Podcasts about diy

Trepanation, voluntary eunuchs, and other things to never try at home. Nick Pell cuts through the crackpot science here on Skeptical Sunday.Welcome to Skeptical Sunday, a special edition of The Jordan Harbinger Show where Jordan and a guest break down a topic that you may have never thought about, open things up, and debunk common misconceptions. This time around, we're joined by writer and researcher Nick Pell!Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1369On This Week's Skeptical Sunday:The oldest surgery on Earth: How humans spent 7,000 to 10,000 years drilling holes in skulls — and why survival rates reached 40 percent, climbing as high as 78 percent in some pre-modern European populations, rivaling the best of early modern Europe.When the ancients got it right: Why trepanation was sometimes sound medicine — relieving deadly pressure from a brain bleed — even as it was also used to release evil spirits, treat epilepsy and migraines, or mark warriors and shamans in rites of passage.The modern movement's quack roots: What drives voluntary trepanation today traces to Dutch pseudo-doctor Bart Huges, who drilled his own skull chasing a "higher consciousness" — a theory with zero evidence and a mortality rate north of 25 percent.DIY castration and the men behind it: How thousands of voluntary eunuchs and unlicensed "cutters" operate outside medicine, and why researchers tie the drive to body integrity dysphoria, sexual fetish, and the elusive pursuit of total "eunuch calm."How separating crackpot theory from real science comes down to asking what the evidence actually shows, respecting bodily autonomy without romanticizing harm, and consulting a mental health professional before anything irreversible.Connect with Jordan on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. If you have something you'd like us to tackle here on Skeptical Sunday, drop Jordan a line at jordan@jordanharbinger.com and let him know!And if you're still game to support us, please leave a review here — even one sentence helps! Sign up for Six-Minute Networking — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course!Subscribe to our once-a-week Wee Bit Wiser newsletter today and start filling your Wednesdays with wisdom!Do you even Reddit, bro? Join us at r/JordanHarbinger!This Episode Is Brought To You By Our Fine Sponsors: FlyKitt: 15% off: flykitt.com, code JORDANAG1: Welcome kit: drinkag1.com/jordanQuince: Free shipping & 365-day returns: quince.com/jordanZipRecruiter: Learn more at ziprecruiter.com/jordanSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Choosing a financial advisor is one of the biggest financial decisions you'll make—but do you actually need one? Brian and Bo break down the uncomfortable truth about financial advisors, including advisor fees, fiduciary standards, commission vs fee-only advisors, behavioral coaching, retirement planning, tax planning, estate planning, investing, and why portfolio management is only a small part of real financial planning. You'll also learn when DIY investing makes sense, how advisor value is measured, and the biggest mistakes people make when hiring an advisor. Whether you're building wealth, approaching retirement, or deciding if professional financial advice is worth the cost, this episode helps you make a more informed decision. ⁠⁠⁠⁠Jump start your journey with our FREE financial resources⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Reach your goals faster with our products⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Take the relationship to the next level: become a client⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Subscribe on YouTube for early access and go beyond the podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Connect with us on social media for more content⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Bring confidence to your wealth building with simplified strategies from The Money Guy. Learn how to apply financial tactics that go beyond common sense and help you reach your money goals faster. Make your assets do the heavy lifting so you can quit worrying and start living a more fulfilled life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It was the hit DIY podcast that became the definitive telling of the crime of the decade. It was a true crime sensation — but was it any good? On this CWO Classic Rewind, we're going back to our October 18, 2021 review of the legendary podcast recorded at Mandy Matney's kitchen table, “Murdaugh Murders.” For exclusive podcasts and more, sign up at Patreon.Sign up for our newsletter at crimewriterson.com.This show was recorded in The Caitlin Rogers Project Studio. Click to find out more. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Can a single journalist armed with $30 in AI tools outpace traditional newsrooms and reinvent local reporting? This episode spotlights the DIY ingenuity shaking up journalism from the ground up. How Claude marks AI-generated content Zuckerberg: The Future is for Everyone Introducing Muse Glimmer: An Open Agentic Model That Runs on Your Device Tim O'Reilly's analysis: Google's Westinghouse Bet OpenAI's New Device Will Be Hockey Puck-Sized and Cost Over $300 Nvidia, Wall Street Firms Strike AI Financing Deal Targeting $500 Billion High-Schoolers in Denmark Will Make Oral Defenses on Assignments To Curb AI Cheating Anthropic Strikes $9 Billion Cloud Deal With Bitcoin Riot Platforms US appeals court allows Perplexity's AI shopping agent back on Amazon Google debuts SL2T, an AI model that's designed to understand sign language Phoebe Gates Knew Phia Shopping App Took Credit for Sales It Didn't Drive Wired: Oh Lord, AI Reporters Are Actually Breaking Big News "* David Corn: I Asked AI to Write a Novel. It's Not So Bad." Yea or Nay BMW Owners Angry 'Spider-Man: Brand New Day' Ads Are Suddenly in Their Cars: "F*** This" Hosts: Leo Laporte, Jeff Jarvis, and Paris Martineau Guest: Nicholas De Leon Download or subscribe to Intelligent Machines at https://twit.tv/shows/intelligent-machines. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: monarch.com with code IM helixsleep.com/machines

Full show - Wednesday | Back to school scaries | News or Nope - The Traitors, Travis Kelce, and Claude | What's the next asbestos? | OPP - My husband tells his mom EVERYTHING | Slacker *IS* joining a cult??? | Moral compass test | Are colleges making it too easy for freshmen? | DIY or DI-Don't? | Erin noticed something weird at the gym | Stupid stories www.instagram.com/theslackershow www.instagram.com/askslacker www.instagram.com/ericasheaaa www.instagram.com/thackiswack www.instagram.com/radioerin

Send us Fan MailYour edible math looks clean on paper, then the real world shows up: ovens run hot, flower potency is a guess, and your infusion method does not behave the way you expected. We sit down for a long-awaited listener Q&A and get practical about the stuff that actually changes your results, especially if you care about consistent cannabis edible dosing at home.I walk through my own decarb experiment frustrations and why comparing decarbed vs non-decarbed oil is tougher than it sounds without the right testing setup or lab access. We talk about how tools like a T-Check and a dosage calculator can guide you, but also where they can mislead if you forget about decarb efficiency and extraction efficiency. If you've ever seen a huge number pop out of a calculator and thought, “No way,” you're not alone.You'll also get clear guidance on stovetop infusions, including the jar-in-water-bath question that trips up so many home cooks: the water should hold a gentle simmer, not the oil inside the jar. From there we answer listener questions on mixing sugar leaf trim with AVB (already vaped bud), using a cheap slow cooker, and picking an all-purpose plant-to-oil ratio that works for both edibles and topicals.Finally, we dig into gear choices (MagicalButter Machine vs Levo vs Ardent FX), why hemp oil infusions are rare, and a few honest lessons on building something that lasts, from weekly consistency to owning your website instead of relying on platforms you do not control. If you enjoy craft cannabis, DIY edibles, and real-world kitchen methods, subscribe, share this with a friend who's dosing blind, and leave a review so more people can find the show.The map you need to start making great edibles in easy, digestible lessons. Sign up for Free.Support the show Visit the website for full show notes, free dosing calculator, quiz, recipes and more. 

Today you will hear my conversation with New York-based pop songwriter and figure skating ingenue Chloe Jane. She joins me to discuss the art of DIY fashion, getting immersed in the small circle of creatives in NYC, and her love of the disco and house 12" mixes she inherited from her parents' record collection.✨ MORE ABOUT CHLOE JANE✨Chloe Jane is New York City-based dance-pop artist and DJ who has carved a distinct identity within the the electronic and nightlife spaces. She approaches her work as a way to create an environment for young women to feel confident, and turning the dance floor into a community. ✨ KEEP UP TO DATE WITH CHLOE JANE ✨Web: https://www.chloe-jane.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/chloejane/?hl=enFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/chloejanesworldTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@chloejaneworldYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@chloejanesworldSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/37YnbbW3oQAg9L3qYho0rv?si=1NZkCGiFQwuQFTu9B-e9Iw Apple: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/chloe-jane/1079686577✨ CONNECT WITH IZZY ✨Blog: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://agrrrlstwosoundcents.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠youtube.com/channel/UCv6SBgiYCpYbx9BOYNefkIg⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠instagram.com/agrrrlstwosoundcents/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠twitter.com/grrrlsoundcents⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

This week on Riff Worship, we dive deep into the making, history, and sonic evolution of Kylesa's seminal 2009 masterpiece, Static Tensions!From their roots in Savannah's pioneering crust-punk band Damad to their rise as titans of psychedelic sludge, Kylesa's story is defined by resilience, reinvention, and sheer heaviness.In this episode, we explore:The early days of co-founders Phillip Cope and Laura Pleasants, navigating the tragic loss of founding bassist Brian Duke, and how their DIY origins built their signature sound.How Carl McGinley and Eric Hernandez unlocked Kylesa's legendary double-drum assault—plus the hard-panned recording magic crafted at Jam Room Studios.Rehearsing under The Jinx (and drawing noise complaints from Paula Deen's restaurant), capturing a real Southern rainstorm for "Nature's Predators," and the surprising tonal influence of The Cult's Love.The story behind the iconic artwork hand-painted by Baroness's John Dyer Baizley and session bass work from Javier Villegas (Born Against, Cattle Press).A detailed analysis of classics like "Scapegoat," "Running Red," "Unknown Awareness," and the frantic "Insomnia for Months!”Recommendations:Kylesa - Time Will Fuse Its Worth (20th Anniversary Limited Edition)Iron Monkey - Our ProblemCove - CoveCADY - Limitations of the Human FormCapsule - FeroxGojira - From Mars to SiriusCorrosion of Conformity - AnimosityKrallice - Scour OrderFollow Riff WorshipInstagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/riffworshippod/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://x.com/RiffWorshipPod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@RiffWorshipPod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Check out our Official Playlists:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Riffs on Repeat (Spotify)⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Riffs on Repeat (YouTube Music)⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Hits from the Crypt (Apple)⁠

Starting with negative net worth at 47 in Los Angeles on $58,000 a year sounds impossible. Yet Paige reached financial independence by 56, retired early, and now lives exactly the life she designed. This isn't theory — this is what happened nine years after her first ChooseFI appearance. Key Topics Discussed 00:00:00 Introduction and The Alley Will Provide Brad welcomes Paige back nine years later and revisits the famous "alley will provide" philosophy. Paige shares modern examples including vintage outdoor furniture and garden bricks sourced for free, plus tips on Facebook Marketplace and neighborhood pickup days. 00:06:30 DIY Then and Now Discussion of how DIY has evolved in Paige's life, from teaching herself to plaster walls to handmaking trim. She explains how priorities shift as resources grow, choosing which projects deserve personal attention versus outsourcing. 00:12:00 The Journey from Negative to Positive Net Worth Paige recounts reaching positive net worth in 2017, quitting a toxic job in 2019 with newfound FU money, and serendipitously landing a better opportunity. Her career progression led to becoming a post-production supervisor with significant income growth. 00:22:15 COVID Market Crash and Bold Moves Paige reveals her contrarian decision to invest almost all her savings during the COVID market crash with only $1,000 in savings, living on unemployment she'd designed her life around. She explains trusting the math and seeing the dip as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. 00:30:00 Test Driving FI and First Withdrawals Currently on a sabbatical year test-driving FI, Paige shares the psychological experience of taking her first withdrawal from investments and choosing quarterly distributions. She discusses adjusted FI numbers and how her spending evolved while core frugality remained. 00:38:45 Living with Purpose and Community Paige explains how her 100-year-old home has become a haven for friends in need, never charging rent but creating a communal living environment. She reflects on the value of shared meals and how society's assumptions about independence are often wrong. 00:46:20 Age and Location as Superpowers A counterintuitive discussion about how starting FI in her mid-40s in Los Angeles actually became advantages. Knowing herself meant no identity crisis, higher income opportunities in LA offset costs, and decades of frugal living made the transition natural. 00:52:30 Freedom to Create Without Monetizing Paige shares her ultimate FI win: the ability to be the artist she always wanted to be without needing to monetize her creativity. She reflects on buying an extra decade of freedom and helping younger colleagues start their own FI journeys. Notable Quotes Paige: "You either trust the math or you don't trust the math. And I trust the math. It has served me and I've trusted the math for ten years and it's worked." Paige: "When you have something you want and you're getting something you want, you don't feel like you're sacrificing." Paige: "The great thing about FIRE is it asks you to say, who are you and what do you value most? And when you do that, somehow, the money does fall into place a little bit better." Paige: "I bought an extra ten years of freedom for myself than the average by just doing what I had already been doing." Paige: "I don't have to monetize my life anymore. I can just enjoy what I do as an artist solely to do it for my own personal enjoyment. And that is wonderful." Key Takeaways Design your budget to be survivable on unemployment income (or other safety net) to create flexibility for bold career moves and market opportunities Implement the 72-hour rule: add desired items to an online cart or "save for later" list and wait before purchasing to reduce impulse spending Identify your core values and audit whether your time and money align with what you say is most important — adjust accordingly Start quarterly portfolio withdrawals (rather than annual) if the psychological comfort of smalle…

"Looksmaxxing" has exploded online as young men pursue physical perfection – from chiseled jawlines to extreme body alterations. But from "softmaxxing" skincare to risky DIY fillers and extreme bone alteration, when does self-improvement cross the line into dangerous self-harm? USA TODAY Senior Wellness Reporter Charles Trepany joins The Excerpt for a look at how social media algorithms, physique inflation and the pressure of unrealistic beauty standards are affecting young men today.Let us know what you think of this episode by sending an email to podcasts@usatoday.com. Episode transcript available here. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

How can you tell where the real innovation in publishing is happening right now, and why is it emerging from the indie side first? How do you market your own book when you've spent 35 years marketing everyone else's? John Bond talks about Going Indie and what he's learned about authors who last. In the intro, my thoughts on writing with AI, Charles Dickens and encouragement for the 3-year-old dancing to K-Pop at the wedding, UK copyright law, The end of an era — Hugh Howey; Notre Dame, Paris; Today's show is sponsored by Bookfunnel, the essential tool for your author business. Whether it's delivering your reader magnet, sending out advanced copies of your book, handing out ebooks at a conference, or fulfilling your digital sales to readers, BookFunnel does it all. Check it out at bookfunnel.com/thecreativepenn This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn John Bond is the co-founder of Whitefox, a premium publishing services agency, and has over 35 years in traditional publishing, from bookselling to marketing and management. He's also the co-author of Going Indie: Publishing Your Book Your Way, with James Silver. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Why 2012 was a watershed moment for publishing in the UK Whether the snobbery around self-publishing has finally gone How to co-write a book with someone, and why there's no formula The pride swallowing involved in getting endorsement quotes for your own book The shadow economy of indie sales that no industry chart measures The hallmarks of writers who build a long-term career You can find John at wearewhitefox.com. Transcript of the interview with John Bond Jo: John Bond is the co-founder of Whitefox, a premium publishing services agency, and has over 35 years in traditional publishing, from bookselling to marketing and management. He's also the co-author of Going Indie: Publishing Your Book Your Way, with James Silver. So welcome back to the show, John. John: Thank you, Jo. Thanks so much for having me. Jo: You were last on the show in 2022. You've been on a couple of times, but just set the scene. Tell people a bit more about you and your long background in publishing. John: I suppose I could say I started as a marketing manager at Penguin back in the early 1990s in London, and that role eventually evolved into running sales and marketing, as it often does. I did that at Penguin and at HarperCollins. Then I ran one of the publishing divisions at HarperCollins, including 4th Estate, and published Hilary Mantel and Jonathan Franzen and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and others. I left that in 2011 and set up Whitefox in 2012, and it's a classic startup story. It was somebody I worked with at HarperCollins. We sat around a kitchen table, came up with an idea for a business, which was Whitefox, and that's grown into the creative agency that it is today. Jo: So back then, did you think, “I can do this better”? Was that the impetus, “I can do publishing better than Penguin and HarperCollins”? John: No, I thought we would solve a problem. There's something very attractive about that whole startup mentality and beginning something from scratch. I mean, I was in my early 50s. I'd had a long career in traditional publishing. On the plus side, I knew a lot of people, and I thought I could get meetings, people would reply to my phone calls or my emails. On the downside, I didn't necessarily have the energy of a 20 to 25-year-old. I knew a lot of people and I knew quite a lot of things, and I also knew what problems something like Whitefox could solve. We set up with this idea that if we could galvanise and organise the diaspora of freelancers in the publishing space and make them available to anybody that wanted to make a book, that that would be quite a powerful thing. These incredibly creative, wonderful people who were below the radar and were not particularly valued or managed or utilised properly. I thought if we could access that and make that available not just to traditional publishing people who know about these people, but to individual authors, businesses, brands, people that wanted to make a book, and if you added a layer of our expertise from traditional publishing, that could be quite powerful, I suppose. That's what I was thinking back then. Jo: It's funny, though. You said these wonderful freelancers who were not particularly valued or managed or utilised properly. That could also apply to a lot of authors in traditional publishing. John: Totally. Totally. But if I'm honest, I don't think I was thinking about that. What's really evolved since we started, even in that 2011, 2012 period, is so much has happened to independent writers, indie authors. The whole ecosystem has become much more vibrant, and what is accessible to those writers is much greater. I'd like to think we've played a part in that. What that's done is put power back into writers' hands, and that quickly became apparent in the business as a byproduct of what we'd set up. Jo: Yes, and 2012 I do think in the UK was a pivot point, because I got into self-publishing in 2006/2007 when the Americans did with the beginning of the Kindle and the iPhone. Really the American ecosystem grew first. I happened to be in Australia, and so I think I was able to escape the negativity of the vortex in the UK, which took a number more years to embrace self-publishing as a force to be reckoned with as opposed to an embarrassing thing in the corner for vanity press. Do you see 2012 as a changing point in UK publishing? John: I think we'd just come out of the Kindle moment, hadn't we? There were all sorts of conversations going on about how that was going to change things forever. I think no one quite knew what the upshot of that was going to be, but we knew that it was incredibly disruptive. In 2012, Penguin, as it was then, before Penguin Random House, had offered to buy Author Solutions for $115 million, presumably seen as some kind of defensive measure as to what the market was going to evolve into. I think it felt like a real period of change. In the UK, James Daunt took over running Waterstones, and he was then ultimately going to run Barnes & Noble. It felt like a bit of a watershed. I think we were lucky in that sense, that maybe in the UK and in London, what we were creating coincided with an opening up of opportunity and creativity, and people wanting access to more tools to be able to do things themselves. Getting this idea that you invest in your own talent and what that could mean for your ability to do things quicker, better. Some of it was happenstance, but lucky for us. As you say, we then became aware that in a sense a lot of these things had come to fruition earlier on the US side. In London, that whole idea of setting up something that wasn't a traditional rights-owning model, but where you wanted to be working with people creatively, felt actually really exciting and timely. Jo: And when you started to work with independent authors, probably a couple of years after that, you started to work with a lot more indie authors and things really started to change in terms of the business side. Did you feel any of the snobbery from the traditional industry? Like you mentioned, you have a lot of contacts, a lot of connections. I came to your wonderful launch party and there were just people from all over the industry. I wondered if you got any kickback, or if anyone raised their eyebrows a little bit at who you were choosing to work with? John: Oh, definitely. And I would say I really think that's gone. You may think differently, Jo, but from my perspective, I think there has been such an evolution in the nearly 15 years that we've been going. So any of that residual snobbery, looking down your nose at people that were going DIY, producing multiple books, learning from every single publication. We've spoken about this before. I remember you sat on the panel of a FutureBook conference in the UK, which was run by a trade magazine, with this idea of looking at the, in quotes, “digital future of the business.” It felt like there were a lot of things being talked about, but not a lot of action on the traditional side. I suppose some sort of awe that there was some magic going on with people who were making a success of self-publishing. But then quite a lot of people looking down their noses at things that shouldn't get through the gatekeepers. I do think that's gone. Or if it's not completely gone, I can see it on the way out of the door, because there's no room for that when agents are struggling to sell books to publishers because publishers are looking at the next indie author, the next Freida McFadden, the next Sarah J. Maas, the next Rebecca Yarros. So whoever it may be, or wherever they're publishing, whatever they're doing now, wherever they may be, knowing that a lot of those people will already be publishing and be on not their first, second, third or fourth, but potentially their 10th or 11th book. It's a race to see who can help those authors, as a traditional publisher would see it, amplify what they're doing. I think the idea that there's an us and them, if it did exist then, which it certainly did in certain publishing quarters, is gone. I used to go to those conferences, like the FutureBook Conference, and certain publishers would talk about publishing, and when they meant publishing, they meant a really tiny area of quite literary, traditional imprints. That's what publishing meant. They didn't even mean publishing to mean educational publishing, or children's publishing, or academic publishing, and certainly not Kindle or POD or whatever. So I think that's had to change for very good, sound, commercial, economic reasons. Jo: Yes, you're right. I definitely have heard, as we go to similar events sometimes, and you do hear agents used to talk a lot more about finding books very occasionally in a slush pile, or doing courses so you could meet people and do pitch events and all this. Now it's often build an audience on BookTok or whatever, and sell lots of books, and traditional publishing as an amplifier, as you said. That's how I always hear them pitch it now, the question of— What can traditional publishing still do when indie authors can do so much? It does seem to be, well, we can amplify you, we can get you into traditional press, we can get you in traditional bookstores, we can help you with film and movie deals, that kind of thing. So that's really interesting, because that's actually changed quite a lot. They don't now seem to say, “Oh, well, we can make sure we pay you,” or, “We are editorial success as such.” John: I think they don't say editorial success or quality or indeed marketing, because that was what used to be said. I think there's an understanding that a lot of indie writers are better marketeers of their own books than traditional publishers, and if you go into the publishing machine, then you'll get your slot. It lasts for a certain period of time and then that moves on to another book. Whereas obviously if you're writing your own book and you're marketing your own book, you're able to do that yourself 24/7 wherever you are in the world, and you will know more about your readers and your audience and how that evolves than a traditional publisher would. What they probably mean now is, as you said, as much as anything, distribution, or even physical distribution. Because to be part of that process, I think that is still where a large conglomerate is able to wield some muscle, with this idea that if you physically want to see your book in bricks and mortar retailers in X outlets around the world, that's potentially easier to do if that is your aim, via a traditional publisher. So it is constantly evolving, because it used to be that marketing was the silver bullet, and I don't think that's the case anymore. Jo: No. We'll come back to marketing, shall we? Struggling with marketing. So let's get into your book. You recently co-wrote Going Indie with James Silver, Publishing Your Book Your Way. Obviously you already knew a lot about indie authors, so I wonder, what did you discover in the process of researching the book and the interviews you did? And I was one of your interviews. Did anything come up that surprised you, since you're already pretty embedded in the world? John: I would say some of it was reinforcing what I knew. So how everything is so intertwined, how in some ways unlinear everything is. People are doing lots of things in a different order to the way that traditionally writers would perceive this relay race of a manuscript gets passed to an editor, an editor passes on. That's just not how it is or needs to be anymore. I still think there is—not even a misconception—but I think there's a received wisdom that when you're talking about self-publishing, you're talking about fiction. The majority of books that Whitefox produces are not fiction, they're non-fiction. Some of them are quite mainstream, some of them are quite niche. That idea of connecting to your audience and your followers, and being slightly more scientific about how you find readers in your non-fiction niche, I think is still unspoken about in a way, in that genre fiction tends to be what people automatically assume the conversation is about. This probably doesn't surprise you, but I was pleasantly surprised to have it confirmed to me quite how much swapping and sharing there is of skills and knowledge in that space. I'm not saying indie writing is egoless at all, but there's quite a lot of sharing of knowledge and what works, and collaboration, which I think is great to see. Again, if you've, as I did many years ago, come out of corporate conglomerate publishing, traditional publishing, there's less of that by the very nature of the kind of organisation. And look, we just talked about marketing a little while ago. I do think this whole idea that the cutting edge of experimentation, it's not traditional publishing, it's indie writers. They are looking at not just how to find readers, but how to fulfil orders, how to make commercial sense of what they're doing from the absolute outset and get-go of what they're doing. And just how now the lines are blurring between what would be classified as traditional digital publishers and the writers who are doing their own thing, or doing their own thing on behalf of a few other writers. Those lines have completely blurred. There used to be this traditional hardback, paperback, X number of books a year, a year after hardback there's a paperback. This is the model we have been doing for centuries, and people doing things on their own. I think that's blurring massively, and the Venn diagrams of people's areas of expertise are just overlapping massively. Jo: Well, I think you're right there, and certainly the hardback special editions with sprayed edges and foil. A lot of us now are doing that first and not putting out the other, or putting out the rest of it at the same time. I dare say probably there are more indie authors with sprayed edge hardbacks than there are traditionally published authors. John: I'm sure that's right. And what's interesting is if you go to a traditional book printer, they are loving the direct communication with writers, that's not coming through traditional channels and traditional relationships. It's great business, it's interesting. I think that's something that's even developed in the last couple of years, that cutting out of some of the middle men required. Jo: Yes, and in terms of supporting freelancers and small publishing houses and printers and stuff, the other thing I've heard is that indie authors pay upfront, or they pay quickly, compared to some of these big publishers who are asking for long lead times and steep discounting. So actually a lot of these independent businesses are doing better under indie author work than they were under traditional. John: I think that's right, and that's what I mean also about the sharing of information and this collaborative idea of sharing creative knowledge. I mean, I'm making it sound like a kind of 19th century cooperative, which it isn't. I'm not suggesting that for a second. It's this idea that there's a lot of people learning a lot of things and there's a keenness to share some of that information, because if you've developed your own readership for your unique creative product, some of those learnings are very exciting. The printers I've spoken to love working on those kinds of things, because they are also being challenged to come up with new ways of developing ever more innovative physical product. Jo: Yes, I think it's a fun, creative time for sure. Things like Kickstarter, which you came on and talked about crowdfunding years ago, and I've obviously done. I think, what am I on now? Seven? I've just done my seventh. John: Wow. Jo: It's so much fun. But now what's happening is traditional publishers are arriving on Kickstarter and all that kind of thing. So we really see a blurring. Let's come back to your book, so Going Indie. You co-wrote it. Now obviously there are lots of positive sides of collaboration, but in terms of any challenges with collaboration and co-writing and the writing process of doing this? Because I've done this several times and I've found it very challenging. So tell us about the collaborative writing process. John: We thought a lot about it before we took it on. What I would say, having done it, is I am assuming there is no formula for how you do this. At Penguin I worked with a married couple who were crime writers, and they wrote books together. They merged their names so it appeared to be one name. I could not tell you, and they didn't share what that process was, whether they were writing different chapters or … I don't know. So I can only speak from my own experience. James is an established journalist. He's great with deadlines. He was very good at chivvying me along when I needed to be persuaded to hit the deadlines that I'd promised. I write blogs, I write newsletters, I write content for our website, but this is my first book. I've never written anything of this length. So in a way it started with the structure. It started with this idea that we would play to what we perceived as our respective strengths in terms of writing. We absolutely were not each writing every third word or anything like that. It was a process of trust in different parts. I thought, James had done some research and will be better at writing that. He deferred to me on areas that he took to be my areas of expertise. We did every interview for the book together. We went over the notes from those before they became part of the interviews for the book. And some of the book's elements are diagrammatic, so those are very easy to collaborate on. I think we tried to be professionally, creatively constructive with each other. So it was raising an eyebrow rather than shouting at each other if we didn't agree about something. A lot of it was down to the editing, and I don't know what your experience was like with a co-writer, but a lot of it came down to: here is something which is quite baggy. How do we, between us, make this as tight as we possibly can? I don't mean copy editing or proofreading. I mean the actual sort of, how do we get this into a pithy, usable, practical but discursive book? We didn't ever set out for this to be a pure reference book at all. We wanted to take a snapshot of what was going on. So a lot of it was genuinely trying to do some research and get people to feed into what was going on from lots of different perspectives, which is why we wanted to get mainstream traditional publishers, we wanted to get agents, we wanted to get indie writers, we wanted to get people who have all sorts of experiences and perspectives. That's what makes it what it is, which is, here's what we think are some of the interesting discussion points of what's going on now. Jo: It is a fantastic snapshot. I think it's really interesting—and obviously you also have seen my book, Successful Self-Publishing, which is on its fourth edition—this is one of the difficult things with snapshot type books. So have you already thought about that? I know this one has just come out, but have you thought, “Oh no, in five years we have to do it again”? John: Well, I think we thought we're going to have to address AI, which we do in the book, and we really tried to caveat that with saying, look, so much may change so quickly, and here we are talking about what we know now. We obviously tried to set the context for where we are now, and we tried as much as possible to make something which would last as long as we can. I think what we did think was, we have tried to make it as international a perspective as possible. But at the same time, we are a London-based agency, and a lot of the views will be from people based in the UK. So I think what I would like to explore is something that looks at potentially somewhere like the US, where I think there'll be different people that would perhaps have different perspectives on different things. So I think we thought about potentially there being future iterations of the book, but not yet. Jo: Not yet. This is the challenge with non-fiction, of course. On that, I would say what you just said around the US and stuff, the successful UK authors all use the same systems as the US. So I wouldn't say that the US … I mean, we all have the US companies we all use. I say Kobo is obviously Canadian, but I would say that we use the same ways of doing things. Obviously you might interview a different author, but … John: That was all I meant. I meant interviewing. Because we've interviewed agents and authors and publishers and they are largely UK based. So it was the idea that maybe there are some perspectives on things rather than systemic. Jo: Differences. John: Yes. Just that. Jo: So then I guess another challenge, we've kind of nodded to it so far, is marketing. So let's talk about the challenges of getting this book out in terms of publishing and marketing. Because you've been on the inner circle side, trying to do that for other people's books, but your own book, this is a whole nother thing. So tell us about that. John: Well, how do you do it, Jo? I mean, honestly, I've loved some of it. I get how you become completely obsessed with your book and trying to make sure that you can get it into the hands of the people that you want to get it into the hands of. We've got some great endorsement quotes, which was a task that, how can I say this? I would call it pride swallowing. The idea that you really try and get people to say nice things about your book and, if they don't reply, you think, “How much do I pester them? How much do I annoy them by asking them again nicely?” And the absolute sheer unadulterated joy when they come back with something positive that you can use and utilise in some way. So that whole process of waiting for feedback, I suppose, and hoping that people are going to like what you've done and help you spread the word for it. We had a launch event, we've given books away. We've published the book as ebook and POD. I think one of the great things about that is it's enabled us to be completely adaptable and make changes right up until the last minute. That drove everybody in my team completely crazy because we were making changes up until the last minute. So, is the book definitely going to be available on publication date? What's it going to do? You know, all of that kind of stuff. Also, just getting this idea that I suppose you can never stop. Is that a very obvious thing to say to a writer? It probably is. You just can't stop, because if you go, “Right, well, I've done it,” complacency is the enemy. Just as soon as you've got that quote, or someone said that they're going to give you an opportunity to talk about it on a platform, it's just another day and you've got to keep thinking about how you can spread the word and tell people that it exists. Jo: Yes, well, I think that's right, and particularly non-fiction, which unless it's very timely and you must get it out right now. But other than that— Most books you just have to keep marketing for years. Then just as you say, when do you stop? Well, you kind of never stop unless you want to, unless you want to retire and just give up, basically. Dean Wesley Smith, who's a big writer in the US and a kind of a mentor of mine in past years, he talks about it as this massive sea of books. And when a book arrives, he pictures it coming down and landing on the water. So the day you launch, it's landed on the water, and then it begins to sink. Then there are all these other books coming down. It's like this rain of books, and your book is sinking as soon as it lands. And your job is to keep it afloat somehow. John: Keep it afloat. Jo: Yes. John: I think you're right, and it's such an interesting perspective for us, who work with a lot of people who have one book. You know, they've spent 10 years writing it. It's their life story. It's their memoir. It's their self-help book. It's their book that accompanies them on their speaking journey, or whatever. Then there are the people who are writing constantly and can't stop writing because they're exercising that creative muscle all the time and wanting to get better, and wanting to improve and learn and understand why this works and why that hasn't worked. Just getting a glimpse into what it must be like for that person for whom writing is not a hobby. I kept saying to myself, “This is not something you're doing as a hobby.” I want this book to be of value to people, and if I'm investing that time and effort into something that I want to get out there, you've got to commit to whatever it is you need to do to make sure you're not sinking. Jo: Yes. John: I will now not be able to get that image out of my head. Jo: Yes. I know there's people listening who don't have a mind's eye, which I always find fascinating, but for those of us with a mind's eye, you can now picture that and you will never forget it. The other thing, I guess, is that, having done a lot, over 40 books now, the inevitable thing is you cannot keep pushing all of those books back up to the surface. So when you do get the bug as such of writing, the most interesting thing for all of us is always the next book. It's always like, ooh, the next thing I'm doing, I'm very excited about. So you do have to pick your battles on marketing. So have you got the bug, do you think? Are you thinking of other books in general? Because as you said, you must be, I guess, in your 60s. John: I am. Jo: You could retire. John: I am. You were talking about that long career. I could. I mean, I really love doing it, and I would love to do more. I think one of the things that surprised me was just how many ideas came up while we were doing the book about tangents that one could take it. I have no desire to write a novel. I don't want to do that. I wouldn't be very good at that. I do think there are some interesting spaces around where there's a kind of intersection of creativity and learning, and how you can develop books that would help people who are trying to achieve different things in different sectors of publishing. So without getting too granular about it, this book doesn't really address brands who want to become publishers, and I think that is something that our business has developed into working with, not just individuals, but businesses and brands. I think there's definitely spin-offs of this book which are not about repeating what we've done so far. And this whole idea of what you've been doing for a long time, what we've been doing since 2011, 2012, it's evolving now at such a speed. I mean, who would have known what was going to come out of TikTok? As you talk about TikTok to Shopify, that whole kind of new ways of finding readers, of taking books to market. As you said, Kickstarter, crowdfunding. There's all sorts of things that I think will emerge, because in a funny sort of way traditional publishing at the moment feels quite conservative with a small c. I mean, the bestsellers. Dan Brown is number one in the bestseller list this week in the UK as I speak, who has been a bestseller forever. And obviously new writers come along the whole time, but the market feels a little bit as if it's waiting now for innovation. I think if that innovation's going to happen, it's probably going to happen in the indie space before it happens in mainstream publishing. So people are coming to us and thinking, does that represent a trend? Does that represent something which could be a way of looking at something a little bit deeper, doing some research around and creating something which is not a long book, not a massive thesis, but something which is indicative of something which could be useful for people. Jo: Just coming back on the Dan Brown is in the bestseller list. I think this is completely to do with the way that traditional publishing measures things. For many years, more than a decade, probably since the beginning of Kindle, certainly the beginning of Kindle Unlimited, there is a shadow economy, I call it, or a parallel economy. I would say that almost zero of my own personal sales are measured by any industry standards. Anyone who makes any money from Kindle Unlimited or Kickstarter or Shopify, or selling direct in any form, or selling books at conventions, none of this is measured by any traditional things. As you know, the New York Times list, for example, does not include Amazon sales in their bestseller list. So you've got indie authors in the UK who are incredibly successful who have to decide, say, someone like LJ Ross, for example, decides, “Okay, I'm going to set up a proper imprint with Gardners or whatever so that I can get in bookstores so that I can hit a Sunday Times list or something.” So I would say that seeing things like Dan Brown on a bestseller list has almost no meaning in the shadow indie economy. John: No, you're absolutely right. We're not even able to see audiobook sales. Jo: Yes, audio. Any kind of borrows, like Spotify. John: No, you're completely right. I suppose I was making a broader cultural point, that it doesn't feel like there's an enormous amount of innovation going on or risk taking within what I would call mainstream trade publishing. And there doesn't seem to be the need to be, because there will be more consolidation. Small companies will be bought by big companies, so there's growth through acquisition. There's still a hope that something will take off that is a surprise, and there's still an enormous reliance on established brands who, even through the traditional metrics of how you measure them, are probably selling less, but still at the top of the pile. I suppose that's what I was meaning. Jo: Yes, and I agree with what the industry looks at as signals. It's just, as we said, a lot of these signals are invisible. So coming onto innovation, at London Book Fair this year there were a lot of sessions on AI, and you mentioned AI briefly, and there is a chapter in Going Indie on generative AI. And of course there's a lot of negativity and drama and lawsuits and this, that and the other. But at the same time, at London Book Fair, a lot of traditional publishers talking about using it, and of course they always say, “Oh, we use AI only in marketing and business, not with the creative or editorial.” Everyone makes this distinction. What are your thoughts on what's happening and where's it going with AI? Is a lot of this stuff not happening in public and just going on behind closed doors? John: I think so. We do have a chapter in the book on AI. We've generated summaries of every chapter using AI, which we explicitly said in the book as well. We've got our Ten Commandments of what we think are useful guidelines. I think that there has to be an enormous amount being done, whether it's experimentation or speeding up for efficiency's sake, or things that slow you down, within mainstream publishing. There has to be more than just the guardrails around the creative process. And clearly when we're talking about metadata, book description, cover copy, presumably royalty calculations, presumably if you're trying to grow your newsletters. There has to be an enormous amount of activity going on. We're driven by the market, so we do not commission. Writers come to us and they either want to work with us and we want to work with them, or that doesn't happen. So we're in a sense seeing what the market is seeing, and that is a whole range of things. As I've said before, there's a lot of sweeping generalisations out there, which if you look back to that Kindle moment, we were talking a little while ago about what was going on in 2010/2011, about the enormous broad brush strokes that were being perceived as a result of Kindle. Kindle has affected some areas of publishing, it's affected some not at all. I think it will be absolutely fascinating when the sweeping generalisations stop and there becomes, I suppose, even more transparency. The thing that people are looking for, isn't it? A little bit less opaqueness as to what is really being done. Because everybody's being so careful about what they say they're doing and what they're not doing. I suppose ElevenLabs is the one where people are openly engaging on the audio side. I mean, everyone is being so careful and cautious. Jo: Me too. John: What do you think? We spoke a bit about AI within the book, and I'm interested to know what you think. Jo: Well, I've obviously been openly talking about it since 2016. I openly talk about using it, and I've got my Patreon community where we talk about how we're using it, and tips on how to use it. But then, because I have been writing and publishing since 2007, 2008, I'm very strong in my creative voice. I'm very strong in my understanding of what I consider to be my level of output, and what I publish under my own name is what I publish under my own name. John: Totally. Jo: So the problem is for people who are less confident, I think, in what they're doing creatively perhaps. I know some people feel like they're scared it will take over or something. When you're as strong-minded as me, it's not taking over anything. John: It's not going to take over anything. And the other side of the coin is how many people are finding Whitefox using ChatGPT. Jo: Mm. John: I'm thrilled that we are emerging, through very detailed briefing of AI, as something that is worth engaging with. Jo: Positive marketing. John: Yes, exactly. As you say, I think there's a lot of negativity, and I think it will settle down eventually. I think less hysteria. Jo: Yes, hopefully sooner rather than later. So as we come to an end, you've been in the publishing industry a long time and seen a lot of people who have disappeared, but also those who've lasted. I wondered if maybe you could comment on those who last, because I definitely feel like I'm in my 50s now, and I want to keep doing this. I'm pretty obsessed with— What are the hallmarks of people who have a long-term career? So reflections on that. John: Oh, that's such a good question. I think there's some common characteristics and themes. So I think authenticity, I think this idea of being continually curious. I think there are people who can't help but create, and this idea that once you've sort of expelled once, that's enough. I think there's people that just can't stop creating, whatever you do with it. But this idea that the more you do, the better you get, the more you evolve and keep an open mind. I think there's definitely entrepreneurial writers who love this idea of keeping their readers engaged, and how that conversation is something that evolves and that collaboration evolves, is fascinating. I think if you love that, and you listen, there's always an opportunity to keep building on what you do. I love the writers who we work with. I can think of a writer who we're working on his fourth novel at the moment, and he is a bundle of positivity. No matter the trials and tribulations, the things that have gone wrong, his expectations definitely not being met with his first book. He definitely has this idea that he wants to keep writing, he wants to get better, and he is getting better. It isn't a journey that has a beginning and an end. It's something that will continue for as long as he wants to write. Every single book that he has published, he has learned and gained confidence, gained a network of connections that he's utilised himself now to not make the first half a dozen mistakes he made on the first book. Who knows where it will end up? But certainly the satisfaction he's getting, and the sales he's getting, are growing as he becomes savvier and quicker to make the right choices and decisions. So I think that's my honest answer to that. I think there are definitely people who think, “Phew, I have really wanted to do this book. Now I can rest easy. I've done my book.” Then there are people who really, whatever their objective, whatever the definition of success is from the get-go, just can't help creating. I do love that and respect that. I don't think our book falls quite into that category, because I think it's a slightly different thing. I think there are people who are still making a success of what they do and redefining that as they go on, and who are really open to ideas and input from different people and are not closed off. I love working with those people. Jo: So where can people find Going Indie and everything you do online? John: Well, Going Indie is available online at all good bookshops. It's available at Amazon and anywhere you buy books online as ebook and POD. Our website is wearewhitefox.com, and you'll find information about not just our book there, but a lot of other things that we're doing on that site. Jo: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, John. That was great. John: Thank you so much, Jo. It's been a pleasure. The post Going Indie, Publishing Innovation, And The Challenges Of Book Marketing With John Bond first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Punk rock comes in a lot of different flavours, but few have had the impact of pop-punk. In Part One of this series, we dig into how a genre that was supposed to be the enemy of pop music ended up borrowing some of its best ideas. From the Ramones and Buzzcocks to Bad Religion, Descendents, Hüsker Dü, and Social Distortion, we'll follow the bands that started mixing punk's speed, attitude, and DIY spirit with melody, hooks, and songs you couldn't get out of your head. We'll also look at the underground scene that helped shape the sound and set the stage for bands like Green Day, Blink-182, and The Offspring to take over the world. It's the story of how punk and pop learned to get along... and changed alternative rock forever.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Homeowner Show kicks off with a lighthearted, albeit slightly gross, discussion about an infestation of flies and a spider web in their studio, a stark contrast to the more serious topics that follow. This initial banter quickly transitions to personal anecdotes about home maintenance and repairs. One host shares his experience fixing an electric golf cart charger by replacing a blown circuit board for a mere $25, highlighting the cost savings and satisfaction derived from DIY repairs, especially when guided by online tutorials. The conversation then shifts to a similar repair experienced by the other host, who fixed a problematic mini-split drain line for the studio. He details how he bypassed an expensive quote by sourcing the parts himself for $25 and completing the repair in about 20 minutes, emphasizing the accessibility of information and parts for common home issues. This leads to a broader discussion about the empowerment of homeowners to tackle repairs themselves, potentially saving money and gaining valuable skills. A significant portion of the discussion delves into the contentious issue of housing affordability and the impact of large institutional investors. A new piece of legislation, the "21st Century Road to Housing Act," is analyzed, which aims to limit the number of single-family homes that large institutional investors can own. While the hosts acknowledge the intent behind the act, they express skepticism about its effectiveness, pointing out loopholes like the ability to create multiple corporations and the exemption for multi-family dwellings, suggesting it may be a superficial fix rather than a solution to the core problems of inflation and interest rates. The episode touches upon various other topics, including a humorous take on a WNBA situation involving an NBA player's controversial "no" vote and a subsequent "white privilege" claim, as well as personal experiences with insect stings and spider bites. The conversation concludes with a return to the theme of housing affordability, with the hosts reiterating that while homes may be expensive, creative solutions and a willingness to compromise on location or size can still make homeownership achievable for many, especially when compared to the drawbacks of apartment living. They also briefly discuss the tax incentives available to business owners, emphasizing that responsible financial planning can mitigate tax burdens. Buy a Homeowners Show T-Shirt! Subscribe to our YouTube Channel The Homeowners Show Website The Homeowners Show Facebook Page Instagram @homeownersshow Twitter @HomeownersThe Info@homeownersshow.com Sustained Growth Solutions – Design a lead generation system specifically for your business so that you never have to search for leads again! We are a full digital marketing agency. Termisave Email – Warranty your home against the threat of termites.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Margo is joined by Kim Robinson, founder of 3pts and a longtime contributor to and advocate for creative communities. With more than 15 years of experience at cultural platforms including The FADER, Complex, Red Bull, and the American Museum of Natural History, Kim has worked alongside artists like Solange, Kendrick Lamar, Spike Lee, Erykah Badu, and Tyler, the Creator. Raised within underground punk, hip-hop, electronic music, and art scenes, Kim eventually founded 3pts to put his experience directly in service of makers and creative entrepreneurs, helping them build sustainable careers on their own terms. Kim and Margo explore what working behind the scenes in music and culture taught him about what artists actually need, why he continues to approach his work as a fan first, and the role community plays in building a sustainable creative life. Margo and Kim discuss: How growing up in DIY punk, hip-hop, electronic music, and art scenes shaped Kim's approach to creativity and community What working with major artists and cultural platforms taught him about the realities of building a creative career Why Kim leads with a "fan first" mentality and how genuine curiosity has guided his career Why community is the invisible infrastructure behind so many successful creative careers Moving beyond the myth of the self-made artist and recognizing the people, resources, and relationships that help us grow Defining success on your own terms rather than following someone else's blueprint for a creative business The value of practical support—from sharing opportunities and resources to having someone a few steps ahead show you what's possible Connect with Kim: Website: www.3pts.co Instagram: www.instagram.com/3ptsco Substack: 3pts.substack.com A monthly newsletter dedicated to sharing opportunities for makers such as grants, residencies, open calls, markets and more. https://us7.campaign-archive.com/home/?u=eb522373216e8266b4805a156&id=45f83f7c19 Connect with Margo: www.windowsillchats.com www.instagram.com/windowsillchats www.patreon.com/inthewindowsill

Researcher and writer Thomas Michael Swensen (Tangirnaq Native Village) takes music fans to the fascinating intersection of punk music and Native America in his new book, “Where Next, Columbus?: A Native Punk Mixtape“. He explores some of the unlikely places where this intersection appears, from Alaska to the Southwest to the Black Hills of South Dakota. He thoroughly dissects Native punk music, zines, videos, and art installations, examining recurring themes of individualism versus collectivism, DIY culture, and sovereignty. We'll speak with Swensen about the new book and listen to some of his favorite Native punk songs he found during his research. A new album, “Live From '81–'85“, collects live recordings from the legendary 1980s New Wave band Romeo Void, from the height of their popularity and creative power. Fronted by singer Debora Iyall (Cowlitz), the group is known for edgy, pointed lyrics and standout saxophone solos. Songs like “A Girl in Trouble (Is a Temporary Thing)” and “Never Say Never”, which was named one the 200 Best Songs of the 1980s by Rolling Stone, have been featured in movie soundtracks and the Billboard Top 40. Iyall remains active in the arts and performs as part of a new creative project. We'll speak with her about music, art, and activism. Thomas Sewell recommended Native punk tracks: Ya Tseen “Back in that Time” Bastard Fairies “Guns and Dolls” Pisswalker “Crudo y Confundido” Weedrat “Don't Tell Me” Friends of Cesar Romero “Baby Razorblades” Dead Pioneers “My Spirit Animal Ate Your Spirit Animal” Lozen “Unnatural Disaster” Break 1 Music: 500 Años (song) Los Crudos (artist) Doble LP Discografía (album) Break 2 Music: Wolastoq Song by Saqatay (song) Mawi Sakolikapuwicik Singers (artist)

In her new book, Floramama, flower farmer Chloé Roy combines ecological growing practices, proven business strategies, and the artistry of floral design into a visually rich guide to small-scale floriculture. This Quebec-based farmer-florist originally published Floramama in her native French language in 2023, and now, New Society Publishers has translated it into English for the […] The post Episode 781: Meet Floramama's Chloé Roy as we kick off Canadian Flowers Week and discuss the English-language edition of her new book appeared first on Slow Flowers Podcast with Debra Prinzing.

What if everything men are told about a prostate cancer diagnosis, biopsy first, surgery next, is built on evidence that was never actually there?In this episode of Integrative Cancer Solutions, Dr. K sits down with Dr. Stephen Petteruti, board certified family physician and author of Fight Cancer Like a Man, to break down the 2023 New England Journal of Medicine study that found no survival difference between surgery, radiation, and doing nothing at all for early stage prostate cancer. Dr. Petteruti explains why he stopped recommending biopsies, how a needle can spread the very cancer it's meant to detect, and why watching PSA and MRI trends over time is often safer than rushing into treatment. He also covers the overlooked role of testosterone in prostate cancer care, including bipolar androgen therapy, and makes the case for tracking the disease like a chronic condition instead of chasing a cure that costs a man his vitality.If you or someone you love is facing a prostate cancer diagnosis, or just navigating an elevated PSA, this conversation lays out the questions worth asking before agreeing to anything.Key Takeaways:0:00 Introduction2:33 The prostate trial that shattered the surgery-first model5:19 Why a biopsy can spread the very cancer it's meant to find8:23 Castration's hidden cost on testosterone and quality of life17:12 Tracking prostate cancer with MRI and PSA instead of biopsy21:58 Repurposed drugs and why DIY protocols backfire38:10 BAM therapy: using testosterone as a weapon against advanced cancer Schedule a Free 15-Min Cancer/Lyme Consultation at The Karlfeldt Center: 208-338-8902Resources:Fight Cancer Like a Man (book) - https://www.intellectualmedicine.com/dr-stephen-petteruti-booksIntellectual Medicine, Dr. Petteruti's practice - https://www.intellectualmedicine.com/The Prostate Protocol - https://assets.ctfassets.net/psmhuxrqomif/4iFYGN6rh0cloFTQyxdit9/a2c3e8e20e335df0ad22f70ca0e0af48/the-prostate-protocol-pdf.pdfProtecT Trial, New England Journal of Medicine, 2023 - https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2214122Johns Hopkins Bipolar Androgen Therapy Research - https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/articles/2023/12/bipolar-androgen-therapy-trials-under-way Medical Disclaimer: This content is for educational purposes only and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or replace professional medical advice. Always consult your physician or qualified healthcare provider regarding any medical condition or treatment decisions.

Ready to take a deep dive and learn how to generate personal tax-free cash flow from your corporation? Enroll in our FREE masterclass here and book a call hereAre you a high-income T4 earner who feels financially behind simply because you cannot access the same tax strategies as an incorporated business owner?It is easy to compare your tax bill, investment returns, or wealth-building options with someone playing a completely different financial game. But incorporation does not automatically mean more spendable income, and chasing strategies designed for someone else can distract you from the opportunities already available within your own plan.Through the story of a successful T4 earner with rental properties, registered investments, a DIY portfolio, and substantial home equity, this episode explores why knowing more strategies does not always create greater confidence. The real challenge may be choosing a tax-efficient approach that fits your risk tolerance—and staying consistent long enough for it to work.By listening, you will learn how to:Stop comparing two different financial games. Understand why the corporate small-business tax rate does not tell the full story and why incorporated owners still face personal tax when extracting money from their companies.Evaluate your next wealth-building move more clearly. Explore the trade-offs between seeking higher returns, taking on more investment risk, increasing your income, and improving tax efficiency through strategies such as the Smith Manoeuvre.Build confidence through consistency instead of chasing certainty. Discover why long-term financial confidence rarely comes from finding one perfect strategy—and how a repeatable process aligned with your goals, personality, and comfort with risk can move you closer to financial freedom.Press play now to learn how to focus on the financial game you can actually play—and build a strategy you can confidently follow for years.Discover which phase of wealth creation you are in. Take our quick assessment and you'll receive a custom wealth-building pathway that matches your phase and learn our CRA compliant tax optimized strategies. Take that assessment here.Canadian Wealth Secrets Show Notes Page:Consider reaching out to Kyle if you've been……taking a salary with a goal of stuffing RRSPs;…investing inside your corporation without a passive income tax minimization strategy;…letting a large sum of liquid assets sit in low interest earning savings accounts;…investing corporate dollars into GICs, dividend stocks/funds, or other investments attracting corporate passive income taxes at greater than 50%; or,…wondering whether your current corporate wealth management strategy is optimal for your specific situation.This episode of Canadian Wealth Secrets explores how a high-income T4 earner can improve financial planning, wealth management, and tax efficiency without comparing their situation to an incorporated business owner playing by different tax rules. Using a real listener case involving rental properties, RRSPs, a DIY ETF portfolio, and substantial home equity, Kyle and Jon explain why the small-business corporate tax rate does not equal personally spendable income and why salary versus dividends in Canada must be viewed through both corporate and personal taxation. They examine practical investment strategies, including the Smith Manoeuvre, real estate leverage, RRSP optimization, tax-efficient investing, and using home equity to support long-term wealth building. The conversation also highlights risk management, showing that higher potential returns often require greater concentration, private lending, or other risks that may not fit every investor. Rather than chasing the perfect strategy, listeners are encouraged to create a personalized Canadian wealth plan, define their minimum retirement cash-flow needs, and follow repeatable financial systems that match their investor personality. The core message is that lasting financial freedom in Canada comes from understanding the financial game available to you, choosing a strategy you can confidently maintain, and staying consistent on the path toward financial independence.Ready to connect? Text us your comment including your phone number for a response!PE Gate is now offering accredited investors access to Project Rope: the acquisition of an established, cash-generative Canadian industrial business with more than 45 years of operating history.PE Gate's targets an annualized IRR above 25%, net of carried interest.For the Offering Memorandum and full risk disclosure, visit pe-gate.com or email sarmen@pe-gate.com. If you listen to podcasts like The Rational Reminder with Ben Felix & Cameron Passmore, The Canadian Investor, The Canadian Real Estate Investor, Build Wealth Canada with Kornel Szrejber, ChooseFI with Jonathan Mendonsa & Brad Barrett, Afford Anything with Paula Pant, The Ramsey Show with Dave Ramsey, BiggerPockets Money, The Money Guy Show with Brian Preston & Bo Hanson, Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Masters in Business with Barry Ritholtz, The Wealthy Barber Podcast with David Chilton, Financial Audit with Caleb Hammer, In the Money with Amber Kanwar, The Loonie Hour with Steve Saretsky, or More Money Podcast with Jessica Moorhouse — we're confident you'll enjoy Canadian Wealth Secrets too.Canadian Wealth Secrets is an informative podcast that digs into the intricacies of building a robust portfolio, maximizing dividend returns, the nuances of real estate investment, and the complexities of business finance, while offering expert advice on wealth management, navigating capital gains tax, and understanding the role of financial institutions in personal finance.

According to Gartner, worldwide AI spending is forecasted to increase 44% by the end of 2026. Companies are investing in AI, and they are investing heavily. But knowing where and how to invest isn’t easy, especially with what feels like a million different AI tools out there and a million more different ways to build your own. So how do you figure out what to build, what to buy, and which investments will help you move the needle for your business? Riley Rogers: Hi, and welcome to the Win/Win Podcast. I’m your host, Riley Rogers. Join us as we dive into changing trends in the workplace and how to navigate them successfully. Here to discuss this topic is Cody Sims, head of commercial brand at Cox Communications. Cody, thank you so much for joining us today. Super excited to hear your thoughts on this one. Before we dive into what is quite a loaded topic, could you tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, and your role? Cody Sims: Yeah. So, hi, I’m Cody. I’m the head of commercial brand for Cox Communications, and it’s kind of crazy how I came into this role. So I actually started my career when I was 15 and was installing phone systems for my dad’s phone company. And after that, I had actually had two parts of what I thought was what I wanted to go into, and that was either musical theater or physics, because those were two things I really had a passion about. And when I got into college and had musical theater as my major and physics as my fallback, I realized that both of them left a part out of what I really enjoy. And so I ended up actually landing in marketing because it’s both analytical and creative, and that has served me really well over the years. So, across Cox, I have done all kinds of things from product management to market development to pricing to competitive analysis, and now in the brand world. It’s given me kind of a 360 view of the entire business from a marketing lens. I would say that I’m pretty much a transformation leader. I really enjoy breaking things and building them up new again. So, AI is happening right at the right time for me. RR: I love that story, and I love that it’s taking you to a place that especially now is getting more and more technical, more and more analytical. I’m very excited to get into that transformation leader side of things. But before we do, can you paint a little bit of a picture of your sales environment? CS: Yeah. So when I first came to Cox, it was very similar to most of what you would call a CLEC, or a competitive local exchange carrier, which is primarily internet service, voice services, and obviously because it was Cox, some cable TV services that were the triple threat. That was kind of what in the early 2000s was kind of the way that they went to market. But over time, the team at Cox realized that in order to stay competitive, they had to add to the portfolio to make sure that they were providing value to their customers, and I’m sure many would understand that and have gone through similar transformations. And so we had acquired several different other companies that added to our portfolio, and developed some of our own products, and over time that turned into a lot of products. But it’s not just 70 products. It’s 70 products, it’s nine customer segments that we have from a segmentation perspective. It’s six distinct buyer personas, industry verticals, what’s serviceable at that address. So you take all of these different components and it’s almost like three-dimensional chess for the salesperson. The way that I like to think about it is that the sellers, what they really need and what their challenge is, is that they’re not looking for specs. They’re looking for what are the business outcomes that my customer is trying to achieve, and then what do I have from my portfolio that will help them to achieve those results? So it’s no longer a world where they can memorize everything and know every product in and out, and be the technical expert. They really do have to have tools and systems that help them to have the right knowledge at the right moment for the right person in the right place. RR: Yeah, there comes a point when the human brain just can’t contain the context and the expertise that you need. So when you can’t ask for expertise, what you can do is provide, to your point, that just-in-time support. And one of the things that you alluded to was that that’s where you kind of started some of that AI investment as a way to bridge that gap. You’ve given us a little bit of a taste, but what kind of motivated that early initiative? CS: Well, I would say that, over time what we discovered was that we couldn’t keep track of all of our marketing materials, collateral, all of the pieces of information in just files, formats, and putting it online into a here’s-an-accessible-library. Because the library just becomes bigger and larger and more difficult to manage. But I would say that we didn’t set out to do AI. We didn’t sit down and say, “Oh, hey, AI looks cool. Let’s make sure we’re doing it.” We needed to transform our go-to-market strategy so that we were more nimble, we were more competitive, and that we could deliver the kind of experience that our customers were asking for. And so AI was the mechanism that would help us to get there. But what really triggered this whole thing was what I mentioned earlier, was our segmentation. When we sat down and said, “Let’s rebuild the way that we look at our audience segments,” and we did that based off of what is the value to Cox of each of these customer profiles, and then what is the technology sophistication of that client, of that business. And that intersection allowed us to create our nine different segments that we were working on. And so when we did the math, when we looked at all of that information and all of the things that we needed to be able to provide to those segments, we realized this was quickly going to turn into something that was far beyond any marketer’s ability to do. But what we knew is that the Gartner information we were tracking said that personalization was having much higher returns on the way that people respond to information. And not only that, but if you do personalization and you get it wrong, if I call you and I say, instead of, “Hey, Riley,” and I say, “Hey, Jonah,” you’re like, “Hmm, nice try.” So personalization is really important to being successful, but getting it right is even more important. So we realized that we needed to have some radical partnership between our marketing, AI, and sales teams, that we needed to make sure that this was not just an IT project, that we were going to go and pull a bunch of requirements together and everybody would be like, “Oh, hey, here’s this new tool. Everybody figure out how to use it.” And it wasn’t necessarily about optimization. It was about transformation, the way that we go to market, the way we think about our customers, and the way we show up. So I would say that AI definitely was part of the solution set, but we had to look ourselves in the mirror and say, “It’s time for us to actually think about this in a completely different way.” RR: That distinction comes through very well, and I think is very important because oftentimes when you’re in kind of the scramble to be keeping up with the market, keeping up with your competitors, there is this urge to just tack on AI because we have to. But when it’s not strategic and it’s not built into the things that you’re actually doing, to your point, it’s we put together some specs, good luck using it. But instead, now it’s something that’s really built into the way that you work. I would love to hear a little bit more about that specific use case, especially given the fact that a lot of teams are running into that question of how do we use AI and can we just build what we need ourselves? Given that you’ve done the math, answered the question, I’d love to hear how it worked and kind of where you landed. CS: It’s very easy to fall into the trap of, “Hey, everybody, here’s AI. We put it on your computers, now go use it.” And so then everybody starts using AI to try to figure out, how does this help me in the job that I already do, in the role that I already do, in the processes that I already do? And so then it really limits the impact that it can have on the business and the performance because either, A, you have a handful of people who are really smart, and they go crazy with it, and they create their own thing, or you have a bunch of people who are looking at it going, “Okay, came up with some ideas, but I still have to do my work.” What you end up with is there’s no standard. There’s no flag running up the hill to say, “Everybody follow me. Let’s go do it this way.” So, it required both the yes, we had to make sure that the teams were bought into using AI, but we also had to have a standardized way of approaching how we deploy AI. And that brought us to the question of do we buy or do we build? And because there were so many different parts of what kinds of functionality we needed, it wasn’t the same answer for every one of those needs. So in some cases, we have a tool, we have a partner, they already have AI integrated into their platform, let’s go see how we can use that. In other cases, and I’ll give you an example, in the case of content generation, that is where we started with our AI journey about a year ago. We sat down and started interviewing and reviewing all of the different providers who can do content generation. Every one of them had a different approach to content development, content generation, which were all very good, and they attempt to make sure that they are covering as much of the marketplace as possible. And so sometimes when you buy that, you end up with features maybe that you don’t need, and you also have to still go through the process of integrating those platforms into your security posture. So us being a connectivity provider for governments, for major corporations, enterprise carrier grade, we have a very, very strict and strong security policy, which means that when we bring new vendors on, it takes a lot of time and a lot of effort and a lot of back and forth. And so what we found in certain cases, it was actually better for us and more beneficial for us to build the actual platforms that we needed for that particular use case. But like I said before, in other situations, we found that there was a partner who we had who already had AI integrated into their platform, and so they were already part of our security posture. They were already inside of our ecosystem. So the question of build versus buy really had to do with time, had to do with return, and it had to do with the security measures that we had to put in place. RR: Thinking about in addition to those factors, when you’re evaluating these things that you outlined, time, potential cost, security, how are you kind of doing that ROI math to say one is going to be better than the other? CS: There’s several different parts of that. And like I mentioned, we wanted to make sure that we were following our AI strategy foundation that said, we don’t want to introduce more and more vulnerable access points. And so it’s important for us to make sure that we are all coming together with everyone across the Cox leadership team according to who are the vendors that we feel the safest with, that we can go set up and make sure that we are pulling together the best of the breeds. The assessment, like I mentioned before, is what is the value that we’re returning to the business in terms of revenue generation, new customers, cost savings in terms of not necessarily just reducing people’s time, but redeploying people to doing other important tasks. And then what are the things that we are doing that help us to keep the system all working together? So, revenue generation, cost deferment, and then keeping a cohesive connection between all of the different platforms. So some of the things that we looked at from our comparing vendors versus doing DIY, is there a maintenance tail that goes in this? So if we build it, what does that look like in 18 months? How much more people do we have to have to support it? Governance and observability, do we have the permissions, the versioning, the audit trail, all of the parts for discovering what is needed and then able to see it and observe it as we go? Interoperability, as I mentioned before, really important between different platforms that we have, that those APIs and MCPs all work together. And then whose roadmap is this? Is this our roadmap? Is this the IT roadmap? Is this the vendor’s roadmap? If we know where we need to go, is there anything that’s getting in our way of being able to get there? And then of course, obviously the speed to value against the cost of being wrong. RR: And so hearing you outline this very comprehensive list of considerations, you can start to understand why it starts to feel complicated and really hard to tackle. To your point, it’s been a year of figuring it out since you started developing that very first use case. I’d like to go into a little bit of detail about the evaluation piece and deciding what vendors you felt safe with, that you were excited to partner with and continue to either use or build upon as you’re developing your AI strategy in alignment with your business transformation. One of those that you landed on was using Highspot’s MCP server to support some of the workflows you wanted to spin up. How did you make that decision and why did that feel like the way to go? CS: Well, as I had mentioned before, as we had gone through our history of, here’s a library of a whole bunch of stuff and everybody’s trying to find the right item, and it just was such a headache to make sure that we were always getting the right information to the right customers at the right time. And not only that, but we had no real clear feedback about how it was performing. And so at that time, which I believe was in the 2015 to 2017 timeframe, is when we had first started our relationship with Highspot to help us better catalog the library, make it more searchable and usable and referenceable for the sellers to be able to share information and track the information, make sure that it was the most relevant and recent, and then help us to understand what’s working and not working. So all of that was already in place before we even started the AI conversation. And so as we were doing our work around our go-to-market roadmap, we started with content because it was probably the easiest place for us to use AI to generate content, and that looked like a two-layered approach. We had what we called a knowledge base, which is formally putting into AI rules that can be read by AI around all of our standards for brand, for legal, for segment definition, for product information, for pricing and promotion information, industries, verticals. All of that was put at this knowledge base foundation layer. And then we built the content generation engine on top of that, where each of the agents within that tool would go find what it is that the marketer was asking to do, compare it against all the information in the knowledge base, the brand standards, all of those good things, and then produce the content piece that the marketer was asking for using that foundation layer. However, once we got that moving and going, we realized that that level of personalization for marketing could be even more valuable and even more specific when used by a seller. But in order for that to work properly, the seller had to have access to a large range of information all at the same time, including any of the buying signals or online signals that we had through some of our lead generation partners, any of our information that we have within our own systems, like when was the last time they called into billing or when was the last time that they had an outage or what is their general sentiment that the customer has right now. And then all of the information about their current services, their current products, all the things that are going on in their world. But then once we have all of that information, we have propensity to buy, propensity to churn, propensity all these modeling, now we need to be able to talk to them and provide a recommendation to the seller that says, “Here’s what we recommend you use, what you should say, how you should set it up.” And all of that was inside of Highspot. And so we realized again, we could look at this and say, “Are we going to go buy a new platform? Are we going to use a platform we already have or are we going to go build something new?” And obviously when we looked at the Highspot platform, the MCP servers, and the way that it was laid out and set up already, we knew that that was the right path to go. So what we had started with was the content engine, then we went into a sales enablement engine, and as part of that sales enablement engine, the only way for it to work properly was for us to bring in the Highspot MCP service. RR: And how has that been working so far for your sellers? As you’ve rolled this out, how has it been used? Any anecdotal feedback you’ve heard? CS: It’s pretty funny because we have done multiple rollouts of sales enablement platforms over the years, and as anyone who’s ever tried to roll out new sales items and new sales tools will say, it takes time, it takes consistency, messaging over and over. But in this particular case, when we went out and did our roadshow with all of the sellers and sat down and showed them how the new tool worked, there were so many positive responses, and the adoption was much faster than most of our previous releases of other types of products. And I think that the reason why is because it was bringing together all of those pieces of information that I mentioned before and bringing in the Highspot information that they were already very familiar with. And in our world, we call it the sales asset manager, SAM. And so they were very familiar with SAM and then this new tool with the AI capabilities built into it. Now it’s specifically just telling them, “Here’s what you should do. Here’s the way to lay it out, and here’s all the content to talk to the customer about in what order.” And it took a lot of the burden off of them to research, go find a piece, start to build a story in their head, try to build a deck, and then think about what are they going to share with them in what order. So it’s been a huge benefit to the sellers. They’ve loved it. RR: Yeah, that’s such a strong signal when adoption doesn’t feel like a push and more of a grab. Curious if there are any other AI or agentic connectors that you’re pairing with Highspot in another AI application that you think would be interesting to share? CS: We have basically six different programs or parts of our roadmap, and we’re calling them AI modules, and then they work together in different components for different functions that need to be done. So as I mentioned, we have the knowledge base that is the base. Then we have the content creation tool, which we call CAMI. So it’s Content Automation Marketing Intelligence, and that has everything that is needed to produce and create new pieces of content, and then those content pieces are either generated in emails or things like that. A lot of them actually are put into the Highspot tool. And then we have what we call SAMI, which is the Sales Automation Marketing Intelligence, and that is the tool that integrates directly with Highspot to make the recommendations to the seller based off of all of the other information, the 360 view of the customer. We also have what’s called Livia, which is the Lead Validation and Enrichment. The tool uses all of these multiple different access points and different vendors to pull information about that particular contact to validate that it’s accurate, so that by the time it gets to the seller and they’re going to go do a pitch, they have a lot more confidence that who they’re talking to, the business, and it’s at the right address, and prevents them from wasting time. And then, of course, Highspot is such a critical part of how that story all comes together because it’s capturing all the content that’s being created by CAMI, and then the AI that comes from Highspot is infusing into the SAMI tool that the sellers are using. It’s an interesting thing because somebody might say, “Well, you’re not really using Highspot, you’re using SAMI.” And the reality is, well, yes, I am using Highspot because Highspot is feeding all of that into the SAMI tool. There’s a whole bunch of other stuff we add into that for flavoring, all of the information about the customer so that the seller has a 360 view, but that just sets it up. The what do you do next is what’s coming out of Highspot. The next phase of this that we’re going to is a fully agentic approach to our marketing and sales engine. And what that means is that today, most of the work that’s being done is a marketer who is saying, “Here’s what I need to go get done. I’m going to use AI to help me go do it.” We’re going to flip that script, and we’re going to say, the agents that we create are going to do the work, and the marketers are going to instruct the agents on how to do that work properly and watch it and govern it. That will then accelerate for the sellers as well. RR: We’ve heard a little bit about what’s been built in the last year, but it’s, again, to your point, crazy that that’s one year of building, thinking, strategizing, and it’s come to this point. When you look across all of that, what has changed for your sellers and for the business? CS: Well, I would say the first thing is, is that sellers are now able to focus on what they’re really good at. What I mean by that is their confidence is shifted to focus on outcomes and value. They are now able to build trust and provide value, which is honestly what all of our customers, especially our business owners and decision makers are looking for. And then for the marketers, it’s no longer about building a queue, trying to figure out what is the message that’s going to hit the most people with the most response. This idea of efficiency for media or efficiency for marketing materials. It’s like, what is the one message I can send to a million people and have the most response? Well, now you actually can flip that on its ear and say, “I’m going to personalize it at scale.” So that is super exciting. And then the last thing that I would say is that consistency became structural. The same knowledge base, the same rules across every surface, making sure that our content is clean, correct, built on the same policies and rules, but is personalized. Doing those two things at the same time is very tricky, and being able to do it with AI is the only way we could get there. RR: Curious if you’ve seen any sort of measurable returns. CS: Our lead accuracy, like I mentioned before, moving from that 13 to 18% all the way up to the 95th percentile. We have campaign speed to market of improvement of 55%, meaning the amount of time that it takes us to get to market is cut in half. The marketing content teams are 40% more productive, which means they’ve been able to redeploy their time for 40% of the time that they spend at work on other projects, which is amazing. Our conversion rates are up, our driving net new revenue is up, and we have seen material improvement in click-through rates and conversion rates when we are more specific and personalized to the audience. So Gartner was right. Yay. So that’s been really good. And I would say that part of the reason why I think that, at least for part of what we did, doing it as a build ourselves was wise, is because we learned so much by going through the process of just banging our shins on the corners and running into cabinet doors that were open, and we’re just like, “Oh, wow, that was, I did not see that.” So it’s been a huge learning process, a very, very intense learning process, but we’ve all had a really good sense of humor and amusement and just, we are having a ton of fun. RR: And I think that’s one of the more encouraging things to hear. Is that nobody starts perfect, and you just have to build your way up to good. And once you get there, you start to see again, like those measurable improvements. But it is a process. So I guess the message there is stick with it. Which I think kind of feeds into that last question I have for you, which is for anybody who is running into this question, hitting their shins on all of these problems, how would you recommend they approach the question of building, buying, blending some things together when they’re thinking about their AI investments? CS: Well, I would say the first thing is you have to look in the mirror and be real with yourself and say, “Is my processes and workflows working? If I blew up my entire go-to-market, I blew up all my processes, what would it look like?” And don’t start with a tool. Start from a place of what would serve me best. The other part of it that I would say that Highspot did really well is because of the MCP product, I was able to look at it as how am I using this from a plumbing perspective, not just a judgment perspective. And what that means is that it worked well with the strategy and the AI strict rules that we had built for ourselves. Highspot, kudos to Highspot, built a platform that is trusted and that works well with all of the other components that we had flying around, whether it was Salesforce or AWS or even our Accenture development team being able to use the components and pieces to connect to the whole ecosystem. Then the other thing I would say is that even though we’ve been doing this for a year, a year is like eons in AI’s time. It was every other week there was something that changed, something new, something shifted. So you have to go into it with this idea of you have to prepare yourself that this is how I set it up now, but I might have to change it tomorrow, and just be okay with that. So my answer for build or buy, my answer is both. Build the things that make sense for you and where you have the resources and when it’s the right fit. But definitely buy when you are in a partnership or when you have someone that you already know that you can trust. RR: Very pragmatic. That’s kind of the only way to do it. One thing I’ll say, I know I am walking away inspired, and I can imagine our audience is going to as well. So Cody, thank you for the time. I really, really appreciate it. It’s been so wonderful to hear a little bit more about what you’re building. CS: No, I love it. And the reason why this is great for me is that it forces me to think back on this journey that we’ve been on for the last year and really consider what is it that has brought us to where we are, what are the things we’ve learned, and then, maybe how are my bruises doing? RR: Well, thank you for the time again. And to our audience, thank you for listening to this episode of the Win/Win Podcast. Be sure to tune in next time for more insights on how you can maximize go-to-market success with Highspot.

What happened to emo between the 2000s mainstream boom and the resurgence we're experiencing today? Andrew Sacher joins Matt on OurSpace to discuss his new book, Emo Revival, which documents the fourth wave of emo and the underground community that helped keep the genre alive. Having covered the scene for Brooklyn Vegan as it was unfolding, Andrew brings a unique perspective to the story of bands like Modern Baseball, Title Fight, Snowing, Algernon Cadwallader, Joyce Manor, Foxing, Citizen, The Menzingers, The Wonder Years and more. Andrew and Matt discuss why fourth-wave emo has sometimes felt like the genre's "forgotten wave," how bands that once played constantly for a few dollars have become holy grails for younger fans, and whether the success of today's emo scene is finally giving these bands their flowers. They also dive into the DIY community that made the emo revival possible, why the suburbs seem to be fertile ground for emo bands, whether bands lose something when they graduate from basements to arenas, the changing idea of "selling out," and why Andrew believes this movement was about community as much as it was about a particular style of music. Plus, they look back at the role MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr played in building the fourth wave, how the internet has changed regional music scenes, and why today's fifth wave of emo might actually be an extension of what the fourth wave started.

In Oakland on any given weekend in the early 2000s there might've been be a punk show in an old Victorian happening down the block from a warehouse rave while, at the same time, a bunch of burners were doing pyrotechnics in an old factory and a few blocks away, experimental noise musicians were making bizarre sounds in an abandoned train station within spitting distance of hardcore kids moshing under a freeway overpass while the nearest intersection was being taken over by a sideshow blasting hyphy. It was raw, unpermitted, cheap, and people weren't doing it to get rich or famous.  There was cross-pollination, collaboration and confrontation. It could be wild and dangerous, problematic and annoying… it could be whatever you wanted it to be because it wasn't being sold to us from the outside, we were making it happen ourselves. For some folks, these overlapping DIY scenes were all about art, music, and building community. For others, it looked like gentrification, a wave of hipsters setting the stage for rising rents.   Inspired by Jessalyn Aaland's article in the Oakland Review of Books, “Please do not hang out in the street: Oakland DIY music spaces of the early 21st century,” the Oakland Underground miniseries will explore why there was such a big explosion of underground activity happening here during this particular era – and how things have changed. This episode features interviews with Aaland, an artist and publisher of Current Editions, as well as Heather Freinkel (aka Heather Blotto), a musician and photographer who organized countless shows and cultural events at DIY spaces like Dead Rat Beach and Unimatrix Zero. This episode features music from High Castle, Ettrick, Vholtz, Circuit, Your Pest Band, and Eats Tapes. To see photos and links related to this episode, visit: https://eastbayyesterday.com/episodes/no-ones-trying-to-get-famous/ Don't forget to follow the East Bay Yesterday Substack for updates on events, boat tours, exhibits, and other local history news: https://eastbayyesterday.substack.com/ Donate to keep this show alive: www.patreon.com/c/eastbayyesterday

In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, Jennifer Anderson, registered dietitian and founder of Kids Eat in Color, shares how parents can help kids develop a healthy relationship with food and their bodies—without shame, restriction, or diet culture. Plus, practical tips for school lunches and making family meals easier and more affordable.Know someone who might appreciate this episode? Share it with them!And if you love the podcast, FREE ways to help us out:1- Rate and review the podcast in your podcast player app2- “Like” this post by tapping the heart icon ♥️3- Share this with a friend. THANK YOU!You can listen wherever you get your podcasts or check out the fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.We talk about:03:00 What does a healthy relationship with food and our bodies look like?05:00 Protecting kids from body image and weight concerns07:00 Boys, body image, and the pressure to look “ripped”09:00 Talking to kids who are worried about being in a bigger body12:00 Helping kids develop a healthy relationship with food14:00 Treats, limits, and avoiding shame or moralizing around food21:00 Can kids really regulate how much they eat?24:00 Neurodivergence, interoception, and mindful eating30:00 Emotional eating, comfort, and food as connection32:00 Simple strategies for packing school lunches37:00 Feeding a family when time, money, and energy are limited39:00 Why simple dinners are good enough42:00 Jennifer's book and pre-order bonuses44:00 The parenting advice Jennifer wishes she'd known earlierResources mentioned in this episode:* Jennifer's Book Feed Them Well: A Guide to Raising Healthy, Confident Eaters* Search “Kids Eat in Color” to find Jennifer on all social media platformsConnect with Sarah Rosensweet:* Instagram* Facebook Group* YouTube* Website* Join us on Substack* Newsletter* Book a short consult or coaching session callxx Sarah and CoreyYour peaceful parenting team- click here for a free short consult or a coaching sessionVisit our website for free resources, podcast, coaching, membership and more!>> Please support us!!! Please consider becoming a supporter to help support our free content, including The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, our free parenting support Facebook group, and our weekly parenting emails, “Weekend Reflections” and “Weekend Support” - plus our Flourish With Your Complex Child Summit (coming back in the fall for the 3rd year!) All of this free support for you takes a lot of time and energy from me and my team. If it has been helpful or meaningful for you, your support would help us to continue to provide support for free, for you and for others.In addition to knowing you are supporting our mission to support parents and children, you get the podcast ad free and access to a monthly ‘ask me anything' session.Sarah: Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast. Today's guest is Jennifer Anderson, nutritionist and founder of Kids Eat in Color. Jennifer has a new book coming out all about helping kids develop a good relationship with food and with their bodies. That's what we're talking about in today's episode.Along the way, we also touched on some great tips for packing school lunches and making meals easier and more affordable. There's so much conflicting information out there about feeding kids, and with their physical and mental health at risk, knowing what to do can be very stressful for parents. I love Jennifer's common-sense and relaxed approach to eating and feeding, and I hope you do as well.If you like this episode, please share it with a friend so more parents can learn about peaceful parenting. If you're a fan of the podcast, you can help us out not only by sharing it, but by leaving a review and a five-star rating in your podcast player app. While you're there, don't forget to follow the show so you don't miss an episode. If you'd like to support us even more, you can become a supporter on Substack to help us offset the cost of making the show. We'll put a link in the show notes.Okay, let's meet Jennifer.Hey, Jennifer. Welcome back to the podcast. This is your second time with us.Jennifer: Thank you so much for having me.Sarah: Yeah, I'm so excited. You have a new book coming out, so maybe you could introduce yourself and then tell us about your new book, which is available for pre-order and coming out in September. We will link to that in the show notes, but tell us a little bit about who you are and about your new book.Jennifer: Sure. I'm a registered dietitian. I have two kids who have not been easy to feed, and I'm the founder of Kids Eat in Color and the CEO of Better Bites. I'm so excited to have this book coming out. It's called Feed Them Well: A Guide to Raising Healthy, Confident Eaters for Life. I just cannot wait for parents to have this resource.Sarah: Amazing. You were telling me before we started that the focus of your book is having kids have a healthy relationship not only with food, but with their bodies. Maybe we could start out by talking about—obviously, this could be a very long conversation—but some of the top things you've found that are really helpful, sort of dos and don'ts, in terms of having kids have that healthy relationship with food.And also, what do you mean when you talk about a healthy relationship with their bodies? Maybe that's a two-part question.Jennifer: Yeah. I love that you framed it as a two-part question, because it is kind of a two-part question, but I feel like that's only because in English we don't have a way to describe the fact that these things are deeply connected in us.When I think about a healthy relationship with food, I want to make sure kids know how to take care of their bodies. They know what a balanced diet looks like. They're able to enjoy food, whatever kind of food it is. And also, we want kids to be able to really appreciate and live in their bodies, experience life through their bodies, and not have this deep what's called internalized weight bias, where thin is the ideal. Thin is what everybody is shooting for. You should either be worried about how thin you are or trying to get thinner. That is a soul-sucking way of living when we're so focused on weight and diet culture.So we want to give kids another option. We want to give kids the ability to really appreciate their bodies, and yet we also want to do so in a way that they're still able to care about the health of their bodies in a way that's healthy, as opposed to just diet culture.What I call this is embodied independence, where kids are independent. They know all the things they need to do, and they're also embodied. They're living in and experiencing their bodies.When we think about what we want to do and what we want to not do, we want to model what we want kids to do, ideally, and this is in every single area of parenting, including eating. That's where the independence comes from. We're modeling, and we're also providing the boundaries and opportunities for them.I always tell parents, “You are in charge of your restaurant at home. You're the head chef. You're going to set when your restaurant hours are, you're going to set what's on the menu, you're going to set all these things.” As you're doing that, you are teaching your child what is part of a healthy lifestyle.On the other side, we're thinking about their relationship with their body. We want to minimize internalized weight bias, and that means we're not discussing body sizes or body shapes. We're not weighing ourselves in front of our kids. One of the most powerful things you can do as a parent is to not discuss your body size or shape and not discuss any weight-loss attempts at any point, if that's something you ever engage in. Those two things are huge risk factors for disordered eating and eating disorders. If we could just not do that, that would actually be huge.Sarah: I feel like that's actually a real gift my mother gave me. She never talked about her weight or diets or her body, really, at all. And I feel like I'm one of the few people I know who—I'll say at least until perimenopause recently—had no body-image issues for my whole adult life. I think that really did stem from being raised without that being a thing that people were talking about.Jennifer: Yeah, absolutely. It was discussed in the groups that I grew up in. At the same time, my parents were like, “No, you are not allowed to look at beauty magazines or teen magazines.” I don't remember really pushing back on that as a teenager, but now I am so grateful because, whether it's social media now or teen magazines or so many other things, so many of them are focused on body image: how thin you are, how to get thin, how to stay thin, all this stuff. And that stuff is just toxic.Sarah: Yeah, and it used to just be for girls, right? And now boys are—I have so many clients who've said their son wants a six-pack, and they're eight or nine years old and won't take off their shirt to go swimming.Jennifer: My kids are right now into parkour, and it's interesting to watch because we've been very careful about what we've said about them. They've recently started talking about six-packs and strong cores and all that because, in reality, my son is like, “I need a stronger core because that will help me flip better.” And he's 100% right that his core strength is going to determine his success in this sport in a lot of ways.At the same time, getting ripped is not the phrasing that I would really prefer because so much of that is focused on image, right? And yet this is what they're hearing. My kids are 11 and 13, but it really started last year, when they were 10 and 12, where they're just kind of being exposed to these ideas of fitness.So when we think about kids understanding this, yeah, we have to have them understand their physical fitness, and then we also have to help them understand that it's not about looks. It is about how we feel. It's about what we can do. It's about how we can serve people. It's about so much more than just how we look.So as I think about my kids getting ready to do these things and doing these things, I'm going to continue to focus on, “This will help you flip,” not, “This will help you look ripped.”Sarah: Talk a little bit more about some of the dos and don'ts about the healthy relationship. We've sort of focused on our bodies. Actually, you know what? Before you do, I want to ask you about something else first, so we'll stay on that for another second.If you have a child who is in a bigger body and they're concerned to obsessed about being in a bigger body and feeling like that's, quote, “bad,” how do you talk to them about that?Jennifer: So I think the first thing is—and I have a framework in the book that, even though it's kind of cheesy, I call the LOVE framework—we want to listen. We really want to listen, and then we want to validate. Because if a kid is coming to us and saying, “I'm fat. I want to lose weight,” one, we don't really know what they mean by that. We don't know where that came from. Are they being teased? Did they hear something? Are their friends all trying to lose weight? We have to listen and understand.And then we have to say, “Yeah, you feel like you want to lose weight. You're feeling bad right now. You're telling me that your body is rounder than your friends'.” As we validate, we want to use neutral, factual language. If they're describing their body in negative terms, we don't want to say, “Oh no, you're wrong,” because that's not right, and it's also not bad to be in a bigger body. And so if we're like, “Oh, no, no, no, you're not fat,” that's not helpful because we're just invalidating their whole experience, and we're also reinforcing the idea that fat is bad.Instead, we want to be like, “Oh yeah, you're right. I've noticed that in our family, we all have softer tummies. We all have rounder tummies.” When we're using basic descriptive language that's not negative, we help them reinterpret their body in a way that is more neutral, where we can then eventually move away from this judgment of body size and shape to an acceptance of body size and shape, where that's just not part of what we're talking about. It's just like, “Oh, it's neutral. This is just a body,” and let's move on to something more interesting.And then, after we've listened and validated, we really want to see if there's something that we need to take action on. We're saying, “Okay, do I need to help my child learn coping skills for being bullied? Do I need to talk to the school? Do I need to talk to their friend's parents? What is my role now in figuring out what needs to happen? Is my child showing signs of having disordered eating? Have they put themselves on a diet?”Those are the sorts of things where you want to take it seriously. If they're restricting themselves from different foods or they're doing things to try to change the size of their body, then is the time to involve a professional. Whether it's a counselor, an eating disorder therapist, their doctor, whoever it is, that is the time. I know it's hard when we think, “Oh my gosh, my kid potentially has disordered eating or an eating disorder.” That can fill parents with a lot of guilt and fear and shame and all that sort of thing. Don't let that stop you from getting your child help as soon as possible.Sarah: Yeah, this is not a DIY project.Jennifer: Yeah, it's not. Now, of course, you can be DIY-ing it all the way up to that point, but at the point where you see a big red flag, go bring somebody else in.Sarah: So what are some tips for helping kids have a healthy relationship with food?Jennifer: I love to talk about food factually, the same way we would talk about bodies. It's like, “Oh, these are the names of foods. They're hard, they're crunchy, they're savory, they're sweet, they're delicious,” as opposed to this sort of, “These are healthy foods, and these are not healthy foods.”It adds a level of complication that is too simple and also contributes to a very rigid perspective of food and eating. Potentially, that can even leak over into how people think of their bodies.Sarah: Yeah, because it just occurred to me—I was reflecting before, when I was thinking of questions to ask you—that I do know someone who talks to their child about, “We have to eat healthy food before we eat the unhealthy food.” And why would you ever want to tell your child that you're giving them something unhealthy anyway? “Have this dangerous toy.” You know?Jennifer: Yeah. “Don't play with the dangerous toy until you've played with the safe toy.” I completely agree with that, and I think it comes from a very well-meaning place where, again, we're wanting to pass on this information that empowers kids to nurture their bodies for the rest of their life.So it's all coming from a good place. We just have to think that kids will internalize this sort of, “Wait a second. You're giving me all this healthy food, but then we have this unhealthy food. Why are you giving me unhealthy food? And also, am I bad if I eat this unhealthy food? Should I feel guilty? Should I feel afraid of it?” There are a lot of things that kids can take from these conversations.Now, it doesn't mean that if you're using this language, you have ruined your child or you have given your child an eating disorder. I am telling you, kids are not that easy to ruin. And you can give them new skills, though, which is just to understand every food does something different in your body, and we can listen to our body to find out what's right for us. Because let's say you have an allergy. Yeah, there are some foods that are truly unhealthy. You're going to have a really bad reaction. And there are also foods where, if you eat too much of them—and this is truly just about every food, including water—if you eat too much of it, you can also become unhealthy.You can't just live on broccoli. I promise you. That's not healthy. And we see this in people who become really obsessed with healthy eating. They become very unhealthy. They're unable to maintain their physical and mental health and social health. It affects all their relationships. So I like to get away from this unhealthy/healthy thinking.And it is so healthy to be able to sit down and enjoy a bowl of ice cream. We're visiting my parents right now, and my two kids had these big bowls of ice cream, and also the two baby cousins, who are two and not even quite one yet, my mom was giving them ice cream too. I was like, “This is such a grandma move right now.”But here they are, they're all together enjoying their ice cream, and the two-year-old had sprinkles for the first time. It was just this really amazing bonding moment. I don't want my kids, in the back of their heads, to think, “Oh my gosh, I shouldn't have eaten that much ice cream,” or, “I shouldn't have eaten that ice cream,” or, “That was unhealthy for me.” I just don't want that for them.Sarah: Yeah. You want to enjoy the food that you're eating, no matter what the food is. So how do you talk about it then? I've heard some people say “sometimes food,” like, “This is food that we don't eat every day.” How do you talk about or differentiate?Jennifer: You can model that, and I like to do what's called predictable parenting, where you're just going to be really consistent about whatever you're going to do, and you're going to help your kid get in touch with their hunger and fullness cues. So you're going to serve them meals, but you're also going to be like, “Sorry, you can't have a snack right now because dinner's in 30 minutes.”You're going to have a really predictable routine of meals, and that has the purpose of developing their embodiment, which is actually being able to tune in and listen: What is going on inside of my body? What does it need? How do I respond to it? One thing you do is just have an eating routine. That actually goes a really long way in helping kids have a good relationship with food.Then you want to talk about food neutrally, and you want to model what a balanced diet looks like. If you really own your role as the restaurant owner, you're not going to be making multiple meals. You're going to be making one meal for the family, in most cases, and you're always going to make sure there's at least one food on there that your child's comfortable with. It doesn't have to be their absolute favorite food, but it's got to be something that they're comfortable with.Sarah: Something they'll eat.Jennifer: Yeah, something they'll eat, in most cases. Although kids are eating eggs several times a week for their whole life, and then one day my son's like, “I don't like eggs. I've never liked eggs.” I'm like, “That's just so not true.” So you never know, which is why I say something they're comfortable with, something that they almost always eat.Then you can model what a balanced diet looks like. You're probably not going to serve candy for meals. Maybe you add a little candy onto a meal or snack, and that's a strategy people often use, and that's fine. But you're going to show that every single meal—or most meals—has a fruit or a vegetable. I like to think of it in terms of a protein food that also has fat, an energy food, which is a carbohydrate-rich source, and then also color, which is fruits and/or vegetables. That's kind of how I think of a balanced meal.We want to model that for kids for most of their meals and most of their snacks. They will absorb what that means. And so without saying anything, without being like, “Oh, this is a sometimes food. This is an always food,” you're going to show them that it's only there sometimes.Sarah: Right.Jennifer: And you're also going to show them that other foods are there all the time. Now, as kids go out, they're going to get hyped up on candy and sweets. It's not like these are going to be, quote, “neutral foods.” They're not. Maybe when they're in preschool, but by the time they're six and in school, with friends and parties, they know that these other foods are different. They know.On social media, I've heard, “Oh, we can never restrict kids. We can never say anything that suggests they're different.” I'm sorry. Hyper-palatable food—meaning candy, things with added sodium and sugar and fat—they are so different.Sarah: Right. Your brain knows they're different.Jennifer: Yeah. The kids know they're different. So we don't have to hide the fact that we know they're different. We can also set some limits, but we just want to be consistent about them. Like, “Oh, you can have two cookies.” Sometimes we might want to give kids more cookies. You might even say, “Hey, I want my kid to be able to choose how many cookies they have.” That's all totally fine, and it's all within the bounds of something that's going to help kids have a healthy relationship with food and their bodies.Sarah: I mean, I guess it depends, too, on the access, right? Like you were saying, you're the executive chef of your restaurant. What we did, which I think worked pretty well, was we only occasionally had—I'd buy ice cream once in a while, and we'd eat it until it was gone. Or we'd have chips once in a while, or we'd make cookies once in a while. They sort of had, not 100% free access, but everybody would eat it, and then it would be gone, and then we wouldn't have that stuff in the house anymore.But the funny thing is—I mentioned to you before that two out of my three kids have been moved out of the house for a while—and I figure now my 19-year-old, I can buy chips and she can decide to eat them or not. So they come home and they're like, “When did we become a chips household?” I feel like at a certain point you can just have in your house whatever you want and your kids are adults. But it's hilarious because they're like, “And bacon? When did you start buying bacon regularly?”Jennifer: Right. And I think ultimately they're going to grow up. They're going to decide what they have in their house, and you're going to decide what's in your house. We just want to kind of get them to that point where they can enjoy all foods without any guilt.Like, yeah, you made cookies and you enjoyed them together, and then that was that, and then you didn't have them around for a while. You weren't sitting there saying, “Oh, well, cookies are bad for you, and so we only have them sometimes.” No, cookies aren't bad for you. They're only bad for you if you're eating so many cookies that it's pushing out all the other food that you need.Sarah: Yeah. So that reminds me of why I brought that up, which was that you can't really ask kids to self-regulate, in my opinion—tell me what you think—if that food is available all the time in your house. Most kids, I think, would have cookies all the time if the cookies were just freely available 24/7. So I don't know. Tell me what you think about that.Jennifer: Yeah, this is a great question. If you go on social media these days, you'll see people who are like, “Kids can totally regulate. Kids know when they're hungry and full. Kids can listen to their hunger and fullness cues.” After doing so much research for this book and also having parented—I don't have as much experience as you, but I'm at 13 years—I agree some kids can regulate, but a lot of kids cannot.And here's the reason. It's because, again, that hyper-palatable food has a different effect on their brain than other foods. And if it was an ultra-processed food, meaning it's a food that was kind of created in a factory or the recipe was designed by a multinational snack corporation, they have done so much research to find out the exact recipe that's going to make people eat the most of it, override their hunger and fullness cues, and therefore buy more of it.Sarah: Or even their enjoyment cues. Like people eating things and eating, and they're not even really enjoying it anymore.Jennifer: They are overriding their body, and I think it's unfair to ask children to try to regulate that and to put that on them. Again, some kids are good at this, and if that's one of your kids and that's just how they work, fine. That's fine. You don't have to set limits.The key, whether we're letting kids eat as much as they want or we're setting limits, isn't whether we're setting limits or not. It's how we're setting the limits. So if I want to set a limit on cookies, what I want to say is, “We're all having two cookies today,” and that's it. I'm not saying, “Because it's a sometimes food,” or, “Because it's bad for you,” or, “Because if you eat too much you're going to gain weight,” or, “Because you don't have self-control.” I'm not saying any of those things.What the research has shown, and what's just been observed, is that kids who have a higher weight hear more of these qualifications from their parents: “Because of this,” “Because you...” “Because that's just too much.” That part is where you're adding on guilt, shame, and worry, and that's what we want to avoid. So when we just say, “Hey, everybody's having two cookies,” that's just the facts. I'm going to enforce it, but I'm not adding anything to it. It's in the addition that we run across problems.Sarah: Right. More like moralizing. That makes so much sense. I like how you said some kids can regulate and some kids can't, in terms of the amount that they're eating and the kinds of food that they're eating, because I really did follow all of that sort of intuitive feeding advice for kids. And I did have one child who really had a hard time regulating whether they'd eaten enough, or eating past the point of fullness, and the things that they wanted to eat.It wasn't until I discovered through some research the connection between ADHD and feeding and found that there are some kids where you can sort of let them more intuitively know what their body needs and wants, and other kids you have to teach mindful eating, which is what we found really solved the issue. Because I was afraid to say anything, you know, because I didn't want to make this kid feel bad about themselves or their body. But as soon as we had a way to talk about it that was about mindfulness rather than that sort of intuitiveness—I don't know if you see those two things as different, but that's sort of how I came to think about it.Jennifer: Yeah. So here's the thing with intuitive eating. It was a model, and it's the name of a book. It was a model designed for adults—a very specific group of women, in fact—to come out of diet culture and to get back in touch with their bodies. Of course, that's a huge simplification, but it was never designed for children.And you may have heard of the division of responsibility in child feeding. That was also designed by a dietitian and eating disorder therapist for the purpose of helping private-practice eating disorder clients—children. But the thing is, that's a very specific group of people in both cases. So to take a model that was designed for a specific group and now say this is applicable to all children, I don't think is fair. It's not evidence-based, and it's something that I've really had to do a lot of thinking about over the past two years.Also, seeing so many kids grow up over the years and helping so many families in the Better Bites programs and things, I've been thinking, yeah, this model of always letting your child decide how much to eat, or how much to eat of what foods, actually is not great for many kids.Sarah: Yeah, it wasn't great for one of mine.Jennifer: Neurodivergent kids especially, whether it's ADHD or autism or something else, sometimes don't have as strong of a sense of interoception. And this is true even of some neurotypical kids.Sarah: Yeah.Jennifer: So the interoceptive sense is the ability to tell: Am I hungry? Am I full? Do I have to go to the bathroom? Am I hot? What is going on inside of my body, and do I know how to respond to it? Do I know how to make sense of that experience?Some people describe being anxious as being very, very hot. Like, what do you do if you're very, very hot? They have to learn over time, “Oh, that also means I'm anxious. Therefore something is worrying me. Therefore I need to address the thing.”So for a lot of kids, we have to walk them through that experience. One of the most powerful ways we can do that is by narrating our internal experience, where we're saying, “Oh, I'm cold. You see these goosebumps on my arm? That's telling me I'm cold, and I'm kind of shivering. I'm going to put on something else. Oh, that makes me feel warm.”Or, “I hear my stomach grumbling, and I feel empty, and I feel kind of grumpy. That's telling me I'm hungry, and so I'm going to plan to eat a snack. I have snack in 15 minutes,” or, “It's time for a snack right now.” And then as I'm sitting at the table, saying, “Oh, you know, I'm starting to feel my tummy fill up.” At some point you're like, “Ah, I'm feeling full now. I'm going to stop eating.”But like you're saying, for some kids, we actually have to teach them explicitly. Some of these kids are going to have a harder time potty training. They may have a harder time learning a lot of things and how to respond to their body because they have to be taught explicitly.Fortunately or unfortunately, that kind of falls to us to help them because we're the ones who are with them so much of the time, and they're most likely to be relaxed around us and able to learn. The more we can narrate our experiences—although that can be exhausting, I know—the more they can start to make those connections.Sarah: That makes a lot of sense. And I think also the interoception thing that you mentioned is really a big part of it. Then there's also that eating can be very regulating in terms of the chewing action and being able to differentiate hunger from boredom. There are so many things that some people or children just know, and some people or children need to be, as you said, explicitly taught those things.Jennifer: Yeah. It's just something that they don't know, and their body doesn't automatically make those connections. And that's so true, especially with chewing.If you find your child is eating a lot when they're bored or when they're lonely or when they have negative feelings or hard feelings, one of the things you can really fall back on is your eating routine, where you're like, “Okay, we're going to eat our meals at these times. We're going to eat our snacks at these times.” It kind of keeps everybody on the same page in terms of when we're eating.And then it's a little bit harder to say, “Oh, I'm going to use food to help my kids soothe themselves,” because that's really tempting when we know, “Hey, if I just give them a snack, they're going to calm down.” I'm definitely a big fan of occasionally using food as a pick-me-up because what a great tool. We could be feeling bad, and then we can eat something, and all of a sudden we can feel so much better.Sarah: My daughter this morning had to have some blood work done, and she texted me, “The blood work hurt my arm so much. My arm is just killing me, and so I bought myself an almond croissant to feel better.”Jennifer: Ah.Sarah: I said, “Great self-care.”Jennifer: Yes. Great self-care. At the same time, if that's our only tool, then we're in trouble. And so I think we have to kind of help our kids. I'm never down on somebody, or myself, for eating just for the purpose of feeling better or just for the purpose of enjoyment. We think about receiving meals from people in tricky times in our lives, or eating something that someone gives us even when we're not hungry. It can still build connection and be such an uplifting experience.Sarah: Well, and food is so nurturing, too. Again, before we started our recording, I was telling you how my 22- and 25-year-olds, who don't live at home anymore, I really use food as a way to show my care and love for them when they no longer, quote, “need it,” right? Like making them food.Once last year, I made a lasagna and took a picture of it and sent it to them and called it “son bait.”Jennifer: That's right.Sarah: So yeah, food really is nurturing. And I think what I've come to think about it is, as long as you just don't do that all the time, right? Have seconds when you're not hungry because it's your favorite food, as long as you don't do that every single time you eat.Jennifer: Yeah. I think having the ability to be flexible goes so far in our well-being. When we're really inflexible, sometimes our life circumstances call for inflexibility. If we have very tight deadlines for when we can eat and when we can't eat, or maybe we're working through a health issue or something like that where we just really have to be a little bit more mindful of what we're eating, maybe we have a little bit less flexibility.But if we're out of that season, we're in a different time, then we can be more flexible during that time. I think the key is we're not over-moralizing this experience. Instead, we're enjoying it, we're participating in it, and we're learning to connect to real life, not just eating away all of our hard times or avoiding all of our hard emotions or things like that.Sarah: That makes so much sense. Okay, let's shift gears a little bit. I'm talking to you—I know school has already started in some parts of the country, and it's starting in the next few weeks in other parts of the country. And with school comes packed school lunches.Jennifer: Right.Sarah: And I think every parent out there is like, “Oh, I've got to start making lunches again.” So do you have any sort of hot tips for things that you find—are there ways to cut corners to pack lunches that kids will eat, that are healthy and nutritious, and also don't take a ton of time or money to do?Jennifer: Sure. So when I'm packing lunches, first I just kind of start with the same formula, which is a protein food, an energy food—which is what I call a higher-starchy carbohydrate food—and then the color, the fruits or vegetables.If you want to really cut corners, get yourself a lunchbox that only has three containers. That's one of my big tips. A lot of these fancy bento lunches have four, five, six containers of food, and then often people feel pressured to fill it with six different kinds of foods. That's just a lot for you to think about. I have all the different lunchboxes because it's part of my job, and we often send ones that have a few more compartments, but that can be stressful. I've definitely felt that, where I'm like, “Just give me three containers.”Also think, “Is there something that I can use from dinner or another meal that I made earlier in the week in this lunchbox?” The more you can incorporate that, the better. Or, if you can't, see if you can make it during your dinner meal. When you're already in the kitchen, things are already a mess. It might look like a bomb went off in your kitchen, where there's a half-made lunchbox, there's a half-made dinner, but if you're the sort of person who can kind of manage that chaos, then do it then, because then you only have to clean up once. It's already chaos; you're just adding a little bit more chaos.And you can also train your kids to help you, depending on your kids, of course. That can be a way for them to help save time for you. And then also kind of lean into maybe a baby carrot or a cucumber that you just chop, chop, or stuff where you're cutting it up but it doesn't feel that hard for you.I think so much of what's hard and easy—I was kind of talking to my Instagram audience about this recently—is individual. Making meatballs to me is a bridge too far. That just feels so hard and tedious. And a lot of people are like, “Oh my gosh, it feels so easy to me.” So I think a lot of this is what feels hard and what feels easy to you, and kind of run with that. Don't compare your child's lunchbox to everybody else's.If your kid is going to eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich every day, if you can send peanuts, or a sunflower seed butter and jelly sandwich every day, go ahead. Send them with the same lunch every day if they're the kind of kid who just needs the same lunch every day. If your kid needs a different lunch every day, obviously that's a little trickier.But also, if you can say, “Okay, can I use something from dinner?” that can really help. My kids have also learned that they kind of like soup at lunch, and I freeze it in one-cup segments, little portions. They know how to take it out of the freezer, put it in the microwave, heat it up, and put it in the thermos. That's something that I was able to train them to do.So any prep that you can do outside of it, when you're already doing something else, is just going to save you a little time. And then if you can also save time with cleanup by doing it at the same time as dinner, that can be really helpful. We have a whole bunch of under-15-minute lunches in my Everyday Lunches e-book, as well as mix-and-match guides.Sarah: Okay, nice.Jennifer: And they can be really fun. I think engaging your kids, too—finding out what are they going to actually eat, asking them questions. “Does this lunch look okay?” If it comes back uneaten, ask them what was wrong with it so that you can kind of iterate on lunches as well.Sarah: I once accidentally sent a thermos full of hot water with one of my kids to school. I forgot—I think it was probably macaroni and cheese that I was putting in it—and I forgot to put the macaroni and cheese in.Jennifer: Oh my gosh. There are so many times that I've messed up on lunches in one way or another. You do the best you can, you know?Sarah: Yeah. I mentioned before when we were talking about lunches that making food—and I'm somebody who cooks a lot, and I've made a lot of food for 25 or 26 years now with kids—it does take a lot of time and money and energy to make, I'm going to say, “nice food,” whatever that means to you. But the food you feel good about serving your family.If you're short on time, money, energy, or one, two, or three of those things, what's the best use of resources, do you think, for feeding families if you're short on some of that stuff?Jennifer: First, go for frozen fruits and veggies. Just go right there, because that is no compromise whatsoever. It's just a different form of the same food.Sarah: They're often cheaper too, I find. Especially frozen fruit is a lot cheaper than fresh fruit.Jennifer: Yeah. Lean into that first. Also, find some cooking methods that are easy. The other day I put a bunch of chicken thighs in the Crock-Pot and poured some salsa over it. It was delicious at the end of the day. It took me five minutes, if that. I'm trying to think of what I served with it. I think it was leftover rice or something that was already leftover, something I could just quickly heat up in the microwave.I can't remember what we did for veggies, but I could have also added on the side of that just a couple bags of frozen peas, and we would've been good, right? So some bread and some frozen peas. I had a meal that took me maybe 15 minutes to make, very economical. It's really kind of looking for those time-saving prep methods and then saying, “Okay, what can we do?”Sarah: Yeah. One thing I always talk to overwhelmed parents about is trying to just really, really simplify dinner. Coming home, daycare pickup, everyone's tired, blah, blah, blah. And I always have this funny story. Once when I was pregnant with my third, and my other two were two and five, my husband had an out-of-town job for four months, and I was in school full-time.Jennifer: Oh my God.Sarah: It was exhausting. And I would make eggs for dinner a lot.Jennifer: Oh my goodness, yes.Sarah: Eggs and baby carrots and toast were the go-to dinner, to the point where one Saturday morning I said to my sons, “Who wants some fried eggs for breakfast?” And my two-year-old said, “Silly Mommy, fried eggs are for dinner.”Jennifer: I love that. Oh my gosh, we went through years and years and years where at least once a week we had eggs and toast and baby carrots, or some microwave peas or something from the freezer.Canned soup is an okay dinner. There are so many things that I think people are feeling kind of hard on themselves about. Don't listen to other people's rules. What is working for you right now? Go with that.Sarah: Yeah, like pesto pasta and jarred spaghetti sauce and noodles and apple slices. And I think sometimes it's hard for parents, too, because they like to cook and they want to make nice food for themselves, right? But something has to go.Jennifer: Yeah. Something's gotta go, man. Making something nice for yourself—do it when you have a chance, but otherwise it's okay to let that go for now. You'll get it back.That's the other thing. We feel like, “Oh, I don't want to give up this part of myself.” You're not giving it up. You're just saying, “Hey, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to do other things right now, and then at a different stage I will do that again.” I'm actually cooking a lot better now that my kids aren't holding onto my feet and fighting while I'm trying to cook.Well, they still do that, but they're not really getting in the way of cooking. It's so hard to cook with little kids around.Sarah: Totally.Jennifer: I always say I would notoriously let my kids make a huge mess while I was making dinner, and I call it a “time loan.” They're making a huge mess, but I was able to actually get dinner on the table. I got that time, and then, yeah, I'll have to pay it back. I'll have to clean up their mess when they were really little, but it's worth it.And I will also say, if you're having a really hard time budget-wise, but you still have some time to cook, I have a meal plan that's specifically designed to save money. It's all about making the most of the food, using up all leftovers and preventing waste and all that, so that you can really spend significantly less—Sarah: Yeah, I think I saw that a few years ago. We'll link to that. You've had it for a while, right? It's called Affordable Flavors.Yeah, we'll link to that in the show notes. One thing I'm just remembering that we did when my kids were little is there was another family—this woman who had kids around the same age—and we lived a few blocks away. Once a week, we would make double dinner and give it to the other one.Jennifer: I love that.Sarah: Yeah. She was Japanese and a really nice Japanese cook, and my kids actually, to be totally honest, weren't huge fans of her dinners, but my husband and I certainly were.Jennifer: Oh, that's great.Sarah: Yeah. But it was really nice. Once a week, you didn't have to make anything because somebody gave you dinner. And it's not very hard to make double of your own dinner. So if anyone has a neighbor that they could do that with, it was really a nice thing to do.Jennifer: Yeah. That's a great idea.Sarah: Well, thank you so much. Tell us about your book launch. We'll put any links in the show notes, but you told me before that you had some prizes and things for the pre-order.Jennifer: Yeah. So there are a bunch of pre-order bonuses. As soon as you buy the book, you can upload either your receipt or, let's say you requested it from the library, you can upload just proof of that request. I have some printables—how to talk to kids about red foods, orange foods, yellow foods—that are super popular. I usually sell it, but I'm giving that away as a pre-order bonus.There are also mealtime conversation cards coming. There is a live call with my mom that I'm going to be doing that's also recorded, so depending on when you hear this, it's still available. There are also conversations like, what do you say if your kid comes back and says, “I'm fat”? What are some scripts? There are some scripts for that. There's also my bedtime snack chart. There are a lot of tools where you're like, “Okay, I want to make some improvements in different areas.” There are pre-order bonuses that give you tools for almost every area that you could want to apply.And then I'm also doing a really fun book tour where I'm meeting with child feeding and food specialists from all over the United States over time, and I'm going to be posting my interviews online for everybody to see. It's almost like a short-term podcast kind of demo. It's going to be a lot of fun for people to follow along.Sarah: Great. Well, thank you so much for coming on. One last question, which I ask all my guests—and I've asked you this before, so I can go back and compare and see if you answer it the same way—which is: If you could go back in time to your younger parent self, what advice would you give yourself? It can be about anything. It doesn't have to be about food or feeding.Jennifer: Sure. So now that I'm 13 years in, I think the one thing that would've been so helpful for me to know is: It's not my job to make my kid happy. It sounds so simple now, but I'm like, no, it wasn't my job to try to make them stop crying. It was my job to just hold a boundary and be there.And when I stopped, when I just kind of let go of that idea of trying to make them happy, oh my gosh, the weight, the drama—it just went away. It's like, “Oh, it's okay for you to be unhappy. That's you and your feelings over there, and I'm here to support. I'm here for you.” And also, it's not my job to fix that.Sarah: Yeah. Great. Well, thank you so much. Best place for folks to go and find out more about you and what you do?Jennifer: Kids Eat in Color, whether that's kidsincolor.com or on your favorite social media. I'm there.Sarah: All right. Thank you so much, Jennifer.Jennifer: Thank you so much for having me. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sarahrosensweet.substack.com/subscribe

Most people assume divorce means courtrooms, legal battles, and losing control of the outcome, but Karen McMahon knows that's not always true. In this episode of the Journey Beyond Divorce Podcast, Karen sits down with Cary Jacobson, a collaborative divorce attorney, mediator, and child advocate, to break down every path to divorce outside of litigation and help listeners understand which one actually fits their situation. Karen and Cary walk through the full spectrum of options, from do-it-yourself kitchen table agreements and settlement negotiation between attorneys, to mediation, to the collaborative divorce process, where both spouses commit to a team-based approach with collaboratively trained attorneys, financial neutrals, and mental health professionals working together toward resolution. They explain how each option works, who it's best suited for, and the real risks of going the DIY route without legal guidance, especially when children, retirement assets, or property division are involved. The conversation dives deep into what makes collaborative divorce unique, including the participation agreement that requires full transparency and commits both parties to staying out of court, and why Karen believes collaborative divorce can be especially powerful in high-conflict situations, cases involving substance abuse, or divorces involving young children. Karen and Cary also unpack how mediation works, when a consulting attorney should be brought in alongside a mediator, and how power imbalances between spouses can shape which process will actually lead to a fair outcome. Karen closes the conversation with a reminder central to everything Journey Beyond Divorce stands for: every person going through divorce is the CEO of their own case, with the right and responsibility to understand their options, ask questions, and choose the process, whether that's mediation, collaborative divorce, settlement negotiation, or litigation, that will protect their family's future. Cary Jacobson is a collaborative divorce attorney, mediator, and child advocate, and the founder of Jacobson Family Law. Connect with Cary: Email:cary@jacobsonfamilylaw.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jacobsonfamilylaw, Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jacobsonfamilylaw/ Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caryjacobson YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1vZ9kkhd4LPpB1yEqK7U9w Website: https://jacobsonfamilylaw.com/ Resources Mentioned in this Episode: Book a Free Rapid Relief Call: http://rapidreliefcall.com Free Divorce Support Network Gift: https://divorcesupportnetwork.com/jbdpod

Helen shares her inspiring journey of moving from Ukraine to Portugal with just one suitcase and €700, revealing how she navigated Portuguese bureaucracy, learned the language, built a successful creative business, and eventually became a Portuguese citizen in a remarkably short six months. This episode is packed with practical advice for anyone considering moving to Portugal, including insights on the cost of living in Lisbon, renting as a foreigner, integrating into Portuguese culture, and what life is really like for expats in Portugal. Helen's website: diariesbyhelenv.comBook a call with John here- http://www.calendly.com/johnoceansgreen Choose the ExpatsEverywhere intro call and you'll get a free 15 minute call with him to see if you would like to work with him.Wanting to get your mail forwarded to you while abroad? Use World Post: https://worldpost.anytimemailbox.com/...We have two courses to help DIY the D7 visa and the remote worker visa for Portugal. The courses include step-by-step videos, checklists, resources, recommendations, discounts, and more. They break down the timeline and when and how to do things, plus give action items to keep you on task but not be overwhelmed. Check them out here: D7: https://expatseverywhere.thinkific.com & Remote Worker: https://expatseverywhere.thinkific.co... ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

SPONSORS: Don't let your mind get in the way of a good time. Discover your options at https://BlueChew.com Shopify: Turns out you don't need a real job. Build your own business with a free trialat http://shopify.com/bears Head to https://acorns.com/bears or download the Acorns app to get started. New DraftKings customers, sign up with code BEARS spend five bucks to get one hundred fifty in rewards within 14 days, includes all markets. Over at https://dkng.co/bears. For a limited time, our listeners get 50% off FOR LIFE, Free Shipping, AND 3 Free Gifts at Mars Men at http://Mengotomars.com. This week on 2 Bears, 1 Cave, Tom Segura and Bert Kreischer are back in the cave after eight weeks apart, and they open with a full review of The Odyssey, Lupita Nyong'o as Helen of Troy, Matt Damon's rogue Boston accent, and why Jon Bernthal is Hollywood's most legendary napper. From there, Bert unveils his billionaire rebrand (Sabah shoes, LBJ Stetsons, and the top five shoes billionaires wear this fall) before getting real about sobriety, anxiety attacks, and self-diagnosing 12 terminal illnesses in a single month. The Bears also spiral into the movies that blindsided them, Primal Fear, The Sixth Sense, Memento, Fight Club, and why the DIY hits like Obsession prove Hollywood is in another pivot moment. Plus: Project Hail Mary vs. the 15-hour audiobook, Bert's theory that this is the funniest (and most jacked) generation of comics ever, college football weight-room PRs, Jason Kelce showing up for a 9 AM bench session, and a meet & greet at MacDill Air Force Base August 14. If you missed the Bears, this one's for you. 2 Bears, 1 Cave Ep. 335 https://tomsegura.com/tour https://www.bertbertbert.com/tour https://store.ymhstudios.com Bet with DK Sportsbook: Gambling Problem? Call 1-800 GAMBLER, 1-800 MY RESET. Connecticut: call 888-789-7777, visit http://CCPG.org. On behalf of Boot Hill Casino in Kansas. Bet tax pass-through may apply in Illinois. Twenty one plus. Void in Canada. Event contract trading with DraftKings Predictions involves risk of loss. Availability varies. Predictions offer void in New York. Bet to get Bonus bets that expire in seven days. Trade to get Predictions Dollars that expire in one year. Fifty dollars in rewards issued every seven days via click to claim for fourteen days. One non-withdrawable reward redeemable. Nationwide based on Sportsbook, Predictions, and Free-to-Play Sports Contest availability. Varies by State. Terms at http://dkng.co/offer. Limited time offer. Chapters 00:00:00 - Intro 00:00:26 - The Bears Review The Odyssey 00:10:34 - Bears At MacDill Air Force Base 00:11:15 - Project Hail Mary & Bert's Cute Shoes 00:23:37 - Bert's Drinking Again 00:33:36 - Obsession & The New Hollywood Pivot 00:39:00 - The Best Twist Movies Ever 00:52:33 - Everyone's Got Abs 00:56:02 - College Weight Room Energy 01:00:44 - Wrap Up Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Paige started her journey to financial independence at 45 with student loans, negative net worth, and an average income in Los Angeles—yet she'll reach FI by 2025. Sam lives on $12,000 per year in the same expensive city and champions "retiring often" instead of early retirement. Together, they prove that every excuse about FI being impossible is just a limiting belief waiting to be shattered. Key Topics Discussed Introduction and Context 00:00:00 Brad provides context for this 2017 episode, explaining how Paige challenged their limiting belief about achieving FI in high cost of living areas. Paige's FI Discovery 00:05:00 Paige shares how she discovered FI at 44 after getting her first 'real' job, introduced by Sam to Mr. Money Mustache, and started her journey with negative net worth. Sam's Early FI Journey 00:15:00 Sam discusses how his parents automated investing for him, the importance of starting early, and his approach to 'retiring often' instead of just early retirement. Living on $12,000/Year in LA 00:25:00 Sam breaks down his extraordinarily low burn rate in Los Angeles, including creative housing solutions, no car payments, and extreme DIY lifestyle. The Alley Will Provide 00:35:00 Paige and Sam discuss their non-minimalist approach to possessions, finding everything from vacuum cleaners to furniture in alleys and thrift stores. Housing Arbitrage and The DIY House 00:45:00 Discussion of how they purchased a house with a gas leak for $475k in LA, using Sam's DIY skills to make it work despite traditional financing challenges. Breaking Down Limiting Beliefs 00:55:00 Paige addresses common excuses for not pursuing FI: late start, student loans, high cost of living, average income, and shows how she's overcoming each. Path to FI by 2025 01:05:00 Paige outlines her concrete plan to reach FI with less than $500k, leveraging the age 55 rule, catch-up contributions, and eventual Social Security. Hot Seat Round 01:15:00 Rapid-fire questions covering favorite blogs, articles, life hacks, biggest mistakes, and advice for their younger selves. Notable Quotes "The alley will provide." — Paige "Don't retire early, retire often." — Sam "The best time to start investing was twenty years ago. The second best time is today." — Sam "Earning more, but still living on thirty, I feel so much freer. It feels so different." — Paige "Forgive yourself for not having done it sooner. Because if you get hung up on that, you're just going to get stuck." — Sam Key Takeaways Calculate your own FI number using 25x your annual expenses, then work backwards to determine your timeline If you have kids, automate investing for them early—open accounts and make saving the default, not a decision Explore creative housing solutions in your area: roommates, house hacking, or arbitraging neighborhoods for lower rent Learn one new DIY skill per month using YouTube—start with something currently costing you money (car maintenance, home repairs) If you're over 50, maximize catch-up contributions to retirement accounts and research the age 55 rule for your 401(k) Track where free resources appear in your community—thrift stores, community boards, bulk trash days, online marketplaces Set up automatic transfers to investment accounts to remove decision fatigue and make saving the default Resources and Links ChooseFI Episode 041 (original) Mr. Money Mustache Blog Mad Fientist Blog Big ERN (Early Retirement Now) Jim Collins stock series Frugal Woods Personal Capital YouTube (DIY learning) Jocko Willink podcast

Rhino Records co-founder Richard Foos reveals how a scrappy record shop invented reissue culture, chasing master tapes, getting arrested for selling bootleg records, memories of Frank Zappa, Darby Crash and more. Topics Include: Foos discusses being called originator of reissue culture, credits early employee's phrase. Started as a Los Angeles record shop in 1973. Recalls how scarce and cheap rare records were before collecting culture existed. Describes hunting records at warehouses, swap meets, and Salvation Army stores. Notes punk rock's DIY ethos sparked broader music fandom and collecting. Rhino's shop became a punk hangout; Darby Crash was banned for chaos. Explains how punk bands pressed 45s since albums were too costly. James Brown's out-of-print catalog became Rhino's breakthrough first major reissue. Details licensing process: major labels' passive licensing departments simply approved requests. Rhino insisted on original master tapes, never secondary sources or stampers. Engineer Bill Englott restored recordings purely, never altering original mixes. Some projects stalled without usable masters, like a punk box set. Nuggets compilation missed "96 Tears" for years due to licensing issues. Foos explains Rhino's sequencing philosophy: welcoming newcomers, not strict chronology. Doo-wop box set, initially unpopular internally, became Rhino's best-selling release. Discusses 20-25 year nostalgia cycles driving collectibility of past decades' music. Notes scarce 2000s vinyl pressings now make that era highly collectible. Rhino focused on best listening experience over rarities for rarity's sake. Foos recounts pre-Rhino bootlegging ties and friendship with bootleg artist Bill Stout. Reveals he was arrested for selling bootlegs during a warehouse sale. Discusses how record labels misunderstood fandom, limiting artist output and bootlegs. Reflects on vinyl's spiritual appeal despite many records never being played. Compares cassette-era scarcity to streaming's shifting availability of licensed content. Predicts streaming remains the future, praises YouTube's vast musical accessibility. Doubts catalog values will keep rising, questions which artists endure historically. Criticizes a post-Rhino "L.A. Nuggets" box set for prioritizing rarity over listenability. Recalls Kinky Friedman rejecting a hits compilation over disliking his originals. Explains publishing hurdles licensing music for Freaks and Geeks and WKRP DVDs. Describes working with Frank Zappa on Beat the Boots and elaborate packaging. Shares current work: Shout Factory, wife's Narrative Method, and a new podcast. High resolution version of this podcast is available at: www.Patreon.com/VinylGuide Apple: https://tinyurl.com/tvg-ios Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/tvg-spot Amazon Music: https://tinyurl.com/tvg-amazon Support the show at Patreon.com/VinylGuide

Standing out in the $2.1T wellness market takes more than running social ads. As people seek real solutions for chronic pain and mobility, growing brands have to figure out how to scale nationally without losing the personal, in-person connection that keeps clients coming back. Jeremy Goldman sits down with Lindsey McFadden, CMO of Stretch Zone, to talk about how the assisted-stretching pioneer balances medical claims with retail fitness, uses star power like Drew Brees, and turns first-time trial visits into multi-year memberships. INSIDE THE EPISODE: • Cutting Through Digital Noise in a $2.1T Market: With wellness ad feeds more crowded than ever, maintaining brand clarity requires sharp positioning that clearly distinguishes assisted stretching from DIY routines. • Balancing Clinical Benefits with Retail Fitness: Navigating therapeutic claims demands a flexible messaging strategy that resonates equally with chronic pain sufferers and active golfers without alienating either group. • Leveraging Star Power Without Intimidating Everyday Clients: Utilizing high-profile partners like Drew Brees drives powerful local foot traffic, but must be balanced to ensure non-athlete, everyday consumers feel welcomed and capable. • Scaling Brand Cohesion Across 400+ Locations: Maintaining strict nationwide brand standards while empowering local franchisees to tailor marketing to their specific communities is essential for scalable growth. • Scaling Tech Without Sacrificing the Human Touch: Leveraging backend AI and automated workflows optimizes customer acquisition and retention while preserving the high-touch, personal connection of in-studio sessions.

Shinghi Detlefsen, one of the Founders of theAmerican Ecommerce Business Alliance AEBA fighting free and fair marketplace, CEO and Co-Founder of ExpandFi, and President of Wholesome Story and one of the most successful supplement brands on the Amazon.Shinghi isn't just another SaaS founder he's a true operator who has built, scaled, and optimized real brands at a high level. His expertise goes deep into what really drives sustainable growth:money, systems, and people.Highlight Bullets> Here's a glimpse of what you would learn…. Challenges of unfair competition from foreign sellers on Amazon, particularly in the supplement category.The importance of regulatory compliance for foreign sellers using U.S. infrastructure.Strategies for increasing Amazon advertising spend while maintaining profitability.Measuring customer lifetime value (LTV) and optimizing customer acquisition costs (CAC) on Amazon.Driving external traffic to Amazon product pages through targeted advertising on social media platforms.The significance of building a legitimate brand versus relying on short-term marketing hacks.Navigating Amazon's fee increases and the impact of a strong brand on pricing strategies.The role of AI in e-commerce, including its applications in data analysis and task automation.The importance of financial discipline and risk management in e-commerce operations.Key action items for e-commerce sellers, including advocacy for marketplace fairness and focusing on core business fundamentals.In this episode of the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast, host Josh Hadley speaks with Shinghi Detlefsen, Amazon expert and founder of the American E-commerce Business Alliance. Shinghi discusses the regulatory disadvantages U.S. sellers face against foreign competitors, explains his data-driven approach to maximizing Amazon ad spend using customer lifetime value metrics, and emphasizes building authentic brands over chasing short-term tactics. The conversation also covers AI's practical role in e-commerce, financial discipline, and the importance of staying focused on core business fundamentals rather than distractions.Here are the 3 action items that Josh identified from this episode:Scale ads based on profit, not fear Track CAC vs. 12-month profit (LTV)—if it's profitable, increase ad spend (even +50%) to capture more customers and defend your rankings.Build a real brand (your only long-term moat) Invest in product quality, content, and trust-building (reviews, influencers, external traffic) so you can charge premium prices and stay resilient.Use AI to save time, not replace strategy Automate admin and data analysis, but keep human control over ads, creatives, and growth decisions where nuance matters most.Timestamps:00:00:00 Introduction and Setting the StagePodcast intro, host and guest introductions, and overview of the episode's focus on e-commerce scaling and Amazon.00:02:38 The ABA and Regulatory Disadvantages for US SellersShinghi explains the American E-commerce Business Alliance and the regulatory/tax advantages foreign sellers have on Amazon.00:07:06 How to Get Involved with ABA and the Bigger PictureDiscussion on actionable steps for US sellers to support ABA and why regulatory change matters more than minor Amazon policy changes.00:08:18 The Consequences of Losing US Brands and ManufacturingExplains the broader economic risks if US brands and manufacturing are lost to foreign competitors.00:10:04 Doubling Amazon Ad Spend ProfitablyShinghi shares how he doubled Amazon ad spend without losing profitability, counter to common industry trends.00:11:19 Why Amazon Remains the Best ChannelDiscussion on consumer shopping behavior and why Amazon is still the dominant platform for most buyers.00:12:37 Optimizing Ad Spend with Customer AnalyticsExplains using data to determine optimal ad spend, focusing on maximizing 12-month contribution profit per customer.00:15:32 Customer Lifetime Value and Profitability MetricsHow to track and use LTV and lifetime profit on Amazon, and why these metrics matter more than ACoS/TACoS.00:17:23 External Traffic and Meta Ads Direct to AmazonStrategy of sending Meta (Facebook/Instagram) ad traffic directly to Amazon product pages for better results.00:19:18 Brand Building vs. Short-Term HacksWhy building a real brand with solid fundamentals outperforms chasing short-term hacks or black-hat tactics.00:20:14 Mindset Shift: From Transactional to Lifetime ValueEncourages Amazon sellers to focus on CAC:LTV ratios and long-term customer value, not just single-sale profits.00:22:48 Education and Data-Driven Decision MakingImportance of learning business fundamentals and using customer analytics to drive growth.00:24:25 Amazon Fee Increases and the Real Root ProblemWhy blaming Amazon for fee increases misses the point; the real issue is regulatory imbalance with foreign sellers.00:28:43 Brand Power and Pricing FlexibilityHow having a strong brand allows for price increases and resilience against Amazon's changing policies.00:29:40 AI in E-commerce: Hype vs. RealityDiscussion on the current state of AI in e-commerce, what's real, what's hype, and where to focus your time.00:30:07 Build vs. Buy: SaaS, AI Tools, and Time ValuePros and cons of building your own tools with AI vs. paying for SaaS; focus on time value and maintenance.00:33:51 Where AI Delivers the Most ValueAI's best use is interpreting large data sets, not replacing complex SaaS or business processes.00:35:27 Avoiding FOMO and Focusing on High-Value TasksAdvice to avoid distraction from shiny new tools and focus on automating admin tasks to free up time for growth.00:39:01 SaaS Innovation and Staying AheadWhy SaaS companies will quickly catch up to DIY solutions, and the importance of focusing on your core business.00:40:07 Final Thoughts: Build a Brand and Give BackEncouragement to build a real brand, take care of customers, and use success to contribute positively to the world.00:40:39 Three Action Items for E-commerce SuccessHost summarizes three key takeaways: fight for a fair marketplace, build a real brand, and avoid distractions.00:44:40 The Myth of Constant Product LaunchesChallenges the idea that always launching new products is the best growth strategy; focus on bestsellers and distribution.00:46:39 Risk Management and Financial AdviceAdvice on managing risk by investing conservatively outside the business and building a financial safety net.00:48:03 The Value of Financial Security for Better DecisionsHow having a financial cushion leads to better business decisions and peace of mind.00:48:42 Rapid-Fire Questions: Book, AI Tool, and E-comm LeaderShinghi shares his favorite business principle, AI tool (Claude), and recommends following Logan from Physician's Choice.00:50:10 Outro and Contact InformationHow to follow Shinghi, closing remarks, and end of the episode.Resources mentioned in this episode:Josh Hadley on LinkedIneComm Breakthrough ConsultingeComm Breakthrough PodcastEmail Josh Hadley: Josh@eCom...

Fulfillment can make or break your crowdfunding campaign, and most creators don't realize how much can go wrong until it's too late. In this episode, Andrew sits down with Konstantinos Matos of Hive Interactive and Vesuvius Media to unpack the realities of international fulfillment, freight logistics, and why even experienced publishers still encounter unexpected disasters. With over 21 successful Kickstarter campaigns under his belt, Konstantinos shares real-world horror stories, from missing pallets and incorrect shipments to insurance headaches and customs complications. More importantly, he explains how creators can reduce risk, set proper expectations with backers, and build fulfillment plans that survive the unexpected. What You'll Learn Why fulfillment is far more complicated than most first-time creators expect. The biggest misconceptions creators have about international shipping. Why you should never rely on a single fulfillment or logistics provider. How fulfillment mistakes happen long before products ever leave the factory. What insurance actually covers, and what it doesn't. Resources: Thank you to our sponsors! Use Our Pledge Manager Powered By Hive Interactive - 2% Late Pledge Fee + 0% Setup Fee / 0% Campaign Fee: https://pledgemanager.crowdfundingnerds.com/services https://bridgedist.com/ - We recommend Bridge Distribution & Fulfillment for US fulfillment and Amazon fulfillment. We use them for our own projects, too! http://crowdfundingnerds.com/hive - Hive Interactive Pledge Manager - https://www.mailerlite.com/a/6K95GNejWHMV - We recommend Mailerlite for building your community [Affiliate] https://crowdfundingnerds.com/academy/ - If you are looking to DIY your crowdfunding, we have highly impactful courses that teach you how to build, excite, and prepare a crowd to fund you on Launch Day! Official Website: https://crowdfundingnerds.com/ and join our bustling Crowdfunding Nerds Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/crowdfundingnerds/ Connect with Crowdfunding Nerds: Website: https://crowdfundingnerds.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/crowdfundingnerds/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@crowdfundingnerdspodcast

An antidote to the summertime banger, with an hour of breezy ambient from the Vienna artist. When we picture the summertime banger, we picture high energy. But with record-breaking heatwaves from South Korea to the South of France, a different soundtrack makes sense. Cue RA.1051. Across an hour of woozy lo-fi electronics—many his own productions—Mietze Conte offers the alternative, inspired, as he puts it below, by "the fresh cool cleansing breeze" after a storm. At his most energetic, the Vienna artist appeals to fans of Live From Earth or 1tbsp—eurodance meets hyperpop with a DIY smirk. At his most contemplative, he drifts toward the ambient reverie of Otto Benson and Dylan Henner. What ties it together is playfulness: songs under two minutes, hand-drawn covers, music that's deeply serious and deeply unserious at once. Here he goes wide without raising the temperature, from Green-House to Nala Sinephro to Terekke's dub-hazed loops. Step into his world and find some much-needed shade. Find the tracklist and Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1070
 @mietzeconte

In this episode of The Skin Real, Dr. Mary Alice Mina sits down with dermatologist and Skinfluence Podcast host Dr. Dustin Portela to break down the skincare trends flooding social media right now. From DIY sunscreen and beef tallow moisturizer to at-home chemical peels and tanmaxxing, they separate real dermatology from viral misinformation. The conversation covers red flags to watch for in skincare influencers, the science behind sunscreen safety, why skin cycling can work when done right, age-appropriate routines for kids and teens, and what medical grade skincare actually means. It is a practical, no-nonsense guide to protecting your skin from bad advice. In this episode:  0:00 Intro 1:15 Meet Dr. Dustin Portela 3:00 How to spot fake skincare advice online 6:15 The truth about DIY sunscreen 9:30 Beef tallow moisturizer breakdown 13:00 At-home chemical peels and TCA risks 16:45 Tan maxing and the return of tanning culture 21:00 Melanotan and the anti-sunscreen movement 25:30 Sunscreen myths and the seatbelt analogy 28:45 Skin cycling explained 31:15 Skincare for kids and teens 34:00 Real skin vs filtered skin 35:15 What medical grade skincare actually means 36:45 Top three tips for cutting through the noise 37:45 Where to find Dr. Portela Want a deeper look? Watch the full episode on YouTube for a more visual experience of today's discussion. This episode is best enjoyed on video—don't miss out!

This weekend, Gary Sullivan is tackling the challenges of homeownership, from dealing with the aftermath of crazy weather to exploring innovative solutions for home improvement projects. As the summer heat continues to bring unpredictable rain and flooding, Gary shares his expertise on how to protect your home from water damage and ensure a safe and dry living space. Gary dives into the world of sump pumps and battery backup systems, discussing the importance of proper discharge and the potential consequences of improper installation. He also chats with a guest about the benefits of using a Venturi system, which can provide a reliable and efficient way to remove water from your home. Additionally, Gary talks about the importance of water control in gardening and shares tips on how to deal with too much rain. Gary also answers listener questions, offering advice on how to tackle textured ceilings from the 80s and how to choose the right materials for a DIY project. He also discusses the pros and cons of using a product like Roof Max, which can extend the life of your roof without the need for a full replacement.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, Nathan talks about a number of tasks that you could tackle this week or next in the garden. Some are more critical than another, but all are quite timely.

This weekend, Gary Sullivan is tackling the challenges of homeownership, from dealing with the aftermath of crazy weather to exploring innovative solutions for home improvement projects. As the summer heat continues to bring unpredictable rain and flooding, Gary shares his expertise on how to protect your home from water damage and ensure a safe and dry living space. Gary dives into the world of sump pumps and battery backup systems, discussing the importance of proper discharge and the potential consequences of improper installation. He also chats with a guest about the benefits of using a Venturi system, which can provide a reliable and efficient way to remove water from your home. Additionally, Gary talks about the importance of water control in gardening and shares tips on how to deal with too much rain. Gary also answers listener questions, offering advice on how to tackle textured ceilings from the 80s and how to choose the right materials for a DIY project. He also discusses the pros and cons of using a product like Roof Max, which can extend the life of your roof without the need for a full replacement.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Britain is on its seventh prime minister since bidding adieu to the EU a decade back. There's news of once-unimaginable crimes and ethnic strife shaking once sleepy shires. Even model citizens like scholar-slash-philanthropist and casual world-class athlete Jason Arday are having a hard go of it. For the lowdown on the United Kingdom's political crisis, we're joined by our new pal, historian and commentator Dominic Green.Plus, the regular hosty blokes see plenty of problems on our side of the pond, especially after the DSA proves that they can win statewide primaries outside coastal enclaves. But there's always plenty to be cheery about in the land of opportunity, like DIY burritos, roaring roller coasters, and albums so familiar that you can spot the covers from miles away.Opening sound this week: Hasan Piker says, “(Screw) Black people!” James Carville says “I'm outta here” to Fox News, and UK MP Rupert Lowe says, “Everybody has to go!”Closing music: "God Save the Queen," by Ian Post (via MotionArray)Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-ricochet-podcast--5817275/support.

Topics: Satellites and Joe Scott youtube videos DIY linear gage Renishaw OTS wearing tools Shatter by Rob Lockwood Telecentric lens Vibe coding fun

Topics discussed on this week's #FlashbackFriday episode from 2018 include: An update on Kyle's piano playing A listener gave us a great gift Our idea to break into the toothpick game Kyle is trying to pick a fight between Steve and his neighbor Kyle's latest DIY endeavor Steve has a new Jeep project The Fast 5 And more! Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Bluesky! Get show merch here! Please review the show wherever you download podcasts! Wanna send something? The Steve and Kyle Podcast P.O. Box 371 Hudsonville, MI 49426 Opening music: "Malt Shop Bop" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Closing music: "Pulse" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ TAGS: funny, friends, family, kids, comedy, talk radio, talk, radio, pop culture, music, food, garage, sports, relationships, viral videos, social media, politics, fbhw, free beer and hot wings  

In this episode, John talks with John Ray about how our mindset about money, value, and ourselves shapes our business. They also discuss why pricing your expertise is so hard, how to deal with imposter syndrome, and why confidence must come before clarity. About John Ray: After a successful career in investment banking, investment management, and strategic advisory, John Ray left the corporate world in 2013 to build his own business. It didn't take long to find the gap nobody had prepared him for: he routinely undervalued his own expertise, struggled to set prices that matched the outcomes he delivered, and watched his clients do the exact same thing. He spent the next several years figuring out how to fix it for himself first, then for the consultants, coaches, attorneys, CPAs, fractional executives, and other expert practitioners who hire him today to gain clarity, confidence, and profitability through positioning, pricing, and value-based business development. That work became his first book, The Generosity Mindset: A Journey to Business Success by Raising Your Confidence, Value, and Prices (2023). His second book is set for release in the first quarter of 2027. Listen to this episode to learn more: [00:00] - Intro [01:00] - The story behind starting Relationships & Revenue Podcast [04:50] - Using beta readers when writing a book [07:17] - Who John Ray serves and what he does [10:42] - John's journey from investment banking to coaching entrepreneurs [13:45] - Pricing  your  expertise & the "Bad  Neighbor" mindset [15:50] - How imposter syndrome affects pricing and confidence [17:14] - Why knowing your ideal client changes everything [20:25] - Helping entrepreneurs who keep waiting for the perfect time to start [24:18] - Why some entrepreneurs struggle with clarity, confidence, & profitability [27:36] - Helping someone with a scarcity, cutthroat view of business [31:04] - Serving vs. giving everything away [32:06] - The Generosity Mindset book [33:29] - The challenge of selling expertise in a DIY world [36:48] - Pricing for outcomes vs.pricing for deliverables [37:33] - Best barbecue spots across the U.S NOTABLE  QUOTES: "Everybody has a story to tell, and unfortunately, most people die with their stories inside them." "Your expertise is up there between your ears, and guess who's right next door, shouting out the window? It's all the mindsets that hold you back." "Lack of confidence equals lack of clarity." "You don't want to start a business with no plan. You don't want to start a business with too good of a plan." "Your playbook changed over time, and that's the way it is for every business." "If you grew up in a scarcity mindset because of your family of origin, or an abundance mindset, you've got two totally different views of the world." "Our clients see more value in us than we see ourselves." "It's not about you, per se. It is about those you serve." "Clients buy for their own reasons, not for the reasons that we come up with." "Your personal brand is not what you think it is. It's what others say about you when you're not in the room." "If you have a mindset that revolves around others and their hopes, wants, needs, desires, anxieties, fears, and serving them, then it changes a lot about your business." "If you really want to serve people, you've got to be in business by definition. You can't run the business up on the rocks, give everything away, and be sustainable and serve people." USEFUL LINKS: https://www.johnray.co/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnray1/ www.amazon.com/author/johnray   The Price and Value Journey - https://tinyurl.com/PriceAndValueJourneyPodcast North Fulton Business Radio - https://tinyurl.com/NorthFultonBusinessRadio The Generosity Mindset: A Journey to Business Success By Raising Your Confidence, Value, and Prices - https://a.co/d/09DYp6Gs CONNECT WITH JOHN Website - https://iamjohnhulen.com    LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnhulen Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/johnhulen    Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/johnhulen    X - https://x.com/johnhulen    YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@iamjohnhulen    EPISODE CREDITS Intro and Outro music provided by Jeff Scheetz - https://jeffscheetz.com/ 

SponsorsBlueChewThere's a reason BlueChew is the #1 brand for better sex. Experience it yourself at BlueChew.com. When you buy two months of BlueChew Gold, you get the third FREE with promo code DIYS. You will also receive an additional 10% OFF plus free overnight shipping on your first order. Visit https://www.BlueChew.com for more details and important safety information.Cash AppDownload Cash App Today: https://capl.onelink.me/vFut/crftch8p #CashAppPodNew Cash App customers can earn $10 if they use code CASHAPP10 in their profile at signup and send $5 to a friend within 14 days. Terms apply.Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App's bank partner(s). Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC. Cash App Visa® Debit Flex Cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC, and The Bancorp Bank, N.A., pursuant to a license from Visa U.S.A. Inc. See terms and conditions for the Sutton prepaid card, Sutton debit flex card, and Bancorp debit flex card. Cash App Green features, Savings, Direct deposit, Round ups, Overdraft coverage and Discounts provided by Cash App, a Block, Inc. brand. Visit cash.app/legal/podcast for full disclosures.Tahir Moore is back from Festival at Sea with a win.In this episode of Dam Internet, You Scary!, Tahir tells Patrick Cloud how he won a multi-round comedy competition aboard an eight-day cruise, performed for a packed theater, and prepared each set like he was studying game footage. He also explains why observational jokes gave him an advantage, how cruise passengers became new supporters, and why that exposure may be worth more than the prize itself.Tahir and Patrick also discuss first-time cruise advice, an alleged KFC drive-through confrontation, the best pieces of fried chicken, dog-leash etiquette, a police encounter that took an unexpected turn, Rick Ross's recent public image, and why established rappers may be underestimating the influence of streamers and podcasters.In this episode00:00 Opening and weekend plans00:36 Tahir's Festival at Sea experience03:26 The cruise-ship comedy competition06:00 Four rounds and the pressure of advancing06:36 How cruise observations gave Tahir an edge07:08 The $1,000 drink package workaround09:24 Planning four different stand-up sets11:21 Learning comedy structure from David Arnold12:22 The economics of touring smaller comedy clubs13:32 Why comedians need to control their promotion15:17 Turning cruise passengers into ticket buyers17:04 Why the exposure was more valuable than the prize17:45 Honduras and the all-inclusive beach day20:24 BlueChew sponsor message22:05 Celebrity performers aboard the cruise24:04 Festival at Sea and cruise hospitality26:19 What Tahir packs for a cruise26:59 Advice for first-time cruise passengers29:19 Carnival pricing, food and reputation30:20 Virgin Voyages and creator cruises31:22 Internet stories begin31:38 KFC drive-through rifle arrest35:25 KFC memories and popcorn chicken38:11 Ranking every piece of chicken40:19 The chicken conversation takes a turn42:34 Cash App sponsor message44:38 An adults-only anatomy discussion47:56 Unleashed dogs and inherited anxiety50:05 A police encounter in St. Louis53:06 Rick Ross's album numbers and public image56:32 Does Rick Ross need to reinvent himself?59:54 Rick Ross and the 85 South Show01:02:38 The DC Young Fly lyric01:04:26 Rappers versus podcasters and streamers01:08:31 Recognizing a change in entertainment power01:09:11 Could R&B or neo-soul take over again?01:11:20 African R&B recommendations01:12:08 Patrick's We Trippin update01:12:32 Tahir's upcoming comedy dates01:13:40 Growing comfortable with the older cruise crowd01:14:18 DIYS announces a sci-fi thriller project01:15:06 ClosingJoin our Patreon now!! https://www.patreon.com/DamInternetYouScary#DamInternetYouScary #TahirMoore #StandUpComedy#PatrickCloud#ComedyPodcast#FestivalAtSea#CruiseComedy#ComedyCompetition#PodcastClips#RickRoss#CreatorEconomy#HipHopPodcast#CruiseTips#DIYS

In the late '90s, in daring feats of DIY networking on rooftops across Romania's capital, Bucharest, teenagers are stringing computer cables between tower blocks to share an internet connection. This guerilla infrastructure starts out scrappy, but it sprawls into an impressive improvised network that catches the attention of telecom giants. Told by those who built it, this is the extraordinary story of how a homemade system became the backbone of a city - a reflection of what the internet was meant to be and what it became.

In a world obsessed with DIY, YouTube tutorials, and learning everything ourselves, navigating the depths of our own minds can land us not knowing where to start or how to practice. In this episode of Buddhism for Everyone, JoAnn Fox breaks down a foundational practice in Tibetan Buddhism: Relying on a Spiritual Teacher. Far from checking your brain at the door or surrendering your autonomy, relying on a spiritual guide is like hiring an experienced mountain guide before attempting to summit Everest. Having a teacher is genuinely a life-hack that saves you years of trial and error. In this episode, JoAnn explores: What Reliance Really Means: Why healthy devotion isn't about personality worship, but cultivating internal respect, admiration, and gratitude for someone's kindness. The 10 Qualities Checklist: The traditional criteria to evaluate potential teachers (from mental discipline and deep compassion to resilience and mastery of wisdom). The Highest Offering: Why material gifts mean very little compared to the ultimate gift you can offer your teacher, which is to put their teachings into practice. Your increasing happiness is the best offering. Whether you're actively searching for a mentor or looking to deepen your relationship with the teachings you've already received, join JoAnn for a practical, warm, and heart-opening discussion on stepping off the "DIY treadmill" and walking the path with clarity. "The actual reliance on a spiritual teacher is done through the cultivation of certain thoughts, particularly faith, admiration, and respect based on the recognition of your teacher's great kindness." "The best way of making an offering to your teacher is to practice what you've been taught." --Dalai Lama, from Illuminating the Path to Enlightenment  Resources:  The Fourteenth Dalai Lama (2002). Illuminating the Path to Enlightenment. Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive. Find us at the links below:  Our Link Tree: https://linktr.ee/BuddhismForEveryone Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Buddhismforeveryone Private Facebook Group:: https://www.facebook.com/groups/sanghatalk/ Website: Buddhismforeveryone.com Instagram: @buddhism4everyone X: @Joannfox77 TikTok: @buddhism4everyone YouTube: @Buddhism4Everyone To learn more about the new Wednesday evening drop-in classes on Zoom, visit https://buddhismforeveryone.com/meditation-classes-for-peace Interested in an online Study Program, visit https://buddhismforeveryone.com/ongoing-buddhist-study-program To learn about Buddhist Coaching with JoAnn Fox visit www.BuddhismforEveryone.com or email JoAnn Fox at joann@buddhismforeveryone.com  

John Durante has built his dream home theater from scratch in his basement, and it's a modern marvel of understated design and exceptional performance. It cost some serious coin, even with a lot of DIY sweat equity, but it's worth every penny. Host: Scott Wilkinson Download or subscribe to Home Theater Geeks at https://twit.tv/shows/home-theater-geeks Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Club TWiT members can discuss this episode and leave feedback in the Club TWiT Discord. Sponsor: helixsleep.com/htg

Soph's levelling up her DIY era with some exciting loft plans that are getting more ambitious by the minute! Plus, one listener shares the moment her little one's honesty went a step too far in the supermarket...

Free car advice and DIY tips from real mechanics

This episode originally aired on December 13th, 2022.Don your finest duds! This week, The Moth Radio Hour is all about clothes -- from DIY threads to silk blouses, from a prison visiting room to a runway in France. This episode is hosted by Moth producer and director Chloe Salmon. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by The Moth and Jay Allison of Atlantic Public Media.Storytellers:Tween Horace Sanders creates a homemade Halloween costume.Deepa Ambekar is caught off guard by a prison's dress code for visitors.Zakiya Minifee fails to heed her mother's fashion advice. Adrienne Burris is certain that her new husband has ruined her favorite blouse. Graham Shelby joins the football team as a gentle teenager. Model Norma Jean Darden participates in a historic catwalk battle. Podcast # 795

Divorce attorney James Sexton has a theory: the smartest thing you can do before you get married is think like someone whose job is ending marriages. Today, James joins Nicole for part one of a two-part conversation, sharing what you need to know before you say "I do." Make sure you're subscribed to Money Rehab so you don't miss part two in a few weeks, where they get into what you need to know before you get divorced. James unpacks why every couple needs a prenup, and shares the wildest prenup clause he's ever seen. He also gets into what actually makes fidelity and sex clauses hold up in court, and why most DIY prenups fall apart long before they're ever tested.  Then Nicole and James zoom out to the stuff that can predict divorce long before anyone hires a lawyer: the small, unsexy daily habits that keep a relationship alive, and the financial fights that are never really about the money. Plus, James explains why he thinks couples should see a divorce attorney before they get married, and as weird as it sounds… we agree. Start investing investing at SoFi.com/MNN  Check out Nicole's financial literacy course ⁠The Money School⁠  Find a Financial Advisor or Financial Coach from Nicole's company ⁠Private Wealth Collective⁠  Watch video clips from the pod on ⁠Money Rehab's Instagram⁠ and ⁠Nicole Lapin's Instagram⁠ Learn more about James Sexton and his work Here's what Nicole covers with James: 00:00 Are You Ready for Some Money Rehab? 03:13 Why James Chose Divorce Law (Not the Money) 06:06 Has Divorce Law Soured James on Romance? 08:33 James's Own Marriage, Divorce, and Dating Life Now 14:23 Why You Should Talk to a Divorce Attorney Before You Marry 15:49 The Small Habits That Keep a Relationship Alive 21:16 What Actually Ends Marriages 27:28 Should Marriage Have a Higher Bar to Entry? 29:37 Is Your Prenup Actually Enforceable? 31:38 The $10,000-a-Pound Prenup Clause: A True Story 38:03 DIY Prenups and What Not to Skip 44:54 Fidelity Clauses and Sex Clauses 49:01 Do Prenups Actually Prevent Divorce? 50:41 Why the Prenup Conversation Is Secretly Romantic 53:03 The Story of the Lemons: Why Positional Bargaining Fails 57:51 The Most Toxic Financial Fights in Relationships 58:41 What Money Can (and Can't) Buy 1:00:54 Coming Up: James's Divorce Advice in Part Two All investing involves risk, including loss of principal. This episode is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or legal advice. Always consult a licensed professional before making financial decisions.

Dave Rubin of "The Rubin Report" covers Kamala Harris calling for abolishing the Electoral College, expanding the Supreme Court to 13 justices, and granting statehood to Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico while leaving Joe Biden off her list of America's greatest presidents; the growing campaign to free accused UnitedHealthcare CEO killer Luigi Mangione through jury nullification despite the evidence against him; the rise of "Ozempic temples," why rapid weight loss from GLP-1 drugs is creating new cosmetic concerns, and doctors warning against dangerous filler procedures and DIY weight-loss regimens; and much more. #RubinReport #KamalaHarris #LuigiMangione #electoralcollege #supremecourt #ozempicface #ozempic #daverubin

As summer winds down, we're seeing some wild shifts in the airline industry. Despite recent price hikes, a two-tiered economy in travel has created surprising opportunities for budget-conscious travelers. Clark breaks down why you need to sign up for frequent flyer programs right now, what you actually get (and lose) with new unbundled luxury fares, and where to find the best flight deals over the coming months. Also, your homeowners insurance company might feel like a "frenemy," but you can make them work for your wallet with a few simple DIY home upgrades. Learn how a weekend DIY project can protect your home, prevent costly disasters, and keep more money in your pocket every month! Plus, Christa shares your #AskClark questions and Clark gives his take. All this and more on the August 3, 2026, episode of The Clark Howard Show. Submit your opinions or questions: Ask Clark. Air Travel Updates: Segment 1 Ask Clark: Segment 2 DIY Home Upgrades: Segment 3 Ask Clark: Segment 4 Mentioned on the show: How To Score Cheap Fall Airfare and Award Flights The Extra Mile -Delta's Basic Premium Fares-LifeMiles ‘Revalues' Biz Class Awards NYTimes: A Guide to Basic Business / Why You Should Re-Shop Your Cruise European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS) Life360 | Family-Proof Your Family | Location Sharing & Safety Easy DIY Upgrades To Save on Home Insurance Axios: Treat your home like a hobby Clark Howard's 5 Money Tips for Couples / How To Open a Roth IRA Why Clark Howard Is Obsessed With Roth for Retirement Savings Clark Howard's 5 Money Tips for Couples Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card: 6 Things To Know  Clark.com resources: Episode transcripts Community.Clark.com  /  Ask Clark Clark.com daily money newsletter Consumer Action Center Free Helpline: 636-492-5275 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices