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We all know it's been one hell of a year, and a lot of us are feeling a LOT of different emotions. So this episode, Donte and Lindsey talk about just that -- their emotions. They discuss the "proper" response to random acts of tears, they note the value of going on a "therapist date", and we hear Lindsey ramp up from 0-100% on the "Am I seriously crying on my own podcast?" scale.   About Your Hosts Lindsey M Dillon is an award-winning professional ceramic artist who makes nerdy mugs, cafe dishware, and creature sculptures. She has been working in clay since 2007, and doing so professionally since 2014. Her supernatural powers haven't manifested yet, but it's ok, she'll wait. Donte of Earth Nation Ceramics is a professional ceramic artist and Youtuber with over 30k artists in his community, all helping each other grow through their ceramic art journey one step at a time. He also has a massive addiction to boba milk tea and anime.   Find Lindsey: Website: http://www.lindseymdillon.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lindseymdillon/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lindseymdillon Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/shop/lindseymdillon/   Find Donte: Website and online store: https://www.earthnationceramics.com/ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/earthnationceramics Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/earth_nation_ceramics/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EarthNationCeramics/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Earthnationceramics

I feel like I'm just rolling through this party, not in a bad way, like I'm on a rigging being pushed through with a camera in front of my face so its like I'm floating through the party blissfully. We had to pay the fx team extra for that. Today's topics include the lies capris tell, being a toad person with a giant tongue, shark leather, switch blade combs, The Bozo Buckets of Bad Celebrities, and the Lizzie McGuire tongue scraper episode. Want more party? Find it at https://www.reviewpartydotcom.com/

Religion has a lot to say about modesty - from clothing to behavior to even thoughts. Much of it is misunderstood from the outside perspective. The concept central to the idea of "modesty" is one of boundaries. In tech, we also have to set boundaries: from who has access to certain types of data to what "work hours" mean to which deliverables are in or out of scope to the tasks are considered part of our regular job.  In this episode, we'll hear from an entirely new set of voices: Alex Navarro, Faria Akram, and Yum Darling - who will explore the nature of those limitations and how our religious/moral/ethical POV can inform our tech life - and vice versa. Listen or read the transcript below. Leon (00:32):welcome to our podcast where we talk about the interesting, frustrating and inspiring experiences we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate IT. We're not here to preach or teach you our religion. We're here to explore ways we make our careers it professionals mesh or at least not conflict with our religious life. This is Technically Religious.Alex (00:53):Religion has a lot to say about modesty from clothing to behavior to even thoughts. Much of it is misunderstood from the outside perspective. The concept central to the idea of modesty is one of boundaries. In tech, we also have to set boundaries; from who has access to certain types of data, to what work hours mean, to which deliverables are in or out of scope to the tasks are considered part of our regular job. In this episode we'll explore the nature of those limitations and how our religious, moral, ethical point of view can inform our tech life and vice versa. I'm Alex Navarro and the other voices you're going to hear on this episode are my guests. Faria Akram.Faria (01:38):Hi,Alex (01:39):and Yum Darling.Yum (01:40):Hello.Alex (01:41):Thank you ladies.Alex (01:43):All right. So if you are new to the podcast, we start each episode with a moment for everyone to be able to introduce themselves, have a shameless plug, or basically engage with you in some other form. Uh, so Faria why don't you go first?Faria (01:57):Hi, I'm Faria. I'm a mental health advocate, storyteller, dancer, and cohost of a podcast called vulnerable views. You can keep up with what I'm doing in all those areas on my instagram @followingfaria and my website followingfaria.com in terms of religion, I was raised as a Muslim and still identify as such.Alex (02:15):and Yum.Yum (02:16):Okay. Uh, my name is Yum Darling. I am a community manager by day and by night, which is very long. I am a mom to two children. Um, which is why I'm hiding today at my parents' house so that you don't have to hear it. My dog, my cats, my children, and my husband yelled at me all at the same time. I don't really do as much on social media, so don't bother following me. I was born in Israel. So culturally I'm Jewish and I have gone to Jewish schools pretty much my entire life. So that is where the bulk of my, um, religious education is. But, um, spiritually and religiously, you know, I just like learning about religions. So I have a little bit of Buddhist knowledge, which isn't really religion if you're but whatever. And Judaism paganism. So ask why I will be happy to, you know, answer your questions.Alex (03:06):And just to round out today's podcast, my name is Alex Nevaro. Again, I am the founder of a creative agency called running their production house. You can find us on Instagram at that same handle. You can also find us on our website, which is that same name or any of your production house.com. And I was actually raised as a Catholic by a Catholic mother and a father who was a Jehovah's witness at the time. I didn't stay that way. We'll probably get into that later on in podcasts, but now I identify as a nondenominational Christian. So if you were not able to keep up with those amazingly, uh, short introductions, relax. It's okay. We're going to have everything posted in the show notes for you so you can just sit back and enjoy the conversation and let the amazing ideas flow over you. So, moving on to our first topic of discussion, when you hear the word modesty, what ideas or reactions does that conjure up for you in a religious context?Faria (04:08):So when I heard the word modesty, one thing that comes to mind in a religious context is a story of the prophet Muhammad. Peace be upon him. Um, and to those who know the story better than I do, I might mess up some details, I apologize. Uh, but there's a story that he was traveling with another man and they saw a woman who was quote unquote immodestly dressed in some sort of way, right? Um, but the prophet, instead of telling the woman, you know, Oh, you shouldn't be wearing that, or you need to change or whatever. Um, because his friend was just staring at the woman, he, I think took his hand and like moved his friend's face or covered his eyes, um, or averted his gaze in some sort of way. And that's always struck me as really powerful. Cause I think a lot of times when I hear the word modesty, even absent from religion, it's talked a lot about women and what they should or should not be doing. Um, so that story when I heard it as a kid always really, uh, struck a chord with me because it just reminded me that it's modesty is so much more than clothing, right? Which I think we'll talk about as well, but it's also on men to be modest and to do their part on all people.Yum (05:16):It's pretty much the same in Judaism. Um, modesty is, uh, how, how did an old friend put it? Uh, it's about women being a team player. And the whole, the whole interaction between men and women and modesty is that modesty equals privacy. Snoot or modesty and Hebrew is about how much you respect herself and how private you would like to be. So it really is the woman, the woman's decision. Now, of course, there are guidelines, if you will, if you would like to, how you could, you could dress modestly. Um, and everyone will have a different opinion on that. I'm sure we'll get into that later. But um, yes, pretty much, pretty much the same story there as Faria. You know, we, we tell our our men, if you don't want to pray in front of this woman who is distracting you, um, go somewhere else.Alex (06:10):Well, it's, it's interesting that when we hear the word modesty, it seems like the first thing that comes to mind is, is how we dress or how others are dressed. And that's definitely something that was drilled into my mentality when I was growing up as a Catholic because there are definitely certain rules that you had to abide by when you were entering into the house of God. And so that I feel like what people can relate to whether they were brought up in that religion or not. But um, it's an interesting concept also when we're talking about the workplace because we're talking about modesty. A lot of people sometimes associate that with not being braggadocious. But if you're a woman in the workplace, particularly in the tech industry and the workplace, could it sometimes be a disadvantage for you because you are quote unquote being too modest and you're not speaking up for yourself. Whether it be something like a good idea that you have in a large group meeting or speaking up about a great accomplishment that you've done for the organization.Yum (07:12):Sometimes modesty is um, equated with humility and submission and women that are um, more covered up or more modest or even just more quiet are seen as more submissive at home in the workplace, in their religion. And yeah, it can definitely work against you. Women that are that way sometimes get put in that bucket at work, whether people don't listen to them as much or don't take their voices seriously or um, don't give them the opportunity to say something. Sometimes you have to pause and let someone who might not be as loud as you are, come forth and say something meaningful from their perspective. And a lot of time we tend to take people who are more modest, a step next to us and just put them in that bucket of silence and submission and oppression and, and their views kind of go away. And that's sad in religion and in life and in the workplace,Alex (08:10):I think it's really easy for people to get an impression of you before you open your mouth. Right? So what are they going to go off of? They're going to go off of how we look and a lot of times for women, how we're dressed, how much we're covered up, how much makeup we have on, you know, if we decided to do our hair that day or night. I mean there's just, there's so many ways for people to sort of misinterpret who we are as a person. And I feel like if we're not mindful of how quote unquote modest we are in the workplace, then are we sort of doing that to ourselves. And then I also think there's a very fine line of that level of modesty because very easily, like you mentioned, young, if we're just naturally loud and we naturally just have this sort of emphatic tone, all too often it can be misinterpreted in a negative way. And I feel like that is something that is very specific to women. So what do we do? Do we need to be less modest?Faria (09:20):Heck no.Yum (09:23):Um, I do think there's this, there's a place for women to stand up for other women in this context. Um, I definitely think men allies are awesome, but sometimes that permission from a man to speak is just really patronizing. Um, so what, what I would say is if you work with a woman who is more modest or even a woman who is on the opposite and is loud and vivacious and does not dress modestly, um, perhaps bringing their voice into a conversation or just pausing and letting them speak. Um, and as a woman, of course, definitely inviting those women to the conversation and into outside life as well, especially in the tech industry. I find you make really close friendships and you, you do things outside of work and sometimes the women who are seen as more religious, I am doing air quotes, uh, are, aren't invited because they're seen as, they would not enjoy this simply because of the way they dress and what we think their religion is.Alex (10:22):That's a very good point. I completely agree with that and I feel like that's something that probably both men and women are, are guilty of. Take the time, I guess take the time to get to know someone instead of sort of making an assumption based on how they look or how they appear. So. Okay. Do you, do either of you kind of find yourselves being mindful of this in your own workplace? You know, especially when we're talking about, you know, in the world of it, is there a balance that you try to find for yourself that you're trying to create when it comes to being modest, whether it's, you know, how you're dressed or just, you know, how you are being interpreted by others in the workplace.Faria (10:59):I don't think I really take that into consideration to be honest. Yes. I had a great conversation this week where someone told me I should enter every room with the confidence of a white man. And so that's something I'm working on that thing.Alex (11:16):Oh my g... that is gold. that needs to be on bumper stickers. I want a tshirt that says that.Faria (11:31):Yeah, no, it was very eyeopening. Right. And I think, and we can have probably a whole nother podcast episode on just confidence in itself. Um, you know, right. But I think it relates to modesty, to your point of how you carry yourself. Right. Um, and going back to actually Yum when you were talking about, you know, someone who's loud and vivacious and who, uh, dresses less modesty though modestly, that was interesting to, because I think I know a lot in a lot of loud and vivacious people. So I come, I come from a more conservative Muslim background. My family is pretty conservative Muslims. And I was raised in a small town in a small Muslim community that was pretty conservative. Uh, but I know a lot of loud, vivacious Muslim women who are like that with their personality. But then in terms of dress, they wear the hijab, which is the head covering or the niqab, which covers everything but your eyes. So it's funny cause it's like there. What would you be defining Montessori as, right. So as someone who is more of a voracious, who is more loud and more outgoing, I try to be more quiet and listen to other people I'm working on not interrupting others has been something I've been really trying, actively trying to work on. Because by nature I love talking and I will talk over other people. Um, which is not the right thing to do. So giving others a space to converse and also active listening. So not, I'll admit it, I did the listening where it's like, okay, I'm listening to you because I'm waiting for you to finish. So I can say what I have to say. Cause I have three thoughts in my head right now, but active listening, of holding a space for this person to communicate with my full attention because that is what they deserve.Alex (13:07):So, okay. What about,you know, this kind of is making me thinking about just kind of how I was supposed to or not supposed to, I guess maybe how it was expected to behave when I was, you know, at Sunday school or when I was at mass or you know, when I was even, let's say around a certain group of people that maybe only interacted with me when we were at, you know, church gatherings. Um, I feel like for me personally, it was a certain Alex that people interacted with when I was at Catholic functions and at Catholic mass and so on and so forth versus the openness I guess that I found when I started going to Bible groups and Bible studies and, um, functions for the nondenominational church, which for me, that journey started happening when I was in college. And I don't know if you know, that is a Testament to those two religions or if it was just my experience personally, but I definitely would say that I felt like I had to be a certain level of modest when I was being brought up in the Catholic faith versus when I switched over to being nondenominational. Christian. Did either of you have some kind of experience similar to that?Faria (14:28):I feel like I kind of did. Um, so yeah, I grew up coming from a more conservative Muslim background I think. And I know not only am I less modest when it comes to talking a lot, but also in, um, kind of my habits of dress. So I was the first woman in my immediate family who did not wear the hijab, the head covering, um, every, almost everyone I knew more for at least some period of time. Some took it off. Um, so from just the very get go, um, it wasn't something I wanted to partake in. And I'm more the type of person who it's hot outside, like I'm gonna wear short sleeves instead of committing to something like that. Um, that's not saying anything about me as a person, good or bad. That's not saying anything about people who choose to dress that way. It's just, I noticed very early on I was different in a sense. So yeah, the Faria that went to the mosque, uh, obviously I wore a hijab there. I covered my hair cause it was a place of God. Uh, I interacted a little differently because, uh, it, it was, it just was a little bit more of a conservative setting and toned down my mannerisms. You know, a lot of it was for Sunday school, so you can't get all my monks just there. I mean you can, but that's how you get Sunday school detention. Your parents aren't happy. Um, so yeah, it was in college actually because I was in the same town for the first 18 years of my life, which I didn't. I thought that was everyone's normal. And then I realized it wasn't, I went to a bigger university with more people and um, not just more people and more Muslims, but a more diverse group of Muslims too. So my family is Pakistani. Um, so I met Muslims from all different kinds of countries and who, you know, different, um, sects too. My family is Sunni Muslim. Um, and I didn't even know about some of the sex cause there wasn't that, uh, open-mindedness I feel like taught to me and my faith journey growing up. And that's where I really kind of started to see how there are so many different levels and how you can be modest in so many different ways. And that's something I started gravitating to. I started to lean more towards, I don't have to cover every inch of my skin to be modest. And that became my personal choice.Yum (16:34):Confession time, baby. I'm only went to shool slash synagogue, slash tempo, whatever you wanna call it. Um, for school purposes. My parents lived and I obviously, um, our family lived on a little Hilltop in Israel, in the North of Israel, just South of Lebanon, surrounded by other little Hilltop villages, um, surrounded by, um, hilltops of Arab villages. And I went to school with, um, most of the people in the surrounding areas. And the schools in Israel are Jewish. It's a Jewish state. And we do, you know, celebrate every, every, uh, Friday. I almost said Yoshi, but that would not make sense to most of your listeners. So every Friday we would have a couple of Shabbat at school where you would welcome a Shabbat. We welcome, um, the day of rest Saturday for Jews. Um, and that was my normal at school, at home. Never ever, ever. My mom, I don't, I love my mom dearly and if you're listening, I'm sorry, but she, um, she doesn't cook much or at all. She is a grandma now, but not your stereotypical Jewish grandma because I make all the chicken soup. So we, I had a very different upbringing, what you would call a religious Jew. I would, I was more of a, of a secular Jew with a lot of Jewish history. But my understanding of modesty, um, came so much later, like way into college. You guys like were into college. I went to NC state, go Wolfpack and um, we had this NC state is made up of red bricks. They signed this, I don't know if actually this is a rumor, maybe someone out there can validate, but uh, apparently they signed a contract and got a lot of their bricks for super cheap because they bought so friggin many. Um, so the entire campus is RedBrick including the well known brick yard, which is, you know, made a brick and very slippery in the winter or when it's raining, which is, you know, full time in North Carolina and you can't walk without slipping. So you have to be real careful what you wear because when you slip on brick, it's not just going down, you're going down, legs up. And we had the lovely Brickyard preacher who used to stand on his little, I don't know what it's called, a box. Um, I'm sure there's another name for it. It was, it's, it's just a little, it's a cute little box with a little, um, podium. And he used to yell at people walking by about, um, the, how much they are sitting and where he thinks they should go and isn't it lovely? Great. I feel like I feel like they're pretty universal. And I was walking by wearing my normal young clothes, um, which at the time was probably like gym shorts and a tee shirt on my way to biology class, thinking about what I'm going to dissect today. And he like yells at me when I walked past whore and I'm just like, I'm 18, I don't know what you're talking about. Oh no, you guys, that was, it was hurtful. I don't, I w you know, totally not what I was expecting. Of course it was raining that day and I slipped and fell legs up right in front of him. Luckily there were, there were some very burly, um, football players that were walking right behind me who like pulled me up and started walking me away. And there's two things you should probably know about me. One is I can control my temper and two is I have no filter. So, um, something like this could be really bad for all parties. So thank you. Burly football man that I never met again for, um, you know, probably rescuing me from being arrested. Um, but yeah, Brickyard preacher dude taught me about modesty and taught me about how modesty sometimes is in the eye of the beholder and sometimes it's in the eye of the be the bearer, if you will. Yeah. So, so that was really an eye opener for me.Alex (20:40):That's really interesting. I think maybe you bring up about, you know, when, when we're talking about modesty in terms of our appearance and more specifically what we're wearing or not wearing. You know, that's an interesting question is it's the person's responsibility who is wearing the clothing or is it the person's responsibility? Who is Ewing the clothing? And then, you know, to take that a step further, if we're going back to the story that Aria shared earlier about, you know, sort of averting your eyes, if you will. Um, and I'm going to attempt to say this correctly, so young helped me if I, if I bought this, but when it comes to the ha ha that says, thank you that says don't pray in front of an in, modestly dressed woman and we have to divine define those terms. Right? So is it, are those terms in the IBD holder or the terms in, you know, the person who's wearing the clothing and then to take that even further, maybe go cry somewhere else?Faria (21:38):Um, yeah, so I think I'll go, I don't know too much about Judaism, so not speaking to these specific rules or trying to offend anyone. But when you say that Alex actually reminds me of my favorite Bollywood movie or one of my favorite Bollywood movies, there's a line where, um, the, the lead actress or whatever is talking to her sister and she's like, why did you wear that to the tumble? Everyone at the temple was staring at you and her sister's like, well, if everybody in the temple was staring at me instead of God, that's their problem, not mine. Um, and I was just like, yes, cause I love that scene. Um, and I recognize that not everybody has an opinion. Uh, but I do, I, you know, with that, I think it opened up that I lean more towards, it's, uh, on the responsibility of not the person who is dressing her appearing that way. But the other, because I think yes, modesty is, is very, can be very physical, right, in terms of dress, in terms of makeup, things like that. But my take is you don't know that person's intention behind it. Right? Like I, my mother, I think the first time Yama was really bonding with your story because, um, I mean, I love my mother a lot more than I'm sure you'd like that preacher, but she called me like a whore once I was 16 and I wore red lipstick for the first time and she said, uh, she said I looked like a streetwalker. Uh, but she said it in ODU, so to add some color to this podcast, her exact words were [inaudible], which means you look like a woman of the night, which meant hooker. And I was like, thanks mom. I'm 16 and you and dad said I could wear this and now that I've worn it, you're mad. I'm so sorry.Alex (23:09):Insult.Faria (23:10):Yeah, I know. Yeah. She was like, why do you look at woman on the street? I was like, I didn't even know what meant like hooker. Like that part came later. By the way, I was like, I am a woman and we're about to start one of the night. Yeah. I was like, I am a woman and it's night and we are about to go somewhere. Like it didn't click till later bless my baby Faria heart. Um, cause I was like, where are you mad? Yeah, man. I'm just like, it's fine. It's fine. I was like, wait, but she seems upset. So I lean more to the side. That is, it's the responsibility of the person who is seeing or witnessing any other type of dress or the person who is dressing quote unquote modestly or modestly. Because I think intention plays a big role in that. And we don't know people's intentions, right? We don't know what's going on in their head, but what we do know is ours, our thoughts and feelings and what we can control is our actions and how we choose to react or handle a situation that we feel is in modest or too modest or however you'd put it.Yum (24:05):I'm just going to say that once I was the, the on the side of the be-wearer, it is in the eye of the bearer. What he or she thinks is modest. Um, but I think I've switched to the camp of both.Alex (24:18):Oh, interesting.Yum (24:19):Yes. And it's been a very recent switch you guys because of this very last 2020 Superbowl that I have switched.Alex (24:29):Are you referencing J-Lo and Shakira?Yum (24:32):I am. In fact, yes. First of all, let me preface this by saying that I have a huge amount of respect for them and for Adam Levine who was, you know, the year before shirtless, the energy that my Facebook stream had that night and probably for a week afterwards commenting on what they were wearing, how they were dancing, what they were doing, what they were saying really kind of struck me as, you know, it doesn't really matter what they were thinking they were wearing. Everybody else is hating on them except for not because those women are in their forties and fifties and they look better than I do right now. So really I wasn't hitting on you, Shakira and J-Lo. I love you and just going to share a little tidbit with you. Part of my fitness routine is pole fitness. So seeing J-Lo up on that pole is like my life's goal. Really? Yeah. Do you see her in hustlers? I did. In fact here in hustlers, I've done one of my classes before. It is not easy girl. It is what got me in shape after two babies. Um, the core strength that it takes and the arm strength and the back strength don't even get me started. This is way, way, way, not what we were talking about before this podcast. I asked, um, my mom's group who are very varied in their beliefs and in their personalities and I respect all of them a whole lot. What they thought about modesty in general because we did have a thread talking about whether we covered our children's eyes during the halftime show and kind of what we landed on was, you know, what was really to blame was camera angles. And I'm going to bet that the person behind the camera who's deciding where the camera's going to go and what it's going to look like was not a woman. So at the end of the day, at the end of the day when they're saying, well she shouldn't have jello, shouldn't have done that. Like widespread slide. Excuse me, how are you going to slide without whites, without like widespread legs? People who have never tried to slide are saying this, but people who are saying that because, Oh my gosh, the camera was right there. Who put the camera right there? Ladies and gentlemen, not the ladies. So I think, I think there is a something to be said for the people who are watching to bring it back to Israel. There was a situation in the military where um, Israel wanted religious men to serve in the military and Israel. Everyone at 18 serves and religious men often get exempt to go study. And Israel said, nah, actually you're going to go in and be part of part of the military. You're going to serve as well for your three years. And they said, we can't serve or we can't. So they have their, they have, um, the more religious men have their own little, um, segment in the Israeli military. So we do try to accommodate. But they said they couldn't come to a, uh, event because there was a choir at the beginning and that had women in it who were wearing skirts that did not reach their knees and that would, that would give them inappropriate thoughts and they therefore they could not go and then they wanted to get out of the military altogether. Pretty much what I'm saying here is I do think that it, I think sometimes it gets mangled, but it is both who is wearing it and what we feel about it and whether we feel modest in what we're wearing versus what, um, Faria you can look at me when, you know, when we're together in a room and be like, Holy crap, that shirt is a low cut and that's, you know, your prerogative and I can't stop you from thinking that. And it's fine if you think that I'm still gonna wear the shirt.Alex (27:51):So taking, taking this concept back into the workplace, if we're talking about let's say the it version of modesty, is that really just boundary setting and then, you know, is it, are we sort of setting these boundaries to sort of protect people from themselves, whether that be, you know, security risks or whether it be potentially preventing you from getting eyed for a promotion because your direct supervisor is getting the wrong impression from either your low cut shirt or maybe the fact that you wear ripped up tee shirts and jeans to work every day. When is it okay to have boundaries setting in the workplace when it comes to modesty?Yum (28:35):So I think IT is a really interesting, um, subsection of people. Uh, especially. So I come from a, um, small business SaaS background and the people I worked with came to work in leggings and ripped up jeans. And, um, every time the company wanted to give us a gift, it was a hoodie. Like this is the kind of people that I worked with. And they were, they were expecting the same for me. There was never an expectation that I get very, very dressed up to come to work. In fact, some of the women who did come to work more dressed up, and I'm not talking like more modestly because those t-shirts come up to your neck. So it's not, it's not that kind of a problem. I'm just talking about like, you know, sharper. I'm more sharply dressed. They were seen as the ones that were trying too hard. Yes, they were most of the time busy, uh, sales women and they needed to feel the part in order to speak the part. You know, nobody sees them, um, where we do most of our sales by phone, but it was important for them to feel that way. And I do think that more and more we are coming to a place, work and life are intersecting in a way that it hasn't before. And I think boundary setting is probably one of the most important things that we can do for ourselves. Um, I don't know about you too, but I'm a millennial and what we, what we kind of grew up on was a work life balance. But I heard on a radio talk show that gen Z is actually talking about work life blending where they want, um, they want businesses to be more okay with their life and their work really being one thing. If you expect me to answer an email at 7:00 PM, it's okay for me to go to the doctor at 10:00 AM and for you not to know about it. See what I'm saying? Like it's, it's more of a blending than it is a separation, which is what, which is what we were taught to want. Right. They were like, you're going to find a nine to five and then you're going to leave your work at work and go home and do your thing. Um, as a community manager, that's impossible. I answer emails all the time. I answer emails on PTO. Not that I should, but I do. Am I inviting people to treat me a certain way? Probably and I should probably stop. That's kind of, it's kind of expected of me at this point. At what point do I say I have this amount of self-respect, which is related to modesty, because modesty is having enough self-respect to dress in a way that shows that you are not trying to be overtly sexual or overtly whatever, or maybe you are good for you.Alex (30:58):So is it maybe because your boundaries are, have become less modest that now this is sort of what's expected of you because this is the impression that you've given to people and that's what they've perceived in terms of your availability, in terms of, you know, your work life blend or balance or lack thereof. You know, is it sort of we're setting these boundaries by determining how modest we are with our time, with our words, with our actions, with our dress. So kind of like what you were saying earlier, I think that it does fall back on us a little bit, but it's still also in the eye of the beholder. So I would agree actually. I think it's bothYum (31:49):Welcome to my "both" camp. Population 2: you and me.Alex (31:52):but when it comes to it, you know, there are definitely certain scenarios where being more modest is without a doubt. A plus. Right? Like if we're talking about security measures, if we're talking about, um, just really kind of helping people to protect them from themselves, cause you may not be a malicious user, but you may just be a user who's too busy and trying to do too many things at one time and then you become a security risk to the organization and you should have been a little bit more modest about your passwords.Yum (32:21):Yeah, I think you're right Alex. I think, um, companies need to be very modest with the access they're giving their users. And I think users need to be, um, respectful of the boundaries that they're setting and the boundaries that their work is setting. I know a lot of times we get, um, for laptops from the companies that we, that we work for. Um, and perhaps, um, being respectful to yourself and being respectful to the company and not using that laptop as your personal machine and inviting in, um, security risks that way. Or even just, you know, at the end of the day it can go in and take a look, see and see everything you've Googled for the past. You know, however long you've been working for the company and do you really want that? Cause I don't,Alex (33:05):right, right. In case in case anyone was unaware that that is going on at their workplace, it's definitely happening. And you should, uh, adjust accordingly.Faria (33:16):Okay. I'm going to be honest, I have a lot of Buzzfeed articles, the ones that are like incentivizing you to buy this thing under $15 because you need it in your life and it's because they pop up and I'm like, bookmark, save, go look and buy all the things later. So yes, sorry. Office peopleYum (33:32):Faria that is, that is the least of their worries. Um, as a, as a side gig, I am a writer slash, editor and um, my biggest issue is I'm Googling how to murder people, but we can talk about this some other day.Alex (33:47):So would you say that, just to kind of bring this back and kind of round it out, is there something from your faith or your religion that maybe I think IT could learn from or maybe even that you've taken that principle or that idea and it's carried over into your professional life?Faria (34:11):Yeah, I would, I would say don't be afraid to be open-minded and challenge what you've been taught because I feel like this is like, you know, take a dog or take a drink every time she says she came from a conservative background. But yeah, like I didn't question things for 18 years. Right. Um, and just kind of accepted what I heard and believed, which was all great and wonderful. Uh, then maybe not the best fit for me. Right. So I think also as someone in her early career, um, I'm at just my second company right now out of college. So, uh, being new, kind of in that early career stage, there was a lot of, uh, maybe X, Y, Z is exactly what I need to do to advance or to meet the goals or to do the things. And I get afraid to challenge or to speak my mind or to say something different because that's not the way it's always been done. Um, and so yeah, just kind of learning to be open and to trust myself I think is something that resonates with me in modesty or in faith. And also in the workplace.Yum (35:13):I'm actually going to draw from my, um, educational experience about theology in general. Um, and, and across many, um, the many religions that I've learned about both pretty in depth and just surface level, almost every single religion way of life. Um, anything, whatever you want to call it, spirituality has, um, some sort of need either privacy or or sneeze or modesty or whatever you can call it. And I think, um, companies can learn from that as well, especially in it. Every company should have their proper use of computer bylaws and rules of engagement within their company and an understanding that people come from different backgrounds and it's not always easy and it's not always comfortable. Um, and sometimes it gets real awkward if you meet, for example, uh, a Jewish man who will not high five or will not shake hands or a Jewish woman who won't, um, give you a hug, which is apparently, you know, accepted or expected of, of women. Nowadays, I think that's, that's this generation's you should smile more. But I do think that, uh, every company should understand modesty, understand self-respect, understand boundaries. Um, we'll see when we get there.Destiny (36:33):Thanks for making time for us this week to hear more of technically religious visit our website, technicallyreligious.com where you can find our other episodes, leave us ideas for future discussions and connect to us on social media.  

On the eighth installment of our See It to Be It series, our amazing host Amy C. Waninger sits down to chat with Uso Sayers, CISA, an IT Audit Professional with over 14 years of public accounting experience who currently works as a managing director at Johnson Lambert LLP. Uso graciously shares a bit about how she got involved in public accounting and what about it appealed to her, and she names a couple organizations that help people of color feel supported and connected within the public accounting and IT audit field. She also discusses what surprised her about this work that she didn't expect going in, and she and Amy emphasize the importance of finding the place where you're different and going to listen.Connect with Uso on LinkedIn.Learn more about the National Association of Black Accountants.TRANSCRIPTAde: What's up, y'all? This is Ade. Before we get into Amy's episode, I wanted to share some advice on working remotely. For those of us who are impacted by COVID-19, more commonly known as coronavirus--or if you're not at all impacted by COVID-19 but you are working and transitioning into a more remote lifestyle--I just wanted to share six quick tips that you want to try out to work for you. I do want to say that I don't necessarily abide by all of these rules. I simply know that they are good things to follow based off of me implementing them at some point or another or folks who are better, smarter than me offering these things up as advice. So first and foremost, I would set up a strict calendar. By that I mean I would accept every invite for every meeting. I would have any break times that I wanted to schedule. If there's a point when you're working remotely where you have a cleaner or a plumber or you have a doctor's appointment, keep an updated calendar and make sure that you are updating your team, because it helps you work asynchronously across your team. If folks know that you're not gonna be available between the hours of 5:00 a.m. to 7:00 a.m. Eastern time because you're asleep, or some psychos are in the gym, it gives them an opportunity to not pester you while you're away but also think through some questions of how they may better utilize your time when you do get back online. My second tip would be to use check-ins with your co-workers. By that, I mean use your daily stand-ups [?]. Use your Slack team channels if that's a thing. Use those things to keep in contact with your teams, because it's very easy to lose perspective in a sense and lose empathy for your friends or for your coworkers if they're not constantly top of mind. So in that sense, I would remember, you know, team birthdays. Maybe establishing a Slack reminder that it's someone's birthday [and] you all should go drop a Happy Birthday gift in their messages. All of that to say [laughs] that if you can remember to treat your teammates as teammates, as people, not just, you know, an avatar on the other side of the conversation you're having about poorly deployed code, it makes for a better work environment, as distributed as it may be. Thirdly--and these also sort of go hand-in-hand, but I would say that you should over-communicate. This also kind of ties into your strict calendar. Over-communicate. Ensure that any time away from your desk, any planned work that you're gonna be working on, any roadblocks that you're having, you say those things before they become problems, because it's so much easier to kind of get ahead of the horse before it gets out of the table. I don't know if that's an idiom that people actually use anymore, [laughs] but I do think that it's important to ensure that folks aren't caught blindsided, that if you've been working on something and you're stuck on it, give people an opportunity to help you out, and give others the grace to see you where you are so that you don't foster resentment. It's much easier to get something done if you speak up about it sooner rather than later, and it's difficult. I know, for one, it's something that I've had my issues with, especially in situations where you are, you know, bound to your home. Reduce your stress levels and just ask for help. Actually there was one thing that I didn't mention at the top when I said "Set up a strict calendar." On your calendars, I also recommend that you put your self-cues. If you're someone like me who--I drink a lot of caffeine over the course of the day, and I recently spoke to a nutritionist who kind of reminded me that when you work asynchronously and when you consume a lot of caffeine, caffeine suppresses your appetite, and it causes you to fall into really unhealthy eating patterns. More often than not, when you find yourself at home throughout the day you get really comfortable--too comfortable sometimes--so I kind of encourage that you set up your calendar so that you have a routine, so that you're not just, you know, at home and not separating what is home from what is official work time. So when you're working from home, set up your calendar so that you have a routine. Have, you know, time for a shower, time for breakfast, time for the gym if that's something you do in the morning, so that you have a much more regimented schedule. And on your calendar as well, put in your hunger cues. If you're gonna eat at, I don't know, 7:00 a.m., if you're gonna eat breakfast or drink a smoothie at 7:00 a.m., it stands to reason that by maybe 11:00 you might need a small snack, so put a snack cue in your calendar. Maybe at 12:30 you're going to need your larger lunch. Put your lunch on your calendar. These things are important to help you establish a routine around your new lifestyle. Okay, we skipped back up to one, so I'm just gonna finish up with five and six. #5 is to protect your space. Whether it's that you need a physical demarcation of where work happens versus where life happens or if you're the sort of person who is able to, you know, keep up with the simultaneous demands of your work life and your home life, then it doesn't really matter where you work as long as work gets done. Just make sure you're protecting your space. Make sure that, if your close of business is 5:00 p.m., you're not allowing the fact that you work from home to have you check, you know, e-mails at 11:30 p.m. when you're supposed to be asleep. Ensure that you're protecting your space and establishing boundaries in that way, and help others understand and protect those things by communicating what your boundaries are. Just because we're working from home and we're mandated to work from home doesn't mean that my time after, you know, 5:30 p.m. is available to you, and if you see me online, mind your business. As far as you are concerned I am off work, unless it is a dire emergency. And then the sixth thing is don't forget to move. It's very easy, I know. I fell into the trap of eating inconsistently, over-indulging, under-indulging, such that after I had worked remotely for a while I realized that it was getting harder for me to, like, move physically, and it's easier to get ahead of that by simply incorporating movement into your day so that you don't develop back problems or spine problems or anything like that as far as your abilities may allow, but I also think that it's a good way to get out of the monotony and to inject some freshness and a fresh perspective into your day. If you just incorporate a quick 10-minute walk or maybe do some squats or, you know, whatever it may be that you can incorporate into your life to make your life easier, that is helpful and beneficial to you and obviously doesn't take away from you enjoying your day, I would say you should incorporate those things. I've been blathering on for a while. I hope these tips helped you out. Please let us know if there are any tips that work for you when you work remotely or asynchronously with your teams. That's it for now from me. Thank you so much for listening in. Next up you have Amy.Amy: Hi, Uso. Thank you for joining me.Uso: Hello, Amy. Good evening. It's my pleasure.Amy: Thank you. So I was wondering if you can tell me a little bit about your job as a tech auditor and how you got into that work.Uso: Okay, sure. So being in public accounting, I guess you could say I happened upon it. So I had an undergrad in accounting, and I was in grad school studying finance. Given that I had accounting background I figured, "Hey, finance will be a good thing that can, you know, supplement and complement my accounting degree." So I started doing that and I realized I really didn't like finance, so I added information systems as a second major. But doing that opened up--because this was back in 2002 to 2004 when Enron was happening, [?] was going down, so SOX became a big thing. I graduated in '04, and SOX--you know, filers had to be compliant with SOX in 2004, and--Amy: And SOX is the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation that sought to put some protections in place for consumers because companies were behaving very badly.Uso: Exactly. [laughs] I could not have said that better. And so most companies, especially large companies, were required to have IT audits performed. They had controls that they had implemented, and these controls needed to be validated. So that's kind of how I got into the [?] realm. Now, fast-forward 15 years, I'm still doing it because I absolutely love it. I love learning about companies and understanding their control structure so I, you know, can figure out how we can help them, how we can give them recommendations that they can implement.Amy: And when you talk about control structures, you mean things like separation of duties or checks on security so that the people who are accessing the system only have certain rights, the minimum rights that they need to do what they need to do and not extra stuff, right?Uso: Yes, exactly. So, you know, most of the company's financials come from one of the systems, and what was happening back in the day, one person can take a transaction through the system without anyone else touching that transaction. So I can create a vendor, I can pay that vendor. I can then determine where that check goes where that vendor, which leads to fraud or could lead to fraud--errors too, but fraud is one of the bigger reasons, because one [?] could pretend to be a vendor and the company never get any products or services, but I'm also the receiving clerk, so I can check off that this item that we've ordered has been received, and then I send the payment. Or I can even do it for myself, you know? Create some type of a dummy company with my address and then pay myself that way, and a number of companies actually lost money that way. But then there are also other ways outside of just fraud. You can have errors. You can also just have things that are--when you are developing code, and I know we're kind of getting into the technical realm, but when you're--and that's where a lot of errors could potentially happen, but when you're developing code you have the ability to determine how things are being calculated. So you can determine that 1 times 1 is equal to 100 versus 1, and if there aren't checks and balances in place to validate that 1 times 1 is 1, then, you know, the company could be losing money and not realize it. I always remember when I was in college, one of the things they always talked about was the [Lloyd fraudware?]. I think the guy changed one of the configurations by, like, a penny, and he was siphoning that to his own account, and I think he ended up getting millions of dollars.Amy: Oh, my gosh.Uso: You know, so now having--ensuring that the same person who is creating and developing the configuration is not the person who is making that configuration the final configuration in the system, or at least having somebody inserted to check it and make sure it's doing what the company thinks it's doing, you know? That's kind of what we call the control structure.Amy: Got you. Uso: Now, with cybersecurity, the security piece is getting focus. I think with SOX, this change management piece was the big deal then. Security was important, but now with cybersecurity and personal information and protecting that personal information, security is being put on the map so to speak.Amy: Mm-hmm, very good. So I know you got into this kind of a little by accident, because you were down the accounting path and then you just got interested in the IT side of things, but what surprised you about this work that you didn't expect before you got into it?Uso: It is interesting. You know, when you--at least I when I thought of accounting, I thought "boring." And, you know, finance to some extent, but then even though IT audit is not truly core IT, you have the ability to learn a lot about the technical side of what companies do, because before you can offer a company recommendation you have to understand what they have configured and what they have in place, what systems they have, what infrastructure those systems sit on, and then how they're securing their environment, how they're ensuring that, you know, they're protecting--another big area in the IT control realm is that [?] recovery. If we remember 9/11, a number of companies went under because all of their operations were in that building. You know, Tower 1 or Tower 2. They did not have any of that information backed up to a different location. Now we all have phones, and you'd be surprised to know how many people do not back up their pictures and their contact information outside of their phones. So the phone falls in some water, and that's all of their information. And so, you know, that's also one of the areas that we look at, because in 2018, 2019, there's still companies that do not back up data or do not back up frequently, which may sound surprising. [laughs] But it is true. And helping them understand why it's important, or understand why it's important to back it up to something other than the machine where you have the information or outside of the building where you have your information so that you can access it if something happened. You know, you might have people say, "Well, we're not in a [?] plane." Okay, but a pipe could burst. You know? So [laughs] the risks are still there, and, you know, we help companies understand what their risks are so that they can design controls, they can help them make [?] those risks.Amy: That's terrific. So a lot of computing is moving to the cloud, and how are you managing those same risks when the companies don't own the servers and the computers that the work is really being done on?Uso: So two things. The company now has to hold their service provider, that cloud provider, accountable, and they also are still accountable, because at the end of the day it's their data. It's their information. As a client of theirs, I gave them my information. I did not give the cloud my information. So when something happens, I go to the company that I gave my information to. So what companies are doing, there's something called a SOC report, Service Organization Controls report. So the cloud service providers have auditors come in and review their controls, and one of the reasons why the cloud service providers are so successful [is] because they're doing such a large-scale operation. They can afford to have, you know, the best auditors come in, validate their controls, and they can afford to put robust controls in place. So a lot of these companies--the larger cloud providers I guess I should say, because some of the smaller ones are not as sophisticated, but the larger ones, they have very robust controls in place, and they love to have auditors come in and look at it and try to tear it apart so that they can demonstrate that their controls are robust. And even those large companies have incidents happen, you know? That's why the Amazons of the world, they have data centers on both coasts and different places, because things happen, and for companies that do not have the infrastructure in place to support that in house, putting it on the cloud is probably the next best thing because it's going into a secure infrastructure. Now, where some companies think, "Oh, I just put it in the cloud. It's okay." You have to ensure--the cloud companies, in those SOC reports there's something called complementary user entity controls, and what that says is I have this gate, but you design the lock, and you design who has access to that lock. And companies don't realize that, so they think "Oh, it's in the cloud. It's okay," but no, there are those complementary user controls. If you are not doing those things, then the cloud service provider can say, "Well, we did what we're supposed to do, but they came in through the gate. We put up the fence of the infrastructure, but the people came through the gate because they didn't put a lock on the gate like they were supposed to." They will tell you what are the things--you know, they may say, you know, "You must authorize all users that are granted access," or for firewalls, the firewall is kind of the router, I guess, so to speak. I'm trying to find a good way to explain it, but the firewalls protect the network. So, you know, if you have internet traffic, it has to flow through the firewall. The firewall validates that this traffic is coming from a computer that's authorized before it can view your information. But you have to set up the firewall to do that. The cloud service provider is not configuring your firewall to tell which of your people can come in and view your information, and sometimes companies don't realize that. So it's easier, but you have to take the steps to also ensure that you're doing those things that you need to do.Amy: Thank you for that. So, you know, I think it's fascinating the way this role is changing in terms of IT and just all of the technology that's available and the way our platforms are changing. I grew up in IT back in the day, and it seems like this is a place that is ripe with opportunity for people just coming out of college or maybe even looking for a career change. What would you say to someone who's interested in learning more about whether or not they might be a fit for this industry? What kinds of resources are available to them to learn more?Uso: And this is tricky, 'cause I wish schools--and I think some schools are getting there, 'cause ideally the colleges will be providing guidance in this area because there's so many career opportunities in the IT field, even in public accounting. So even the traditional--you know, even the traditional accountant or auditor is different now. For the financial audit teams, they're adding data scientists and they're adding data analysts, so those are fields that maybe five to ten years ago, it wasn't a thing, and people may not know that. Even four years ago, some people entered school and that was not a career path, and now in your graduating years it's an opportunity. Project manager, you know? You know, if you're on the company side, project managers are in great demand. Certified information systems security professionals, you know? They're in great demand. It can be intimidating, but Google's probably the best place to start because that usually has the most updated information. I can tell you a number of universities, and, you know, when you look up careers in auditing or careers in IT auditing, you'll see that it's no longer traditional just control management. There are risk management roles, security roles, the data roles like I said, and the data roles are becoming more and more important because of big data. You know, companies have all this data. Somebody has to analyze that data and assess it and determine, you know, how can we use it. Even for auditors, you're getting information from a company, you want to know if there's all of the information that I need. So let's say you're auditing an insurance company [and] you get a list of claims. You have to performance procedures to ensure that that list of claims has all of the claims that you wanted to see for the period of time that you wanted to see it. So you may see "I need to see all claims for 2018 over a million dollars." Well, how do you know that this report that they gave you has all this information on it? You have to do some type of validation procedures to get comfortable that the information on the report is complete and then do your auditing procedures to, you know, understand and test the accuracy of it. A lot of times also the bigger firms--so in public accounting the big four firms and some of the larger public accounting firms, they also have a lot of info on their website that can potentially help. But again, that may be skewed to their company. So I would say start with just, you know, a broad search on Google depending on what aspect of IT you're interested in and then kind of use--you know, I always go for a known site. So, like, if I'm Googling something and I see Harvard is in the top six, I probably will click on the Harvard Business Review's point of view and read there first before going to the next thing, 'cause there's some things that make you go like, "Hm, I don't know." [both laugh]Amy: So what about for people of color in this industry? I would imagine that there's a predominance, especially in management ranks and probably in some of the bigger companies--I know a lot of the bigger companies are really committed to diversity initiatives, but I would imagine that it's common for a person of color who goes into this work to be the only on their team or the only in their department. What resources or organizations are available in this industry so that people can feel supported, feel like they have a community in this space?Uso: Right, yeah. And it's interesting. So public accounting generally, yes, is still pretty traditional, all white male, but I noticed the IT audit side is very diverse. It's very interesting, because I think it's one of those areas where your skill--yes, politics play a part, but your skill set is needed and your skill set is valued and respected. And there are an number of resources. Most of the bigger firms have affinity groups that, you know, they're either women's groups, groups that are by race, and then even for sexual and gender-type diversity, there are groups for that. And then outside of the firms there are also various groups. You know, there's Women in Technology. There's the National Association of Black Accountants. There's the National Society of Black Engineers. There are a number of affinity groups that are out there that focus on helping minorities 1. connect with each other and 2. be exposed to the resources and development that they need in order to progress in their organizations, and it's one of those things where I personally feel like it's--when I started in public accounting, I was a member of the National Association of Black Accountants, and I felt like that really helped me to 1. understand what it takes to be a professional. It helped me to expand my network, because I got to meet not only people in my firm, but also people in other firms. I got to meet professionals at my level, professionals that were higher than me, professionals that were my gender, my race also outside of that, and that really helped me to have a wider view, a wider point of view and different points of view, as I progressed through my career. Some people feel as though these groups sometimes hinder your career, and I say it only does that if you're not being smart about how you're using your time. Because sometimes I think people only use this opportunity for social networking. They don't use it for any technical development. They don't use it to help auditors--like, one of the errors I have focused on as I was coming up in my career was the development of [?] students. So things that I learned, I would go back and present on campus or, you know, in that I was director of student [?] services, so, you know, help them build some of the governance documents, and even talk to some of the professors about some of the things that I'm seeing and things that they should be implementing and instilling in their students. So I'm a firm believer in it. Now, I can tell you that my white counterparts will always be like, "Well, why do we need a group for black people? What would happen if we had a group for white people?" It's like, "Kind of technically we do." [laughs]Amy: [laughs] Kind of all the groups are for white people unless they're saying specifically that they're not.Uso: Yeah, 'cause I think sometimes you get discriminated against. You know, people don't want to do it because they don't want to say that "I'm in this group," that, you know--and the group may be, you know, black or Latino or whatever in the name. There's alpha. There's also the [?] for the Asians, but even though the groups have that in their name, we welcome everyone, because we realize that we need that perspective from, you know, the white male manager, the white female manager, because they're the ones that can help us understand what their points of view are, and then we can also help them, because sometimes they realize, "Oh, wait. My view might be skewed," or "I was never exposed to anyone outside of my town, my city, my race," you know? So usually it's a two-way learning experience.Amy: So I want to put a really fine point on that, because I always tell people, "Go to the conference that's not for you. Show up at the meeting that's not for you. If you're at a conference, go to the breakout where you're not on the menu." Right? Like, find the place where you're different and go listen, because I think it's important for people--you know, the same person who says, "Why do we need an association of black accountants?" That's the person that needs to go to the meeting to listen, to learn why they need associations of black accountants, right? They have no ideas what kinds of barriers are in place for people who don't look like them, and so, you know, I always challenge people and they say, "Well, yeah, but, you know, how do I even learn about this?" Go sit down in the back of the room, don't raise your hand, take notes, pay attention, and--"What if someone asks me what I'm doing there?" And I say, "Tell them you're there to learn, and then zip it." [Uso laughs] Like, nobody's going to ever get mad at you because you want to learn more about their experience, right? So thank you for being on that train with me.Uso: And I've had people who have said being in that room where they were the only really opened their eyes, because they're sitting there and they're like, "Oh, my goodness. I'm so uncomfortable." And then they start realizing, like, "This is so-and-so from my group who is the only. This is probably how they feel." And I think sometimes that's such good advice to give, because going out there and experiencing, there's nothing that compares to that. Hearing second-hand about it, I don't think you could fully appreciate it. I also liken it to parenthood, you know? Before you have a child, you have all of these things that you know exactly how to raise a child, how a child should behave, everything, and then you have yours and you're like, "Oh, my goodness. This is not anything like I thought it would be. I can't control my child. My child runs wherever." You know, you can't keep up, and you start to appreciate parents more because you realize how difficult it is to be a parent. So sometimes you do have to sit in that person's shoes so you can understand what they experienced.Amy: Yeah, absolutely. And it's so funny because I--yeah, I think my kids--on that point, I think each one of my kids exists for the sole purpose of proving me wrong on something I said before I had children. [both laugh] I don't want to get off-topic, but yes, you are right about that. It is so much easier to be a good parent before you have kids. But I think for a lot of people, you know, that self-awareness and that self-consciousness that they feel for the first time, you know, people can go a long way through their lives with never having that kind of moment where they have to be self-aware and they feel very self-conscious, and when they realize in that moment that other people have felt that way for, you know, 25, 30, 45, 50 years, right, in their careers, and, you know, I think there's just an amazing amount of empathy that can happen in those epiphanies. So I'm so glad to hear someone else say, "Come to the meeting."Uso: Yes, it's so important. And you can never, never not benefit from being there. It will be uncomfortable. I cannot promise you that it won't be uncomfortable, because people will probably look at you like, "Hm. Is she [?]?" "Do I have to be careful what I say?" Because sometimes, you know, people do--in some of these meetings, people do get a level of comfort where they share openly, and sometimes when there's somebody in the group that's of that group that they're talking about they may not share as comfortably, but you need to be there. You need to understand some other things that people see. And I always, even to my colleagues and black friends, I'm like, "You have to also look on the other side." So some of them, you know, yes, at work we're usually only, but sometimes going to some of these other conferences and understanding the expectations can help us also. So I have always tried to go to my NABA conference, but I also go to my ISACA conference, which is, you know, the Information Systems Audit and Control Association, which governs the work I do, and now that I'm in the insurance industry I go to the, you know, insurance accounting and systems association conference because I want to develop the technical knowledge and the technical skills so that I can have those conversations and be comfortable. I mean, you start to realize there are some people who are just idiots and that's just who they are, but more and more when you go out and meet other people, you realize that getting people and having them learn a little about you and you learn about them breaks down some of those barriers, because a lot of things are just perception. They're not reality. They don't really just hate you because you're a black woman, you know? Sometimes they just--they don't know what to say to you, and for me it's a little harder because am I a black woman, I'm a black woman from a different country. [laughs] So some of the things that are culturally acceptable and expected, I don't always know about it, and my friends always--you know, they gave me the whole "Bless your heart" kind of thing [laughs]. There's some things that I just don't know, but I am not afraid to learn. I am not afraid to learn, and I'm always going out there so that I can learn and develop and become a better person.Amy: I think that's fantastic. So you and I had talked before about--I'm gonna switch gears a little bit on you, but you and I had talked before about how each of us, you know, people in general, we kind of contribute to the de facto segregation and the narrowing of our own professional networks and our own communities and, you know, only hanging out with people who are just like us until we had that moment when we realized, "Oh, my gosh. I've done this to myself and I didn't even realize it," and I was wondering if you could share a little bit about your experience with that.Uso: Sure. So when I moved to the U.S. and I started my public accounting career I was in New York, and I remember my first time going to training. It was, let's say, 2,000 professionals, and the black professionals were a very small group there. We were there for two weeks. The first few days, I would always go find my friends and, you know, go sit at that table, and I don't remember if somebody said something to me, I don't remember what it was, but one day I decided, "You know what? Let me just go sit at one of these tables," and I can tell you, I mean, of those 2,000 people, if we had 100 people who were not white, that probably was a large amount. So, you know, I'll go a little bit off-topic for a second. I always hear people say, you know, "Oh, is that so-and-so?" And they may take you for somebody else, and then black folks will be like, "Why do they think we all look alike?" Being in that room, like, there were, like, so many guys that, to me, I couldn't tell who was Joe from Jim from Bob. [That] made me, like, really understand how it is that we can all look alike, but side-note. But being in there and looking around and seeing all of these different people, you know, I thought "Let me go sit from people who are not from New York, who are not black, who I've never met before." So I started, for lunch and dinner breaks, just going to sit at random tables with people that I had not met before. You know, I developed relationships. I met people who I was so similar to that, you know, it was very interesting. And after that, even at work, you know, I started having conversations, and I remember I was on a team once, and then--you know, I always said that if you heard the conversations and the things we talked about as a team or the shows that we watch, the music we listen to, and people just told you the thing and you had to map it to the person, you would get it wrong, because the person who could quote the movie Friday was not the black girl on the team, and the person whose favorite movie was Pretty Woman was not the white girl on the team, you know? And that's when I started realizing that we have a lot more similarities than differences, and the only way I got to know that was to step out of my comfort zone and go meet people that I had not met before and be uncomfortable. And it wasn't even--I mean, yes, at first, you know, it takes a little [?], but once you sit there, people are pretty friendly. There are some who are not as friendly, but for the most part people were friendly and willing to, you know, open up.Amy: Thank you for sharing that. You know, I think if we all start with just being a little uncomfortable at first, and then what used to be a little uncomfortable becomes comfortable, and then we start to be a little uncomfortable again, and pretty soon you build that muscle memory to where it's not all that uncomfortable anymore.Uso: Yep. And I'll share another story. I have two kids. I have an almost 9-year-old and a 6-year-old, and I remember when my son, who's the older one, was in preschool and we had to look for an elementary school, we looked at a number of schools. Private schools, public schools, charter schools, and one of the things that--I think he was in pre-K, and he was telling us about a friend in his class and something that he said, but he wanted to--so he told us the boy's name, but we didn't know--we didn't recognize the name, so we were like, "Oh, which one is this?" And he's like, "Well, the one that looks like people on TV," and we realized he didn't have, you know--'cause he had just started his new preschool, but before that, all of the years that he was in preschool, it was a predominantly black preschool. So he didn't have any white boys in his school, and then we started looking around and realizing that that was our network. So we made a concerted effort that wherever he goes to real school is going to be a diverse place, because he really shouldn't have to describe somebody based on what they look like on TV. He should know them, be able to relate to them, and have relationships with them, and it's so great now to see that he has such a diverse network and that I feel like I can't wait to see kind of what their future looks like, 'cause I think they will have a different perspective on diversity than we do, 'cause to them it's like, "That's just my friend." "That's not my white friend, that's not my black friend. That's my friend." Amy: Oh, I sure hope so. And I think there's another angle to that too, which is that it's sad that the representation that he sees on TV is so predominantly white.Uso: Different story, but yes. [both laugh]Amy: I didn't want to let that moment pass. I think that there's another lesson in there about media and representation and those sorts of things, but, you know, I'm grateful. I'm grateful for other parents out there who can, you know, self-reflect on the kinds of experiences and exposure that their kids are getting and say, "Oh, we need to be intentional about this. We need to be intentional about bringing more diversity and exposing our children to different types of people." I was wondering. I know that you have experience as a volunteer leader within some of the companies that you've worked in around bringing together diverse employees and their allies, and I was wondering if you could share a little bit about what drove you, what motivated you to do that work--which can be exhausting and thankless and on your own time and in addition to your day job--and also just a little bit about what you got out of that experience?Uso: Yep, sure. I think I've always had a servant/leader-type mentality, because growing up my dad always, for birthdays and holidays, took us to places where we could volunteer to help others. He was a baker, so we would bake, and then we would serve--you know, he'd take us to different homes. One was a children's home for children who had polio and then one was an old people's home. When I moved to the U.S., I first started volunteering at the library for people who couldn't read, and I realized--the thing that attracted me was this flier that said, "If you can read this you can help, because there are people who can't read this." And I was like, "Really?" And I met people who were over 21, all the way up to, like, 60, who couldn't read, and I'm talking about don't know that t-o-i-l-e-t is toilet. They just use the picture of the door to know that that's where they go to use the bathroom. In school I volunteered. [?] I used to help kids with homework, but once I got into the profession and I realized that there are opportunities 1. to network with others like myself, but also to help others in the firms, I loved it. I jumped at that opportunity. So I moved from New York to Indiana in my second year as a professional, and being in Indiana, I did not have a lot of others that looked like me in the firm. We didn't have enough to have, like, a black employees network, so we ended up in a multi-cultural circle, which was great because we had people from different parts of the world, different genders, different thought processes, and because we didn't have, like, black partners or Indian partners, our leaders were the white partners. So that really helped us 1. we got the support we needed, but 2. we were able to have conversations and understand what it took to grow in the firm. One of the things that I did was to organize these many--what did we call them? It was, like, Breakfast with a Leader. So each partner would meet with three to four professionals from the group for either lunch or breakfast and just get to know each other. That was so powerful, and I still have relationships with some of those people today even though I'm no longer with that firm. And, you know, one of my partners was always telling me about this client contact that he wanted me to meet, and, you know, people always tell you they want you to meet people, but when I finally met the person he wanted me to meet, the first thing the person said to me is "This guy really respects you. He has been telling me about you for the past year." And that--sometimes you don't realize that. You don't have that. You don't get that. You know, people will say whatever, but they don't follow up with their actions and match it, and so I think that whole experience, I still say that I think 1. if I stayed in Indiana I probably would still be with that firm, but that just really helped me to grow as a person, helped me understand my weaknesses, things I need to develop, helped me educate others on us as a group and help them see, you know, us as we are high-performing professionals just like everybody else. We just have differences, but those differences are not hindrances. So, you know, educating them and then educating ourselves. It was just a really powerful experience.Amy: That's breaking down the walls between you, right? And I think so many times people look--when they look mentor, they look for people who are just like them because that's what's the most comfortable. Not because there's any animosity, right, between them and another group or not because they harbor any ill will, just because they don't want to be uncomfortable with that first minute either, and so what you really did was you took away that discomfort and opened up--you know, opened up the channel for people to be mentored and, you know, for executives to find mentors that didn't look just like them, and that's powerful.Uso: Yep, it was very powerful, and it's really helpful because a lot of times you really do try to go to people who look like you, and one of the things that I've learned is you need people as mentors who have had similar experiences to you, but it doesn't matter what they look like. If you are a high-performing individual who is on the fast track in your company, it is very helpful for you to have a high-performing mentor, because having a mentor that may take, you know, three or five years less than you would take to get to a level, they may not understand what you need to do to get there because they didn't do that, but having a white mentor versus a black mentor probably won't make a difference to you, because what you need more is someone who has the technical capabilities and the connections to get you where you need to go, and I think people undervalue the need to have advocates, 'cause the advocates are the people who have the power to connect you and also sell you and get you to where you aspire to go. Having a mentor is great, but if your mentor does not advocate for you, you know, then you may not be getting the best out of that relationship, and I think sometimes why people try to build the relationship, the mentor-type relationship, with people who look like them is because they may have tried to develop a trusting relationship with someone who broke that trust, and then they associated that, breaking that relationship, with the person's race. No, that person is probably a person who would have broken somebody's trust regardless of who it is that they're mentoring. And yes, I do, you know, accept that there are people who haven't [?] somebody different. They may have acted differently, but I'm learning now that it's a smaller group of people. It's not as large a group of people as we think, and sometimes we generalize that one-off experience and kind of take the brush and paint the whole wall with it to say, you know, "All white men, you can't trust them because this is what happened to me," but you'll learn that sometimes you can trust people more than you think and a lot of the people who have helped me in my career have not looked like me. A lot of them were not my same gender, and, you know, they were very honest with me, and I think what was helpful was for me to be open-minded and receive information, 'cause what I've learned is sometimes we're not receptive to constructive feedback, and because of that we are not given the truth, so we don't really know the reason why we didn't make it to the next level. And a lot of times it's not just because of what we look like, but it's because of what our work output looks like. Which, you know, as we all know, there is no color there, you know? But if you don't know if your work is not of the quality that is, you know, expected of you, you may not know that you need to improve your work quality.Amy: That is true, and a lot of times we have to have trusting relationships to get good feedback. You have to build that relationship first so that people know that they can trust you with their feedback. How you receive feedback is so important as to whether you will get it a second time, and I tell people, don't punish the people who praise you, because if somebody's giving you a compliment, if somebody's telling you you did a good job and you belittle that praise, they're not gonna tell you next time, and you're not gonna know when you're on the right track, and you may hear something constructive that you don't want to hear, but if you can say, "Thank you for making me better. I'd like to think about that," even if you do nothing with it--if all you say is, "Thank you. I'd like to think about that," that goes so far in building a relationship with someone. And then if you do actually think about it and come back to them with questions later, even better, right? Because they know that you really have a desire to improve. So spot on. Oh, I love talking to you. [both laugh]Uso: And it is hard, 'cause you do not want to hear that you suck. [both laugh] You know? You don't, and I can tell you that I have received feedback that hurt me to my core, and I'm sure my facial expression and my reaction was not the most receptive, but I went away and realized, "Oh, my goodness. This is true," and one of the things that I had to realize--there is this one person who I had one shot to work with her, and I had come to her with a lot of praise and, you know, all of this stuff surrounding me, and I screwed up, and, you know, she had a lot of influence in what happened to my career that year, and I was mad, but then, you know--it took a while, but then I realized she only had one shot at me, and I screwed that shot up, you know? She didn't find all of the errors in my work. I put the errors there. I missed the stuff. But at the time it was happening it was not easy for me to realize that, you know? You have to really sometimes, like you said, just say, "Thank you for making me better," and go away and think about it and not just be like, "What? When? Where? How? What? I didn't--" You know? "Thank you for making me better." I like that. I think I'm gonna use that. [both laugh]Amy: So in the time that we have left, I'd love for you to answer--like, finish two of my sentences. The first one is, "I feel included when _______."Uso: I feel included when my opinions are asked and respected.Amy: And the second sentence is, "When I feel included, I ________."Uso: When I feel included, I am happy, and I'm usually looking for ways to help include others. Amy: Thank you so much, Uso.Uso: My pleasure. Thank you for the opportunity.Amy: This was so much fun, and I hope we get to talk again soon.Uso: I'm sure we will.Amy: All right.Uso: All right, take care.

Kat: Okay. Oh. How do I do this? Wait for it. Patrick: Got to do it. Kat: Are you going [crosstalk 00:00:42] through the snow? Patrick: Yeah I'm going through the snow. I got it at like 60 degrees in here right now. It's 60 degrees in my house, I have no idea why. Kat: Is that cold? Patrick: To me it is, yes. Kat: Does that mean cold, I don't understand your language. Patrick: To me it is very cold. To me its subzero temperature, I'm absolutely freezing right now. I'm about to die of a cold or flu. Kat: Your dying? Patrick: Yup. I have not gone [crosstalk 00:01:11] Kat: It's a sad state. I'm going to ... Patrick: Hold on let me [crosstalk 00:01:18] Kat: I'm finding out what temperature that is. I'm Googling it so everybody understands what's happening. Patrick: Oh yeah, it doesn't translate. Doesn't translate in your language. Kat: Oh, it's 15 degrees. Hang on I've got to shut the door, there's window men right outside my door and it's super noisy. One second. Patrick: 15 degrees. Holy shit, what the fuck happened to my computer. So what's up everybody, hello, hello, welcome everybody. I'll go ahead and say that. Hello? Kat: What's up? Patrick: [inaudible 00:01:47] everybody's already said something. I don't know, my computer just took a shit. I've no idea. So did you say 15 degrees, your words? This is retarded. Hold on. I can't hear you. Kat: [inaudible 00:02:04] must be dying. Patrick: I can't, what the [crosstalk 00:02:06] Kat: Am I back? Am I back? Patrick: Yeah you're back. Oh, I forgot we're on my internet connection. Kat: Yeah I had ... No, it's because I put my earplugs in because my house cleaner is upstairs vacuuming. Patrick: Oh well how fancy, how fancy. Kat: I'm very fancy, you know that. Patrick: Very fancy with your extravagance earbuds. Kat: So I said that everybody should send you a love heart shower because you're surviving in only 15.555 degree Celsius right now, for the Australians. Now, if people are from Melbourne though, which is my hometown, they're going to be like, "Harden the fuck up, that's warm," but here where I live that's horrible. Horrible. Nobody should have to endure those sort of ... Patrick: Yeah, these are very horrible circumstances. [crosstalk 00:02:58] Kat: Nobody should have to endure those sort of subzero temperatures. Patrick: Nobody should be asked to endure these subzero temperatures, I'll tell you that. All right. Kat: All right. I might need some assistance. Can you help me out? Patrick: What do you got? Kat: Should I wear my hair like this? Should I wear my hair like that or behind? Or on one side? What's the best livestream hair? Patrick: I kind of like it behind. Kat: Out? Patrick: That looks good. Kat: Behind, all right. There you go everybody. Patrick: There you go. That looks good. Kat: We're going to talk about [crosstalk 00:03:37] Patrick: That's the queen Kat look. Kat: [crosstalk 00:03:39] Cleopatra. Patrick: She says, Angela said, [inaudible 00:03:43] I'm in Texas right now. Texas by way of Bali, very, very soon. In the next month, no, no, this month. This month, I'm going next week, next week. Kat: This week maybe. Maybe even tomorrow. Patrick: No I have to wait till the weekend. Kat: Oh well. Patrick: Have to wait till the weekend because [crosstalk 00:04:04] I have to move my stuff. Kat: Time and space is just, time is just an illusion anyway. The weekend could mean tomorrow. Could mean today. Could all be one day. That's extended into itself. Patrick: Time is an illusion [crosstalk 00:04:18] Kat: I think I'm going to take these out again now. I'm going to take these out again now because they're annoying me. Patrick: What is [inaudible 00:04:25] giving you a delay? I'm going to drop this in my [crosstalk 00:04:30] Kat: No, I just prefer no earbuds and the vacuuming stopped. But check it out, I'm sorry that I keep doing this to you Patrick, but I'm going to do it anyway. Are you ready? Patrick: I'm ready. Kat: I'm just eating my bacon and eggs with my Vegemite while in waiting for us to go live. Patrick: Oh my God. Oh my god. Kat: I was halfway through eating. Patrick: How are you destroying this fucking meal with that shit? That's an all American meal, and you're just going to destroy it with that. Destroy it, it's completely just- Kat: Look, pay attention. You want to put the Vegemite straight onto your eggs. Straight on. Patrick: What's that green thing? I don't want to put that Vegemite anywhere near my eggs. I don't want it anywhere near any of my food. Kat: That's avocado. Patrick: Oh that's an avocado? Kat: That's avocado. Patrick: I thought you all had green eggs and ham over there or something because I don't even know. Kat: You want to eat that with, look, pay attention. Patrick: I have no idea what you all have over there. Kat: You want to put a little bit of Vegemite on the avocado, eat it like that. I don't know why I get so much enjoyment from doing this to you. Patrick: [crosstalk 00:05:29] it's just crazy how different people's taste buds are. Kat: It's so good. Patrick: What you just did- Kat: It's just because- Patrick: What you just did was the equivalent of somebody spraying a cat turd on a fucking piece of toast and eating it to me, that's just what I just saw you do. Kat: I'd love to have some toast. [crosstalk 00:05:52] I'd love to have toast with avocado. You also- Patrick: What's up [crosstalk 00:05:57] on here. Feel like we're getting delayed [crosstalk 00:06:00] again, we're delayed. Kat: We're not delayed. The internet just doesn't know how to keep up with us, but really you should also always dip your bacon straight into the Vegemite. Pay attention. Look. Patrick: I'm not paying attention to that, it's fucking heresy. Kat: Because salt with bacon. The saltiness, it's like extra salt in it. It's great. Patrick: That's the most disgusting thing. Kat: So yesterday- Patrick: You're so beautiful and then you do such disgusting things to yourself. It's just weird. It's like [crosstalk 00:06:37] weird, it's like- Kat: It's part of my mystique. Patrick: Why did this very creative hot chick just do the nastiest thing. It's like watching a shizer video. Know what shizer is, [crosstalk 00:06:44] the German [crosstalk 00:06:45] Kat: I'm sorry, but thanks. No. No. But I appreciate the compliment. Patrick: No. Have no idea [crosstalk 00:06:51] Kat: But I can't help it, it's part of my mystique. Patrick: That's not mystique, that's not. Kat: But it's actually ... Do I need to know? Patrick: What'd you say? We've got a delay, we've got a delay. Kat: Do I need to know? No I was waiting for you, do I need to know or understand? Patrick: Well you're from Germany, so you should know. It's basically German scat porn basically. You know what scat porn is? Have you ever heard of it? Kat: I don't watch any German porn. Currently I don't watch German porn. I watch regular, all American or Australian porn. Patrick: Well I'm saying that you can know of it, you can know of it. There's different types you know, when you're scrolling through you're going to see some different categories. There's grandma, there's all sorts [crosstalk 00:07:38] of different types. Then there's German shizer, there's scat porn, you just happen to be scrolling by it, see it, sometimes. Kat: So basically what's happened here is we came on to do a recoded conversation about art and resistance and flow and we're talking about German porn? Patrick: Yes. Particularly the scat variety. You invited me on here. Kat: I just like to keep- Patrick: You fucking invited me on here. Kat: I think you said we need to record our conversation. You said I believe ... Thank you. You said I believe it's time to record our conversation again or something like that I believe it is. You messaged me yesterday and then you must have rudely just gone to bed straight after messaging me because I needed help, I was stuck in the resistance, I wrote back to you with a happy faced emoji. Then you must have gone to sleep so I just had to live in the resistance all by myself with nobody to kick my ass. Patrick: Yeah, I saw that, I was like man [crosstalk 00:08:38] Kat: And that's how I ended up with [crosstalk 00:08:39] Patrick: That was a weird thing to wake up to, I was like wow, you were in the, you, Kat of all people in the resistance? Now that's the part usually reserved for me. I'm the one that likes to play in the resistance. Kat: I know, it's mind blowing. The truth is maybe I just don't talk about it enough. It's like quicksand, it was dragging me into it. It was probably a Vegemite deficiency in my bloodstream. There was definitely a flow deficiency in my bloodstream. Patrick: It's all coming to a head you know. It's finally attacking your nervous system. Kat: The Vegemite? Or the flow? Patrick: Yes. Kat: So then okay, so this morning I went to Muay Thai and I was doing my rounds in the ring and I couldn't breathe properly. It's fucking annoying because I'm very fit, but my fitness just wasn't there. He's like, "What's going on?" And I said to him, my trainer, "I think I'm just not connected to my body properly yet." Like I haven't connected into my body yet because my mind's thinking about other stuff and we had already done maybe three or four rounds. I was going hard, but I was just like kind of breathing like that, but I wasn't feeling anxious about anything. So then it was just fucking annoying, but as soon as I, like we got to maybe 30 or 40 minutes into the session even, and then you feel that switch click and you connect to flow and you're just like holy shit, it's on and you're in that dance and that super flow. Kat: It's exactly like business. I was saying to my trainer this morning it's like, you're like, ugh, even I get this, I get it every fucking day. Like people maybe think I'm motivated because I do so much content. Well I'm driven by, I hate the fucking feeling of when I don't do my content. I just feel like shit if I don't do my art, but that doesn't mean that when I sit my ass in the chair that it's flowing. It's often exactly the same as at the start of that workout where the first 10 or 20 or 30 or even 40 minutes, you just feel like you're wading through quicksand. You don't feel connected properly and you're not breathing deeply and then you're thinking, this shit, what am I even writing. Even yesterday after I messaged you then I was like fuck you, apparently you're not going to message me back and save me, so I'm going to have to write something myself and figure it out. [crosstalk 00:11:07] Patrick: [inaudible 00:11:10] all the time. Kat: And I write something, I write a blog anyway, but it was so shit. I posted it anyhow on Facebook, it was just the lamest thing I've ever posted in the history of time. It's still there, everyone can see it from yesterday. Even my team are like, "What is this, is this a blog? Are we supposed to put this on the Instagram story? What is this actually, there's no photo, it's not long enough." No, they weren't really ... But my point is you just got to do that damned thing anyway. You don't wait for flow, you get into flow. Sometimes you've got to get in and it's like a tumultuous, whitewater river and you just got to get pounded under the water again and again and knocked back down. Then at some point it's like boom, I'm in the flow zone. Everyone just wants to be in the flow zone, but you don't get there without being willing to go through the quicksand a bit. Patrick: No, it's funny you mention this now and I glad we're on here talking about this because I actually had exactly what you're talking about happened today, but fortunately ... So, did you ever get back into, did you ever reach flow or did you just spend the whole day just not, you didn't get there? Or did you finally get there? Kat: Yesterday, you know what, I wrote the damn post anyway. I published a post, I put a sales call to action on the end because I fucking show up for my art, that's my commitment. I'm very consistent. I'm probably the most consistent person on the internet with content, I believe. And I'm personally doing all my content myself as well, it's not like you know some people put a tonne of content out there, but how much content are they actually doing. Patrick: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Kat: I think I'm like the most consistent person out there. So I posted the damn post anyway, I had to cut it short because I was meeting somebody and I knew that he was going to be there any minute. I was like all right, I didn't even have the time to get into my flowzone, I had like 12 minutes. I'm like fuck, I'll write something. I still wrote a damn blog, I still put a sales call to action on the end. I was like, this is bullshit, but, I don't know how many likes or comments are on it, but the people who commented and liked it, the people who commented were like, "This is exactly what I needed." And so it's about getting out of your own way, but then after that I went on a walk for like two hours. Had a good conversation and then came home and I still wasn't quite in that flowzone and I thought I could livestream last night and snap myself into it. But I didn't, resistance got me by the ass. I sat around for a bit, fucked around, pretending to do things on the computer and then I just went to bed. Kat: But, this morning, I don't know if you read my blog this morning. It was so good, it might be one the best posts I've written this year. It's called, "You're not a marketer you're an artist. A tortured one or not, and you'd better start fucking acting like it," or something like that. When I wrote that [crosstalk 00:13:55] blog ... Huh? Patrick: I saw it, I usually read your stuff at night on my time, nighttime you know. At the end of my day I'll read it. So you kind of catch me whenever I haven't read it yet. Kat: You're going to like that one. I'm so happy with that. You know when you write something or you do a livestream and you're just like oh, yeah, I fucking nailed it. Or, I didn't even know what I wrote, but I got what I want from it. I got that release and that connection to soul and then I went straight to training to Muay Thai then I was disconnected for 35 minutes. Then I got in the zone and holy shit, the last 15 or 20 minutes of my workout this morning, I have not brutalised myself like that in a while. It was so good, like I was nearly collapsing onto the floor. It's like that voice in your head that's like oh, are you going to die, are you going to die, you think you're going to fall down and die? You can't keep going? Are you dead yet? No, then keep fucking going bitch. I was just smack talking myself and I was so on the edge of being like I need timeout, I need to stop early. Kat: I just kept going and I kept thinking of, like I always remember Arnold Schwarzenegger saying that your body can go so much further than your mind. Like when you think that your body is done, whether it's in training, but also with the business. Your writing, your art, it's such a load of bullshit. I love nothing better than kicking my own ass and being like oh, you think you're hurting, you think this hurts? Keep fucking going. It's the most empowering feeling in the world. I literally collapsed onto the floor in the ring at the end of the session. Within a second though I had the biggest smile on my face already even though I was in agony. Kat: It's just, I don't know, I don't know how many people relate to that, but I love the pain, the purposeful pain. Otherwise, you just feel like you're not alive. So that resistance got me yesterday, but then today I eliminated it. Patrick: Well I know we were talking, the night before I believe, we were talking about how to say enjoy resistance. We were also talking about some of the things that were going on with your spot and where you were living at and things like that. We were talking about being where you were at and that you might have to create new challenges for yourself. You think this is maybe a product of that? Maybe your mind switched over to that, maybe you wanted some more resistance and you brought that to yourself? Kat: Maybe, that's a good point. Yeah, we had a phone call the other night that went for nearly three hours. At the end we were like fuck, we forgot to record our phone call again, so that we can sell it to everybody. It was so good. So now we- Patrick: It was good. Kat: No we're doing this for everyone. You can send [crosstalk 00:16:38] us a love heart [inaudible 00:16:40] huh? Patrick: Some love hearts to what? Kat: To thank us for being here and speaking. Patrick: Oh yeah, for sure. Check this out though, so we talked about that right and then so now that was happening, this resistance was happening. Now I've been like, the resistance is easing up on me. I've been going through fucking resistance because I'm a glutton for punishment. I don't know what do they call it, sadistic? No, it was masochist, what's the one where you like to get kicked in the balls? Kat: Isn't one of them like means you like to hurt other people and one means you like to hurt yourself? Masochist is you like self punishment I think. Patrick: Yeah, I think that's the one. Kat: And sadist is you like to hurt other people. Patrick: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, one of those two, the one where you get kicked in the balls. Obviously that's what I'm going through right now, I like to kick myself in the balls here. I've been going through that resistance, what we talked about on the phone. Maybe I want to, obviously yes, of course, why the fuck, how could it be any other way? How could it be any other way? Anything that you're going through, any resistance that you have in your life is because you want it to be there. Plain and simple. There's no other way around it, if you take responsibility for everything in your life as you should, as you should. If you believe in manifestation, if you believe it's all in your control. If you fucking believe in manifestation, [inaudible 00:18:03] you can alter your body by eating donuts or ramen noodle soups and still lose weight. If you believe that you have that [crosstalk 00:18:12] kind of control- Kat: Who said anything about donuts? Patrick: If you believe that you have that kind of control over the universe, then you better damn fucking well believe that you're making this shit up. That you're making up the resistance, you're creating the resistance. You're creating the despair, the feeling, the thoughts or the anguish. All that shit you want to, you fucking masochist you. You want the kick in the balls for some reason. Patrick: Okay, well I'm tired of the kick in the balls I guess. I must be done with it because today, so and then we're talking about now we're talking about my day. What's up Johnny? What's up Pistol Pete. Then we're talking about, now it's kind of easing up on me right. I woke up this morning and I saw your message, I'm like damn, I left her in the cooker last night. She's just, it's like I can't believe I saw this message of resistance here. I'm like, I was blown away by it you know, but I knew you were asleep, so obviously went about my day. Patrick: I started out my day just like you're talking about. I couldn't get into where I was trying to go. I was getting wrapped up and started right out the gate getting into shit that's not my art. Started getting into stuff pertaining to my other business, which I had put a cutoff date. We had just got done talking about that, saying fuck everything until noon or whatever, you know, until we get going. Right off the bat I start getting things happening though that were saying to me that some resistance was being overcome in the other business. So I was like huh, so I took the bait you know. I took the bait. Patrick: Not only that, last night I had found a blog post that I had written and I had never posted it. I got scared about it and I didn't post it. I was acting like a little bitch and I left it there. And so I discovered it and I was like fuck, I had already wrote a blog post that night. So, I had two blog posts and so I was happy about that, I'm like okay, I've got two. I'm going to drop those tomorrow. So I'm feeling good about that. I went to sleep and I woke up and immediately some things started happening at the other business, some resistance was overcoming the other business. I'm like fuck, okay, okay we're making some headway here so this is good. I jump right in this, it's like 8:00 in the morning, I jump right into that and start going to mess with my other business. Patrick: I get caught up with all that and next thing you know 12:00 comes around. I'm slugging, but I had been throughout the day doing tiny things because I'd been, I'm going to post content all day. Today, I'm just going to have a day where I post all content. You know on my Instagram, I'm going to post content throughout the day on my Facebook, I'm going to post whatever. I had just been starting to feel it again. Started to post things and they were getting a lot of engagement on them you know, just things that I would think, I'd post it and just small things you know, not real boring blog posts. Patrick: Then I drop my blog post on there, sprinkle that because I had that ace up my sleeve, so I drop the blog post, bam. I drop the other blog post, bam. Then it just started to come together, right. Then we rolled right into, right about 12:00 noon or so I took a little nap and then 1:00 PM and then the resistance just started to go down. All just starts to crumble right? Kat: Yeah. Patrick: Everything starts going right. I just start banging out all sorts of stuff. Me and Travis ended up doing, we just got done off of a livestream, which generated a lot of new people into our circle and to his audience. I'm jumping on here with you and now this is going, this is a great one right, so just like all the ones that we do. And so, it just started rolling, that's been my day. It just started rolling, and it started out just like you talked about though. It's very sluggish, but it took me till about 1:00 PM till it just started to roll really good, but I stuck with it. I stuck with it, I just kept on thinking I've posted, but it was like bite sized pieces of content that I kept dropping that led up to it. Kat: Yup. Exactly. Exactly and we talked about this when we were on the phone the other night that was like until 2:00 AM my time, that massive phone call. I said the same thing about when you're working out and it's like the first 10 or 20 minutes or however long, you just feel like fuck this shit. I don't really want to be here, I'm not feeling it. That was me this morning in the ring, I was like oh, fuck. Okay, yeah, I'm here, I'm doing what I need to be doing, but my mind was like why am I here. I'm not really vibing with this and I wish I didn't come today or whatever. You just fucking learn over the years, you figure it out finally when time is passing you by in your life and then you still didn't do the damn shit that you said you were going to do. At some point you just figure the shit out where you're like, oh fuck. Kat: I can remember, probably five years ago I can remember feeling like I think I was waiting, I thought there would be a point in my life where I would evolve to being a person whose always motivated and always ready, always has the inspired ideas and wants to do the damn thing. I remember one day it just kind of smacked me in the face like a wake-up call where I was like, oh shit, I just realised that for the rest of my life I will still battle resistance because it's part of the human condition. Particularly as an artist, resistance is inherent to being an artist, that's why I wrote this morning about the tortured soul. Probably your blog influenced my post this morning a little bit because you know, like I told you, when I got up in the morning before I journal I always read something. There's only like five people whose shit I'll read and I checked if you posted something new. I checked, you had posted something new so I read your blog and it was full-on. For me I found that full-on to read to hear the voices inside of your head. I was like holy shit that was so raw, it was like everybody should go read that blog. It's on your personal profile right? Patrick: Appreciate it. Kat: Go read it. But it was kind of painful to read, I found it kind of painful to read. Patrick: That's so funny you said that, [crosstalk 00:24:31] somebody messaged me, two people messaged me and they said the exact fucking same thing. They said, "I can't believe that shit. I did not know you wrote like that," and they said that it was painful. I said, "Well, what's painful about it?" It was like, "Well, it's painful to read." Two women you know, so I was wondering why is it painful for you to read it, you know what I mean? That's what I was wondering because I really was thinking about connecting with guys for it you know, more along the lines with the guys. Kat: Well, for me personally I found it painful to read because I care about you. I was like, that's like hearing somebody that you care about saying that shit about themselves, it's like fuck, it just felt painful for me for that reason. I don't know about what other people's reasons are, but also because I could relate to it. At first, I was thinking this so fucking full-on I can't believe you say that shit inside of your head, I found it shocking. Kat: Then I was like wait, why do I find it shocking, it's only shocking because you're writing it down because I've said all that same sort of shit to myself many times over as well. In my way, about my own stuff and if people heard the voices inside my head I'm sure they'd be shocked. Like you were taken aback even by me just simply saying that I'm in resistance, right? Now think about the shit that you put in that blog, it was extreme. Well I think that's why at first I was like, this is so full-on, like I felt shocked or upset about it just relevant to you personally, not in a general sense. Then I was like wait, no, it's just because this is a very raw, extreme thing for somebody to write down. I definitely have said so much to inside of my own head. Kat: Then I loved the way you finished the post like where basically you choose each day, every day you have those voices in your head and then you have the voice that's saying that you can and that you will. Then that is now what you do, you do your damn journaling, you do your content, you're showing up for your business and for your art. That's exactly the same as me and that's what I've always done and that's what I've done to get to this point. Now, for sure I don't have as much of those voices as I used to, it is less because I guess I've proven myself, to myself to whatever degree. Kat: But it's still here and that's what I think so many people don't understand about me. I'm not, or about anyone, about you as well, you do your livestreams every day, I do my content every day. People then go, oh no well I couldn't be like Patrick or I couldn't be like Kat. They're motivated, they're good on camera or whatever it is, but then go and read what you wrote about how you feel about yourself some of the time. Or if somebody could hear inside of my head and the smack talk that goes on in there. It's about realising that yeah, as you keep going and as time passes it will get easier, and I think you said this in your post, it gets easier because you learn how to deal with it. I feel like I learned how to dance with resistance and I can see it for the bullshit that it is, whereas maybe earlier on in my life I tended to believe it more. Kat: Now even if I feel like I'm believing it a little bit, I'll be like, yeah, no, I know exactly what's going on here. I do know what the answer is because fucking 20 years of training, of fitness training, has taught me how to get into flow and how to breakthrough resistance and discipline my ass and if you're not dead yet you keep going. Then many, many years in business as well has taught me the same thing, so I always know that the answer is too fucking bad, sit your ass down and do the damn thing. Sometimes it will feel fucking incredible, like today when I wrote my blog I was on the biggest high. I got in the car and I was just slamming my best tunes and then driving down to the fight gym. I was like, this is the best day ever, I'm so in the zone and that's an amazing feeling. Kat: I wish I could have that feeling every day, but yesterday felt like quicksand day. It doesn't matter right, like some days you'll feel superflow, some days you won't, so the fuck what. Either way you keep going, but for sure because I read your blog first and then normally I read a piece, I read if you write something or [inaudible 00:28:44] or whoever else I read, like such a small handful of people. Then I go into my journaling and then usually I write my blog after that. Today I read your blog first and then it really did impact me a lot, then I went straight into writing my blog, I didn't even do anything on [crosstalk 00:29:00] yet today, which is [crosstalk 00:29:01] Patrick: Damn, did my blog fuck your day up? Did my blog fuck your day up? Kat: No, no, it's the opposite because I had to write straight after that. Patrick: Oh, that's good. Kat: I went straight into writing that piece, but I was partly responding to you and partly I was thinking about one of my inner circle clients and partly it was for myself. Okay wait, we're going to need to start again because Brandon just jumped on and he asked that we start again. So where we started [crosstalk 00:29:26]- Patrick: I believe we started without him. Kat: Was with me dipping the bacon into the Vegemite. We got to start with the bacon and the Vegemite if we're starting from the top. Patrick: Can we please not? Kat: Anyway- Patrick: Brandon dammit, this was a bad day for that. Even though you're eating [crosstalk 00:29:39] Kat: Yeah, no, [crosstalk 00:29:40] read my blog later you'll see my blog was partly like it's speaking to you and like I was talking to you, but then I was talking to myself, but then I was talking to one of my clients and I told her that. It was just, I kind of love that because something you wrote definitely impacted what I created and what I created will be impacting other people. It's just amazing, it's the collective unconscious. Patrick: Well I saw your blog post and it jumped out at me. I was like this is something that I have to read, I just saw the title and I can't remember exactly what it said. I just saw it and I was like, I'm going to have to read that later on because I immediately saw it and I was feeling like, I don't know it was kind of geared towards me or something. The words weren't like that, but I just felt that, you know what I mean? Kat: Yeah, and I knew, usually I don't tell somebody if I write a blog that's skewed towards them because I know you're going to feel it anyway. It's not always, but often I'll be thinking of a particular person when I'm writing. It started off towards you and then it became about me. I thought it was going to be, I thought the post was going to be about honouring and respecting the artist, being like my soul recognises the artist in your soul, that sort of thing. Like the respect that I have for that and then it turned into kind of like a smack down post where I was kicking ass and I think that was at myself. Then at the end I was like fuck, this was not supposed to be about me. Then I brought it back around again and it just came out however it came out. Patrick: Oh see everything that I read, I'm like thinking, everything I read from you I'm thinking this is to me right. Kat: Everybody does, especially when I do, I don't know do you get this sometimes or have you had this happen, but if I do a post that's really quite brutal I'll tend to get like 20 people message me and they'll be like, "I know you were talking about me." And I'm like, "Well, if you think that I was, then maybe I was." Patrick: That could be the case, but I used to think that all the time when I worked for Ryan. I would always say and he'd said if you think, he said the same thing. If you think it is, it is. So, you're right, it's right, in the case if you think it is, it is, right. It's for you, it's for you if you are triggered by the wording. But I wrote mine like a while back and then I didn't feel anything about posting it. When I found it I was like, yes, I found it. I was like I'm going to post this now, no problem. I remember what you told me, it was like you should just not even think about it and just post it. So I posted it and it was apparently like real full-on, people said that. Patrick: I think that you do, like what I did was I was sitting there facing resistance big time whenever I started to write that. I was facing one of the biggest challenges of my life, which was making our first sale since we went out on our own, and it wasn't happening. It was taking like two weeks, I mean we were in this thing for like two weeks, damn near a month. I was sitting there, and I'm sure I had probably talked to you the night before, something like that. I was writing, I started to write the beginning of it you know, just to start thinking about what kind of shit you say to yourself whenever, or the kind of shit that people say to themselves whenever they're facing that. I really wanted to know, I started thinking about the things that I was thinking at the time. Patrick: Then I was like, well this is bullshit because this is right around when the shit broke and we made ourselves and everything started to work out for the better. That was when I was really, really getting into it and getting into manifesting and writing and controlling it you know. Right before it happened I just said, I'm just going to take all these things that are being said and I'm just going to go with it. As much as I can I'm just going to just get it all out there. Everything that I hear on the stream of thought, I'm going to just write it down as I go. Patrick: And so, I did, I just started fucking like turned on some music and I just started. Every one of the resistant thoughts that came through, I just typed as it was coming. I was like this is some fucking creative ass ways to talk shit to myself, you know, of this voice in my head that's talking this shit. Just so creative and the ways it says, the lies it says about you. I just put it down and it was just endless and relentless and didn't stop. I just had to stop it myself you know. It would have just kept going. Kat: It was relentless. That's how, like I was reading it, I was sitting down at the coffee shop. I was like how fucking long is this going for? It's just getting worse and worse, but that's why it was painful, I was like fuck me, I thought it would be finished now, it's still going? Then I was thinking, I hope there's going to be a reframe at the end of this and it's not just going to finish. And then there was. Patrick: The end. Your life is horrible. But I got it [crosstalk 00:35:01] it was like an experiment to just fucking just see if it would stop you know, but it wouldn't. I had to stop it myself which I guess you could say something about that. You have to stop that fucking voice yourself. It's not going to stop on its own. You have to stop it because [crosstalk 00:35:21] it's there if you want- Kat: You have to see it for what it is. Patrick: Yeah. Kat: You've got [crosstalk 00:35:25] to see it for what it is. Yeah, it's the devil. We were talking about this on the phone the other night. It's a seduction right? Patrick: Yes it is. Kat: Did you read Patrick's post Maria? It's like be prepared to be upset. If anyone reads that post, just be prepared to be upset, but it will be powerful for you. I think that we all think that we're the only ones who have those thoughts. It's natural to feel like if people knew the truth about me, or if people, like I should feel ashamed of myself or whatever. Everybody has those thoughts and then everyone looks at ... Yes, so Maria read your post, she's one of my inner circle clients, she said she was in tears. Exactly, I think for women in particular it's going to upset them. I thought it upset me because I had a personal interest, but I think it probably upsets everyone. Kat: It was very upsetting because it was so raw, but it's also incredibly healing. That's the sort of blog post that will heal people and probably healed you maybe when you wrote it or maybe by publishing it because it's so raw. That's the point I was trying to make in my blog this morning ... Where can you find this post, just click on, I'll get the link. I'm so helpful. I'll put the link here in the comments. Like I'm fucking up all my shit now. Kat: It's [crosstalk 00:36:45] like I wrote about this a little bit in my post that you've got to, to impact people, like yesterday I was talking to somebody new who I met about my business. I was explaining how I market, and he's an entrepreneurs as well with four amazing businesses, but a totally opposite sort of entrepreneur to me. We were talking about how the way that I show up on social media is the exact opposite of him. I put as much of myself out there as possible, and he's got as little of himself out there as possible. I was saying my system basically, my marketing is essentially I'll write these three thousand word blog posts every single day. The people who can get to the end of that and watch all my content are clearly, they're my soulmate clients or they wouldn't be sticking around that much. He was like- Patrick: I like that system. Kat: Holy shit, big long posts [inaudible 00:37:34] right, but he goes ... Oh yeah there's the blog. He goes, "Yeah, but that wouldn't work anymore would it," or something, or, "That's because you already built that up or something like that?" I'm was like, "No, no, it doesn't matter how crowded the internet is or how crowded Facebook is there is always going to be a space for the true artist to bear their soul." Like since the dawn of time, those of us who are storytellers, messengers and who actually reveal the raw shit inside of us, like what you wrote, was the painful, gritty, even ugly parts of the soul. It's almost like you don't want to look at it directly, it's like staring into the sun. It's too much, it's too intense, it feels too painful. Then at the same time it's magnetising and you can't look away. Kat: So somebody who can share a piece of their soul like that, like you do and like I do and like many people here do, really are very few people though in the total of the internet marketing world. That person doesn't fucking need to buy their followers like you livestreamed about yesterday and we talked about the other night. Or to worry about a fucking funnel or what's the best strategy or Facebook ads. Nothing wrong with doing your funnels and your whatever right, but it's the cherry on top. Anybody who can release a piece of their soul and is brave enough or willing to do that, will always have people that want to listen because it is a magnet. Kat: It's just mind blowing to me how so many amazing artists and messengers are out there wasting their lives thinking that the way to build a following or to make money is let me get my fucking funnel right or my strategy or my marketing for whatever bullshit. And let me have a pretty website on the internet and make sure that I have good head shots. Are you kidding me? Why don't you just strip yourself naked and show it to everybody? Your soul, right? That's all it takes. Patrick: Anybody [crosstalk 00:39:38] can have- Kat: Being willing to do that even in your own resistance. Patrick: And there's a lot of ego out there too. It's like everybody's got one of those, so how do you really separate yourself from everybody else. You know what I mean, everybody's got a marketing strategy, everybody's got a marketing plan. Everybody's got an ego, so how do you get that ... I get to talk to people today, I got to talk to somebody because of my blog post. One of my people, one of my people, as I call them true believers. He was going through some serious shit in his life, like some real, real horrifying shit that he told me about that I got to help him through, today. So to me to be able to help in such a way to change somebody's life, to save a life is, fuck, that's more important to me than the other shit. Patrick: The other shit's stupid and I wouldn't get that far with somebody if I didn't post something like I did, if I didn't say what I was really feeling I wouldn't get to say that. It wouldn't probably connect like that on that level with him. That to me is more rewarding than anything else I could be doing. Even if I have to take, for a while, you know it's going to be a while. I could go out here and make a marketing webinar and be very successful with it and make money off of it you know. I could do that. Kat: Successful. Patrick: Yeah, successful. Run traffic to it and do all ... I know how to do all that, I've done it. Or a book funnel or whatever you want to do. Whatever you want to do to make money. Give somebody an irresistible offer, tell them how to double or triple their income, whatever you want to do. That's fine, but understand that anybody can fucking do that. Anybody can do that. If you hold back, if you don't say what's on your mind, if you don't actually share a piece of yourself, then you're not really like an artist I don't think. You know? Then you're just giving people- Kat: You're not and you have to decide [crosstalk 00:41:46] if you want to be an artist first or a marketer first. Like, you're an amazing marketer, I know a lot about marketing as well. We can both do all that shit. I don't even think anybody can do it, it is still a skillset because plenty of people are trying to fucking do it and they're not doing anything, they're not getting anywhere with it. Kat: I did read a blog post one time by a mentor of mine from years back and she was like you got to choose, you're either an artist of an entrepreneur, who are you? I was like holy shit, she's right, I'm an artist first. I am an entrepreneur, I am a marketer, I where those hats and I've been an entrepreneur, like it's in my blood, I've been selling shit since I was three years old. But first and foremost I'm an artist. You've got to choose, you can't be in both camps. You can't be like, oh I'm an artist and I share from my soul and I do my soul purpose, but first let me build this pretty little funnel over here and then I'll be ready. It's bullshit. Kat: Nobody said you need that you needed the internet to get your message out there and to make money. Amazingly enough artist through the history of time have managed to have people fall in love with them without a Facebook page. I know it's mind blowing for everybody and you might need therapy [inaudible 00:42:57] and some sexual healing in order to come to terms with that, but you don't need any of that shit in order to get your message out there. What you do need is to be courageous enough to put the blinders on and just art, art, art, art, art because like we said, you have a true believer client as you call them, I call them my soulmate clients, who comes to you as a result of that post. That person is so connected to you now, there's instant trust, instant deep rapport, they become a longterm client who refer their friends and just be so in love with you and your message because they see themselves in you. Kat: Most people, you could do an automated webinar and get leads from that, like you said. You could become successful and I say successful like that because even if you were making great money doing that, which of course you could do and you know how to do. You would be, and we've talked about this many times, you would be miserable. You would be hating it, your soul would be dying because it wouldn't be doing your purpose work and you're essentially selling your soul to the wrong clients, the wrong people doing the shit that doesn't light you up. Kat: Whereas, when you go all in with your art yeah, like most people are going to be horrified at the idea of reading a daily two or three thousand word blog post or listening to a one hour livestream that you do. They're going to think that's crazy, who wants to listen to that. I've had people make fun of me so many times when I've had hater-ship online. Like, "Oh ha ha, who would read all that shit?" I'm like, "Well firstly I don't fucking care if anybody reads it because I'm writing it for me bitch, not for you. Secondly, clearly a few people are fricking reading it if you look at the business that I've created." Kat: So if somebody is going to read that or watch your webstream or read your post, then they come to you and talk to you, that person is a soulmate client for life. I'd rather 10 people like that than a 100,000 people that are fucking bored on Instagram or got off a webinar. Patrick: Well there going to fall off, those people are going to like, what people realise is how much of this bullshit that's out there that's the same. People don't show you their refunds, people don't show you their attrition rates. People are dropping off. They don't show you that shit. They don't show you that shit. All they'll show you is- Kat: Yeah, so true. So true and we talked about that the other night as well. Like my refund rate is like 0.000001%. I'll get like three refunds a year and two of them is because the person accidentally bought the same product twice. They're like shit, I didn't realise I already have it, can you refund me? Patrick: And I haven't had that one- Kat: That's not normal, what's the industry rate even? It's like- Patrick: It's crazy, it's like 30. Kat: 40 or 50% some of the time. Patrick: Yeah. Yeah, it's insane. Then people don't say that and then they don't say, they don't talk about you know, affiliates and things like that that they're doing. So numbers are fucking crazy you know what I mean? You can't even get into numbers there's so much bullshit out there. There's so much bullshit out there that you might as well just be truthful and honest and just put yourself out there. I get on here and I've got now these few people that come on, I mean anything that I do, they follow me around for whatever it is that I do. I did something with Travis today, which we did marketing and I dropped a link out there for our funnels and everything. I thought we're going to pull in these new prospects right and these clients for his side of things, you know his new audience and everybody who showed up was my people. They hopped on to see that we were talking marketing, they showed up, popped up. Kat: They watch you, or my people watch me instead of Netflix. My people say that all the time, they're like, "I can't believe what time it is and I'm still watching your content." That's all you want, but it's also like what we're saying here is your going to get a better result just following your art and making your marketing strategy should be your art. Then let's not forget also the selling of the soul side of it because even if it was true that you could make more money, which I do not believe, by following straight up internet marketing Stepford-preneurship you would be miserable, in sabotage, addicted to whatever shit that's not good instead of addicted to flow. And just not happy right? Kat: I did it that way, I built my business at first to where it was nearly at a million dollars a year because I did the fucking work and I did the marketing. I was right on the cusp of a million dollars a year in my business. This was in 2012, and I walked away. I shut the whole thing down, I walked away from all of it. I remember saying to my partner at the time, if this is the path to a million dollar business, I don't want it. I cannot do this anymore, I would rather go back to being a personal trainer. I said to him, "I'm going to give myself three months, give me three months. I'm going to prove that I can make money doing what I love, but fuck all that shit, I'm going all in doing what I want. If I don't do it in three months then I'll just go back to the gym and I'll be a trainer again because I know how to make a lot of money doing that." Kat: Well, I didn't do it in three months anyway, I ended up over $100,000 in debt and blew the whole thing up. Then eventually, eventually, I stayed though, I stuck to it and now look where I am because I've experienced what it's like to make good money by selling my soul. I mean, it's your life right, you want to be, this is like right now we're not really selling anything, but this is content. This is us filling ourselves up with our art and our craft. Even though we're not directly making an offer, how many people are becoming soulmate clients or true believer clients of each of us right now because of this content. Then we drop a link or we keep saying we're going to start recoding our personal phone calls and sell them. People are going to fucking buy that shit, like who wants to buy the recorded phone calls of when we talk to two or three hours- Patrick: I do. Kat: Because that shits gold, but sometimes we've got to keep it private. But, we'll figure it out. Patrick: Yeah, we got to keep some things private, a little bit, a little bit. Those are like extreme, super, super VIP shit. But Helen makes a good point, Helen's asking a good question here though, she says, "I get what you're saying," but she's surrounded by true artists putting themselves out there every day and never make any money, what would you say about that? Kat: Okay. Okay. Good, I'm so glad I asked this. Patrick: I like that one, yeah. Kat: I was ready to preach on this. I'm going to need a love heart shout-out first, send me the love hearts. Then I'll bring the [crosstalk 00:49:37] Kat show. Patrick: Can I do it to? [crosstalk 00:49:37] Kat: Can you do it too? Everybody shower me with the love heart. Oh there they come, thank you. Patrick: Shower. Kat: All right. I already answered these same questions to two or three clients earlier today when I was answering my client audios, so I'm prepared and I'm ready. Here's the thing right, money, money is just a decision and a choice right? Like yesterday I bought a new car, I'm also getting a new house and a few other things all at once. It is a big deal, I'm excited to get the car, I feel good about it. Yeah, there's some ego attached to it for sure because I feel like yeah, look at my badass car, but at the same time I don't need that in order to be happy or fulfilled right, I'm detached from it. When they didn't give me exactly what I wanted at the dealership I just left. I wasn't doing that as a strategy, I was like okay, I'm not attached, this is what I want, if you can't give it to me I'm leaving. I got in the car and drove away and of course, they called me eight minutes later and gave me what I wanted. Patrick: Sorry guys. Kat: Either way I [crosstalk 00:50:40] Patrick: I used to be one. Kat: But, yeah, you know how it works. I [inaudible 00:50:45] I'm leaving. And I literally was about to sign and then I just put the pen down, I'm like look I've got to go. I'm going to go see the house, I left. What I'm trying to say though is, I don't need the car, I'm not emotionally attached to the car in order to feel good enough, in order to feel worthy, in order to feel like I'm now complete and whole. The thing that fills you up and lights you up and gives you your sense of freedom and completeness and your happiness, your source of all things is being true to yourself and doing your art right? So then for the money, to me the car is the same sort of thing, whether it's a car, whether it's do I want to buy the fancy Voss water, whatever it is. It's just a decision, so I can choose the car or not choose the car, either way I'm whole and I'm complete, but am I going to choose the car, yeah it's fucking badass, it's a hot, sexy car. I'm going to choose the car because I like it and I can have it. Kat: Same as with money. Get out of the idea that there needs to be an emotional attachment around money, it's only money. Choose it or don't choose it, it's infinitely available. Like you can choose am I going to wear pants or a skirt today, it doesn't matter, why get emotionally attached to it, but it's always available. That's how I feel about money. One of the courses a I made in 2014 when I first figured this out for myself was called, "It's only money honey." I called the course, "It's only money honey," one of the best courses I've ever made, because it was like a slap in the face wake up call where I suddenly realised, fuck, I've been making it this really emotional thing. Like am I good enough for money, am I worthy for money. Imagine we did this right, like am I good enough for the Voss water, am I worthy of this, what are people going to think of me? Does this add to my value if I have this amazing water? Either just pick it up off the shelf or don't. It doesn't matter. Kat: And so that was like a breakthrough for me to go oh shit, money is just a decision, decide how much you want. Expect it the same way if you're in a restaurant and you put your order in, you know I'll have a steak and broccoli, you expect it, you assume it's going to turn up. You don't go into the kitchen and be like, am I good enough for this? Do you guys think I'm worthy of the steak, can I really have that? Is it being prepared and will I get it? You just order your fucking meal and then you sit down and you wait for it and you expect that it's going to show up. Then meanwhile you're in the now, being present with whoever you're with. Kat: Same with money, decide it. It's a decision. When you get out of the emotional attachment around money being a reflection of your worth or being something that's going to save you, then you'll realise that it's just something you decide. But you fret now, you think that money would make you more worthy or it's going to save you or it will fill you up or it will make you happy. Or you'll be, yeah, safer in some way or a better person in some way. Then you'll continue to keep it at arm's length because you're trying to validate yourself and you're trying to find your safety and security from something outside of you, which is not possible. Kat: The lesson is you need to decide ... Did I just get invited to go to a cruise? Somebody's just invited me to go on their birthday cruise and I don't even know this person. I'm just magnetic as fuck. Patrick: It's your most active follower it looks like. Kat: I don't even know who that is. Hi, [Taveda 00:54:01] I can't, I can't go. I've got something on, but thank you. Kat: So, yeah, it's about realising it's a decision. If artists are out there and they're broke, maybe they're buying into the broke artist story, but maybe, maybe, and probably, they're in some way basing their self-worth on their financial situation and/or thinking to themselves that if I just had that money, then I'd be safe. Then I'd be good enough, then I'd be a worthy or a valid person. It's the same as love. You'll never find love when you think oh that person is going to make me feel like then I'm good enough, then I'm worthy, then I'm attractive, then I'm whatever. Kat: You got to figure that shit out right, like otherwise you'll just continue to hold that deep connection at arm's bay. When you realise you've already got everything inside of you and of course you can choose the money because abundance is infinite. Or of course you can choose to receive love because it is available. Or of course you can choose to have the body you want or whatever and you don't need it, well like you can need it and not need it at the same time, we've talked about that. But either way, you already get your completeness inside of yourself. Kat: Does that make sense? Did I just ramble in 49 different directions at once? Patrick: Pretty much, but I'm feeling it, I'm catching it. So, you're saying then somebody who is a starving artist, they're buying into it, which that makes sense to me. There's a lot of things that people out here buy into because that's just what people say. You know, oh you're a starving artist. Oh, you're not going to make any money. That's what they say, but how much of this shit is rooted in fact, it's just something that somebody said. You know, there's a lot of shit like that that's out there, but you have to, you know, you can't cuss if you want to make money online. You know, there's a huge one right- Kat: Really? Fuck, that's rude. Patrick: Yeah, how rude. There's all these things that they say. You have to, what else do they say, you know, you already have to have made this much amount of money before you can make any money online. You can't help anybody unless you've hit this, unless you've achieved these goals. You know, you have to have a book. All sorts of crazy shit that's just not true, but people will buy into. There's so many limitations being sold to everybody out here and they're constantly buying into them. I see what you're saying about that, it makes sense because if they're thinking that I'm an artist and I'm not making money or that I'm just going to be an artist, I'm not making money that's fine because that's just what it is. Patrick: Yet, you're on here, I'm on here and we're doing it. There, you in the back. Kat: I have a question. My question is do you think that sometimes artists/entrepreneurs, that there's ego attached to being the starving artist? Like there's an element of look at me suffer? It's almost like a badge of honour that I'm the starving artist, do you think that sometimes people are toting themselves back to that? Patrick: I'm doing it. I'm doing it. You know you get in this thing where you're like, I mean I've seen people do this too, and I do this, I'm guilty. I like the story okay, I like the story. I could have, I mean I'm sure if I opened myself up for it more and just said that it's going to be super easy and that it's just going to happen and everything's going to come to me. I'm just going to go in the superflow and do what you said and just go all in on this thing and have it happen. It's just going to boom, the doors are wide open. Patrick: When I did my first programme I sold a bunch of my first programme right. For me that was a lot to sell as much as I did. That was not even fully half assing it, that was like 10% of what I could have really done, of me going all in because I'm running like two businesses right now. There's the story that if I just got away from this one thing, it would just go so much fucking easier and everything would just happen you know. Instead, I'm choosing to build the story and now I'm going to be able to have the little ego and look back on this thing and be like, I struggled so hard when is first started out and you can go track it. Patrick: I've got that in my head, that's programmed in my head from something I've learned from somebody else. You know that you got to step your way up. You work your way up if you want to get there, you can't just [inaudible 00:58:29] you got to work your way up. So, I feel [crosstalk 00:58:33] that same way, I get- Kat: It's so interesting because ... Patrick: Go ahead. Kat: No you go ahead. Patrick: No, my train of thought just ... Just took a shit. Kat: Well, here's the truth right. I am proud of myself, I have ego and pride, not, I don't mean I shouldn't have, but there is, for me there is ego attached to I know what I fucking went through to build this business. I do feel maybe a bit superior about the fact that I know full well that most people would not do what I did and that they will not choose to be tough enough. I like feeling like I'm the one who can get knocked down again and again and again and look at me bitches, I'm still getting back up again. It relates a lot to all my fitness stuff and like I always wanted to be the most badass hardcore chick in the gym and I would definitely get triggered if I saw another chick who was training harder than me. Then it would bring me up to speed right, I would then become friends with them. Then it would be like it's on. Kat: In business, I definitely have pride that comes from yeah, I did go through so much fucking shit and I just kept getting up and every time I felt like I was on the floor and I couldn't get up again, it was that thing of are you dead yet though? No, then keep going. I do like it, I get off on it. Patrick: There you go. Kat: You know, you said this earlier on in the call, you said to me what we had spoken about on the phone the other night, about how I said to you I've gotten a little bored because the truth is I had my, I think I told you this, I told my private clients. I'm sure I told you this on the phone, I had my biggest income month ever last month in May. I haven't even published it or anything, well I told my private clients about it and I did a livestream talking about the mindset of that. But it was my biggest income month ever and it was like I feel proud of it. I feel likes that's cool, but did I get a rush from it, did I get an adrenaline kick, no. To be honest, and I know what I'm going to say now is going to make a lot of people want to throw shit at me, if you're going to throw shit I like Guylian Seashell Chocolates or Chanel, you can throw Chanel. Patrick: Or Vegemite. Throw [crosstalk 01:00:52] poo. Kat: But, it's very [crosstalk 01:00:52]. I got that all sorted already. Patrick: Fling a little poo. Kat: I just, it's easy for me to make money online and I mean look, it doesn't mean I can't relate to and resonate with where people are at in their journey and their struggle. It hasn't been that long ago where was over 100K debt, struggling and that went on for a long time. I know how to break through that and that's how I support my clients, but it's not a rush for me to, like even if I do a launch that would make an insane amount of money, I would be like that's awesome, but also, I just expect it. I'm not doing to get an adrenaline rush from it in the same way that if I cook an amazing steak, and I do cook an amazing steak, I'm not going to be like oh my God, I can't believe it, this is the biggest rush ever. I mean of course it tastes fucking amazing, I know how to cook steak. Of course the launch made that much money, I know how to make money online. Kat: What we had spoken about and this relates to what I'm saying here is, well where do I get my rush from now. Where do I get my adrenaline from because I am that person. It wasn't just that I was proud of myself for getting up again and again every time I got knocked down, it's that I do get off on it. I enjoy it, I like being like, you know, put through, I like the pain. I like purposeful pain and I feel so alive. Like the training session which I spoke about, which I did this morning was the hardest I've gone. I had to ease back into it obviously with my training after my surgery, but so today was the hardest that I've gone since then. I was dying and then within a second of it being over, or anytime I felt more knocked around, I'm smiling at the same time. I'm like this is so fucking good, it's fucking amazing. I crave that, I want it. Patrick: And you desire it because at this stage in the game you know that all these rules are bullshit. The fact that you have to, I had only $30 in my account when I started out, to get customers, to get clients, to get your soulmate clients is bullshit. You would be able to attract them without that fucking story. You know? You don't need, that story doesn't [crosstalk 01:03:05] Kat: Totally. Patrick: I don't think it brings people, I don't [crosstalk 01:03:07]- Kat: Right. And I don't even tell my [crosstalk 01:03:09] yeah. Even I told you parts of my story like when we were on the phone the other night and you didn't even know some of it because I just don't talk about it that much. I have and I do if I get interviewed and stuff, but I don't use that for my marketing. I use my art for my marketing. I just use self-expression for my marketing. Like you said, I don't need the fucking story, but what I do need is, I need to feel lit up, alive. Maybe you're right that yesterday I created resistance to knock me around and make me feel shitty so that today I could then create the contrast and today I'm on fire. Kat: There's more to it than that, like I think, yeah, I do think sometimes for people who haven't broken through on money yet. Or if you've experienced this, if you're a person who can make a little money and then you're like, yeah I'm riding high. Then it just disappears again and you crash up and down, I know a lot of people do that. I did that for years, I would make quite a lot of money and then I'd be like, where is it? Why am I broke again? What's happening? I did that roller coaster for years. Kat: I finally cracked that quota, I figured it out and I teach my clients this all the time. Because I was addicted to the ego and the adrenaline of when your back's against the wall and you don't know if you're even going to be able to buy food that day or God forbid even coffee. Then you just, like a magician, you pull a rabbit out of a hat because you're forced to, you're so back against the wall and you're going to lose, then you just make magic. You're smashing through and you create and you save yourself, but actually w

Every day, I'm Googling to find out who is that actor on Twin Peaks and what have I seen him in before? Or, I want to find out how to prepare a spicy hot chili for dinner, or even to figure out what that thing is on my arm. We are always Googling, and information is at our fingertips, which means if you are an expert in your field and you're focused on the how to do something, then Google can easily replace you. So, what's a speaker to do? If you're focused too much on the "how to," you're not positioning your expertise in a way so that people want to hire you after they hear you speak, and if you're getting paid to speak, you want to position your expertise so your audience knows that there is more where that came from. At the end of the day, when your audience feels like they can DIY it, you've just talked yourself out of a job, so let's change that.

What is the 80-20 rule and can it make 80% of work disappear? What you’re going to learn: How to identify which projects or goals are most important to your organization and which ones are going to get you that promotion How to apply the 80-20 rule to your work as a freelancer Key Quotes: “Don’t try to do everything at once.” Read Full Transcript Hey I'm Kevin Kruse, and I am here to 10x your productivity at least in key areas of your life and to dramatically increase your productivity everywhere. Today I'm extra high energy because Saturday night I did something I don't usually do I went to an NBA basketball game. I'm outside of Philadelphia, so I went and watched the Philadelphia 76ers play the Detroit Pistons. Don't worry this isn't about basketball. If you don't follow American basketball, if you're listening from some other part of the world and don't even know the teams or what I'm talking about it's okay. I only got to about 1 or 2 games a year. I like to go with my friend we take our boys have a good time. The Sixers this year are horrible. They've won the worst records in the history of the NBA, but we were there for fun games get out to have some cheese steaks and just relax. It was a good game it was a fun game but what made me take notice is all over sudden this short kid for the Sixers comes running out onto the court and the entire pace of the game changed. This guy his name is T.J. McConnell; he all over sudden starts racing up and down the court like someone's chasing him. I mean all the sudden he's going for steals, he's only 6 foot 2 and he's jumping in trying to get rebounds, he's making crazy plays I mean he's bringing it. It's like nobody told them that the Sixers are going to be in the last place no matter what happens. No one told them that the game didn't really count. He was bringing it no matter what. Like I said I don't follow the Sixers or basketball that much so I'm Googling this guy, turns out he's a rookie he was undrafted. As I mentioned only 6 foot 2 he used to play for Arizona I believe, has no profiles on social media. He's not out there trying to be a star or anything else. That might be a mistake but as soon as he took the courts the entire energy and mood of the game changed. You might not be the star on your team, but you can always bring the energy you might not be the tallest or most naturally gifted. You can always set the pace you might not have the best jump shot or whatever the analogy is in your career you, but you can always set the tone. This is the underlying secret of productivity. There is no such thing as time management. We can't control time, but we can control our energy and focus. You take two people with the same 1 hour and the same to do list to burn through in that 1 hour. You take someone who's feeling tired, and lethargic, and is multitasking, and is low energy. I'm sounding like Donald Trump accusing people of being low energy, but anyway, you take the other person like T.J. McConnell, who I've never heard of before this undrafted 6 foot 2 rookie, and you decide to bring it. You are high energy you're focused you're not multitasking you're loving what you're doing you're trying to beat the clock. Who's going to get more done? It's the same 60 minutes, it's the same 1,440 minutes in a day, it's about bringing focused energy to the task at hand. Hats off to T.J. McConnell, and he's my new favorite player. I hope he's got a jersey or something out because I'm going to get it. Listen, in the last episode, I talked about the 6 secrets to