likely be dead within a few months. He retells the story of our friend who once drunkely tried to steal liquor from a store by sneaking into the back warehouse and pouring it into an empty bottle. Hate to see a flawless plan fail like that. One autistic man was caught stealing over $30,000 worth of legos. Then we discuss the great story of General Tsao aka the Chi-Comm Captain America and how he snuck onto an American army base to steal the broccoli, sauce, and organ chicken to start his chain of restaurants. Brian Laundrie reddit forms are saying he's innocent and a martyr. Honestly, he did save us a from another shitty blog from a white woman so maybe they have a point. This is both one of the funniest episodes we've ever done and easily one of the stupidest. If you enjoyed the show, please Like & Subscribe to our channel and share the links. This show can be found @hiddeninplainsightradio on Instagram and @thehiddenpod on Twitter. iTunes Link: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hidden-in-plain-sight/id1488538144?i=1000459997594 Spotify Link: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5zsntvl63Do7m9gNTD8Za2?si=MczvbuMlRuCbmWChclVUZA YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNRejWJs0hn8pefj5FiE7ZQ If you want to support the show, check out our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/hiddeninplainsightpod

On this week's episode we're kicking off our 2021 Halloween Spooktacular and talking all about cryptids! Join us as we discuss whether Mothman is a harbinger of doom or simply misunderstood, which cryptids we'd swipe right for on Tinder, and more! -- Honestly?! is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. You can find more outstanding podcasts to subscribe to at www.frolic.media/podcasts ! Music by Purple Planet Music: www.purple-planet.com Avatars by Julie Campbell: www.thingsbyjulie.com/ Like us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/honestlypod/ Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/honestlypod Listen to us on Apple Podcasts: itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/hones…d1241566221?mt=2 Listen to us on Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/4etPaklp2SYw7g8Z4WcMWJ Follow us on Instagram: www.instagram.com/honestlypod/ Visit Our Website: thehonestlypodcast.wixsite.com/home Email Us: thehonestlypodcast@gmail.com Listen to Our Spotify Playlists: open.spotify.com/user/honestlypod

Can you compete if you don't want to list your books with major online retailers? We get this question more often than many of you might think, authors that have very strong feelings about not bowing to “the man” but how realistic is it that you'll be able to build a strong network of readers and return buyers using just your website or through sites like Smashwords? October Promotion:Book to Bestseller Pre-Order Giveaway and Prizes!It's finally here – Book to Bestseller: The Savvy Author's Guide to Book Promotion, Smart Branding, and Longterm Success is up on Amazon for pre-order and that means it's time to announce all the fantastic promotions we've been planning to celebrate!Honestly, this has been the most exciting release yet, so I encourage you to read through this post twice to ensure you know what's on the table!

We answer a question, talk about some news and a rant! Plus a lot of talk about recent books.

Honestly, content creation is NOT fun for most people! It's the first thing to get thrown off the to-do list. We avoid. Make excuses. Complain. Silently whine that it's even necessary… But it's still there as an invisible crushing weight! How can we create permission to make it WORK for us - without burning us out or avoiding it altogether? Today, Jen talks about the strategies she employs herself and what she teaches her clients: SUSTAINABLE, realistic content creation isn't a fantasy - Sustainable content creation that actually works can be a reality for you! In this episode of Content Creation Made Easy, you'll learn some easy shifts to make right away that'll bring you into content alignment… So you can crush your content, instead of IT crushing YOU…

The Red Sox. Steve's vision for a Danless show. Honestly then for a while they just ramble with no direction or hope for meaning. If you love us please don't listen. This show is for hate listening only. The Parkway Lounge. Proof of Vaccination. Squid Game. The Blue Sox. Shank. Dogs. Cats. Alternative words for home run. twotours.com promo code fatsos --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/localfatsos/message

Honestly we don't even know but Hen dog joined us for a little discussion about something. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/grit-talk/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/grit-talk/support

What's the one thing that we all hate about sales? Honestly, it feels like a transaction. And your client is a person! So today I'm sharing how to be a relationship building salesperson, and this will change your business forever.   Text me what you thought. 480-400-9019   Join me and Tony Robbins for a rare, free online masterclass! https://deanandtonylive.com/deangraziosi-live?utm_source=pnpodcast     Join my free Facebook group for next level action takers: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thebetterlifechallenge   

Dear Listener,   Today's going to be a good day and here's why: because today we are in the room where it happens, FINALLY. Our good friend, Tyler Carlin, joins us to discuss his thoughts on Hamilton and how Iny is the reason he started liking that show. We also talk about Salt Lake City? Honestly, who knows.   Sincerely, Us A special THANK YOU to Tyler for being on the show! Make sure to check out the WBNE website for all the links to Bacon & Eggs and and follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram! Sincerely,  Us WE HAVE MERCH!!!! Sincerely, Us is a proud member of WBNE! Check out the WBNE website to find information about all the shows on the network and to purchase a SUPER SHOUTOUT! Become a patron of Sincerely, Us on Patreon  Follow us on social media!   Join our Facebook Group! http://bit.ly/sincerelyfb Sincerely, Us Podcast:  @sincerelyuspod on Instagram & Twitter   Becca: @beccaeddows on Instagram & Twitter  Iny: @_inymeeny on Instagram & Twitter  Our graphics are by Vashaun Brandon of Graphite: Instagram & Website

Trevor Moawad - A Re-Release Tribute to an ALL-TIME Mindset Great -- Trevor Moawad is one of the most influential people in the mindset space of all time.  He has had a massive impact on the way sports teams and companies view mindset as a whole, and the individual approaches they take to growing their mental skills.  Trevor tragically passed a few weeks ago after a 2 year battle with cancer. An amazing human being who impacted the likes of Russell Wilson and millions more through his best selling book 'It Takes What it Takes'.  This week on the Podcast I wanted to pay a special tribute to Trevor and go back in the archives when he graced us with his presence and gave us a TON of mindset knowledge! ------ SPONSORS Chili Sleep Welcome to the BEST night of sleep, EVERY night!!! Wellness isn't all about having the perfect diet or the best trainers. It's about recovering + adding to your overall health with sufficient quality sleep. Cooling in the middle of the night not only keeps you sleeping but can also up to double your deep sleep. You pay more for cooling your home in six months than you do for a chili pad or ooler that can last for a long long time! Honestly the biggest difference maker I ever made in optimizing my sleep to the MAX!   NURSE20  20%  Cube Sleep System with Chilipad® Cool Mesh™ NURSE15   15% OOLER® Sleep System with Chilipad® Cool Mesh™   Click the link below!! https://www.chilisleep.com/pages/nurse ----------- LMNT DrinkLMNT.com/DavidNurse  Popular electrolyte drinks on the market have low amounts of electrolytes and miss the mark on the “optimal ratio”. LMNT Recharge gives you more electrolytes in the ideal ratio. 1000 mgSODIUM 200 mgPOTASSIUM 60 mgMAGNESIUM WITHOUT THE DODGY STUFF What we DON'T consume is just as important as what we DO consume. No Sugar No Gluten No Fillers No Artificial Ingredients Paleo & Keto Friendly ----------- Wrkout https://www.wrkout.com/ 'WRKOUT provides the convenience of working out with your personal trainer LIVE from anywhere, on any device.' Train Your Way. No Equipment Necessary. Connect and train with a real live personal trainer and get started on a personalized fitness plan designed just for you. Training is delivered 100% online in a completely live, one-one-one format that connects you and your personal trainer together screen-to-screen using a browser, completely from the comfort of your home. No more driving to the gym. No more on-demand videos. I was always a gym guy - so I was skeptical about virtual training.  But It has delivered!  Let me tell you… you definitely don't need to worry about getting a good workout!  And my lifestyle is hectic!  ...with lots of travel and hotels - it used to be so hard to keep consistent... now with WRKOUT it's easy for me to get a session in with my trainer wherever I am. If you want to see what virtual personal training with a live trainer can do for you then check out WRKOUT.com, tell them I sent you and you'll get your first 3 sessions free and 20% off your first training package!"   Assault Fitness https://glnk.io/k5p5/davidnursenba   Magic Spoon CODE -  DAVIDNURSE  magicspoon.com/davidnurse 

Does anyone else feel like motherhood has become an unrealistic juggling act even more than normal over the last several years?Honestly, between school and sports, Pinterest parties, PTO, snack, field trips, and trying to actually manage work and home, and then adding a pandemic on top of that, it's no wonder we are all losing our minds!Today, we are talking all about the struggles that come along with modern day parenting. And while the list of expectations seems to be never-ending, the reality is that at the end of the day, we get to choose how we do this parenting thing. And we get to say “no” to things that are no longer serving us and our families.If you're feeling completely overwhelmed, we get it, but it's time to take a step back and reprioritize what gets to fit in your life. If you need some encouragement on how to get there, this episode is a great place to start. It's true, this motherhood journey is chaotic, but it doesn't have to be miserable. Moms are what make the world go round, so it's time we start taking our worlds back!Episode Highlights: Brad raves about his drink choice of the night and it might just tempt you to start drinking non-alcoholic beer. ;)The challenges parents are facing today.Why the juggling act of parenting is a lot more than it used to be.Michelle and Brad discuss what they think life might look like with baby Smith #3.The importance of getting honest with yourself and finding balanceLinks Mentioned in Episode/Find More on The Whole Smiths:Use the Code GETWELLTHY on Amazon for 20% off ZoupZoup InstagramLOVEVERY Order my new cookbook HERE!IG: @thewholesmithsIG: @getwellthypodcasthttps://www.thewholesmiths.com/